Ready Player One

Chapter 28

When the IOI corporate police came to arrest me, I was right in the middle of the movie Explorers (1985, directed by Joe Dante). It’s about three kids who build a spaceship in their backyard and then fly off to meet aliens. Easily one of the greatest kid flicks ever made. I’d gotten into the habit of watching it at least once a month. It kept me centered.

I had a thumbnail of my apartment building’s external security camera feed at the edge of my display, so I saw the IOI Indentured Servant Retrieval Transport pull up out front, siren wailing and lights flashing. Then four jackbooted, riot-helmeted dropcops jumped out and ran into the building, followed by a guy in a suit. I continued to watch them on the lobby camera as they waved their IOI badges, blew past the security station, and filed onto the elevator.

Now they were on their way up to my floor.

“Max,” I muttered, noting the fear in my own voice. “Execute security macro number one: Crom, strong in his mountain.” This voice command instructed my computer to execute a long series of preprogrammed actions, both online and in the real world.

“You g-g-got it, Chief!” Max replied cheerfully, and a split second later, my apartment’s security system switched into lockdown mode. My reinforced plate-titanium WarDoor swung down from the ceiling, slamming and locking into place over my apartment’s built-in security door.

On the security camera mounted in the hallway outside my apartment, I watched the four dropcops get off the elevator and sprint down the hallway to my door. The two guys in front were carrying plasma welders. The other two held industrial-strength VoltJolt stun guns. The suit, who brought up the rear, was carrying a digital clipboard.

I wasn’t surprised to see them. I knew why they were here. They were here to cut open my apartment and pull me out of it, like a chunk of Spam being removed from a can.

When they reached my door, my scanner gave them the once-over, and their ID data flashed on my display, informing me that all five of these men were IOI credit officers with a valid indenturement arrest warrant for one Bryce Lynch, the occupant of this apartment. So, in keeping with local, state, and federal law, my apartment building’s security system immediately opened both of my security doors to grant them entrance. But the WarDoor that had just slammed into place kept them outside.

Of course, the dropcops expected me to have redundant security, which is why they’d brought plasma welders.

The IOI drone in the suit squeezed past the dropcops and gingerly pressed his thumb to my door intercom. His name and corporate title appeared on my display: Michael Wilson, IOI Credit and Collections Division, Employee # IOI-481231.

Wilson looked up into the lens of my hallway camera and smiled pleasantly. “Mr. Lynch,” he said. “My name is Michael Wilson, and I’m with the Credit and Collections division of Innovative Online Industries.” He consulted his clipboard. “I’m here because you have failed to make the last three payments on your IOI Visa card, which has an outstanding balance in excess of twenty thousand dollars. Our records also show that you are currently unemployed and have therefore been classified as impecunious. Under current federal law, you are now eligible for mandatory indenturement. You will remain indentured until you have paid your debt to our company in full, along with all applicable interest, processing and late fees, and any other charges or penalties that you incur henceforth.” Wilson motioned toward the dropcops. “These gentlemen are here to assist me in apprehending you and escorting you to your new place of employment. We request that you open your door and grant us access to your residence. Please be aware that we are authorized to seize any personal belongings you have inside. The sale value of these items will, of course, be deducted from your outstanding credit balance.”

As far as I could tell, Wilson recited all of this without taking a single breath, speaking in the flat monotone of someone who repeats the same sentences all day long.

After a brief pause, I replied through the intercom. “Sure thing, guys. Just give me a minute to get my pants on. Then I’ll be right out.”

Wilson frowned. “Mr. Lynch, if you do not grant us access to your residence within ten seconds, we are authorized to enter by force. The cost of any damage resulting from our forced entry, including all property damage and repair labor, will be added to your outstanding balance. Thank you.”

Wilson stepped away from the intercom and nodded to the others. One of the dropcops immediately powered up his welder, and when the tip began to glow molten orange, he began cutting through my War-Door’s titanium plating. The other welder moved a few feet farther down and began to cut a hole right through the wall of my apartment. These guys had access to the building’s security specs, so they knew the walls of each apartment were lined with steel plating and a layer of concrete, which they could cut through much more quickly than the titanium WarDoor.

Of course, I’d taken the precaution of reinforcing my apartment’s walls, floor, and ceiling, with a titanium alloy SageCage, which I’d assembled piece by piece. Once they cut through my wall, they would have to cut through the cage, too. But this would buy me only five or six extra minutes, at the most. Then they would be inside.

I’d heard that dropcops had a nickname for this procedure—cutting an indent out of a fortified residence so they could arrest him. They called it doing a C-section.

I dry-swallowed two of the antianxiety pills I’d ordered in preparation for this day. I’d already taken two earlier that morning, but they didn’t seem to be working.

