"So you're telling me.. that you still don't remember when we first met?" Alex asked Steve as the two walked down a beaten path, surrounded by a dense forest, with their trusty wolf happily strolling between them.

     "You mean that one time you woke me up with a cactus? Yeah, never forgot that." Steve chuckled.

     "No! Not that time, the other time, before that!" Alex raised her volume somehow hoping that would fix the problem at hand. Steve only scratched his head as he wondered if Alex had had one too many healing potions after yesterday's battle. "Hmm, maybe he just needs a little help remembering." Alex thonked, an evil grin rising slowly on her face. Suddenly Alex vanished behind Steve without him noticing, and before he could even hear her footsteps a decently sized branch whacked him on the back of the head. Right away Steve fell down face-first into the still soggy soil. Their wolfy mutt turned and growled at Alex, but didn't attack her because he/she knew Alex meant no real harm.

     "Alex! What the heck did you do that for?!" Steve shouted, standing back up quickly, attending to the bruise on the back of his head.

     "Hmm. That didn't seem to work.." Alex only thonked harder.

     "Wh- Are you going crazy Alex?! Why would you think hitting me with a stick would bring back memories?! How are you even sure I AM that same Steve you keep claiming I am?! There are plenty of other Steves out there!" He shouted, obviously angry.

     "Yeah, but there is only ONE Herobrine." Alex pointed out, keeping her voice calm yet stern. Her comment made Steve stop and think for a moment. It just didn't make any sense. He was sure when he had first appeared on that cube inside the Blender software, that that was where his story had begun. Was it even possible, that, maybe he had a life before then? "..Believe me, Steve.. I know it's you. I know you were the friend who had so long ago helped me when I needed it most... Please, Steve, I need my old friend back, just as much as you want to know who you really are.. how much you need to know who you REALLY are." Alex said with a genuine plead. It was rare for someone as tough as Alex to communicate in such a way so that just made Steve wonder even more if she was actually being truthful. And with that little spark of wonder, came a flash of desire. A desire to know more. To know more about this truth Alex spoke of.

     Steve looked around at the forest not sure what to think. He always looked to the shrubbery for advice, as if the plants themselves could talk. It was odd how connected he felt with the game, even though he had just joined for the first time only a couple months ago.

     "Maybe there's another way to get you to remember.." Alex thonked her hardest. Then she reached into her pocket for something. Steve backed away with terrified eyes, preparing himself for the worst. But she managed to catch Steve off guard when she pulled out a simple picture, one of which he could only see the back of at the time. "..Here, this was someone you knew. I never really met him personally, but I know you did." Alex half sighed. Then she turned the small image around to face Steve. When he caught sight of the face, he didn't exactly recognize him.

     The picture was indeed of a man. A man with black shoes, grey pants, an old brown shirt, a black thick beard, and a bald head. Steve stood looking puzzled at the picture. After a few moments, Alex's hope began to dwindle as shown on her face.

     "Wait.. draw a hat on his head." Steve rubbed his chin as he let some random thought leave his mouth. Alex's eyes lit up with the sign of hope and she quickly pulled out a black marker.
     "What kind of hat?" Alex asked her friend.

     "I don't know.. maybe a cowboy hat or something." Steve suggested. Alex began scribbling on the picture right away and when she was done, turned it back around to show Steve with excitement. The drawn on hat looked terrible but did its job. Because right away, Steve, remembered something. No, not just something.. EVERYTHING.

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     To understand the full story of Steve, we must go back, all the way to the beginning of the year 2009.

     A young man, only about 19 or 20, was running through the office halls of a building, almost there but still considered late.

     "Fudge cake, I'm going to be late on the first day, FIRST DAY." He scolded himself. It was indeed his first day at a job he had been anxiously awaiting an opportunity for years. He had wanted to work in the video game industry ever since he was a 10-year-old playing on his dad's old computer. And if he didn't make a good first impression he might not be able to keep the dream job of his. It was a simple dream, but still his own.

     "Woah, watch ou-!" A man slightly older tried to warn the runner but was rammed right into before he could even finish his sentence. Both the young men tumbled onto the floor, papers from both flying all around the hall and falling slowly on the two like large snowflakes. The two men quickly got up onto their knees and began looking around on the floor for their papers. When the young man realized this older man must have been a worker for the company, a possible future coworker, he became immediately embarrassed.

     "Oh, I am so sorry! I truly didn't mean to bump into you or ANYTHING! I just didn't want to be any more late on my first day." The younger man's face burnt up with guilt, fear, anger, and all those connected. The slightly older man just laughed a little as he reached over for the fiftieth paper he had dropped.

     "Don't worry so much. It's absolutely fine. I've been working here for almost four years now and I can tell you that this place is pretty chill. Just make sure not to get sidetracked too much." He smiled at the younger guy. The younger man picked up the last of his papers and helped the older one. "Hey, you must be the new guy. Steven, was it?" The older man asked.

     "Uh, yeah. But you can just call me Steve if you want." The younger man smiled back at the guy. "And what's your name?"

     "Markus. But you can call me Mark." The slightly older guy smiled back at Steve's smiling back. Soon after, the last few papers were picked up and both men stood.

     "So am I going to be seeing you around here any time?" Steve asked.

     "Actually your desk is right across from mine, so, if you are not FIRED, then I would say yes." Mark smiled, hinting that Steve should be going on his way already. Steve abided the warning and began running off towards the offices he was told to go to first. And Mark simply chuckled at the overexcited Steve and casually walked back over to his working space.

     Thankfully, Steve had gotten there relatively on time; and, Thankfully, he wasn't ever late again, in that first week at least.

