Virus

Last night I had a dream. It was really creepy like all my other dreams, but for some reason it was creepier than usual. It was about Minecraft or, well, something like it.

It was very glitchy. I know it had a name (something like "Cryptic" or "Cripple), but the only words I remember seeing or hearing was stuff like "C148" (Minecraft's music artist). The word "pneumatic" got in there at some point and so did a regular type sheet, like "[]{}1234567890ABCDEFGHIJK", except it was more like "[]{}4KAPES69-HF:AJDI".

So anyway, the game was very glitchy. It automatically generated chunks like in Minecraft, but it took nearly thirty seconds to load each one. I could also see through walls; it was like the gravel glitch but more spontaneous. I couldn't see actual textures, either; just flickering green and grey blocks.

There was also a strange monster. It would travel through and destroy blocks, just like the player character. Apparently the goal of the game was to run (or FLY, in this case) away from this monster and survive for as long as possible. When the monster touched the PC, you instantly respawned at a random point in the map. The monster always spawns, at most, forty blocks away.

When I was playing the game, the monster chased me and I ran away. The only way to escape is to break blocks and run (the player can only fly through the air, by the way. The monster can fly through everything). As I was running, I broke my way into a sort of vault area; it had blocks of what seemed to be wool on the floor where chests should have been. I would have investigeted more, but the monster caught me.

I suddenly spawned with a friend of mine; we could talk to each other, so I assumed she was in the same room. This time, the monster spawned only ten blocks away from my friend. She tried to get away, but she was somehow stuck. I watched as the monster slowly destroyed her barrier and caught her, then as the monster started going after me. I quickly started digging and found my way back into the same vault I was in earlier.

I looked back and the monster was directly behind me. It looked different this time, like a Minecraft Spider with a human head. It seemed not to have noticed me, so I dug a hole to climb out of. I reached the end of the map and my friend happened to respawn there, but I soon became distracted by a text sheet that apeared in the upper right-hand corner of my computer. I figured it was a glitch, so I opened Snapz Pro X and took some screenshots of it. When I paused the game to get some screens, it turned the words on the document into "C148" or "C14B" in large text. After that, I woke up.

This week, I was going to record a Minecraft video for Youtube, but my client glitched out in an odd way.

I started Minecraft as normal; I went through the launcher and logged in fine, but it started to update. I thought it was just a quick bug fix, but I found out later that my ISP shut down the internet for my neighborood only ten minutes before I logged onto Minecraft. When I got to the main menu, the colors were weird and the logo wouldn't appear. My recorder went crazy and didn't record anything after that.

After my recorder stopped, I clicked on Single Player. It brought me to a nearly-empty world select screen with only one button: "NEW WORLD (0.0MB)". There was nothing else. All of my other worlds were gone. I clicked the only thing available and it skipped the loading screen(s) entirely. It just went straight into the world.

There was no sun, sky, or trees. In fact, there were no blocks! The floor was a blank white landscape with some light-grey blocks once in a while. It was completely flat, too. While looking around, I saw something in the distance; it was so far away that it looked like a brown dot. I started to walk towards it, but I kept warping back to where I was standing before (like the newly-fixed fence glitch in SMP).

Whatever that brown dot was, it seemed to be walking toward me. Unfortunately, when it started to get into visible range, Minecraft crashed. Before trying to restart the client, I copied all of the game's files to a separate folder I called "corrupt minecraft". After that, I restarted the client and logged in. I thought I was still recording, so I didn't bother to restart my recorder. Minecraft actually started up like normal and didn't attempt to update. All of my worlds were still there, in tact, and they ran as perfectly as they usually do.

I decided to duplicate the launcher and mod it to open from the other .jar file. It worked and played like it did after the mysterious update, so I closed the client and posted the .jar on the Minecraft forums. It was removed for "unlawful piracy" and my account was banned, so I decided to post it on a site that didn't care about piracy. I'm not naming any websites, but I was banned there too because someone's computer crashed when they attempted to start Minecraft with the corrupted .jar.

I later gave up and sent the file to one of my friends (he's better at computers than I am). He opened the .jar file with some sort of Java developer program and the power went out almost immediately. His computer wasn't plugged into a surge protector, so it died. I'm going to put it on an external hard drive, wipe it from my computer, and never speak of it again.

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From: [EMAIL CENSORED] To: [EMAIL CENSORED]

"My computer has been acting weird lately. It's been taking long amounts of time to start and has been making weird noises on top of that. I don't think I've downloaded any viruses. There was this one piece of software that was buggy, but I erased it. I think this might be a hardware problem, or a bug with Vista. Anyway, please get back to me soon.

Thanks! ~Matt"

"Hey, my computer problems have gotten worse. The computer makes this high-pitched gurgling sound when I start it up now. It won't shut down unless I unplug it.

It appears to be getting worse as I'm typing this. Can you maybe come over here some time around 6 PM tomorrow?

~Matt"

As I posted up there, I've been having computer problems lately. It makes some sort of high-pitched gurgling and sometimes squeals like a pig. I have a friend that works at Microsoft (let's call her Anna), so I'm hoping she'll come over some time and take a look.

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I can't take the squealing anymore! I'm going to open up my computer with a screwdriver if this doesn't stop!

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OH. MY. GOD. There are spider webs in there. It's not just a little bit, either. The entire thing has thick webs strung all over the inside! On the bright side, I've found the problem: a little piece of metal jammed against my CPU. I don't know what it is, but it looks like it melted. So far the computer's still working great; I've still got to remove those webs, however.

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The computer worked for a day or so before it started making the noises again. I've already removed the webs, though. Anyway, Anna should be coming over tonight to take a look.

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Anna came over and took a look inside my computer. We found even more webs, and another piece of metal crammed into the CPU. That was about five days ago. I think it's finally fixed. It hasn't acted up since.

