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The call had taken some timezone coordination, between Luke’s residence in America and Desmond’s current location (unknown, but in the same timezone as Luke, so either in Canada or South America or even perhaps the Caribbean), but, finally, they had managed to coordinate getting online at the same time.
Hershel is altogether uncertain about this…Minecraft game, but Luke enjoys it, and Alfendi had agreed to join them, so it must be fairly universal enjoyment for children. He did his research before this. It doesn’t seem like the type of game he’ll enjoy, but if it’s for his children and friends, he’ll give it a chance.
“Hi, Professor!” Luke says when he finally clicks the button to join the call. Claire had to give him a tutorial on how to use the app. He’s usually fine with physical technology, but he’ll admit that software’s a field he has no expertise in.
“Hello, Luke,” he responds, unable to help the smile that comes across his face.
“You didn’t tell me he was coming?” a familiar voice squawks. He checks the list — he doesn’t recognise most of the profile pictures, but he does recognise some of the names. “em 📷” is almost certainly Emmy, and he knows that “Tim” is Luke, who goes by his middle name online. The person that had just spoken is “albatross”, which…sounds somewhat familiar, but he’s not quite certain what to make of it.
“I’m still not sure how I feel about having him here,” Flora says through the speakers of the headphones.
“I have apologised a multitude of times for kidnapping you and sacking London,” ‘albatross’ replies, who is most certainly Clive. “Luke has—”
“Luke is overly forgiving,” Flora responds. “At least one person in this session has held him hostage before.”
“Hey!” Luke protests.
“I know you feel bad about it,” Flora says, voice sounding more controlled. These headphones are high-quality — he can hear the changes in her voice from the other end of the call. “I appreciate that you included me in your public apology. I’m still angry, and that won’t end anytime soon.”
“I’ll avoid you in the game if it’d make you feel better,” Clive mutters.
“That would, actually,” she answers, and some of the tension diffuses.
“The Professor’s here, which means Claire should be soon…” he can hear Luke murmur to himself.
“Claire left her headphones in the den,” Hershel says. “She told me that she would be online shortly.”
“Are you two going to be in the same room, Professor?”
“Indeed,” he answers. “I must confess that I’m not very good with software. She’s going to be in here with me so that if something happens she’s capable of troubleshooting. I’m capable of some basics, but it’s not my strong suit.”
“Don’t worry, Professor! If you need help with the game, you can stick with me! I’m teaching Aurora how to play, too.”
“That’s right,” Aurora says. “I must admit that I’m curious about this…Minecraft. It seems like it should be fun.”
“I’m here!” Katrielle chirps, alongside the sound of someone connecting to the call.
“Let’s see…one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine…we’re missing Alfendi, Claire, and Randall.”
Claire walks back into the room and opens up her laptop. “Hello, Luke,” she says as she joins the call.
“Hello, Claire!” Luke chirps in response.
Claire smiles to herself. “These headphones are fairly sensitive, but short-range. I’m not hearing an echo, even though Hershel and I are in the same room. That’s nice.”
“I’m glad you like them!” Luke says. “I was a little worried.”
“I do admit that…I do not quite get the point either.”
“This is humiliating,” Alfendi snaps as soon as he joins the call. “I was almost tempted to ditch them, but…”
“You promised, Al!” Katrielle says, sing-songy. “No breaking your promises.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, Kat,” he replies. “Only reason I’m here.”
“Hey!” Luke and Flora chorus in unison.
It’s…nice, Hershel thinks. To have all his family in one place, even as they’re scattered between various locations. He understands the appeal of these sorts of online gatherings now. Perhaps they would have to do this again, even if it was in a different context.
“Professor, do you know where Randall is?” Luke asks.
“I don’t know why he hasn’t joined us yet,” he answers, hearing the sound of someone connecting as he speaks, “but I do know he’s always had a propensity for being late.”
“Hey!”
“Am I wrong?” he asks.
“...no,” Randall answers. “So, Luke, wanna get this party started?”
“Okay, I’ve put the server IP in the text channel,” Luke dictates. “You all remember how to get in, right?”
