Minecraft LitRPG Diary of Jack the Kid

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Scroll down to Preview the first few chapters!

Shortcut Links:
B01 – Season 1, Episode 1 – The Weird Walker Arrives…
B02 – Season 1, Episode 2 – One Block at a Time
B03 – Season 1, Episode 3 – Save the Village!
B04 – Season 1, Episode 4 – Shifting Sands
B05 – Season 1, Episode 5 – The Quest for Iron
B06 – Season 1, Episode 6 – Unwanted Guests
B07 – Season 2, Episode 1 – Flight of the Thunderbird
(Read a Preview from Book One)

S1E1 – The Weird Walker Arrives…

Love MINECRAFT? **Over 31,000 words of kid-friendly fun!**
This high-quality fan fiction fantasy diary book is for kids, teens, and nerdy grown-ups who love to read epic stories about their favorite game!

The Weird Walker Arrives…

Jack Walker is a kid in the real world, and he’s obsessed with gaming. When he finds that his school’s computer lab has just installed a brand new Virtual Reality System, he can’t resist sneaking a peek at it while all of the other kids are outside watching a rare solar eclipse. But when Jack finds himself suddenly transported INTO his familiar Minecraft world–real life body and all–the boy finds that he’s gotten into a VR gaming experience that is a little TOO real!

Minecraftians Steve and Alex live a pretty peaceful life in their mountain home that Alex built around a mysterious anomaly she called ‘the Divining Pool’. One day while repairing some creeper damage to their animal pens from the night before, Alex is perplexed when the sky suddenly darkens and a shadow passes over the sun. The Divining Pool offers cryptic words about the arrival of the Weird Walker, and when she and Steve go looking for their missing sheep, they find a strange creature like nothing they’ve ever seen in their blocky world before…

***This Minecraft LitRPG Series will directly involve YOU the Reader!***
Every new episode will involve a reader’s suggestion coming to life, chosen from the reviews of the last book! If you’d like to see something happen to Jack, Alex, and Steve, make sure to let me know in the review comments! If you’d like to see a new character or mob or anything else, let me know in the reviews! Tell me their name, stats, skin, etc., and I might put it in the next episode!

Love Minecraft adventure??

Read Season 1, Episode 1 of Jack the Kid – NOW!
— Available on Kindle and in Paperback

S1E2 – One Block at a Time

Love MINECRAFT? **Over 37,000 words of kid-friendly fun!**
This high-quality fan fiction fantasy diary book is for kids, teens, and nerdy grown-ups who love to read epic stories about their favorite game!

One Block at a Time

Jack is stuck in a video game! And not just any video game. He’s stuck in his own modded version of Minecraft in a new world he created called ‘Vortexia’ moments before a solar flare back in the real world somehow transported him into his school’s new virtual reality system! Being inside this pixelated world is weird–Jack is a real boy with a real flesh and blood body surrounded by a digital world! It’s a darned good thing that he ran into the famous Steve and Alex. Otherwise, he probably wouldn’t survive the first night!

As Jack struggles to cope with being trapped in the game he loves without an inventory or crafting menu and missing critical controls that a player would normally have on a keyboard, how will the boy survive if he’s reduced to working with one block at a time?? When a seemingly easy task of helping Alex and Steve gather some lost sheep becomes a lot more difficult than Jack anticipated, will the real boy–the Weird Walker–manage to cope with this bizarre, new world? And what wacky messages will the Divining Pool have in store for the trio today…?

Love Minecraft adventure??

Read Season 1, Episode 2 of Jack the Kid – NOW!

— Will be Available on Kindle and in Paperback

S1E3 – Save the Village!

Love MINECRAFT? **Over 30,000 words of kid-friendly fun!**
This high-quality fan fiction fantasy diary book is for kids, teens, and nerdy grown-ups who love to read epic stories about their favorite game!

Save the Village!

