Survival in an Infinite Cube World

Nineteen-year-old Aaron Perez was already a ghost in his own life. Ever since the unsolved murder of his half-brother, Szymon, a heavy, gloomy numbness had taken over him. He stopped caring about school, friends, or the future, living like a stubborn island in a rough neighborhood. His end came on a completely ordinary evening while walking down the street. Shuffling along in his usual dark mood, Aaron froze when he caught sight of a woman being choked by a man in an alleyway. The sudden, violent trauma of seeing someone strangled—the exact way his brother had died—overtook his brain. Emptied of fear, Aaron sprinted forward and threw himself into the fight, tackling the attacker. The man screamed, "Get off me!" and threw a blind, desperate elbow backward. It was a freak, perfect shot straight to Aaron's temple. He dropped instantly. Dead before he hit the concrete. He doesn't wake up in an afterlife, and he doesn't wake up to bright fantasy sunlight. Instead, Aaron regains consciousness lying flat on his back as cold water hits his face. It's starting to rain. Looking up, the sky isn't normal. The dark storm clouds rolling overhead aren't soft or wispy—they are massive, perfectly sharp geometric rectangles shifting across a grid. He is completely alone on a desolate coast made of uniform dirt and stone cubes, with no tools, no supplies, and a strange, blocky reality stretching out infinitely ahead of him. His past life is gone in a flash, but Aaron’s stubborn, cynical drive remains. He survived a broken world, and he will survive this one, too.