Inside the OASIS, I closed all the windows on my display and set my account’s security level to maximum. Then I pulled up the Scoreboard, just to check it one last time and reassure myself that nothing had changed and that the Sixers still hadn’t won. The top ten rankings had been static for several days now.

Art3mis, Aech, and Shoto had all cleared the Second Gate and obtained the Crystal Key within forty-eight hours of receiving my e-mail. When Art3mis received the 25,000 points for reaching the Crystal Key, it had put her back in first place, due to the point bonuses she’d already received for finding the Jade Key first, and the Copper Key second.

Art3mis, Aech, and Shoto had all tried to contact me since receiving my e-mail, but I hadn’t answered any of their phone calls, e-mails, or chat requests. I saw no reason to tell them what I intended to do. They couldn’t do anything to help me and would probably just try to talk me out of it.

There was no turning back now, anyway.

I closed the Scoreboard and took a long look around my stronghold, wondering if it was for the last time. Then I took several quick deep breaths, like a deep-sea diver preparing to submerge, and tapped the logout icon on my display. The OASIS vanished, and my avatar reappeared inside my virtual office, a standalone simulation stored on my console’s hard drive. I opened a console window and keyed in the command word to activate my computer’s self-destruct sequence: SHITSTORM.

A progress meter appeared on my display, showing that my hard drive was now being zeroed out and wiped clean.

“Good-bye, Max,” I whispered.

“Adios, Wade,” Max said, just a few seconds before he was deleted.

Sitting in my haptic chair, I could already feel the heat coming from the other side of the room. When I pulled off my visor, I saw smoke pouring in through the holes being cut in the door and the wall. It was starting to get too thick for my apartment’s air purifiers to handle. I began to cough.

The dropcop working on my door finished cutting his hole. The smoking circle of metal fell to the floor with a heavy metallic boom that made me jump in my chair.

As the welder stepped back, another dropcop stepped forward and used a small canister to spray some sort of freezing foam around the edge of the hole, cooling off the metal so they wouldn’t burn themselves when they crawled inside. Which was what they were about to do.

“Clear!” one of them shouted from out in the hallway. “No visible weapons!”

One of the stun-gun wielding dropcops climbed through the hole first. Suddenly, he was standing right in front of me, his weapon leveled at my face.

“Don’t move!” he shouted. “Or you get the juice, understand?”

I nodded that yes, I understood. It occurred to me then that this cop was the first visitor I’d ever had in my apartment in all the time I’d lived there.

The second dropcop to crawl inside wasn’t nearly as polite. Without a word, he walked over and jammed a ball gag in my mouth. This was standard procedure, because they didn’t want me to issue any more voice commands to my computer. They needn’t have bothered. The moment the first dropcop had entered my apartment, an incendiary device had detonated inside my computer. It was already melting to slag.

When the dropcop finished strapping on the ball gag, he grabbed me by the exoskeleton of my haptic suit, yanked me out of my haptic chair like a rag doll, and threw me on the floor. The other dropcop hit the kill switch that opened my WarDoor, and the last two dropcops rushed in, followed by Wilson the suit.

I curled into a ball on the floor and closed my eyes. I started to shake involuntarily. I tried to prepare myself for what I knew was about to happen next.

They were going to take me outside.

“Mr. Lynch,” Wilson said, smiling. “I hereby place you under corporate arrest.” He turned to the dropcops. “Tell the repo team to come on up and clear this place out.” He glanced around the room and noticed the thin line of smoke now pouring out of my computer. He looked at me and shook his head. “That was stupid. We could have sold that computer to help pay down your debt.”

I couldn’t reply around the ball gag, so I just shrugged and gave him the finger.

They tore off my haptic suit and left it for the repo team. I was totally naked underneath. They gave me a disposable slate-gray jumpsuit to put on, with matching plastic shoes. The suit felt like sandpaper, and it began to make me itch as soon as I put it on. They’d cuffed my hands, so it wasn’t easy to scratch.

They dragged me out into the hall. The harsh fluorescents sucked the color out of everything and made it look like an old black-and-white film. As we rode the elevator down to the lobby, I hummed along with the Muzak as loudly as I could, to show them I wasn’t afraid. When one of the dropcops waved his stun gun at me, I stopped.

They put a hooded winter coat on me in the lobby. They didn’t want me catching pneumonia now that I was company property. A human resource. Then they led me outside, and sunlight hit my face for the first time in over half a year.

It was snowing, and everything was covered in a thin layer of gray ice and slush. I didn’t know what the temperature was, but I couldn’t remember ever feeling so cold. The wind cut right to my bones.