After a completely unexpected midair battle between an Ender Dragon and a freaking Wither, the village to the east of Jack, Alex, and Steve has suffered a lot of damage. The two Minecraftians and Jack the ‘Weird Walker’ head straight there to help repair the blown-up houses before sundown. If they don’t, many villagers will likely be killed over the night!

Can they survive the night and save the villagers? And if they survive until dawn, what interesting things will Jack find in a Minecraft sandstone village as a real human boy? And will Steve finally get to help KittyPaws30 build a swimming pool?!

Love Minecraft adventure??

Read Season 1, Episode 3 of Jack the Kid – NOW!
— Available on Kindle and in Paperback

S1E4 – Shifting Sands

Love MINECRAFT? **Over 32,000 words of kid-friendly fun!**

Shifting Sands

Our three heroes are separated. After a mysterious rescue following an even more mysterious attack on Alex in the desert village, Jack and Alex learn that Steve has traveled deeper into the wasteland toward a distant desert temple.

Will Alex and Jack be able to catch up to their friend, who’s dying and trapped in the shifting sands? And what ancient horrors will Jack have to face in a desert temple as a vulnerable boy from the real world? Or is he really as vulnerable as he thinks he is? And what weird and probably terrible thing does the Divining Pool hold for Steve, Alex, and Jack the kid today?

Love Minecraft adventure??

Read Season 1, Episode 4 of Jack the Kid – NOW!
— Available on Kindle and in Paperback

S1E5 – The Quest for Iron

Love MINECRAFT? **Over 30,000 words of kid-friendly fun!**

The Quest for Iron

Once again, Jack and Alex are separated from Steve, but they’re not alone! A mysterious Minecraftian brought to life by the Divining Pool, Liamfrey the airship pilot, is with them in the desert temple. And as Steve struggles to catch up to his friends, Jack the kid, Alex, and Liamfrey all delve into the massive ravine under the temple’s blown-up treasure chamber in search of iron, redstone, and maybe even some treasure!

But, as they explore deeper and deeper into the dangerous ravine, constantly striving to reach the precious resources at the bottom, will our heroes be able to survive the many mobs stalking the darkness? Can Jack’s strange new-found immunity to zombie attacks save the group from skeletons, creepers, spiders, and other hostile mobs?

Love Minecraft adventure??

Read Season 1, Episode 5 of Jack the Kid – NOW!
— Available on Kindle and in Paperback

S1E6 – Unwanted Guests – SEASON ONE FINALE!!

Love MINECRAFT? **Over 28,000 words of kid-friendly fun!**

Unwanted Guests

After falling to his death, Steve has respawned in a completely unknown forest, which is quite the surprise since he was supposed to appear back in his bed at home! Meanwhile, Jack the kid and Alex are with Liamfrey up on his airship, planning their next move and assuming that Steve is back at the homestead.

But, as Jack and his friends cross the desert again to rejoin the Minecraftian warrior, Steve is lost in the mountains where an Ender dragon dominates the land! And what they find when they return to the homestead turns out to be much worse—and much deadlier—than it seems. Will Steve make it back to his friends? And will Jack and Alex survive the terrible trap that awaits them?

Love Minecraft adventure??

Read Season 1, Episode 6 of Jack the Kid – NOW!
— Available on Kindle and in Paperback

THIS SEASON HAS A BOX SET!
(Books 1-6)

**Over 156,000 words of kid-friendly fun!**
This high-quality fan fiction fantasy diary book BOX SET is for kids, teens, and nerdy grown-ups who love to read epic stories about their favorite game!

Books 1-6 of the “Jack the Kid” Minecraft LitRPG Diary Book Series in ONE!!!

Love Minecraft Adventure??
Love Saving Money??

Read the Books 1-6 SEASON ONE BOX SET of Jack the Kid – NOW!
— Available on Kindle and Paperback

S2E1 – Flight of the Thunderbird – SEASON TWO PREMIERE!!

