Ponk [23:49] are you fucking kidding me?

Ponk [23:49] i step out for one day and i miss this?
Punz [23:49] <3
Ponk [23:49] ugh time to fix your shit

*

The world was strange.

Dream blinked as the final parts of the world generated before him.

The world was made entirely out of blues and yellows, shades of black and white. A beacon was placed right in the middle of the golden temple spawn area, pillars of quartz supporting the structure. When he looked up, yellow stained glass covered the top of the spawn area. Three sides of the spawn area were walled off with quartz stone brick. What was this supposed to be? He was no builder, but somehow these colors didn't seem right...

Well, every other wall was blocked off except for the one leading to the corridor in front of him. There was nothing else to see in this spawn area.

Before he could move, it popped up in the chat box.

Ponk has joined the game.

Uh oh. Dream didn't recognize that name.

<Ponk> are you the new guy?

There was no way he was referring to anyone else, right?

<Dream> i am new here yes

<Ponk> ok hold still for a second

<Ponk> youre gonna need a couple packs to actually see everything

<Ponk> discord tag?

That certainly explained the design. And if Ponk was in this world, that must mean he was a trustworthy person. At least, to the people Dream had already talked to, and the entire process for that said enough by itself. Dream typed his Discord tag in the chat and waited before accepting a friend invitation and clicking the download button for the files Ponk sent him.

Not before scanning it with an antivirus first, though. Can never be too careful in this day and age.

Dream restarted Minecraft and went through the same golden helmet access point as before. But the second he equipped the texture pack, the world generated with a new brightness.

This... This was a castle. The colors were more vibrant, more detailed. They meshed together into a work of art, the beacon shining like a star through the colored glass on the ceiling. It was as if he had been teleported to another, more beautiful dimension.

The spawn area had already left him breathless. What else was left to see?

Dream took the first step forward. Then the next. And the next. Walking was too slow, sprinting was too slow. Weights were tied to his legs, and all he could do was crawl aimlessly through the corridor.

Then the light disappeared, and there was something, something too familiar chasing him down the corridor.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck—

The chains buried into the floor, and the air filled with gray smoke. It felt urgent, miserable, helpless. All he could do was run, run, run, run, run from whatever feeling was chasing him through the hall as it breathed down his neck.

Then when he finally approached the lantern hanging over an archway to another room, he stopped, coughing the smoke out of his lungs and falling helplessly to his knees. The chaser had retreated back into the darkness, never to be seen again. But when he looked back, the corridor was, by all means, normal.

What was that? The files he had downloaded were texture and resource packs, not mods. So why was his heart pounding so hard from a game?

Ugh. He didn't want to think about that. He needed to move on.

The arch led to a ballroom made of wood from floor to ceiling. Lanterns had been placed just enough for everything inside to be visible. The lightning was warm like a hug, a reprieve from what he had just experienced.

Dream stepped through.

His breath hitched.

The world was an explosion of memories. Pictures of George as the central figure were pinned on the walls. Signs were placed beneath each picture, though he wasn't close enough to read what they said. Books were placed in the item frames littered on every surface of wall that was available, and he could only assume the chests scattered around the room were filled with them, too. There seemed to be no particular order to the pictures from the cursory glance Dream had of the area; more needed to be generated.

Before the world could generate, there was a short wall in the way, something of a message board. Signs covered every surface of it.

Dream took a closer look, then his breath cut off.

You're my favo-

-rite person.
Love you. Rest.

-Allysa

To my friend

To my brother
To George.

-Punz

Rest now george

You're the best
part of me.
-Ponk

You've done
enough. Rest

now my friend.
-Callahan

Best friends
Always, forever.

I love you.

-Darryl

Then the torrent of emotion came crashing onto him, dragging him out to sea. The storm was tumultuous, unrelenting. The warmth inside him exploded into a million fiery pieces and dropped into the sea like messages in bottles.

George. George, George, George—

Dream took his hand off his mouse and slapped it against his mouth, a familiar wet warmth building behind his eyes. With his other hand, he typed a worldedit command into the chat.

Unknown command.

Every block of this memorial was placed by hand, so lovingly by hand. Building just the corridor must've taken weeks at the least. But maybe that was the point. Building layer by layer by layer, putting off the construction of the actual memorial site—that could've only been the product of grief.

