Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Are we runnin’?”

“I think we’re running, friend.”

Dashing haphazardly out of the red stained room and continuing to run up the long corridor they found themselves in, Xephos and Honeydew continued their increasingly perilous journey through The Hand. It’s metal walls and computers and god-awful minecarts had left them in a worried state, desperately trying to get out. They’d just been chasing two freshly made clones of Honeydew over what seemed to be a gigantic skeleton when they’d been knocked off to the bloodied room below and immediately attacked as the dopplegangers escaped. As they ran from one creepy metal room to another, they became even more frustrated and even more lost.

Being chased by what looked like zombie lab assistants wasn’t improving their mood.

“Bugger this for an evening out!” cried Honeydew once they felt they’d made it far enough down the corridor for the undead men to catch them. “What’s with all these zombies anyway? This is a bit much, even for Israphel.”

“What makes you think he did this?” replied Xephos, who was leaning on his knees and panting. “They look like they’ve been here for ages.”

“You think they came from here?” the dwarf asked with a grimace.

Xephos nodded. “If two weird clones of you came outta here then Notch knows what else could. I mean, look at them. They look all weird and sciencey like everything else in this place.”

“Sciencey? Is that a word?”

“Yes. Well, it is now. Bloody hell,” he trailed off with a pant, reaching for the small bag over his shoulder. He rummaged around in it for a moment before retrieving a glass water bottle, pulling out the cork with a quiet ‘pop’ and taking a long drink. He held it out to his friend.
“Want some?”

Honeydew frowned for a moment before taking it. “This from KP?”

Xephos nodded slowly. “Drink up.”

After the two had got their breath back they decided to venture on. The corridor they were in seemed ‘busier’ than the others, in Xephos’ words, to which Honeydew had told him that ‘that made no sense, actually’. He’d then elaborated that it had been ‘more used than the others, y’know? Look at the floor’, to which Honeydew had conceded that he made a good point. Enoch’s diary had explained that the whole place, whilst once ancient ruin, had turned into metal bit by bit, which meant that any remnants of the sandstone walls and floors were long gone. Yet the metal corridor they found themselves in seemed scuffed and worn, meaning it had been used frequently after being turned to metal.

The two continued their idle chatter, trying to block out the ominous clatters they could hear echoing throughout the building, and after some time came to the end of the corridor which ended in one, simple door.
A sign on the door read in faded, bold letters ‘CLONE STORAGE’, and a sign beneath that one (seemingly more hastily added than the first) read ‘DO NOT ENTER’. It looked handwritten.

The two stood outside, and after reading them both aloud, Xephos sighed and with a chirpy voice said “Well I wonder where we’re going then!”.

He looked at Honeydew, and the two readied their weapons. He pushed open the door.

After running inside ready for a fight, they both lowered their stances; the place was empty. Well, empty of people. It was full of seemingly everything else.

“Bloody ‘ell,” mumbled Honeydew, “what a fuckin’ mess.”

The room was large- it was twice the height and length of the Yogcave, post explosion. Rusted metal had claimed the walls and ceiling like everywhere else in the ruin, and several strange machines along the walls had dim lights blinking within- some of the only working lights in the whole room, which managed to retain an eerie blue glow despite the lack of torches.

Xephos and Honeydew began to step forward, investigating the strange platforms which remained the neatest thing in the room.

There were tons of them; square platforms about the size of Honeydew and around a meter long in length and width. They all stood firm, neatly spaced out throughout the room in a grid formation, each in varying states of disarray. Broken glass crunched beneath the Heroes’ feet as they stepped between the platforms- the floor was almost completely covered with the stuff. There were also large patches of red staining the metal floor, which the two tried to ignore as best they could; bloodied metal seemed to be a recurring design choice in The Hand. Aged signs were bolted onto some of the platforms with numerous words and numbers blotted out and scraped off. Other signs had dropped onto the floor, falling apart and wearing away. Each platform had thick lines indented into the top, as if a wall had been slotted in, seemingly made of glass.

The two continued on, slowly making their way to the back of the room where they both stopped and looked on in silence for a moment. In the far left corner, there were two square holes in the floor; pipes peaked through, rusted and decayed alongside neatly cut wires which clearly used to be connected to a platform above. After the two holes was a third platform. Unlike the others in the room, it didn’t have a sea of glass and blood surrounding it’s base. It had a tall glass tank protruding out of the top filled with a blue liquid, a worn sign neatly bolted to the front and multiple lights and buttons on the side flickered weakly.

Inside the tank, floating calmly with closed eyes, was a body.

“Hey, Xeph?” asked Honeydew.

“Yeah?”

“What the fuck am I looking at?”

Xephos sighed, tiredly. “Based on the door sign, I’d guess it’s a clone.”

He squinted his eyes at the worn sign on the platform.

“And based on this sign, I’d guess it’s called Lalna.”

Chapter Text

Neither of them knew what to do.

“I don’t know what to do.” said Xephos, staring at the tank.