Love MINECRAFT? **Currently Being Written**

Flight of the Thunderbird

(Description Coming Soon!!)

Love Minecraft adventure??

Read Season 2, Episode 1 of Jack the Kid – SOON!
— Will be Available on Kindle and in Paperback

Book One Preview

Chapter 1 – Jack

Running to the edge of the bedrock Divining Pool, Alex wiped her eyes and stared into the blue waters within. The torchlight on the water’s surface shimmered…

Then, hazy white words gradually formed inside, which Alex slowly read aloud…

“The time of the Weird Walker has begun…”

“Okay, you two get ready!” Mom said suddenly.

Jack looked up from his Minecraft book, pulling out of the adventures of the Skull Kids. The Minecraftian characters were fighting off a bunch of zombies that had invaded their home while they were away.

Pff. Zombies, Jack thought. How hard could it be to fight zombies?

Normally, Jack would rather play Minecraft than read about Minecraft any day of the week, but he didn’t have his computer in the family van, so…

He did have his game pendant around under his shirt around his neck. Closing the book and setting it aside, Jack felt at the little USB flash drive on the necklace against his chest with a smile. He would be playing Minecraft in the school’s computer lab soon enough…

The boy looked ahead into the rear-view mirror to see Mom’s eyes looking back at him and his little brother as she slowed the van down, pulling over to the side of the school. All of the little kids from the elementary grades were already running toward their classroom doors. Jack’s sixth-grade classroom would be all the way around the corner of the building, but Mom always dropped him off next to Dexter’s class door so that Jack could make sure that his little brother got to his classroom first.

“Ready!” Dexter exclaimed from his booster seat. Jack didn’t have to ride in one of those boosters anymore. He was too big. He hadn’t used a booster seat in a long time now, but Dexter was still small. Jack was pretty small himself for a twelve-year-old—shorter than most other kids in his class—but at least he didn’t need a booster…

The van glided to a stop next to the curve.

“Hey, Mom, what about the permission slips?” Jack asked, suddenly remembering the forms were still sitting up in the front seat.

“Oh yeah!” his mom said, making the lever behind the steering wheel go ca-chunk as they stopped. She reached over and grabbed two papers. They would need those sheets to be able to watch the solar eclipse today.

Jack unbuckled his seatbelt and jumped to his feet, grabbing his Avengers backpack. Squeezing between the seats, he rushed up to where Mom’s hand held both forms for him and his brother. Taking them both from her grip, he kept the one with his name on it and gave Dexter the other.

“Mom, we’re gonna make box things to look at the sun with!” Dexter exclaimed with a broad grin. “There’s a solar eclipse!”

“It’s kinda cool, I guess…” Jack added.

“I know, baby. Have fun and listen to your teacher,” she replied with a warm smile.

Smirking, Jack hugged his mom and backed away to let Dex get a hug, too. He opened the sliding side door of the van, making it lock back.

“Love you, Jack!” Mom said, calling out while hugging Dex. “Dexter, don’t look at the sun without your teacher’s help, okay? I don’t want you to go blind.”

“Okay!” Dex said, pulling away from the hug and slipping his backpack on over his narrow shoulders.

Jack looked out over the playground. Part of him wanted to go nuts out there and climb and swing—if there was still time—but he also knew that he was getting too big for that now. His school had both elementary grades and middle grades in the same place. All of the sixth, seventh, and eighth graders hung out on the other side of the building during breaks. Just last year—in fifth grade—Jack was still playing on the huge playground full of cool equipment in front of him with the younger kids. But now, he was too old. He was almost a teenager!

“You too, Jack!” Mom added. “Don’t look at the sun without protection! You can go blind!”

“Alright, Mom,” Jack said, rolling his eyes. Duh. He adjusted his glasses, which were slipping down his nose a little.

“Oh, and hey, you too, make sure you’re standing here right after school today, okay? I’m gonna pick you up right after the bell. Joel has a soccer game. ”

“Alright, mom,” both boys muttered.