But the site was constructed anyway. The builders persevered. And that was the strength only the strongest, most unfiltered grief known to man could bring.

As Dream stewed in his thoughts and the clot of emotions knotted in his stomach, a Minecraft avatar wearing a red mask teleported to him.

<Ponk> oh you found it

<Ponk> i dont know why i say that like im surprised, it was one corridor

Dream's fingers hovered over his keyboard, rigid and frozen.

<Dream> all of you made this?

<Ponk> yeah haha
<Ponk> took a good while
<Ponk> bad worked on it the most though

<Ponk> bad set up the area and wanted to get the outline done before we put in our memories but he would just.

<Ponk> feel lost.

<Ponk> you know?

<Ponk> then one day he opened the area to us and told us to build the best damn memorial the entirety of minecrafts ever seen
<Ponk> not in those words

<Ponk> but pretty close

Something about the tone of those words told Dream he wasn't the only one only barely holding back another wave of emotions.

<Dream> bad?

<Ponk> oh sorry
<Ponk> darryl

<Ponk> hes owner of the server

Darryl. So that was George's best friend?

<Dream> sorry, im kind of disconnected from the general friend group

<Ponk> no worries man

<Ponk> how about i just give you a tour of the area?

Dream took a moment to look around the memorial. While the building itself seemed neat and organized, even just one conversation with most of the builders told him it'd be more chaotic beneath the surface. Ponk wouldn't be offering if he didn't think it was needed, after all.

<Dream> sure

<Ponk> cool
<Ponk> do you want to like. Get in a vc on discord?
<Dream> im down

Dream had just finished wrapping his headphones around his ears by the time the notification for Ponk's call came in. He clicked accept, then said a tentative "Hello?".

"Hey, it's Ponk," Ponk said. Dream liked to think his voice matched his Minecraft skin somewhat. His voice was on the deeper end of the spectrum but still close to the middle. Just from that small bit of conversation, Dream could tell his accent was a bit stronger than George's. "I guess we should start from the beginning, right? Would you rather start chronologically according to his life or how we started building it? One's easier than the other."

Dream took a moment to think. "Um... I don't have a preference. Whichever one's easier."

"Alright, we'll start with what first got built here. Follow me." With that, Ponk took off sprinting to the left, gesturing towards a painting on the wall.

The painting had six people in the picture: George, and five other people he assumed were the builders. They sat around a table covered by a red and white tablecloth, all smiling in varying degrees at the camera (and one of them putting their middle finger up, to the seeming chagrin of the man in glasses taking the photo). A variety of dishes were set on the table. Everyone had a plate and a pair of silverware in front of them. Beneath the picture, all of their names were listed.

George smiled softly at the camera. God, his smile was so pretty.

"This was one of the first pictures we took as a group," Ponk said. There was a smile in his voice as he explained. "George and I went to visit the other crackheads in the States during the holiday times right after George graduated. So, we just invaded Bad's house. You can see his dog if you really look in the corner there."

He was right; there was a patch of blurry white in the bottom right corner of the picture. The only thing that could've been was a dog.

"We have a ton more pictures of that hangout," Ponk said. "We put the ones of George up on this wall."

Dream looked further down the wall, only to find more pictures. Ponk followed, silent.

In the first, George kneeled down next to (presumably) the same dog as before, his face broken into a bright grin as the dog was halfway through jumping onto his lap. He stood in front of a green background. Half of a black chair showed on the left side of the picture. Underneath the whole frame, somebody had placed a sign reading, "George meeting Lucy!"

The picture next to it had two people wrapping their arms around George: one with dark brown hair and glasses and the other looking away from the camera, his face too blurry for Dream to make out any significant features. George looked a tad awkward at the contact, but when did he not look a tad awkward at physical contact? Some things never changed. Dream smiled at that. The sign read, "Bad, George, and Callahan being an idiot."

There were a couple more pictures after that, but none in particular caught his eye until the last one. A man wearing a white jacket and another woman with long blonde hair stood behind George, who sat in a chair in front of a computer. Even without high-quality graphics, the game on the computer was obviously a server in Minecraft (Munchy? Probably Munchy). Below, the sign read, "Punz and Alyssa watch George suck at KitPvP."