“Well fuck,” barked Honeydew. “If you don’t then where does that leave me?”

“You say that like we don’t have 2 brain cells between us at the best of times, friend,” Xephos replied. “I can’t make heads or tails of any of this weird, future-y stuff, I’m as new to it as you are.”

Honeydew huffed at that. They both stood in silence again, staring.

“...Do you think he’s alive?” Honeydew quietly asked.

“You know what,” said Xephos, with a sad look on his face, “I think he is. This machine- whatever it is- seems to be on, whatever that means, and he isn’t drowning in that blue stuff. And you were fine in that weird cloning machine in the other room- oh!” he said with a start. “Look! He looks like the zombies, doesn’t he?”

Honeydew tilted his head to the side. “Bugger me, he does.”

The floating man, aside from his extremely creepy circumstances, looked very normal. He had short, blonde hair which floated around his head in a neat halo, and a pair of black framed goggles on top of that. A long, white lab coat fell to his knees and was cinched at the waist. Beneath that he wore some white trousers, long black boots and had matching gloves on his hands which came to just below his elbow. There was a ring on one of his fingers.

“Make him a little greener and bleed a bit and bam, got yer’self a zombie scientist there, I reckon,” said Honeydew as if he were pitching the idea to a customer. “What d’ya make o’ that then?”

“I’m not really sure, to be honest,” Xephos replied, squatting down to read the sign properly. “‘Master Clone: Lalna, Ver.One, Year One. Memory input- Year one’- I don’t know what any of this means, ‘Dew,”

“What are the doo-dads on the side?” Honeydew asked, walking around to investigate the buttons. He cleared his throat before announcing “‘CREATE CLONE, PAUSE CLONE, MEMORY REPORT, TURN OFF’, only to be used in emergencies,” he added on the end in a different voice. “There’s a screen here, I could see if it turns on?”

Xephos shrugged. “Might as well.”

Honeydew moved to push a small red button above the panel which made a quiet ‘boop’ when did. The panel lit up, revealing a small black screen which poorly flickered to life. It showed an image of a large, pixelated circle with the word YOGLABS written within. After loading for a moment, it seemed to run a start up sequence, eventually settling on a pixelated menu which read:

YOGLABS - CLONE STORAGE
UNIT 3
-CLONE DETAILS
-CLONE HISTORY
-OTHER
-ADMINISTRATOR

Honeydew looked up at Xephos. “Well, whad'ya fancy?”

“Uh, try history,” he said. Honeydew pressed the screen, and waited for it to load in.

“Uhh, okay this is weirder than I thought it would be. ‘Last clone dispatch: One day ago, Memory File Corrupted.exe’- what the fuck does that mean?”

“I haven’t a clue, friend. About the ‘exe’ thing, anyway. I guess the rest means the last zombie was made a day ago. I guess they come from in here?”

“That would explain why the floor is all worn,” Honeydew thought. “Though I don’t like the idea of being in the same room as those things. Can we turn this off? I feel like we should turn this off.”

“So do I. He doesn’t look like a zombie though,” Xephos pointed to the tank. “What if he’s alive?”

“Well maybe we can turn off this weird clone shit and get him out of the tank. How about that?”

“What if he’s evil, though?”

“Then we’ll kill him, duh.”

“Oh,” said Xephos. “Good point. That would bring our total of evil clones to kill up to three.”

“Oh shush,”

They navigated the screen back to the menu and pressed OTHER, which brought up another menu with the following display:

-ALTER CLONE DISPATCH
-MASTER CLONE REMOVAL

“Welp, let’s go shall we?” Xephos asked, pressing ALTER CLONE DISPATCH. After loading for a moment, the screen changed and brought up an options menu.
“‘Automise Cloning, Restart Cloning, Turn Off Cloning’,” he read, before looking at Honeydew. “Shall I just press it?”

Honeydew shrugged.

Xephos shrugged in agreement, and hit ‘Turn Off Cloning’. For a moment nothing happened, then the two heroes jumped as one of the machines on the walls of the room clunked loudly, whirred with increasing volume for a moment, and then fell silent, the dim light inside blinking off. The screen then flashed with the words ‘CLONING HALTED: RE-CONFIGURE IMMEDIATELY- LALNA MASTER CLONE #001’ in bright red, before turning off completely. A few of the lights on the side turned dark.

The man stayed floating.

“I think we maybe should have tried to get him out before turning it off, now that I think about it,” said Xephos. He turned to Honeydew. “What now?”

The dwarf just sighed and pulled out his axe, “Best to just get on with it, eh?”. Xephos’ eyes widened and he barely managed to yell “Hang on-!” before Honeydew brought his axe down on the glass tank.

Perhaps it had once been reinforced glass that could survive the elements- the fact it was still standing was a testament to its strength. But after sitting for who knows how long in a decaying ruin, it didn’t hold any resistance against the dwarf’s diamond blade, smashing instantly. The cracks fractured and climbed taller up the tank, splintering and breaking more as it went. Honeydew stepped quickly back, and Xephos grabbed his hand, pulling him onto one of the other platforms before the blue liquid soaked him as it spewed out of the tank and onto the floor.

