The Puzzle House - The Short Story

[OuRaion]

A while back I made a minecraft adventure map that got lots of downloads. I was bored (seeing as i'm on holidays) and made a short story based on it. Please comment on what you think. I will post one chapter at a time, one every day until it is finished. Here is the first one:

Chapter 1 – Fire!
“Where am I?” is the first thing that pops into Steve’s head when he wakes up. He has awoken in a small room, with a bed and a speaker in the roof. Just as he starts to think of an escape plan, the speaker crackles to life.
“Good morning. I hope you slept well.” says an unfamiliar voice.
“Where am I?!?” you demand.
“Remember that strange house you stumbled upon four months ago? That was something I created to see who would be worthy. You see, I am looking for something to put my mind into so I may live on as I am dying. Enough about me though. This harder test of your abilities will test your mind and body to see if you can be my new body. Now move on!” yells out the voice.
Steve then notices a lever above a door. “If I can just reach it…” he thinks to himself. Steve reaches up and just touches the lever. He pulls it downwards and the door flies open.
“Good” says the voice, “You remember how to open a door. The drugs didn’t take away that much memory then. Keep moving.”
Steve pulls another lever and goes through a second door. He arrives in a high-ceilinged room with a wooden roof and a chest filled with gravel and some. Steve ponders for a while, and then figures out the solution. He pulls the iron out of the chest. He searches through the gravel and finds some flint. He stares at the roof, reaches as high as he can and strikes the iron against the steel. There are some sparks, but the roof does not ignite. He tries again and again until on his 13th try, the roof finally catches on fire.
“Success!” he yells out.
Steve retreats into a corner of the room and watches the fire slowly spread around the whole roof. He watches as the timber burns. Then as they all disappear into ashes, sand starts to fall. As the last grain of sand falls, Steve stands up and makes his way up to the top of the sand pile. He then goes through the doorway into the next room.

[OuRaion]

Chapter 2 – Fire! (In Liquid Form)
As soon as he goes through the door, it closes behind him and some platforms start to pop out and recede from the wall. There is only one way out now. Over the platforms. Steve studies the platforms for a while to look for a pattern. He knows the timing and if he gets it wrong, he has a nice lava bath to look forward to. As soon as the last platform receded into the wall, Steve leaps for where the first platform should be, and surely enough, it pops out underneath him. Wasting no time, he races for the next platform and as soon as he leaves the platform he was on, it retracts. Wasting no time again, he leaps for the last platform, and then sprints as fast as he can to the safe zone on the other side.

[OuRaion]

Chapter 3 - Math
He then proceeds onto the next room. As he walks in he sees a sign that has math written on it. He groans as math was a bad subject for him. He looks at the problem. (1+2+3+4)\5+6-3. “Yikes!” he says. He thinks about it for about 5 minutes and a number pops into his head. Five. He goes over to the lever marked ‘five’ and pulls it. He braces himself, and then the door opens. He lets out a sigh of relief as he was almost certain it was wrong.
He almost faints as he sees what is in the next room. “Another math problem!!” he yells out. He thinks to himself, “What does ‘a’ equal if three plus four plus five is ‘a’.” He does not think for long and then exclaims, “This was supposed to be a test? This is something a 10 year old would do at school.”
“Quiet!” yells the voice, “It is not my fault, my computer came up with this one, not me.”
Steve stifles some laughter and looks around the room. There is a lever marked with a one, a lever marked with one million, a lever marked with pi, a lever marked with twelve, a lever marked with S*** load, a lever marked with three hundred thousand kilometres, a lever marked with fifty cents and a lever marked with twenty-five kilojoules. “Even if I didn’t know the answer it would be obvious” he thought to himself. Steve pulls the lever marked twelve and goes into the next room.
There is a sign saying ‘Please wait here’ and pointing downwards. Steve is just starting to reconsider standing there when the floor disappears underneath him and he falls into a pit of water. He splashes out of the pit and yells out to the voice, “Am I done yet?!?” The voice is very quick to reply, “No you are not.” Steve mumbles a curse as he was sure that was all the voice had to offer, but he moves onto the next room.