“Seriously, Jack,” Mom said. “No playing in the computer lab after school! Be here—got it?”

“Okay, Mom!” Jack said.

“Love you, boys!”

“Love you too!”

Jack and Dexter jumped down from the van onto the sidewalk. Jack adjusted his glasses and his backpack, then closed the door. With one last wave, Mom drove away, and the two boys turned to face the playground. Most of the kids were already waiting in line at their doors.

“I wanted to play,” Dexter whined.

Jack shrugged and gave his little brother a shove. When Dex looked up at him confused, Jack grinned, making the smaller boy smile too.

“Let’s go, Dex.”

The two of them ran down the mound from the sidewalk, across the corner of the playground, and joined the hordes of other little kids lining up at the doors. Just like they did every day, the two boys found Dexter’s classroom, and Jack’s little brother got in line after a quick hug from the older boy.

“See ya, Jack!” Dex exclaimed with a big smile, then immediately turned to his friend Melody in line. “Hey, don’t look at the sun without the box-thing or you’ll go blind!”

“Pff—I know that!” the little girl replied, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Bye,” Jack said, putting his hand on his brother’s shoulder for an instant, then he took off, running as fast as he could past the playground, then around the edge of the field and the building to the opposite side where the big kids would be.

Jack was fast. He loved how fast he was. He was shorter than most other kids in his class—even though he was older than some of them—but he could run like the wind!

On the other side of the building, a lot of the older kids were taking their time getting to class—especially the eighth graders—but the big kids didn’t line up like the little ones did. Jack ran for the door to the hall that would lead to his classroom from the inside. He knew a quicker way to get to class, but he always went this way because it let him pass by the computer lab. Today Mom had been running late getting them to school, but normally whenever they’d get here with a little time to spare, while Dex played on the playground with the little kids, Jack would plug his game pendant into his favorite computer in the computer lab and play five or ten minutes of Minecraft before class…

Now, as he approached the computer lab, he saw several older kids lingering around the outside, chatting excitedly.

“Why does there have to be just one of them?” one guy said. “They need at least two to play multiplayer games. It’s stupid…”

“Cause it’s not for games, dummy,” another replied. “You don’t play games in school.”

“I do,” the other kid muttered, staring through the windows of the lab.

I do too, Jack thought with a smile. He approached the door, pushing through a crowd of kids, then reached down and pulled it open just like most mornings. The latch stuck a little but popped open. What Jack saw inside made him gasp…

The computer lab was empty, save for Mr. Hayes. The normal rows of computers on long tables were there like any other day, but there was something new on one corner that took up a lot of space! It reminded Jack of something from the arcade at the mall—kind of like that dance game—but also not. It was more complicated than an arcade game. There was a thick pad on the floor—likely for standing on—and a half-enclosure with a single wide computer monitor built into a curved wall. Jack saw a bunch of cables. There were also two joystick-type-things on the table next to the keyboard as well as some kind of virtual reality headset hanging from a hook near the monitor. The entire system was black and dark grey with bright blue and yellow lettering on one curved wall:

Vortex Wave Virtual Reality System 1.0.

“Virtual reality??” Jack said to himself, standing half-inside the room as the other kids chatted and pressed in around and behind him. “Whoa…!”

“What are you doing in here?” Mr. Hayes said suddenly, standing and frowning down at Jack. “The door was locked! The computer lab is closed until later today!”

“It was locked?” Jack asked, looking down at the door handle still in his hand. He looked up again as Mr. Hayes approached. Mr. Hayes was his friend. Jack spent a lot of time in here. “Sorry, sir…”

“Come in here, Jack,” Mr. Hayes said. “Close the door behind you.”

“Hey I wanna come in and see it too!” an older boy cried from behind Jack.

“Nobody’s gonna see it until later!” Mr. Hayes replied. “Now come in, Jack.”