But there was something stunning about how... relaxed George was, his shoulders fallen and his elbows resting on the armrest peacefully despite apparently playing KitPvP at the time. These were his friends, possibly his best friends in the world. And—And George, Dream had gotten to see George like that so much more now than before. Did that mean George held him as highly as Dream held George? And why Dream? They had only known each other for the better part of the year; he had probably been friends with the builders for years.

Dream meant something to him. He didn't know what exactly, but knowing that he meant at least a little bit—that was worth the world.

"Hey, so..." Ponk paused once they reached the other wall. "This is my little corner of the room. You'll see some of the others' corners if you look hard enough; it's a pretty big area. We were friends in real life, so mine's a bit bigger than the others."

The first painting in Ponk's corner was of George in an oversized black jacket grinning at the camera, the hand in front of his mouth doing nothing to hide it. His smile had always been too big, too bright to hide after all. Nothing had changed about that.

Ponk chuckled. "We took that at Winter Wonderland. Called out his name and snuck a pic to see if I could embarrass him in the group chat. But the guy just doesn't miss with photos."

Agreed, Dream thought, then the next painting had him burst out into a short fit of laughter.

Fucking George, crouching in front of a store sign making a peace sign with one hand and a high-five with the other. There was no shame on his face, no acknowledgement that this wasn't a normal position to stay in long enough for a picture. And was that a backpack on his back?

Ponk laughed along with him before explaining. "I don't even know how to justify that one. He just stopped me and told me to take a picture."

"Hey, at least it's a good picture."

"Yeah. Look, here's proof that I'm taller than George."

Dream examined the painting Ponk gestured to, but there was no noticeable height difference between the two. He squinted. Again, no observable height difference. Was he being pranked?

"That was on our Nando's date," Ponk said, a hint of nostalgia tinging his voice. "We went to Nando's a lot, actually. It was like our thing."

Dream's heart jumped at that. He didn't know why. "You guys were dating?"

"Oh, what? No. We both know George couldn't pull anyone in real life if he tried. But I like to think George and I were brothers in a past life or something. It's kind of ridiculous, I know, but..." Ponk trailed off at that, seemingly deep in thought. They were doing that a lot today, huh?

Past life.

Dream wasn't too much of a spiritual person, nor did he buy into the idea of reincarnation. But imagining a past life where he actually met George in person, gotten the chance to see who he was before tragedy struck... What would they have been like?

A question with infinite answers. Still, there was something about George that had prompted them to click together like a cap on a pen. It had taken some time to get to that point, but they had gotten there quickly enough for Dream to be comforted with the knowledge they'd probably still be friends if they had met in a previous life.

Or maybe a future life. Dream was the first to admit he didn't know anything about the universe more than a plant or rock.

"... I miss him a lot," Ponk said quietly. "I haven't been to Nando's or Winter Wonderland in years. It's just... weird without George. Like there's something missing, you know?"

"Yeah," Dream said. His heart hurt. Why did his heart hurt? "Like something's missing..."

They stayed in a thoughtful silence, unmoving in-game. What could Ponk be thinking right now? What purpose was this structure for anyway? Was it to be a reel of memories, a celebration of life, or a method of mourning online?

Or maybe it was a show of love to the only person who wasn't around to see it anymore. Every detail of the structure, every builder who had invested their time into this—it was all crafted with a special kind of unreplicable, unfiltered love. Love for their friend, love for the memories they had shared together, love for the bond they had constructed so carefully over the years.

"I'm gonna get going," Ponk said. "Feel free to stay as long as you want, okay?"

Dream nodded to that as the player leaving message popped up in chat. "Yeah. Thanks for talking to me."

"No problem. That helped a lot more than you'd think."

And with that, their Discord call ended, and Dream was left in the time capsule alone.

Then it clicked—why his heart had lurched at the thought of George having a boyfriend in his life, why he felt so warm with George around, why he had wanted to get along well with George's past friends, why life with George was so comfortable and the thought of life without him enough to petrify Dream into stillness. This whole time, he had—

Dream cackled as his heart bled onto the table.

Love. What an ironic word.