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April 3rd, 2024
Members log onto the server with only a vague understanding of something special is happening today. When it comes time for the event, everyone gets teleported to the intoduction platform in the sky where they announce that the (now iconic) real-time translator is avaliable.
This is huge! Not only can each stream be automatically subtitled, but creators can now interact with other creators in a language that they don't know very well or not at all!
Everyone is impressed, testing the mechanics out and trying to find the limitations. But that's not the only important thing being added to the server today...
As people are fixing their settings and adjusting to the new addition, the screen fades to black for another cutscene. The video starts with a shaky and gitchy zoom out over the wall with the text "WEEK ONE". A creepy text-to-speech voice reads their laboratory notes over interspersed shots of builds across the island while sad music and morse code plays in the background (Look for a way out; this isn't your life). The builds are lit up in grey clouds and rain with a thick fog rolling over the island, a kind of weather that never happens.
"Test subject, Week One. First phase completed. All vitals, [good? full?]. Deaths, zero. Conflict, mild. Age, higher age. First experiment, underway. Results," Sirens start playing in the background. "Null. Error. Error, error, error... Test subject..."
The speaker's voice fades into the sirens, breaking up and becoming more glitchy before it settles on the train station. The video hard cuts to the same train station, now peaceful and in the sun, looking normal like every other day on the island. There are a few more cinematic shots of the train station, before the camera settles on one of the blank displays and cutting to black.
There's an abrupt mood change when peppy music starts playing and Mr. Duck reappears inside his home office to talk to the islanders. It's only been twelve days, but the players have achieved so much! They go through some of the builds that the islanders have made, judging them with either a thumb's up for going above and beyond or a vine boom for not looking much better than a dirt and cobblestone house.
But there's a second announcement! They have very bad news. There used to be a dragon that resided on the island long before the players showed up and fell into an eternal slumber. But when they pressed the button and destroyed part of the wall, they woke up the dragon, scaring it off the island. But in its hurry, it left something behind which will now be entrusted to the islanders. Baby eggs! They just have to keep looking after the eggs until the dragon comes back, working in pairs of two. The adoptive parents will have to coordinate and complete tasks around the island to take care of the egg and make sure that it doesn't die.
The islanders are off to the new adoption center that has been built into the wall near the ground, acting as a tunnel to connect both sides. Around the room in these sort of beds carved into the wall with glass partitions containing them are small, round, white eggs with stick-think black legs. Each of them have accessories to set them apart from each other. In the center of the room is a giant dropper with a button, depositing tickets into people's inventories as they press the button.
Immediately, the islanders are wandering around, gawking and cooing over the eggs and trying to figure out exactly what they are. Some kind of mob? An NPC? Who knows! QSMP has a lot of mods, surely this is another one of their pre-coded mobs with a complex AI or something.
The islanders start pressing the button and getting their tickets, each with a letter from A to H. As they walk around the room, trying to find their partner, it becomes apparent that each of the pairs are one English speaker and one Spanish speaker. That's okay! With the translation mod added, working together is easier than ever!
However, as the pairs claim their eggs, they come to realize that some people did not get partnered up. Bad and Quackity are each single parents taking care of their egg by themselves for now. Vegetta and Foolish don't even have an egg, standing in front of an empty bed, choosing to roll the dice and get whoever was left instead of bullying Bad or Quackity away from their claimed egg.
But in the end, all the parents picked out their egg children for adoption, named them, and started the long and challenging process of becoming parents.
They all stand at roughly half the height of players, barely standing at one block tall (and that includes the hats on some of the eggs). The eggs cannot talk, but they can walk around and cycle through custom-made signs that read "HELLO", "FEED", "EGG", "CLEAN", and "SLEEP". They can also eat and carry around items. Clearly, they are complex enough to follow instructions and communicate. What else are they capable of?
Another cutscene plays, teaching the islanders how to care for the egg, and that they must do the egg's critical tasks every day, otherwise they'll die. There are other tasks avaliable, but those are optional and only contribute to the egg's happiness. However, at the end of the event, whichever egg is not only alive but has the highest happiness score, their parents will be rewarded with a prize.
The islanders take off, now with their given families, and try to plan the logistics. Where is the egg going to sleep? What are we going to feed them? Are they even alive? Can they hear us talking to it, or is it just a really fancy mob? Maybe it's just reading the subtitles and working through that, like a code. But for the most part, the couples either move into whoever's house is better built, or they completely build a separate house together for the egg, still unsure about what this is all about.
Some parents take the parent pairing seriously, acting like they're now dating or married and becoming canonical couples on the island. Missa and Phil refer to their relationship as platonic husbands. Roier and Jaiden are platonic partners. Vegetta and Foolish are an exclusive couple, flirting back and forth. Marianna and Slime are now married and canonically have sex once they put Juanna to bed.