[OuRaion]

Chapter 4 – Jumping Fish & The Doctor
He sees a fishing rod, some paintings, some pressure plates and two doors. He knows what to do. This to him was just a harder version of the painting fishing he did at the annual fair when he was young. He was confident he could do this. He sees that there is a lone painting in the middle with a single pressure plate beneath it. He hits that painting and it falls off and just lands on the pressure plate. The door to his right opens and the voice starts yelling, “No! You were not supposed to get that! I forgot that was there. I am a fool for forgetting to remove that letter!” Steve, curious as to what is in the room because of what was just said, goes into the room. There is a single letter on a table in that room. He unfolds it and starts reading.
Dear Professor Whatsisface,
I am writing to inform you that you have a rare disease known as ‘urabouttodie syndrome’. It will kill you in roughly one year unless you are extremely evil and transfer your mind into someone else’s body, though I don’t recommend it. Besides that news, I hope you have a great last year.
Sincerely, Doctor Who.
Steve was confused at the strange letter, but knew that the voice’s name was Dr Whatsisface and what he was dying from. He goes back to the painting room and hits another painting with the fishing rod. It falls and misses the five pressure plates underneath it, so Steve tries again with another painting. It falls and lands right in the middle of one of the plates. The door to his left opens. He goes through that and comes to a very high room with pillars of varying heights. He is filled with joy as he loves doing hardcore parkour. He then makes his way up the supposedly challenging parkour challenge. He makes one final leap and gets through to the next room.

[OuRaion]

Chapter 5 – Off To Nether, Nether Land
“Well done Steve! You have completed 6 challenges and now there are only dive to go. Now step into the portal.” Says the voice, “Don’t be afraid. Yet.” Steve sees that the portal is one that goes to the nether and he is quite scared, as he has never been to the nether. He goes through the portal though and disappears in an instant.
When Steve reappears, he is in the Nether. A place even more dangerous than a creeper dungeon (which is pretty dangerous if you ask me) that Steve was too scared to go into before. Luckily for him, he was on peaceful so he needn’t worry too much. Steve turns around and looks behind himself and sees a door. Just a door. “What’s that for?” he asks himself. He turns around again and goes to a flight of stairs. He is just about to go up them when he sees a button. He tries to resist the urge to push it, but fails and presses it. He is then pushed up the stairs by a set of hidden pistons. When he reaches the top he hears some faint words, spoken like a commercial, “Thank you for using the lazy person’s stairs. The lazy person’s stairs, pushing lazy people since 2003!”
“Well that was weird” thought Steve. He moves on through the next door and sees a chest. He looks at the contents and finds a whole heap of iron swords. He then hears the voice. It is becoming more and more familiar to Steve every time he hears it, but where has he heard it before? “Only take on sword Steve, and change your difficulty to normal.” “Dammit!” Steve shouts, “I prefer doing this on peaceful.” “You have to Steve” replies the voice, “You are about to face your oldest enemy. The zombie.” Steve is now very scared as he accesses the menu and changes his difficulty in the settings, for it cannot be good if this evil person is making Steve do a mob challenge. Steve stills finds courage to press on and goes through the door.

[OuRaion]

Chapter 6 – Zombies & Pistons
Steve walks into the room and sees the person behind the voice watching him from above. Well, he doesn’t see him, but the mirrors making a box halfway down from the roof is very suspicious. And Steve hears the voice coming from above him. But anyway, back to the slaughter. Steve slays a zombie, then another. “This is easy’ he says. Then a block retracts and another zombie spawner is revealed. He still defeats every zombie he sees. Then another two spawners are revealed, one after the other. When Steve is just about to give up hope he notices the door at the other end of the room open. He rushes in through the door and pushes the button connected to the other door as fast as he can, races through to the other side and lets out a sigh of relief. He then hears the voice, “You may go back to peaceful now, seeing as I am in a good mood today.” Steve happily goes into the menu and changes his difficulty back to peaceful.
The next room he goes into has some pistons behind some glass, for buttons and a lever. “You have to replace the red wool with the green wool” says the voice. Steve goes over to a button and presses it. A piston fires. He pushes another and it fires the piston next to the green wool. He presses another and another until the green wool is two blocks beneath the red. He pushes the last button. Nothing happens. He pulls the lever. A hidden piston fires and pushes the piston connected to the green wool up. Steve presses the button and voila the green wool replaces the red wool, and a path opens up.

