13579 : A Minecraft Story

(This story if fake. I do not claim that it is real. It’s just a fun little story I made up.)

Minecraft, the game that everyone loves. Who wouldn`t? I question that. I know there are plenty of people who don`t love Minecraft, and for good reason. Some think it`s just a game full of blocks and for babies, and others…well, we all have our reasons. Every time I open the desktop IT haunted me. Minecraft, that picture of the grass block sat there. I was tempted to play it again. So tempted, I had to delete it. But every time I went onto YouTube, there would be Minecraft video. “Recommended for you”, it will say. I hate that. I always want to yell at those stupid videos, tell them I didn`t play Minecraft anymore and that was the end of it. Why you ask? Well let`s start by looking at something that has been going around. Something that set off countless stories and rumors about this game Minecraft, which apparently was light- hearted and friendly. The first time anyone saw anything strange in Minecraft was way back during beta or alpha (I don`t remember). The person wrote about it and this is what they said.

“I had recently spawned a new world in single-player Minecraft. Everything was normal at first as I began chopping down trees and crafting a workbench. I noticed something move amongst the dense fog (I have a very slow computer, so I must play with a tiny render distance). I thought it was a cow, so I pursued it, hoping to grab some hides for armor.

It wasn’t a cow though. Looking back at me was another character with the default skin, but his eyes were empty. I saw no name pop up, and I double-checked to make sure I wasn’t in multiplayer mode. He didn’t stay long, he looked at me and quickly ran into the fog. I pursued out of curiosity, but he was gone,

I continued with the game, not sure what to think. As I expanded the world I saw things that seemed out of place for the random map generator to make; 2x2 tunnels in the rocks, small perfect pyramids made of sand in the ocean, and groves of trees with all their leaves cut off. I would constantly think I saw the other “player” in the deep fog, but I never got a better look at him. I tried increasing my render distance to far whenever I thought I saw him but to no avail.

I saved the map and went on the forums to see if anyone else had found the pseudo-player. There were none. I created my own topic telling of the man and asking if anyone had a similar experience. The post was deleted within five minutes. I tried again, and the topic was deleted even faster. I received a PM from username ‘Herobrine’ containing one word: ‘Stop.’ When I went to look at Herobrine’s profile, the page 404′d.

I received an email from another forum user. He claimed the mods can read the forum user messages, so we were safer using email. The emailer claimed that he had seen the mystery player too and had a small ‘directory’ of other users who had seen him as well. Their worlds were littered with obviously man-made features as well and described their mystery player to have no pupils.

About a month passed until I heard from my informant again. Some of the people who had encountered the mystery man had investigated the name Herobrine and found that name to be frequently used by a Swedish gamer. After some further information gathering, it was revealed to be the brother of Notch, the game’s developer. I personally emailed Notch and asked him if he had a brother. It took him a while, but he emailed me back a very short message.

‘I did, but he is no longer with us.’

-Notch

I haven’t seen the mystery man since our first encounter, and I haven’t noticed any changes to the world other than my own.