The second the liquid drained below the sleeping man’s nose, his eyes flashed open and he gasped terribly before he fell out of the tank on the blue waterfall. He collapsed on the floor in front of the platform, landing on his knees and feebly propping himself up as he coughed and spluttered, shivering in the strange room. After a minute or so, he seemed to have got used to breathing again. He slowly sat up, taking in the decayed room as he did so. He looked almost entirely confused and rubbed at his eyes and let out a long sigh.

“Well, he’s definitely alive,” said Honeydew.

The man all but jumped out of his skin at the sound, turning to face the two heroes. But his alarm was immediately replaced by a look of calm recognition and he sighed, placing a hand on his heart before letting out a worried chuckle.

“Yikes, you both scared the life out of me there,” he said in a soft voice. “Woah,” he touched his throat, “Not talked with this thing in a while then, that’s weird.”

Xephos and Honeydew glanced at each other with equally confused faces. “Um, hi?” Xephos started lamely.

“Hi,” the man replied. “What’s going on? I’m assuming something pretty bad for you to have broken me out like this- what happened in here? Or, actually, how long has it been? Last I remember was getting put into here, and we were what, finishing the top floor of the factory at that point? Did something happen?” The man stood up rather heavily as he said this, looking around the destroyed room and then back at Xephos and Honeydew on the pillar. After a moment of staring at their borderline scared faces, he frowned. “What is it?”

“Uh,” Honeydew began, “Sorry mate, but we don’t have a clue what you’re on about. Or who you are, actually.”

A worried look crossed the man’s face. “What do you mean you don’t know who I am? Are you guys messing with me?”

“No, no we’re not. Are you Lalna? It said Lalna on the tank,” Xephos said, by way of explanation.

“Yeah, of course I’m Lalna,” he said with a nervous chuckle. “C’mon, you guys are scaring me here, what’s happening? How long has it been?”

“Well, uh, Lalna,” Xephos began, stepping down off the platform he and Honeydew were huddled on, “We’re the uh, ‘Heroes of Minecraftia’, on a quest to destroy Israphel and what-not, we’re currently in a big Hand full of creepy shit and we found this room whilst pursuing evil clones. And we found you in this clone-type-thing-” he gestured to the broken tank, “Whatever it is.”

Lalna stared at him. “Xephos.”

“Yes?” Xephos replied. “Wait, you know my name?”

“Of course I know your name! What kind of question is that? Hello to Honeydew too, by the way!”

“I didn’t mean to offend you, uh, Lalna, it’s just people have usually heard of some heroes but they never know our names. Right ‘Dew?”

“Yeah,” he replied absently. “Xeph, this guy is freaking me out.”

“What-!” Lalna guffawed for a moment before staring at them both again and shrinking back for a moment. “You really don’t know me?” he asked quietly.

Xephos and Honeydew both shook their heads.

“But, how? Are your memory files corrupted? God, how long has it been?” Lalna seemed to ask himself, turning around to look at the panel on the side of his tank with an obvious familiarity. When it didn’t turn on he immediately went left of it, seemingly out of habit to the next platform which of course wasn’t there. There were only two holes in the floor.

He physically jumped at this revelation. “Your clones! Or Master Clones, I guess, but they were here! They should be here!” He started jogging around the room, taking in the smashed glass and bloodied floor, running his hands over the metal walls. “What happened here?” he asked.

“The Sands,” Xephos replied, following behind the science-man with Honeydew at his side. “This place was all ancient ruin before the Templars started digging it up, we think. Now it’s like this.”

Lalna looked at him in confusion. “Xephos, this is Yoglabs. You remember Yoglabs, right? We built this place, not even that long ago from my memory, but who knows how long has passed with clones. But this is still Yoglabs, Xeph.” He looked at Honeydew. “You don’t remember this place either?”

“Nope. Pretty sure I’d remember a shithole this nasty.”

Lalna frowned. “It wasn’t like this before. And hell, look at everyone else,” he gestured to all the platforms. “If all the Master Clones are gone they could be dead for all I know,” he mumbled. Then an idea seemed to strike him. “One of these panels must work! Mine might be broken but they can’t all be. We’ve got energy reserves to last a hundred years, after all.”

The blonde man- surprisingly not very damp, for whatever that liquid was -started dashing about the room, pressing buttons on the side of every platform in the vain hope of one of them flashing to life.

Xephos and Honeydew watched him in a sort of daze. Clones? Yoglabs? What was this guy even talking about? Xephos looked down at Honeydew with a sort of ‘What do you think?’ kind of look. Honeydew pointed to the axe on his back in a sort of ‘I can always kill him, to be fair’ kind of way, which made Xephos crack a smile and shake his head fondly.

“No?” asked the dwarf. “No murder yet?”