Jack obliged, closing the door behind him. Immediately, the noise of the kids in the hall quieted down. The computer lab teacher smiled down at the boy and fiddled with the door’s lock a little.

“What’s that for?” Jack asked. “It’s virtual reality—I can see that.”

“Dang sticky lock,” Mr. Hayes muttered, then he looked back at Jack, then the VR system. “Oh, for science,” he exclaimed. “We have programs in there that’ll let students experience what it would be like to be on a space station, or to travel to Egypt or Europe, and some other good stuff.”

“Neat,” Jack said. He eyed the impressive piece of equipment. His game pendant around his neck seemed to almost burn on his chest; he wanted to plug it into there so badly. “Are there any actual games on there?”

“No way!” Mr. Hayes said with a laugh.

“Would games be able to run on there?”

The teacher shrugged. “Probably. It’s just a computer like any other. It just has a fancier monitor, basically, and other kinds of controllers … and sensors. It’s actually really cool.” Mr. Hayes sighed and smiled at the new Vortex Wave for a moment, then shook his head and looked down at Jack again. “Now—it’s time for class, Jack,” Mr. Hayes said. “You’d better get to first period.”

“Can’t I try it out?”

“Not now,” the teacher replied with a chuckle. “Of course not. That wouldn’t be fair to all of them out there…” Mr. Hayes pointed at the many faces in the windows glaring at them and drooling over the VR system. “I’m going to open up the lab after the solar eclipse. The eighth grade classes are going to experience the Vortex first, so it’ll be a while, but … I bet I can find a turn for you sometime today,” he said with a smirk. “Now get to class.”

“Yes sir.”

With that, Jack took one last long look at the new VR system, then opened the door and plunged back into the loud chaos and crowds of kids getting to class.

He wondered what playing Minecraft would be like on a fancy virtual reality rig like that…

Jack sat at his desk looking up at the clock.

It was almost lunchtime.

The boy was hungry, but he didn’t care. All he wanted to do was play with that new virtual reality system. It was too bad that all of the older kids would be playing with it after the eclipse. Heck—there was only one for the whole school! That thing had to be the coolest thing ever, and he would hardly ever get to touch it; especially today, since he couldn’t stay after school because of his older brother’s stupid soccer game…

Jack looked back to his desk and stared at the lame pinhole projector he’d made for himself for viewing the solar eclipse. What a jip. It was just a cardboard box with foil and white paper. He wouldn’t even be looking at the sun. They were all just going to look into their boxes and watch the solar eclipse project light onto the white paper inside…

Ugh. He wanted to play Minecraft on the Vortex Wave…

“Okay, let’s go!” his teacher exclaimed to the class, snapping Jack out of his sour thoughts.

“Are we going to lunch now?” one of the girls asked. “Should we leave our projectors here?”

The teacher, Ms. Sanderson, put her hands on her hips and smiled broadly at the class. “Everyone take your projectors and follow me. All classes are going outside to see the solar eclipse. Then we’re going to go to lunch, okay?”

The entire class stood and the room was filled with sounds of murmuring students and shoved chairs. Jack stood and picked up his projector to take with him.

“Now—all of the classes in the whole school will be heading outside, so everyone follow me single file through the hall,” she added. “And remember—don’t look directly at the sun! The eclipse will be starting very soon and it will be dangerous to look at! When we get to our spot outside, we’ll all stand with our backs to the sun and look through the projectors, okay? Everyone understand?”

The students all murmured in agreement.

“Yes, Ms. Sanderson,” Jack said automatically. This was boring. Science was cool, and knowledge about astronomy and planets and stars and the universe was all really great stuff, but watching the sun move slowly on a piece of paper was going to be really boring…

Jack sighed and gradually joined the group of students that were all crowding around the door as Ms. Sanderson waited to open the way to the hall. When she did, Jack saw one of the seventh grade classes walking past. He looked down at his cardboard box in his hands then back up again as they waited…

Eventually, Ms. Sanderson led them out into the hall. The class started toward the outer doors.

