The Door at the End of the World

He shut the End after the Carrier died. Now you know why he'd want to. Out past the obsidian there's a door he made, and a seal he put on it with his own hands, and the one voice the Chorus couldn't swallow knows how to open it.

Chapter Six came in three parts, 1.56.0 to 1.58.0. The mod's title cards call them The Door at the End of the World - Part One: The Audience, Part Two: The Watcher's Vault and Part Three: What He Kept Out. It starts once the Chorus, whole, is dead and you're holding the Last Voice.

The seal

Carry the Last Voice into the End. The Watcher can't keep you out of it any more. The voice talks first ("...here. it's here. can you feel it? something on the other side is listening..." and then "...hold me up. here. he made this seal with his own hands. i can open it..."), and something cracks all the way across the End's sky and stays cracked: "Something cracks, all the way across the End's sky - and stays cracked. The seal he put on it is broken." He says one word.

That's The Door at the End of the World. From then on the End is open to everyone, as it was. Since 1.61.1 the dragon waiting there is always the Infested Ender Dragon, so come ready for it.

Since 1.60.2, the first time anyone's in the End the island's ground over the obsidian platform gives way into a shaft up to the sky, so you don't arrive shut in end stone. Out past the obsidian, a causeway of seal-stone (black, his glyphs cut into it, a few still faintly lit) runs east over the void to an island. On the island is the Door: a frame of seal-stone taller than a house with nothing in it but humming static. The voice tells you where: "...there. out past the obsidian. a door. go through it. i'll be quiet now..."

Part one: the Audience

Walk into the static. It takes you to the Stalls: an old picture house's seats out in the open in the dark, row after row of them in long curves, every one facing the Great Screen. The screen is two hundred feet wide, its curtains drawn back, and between the static it plays the story so far, frame by frame. Behind the seats are the lot, wrecked cars, speaker posts and the projection booth on its tower. "Rows and rows of seats in the dark, every one of them facing a screen. Some of them are taken." You can't sleep there ("Not here. Not with them watching."), and the way home is the Door behind you. That's Take Your Seat.

If you're still carrying the Last Voice, it has one more thing to say as you come in: "...shh. don't wake them. they're watching..."

Keep quiet

• The Audience. Forty of the seats are taken by grey people in grey clothes, faces turned up to the screen, a ticket in their laps. They don't look round, but they hear you: a step near them, a block broken, a door. Then they get up, slowly, a finger to their lips, and come and hold you where you are. Sneak and they can't hear you walk. Lose them and they go back and sit down. Some of them have a Ticket Stub.
• The Ushers. Four of them walk the aisles with lamps, tall, too thin, maroon uniforms, white gloves and no face. An Usher sees, it doesn't hear, so sneaking won't help. If its lamp finds you ("The Usher's lamp is on you.") it puts a finger to where its lips should be, the SHHH goes through the house, and everyone sitting near you gets up. Then it comes for you, bashing you with the lamp, and if it gets hold of your collar it walks you back up the aisle toward the Door. Show one a Ticket Stub (use it on the Usher) and it tears it in two and looks away: for a minute its lamp doesn't see you. Now and then one drops its lamp.
• The Usher's Lamp. Held, it lights the dark round you. Use it and it flashes: Audience and Ushers caught in the flash reel with their hands over their faces for a few seconds. It needs eight seconds to warm again.

The Crowd

Step out onto the front aisle under the screen and "The picture on the screen is you." Every one of the Audience gets up (the Last Voice, if you have it: "...they're getting up. all of them...") and comes down to the front, into one heap, and it stands up: the Crowd, three men high, two great arms made of people and a knot of faces on top, every one of them looking at you. It doesn't leave the front. It reaches across the front rows, slams both arms down (jump the ring), applauds (each clap a wall of air) and sheds people who get up and come for you. From two thirds down comes the Hush ("Quiet, please."): for four seconds anyone who moves or strikes is grabbed by hands up out of the floor. Stand still (Quiet, Please), or flash an Usher's Lamp at it to break the Hush. In its last third it roars with every mouth at once.

Dead, it comes apart into the people it was, they come apart into static, and the screen goes dark (Standing Ovation). "Something's left in the middle of where it stood: a ticket. It's warm." That's the Last Ticket, one for everyone who was there.

Front Row

The screen is dark and the house is empty, but one seat in the front row is still taken. It's the Watcher.

He gets up, goes to the screen, puts his hand on it and tears it open, and goes through. It closes behind him to a seam of light down the middle: "There's a seam of light down the middle of the screen where he went through. It won't stay shut forever." That's Front Row, and the title card: Chapter Six, The Door at the End of the World - Part One: The Audience.

Part two: the Watcher's Vault

Hold the Last Ticket ("ADMIT ONE - THE VAULT") up to the seam. The ticket tears in two in your hand and the seam opens wide, from the top of the screen down to the stage, light pouring out, and stays open for everyone (Admit One). Walk into it.