A chorus of affirmatives echoes across the channel, including one from him. He can follow the instructions that Luke messaged him yesterday.
The world of the game is strange. He had done a little bit of research beforehand, but not that much — he knew how the game was formatted, of course, but not that well.
“Aurora? Professor? Where are the two of you?” Luke asks.
He doesn’t know for a moment, but then he checks the coordinates that are listed, and dictates them.
“Alright, I just found Aurora, so the two of you are going to head over now,” Luke answers. “Then we’ll get you started.”
He doesn’t truly know what exactly to make of all this, but he does have some idea of how to get started. He walks over to a tree and starts attempting to cut it down with his hand, which feels silly and yet somehow works. That’s when Luke and Aurora’s avatars both appear, recognisable by their chosen usernames.
“Okay, now that we’re together, we can get started!” Luke says.
“Can you cut down trees with your hands in this game?” Aurora asks. “What a fascinating concept. I suppose humans in this game must be much stronger.”
“Probably,” Luke says, “but you kinda have to be able to cut down trees so you can get wood, because without wood you aren’t going to make anything…”
Alfendi has a plan. Or, well, he and Kat have a plan, that is. See, the promise wasn’t just that he’d wear the stupid cat ear headphones and join Kat and the rest of the family in a call. It was a bargain, and a bargain works both ways.
Which means that he and Kat are going to commit Minecraft arson. She is going to aid and abet him in burning down a forest. She had been gleeful at the prospect, admittedly, just at the thought of playing with him.
Mostly he just listens to Luke, Aurora, and the Professor go back and forth while Luke teaches them both how to play. He suspects that the only reason it hasn’t descended into chaos yet is because no one wants to interrupt them. Also, he and Kat have been privately chatting back and forth.
kitkat: so when are we gonna do it???
fenderbender: patience, grasshopper
fenderbender: gotta build up our supplies first, make sure the forest really burns ;)
kitkat: *sigh* whatever you say, dearest brother
fenderbender: love you too, dearest sister :P
Flora’s going on an expedition! She’s excited. She hasn’t played this game very much, but as she and Emmy collect more of the prerequisite materials for an expedition into the Nether, she gets more and more excited. She can’t wait for them to actually get started.
She’s never really…talked much with Emmy before all this, but when she had mentioned her desire to explore, Emmy had offered to be her guide to the Nether, and Flora hadn’t been there while playing before. So here they are.
“Okay, Flora, are you ready?” Emmy asks.
“I am,” Flora answers. “Whenever you’re ready!”
“Then let’s go!”
“Um, Luke?” the Professor asks over the call. “Where am I?”
Oh, no.
There are a great deal of places that one can get lost in Minecraft, and Luke doesn’t know them all. He’s been helping Aurora build her house so that they’d have a place to stay when night fell. Last he saw the Professor, he had just been mining away at the ground, searching for some rock. Maybe the Professor was just falling through the world, or had mined too deep and stumbled upon lava, or…
Well, there was only one way to find out.
“Professor, I’m going down the hole you mined,” Luke says. “I’ll be there in a jiffy! Don’t worry.”
“Yes, I can finish building the house,” Aurora says. “I believe I have a grasp of the mechanics by now.”
Luke walks down the hole, slowly and carefully so he doesn’t insta-kill himself by fall damage when he gets there.
He can’t help but be surprised by the sight he sees when he reaches the end of the tunnel.
“Um. Professor? I think you found the Stronghold.”
“What’s that?”
Luke gives an abbreviated summary of what it is. “It’s extremely rare to find, Professor, I’m not sure how you did it…”
“To be honest, Luke, I’m not quite sure myself,” he responds.
They stand in front of the portal for a while.
“So I’d have to have certain materials to activate the portal?” he asks.
“Professor, you don’t want to activate the portal,” Luke says. “Trust me. There are a lot of monsters in there that neither of us are really prepared to fight. The fact that you found this accidentally… most people spend a lot of time looking for them, even though they do randomly spawn. It is possible, it’s just…remarkable.” He feels the smile splitting his face more than anything else.
