Chapter 8

Chapter 8 It's Totally Vexing, but Let's Go Over a Few Things for Those Who Haven't Been Paying Attention. We're Looking at You, Po. After school, they gathered once again in Minecraft. Jodi was on high alert for anything strange. "Let's not waste building materials this time, if we can avoid it," she suggested. Before Doc had invented the VR goggles, Jodi had played Creative Mode. She still missed flying sometimes. Flying would have come in handy when they were hunting the strange Minecraft butterflies! "I want to try something," she said. "A sort of art project." "I'm not sure now's the time," said Theo. "It'll only take a minute," Jodi said. "Do you still have one of the Evoker King's legs? Give it here!" Her time in Survival Mode had taught Jodi a lot about combat and resource management. But what she would always love most about Minecraft was that it

allowed her to make art. The others had set down their Evoker King pieces. Jodi began putting the pieces together like a jigsaw puzzle. She started with the legs. "I see what she's doing," said Harper. "Do you think this will work, Theo?" Theo shrugged. "It's worth a try," he said. "But without the final piece, there's still a hole in the code."

"Explain that to me," said Ash. "I've never fully understood the connection between the Evoker King and the Fault." "Oh, good! I thought it was just me," said Po. "Sometimes I zone out a little bit. Especially when Theo and Harper talk about coding and math."

As Theo watched Jodi connect the Evoker King's torso, he said, "The Evoker King was never supposed to be a part of the game. He was an invasive artificial intelligence who accessed the game through Doc's high- tech virtual reality equipment." "Like an invasive species," Harper suggested. "In the real world, sometimes animals that don't belong in a particular ecosystem find their way into that ecosystem. Because they have different ways of surviving than the normal species in that environment, everything can get thrown out of balance." "…so science stuff?" Po said. "Right," said Theo. "But in this case, the game and the invader found a new balance. The Evoker King, who is made up of programming code, and this game of Minecraft, which is also made up of programming code, grew intertwined. When the Evoker King transformed, he left a hole right in the heart of the game's code. And the hole has been expanding. It's like a sweater slowly unstitching because somebody pulled on a thread."

"But a sweater can be knit back together…," Ash said. "Exactly," said Theo. "And we hope the code will fix itself once the Evoker King is put back together and the hole gets plugged." Jodi had finished assembling the various Evoker King fragments. There was a torso, two arms, and two legs. But they were still missing one crucial piece.

"He looks like a Christmas tree without a star on top," said Ash. "Or a headless scarecrow," said Morgan. "Ooh! That gives me an idea," said Po. He approached the headless form and plopped a carved pumpkin on top. They all waited expectantly. "I guess that didn't do anything," said Harper. "Sure it did," said Po. "It made me feel better."