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OH MY GOD. IT HAPPENED AGAIN! This time, I found a cat. A FREAKING CAT. It looked like it hadn't eaten in months. I heard moaning coming from my computer and opened it up, but when I took a look inside there was a cat in there, tangled up in a spider web! It's unbelievable that this could happen! I'm going to take it to a vet to see if there's anything wrong with the poor thing.

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There's nothing wrong with the cat, but the vet had been told that someone lost their cat and the one I had found matched the description. I brought the cat back to her owner and the woman invited me in. Somehow I got onto the topic of my computer problems and the woman told me she had the exact problems I had and that the same things had happened to her.

After about half an hour of talking, I asked if she played Minecraft. She said yes. I asked if she had gotten any viruses lately and she said she didn't want to talk about it. We exchanged phone numbers and I left, though.

The next day, a friend told me he had gotten his Minecraft server to finally work and wanted me to get on with him. I hadn't been on Minecraft since I found the cat, and was reluctant to take him up on the offer. I ultimately decided to go play some Minecraft with my bud.

When I logged in, everything was fine except for the missing version number. It freaked me out a little, but I got over it. I entered the IP and pressed connect, but almost instantly I got an error that said "Invalid." I pressed cancel and restarted Minecraft, but it did the same thing. I told my friend that something was wrong with Minecraft and I couldn't play with him.

After I hung up, my computer started going crazy. The screen began to flash, my tower started whirring uncontrollably, and all the lights on the tower were flashing. The power light on the tower was flashing colors it shouldn't have been able to flash, like red, purple, orange, or blue.

There were way more colors than it was built for. After about a minute of this, my keyboard looked like it was melting. After a while, all of it stopped at once. When I finally got to look at my computer, my desktop was wiped clean except for the "Corrupt Minecraft" executable I had made. A text document was open, too. The only word on that was "PLAY".

It's been about four or five days since I've been back to my apartment. Right now, I'm staying with my friend, Jeff.

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It's been over a week. Jeff doesn't want me here anymore. However, he says he'll come back to the apartment with me to check things out.

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When we got back to my apartment, my computer was in sleep mode. We woke it up and it was the same as when I ran from my apartment a week ago. I looked at the tower and it was surrounded by thick spider webs, but I wasn't worried about that right now. I looked back at the text document that was open last time, the one that said "PLAY." At that point, I thought the gae wanted me to play it. I pulled out a chair and told Jeff to sit down.

I started the "Corrupted Minecraft" launcher and it went straight to the main menu. There was no login screen. Like last time, I clicked Single Player and went into New World. It was just like the first time. Jeff started asking questions, but I shushed him and told him to watch.

When I located the brown dot, we waited for it to come closer. When it finally got to us, it was a brown spider with a human's head. It was the monster from my dream. At that moment, music began to play (I think it was "13", the song on the golden record). As it played, the SpiMan (as I call it) slowly rose on its back two legs. It stood there, watching us, until the music ended and everything became silent once more. There was a big explosion once it became silent.

Minecraft went into a severe lag spike and there was this deafening scream. It sounded like someone being tortured. After ten seconds of this, Minecraft crashed to an error message screen. The only message was "PLAY." Afterward, we heard a hiss come from behind us. We both jumped and screamed; we looked around, but there was nothing there.

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It's been a month since Jeff and I looked at my computer. I've decided to call an exorcist, but I'm hesitant. I feel like I should go back. I feel like

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Jeff has gone missing. I blame myself. I shouldn't have shown him the game. Whatever's happening to him, I don't think it's good.

I'm deleting the game from my hard drive. That's that.

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It didn't work. "File cannot be deleted. Error 000." I'm scared right now.

I am going to burn my computer. I'm going to take all my important files off of there and burn it. IT DID NOT WORK I AM GOING INSANE HELP ME PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEAAE PLEACDGS PELAE PLKJNBV POIUG IHUGVCF UGFYH HGJYK GS G S DFAFDS FA SDFSFDAS

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I know I'm going crazy, but I can't stop myself. I have a plan, though. I'm goihggyrthyghbghghghghghhyghfghghgghfghgh

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I just woke up. I think I passed out or something. My face is all bloody and I was on the apartment floor. I'm calling the police.

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The police came over and found a dead body in my yard. The body belonged to a neighbor of mine from down the street. A witness said she heard a large noise, like glass breaking, then looked outside and saw a large "thing" coming from my yard. After that, she saw a man run up to the thing with a shotgun and shoot it multiple times, but he suddenly fell over dead with the "large object" nowhere in sight.

The autopsy doesn't show anything. Apparently, he died of old age...at 57.

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That's it. If anything more happens, I'll post it here.

Thanks for reading. Goodbye. ~Matt

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Matthew Thomas was found dead six weeks after finishing this document in front of his computer, with only one application open: Minecraft. There was an investigation into the game's creator, Markus Perrson, but no leads were found. Matt's cause of death is unknown, but could have something to do with a small piece of metal found on the floor next to him. A friend of the boy, Anna Loccs, told us he was having strange computer problems. She wouldn't reveal anything more. After the story was featured on the news, there was one anonymous caller who invited us over to talk about the boy's case. When we arrived, she invited us in and made coffee.

She began talking about Matt and how she only met him once. She eventually got onto the topic of Minecraft, but suddenly fell to the floor, dead. Her death was the same as Matthew's. With our last lead gone, the case was put into the unsolved file. To this day, Matthew Thomas' case is unsolved. Whatever killed him remains a mystery.

A movie file was also found in Matt's computer, but has been confiscated as evidence until the case is solved or deemed unsolvable.

--Officer Brian Thaw, SUPD

(Read the sequel here.)