“Thank you, my boy, though it was an accident…”
“Wait, hold on,” Randall says, jumping into the conversation. “You said you found a Stronghold? Where are the two of you?”
“I was just…mining,” the Professor answers. “I suppose I could find you and take you to where I was mining?”
“Sounds good,” Randall says. “I’ve been looking for one.”
“...if you’re going,” Professor Sycamore says, “I would like to come along as well.”
Luke blinks. He was pretty sure the two of them were like Clive and Flora; no matter how much time passed between the time he had wronged Randall, they would never get along. He knows that Professor Sycamore was reluctant to join because he knew Randall would be there. Luke had spent some time relaying messages back and forth instead of letting them talk to each other because he thought that would make negotiations slightly easier.
“Sure,” Randall answers. “I’d love to see you get your arse kicked by the mobs—”
“Language!” both professors and Claire chorus all at once.
“Sorry, Kat,” Randall says.
“Alfendi’s told me worse!” Kat chirps.
“Hey, you said you wouldn’t tell Dad about that,” Alfendi says.
“Um. Shutting up now,” Kat answers, and the sound of her muting herself comes next.
“Is that true, Alfendi?” the Professor asks. Luke tries his best to mute his giggling.
“It was an accident, Dad,” Alfendi answers. “I didn’t make an effort to do it.”
“Alright,” the Professor answers, but Luke’s pretty sure he doesn’t actually believe Alfendi.
“Besides,” Professor Sycamore says, “if there’s anyone who is going to get killed down there, it’s going to be you. You were always more reckless.”
“Hey, I’m prepared now,” Randall answers. “Ready to go down there into that portal and fight whatever’s waiting.”
“We shall see about that,” Professor Sycamore responds. “I suppose…if it comes to it, I could potentially trust you as backup.”
“Backup?” Randall splutters.
Luke smiles to himself. They’ll be just fine. He and the Professor climb out of the hole together.
Yeah. Just fine.
Randall regrets every bit of this. Every single bit.
He swings his sword on the screen, going for the Enderman in front of him. Des beside him is also on the attack — he can, begrudgingly, admit that they make a good team. At least for when it comes to destruction.
“Who’s backup now?” Randall asks triumphantly as he swings his sword for the last time and the Enderman dies. He’s not particularly fond of the idea of being the other man’s second fiddle again. He had enough of that years ago.
“I suppose your skills are adequate,” Des replies.
“Damned by faint praise,” Randall responds. He can admit that here, in the End, he can’t really imagine anyone else currently here wanting to be here. He doesn’t know Clive very well in particular, but…
“Do you know who first coined that phrase?”
“Oh my God, no, I haven’t read nearly enough pretentious literature for that,” Randall replies.
“Alexander Pope,” Des answers. “Poet and translator from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.”
“Read any of his work?” Randall asks.
“Some of it, including the poem that very phrase comes from,” Des responds. “Though the original tense was different. He had a rather entertaining feud with another translator of the era. The correspondence between them is delightfully filled with malice. Feuds from the time of written correspondence are always rather fascinating, all things considered.”
Emmy snorts. “You’re starting to sound like the Professor now, Sycamore. The two of you — I don’t know how I didn’t see it before.”
“I suppose despite our separation, some things are immutable,” Hershel says. “I’ve personally never studied that era of literature.”
“And what exactly do you read, Professor?” Luke asks.
“Well…”
Randall temporarily deafens himself in the call. He already knows the answers, after all, and he needs to focus on the fight in front of him.
Aurora likes this game. It’s peaceful. She can go as slowly or as quickly as she wants. Some people are choosing to go quickly, but she’s been going at a gradual pace. And she even has a shelter built for nightfall! Though Luke mostly helped her with that. She’s not very experienced with modern computers; she suspects she doesn’t experience electronics in the way that most humans would.
She could interface with the computer fairly easily if she wanted to. They’re both run by the same sorts of things; all mechanical wires and metal bits and electricity. She knows humans are governed by similar things; electronic signals travel through nerves like wires, up and down like circuitry. But there’s a difference between them and her; in human terms she’s made of clockwork and ticking bits, while humans and the Azran people were made from the same elements that govern all life, built primarily from carbon.