Nobody knows who exactly wrote this, so I can’t exactly credit the author. But the Herobrine figure was just the start of endless sightings of strange figures in Minecraft. So many claim to have seen them, but I never truly believed any of them. They were just myths, legends. I almost wanted to believe them, trying out Herobrine shrines I found on You tube, which never worked. These were just rumors. It seemed rather fake to me. However, this did not stop me from trying new ideas that kept popping up all over the internet. I can`t imagine how this thing has grown so popular, but it has. There are plenty of these things that are fake, I can tell. But then others are just too life-like to be put off. So anyway, I should probably explain to you what I`m talking about. Minecraft, my favorite game at the time. Looking over some worlds I had done with friends. You know how it is. Heading down old memory lane. I hadn`t played on these worlds in years. It was part of a Minecraft camp. All the other kids were better than me at…well…everything. They knew Minecraft inside and out, while I didn`t even know about the nether yet. I mean, I learned about it during this camp, but still. That was a long time ago. There were six worlds in total. It was kind of funny. Three were very boring and small and the other three had huge structures with giant builds. Those were the ones I wanted to check out. They were massive, and the first one I saw was the biggest one. There was a moment when I felt shock and then amazement as I stared at these giant builds. One of them was high is the air with a ladder leading to the top. The other two great worlds were big as well. I saw the one that I had spent most of my time on. A black wool platform we had built on the water. When I say “we” I mean everyone but me. All I did in any of these was build a stupid little shop on the wool platform. Anyway, I was going through one of the smaller ones. Well, to be fair there was plenty there, it just wasn`t as big as some of the houses I had seen. I was in creative mode, so I could fly around and see all that there was to see. The kids who had played on here had made these holes in the ground, sometimes leading into the void. So obviously they had played in creative on this world at some point. I was flying over one that didn`t go down quite as far. That`s when a cave sound started up. I thought it was the one that sounds like air rushing. But it lasted a little too long. And as I listened, I realized what I was hearing, was not the cave sound I had originally thought it was. It wasn`t any cave sound I had ever heard before. With horror, I realized what it was I was hearing. Screams. Kid`s screams. Just as I had that realization, the sound stopped. This wasn`t the first creepy thing that had happened on that world. I had left once, and when I came back there was a red stone torch on the block right in front of me. After those screams, I closed the world. Now, in order to understand the event that I just told you about, we`re going to have to go back in time, to the year 2013. This was the year my parents introduced me to Minecraft. I was seven at the time. I had heard kids talking about Minecraft in school (kindergarten) and thought they were saying “my craft”, like everyone was making crafts and I wasn`t a part of it. But it did get kind of confusing when some kid said something about punching a tree and going inside to hide from the zombies. When I first saw Minecraft, I thought creepers were zombies for some reason I can no longer remember. I remember first playing Minecraft. It was creative and it was a time when hostile mobs didn`t spawn in creative mode. So, the only mob I ever saw before starting survival mode were the creepers which I though were zombies. The first new mob I saw in survival was a spider. I called them giant spiders (and to be honest that`s really what they are). I then saw on a hill a zombie (creeper) and two men (zombies). I ran and ran and died and ran. I was playing on the I-Pad so when they told me I could play on computer I couldn`t believe it. During those first months of playing Minecraft pocket edition, only one strange thing happened. A man. I thought it was some kind of NPC, like those big-nosed things I had come across earlier. I don`t remember exactly what the man looked like, but I`m old enough now to know what it was. HE would be the reason I never played Minecraft again. On computer, it only took about five days for something strange to happen to me. I was playing in survival and I was a pretty big noob. One of the torches I was using to explore a cave broke. Thinking it was odd, I put it back. That`s when another torch broke, and then another, and another. One by one all the torches in the cave went