“No murder yet, friend. Might as well try to see what this guy knows,” Xephos replied. “Which apparently includes us, which is mostly worrying, but partially fascinating, don’t you think?”

“Your curiosity will get us killed someday, you prat.”

“And you think that ignorance is bliss, you pillock,” Xephos shot back. He opened his mouth to continue, but caught Lalna huddled over one of the platforms, staring intently as a dim light lit up his face. “I think he’s found something,” he said, walking around to stand next to the man in white.

“What you got there, pal?” asked Honeydew as he walked up with Xephos.

“Some data, I hope,” he mumbled. The screen currently bore the circle saying YOGLABS, and was taking some time to start up. Lalna stared intently at the screen, willing it to work. After a minute of buzzing, the screen changed and brought up the same menu as on the other panel. Lalna let out a breath at the sight. The menu read:

YOGLABS - CLONE STORAGE
UNIT 12
-CLONE DETAILS
-CLONE HISTORY
-OTHER
-ADMINISTRATOR

Lalna immediately hit the CLONE DETAILS option, bringing up a new screen. It had a brief section of writing on the left, with a pixelated image on the right of a man with a strange complexion, a bowl cut and a very bored face. The text read:

MASTER CLONE: SIPS
STATUS: OFF
INPUT: YEAR 1
PROFILE: HEAD OF SIPSCO, DIRT TRADER, FRIEND OF YL.
MORE

“Hiya Sips,” Lalna mumbled to himself before going back to the original menu and pressing ADMINISTRATOR. The screen brought up a keyboard and asked for a password, which he typed in without hesitation, and after another loading screen it showed a page full of numbers, letters and words in a jumble.

“What am I looking at?” asked Xephos.

“Data,” said Lalna with a determined face.

He pressed a small icon in the top left which brought up another keyboard where he typed ‘Time.PassageTime.003/Lalna_Admin[Override_Data_Admission]YearOne-Present’ and pressed GO. The screen processed his message for a moment, before displaying a message which simply said Years Since Active, with a string of digits afterwards. Xephos and Honeydew had just about read what Lalna had typed in before the man yelled-

“What!” and did a cartoonish double take as he re-read the screen. “But that- that’s almost six thousand years!”

He immediately re-typed his command into the screen, but it gave him the same result. He continued typing command after command as Honeydew and Xephos watched with increasing worry. After a few minutes he stepped back and said “Xephos, you type it. There must be something broken.”

Xephos blanched. “Me? I don’t know how to use that thing!”

“Yes! You do! You made it! Just, just type it in. Please. Check the timing.”
He was about to say no again when Honeydew chimed in and said “Just do what he says Xeph, I think he’s a bit stressed out.”

So Xephos stepped towards the panel and asked what to type, and Lalna told him every letter and symbol, which he very slowly typed in before pressing go and bringing up the same number that Lalna had seen before.

The poor man looked like he was about to collapse.

“Six thousand years,” he said defeatedly. “What the fuck happened?”

The two heroes shared a sort of worried look, before Honeydew gestured to the scientist in an ‘after you’ sort of way.

“Look, Lalna,” Xephos began gently, “you clearly know a lot about this place and you somehow know us, so can you tell us what you’re on about?” he finished, not unkindly. “You seem pretty alright, which says a lot considering you just came out of a weird tank thing that’s making zombie clones out of you, I think. Actually, now that I mention it, you’re probably not in the best state of mind...” he trailed off lamely.

“Zombies?” Lalna asked in horror. “Somethings making zombies out of me?”

“Yup,” said Honeydew, “That’s why we came in here in the first place. Was runnin’ away from the bastards, and they happen to look a lot like you.”

He looked miserable. “I don’t know what to say,” he said glumly.

“Well, sit down for a start- you look like you’re about to collapse- and tell us how you know us maybe, or what you think this shithole is,” Honeydew said, pulling Lalna over to sit on one of the platforms where he hauled himself up next to him, as did Xephos. “Maybe explain the clone business, cos I currently got two dopplegangers of me running around in this place and they were kinda fucked up.”

“Okay,” he said tiredly, “First off, my name is Lalna. I’m a scientist by trade, I suppose, and I met you- according to my memory- about a decade ago, I think. But it will have been longer, what with our clones running around instead of us. And this,” he gestured around the room, “Is the Master Clone room in Yoglabs. Or it was. Now it’s more of a tomb,” he said glumly.

“How so?” asked Xephos. “What’s a master clone?”

“Well, I’m a master clone if having an example helps,” Lalna said, looking between the two of them. “Okay so judging by your faces it doesn’t, so uh, okay basic clone theory let’s go.” He sat up straight and took a deep breath. “So, Xeph, a while ago you and I worked together on a project to essentially become immortal. We figured out to do this by-”

“Sorry, immortal? Is that the word you said?” asked Xephos.