The systems of this game are simple compared to the code that governs her; she knows Professor Sycamore had attempted to study the code once, but while his Azran is fluent that does not extend to the language used to program her over a million years ago. She hardly knows how to make sense of it herself. She doesn’t know how she functions. Part of what goes into her is all electricity and wires and things most humans understand, and part of what goes into her is something that very few humans seem to get at all.
Then again, it’s not as though she understands the nuances of humanity. She’s learned a lot, but it takes years for children to learn this, and she is…she was not designed to be a complete child. Young enough to generate sympathy; old enough to be potentially allowed to operate on her own.
“The sun is setting,” Aurora notes. “We should stay here, then?”
“If you want,” Luke answers.
“Okay, then,” she says. “How long are the nights relative to the day?”
“About a third of the length, I think?” Luke answers. “So like…how a lot of people think about it.”
“Alright,” she answers. “I like this game a lot. It’s relaxing.”
“We should get you on creative mode sometime, then,” Luke answers. “That way we won’t have to worry about getting attacked.”
“That would be nice,” she says. “What’s the difference?”
“Creative mode is…peaceful,” Luke says. “You don’t have to worry about defending yourself, you can just make things. A lot of people have made some really neat stuff.”
“That does sound like fun,” Aurora says. “You’ll have to show me.” Though she’s not sure what she’d build. She’s always had trouble with a blank canvas.
Clive gets the feeling that something is going to go wrong eventually. It’s not just the bickering between Randall and Desmond Sycamore (he very much feels like the odd man out; most of them seem to know what the cause of the rift between them is) or what happened with Flora before the game started.
No, that feeling is much more specific. Just the feeling that someone has to be plotting something. Flora’s been pretty quiet, but he knows that she doesn’t want anything except to avoid him. Luke would probably consider doing something if he thought it’d help, but he probably wants Clive and Flora to get along eventually, so there’s that to consider. Claire’s always held a surprising amount of compassion for him; her and the Professor both. He doesn’t know their kids too well either. And he’d like to still consider Emmy a friend after all this, but they’ve only spoken once since his sentencing.
And that’s when the forest catches on fire.
What the fuck is going on here? He runs before he can lose too much health to the burning fire, and manages to run far.
“Who decided that burning the forest was a good idea?” Clive demands.
Katrielle and Alfendi are both unmuted now, laughing in unison.
“Katrielle, Alfendi,” the Professor says, “just what is going on?”
“Oh, come on,” Luke says.
“Oops?” Katrielle says. “I couldn’t get Alfendi to join unless I let him burn a forest down.”
“Oh, come on,” Alfendi squawks. “You went along with it instantly! You didn’t even try to fight it! You just agreed. Don’t throw me under the bus.”
“Calm down,” Claire says. “The fire will, of course, die off on its own. It doesn’t matter who’s to blame. It’s just a game.”
“I’m alright,” Clive says. “Of course I am. It would be rather silly of me to be affected by the game. It shocked me a bit, but my character is not dead, and I am quite alright. No harm done to anything except virtual trees.”
“Exactly,” Alfendi says, sounding awfully smug about it and making Clive wish for a second he had said nearly anything else. “No harm done whatsoever, and I’m here.”
“So…Kat, I guess when you said that you convinced Al…” Luke trails off.
“This is what I meant, yep!” she chirps. Clive thinks she probably enjoyed setting the fire too.
“It was a compelling argument,” Alfendi says.
Clive just watches the pixelated fire destroy the trees as he walks away. He’s not willing to bother with this family squabble, and he needs to find shelter quickly before one of the many mobs that haunt Minecraft at night find him.
Claire has mostly spent her time in the game building. She’s made up a nice house, because she knows more people will need a place to stay. Flora and Emmy are out on some kind of expedition, Hershel has spent most of his time mining, and she hadn’t been quite sure what Alfendi and Katrielle had been up to.