out, plunging me in darkness. I thought that it was probably just a feature of the game. Maybe on computer your torches went out after a while. I didn`t consider the fact that they had been perfectly fine until that moment. Or that they all went out at once. So many other things happened, and I won`t list them all. Besides, none of them were as strange as that one. Just some blocks switching places, and my junk slowly disappearing from my inventory (mostly dirt and stuff which is why I didn`t notice until later). The thing was, I had no clue what this was. So, some time passes, and I start to go to Minecraft camp. We build a few servers and play on them. We mainly just build houses and stuff. One server that`s bigger than the rest starts having issues. While we play on it, our computers lag a ton and even crash. Our chests keep going empty. But most noticeable of all, pink stained glass. It keeps appearing everywhere. In people`s houses, in the farms, and everywhere else it can go. It even starts replacing blocks to make room. So, we were all trying to find out who the “Pink Glass Greifer”, was. It quickly became clear that no one was going to confess. Yet everyone was found innocent. Then some kid claims that Herobrine`s face just flashed on their screen. I had just learned about the Herobrine legend, so I knew who he was. I didn`t really believe it, but everyone else then concluded that Herobrine was the “Pink Glass Greifer”. Nothing else happened on that world, or during camp as a matter of fact. But at home, things kept happening. As I grew older, I quickly realized that these things weren`t normal. Then they updated Minecraft and I got to see the update list. And I saw something in there that I think almost everyone who plays Minecraft knows about. In the list I saw “removed Herobrine”. I couldn`t tell if I was horrified that Herobrine might indeed be real, or happy that he was removed. But of course, like I said, everyone knows about that. But I went straight out of Minecraft to see what this was. On the internet, I searched for like ten minutes before finding something. Notch claimed there was no Herobrine so decided to post “removed Herobrine” on the updates list. The thing is, now that 1.15 is out you can`t access this list anymore. But I`m just here to say it straight up. Herobrine is not a bad entity. He tried to warn us, but we were too busy being afraid of him. Anyone who has suspected as much will say that he has come to warn us about Entity 303 or Null. But all that is just fake news. Only I know the entire story. So anyway, after I saw that Notch denied any evidence that Herobrine might indeed exist, I felt a little better about plying my favorite game. It appears Notch had finally put a stop to all the rumors and ghost stories. I was happy to play Minecraft with no fear. That was until about three days in. A red stone torch had replaced one of my normal torches in my house. I wanted to believe it was just a glitch, and for a while I did. Until they started popping up everywhere. I just wanted to play Minecraft. I was sure that nobody else had this many strange things happen. I knew that some people didn`t have any. Why couldn`t that be me? It seemed something had to go wrong when I play Minecraft, but no one else. I hated this. I hated that this had to be my curse. Why couldn`t Herobrine just leave me alone? Yes, I saw him from time to time, but only glimpses. I only saw him long enough for me to be sure that it was him. I was being haunted by Herobrine. I found signs near my house asking for help. At first, I thought it was Herobrine`s victims who were asking my help. But no. They were HIS victims. Remember the screams I told you about. It was them who screamed. The victims of The Demon. The one who haunts me to this day. More on that later. I got fed up with Herobrine trolling me. But then after a while, I realized that I hadn`t even believed in him until all this started. I longed for the old days. When things were just normal. When I could build a house and have some fun. Oh, I forgot to mention that Herobrine appeared to me in creative and survival. So, I couldn`t get rid of him. If I was playing Minecraft, he was there. The thing was, I quickly realized that Herobrine was not trying to kill me. But rather to stalk me and put down red stone torches. Like he wanted to get my attention. So, one day I finally put down my own sign. “What do you want”? the sign said. Nothing happened for a while, so I turned to head back to my house. But there was a sign behind me. It said “I want you to see me. Know I exist”. I turned around and broke my first sign and wrote “I know you exist you have been tormenting me”. We went back in forth for a little. It went somewhere along the lines of this.