“Yes, immortal. We figured out to do this by creating a cloning system. I’m gonna try make a very, very complicated process very simple, now. Imagine you, the original you, the first and only you gets put into what I was inside- the Master Clone stasis thing- completely frozen. Everything you have done, every memory you have exists in that body. Then, a machine creates a clone of you which shares all those memories. Now, instead of being an unconscious floating body, your consciousness exists inside that clone. You can do whatever you want, carry on your life as normal, you are that clone. Does this make sense?” Lalna paused, waiting for the two to nod before continuing.

“Cool, then, if you -now that clone- were to die, then a machine pops out another clone which your conscious moves into. Now, because we’re terribly clever we made it work so that we could live as clones forever as we constantly save our clones’ memories so whenever you die and come back new, you can carry on from where you left off.

“The only trouble is, your master clone doesn’t get those new memories. It exists as your original copy, and only remembers everything it had done up until the point it was frozen. So if that Master Clone were to die, you would lose your safest backup of all those memories, and whatever clone you currently inhabit would be mortal. Death would be a threat, again.”

A little way through his explanation, Lalna had started to trail off.

“This room used to be full of Master Clones. And if it’s been six thousand years, then that means everyone who used to exist here is long, long dead,” he said sadly.

“They your friends?” Honeydew asked kindly.

Lalna laughed. “Most of ‘em, yeah. Yours too.”

“Huh,” said Xephos absently, his face screwed up in concentration. “Lalna, you said the two holes by your tank- that there were Master Clones there?”

“Yeah, yours and Honeydew’s. I don’t know why they’re gone.”

“So, what does that make us?” asked Xephos timidly.

“Well, that depends. Have you died at all? And woken up a moment later?”

Xephos nodded. “We both have.”

“Then you’re clones. Which is good news, to be honest, because that means wherever they are, your Master Clones are safe and working.” He paused in thought. “How strange, that all these Master Clones were destroyed, yours were moved, and mine just...stayed. I don’t know how the power lasted six thousand years.” He suddenly grimaced. “Ugh, if I’m not a clone then that does mean I need to be careful. I don’t like the sound of dying very much. Or staying in this room, now that I think about it.

“I still haven’t got a clue why Yoglabs looks like this or why you don’t remember me, but if it’s been this long then I guess that leaves a lot of room for change. Tell me, how did you come to be here, if you don’t remember all six thousand years?”

“Right mate, just to clarify, we barely remember a year and half, let alone six thousand. And secondly, as much as I’d love to explain everything, first we gotta get outta here. We just lost a friend of ours, and he was really the one showin' us how to get by and Notch we’re bloody useless without him, but I reckon getting out of the bloody Hand would have been next on his to-do list, so we should head in that direction.”

“And kill those evil clones of you,” Xephos pointed out.

“And kill those evil clones of me,” Honeydew agreed. “That wasn’t my brightest idea, I’ll admit it.”

“How, exactly, did you manage to clone yourself by the way?” Lalna asked.

“There was a weird lil’ clonin’ booth I guess. Seen a couple as we’ve walked through here, actually- one had zombie You’s in it- and I thought I’d have a shot cos' why not. Then bam, not a moment later, two freshly made, beautiful, extremely naked Honeydews are wandering about.”

“Evil Honeydews, specifically,”

“Don’t ruin it, Xeph.”

“Well,” said Lalna, standing up, “I’m completely emotionally confused; I've just woken up to find out my life as I know it has been gone for almost six thousand years, and I have my two best friends by my side but they don’t remember me. So I think I’m gonna have to venture by your side on whatever this quest is you mentioned and try to not think about all of this too much or else I may cry. Perhaps someday I can find out if we ever made Jaffa Cakes. So, lead on, please. Or, maybe I should, seeing as neither of you remember this place?”

“We’ll go together, friend,” Xephos said with a smile, standing up. “Best friends though? Really?”

“Yeah, we were building a Jaffa Cake factory together,” Lalna replied with a smile.

“A what?” Honeydew said, hopping down from the platform. “Seriously?”

“Yeah, take a wild guess at whose idea it was.”

Honeydew grinned and rather clumsily looped arms with the scientist. “You know what Lalna, maybe we are best friends. We could certainly do with an intelligent person on the team cos’ fuckin’ ‘ell, me and Xeph are dumb as shite.”

“I mean, us three were never the brightest, but I cannot stress enough, Xephos built most of this facility,” Lalna said as the trio walked towards the door.

“I cannot stress enough how much I don’t want to believe you,” Xephos replied, suddenly serious. “I don’t like thinking we’re somehow responsible for all this.”

Lalna shrugged. “I don’t know what ‘all this’ is, but it can’t be that bad, right?”

Chapter Text

“So what’s beyond this corridor? A room full of zombies?”

“Yup.”

“Then you might have to lend me a weapon. And some food, actually. I’ve just realised I haven’t eaten in six thousand years and I’m bloody starving.”

Honeydew laughed at the scientist as they continued their walk back down the long corridor, tugging on Xephos’ satchel as he did. He managed to root around in it for a moment before retrieving a worn paper bag and passing it to Lalna.