Alfendi and Katrielle burning down the forest is an unexpected development, certainly, but it’s not the worst sort of chaos they could have done. And the fact that it got Alfendi to agree to meet with them…it’s not that Alfendi is quite a recluse, but he has been more distant since he started uni, part of a desire for independence. Every bird flies the nest, but she knows it’s only a matter of time before she and Hershel start feeling the coldness of an empty one.
Still, with resources like this — staying together is much easier, even when they’re miles or even continents apart. It opens new, exciting possibilities for the future. Claire can’t wait to watch her children grow up and embrace the future — a future she was once sure she’d never get.
And then Hershel comes into the house, and she smiles.
“I’ve heard it’s a tradition for couples to push their Minecraft beds together,” Claire says, letting a smile leak into her voice. “Would you like to?”
“Why not?” Hershel responds. She hears some gagging — probably their children — and laughs.
Katrielle's plan worked . Say what you will about her methods, but she knew what she was doing when she recruited Al, and she absolutely knew what she was doing when she went into that forest. She had known the only person there was Clive, and she had also known that her burning down the forest wouldn't be that big of a deal. After all, she had a promise to uphold. Alfendi had made her swear that she would be an accomplice to his plans to burn down the forest, and she could absolutely delight in the concept. He didn't even have to say it again for her to agree. She has no qualms about virtual arson. Sure, real arson is a crime and bad. Uncle Des might approve, because he doesn’t like the police, but she thinks he’d only approve if the place was abandoned. And she does understand the impact that destruction like that causes. But a little bit of Minecraft arson doesn't hurt anyone in real life. And it’s a lot of fun! So this whole situation is a win-win — she gets to hang out with her brother and she gets to burn a forest down in a video game. Really, she's a genius.
Not that she’s told Alfendi anything about her nefarious plans. After all, if she had let on that she was too into it, he might have left her out and refused it anyways. And then where would they all be? Down a member of the family. He might suspect, but that doesn’t change the fact that he came.
Kat knows it’s probably a little optimistic to hope that all twelve of them will manage to be a happy family. They’ve never been a family in the conventional sense; Flora is her and Alfendi’s big sister, but Mum and Papa aren’t Flora’s parents, and they’re not Luke’s parents either. It's a lot of webbing and Kat doesn't even know how to explain her relationships with some of the people here. She'd like them all to be family, but she knows they aren’t there yet, and it’s always going to be complicated considering things that happened before she existed as a part of the family. Like Flora’s insistence on avoiding Clive, or whatever’s going on with Uncle Des and Uncle Randall. All that happened before she was around, so she's not really sure of what it all means for them or if their relationships can ever really recover from it. Clive and Flora are certainly on rockier ground than her uncles, but Kat thinks if she schemes hard enough she can get all her family on functional terms, if nothing else.
That'll be a plan for next time, she thinks to herself. For now, she can revel in a job well done — after all, getting them all in one call was no easy feat, and she knows a lot of that was Luke's work, but Luke had come to her first when it came to Alfendi. And yes, that’s because she knows she's closer with him than anyone else here, but still — it was an honour to be chosen for such a scheme. And she pulled it off!
She’s the Kat who got the cream right now.
Emmy likes Flora a lot. She’s surprised they haven't really hung out before. Then again, Flora had come in after she already started working for the World Times, so it’s not really that surprising. And by the time Emmy felt comfortable enough to drop by the Layton residence in person, Flora had already moved out to uni.
(She knows the Professor forgave her, but she needed the time to forgive herself before she returned.)
So the two of them haven't really gotten to chat much until this moment. But it's nice — she and Flora have been going around, talking to villagers and hearing their nonsense-speech. They tame a few animals along the way, but mostly they're just exploring the world. It's nice and low-key — Emmy doesn’t get the chance to play video games very often, and when she does she doesn’t usually pick Minecraft.
She’s still not quite sure why Luke had insisted they all wear these headphones, but at least they’re all matching? They’re supposed to, after all. She guesses that was the point of them all being like this. It's a bonding point for their family. And she knows that relationships are complicated, but ultimately she thinks that's why Luke gathered them all together. The ties that bind have brought them all here into this call and this Minecraft server, and Emmy's going to use that opportunity to get to know the one wildcard that she hasn't had the chance to know yet.
