The Chained Watcher

Physics forgot how to gravity?

Several hours were whiled away listening to the dragon's tales, and by the time he left it was night time. Weaving his spell again, he went off to find where Phil was. The avian was sadly looking at a building filled with the sound of excited children, and didn't even notice when Grian arrived.

"You ready to head back?" 

Phil jumped at the unexpected noise, turning to see Grian standing a little bit behind him. "I- yeah. Let's go." With one final glance back, he took off with Grian following behind.

Looking back at the volcano, Grian spotted the head of the red dragon 'stealthily' peeking out of the volcano to watch him leave. Guess he'd found it hard to believe that being found by a Watcher had no negative consequences. Well, to be fair, any of the other Watchers would have probably done something to a dragon if they found one, so his fears are not unfounded.

And now, several hours of ocean flying.

With that done, it was time to head back to base. At least forests and plains had variety to what they showed. Soon enough the base came into sight. Someone had managed to convince enough people to let them build a spiraling tower in the middle of the entire thing, decorated like an ancient futuristic construction.

A giant fantasy tree was slowly getting built nearby as well, making this place truly feel like home with all the different styles of builds. Medieval spires have replaced the guard towers, still working just as well while adding yet another different aesthetic to the area.

Come to think of it, how were they still operating with the server physics? None of the places he'd seen that were built by the locals had the blatant disregard for gravity put on display in all the builds. Despite looking crumbly, the spires were quite solid to the touch, and the futuristic ruin should in no way be able to support its own weight. The tree was also styled in an airy way, with sweeping branches and sprawling roots.

Why hadn't he noticed this earlier? Landing on the ground with a mildly confused Philza, he pulled out a couple of dirt blocks. He placed them one on top of the other, then broke the bottom block to leave them all floating. Sure enough, they stayed in the air ignoring gravity's downward drag.

"You good? You're just staring at the blocks like they're doing something they shouldn't."

Gesturing wildly at the floating blocks, Grian exclaimed, "That's because they are! The servers have their own physics they work by, which is what makes floating blocks even possible. Tell me, then. Why are these blocks floating with nothing supporting them? This dirt didn't come from any of our servers, yet it's still ignoring gravity telling it to fall."

Phil's eyes widened as he realized what Grian was saying. He then rifled through his inventory to find random blocks, pulling out sand, cobblestone, and a couple of wooden slabs. Now it was his turn to place blocks with no ground contact and stare at the physics-defying floating objects as the sand fell down to the ground still in a cube..

"But how... It's normal materials, I gathered that sand from the beach, but now it's stuck in a block shape. How've we carried the hub's physics with us?"

Grian let his mind run through wild theories without limiting it by what should be possible. It was a bit late for logic to reclaim its throne when so much wasn't working how it should anymore. 

"Well... it could be the hub affecting the surrounding area, but the strength of a main plane should overpower any influence. Since no mobs have spawned, that shouldn't be what's happened. Could it be something attached to the players themselves? Come to think of it, we've all started calling ourselves 'players' instead of any other species at some point. Could that unintentionally be truer than we'd thought? Have we lived on the servers attached to the hub for so long that it's started applying its influence over us? But wouldn't I have noticed...?"