Sitting on the floor of the beach cabin, Tango began his admin magic routine.
First, he placed himself in his Decked Out 2 storage room. Deep breaths and a concentrated effort were needed for the walls and ceiling to begin to form, then the myriad of chests. He could still hear and feel everything, but instead of darkness he could clearly see the storage room before him.Â
Grinning, Tango glanced down at his metaphysical hands. They were bare of gloves in this world, since fire could never harm anything inside his own head. Stretching his arms out, he spun in a circle to make sure everything was properly in place, then moved on to the next step.
He imagined that his body was a redstone machine, almost like a droid or a robot. It materialized in front of him as a diagram of circuitry. Glowing red light bulbs indicated where sensations were coming from. Carefully reaching out, Tango located the first glowing dot on top of the diagram’s head. His fingers touched the red light bulb, gently unscrewing it. The minute the light went out, he could feel the heat from his hair disappearing, the sensation vanishing. Satisfied, Tango reached for the next lightbulb, which was located by his face.Â
It took a few minutes of unscrewing light bulbs, but Tango could feel himself starting to drift. With each carefully removed lightbulb his body became more detached from sensation. Temperature, sound, taste, the feeling of his heartbeat, all of it was unscrewed and carefully placed in his “inventory.” Then, once the diagram was dim and devoid of lightbulbs, Tango folded it up and carried it to his storage system. The diagram and all the lightbulbs were carefully stored away.
Properly detached from his body, now, Tango could start to feel the chaotic weight of code pressing in on him. His head began to ache. Tense, Tango walked away from the walls of chests and towards the open, cave-like portion of his storage room. In the real room, this cave opening would lead to the interior of Decked Out, stairs leading into the absolutely beautiful system that was his carefully color-coded redstone lives and painstakingly crafted tunnels. Here, in his own mind, the cave opening led to the rest of the world.
As per usual, the first glimpse at the world code was agonizing to look at. Xisuma had described for him one time how he saw code: to the voidkind, he’d said it was like shifting, moving nebulas; beautiful and colorful. Every player saw code differently as it needed to be interpreted by their individual minds. Tango, for this reason, didn’t see nebulas. Instead, millions of scarlet zeroes and ones stared back at him, each strand of code displayed as a string of glittering red binary. Each string laid flat against a surface found in the real world. If Tango looked hard enough he could see how they laid against the flat plane of the floor, or curved around soft bed mattresses and even made up the exterior of his friends.Â
Grimacing at the confusing sight, Tango began to walk forward. He envisioned a bridge stretching out in front of him, a solid and easily visible pathway for him to walk on, and so it was. The pathway stretched across the coding of the beachhouse and out through the wall, out across the sand. He winced at the sight of the ocean; shifting, chaotically swirling numbers that sent stabs of pain through his eyes. Steeling himself, he imagined his bridge stretching over the waves and kept his eyes firmly fixed forward.Â
There had to be something beyond the ocean. Even if it was just another few islands, perhaps they would be safer than the one they were currently on. Doing his best to suppress the pain in his temples, Tango stepped out over the water and began his journey.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Y'all, let me tell you, if I ever draw a "1" or a "0" again... it will be too soon XD that binary was BRUTAL. However, I think the effect came out quite nice!! And I've never drawn a bridge like that before so that was quite time consuming but also quite fun :D -Imagine