And, lo and behold, she and Flora have hit it off, in Emmy’s opinion. She’s having fun spelunking with Flora. The point of this is to hang out and get to know each other better.
Overall, she thinks that much was a success.
Des reluctantly admits that Randall is a useful partner in this realm. They’ve been fighting together for a while — from the chatter between Luke and Aurora, night’s already fallen above — but neither of them have died yet. He doesn’t have much health left, and he knows that Randall can't be much better off — they’ve been trying to fight the dragon for a while, and it’s not working out, in spite of their skill.
And Randall really hasn’t played second fiddle through their time here. Randall has been just as competent as a partner right now — far better than he had been as the Masked Gentleman. That whole fiasco is always going to be the elephant in the room when the two of them are in the same place, whether virtual or physical, and while he’d frankly be happy to put that aside he very much understands why Randall refuses to let bygones be bygones. Being gaslit isn’t a pleasant experience. Not that he’d know, really, but he can assume. He’d like to get along with his brother’s best friend.
Slaying mobs in Minecraft isn’t that bad as far as methods of bonding go. And maybe it proves that this bridge hasn’t quite burnt yet.
“I hate to admit it,” he says, “but you are a worthy partner for this endeavour.”
“Thanks,” Randall answers. “You too. I’m surprised you’re not more incompetent. I didn’t take you as the video game type, considering you know whoever Alexander Pope is.”
“I can appreciate both modernity and the classics,” he responds. He’s always appreciated referencing both what came next and the future — the Detragan was a remarkable invention for many reasons, the least of which being the hidden robot within. The organ was an extraordinary mechanism. It’s a shame that it was lost with the rest of what he built on Ambrosia.
“Sure,” Randall says.
Luke pauses and looks at the time. It’s starting to get late over there...
“Kat, it’s time for bed,” he hears the Professor say.
“But Papa,” Kat whines in response.
“He’s right,” Claire adds. “I know you’d like to stay longer, but just because you’re homeschooled doesn’t mean that we can let your schedule fall apart.”
“If you say so,” Kat mutters. “Bye, Luke! Bye, everyone!”
Luke smiles. “Good night, Kat!”
Katrielle’s help has been invaluable — without her help, Alfendi wouldn’t be here right now, and that would be a shame, considering that he wanted everyone in the family to be present.
“I’ll be off too,” Alfendi says. “I don’t have much reason to stick around anymore. My time here’s over.”
“Alright,” Luke says.
“I just died,” Randall says. “I think that’s a sign.”
“I do believe this calls for the end of our battle, yes,” Sycamore adds. “Until another time. It was…adequate entertainment.”
“Just say you had fun like a normal person,” Randall says. “I don’t know how I didn’t get tired of you sooner back in Monte d’Or, bloody hell.”
Luke can almost picture Sycamore rolling his eyes. “I will not ‘talk like a normal person’, as you put it, if it means talking like you.”
The insult almost feels…lighthearted instead of disparaging. Progress? Progress.
“I have a test that I should study for,” Flora admits. “It was nice hanging out with you, Emmy.”
“I agree,” Emmy says. “This was good. Thanks for getting us all together, Luke. I know it couldn’t have been easy.”
“It wasn’t,” Luke says. “But it was worth it. I had fun.”
“I had fun too,” Aurora says. “I will certainly be trying out creative mode sometime soon.”
Luke knows he won’t be forgetting this anytime soon, even as everyone drifts out of the voice call and back to real life. And who knows — if it happened once, it could happen again. Even with all the time zone coordinating that it took and mediating Randall and Sycamore and concealing Clive’s presence from Flora — it was worth the effort to bring them together.
He leans back into his spinny chair, pushing it across the floor. It’s still early evening, but he’s pretty sure that his parents will take his help with cooking dinner. He takes off the cat ear headphones and leaves them on his desk — yet another thing that binds them all together.
Back to the real world.