Fluttercraft

Chapter Three

Digital Beginnings

By TheYewTree

A golden afternoon transformed into an indigo evening as Fluttershy finished connecting the power cable to the rest of the monitor. It had been 4 hours after she and her critters unpackaged everything inside the package Twilight sent to her in the morning. Fluttershy was the only being in the living room, awake, as every other critter in the cottage were sleeping silently away, after 4 hours of assembly. It turned out her gift was a computer with everything included-- the keyboard, mouse, camera, microphone, speakers, and even a cup holder for various beverages.

"Phew..." Fluttershy sighed slowly. "It took a longer time than I expected, but... *yawn*... it's finally finished. Maybe I'll try... *yawn*... Twilight's recommended game tomorrow. Oh Celestia, I am... *yawn*... beat." She said tiredly.

All at once, Fluttershy collapsed onto the wooden floor of her cottage and fell fast asleep.

When Fluttershy woke up the next morning and made breakfast, immediately after she had finished eating it and fed food to her animals, she went to the table where the computer was assembled. She brought over a chair and a cup of orange juice to place it in the cup holder. Fluttershy then proceeded to turn the computer on to see if she assembled the device correctly. A whirring sound came from the computer, and bright lights illuminated the various buttons on the monitor contour. About a second later, a visible logo appeared, then disappeared after 3 seconds.

"My... what kind of computer did Twilight even send me?" Fluttershy asked herself. Immediately after her thought, Fluttershy came face to face with the computer interface, with what Fluttershy considered to have a very drab background image. "Apparently, a rather drab looking one with a grey background, I suppose. But... I am her friend after all, and what would I be if I don't use this gift?"

After contemplating the thought, she eventually decided to not bother with the less important details and moved on to see what Twilight had recommended for her to have the "ultimate fun experience." Fluttershy found the sheet with instructions hoof-written in Twilight's hoof-writing. Apparently it told Fluttershy to open up "The Internet" on the sheet with a doodle of  poorly-drawn lowercase "i" with a ring around it. Fluttershy found the icon with ease. She clicked the icon and the screen turned to a white colour with a skinny little bar at the top where the cursor was flashing.

The second step on the sheet was to type in a "website" in the address bar, and Fluttershy assumed that was where the cursor was positioned. With that information in hoof, she blazed through the instructions with ease. Quickly afterwards, Fluttershy was greeted by a website with a dark gray pixelated background with some brown at the top. The words "MINECRAFT" were found at the top of the site. Underneath was a video player with an image of trees and grass. On the right side of the video player, there was a pig and a character with some hair. Fluttershy assumed that the character was holding a rather pixelated version of a mining pickaxe.

"Hmmmmm...." Fluttershy thought. "Twilight did certainly fit my request for something new... and something unexpected. I haven't seen anything like this before, let alone anything that looks so... so... square and pixel-y. Oh my goodness... I have to admit, I can't wait!" She looked at the instruction sheet and read further. It told her to create an account. As always, there was another poorly-drawn image of what Fluttershy was supposed to do.

Fluttershy clicked the "Register" button, and after a long while of setting up her "username", "password", and a "pony email address", she was then asked by the site via display screen, if she wanted to download "Minecraft".

All at once, Fluttershy clicked the "Yes" button, not because the instructions told her to do so, but due to her excitement and eagerness of finally doing something different for a change.

Once all of that was done and her orange juice was finished, Fluttershy read the instruction sheet again for the final, yet most exciting step of all, which was to start playing. Fluttershy was still thirsty and in an instant came back to the computer with a cup of apple juice. Taking a sip, she selected the "singleplayer" option, selected "survival" mode, and put the difficulty on easy. She then continued to tweak around with the settings.

"Let's see... generate structures- definitely. Allow cheats- no... I'm not a fan of using cheats... bonus chest... now what is that? Oh well, I'll just include it then-- what harm could a chest do? And of course, just a default world would be fine." Fluttershy told herself.

"Ok, here we go!" and she clicked the button.

Through the next few moments, the yellow pegasus saw little text messages and a green loading bar directly underneath each of the messages. The next thing she saw was a flash of white, and then pieces... no blocks... forming on the entire screen. Then each of those blocks continued on forming like ripples on water, out into every single direction. A pixelated version of the sun popped up, and 3-D rectangular clouds slowly moved in the sky. In a word, Fluttershy was amazed. Instinctively, she put her forehooves onto the keyboard and slowly moved the on-screen character and moved around. Luckily, Twilight also sent her a manual of the game mechanics, which gave Fluttershy a huge advantage of playing immediately.

At the bottom of her screen, there was a long rectangle with 9 square boxes that Fluttershy assumed would be where she would store items and resources. She also noticed at the top right-hoof side, there was a pop-up that displayed a pixelated brown book and a little message that read:

"Press 'E' to open your inventory."

Fluttershy pressed the key and on the screen popped up a huge box with her character, the same 9 square boxes at the bottom, but this time, there were more slots-- 27 more to be exact, which gave her a total of 36 square boxes-- all for storing items. Fluttershy pressed the key again, and the huge box disappeared. She tried the function 3 times to test if it worked. When she was sure it wasn't glitching, Fluttershy moved her character around the digital terrain and saw she had spawned on a field with grasses, dandelions, and what appeared to sugar canes. She moved her mouse a little to the left, and saw an orange chest that was surrounded by torches. Fluttershy moved her character over to the chest, right-clicked it, and a box popped into view, this time, with items inside of it.

"Wooden axe, stone pickaxe, 5 apples, 3 bread, 4 sticks, 4 wood, and 12 wooden planks," Fluttershy noted. "So that's what the bonus chest was about!"

After dragging the items into her inventory, she moved her character over towards the grasses, and left-clicked at part of the grass with the mouse. A sound was produced then went away, and the grass wasn't there any longer. It just seemed to have disappeared. As usual, Fluttershy continued to experiment with her "discoveries" and tested other blocks as well. She soon was entranced by the terrain and the mechanics of the game, and just stood there for an hour, then two hours... three hours... and soon, she completely lost track of time.

Little did she know in real life, the sun was slowly setting across the sky, and that nighttime would soon come.