“It’s only Jaffas, but it’s all we’ve got at the moment.”

“Jaffas is fine by me,” replied Lalna, gladly biting into one of the cakes.

“You can just ask me for my bag next time, you know,” grumbled Xephos as he adjusted the satchel over his shoulder. “I’ll gladly hand it over.”

Honeydew just waved him off and helped himself to a Jaffa Cake. After leaving the ruined clone laboratory, the trio had ventured back down the corridor which led them there, amicably chatting with the newest member of their party as they went. The man seemed certain he could help them find their way around The Hand, insisting that it had once been a very organised facility which- as far as he could remember- had generally been on the right side of ethical science.

“I could be wrong though,” he had elaborated, “who knows how much changed here since I got put under.”

After wandering for ten minutes or so, Lalna stopped abruptly and looked to his right.

“What is it?” asked Xephos.

“Shh,” Lalna replied, putting a finger to his lips, “can you hear that?”

Xephos and Honeydew both raised a distrustful eyebrow before falling silent and listening out. They stayed silent for half a minute or so, and the dwarf was about to call bullshit, when the unmistakable screech of a giant spider interrupted from beyond the wall. Lalna immediately pressed his ear up to the metal before lifting up his hand and knocking. The knock echoed distinctly through the passage.

“Aha!” he said triumphantly, turning back towards the other two, “It’s a one way window! This corridor- or at least this section- has got fake walls. From the other side it’s a window.”

“Why would anyone make that? To spy on people, or what?” asked Xephos, grimacing.

Lalna shrugged. “Probably for monitoring an experiment without altering it? I don’t really know. I didn’t make it, I just know it exists.”

He looked at Honeydew. “Wanna smash through?” he asked.

Honeydew just grinned and, using the spiked mace he’d found in one of the previous rooms, bashed at the wall which immediately broke beneath the force, shattering into metal-looking-glass shards on the floor.

“Nice,” said Honeydew. “Well, onward then?” he asked as he stepped over the pile of glass and into the newly discovered room. The other two clumsily followed after, ducking awkwardly to get through the rather dwarf-sized hole which Honeydew had made. The room they found themselves in seemed to be rather as Lalna had guessed- a room for monitoring the corridor they had just left. It was long and not terribly deep, housing chairs looking out at the deceptive window at regular intervals, each with a small table at its side. Like most of The Hand, it was surprisingly well lit with the same white lamps the other rooms had in abundance. It was also home to a large spider sitting in a web hanging from the ceiling; it looked towards it’s visitors with a slow curiosity.

“You gonna get that Xeph?”

The spaceman just sighed and pulled out his bow, carefully took aim and hit the creature dead on. It squealed terribly but did not move again.

“I fuckin’ hate those things,” he said, returning the weapon to his back. “And I’m running out of arrows too.”

“Blondie, do you know if there’s a store room here?” Honeydew asked Lalna. “Gotta' be an armoury or some shite, right?”

“Mmm, not in this area I don’t think…” he replied, putting a hand to his chin. “We’d have to go a lot deeper to get to the actual storage area, and honestly if anywhere is full of spiders, it’s there.”

“Well let’s not do that,” the dwarf huffed. “Do you know this area, at least?”

Lalna shook his head.

“Welp, let’s continue wanderin’ aimlessly. It’s got us this far, after all!” Honeydew said with dramatic enthusiasm. He clapped his hands together and started parading toward the only door in the room, secluded in the far corner.

Xephos sighed. “Aimlessly wandering it is,” he said, and looked at Lalna. “Maybe stay behind us, you don’t have any weapons afterall. Oh!” He pulled the arrow quiver from his back and clumsily retrieved a worrying looking metal weapon which had sharp protrusions towards the top. “I don’t know what this actually is, but I found it earlier with that spiked-mace ‘Dew has. You fancy it? At least till we find something better?”

“Oh, hell yes,” said Lalna, taking the stick with a manic smile. He swiped it through the air a couple a times and looked back at Xephos. “This thing is fucking cool.”

“Glad you think so,” the spaceman replied with a smile, as they both followed after Honeydew.

The trio cautiously continued further through metal room after metal room, their new location seeming more like the first few they had encountered in The Hand. Lalna seemed at a loss when he found he didn’t recognise any of their whereabouts as he claimed he would. He could make sense of some of the signs and notes they found scattered along various walls -most of them being settings for ‘simplistic machines’ which Xephos and Honeydew had never heard of- but others left him completely confused. References to the so called ‘robot’ (which the Heroes attempted to explain to him as best they could) meant nothing to him, and he was worried by the extreme amounts of simplistic cloning vats they found along the way.

After a while, they arrived in a small corridor with a door at the end, and a door on the right. Xephos looked through a small looking glass at the end door and hummed.

“Well, good news, we’re back where we started. Bad news, the zombies are still there. Lalna, come see.”

Lalna stepped up to the door and squinted an eye through the peep-hole. “Oh shit, that’s me alright. Wow, that is...that’s unsettling.”