Jack was so bored and wished that he could just go to lunch instead, scarf some food down super-fast, then spend the rest of his free time playing Minecraft until next period.

He sighed, remembering that the lab would be closed anyway…

As bored and disappointed as he was, Jack found himself following his class, trailing along at the back of his class’s line. He followed Ms. Sanderson and his class down the turning halls until they were walking down the long one toward the outer door where he’d come in that morning. Craning his neck, Jack saw a line of eighth graders up ahead of them, almost at the door. Looking back, he saw that the halls behind him were mostly-abandoned. It was strange to see the school so empty…

When his class passed the computer lab, Jack lingered for a moment to peer through the window. He saw the Vortex Wave Virtual Reality System 1.0 standing there in all of its glory, all alone and all by itself at the end of a table lined with the school’s normal, old computers. Stretching to see around the corner of the window, Jack didn’t see Mr. Hayes at his desk. The computer lab’s lights were off.

The briefest fantasy of playing Minecraft on that system—feeling like he was inside the game—invited Jack to linger a little longer. He stared at the Vortex Wave with a broad grin…

Then Jack suddenly snapped back to reality when he realized that he was seriously lagging behind his class! With a gasp, he looked to the back of the line and saw that they were all walking along without him. He had to catch up, or he’d be left behind…

The boy looked down at the cardboard projector in his hands.

Looking back down the hall deeper into the school, Jack saw that—aside from his class way ahead of him—he was alone…

The craziest idea suddenly came over him…

Reaching out, feeling a thrill sweep through him like cold water, Jack reached out to the door handle of the closed computer lab. He turned the latch. The lock stuck a little, then popped open…

He gasped again, looking once more at his disappearing class…

Could I? he thought with a grin. Could I really??

He was terrified. And excited as heck!

So bad! Jack thought. So much trouble!

Jack stared through the window at the VR system. The game pendant in his shirt felt like it was burning on his chest…

He looked back at his class—they hadn’t noticed him lagging behind. He looked down the hall the other way…

Then Jack did the crazy-bad thing.

He slipped into the computer lab and closed the door behind him.

With his heart hammering in his chest, Jack rushed up to the VR system, tossing his cardboard box projector down onto a nearby desk, forgotten. With reverence, the boy stepped onto the dark-grey platform with wide eyes and looked around at all of the pieces…

Jack knew his way around computers and tech.

Yes, there was the monitor. It was probably for navigating the operating system into whatever program the lab was trying to run. It would probably also double as a ‘mirrored’ monitor showing whatever the person wearing the headset was seeing, right? He looked down at the keyboard. Jack picked up the two controllers. They were both wireless, handheld joysticks that would let him navigate through programs inside the VR.

Jack looked around for the CPU and he found it near the floor. It was off.

Reaching down, Jack pressed the computer’s power button. The monitor lit up and went through a normal computer’s boot-up procedure, eventually loading the operating system. Jack saw a variety of educational VR programs on the desktop.

Looking down at the computer’s tower again, the boy searched for some USB ports and quickly found them.

He smiled, pulling his game pendant off from around his neck. His necklace was a unique flash drive permanently loaded with a copy of Minecraft. There was storage on the device set up in a way that Jack could save games, and he’d modded his game pendant’s Minecraft slightly with some basic things: letting torches cast light without having to be stuck in a wall, putting a health bar over the heads of mobs, showing how much damage he did when he hit a mob—little things. Jack liked to keep his game pretty vanilla. He only added mods that made the game more convenient. The most important thing about his pendant, however, was that it could autoplay and run itself on any computer he plugged it into…

Jack regularly played Minecraft in the computer lab on whatever computer was available. He had his favorite computer of course, but it didn’t really matter. His necklace was plug and play.