     "Psst, hey, Steve. Want to see something neat?" Mark whispered over his shoulder to Steve, who was at the time working on the base game mechanics for a basic, but addictive, game.

     "What is it now?" Steve looked back at Mark with a little annoyance. It had become apparent that Mark enjoyed getting off track himself with a few games of his own.

     "It's that game I told you I started last week. Come and see it. I think it's pretty cool personally." Mark advertised. Steve just shrugged and got up from his computer. It would be a while before that game was even CLOSE to done anyways.

     Steve then leaned over Mark's shoulder and squinted at a small green and blue window.

     "What's that supposed to be?" He asked his friend/coworker.

     "It's a little thing I am thinking of calling 'Cave Game' or something, though all I have so far is this grassy platform. Then Mark made the window larger So Steve could see that the blue was sky, and the ground was probably some kind of grass with horrible graphics.

     "Heh, looks like you have a while to go. Those graphics are so grainy." Steve pointed out the obvious.    

     "Oh, it's supposed to look like that. Makes it a lot easier to program stuff like this." Mark smiled as he used the mouse to click the grass in front of him. Suddenly a grey cube with just as bad graphics as the grass appeared where he had clicked.

     "Woah, what's that?" Steve asked.

     "It's stone. I want this game to behave somewhat like a virtual Lego set. But so far I only have programmed stone." Mark explained.

     "Can you make trees?" Steve asked Mark with a smile.

     "Noo, not yet. I guess tress should be the next thing." Mark agreed, about to close the window to continue with his original work.

     "Wait, can I play for a minute?" Steve asked with a childish side of him showing.

     "Yeah, of course!" Mark offered up his seat happily, glad his friend was taking an interest in his new game. Steve sat down and Mark gave him a quick tutorial on which Keyes to press and things like that. In just a few moments Steve was at it making all sorts of things out of the one block he could use. It was pretty limited with only stone, but that didn't stop Steve from building a castle with an empty mote and some trees made of stone around it. He even tried making a few animals for the castle's little farm, which was all just stone and grass.

     When Steve was finally content with his creation he got up and let Mark take his seat again, showering him with suggestions and such for blocks and even things like flowers and crops so he can make a real garden. Mark was happy to be receiving suggestions and noted each one in his mind.

     However, the fun was over, the little adventure already through. So Steve had to go back to his chair.. with nothing else to do.

     After about a month or two Steve still hadn't gotten a chance to play Mark's 'Cave Game.' Mark just kept talking about his ideas for the game and all his plans but never letting his friend see his progress. In fact, there hadn't really been any progress since the last time it seemed. All of Mark's plans were kind of hard to execute with a job demanding being finished. Nevertheless, Steve was still excited about what Mark had managed to do in his free time.

     So one evening, after almost everyone in the building was gone, Steve decided to use some skills he hadn't used to get onto that game: hacking. All he really needed to do was hack into Mark's computer to unlock it from the inside since it was secured with a password no one could guess.

     The feit actually didn't take that long. He got the password relatively quickly, which just so happened to be: Elin, and opened Mark's computer up from the inside. He knew hacking wasn't exactly the way to go, but if he managed to do something as important as hacking into a developer's computer, then he might know how to fix it later and make it harder for other hackers to break in.

     Mark's computer turned on with the password already typed in like commanded and ready for Steve to open it up. He quickly got up with childish enthusiasm and sat down in Mark's chair with a triumphant spin.

     Steve quickly got on and found a file named 'Cave Game.' He smiled and clicked on it, opening up the empty tab that quickly filled up with Java as it ran up the game. Soon Cave Game was up and running, and Steve didn't hesitate to start playing.

     Steve joined the game. He looked around right away. His work had been deleted, but he didn't really like it that much anyway. Besides, be needed room to see all that was new.. Nothing. Steve clicked around. Still, nothing but stone came from his invisible hand. Nothing had been added or taken away. And Steve was pretty sad about that. He had hoped Mark had at least added something. But, all his words were only plans, plans which were pointless if never acted upon. But he didn't complain. He simply decided to write his friend a little note, for fun of course. So using the stone, he began building words on the flat environment.

     "Trees Please :)" He wrote. He knew Mark would know it was him right away and began planning on how he would explain why and how he had just hacked his friend's computer.. There wasn't much time for thought, however.

     Steve's own virus was not satisfied with simply finding a password and turning on a computer. Its simple programming was striving for much more than that.

<Error. A virus has been detected on your device.> A window suddenly popped up on the screen.

     "Hu, I thought I disabled it already?" Steve mumbled to himself quietly. He then turned around to look at his own monitor screen and saw some things had changed since he had last touched it.

<Virus fully transferred to new device. Starting up hosting sequence.> A window on Steve's computer read.

     "Hosting Sequence?. What's tha?-" Steve began questioning as he turned back to Mark's screen. But he froze stone solid when he saw what was on the screen. It was simply a reflection as if the monitor had been turned off, but there was one, big, terrifying difference.

     The reflection had glowing white eyes, that stared back at Steve as if it were a complete stranger. There was no thought next. Not a single idea popped into mind about who or what this might really be. No second thought rejecting the fantasy as a trick on the mind. There was none of that. Simply one, single, happening.

     Either it was the screen or Steve's imaginings, but those eyes glowed brighter, and brighter until in just a couple seconds all Steve could see was a blinding white light. And instead of the usual saying: "and then everything went black." For Steve, it was: "everything went white." And Steve simply fell into an unimaginable state of mind, one, he would never truly awake from...