In the room beyond, little visible was of use. The trio could just about make out a corner or two of giant skeleton, and hordes of zombie-clones of Lalna.

“I don’t get it,” the scientist said, stepping back with a frown. “I don’t get what happened here. I know six thousand years is a long time, but still, this is mental. Who would make brain-dead clones of me? I don’t even know how a person turns into a zombie, let alone makes it into an automated process.”

“As interestin’ as that all sounds,” said Honeydew, who couldn’t reach to look through the peep-hole, “how ‘bout we check this other room before we get all existential? Looks to be computers n’ shit.” Xephos and Lalna turned to listen before Honeydew pushed open the right-hand door and the three examined the small computer room.
Barely three metres in diameter, the room resembled so many others that the Heroes had come across on their adventure. Like those in the Nether, Skyhold, the Turtle and of course The Hand, it had long desks pressed up to the walls looking up at twenty or so screens which either flickered weakly or were completely dead. Machines with exposed wires and damaged pipes protruded out of the ceilings and walls, their original purposes lost to time. The Heroes and their new companion took in their surroundings, dimly lit by one persistent overhead light.

“I hate these fucking rooms,” said Xephos.

“You’ve seen this before?” asked Lalna.

“Yep. All over the place. In Minecraftia you can’t bloody move for weird little decaying computer rooms.”

“Huh,” replied Lalna, stepping over to one of the desks. “I wonder if any of these still work.”

He steadily began messing around with the computers at every desk, hoping they would blink to life or connect to one of the monitors above. Honeydew meanwhile, was exploring a cupboard by the entrance.

“Hm,” he said, pulling the door open. “Xeph, do these look like anythin’ to you?”

Xephos joined his friend by the cupboard, the pair both pulling out a handful of what looked like lanyards which had been hanging on small hooks inside.

“‘Access card: Section C, Access card: Section C’, guess they must be keycards or something. Kinda doubt they work now though. What have you got?”

“Mine say ‘Section F’, I can see an ‘E’ in the cupboard too,” Honeydew said, pulling the last few off their hook. He flicked through the bunch before pulling one out and examining it closely.

“What you got there, friend?” asked Xephos, leaning over.

Honeydew screwed his face up, before turning to his friend. “I don’t really know mate, it says ‘Access card: YL:P.G.L2’. You seen that anywhere?”

Xephos shook his head. “Nope. Might be useful if we hang onto these though, right?”

“Aye,” said Honeydew, handing over the cards so Xephos could store them away in his satchel. “I expect they will be.”

The two then jumped as Lalna yelled ‘huzzah!’ behind them. They turned to see him stood over a computer with several of the monitors above- now turned on- displaying the same grey screen with the circular logo saying ‘YOGLABS’ in the middle, just as they had seen in the Clone Storage before.

“Success?” asked Xephos.

“Success!” replied Lalna, who was already typing in a password. The monitors loaded again, and changed to reveal a simple desktop with neat lines of files along the sides. Lalna seemed to be reading their names carefully.

“Do you recognise anything?” Xephos said.

“I’m...not sure,” said Lalna. “Some of these seem really normal, but some of them are really weird. See-” he pointed at the monitor, “‘Clone Notes, Coffee Machine design alpha, Coffee Machine design beta’, these are all in the common space on the system; that’s just normal admin stuff. But these files, ‘Dragon Status, Dragon Status UPDATED, HD Clone Reports’, I don’t have a clue what they are. Holy shit, ‘Missile Launch Plans’?” he immediately clicked on the file, revealing pages upon pages of detailed blueprints and notes.

“Hell, I know that missiles are fun and all- don’t get me wrong- but this, this looks like fuckin’ war plans.”

“Sorry, what was that about missiles being fun?” Honeydew asked, but the comment didn’t seem to reach Lalna, who was clicking through pages and documents at an alarming pace as he quickly scanned each one. He only stopped when he opened a file which was named ‘Moonbase Family Photo <3’ which simply brought up a photo.

The screen flickered as it displayed the image. In front of a large red dome, stood on top of a pale, rocky surface, were three familiar faces. Xephos stood tall on the left, smiling as he raised his hand to his head in a salute. To his right stood Lalna, who had a much floofier head of hair. He held a clipboard to his chest with one arm, and smirked as he saluted with the other. In the middle of them stood Honeydew, who was beaming a great, cheesy grin as he saluted. They all wore what seemed to be gaudy, orange space suits emblazoned with a brown logo across the breast and great goldfish bowl helmets on their heads.

The three stood in silence for a moment as they stared at the image.

“Woah,” Lalna eventually said. “Look at us.” He turned to the other two with a sad smile and said, “I told you we were friends.”

“Yeah,” mumbled Honeydew. “Are we- is that on the moon?”

“It seems to be,” said Lalna.

“You never said we went to the moon!”

“Well, I’ve never been! That must’ve happened after I was put under. Look at my- oh my goodness, look at my hair.”