Herobrine: I was just trying to get your attention, and now I have it.

Me: Do you want to say something?

Herobrine: Yes

Me: What is it then?

Herobrine: I am not the bad guy in this story. I am trying to warn you.

Me: Warn me about what?

Herobrine: I don`t know. I just know that there is something bad in Minecraft.

I was tried of this. I told Herobrine that I didn`t want to talk to him because he was a bully. But as days went by, he appeared more and more in my worlds. He gave me advice, tips and tricks. After a few weeks, I found myself not thinking of Herobrine as the single most evil and annoying entity ever, but rather as a friend who was playing Minecraft with me. Over time he gained my trust and I gained his. Then one day, he told me there was a seed that he had just felt. He said he knew something was up. Herobrine told me that at a certain coordinate, I find a glitch that allowed me to see the names of everything. Herobrine told me not to tell anyone the seed or the coordinate so that Mojang wouldn`t find out I knew about it. Of course, it still felt strange not to run in terror every time I saw Herobrine. Though, he did give me a few scares. Once, I was in a dark cave and I heard footsteps coming from behind me. I spun quickly and found Herobrine right behind me. He always watches my progress so I`ve gotten used to seeing him around. But man, oh man, that scared me! Another time, I was walking up a hill at night. And when I reached the top, Herobrine was just standing there! Anyway, I decided to check out this seed. When I opened the world for the first time, instead of dirt blocks in the background of the loading screen, there were red stone blocks. I new this wasn`t any normal seed. I spawned in a plains biome, with some mountains off to the left and a birch forest to the right. Herobrine had told me that it would only work if I was in survival mode for the whole time and didn`t use cheats. So, I had to head to the coordinates by myself. It took almost two hours in real time for me to get there. The coordinate was in the center of a snowy biome. When I stood on it the whole world became brighter. Everything, and I mean everything, was now labeled. Grass, wood, snow, everything had words floating above them that told me what they were. It was hard to see anything because it was all blocking my view. Plus, I could see the words through the ground. So, I could see all the ores names. If only I was looking for some diamonds. After wandering around for a while, I found one that was hovering, like ten or so blocks up in the air. So far, I hadn`t seen any labels for air, and this one didn`t even say air anyway. It said 13579. I was confused. Perhaps it was a glitch? Maybe Herobrine was trolling me? However, I looked it up as “Minecraft 13579”, and found a website that was blank except for “13579”, and a picture of something. It looked like a red oval-ish shape with a red dot in the center. An eye. The website shut down and left me with a blank white screen. I didn`t have time to screenshot it. I have never been able to access that website again.

The next day, I had my friend come on a creative world with me. I tried to explain the situation to him, but then he left. Of course, he might`ve thought I was crazy or something, but I hadn`t said anything yet. Strange as it was, I decided to go back to the world Herobrine had told me to. I looked at the floating text, but this time I couldn`t read it. It kept changing. Whenever a word would form, it would change before my mind even had time to understand what it was seeing. As I stared at it, trying to understand what this was, a humming noise started up. At first it was low and quiet. But then it started getting louder. The pitch went higher as well. It didn`t take long before the sound was screaming in my ears, like static or something. I closed the world. The sudden silence was strange. My ears were ringing. In that static, I had heard something. It had sounded like a voice. It was too soft to make out every word. But I had managed to catch “him”, “help me”, and “stop”. I didn`t dare go back into that world, or that seed. Herobrine said he had traced where the sound had come from. Apparently, it was supposed to be a cave sound, but something went wrong while it was being created. It had come from one of Mojang`s most secret places. A lost dimension that was still in Minecraft, but there was no way to access it. Except for one. You had to be killed while in the void, but not by falling into the void. The only way to do that, was to have someone who wouldn`t die in the void kill you while you were falling. The few people who knew this, were unable to pull it off, because all entities died in the void. Well, all except one. Herobrine. He told me that if this didn`t work, it never would. We had one chance. I went into a creative world in dug a straight hole down to the void. We managed to do it! Herobrine killed me while I was taking damage from the void itself. When I respawned, I was in survival mode and I was in a weird dungeon looking area. But it looked broken. And standing right in front of me, was that same eye. It looked at me for a second and then vanished. I was just able to get a screenshot of it before it did.