[OuRaion]

Chapter 7 – Carnival Games!
Steve sees some ice, and a pressure plate in the next room. However, he sees no way of activating the pressure plate, as he cannot get to it. He looks around for ten minutes and finds a furnace, hidden in the ground. He looks inside the furnace and finds some clay. He pulls some clay off the big blob and forms it into a ball. He throws the ball towards the pressure plate and the balls lands on it. The door opens and in the next room is the same type of puzzle. He completes it and moves onto the third room. This room has two pressure plates. One the normal distance away and one farther away. He aims for the one farthest away and misses. He tries again and again until he eventually gets it. The door behind him opens. “Dammit, not again!” yells the voice, “That was another room you weren’t supposed to see.” Steve still goes in the room and finds a page torn from a book.
Journal of Dr Whatsisface Page 46
My Family
My father was a boring man, working seven days a week and never having time for myself or my brother. My mother was a woman who never stopped cleaning. My family consisted of my father, Bob, my mother, Sue, myself and my brother, S-
That is where the page ends as it is ripped in that spot. Steve shrugs and goes back to bowling, thinking the ripped page is of no importance. He goes for the pressure plate closest to him and gets it in one go. The door opens and he finds himself in a maze. He walks around it for a bit and finds a door but no way of opening it. “What do I do?” Steve asks. “Find the lever” the voice replies. So Steve looks around the maze for an hour (which to him is like 5 hours because it is soooooo boring) then finds the lever. He then looks for another hour to try and find the door. He does and places the lever down, pulls it and opens the door.

[OuRaion]

Chapter 8 – Fire, Yet Again
Steve is now in a room with a pit of lava and a splash potion of fire resistance. “It is so obvious what to do here” says Steve. He splashes the potion near himself and sees an orange particle effect around himself. He jumps into the lava and lands safely below. He then drops to the ground and starts rolling like crazy to put out the fire before the potion wears off. Once that was taken care of, he looked up from the ground and saw a minecart on a track. He get in the minecart, pushes the buttons and zooms off along the track. While he is going along he hears the very familiar voice say, “It is time to leave, Steve. Hey, I can rhyme!” Steve hops out of the minecart and comes upon the door he couldn’t get through when he first came into the nether. He goes through the door and steps into the portal again, glad to be going back. (Well not really, but you get the idea)

[OuRaion]

Chapter 9 – An Explosive Finale
Steve is amazed that even though he went through the same portal, he reappeared in a different location. He goes on and is just about to go through a door when he hears the voice. “I hope you had fun in the nether! There is only one puzzle left. Good luck” Steve goes through the door and hears a very loud bang. Then the voice comes to life. “Just a minor glitch, nothing for you to worry about Steve.” Steve does not worry, but right before he goes through the final door he hears an even louder bang and arrives in a room with a broken wall, leading off into Steve’s possible freedom. “Oh darn” says the voice. Steve goes through the broken wall, careful to avoid the blazing fires around him and ends up in a room with a lever marked ‘Self-destruct. Only pull in extreme cases. Will not destroy this area.’ Steve pulls the lever, knowing that he is finally free. But before the puzzle house exploded, the following conversation took place. “
“What have you done?!?!” yells the voice, “You’ll kill me!”
“Well dur” replies Steve, “That’s what I was aiming for. You captured me and made me do horrible tests for your own benefit and you think I wouldn’t kill you if I had the chance? Professor my ass.” As the puzzle house explodes you hear the voice yelling out. “Help me Steve! My brother!” You killed your brother you idiot. Stupid Steve. No wonder he thought these test were hard. Geez, stupidity must run through his family. Well, my opinions don’t matter, it’s Steve that matters. He mourns for a moment and then realises he killed his brother, but his brother was suffering and Steve did him a favour. Steve put him out of his misery. Steve goes outside and sees some sign leading to a large building. “What the?!?” he thinks. He goes to the entrance though and sees a sign and a button. ‘Push and follow path for epic end credits.’ “May as well.” he says to himself. He pushes the button and the Pirates of the Caribbean theme song starts playing on note blocks. He then follows the path and reads what the signs say.
‘Thankyou for reading The Puzzle House – The Novel! Based on the adventure map, ‘The Puzzle House 2’ by OuRaion. Download it at http://www.planetminecraft.com/project/ ... e-house-2/ I hope you enjoyed. Leave a comment below and a rating of what you thought.’
There were numerous other signs that said random things like, PEANUTS, BUTTER and GANGNAM STYLE! As the noteblock song ended (which was very awesome indeed) Steve saw ‘The End’ written in glowstone above a doorway. He went out the doorway into a forest and started life anew. A brand new day was just beginning…

[OuRaion]

Whoever was reading this (i'm guessing no one) thankyou. Please tell me what you thought.