Joel, his sixteen-year-old brother, had given Jack the game pendant two years ago for his birthday. It was Jack’s favorite thing. It was a great birthday present…

Smiling, Jack held the flash drive portion of his necklace and looked down at the USB ports on top of the Vortex Wave’s CPU. He gave one last frightful glance out of the computer lab windows and saw the halls empty. The building was very quiet and Jack could hear students making noise and chatting and laughing outside. He looked through the outer windows and saw classes standing around together in the grass out there, far away.

It was strangely dark outside, like on a really stormy day.

Looking back at the Vortex Wave Virtual Reality System 1.0, Jack bent down and plugged his game pendant into an open USB port. Just like on all other computers, Jack watched the operating system recognize his drive and eventually run the program. And just like on other computers, Jack logged into the game with his handle Weirdwalker000 and navigated Minecraft’s menu to where he could play.

“A new game,” the boy said to himself, “for a new experience…”

Jack didn’t put in a game seed or anything. He let the program create the new world randomly. He typed in … Vortexia … naming the new game after the Vortex Wave.

“Is that a little lame?” he said to himself. “Vortexia?”

Then Jack shrugged and clicked ‘create world’. He quickly (but carefully) pulled the VR headset off of its hook as the game started working to parse and put together a new world. Jack slipped the headset over his head, immediately covering his eyes with a dark screen and feeling headphones rest against his ears. The rig was a little loose, but he quickly found the adjustment areas and tightened it down.

Now blind, the boy reached out to where he remembered the joysticks sitting. He found them and—feeling at the various buttons—he held the things in his hands in the way they felt like they were supposed to be.

With his heart pounding and his face feeling stretched by a massive smile, Jack waited, holding the controls, staring at the black screen…

He wondered if he’d missed something about turning on the headset, but then heard the soft, peaceful Minecraft music playing in his ears.

As he waited, he heard kids’ voices outside exclaiming sounds of surprise and wonder…

Was he missing something cool? How could looking at a solar eclipse on a piece of paper be that cool…?

He heard a teacher’s voice say from outside, “Here it comes!”

Nothing was happening.

Then, as soon as Jack was about to take the headset off to check the monitor, the screen in front of Jack’s eyes suddenly lit up, almost blinding him with the light of day! There was a bright blue sky and bold, green grass! Jack appeared in Minecraft in a mountain valley—it looked like a wooded forest biome—with no mobs or animals around him. He turned his head to look to the right and watched the Minecraft world move around him. He saw the sun rising in what had to be the east.

Jack laughed. As his head shook from it, his vision moved around.

“Awesome!” he exclaimed, suddenly hushing himself, remembering that he was sneaking into the computer lab and could get into serious trouble. “How do I … move?” he said, playing with the controllers in his hands. He found a control stick under his left thumb that let him suddenly surge forward. “Whoa!”

Stopping, Jack took a moment to look around again. This was awesome! The resolution was great, and he didn’t feel dizzy or anything—it was like really being in the game!

He heard a little crunch sound on his left and quickly spun to seek out its source. He saw a rabbit hopping around in the distance. Trying to walk toward the animal—not too fast on the stick!—Jack smiled at the sound of his own footsteps. He lifted the controllers in his hands and saw his blocky Minecraftian hands moving around where his real hands were in reality. The digital hands were coated in Jack’s custom skin: something he’d created on Skindex that looked like a dark ninja with hi-tech armor and glowing red trim and a demonic face. He watched his black and red hands and arms move as he whirled the controllers around…

“So cool!”

Then something odd happened.

Without warning, the sky suddenly grew dark. Jack had seen time pass in this game in fast-forward before, and this wasn’t that. He looked back to the sun—still amazed at how cool it was to look around—and saw that the brilliant block of light in the sky was covered by a shadow. The shadow was also square, and by the time Jack looked up, he was that it was mostly covering the sun. A moment later, the eclipse was complete!

“What the…?!” Jack muttered to himself, staring at the Minecraft sun in a full solar eclipse. He’d never seen that before. Was it a mod that he didn’t remember installing?