“I feel like you're missing the point,” said Honeydew. He turned to Xephos looking for support, but the man was staring rigidly ahead. “Xeph?”

He didn’t reply.

“Hey- earth to Xeph, are you in there?”

“That’s really us?” he said quietly.

“Huh?”

“Is that, is that really us? Lalna, is that really us?”

Lalna seemed to take in Xephos’ quiet panic and slowly said “Yeah, it’s definitely us.”

“From six thousand years ago?”

“From six thousand years ago.”

“And...we went to space?”

“It seems like it, yeah.”

Xephos seemed to deflate. “I don’t know what to do with all this,” he said.

“Well, if it’s causing you that much bother, how ‘bout we just ignore it?” said Honeydew, taking Xephos' hand and forcing him to look at him. “We’ve got our own quest goin’ for us right now, and if this history shite is gettin’ in the way, I say we ignore it. Or come back to it later, if that helps. After we’ve saved the world, maybe. If Lal’ over there can’t make sense of owt’ on that computer then we’ve no reason to stay here anyway, right?”

Xephos continued to bite his lip with worry before he sighed and shook his head. “Yeah, no, you’re right. As always,” he smiled dazed. “You always know what to say.”

“It’s my dwarven charm,” Honeydew said with a smile. “Honestly though, space? I didn't even know going to space was possible.”

“I’m from space you utter pillock,” Xephos pointed out. “Is there anything else you need to do here Lalna? I’d honestly rather deal with the zombies than stay for much longer.”

The scientist sighed as he looked at the monitors. “Not really, though...let me look for one last thing,” he said, as he brought up a bar which said ‘Search for something… inside. Lalna typed ‘Jaffa Factory’ and pressed go. The page was flooded with files marked with envelopes- most unopened- as well as notes upon notes. He sifted through them until he found a handful of image files, which he clicked on.

As another image filled the screen he smiled. “Looks like we did make Jaffas,” he said quietly. There was a photo of a tall, white building with a pixelated dwarf on the front, above the words ‘HONEYDEW INC.’

“Holy shit! That’s my face!” yelled Honeydew.
Lalna skipped through to another image which showed a box labelled ‘JAFFA CAKES’ being put onto a large blue van. Lalna, looking almost the same as he did in reality, was levitating a few feet off the ground, watching as the box got taken on board. Honeydew was also in frame, eating a Jaffa Cake with a party popper in his hand.

“Wish I could remember,” said Lalna a little bittersweetly. “I wish we all could.”

It was silent for another moment before Xephos suddenly said “...wait, are you flying?”

“Oh, yeah,” replied Lalna with a chuckle and pointed to the ring on his finger. “Ring of flight, we all had them. Makes life a lot easier when you can just zoom around everywhere.”

“Can you do it now?”

Lalna chuckled nervously. “I can try, but I doubt it works after all this time.” He stood up and twisted the gem on the top, which changed from white to red. He lifted up his right leg, as if he were climbing up an invisible set of stairs, and then cautiously followed with his left. Miraculously, they both stayed hovering off the ground.

“Holy shit! As if this still works!” he said, laughing. He started to move around the room, levitating a little higher and in different directions.

“How do you even control that thing?” asked Honeydew.

“It’s pretty instinctual when you get used to it, actually. Stepping off to begin is the hardest part, but once you get going it's pretty chill- woAH!” Lalna yelled as the gem on the ring suddenly rotated back back to white and he fell to the floor.

“Owie,” he said. “...I think I twisted my ankle,”

There was a moment of silence before Xephos and Honeydew both burst out laughing.

“Hey! It’s not my fault this thing is busted!”

“You, you fuckin’ egit, that was hilarious,” Honeydew laughed. “And you went for it so hard, oh Notch-” he barked before breaking down in giggles again.

Xephos clumsily held a hand out to Lalna and pulled him up. “Wow,” he said, as he wiped his eyes, “I’m literally crying, wow,”

Lalna chuckled. “Nice to know you two are still arseholes, then.”

The two just nodded. “That we are! Bastards through and through,” Honeydew bellowed.

“Bastards that need to get a move on,” Xephos remarked once he’d recovered his breath.

“Aye, you’re right there friend.”

“But my ankle hurts,” said Lalna, pouting, which just made Honeydew burst out laughing again.

“Ah come on ya’ big girl! We got zombies to kill!” the dwarf yelled as he pulled out his mace, stepped back out into the corridor and kicked open the door to the room with the giant skeleton.

“Honeydew! Don’t, don’t do that!” yelled Xephos, running after him and pulling his sword out.

“Too late! I’m already gone!”

“Then come back!”

“Nope, see ya’ later shitlords!”

Lalna shook his head and smiled to himself, grabbing the weapon Xephos had given him with a stiff grip. “Bastards through and through,” he said to himself.

He walked away from the photos on the computer monitor, and entered the other room to go watch his friends argue as they killed zombies that looked just like him.

A day like any other, really, he thought.