There was a structure that looked like the smallest castle I’d ever seen. I didn`t like the look of this black room I was in though, and I couldn`t switch my game mode. So, I decided to go into the castle. There were stairs that lead up inside of the castle. It turned out that it wasn`t as small as I had first thought it was. The inside was huge. At least one hundred blocks across left, right, front, and back. And easily that up and down. It was all made of stone bricks and nothing else. It was completely empty except for one door straight ahead. But the door wasn`t like any I`d ever seen. It was black and white, like static on a TV screen. That`s when I heard it. Deep, evil chuckling. I ran for the door, freaked out! The door opened with a loud BANG that boomed into my ears. I unplugged my headphones. Behind the door was a small room, made from what seemed to be the same material that the door had been made from. And in the center of the room, Herobrine stood. He told me not to quit the game. “If you do, that thing will come back. It`ll pull you straight back in. And then he`ll kill me. Yes, he has that much power, I can feel it”. I knew that he was talking about that red eye. 13579. Yes, it was obvious that this thing was not a typical monster you found in Minecraft. There was nothing really threatening about it, but when I had seen it, I felt strange. Like I knew what I would see. I didn`t know it then, but I would soon. I would see things through this eye. It would show me things I had never dreamed of. I was transported to a one by two hallway made of stone bricks, lit with red stone torches. I walked down it for about five minutes before I hit a dead end. I turned around and found that there was another stairway leading up. That hadn`t been there before. I didn`t know where this was, but I didn`t want to break any blocks. They might have silverfish in them. I climbed the stairs which opened out into…the nether? I was in the nether. It was an opening, surrounded by nether rack on all sides. In the center of the clearing there was some sort of shrine. It was a Herobrine shrine. The kind You Tubers use in their videos to gain some subscribers. They were always fake. I had tried it a bunch of times after I found out that Herobrine was real. Eventually he told me that they were fake, and somehow, hearing it from him made me believe it. If you don`t know what these shrines look like, then go look it up. Standing in the fire on top of the nether rack in the center of the shrine, was Herobrine. But not the one I knew. It still resembled a Steve with white eyes, but it was all corrupted. It was covered in the black and white that I had seen on that door and those blocks. I didn`t think to take a screenshot. Because just then, the corrupt Herobrine charged at me. Normal Herobrine then appeared out of nowhere and started attacking the corrupt version of himself. They battled. Punching each other like normal noob players who didn`t have any items would. Speaking of noobs who didn`t have any items, I hadn`t thought to bring any items with me because I had been in creative mode when I went into the void. So, I just stood back and watched. Herobrine looked like he had everything under control, until the corrupt Herobrine pulled out an orange and red looking, sword thing. It glowed like it was enchanted. Herobrine backed up and Corrupt took that as an opportunity to attack. Herobrine dodged left and right landing blow after blow. But Corrupt was also landing some pretty solid hits. Realizing then that I couldn`t do this without Herobrine, I tried to intervene. I tried to hit Corrupt with my fist, but his sword got me first. I was knocked all the way to the other side of the room. My health had dropped to two hearts. I was forced to sit there and watch as they fought. After long minutes of me sitting in silence, finally Corrupt landed the final blow. Herobrine exploded with a loud BOOM!!! I leapt back in real life falling to the floor. I scrambled to get back in my seat. And as I looked, I saw thousands of little ex p balls on the ground. Far more than the ender dragon drops. They shot toward me, blocking my sight for a few moments before disappearing into where ever they go after you collect them. Herobrine was dead. Before I had time to react, Corrupt was running at me. The game froze for about a minute. When it came back on again, I was in a different place. It was a waste land. I heard a sound like growling. I looked up, and there it was. The eye, except it was huge! I took a screenshot, and as soon as I did, the game started glitching out. Horrible lag and loud noises, like sobbing and screaming. That`s when I saw them. Images of everything I fear. Horrific images that I cannot describe. People I knew, people I didn`t know. Me. That dream I had when I was young. The monster with the football helmet. It`s razer teeth digging into flesh. But worst of all. I was falling. Falling down a dark hole. The smell of something burning. The screams again. But this time louder, clearer. There were even some screams I recognized, including my own. And then the game crashed.

I was done with that world, for good. I didn`t fully understand what I had just seen. I only knew that I never wanted to understand. I was tired of this. If I couldn`t play Minecraft peacefully, I wasn`t going to play at all.

Maybe I`ll go back someday.

Someday when Minecraft is fixed.

(All screenshots were taken using the “Dimensional Doors mod”)

https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/dimensionaldoors/files