As the boy stared at the blocky sun covered in blocky shadow, the brilliant lines of light shining around the gloom increased in intensity until it flared, suddenly blinding Jack and hurting his eyes!

He looked away, down at the green, pixelated grass. Jack’s eyes burned. He saw a huge, black block in the way of his vision, which grew until he couldn’t see a thing! Then the ground under Jack seemed to fall away, making his stomach flip-flop and his whole body shudder in terror!

The boy felt himself drop the controllers.

Jack reached up for the headset, his heart pounding with fear, his head swimming and feeling like it was swirling over and over—like he was tumbling; falling! The boy lost track of what he was doing and gasped, unable to hear himself because of a roar in his ears! Jack was falling! His stomach flipped around and he was choked with terror just like that time he went on the Tower of Doom ride at the carnival; that grownup ride that carried people to the top of a tall column and dropped them back down to the bottom! Jack felt for the headset over his eyes and ears. He couldn’t see—everything was black—but he could feel his head, his hair, and … his glasses…

Where was the headset?!

Then Jack fell down.

He assumed that in his freak-out—in the malfunction of the headset—he’d fallen down to the grey platform where he was standing, but the floor felt weird under his hands. It felt spongy and like he was touching a rippled blanket covered with bits of cellophane…

Jack could still hear—even after that terrifying falling sensation—and he noticed that his surroundings were quiet again. Jack heard the crunch of the same rabbit hopping around on his left.

Gradually, the pitch-black blockage in front of his eyes faded. Slowly, the color came back into the world, and Jack found himself still in Minecraft.

Was he still wearing the headset?! Reaching up, he couldn’t feel it. Jack felt his hair. His glasses were slipping, so he reached up and pushed them up the bridge of his nose.

Then he realized that he was staring at his hands…

His real hands.

“What?!” Jack exclaimed, jumping to his feet.

He looked down and realized that he was standing on his own real feet and legs. His shoes were planted on a Minecraft ground—one foot in pixelated grass, the other on a black block that looked like obsidian.

“What the heck?!”

The boy looked up at the sun—ready to shield his eyes if it still hurt him—and saw the bright, square sun low in the sky. There was still a sliver of shadow slipping away from it, as if there had also been a solar eclipse in his Minecraft world and it was now passing…

A moment later, the eclipsing shadow completely vanished and Jack was left looking up at a typical Minecraft blocky sun.

The sky was bright and blue and huge, blocky transparent clouds lazily crossed over far above. Low mountains rolled all around Jack, built of blocks as high as his family’s kitchen table back home and covered in vivid green grass with thin, pixelated clusters waving in the wind. Jack recognized Spruce and Oak trees around him. He recognized them, of course, because he played a lot of Minecraft and knew the game backwards and forwards.

But now, he was in it…

Jack looked down at his hands again. He looked over his whole body—his black ‘gamer’ t-shirt, his favorite pants, his new shoes that he loved—he was really in here! He wasn’t a Minecraftian or a blocky Steve-type character. He was a real boy of flesh and blood! He had glasses, for goodness sake! Jack was hungry—it was time for lunch! And he was stuck in … oh gosh … was he trapped in a video game?!

Suddenly too terrified to move, Jack looked all around him. He peered down at the obsidian block next to him, squinting his eyes. Why was that there?! That wasn’t normal…

Normal! Jack thought with a startling laugh. He heard his voice echo across the blocky hills. Had he gone crazy?! Looking to his left, the boy saw the little, brown blocky rabbit hop away from him. It had heard his laugh and fled.

Oh gosh—what was he going to do?!

Jack was stuck inside Minecraft…

Fear flushed through the boy. His heart pounded and he looked at his familiar paradise with wide, frightened eyes. Suddenly something deep inside Jack calmed his heart and reminded him of how much he loved this world. He knew everything about it!

Then Jack smiled. He was … stuck inside Minecraft!

…