You come out of a tear in a great dark canvas into the Watcher's Vault, his archive behind the picture: the stacks, steel shelving going up into the dark with cans of film and boxes of tape on every shelf, labelled in his hand, and old television sets among them, some still on. Down the middle runs a long nave. You can't sleep there ("Not here. Not with them standing out there in the stacks."), and the way back is the tear you came through (Behind the Picture).

The Tuned

Standing in the aisles are people from the neck down, an old television set where the head should be. Unlike most things, the Tuned only move while you're looking at them: watch one and it comes for you in jerks, your face on its screen; look away and it stops dead. Close and watched, it takes your head in its hands and tunes you. Flash an Usher's Lamp at one and it can't move for four seconds, watched or not. In the dark, or in the Projectionist's light, they move whether you look or not. Some drop a Vacuum Tube.

The Watch

At the far end of the nave is his desk, his chair, and a wall of sets thirty-seven across and sixteen high, all showing one picture. The first time anyone comes in:

The keeps

"Three keeps off the nave, behind round steel doors: the Omni's heart, what's left of the Carrier, his first reel. Bring them to the Watch." Use a door or its wheel and the bolts draw back one after another. On a plinth in each is what he kept:

• The Omni's Heart: "every colour at once, turning. It's lighter than it looks, and warm."
• What's Left of the Carrier: a knot of it, still beating. Take it and its static pours out, and every Tuned near you is loose for a few seconds ("...quick. they can all move while it's loose like that.").
• His First Reel, in a glass case: "On the lid, in his hand: THE OTHER SIDE. FIRST. DO NOT RUN."

All three is What He Kept.

The Projectionist

Bring all three to the Watch and every set on the wall goes to it ("...it's here. it's in the wall."). Then it steps down out of them: the Projectionist, twice a man's height, a long coat made of film, and a cinema projector for a head with a lens you can't look into. It sweeps its beam across the Watch (while you're in it, the Tuned can move), projects reruns of old bosses' best moves onto the air, lashes film round you, splices itself behind you, and changes its reels at each third (hit it then). In the last third comes Intermission: every set and bulb goes out and there's only its lens ("Please remain seated."). Dead, it burns through from the middle like film stuck in the gate and leaves the Projectionist's Lens (The Final Reel).

The First Reel

He runs it. The projector on his desk clatters into life:

On the wall: a dark so big it has a shape, sitting, with an eye in it, opening. The eye turns to look at you. Then the wall shows the Door at the End of the World. "Every set on the Watch Wall shows the Door at the End of the World. The static in it has gone black." That's What He Kept Out, and the title card for Part Two. He keeps his three things now.

Part three: what he kept out

The Door's static has gone black: the dark on the far side of it, looking out. It hums, and the air is drawn into it. Walk into it.

The other side is a stage behind the screen your world is shown on: the back of the screen behind you, as big as a cliff, with your world playing across it the wrong way round; the wings either side; painted flats of places from your story; footlights along the front; and past the edge, nothing. "The other side. A stage, behind the screen your world's on - and past its edge, nothing. Something's sat out there in it." You can't sleep there ("Not here. Not with it out there."). Fall off the edge and the dark puts you back on the boards, which hurts. The way home is the seam in the back of the screen (The Other Side).

Curtain Up

The first time anyone comes through, the Watcher is at a projector at the back of the stage.

The Viewer

Out in the dark, knees like hills, hands on the stage's edge with fingers like felled trees, and an eye opening: the Viewer, the last boss. It's so big you only ever fight its eye and its hands. Its gaze wanders the stage; stand in its light with the eye in sight of you and you're Seen, more and more, until it reaches for you. A flat between you and the eye hides you. When it leans in, its eye right at the stage's edge, hit it. With its eye shut nothing hurts it. Plywood stand-ins hop out of the wings and point at you to bring its eye straight to you; knock them over.

His last projector does the rest. At two thirds he loads it with the Omni's Heart ("...its eye's shut. now - the heart." then "every colour at once. it's never seen that."), and it reels, blinded (Every Colour at Once). At one third he loads the Carrier ("...the carrier. it carries whatever's put on it." then "your world. all of it. out onto it."): the stand-ins burn and it gets up ("it's getting up. keep its hands off the projector."). Standing, it comes faster, the footlights go out, and it reaches for the projector from both sides; beat its hands back (It Gets Up). Get through the first third without it ever seeing you right through for Out of Sight.

The last show

It can't be killed. At the last it's held ("...now. give it the reel."), and he threads his first reel and runs it, for it.

Its own eye goes up on it. It goes still and sits back into the dark, watching itself. He sits down by the projector. Then black, and the credits:

Everyone who was there gets Thank You for Watching and the record Thank You for Watching. The Omni's Heart, what's left of the Carrier and his first reel are his again, and the Door's static goes back from black to grey. The story's music becomes The Show Goes On, the music box warm and in a major key at last, a projector still running somewhere and slowing. Chapter Six is done.

...not yet

Since 1.59.0 the credits don't end there. They stop on THANK YOU FOR WATCHING, and he speaks:

His hand comes up through the picture, filling it, and closes round you. That's Chapter Seven: The First Signal. A world whose last show was over before 1.59.0 gets the same moment, the "encore", the next time anyone's at home.