They herded me over to their transport truck. Two new indents already sat in the back, strapped into plastic seats, both wearing visors. People they’d arrested earlier that morning. The dropcops were like garbage collectors, making their daily rounds.

The indent on my right was a tall, thin guy, probably a few years older than me. He looked like he might be suffering from malnutrition. The other indent was morbidly obese, and I couldn’t be sure of the person’s gender. I decided to think of him as male. His face was obscured by a mop of dirty blond hair, and something that looked like a gas mask covered his nose and mouth. A thick black tube ran from the mask down to a nozzle on the floor. I wasn’t sure of its purpose until he lurched forward, drawing his restraints tight, and vomited into the mask. I heard a vacuum activate, sucking the indent’s regurgitated Oreos down the tube and into the floor. I wondered if they stored it in an external tank or just dumped it on the street. Probably a tank. IOI would probably have his vomit analyzed and put the results in his file.

“You feel sick?” one of the dropcops asked as he removed my ball gag. “Tell me now and I’ll put a mask on you.”

“I feel great,” I said, not very convincingly.

“OK. But if I have to clean up your puke, I’ll make sure you regret it.”

They shoved me inside and strapped me down directly across from the skinny guy. Two of the dropcops climbed into the back with us, stowing their plasma welders in a locker. The other two slammed the rear doors and climbed into the cab up front.

As we pulled away from my apartment complex, I craned my neck to look through the transport’s tinted rear windows, up at the building where I’d lived for the past year. I was able to spot my window up on the forty-second floor, because of its spray-painted black glass. The repo team was probably already up there by now. All of my gear was being disassembled, inventoried, tagged, boxed, and prepared for auction. Once they finished emptying out my apartment, custodial bots would scour and disinfect it. A repair crew would patch the outer wall and replace the door. IOI would be billed, and the cost of the repairs would be added to my outstanding debt to the company.

By midafternoon, the lucky gunter who was next on the apartment building’s waiting list would get a message informing him that a unit had opened up, and by this evening, the new tenant would probably already be moved in. By the time the sun went down, all evidence that I’d ever lived there would be totally erased.

As the transport swung out onto High Street, I heard the tires crunch the salt crystals covering the frozen asphalt. One of the dropcops reached over and slapped a visor on my face. I found myself sitting on a sandy white beach, watching the sunset while waves crashed in front of me. This must be the simulation they used to keep indents calm during the ride downtown.

Using my cuffed hand, I pushed the visor up onto my forehead. The dropcops didn’t seem to care or pay me any notice at all. So I craned my head again to stare out the window. I hadn’t been out here in the real world for a long time, and I wanted to see how it had changed.

Chapter 29

A thick film of neglect still covered everything in sight. The streets, the buildings, the people. Even the snow seemed dirty. It drifted down in gray flakes, like ash after a volcanic eruption.

The number of homeless people seemed to have increased drastically. Tents and cardboard shelters lined the streets, and the public parks I saw seemed to have been converted into refugee camps. As the transport rolled deeper into the city’s skyscraper core, I saw people clustered on every street corner and in every vacant lot, huddled around burning barrels and portable fuel-cell heaters. Others waited in line at the free solar charging stations, wearing bulky, outdated visors and haptic gloves. Their hands made small, ghostly gestures as they interacted with the far more pleasant reality of the OASIS via one of GSS’s free wireless access points.

Finally, we reached 101 IOI Plaza, in the heart of downtown.

I stared out the window in silent apprehension as the corporate headquarters of Innovative Online Industries Inc. came into view: two rectangular skyscrapers flanking a circular one, forming the IOI corporate logo. The IOI skyscrapers were the three tallest buildings in the city, mighty towers of steel and mirrored glass joined by dozens of connective walkways and elevator trams. The top of each tower disappeared into the sodium-vapor-drenched cloud layer above. The buildings looked identical to their headquarters in the OASIS on IOI-1, but here in the real world they seemed much more impressive.

The transport rolled into a parking garage at the base of the circular tower and descended a series of concrete ramps until we arrived in a large open area resembling a loading dock. A sign over a row of wide bay doors read IOI INDENTURED EMPLOYEE INDUCTION CENTER.

The other indents and I were herded off the transport, where a squad of stun gun–armed security guards was waiting to take custody of us. Our handcuffs were removed; then another guard began to swipe each of us with a handheld retina scanner. I held my breath as he held the scanner up to my eyes. A second later, the unit beeped and he read off the information on its display. “Lynch, Bryce. Age twenty-two. Full citizenship. No criminal record. Credit Default Indenturement.” He nodded to himself and tapped a series of icons on his clipboard. Then I was led into a warm, brightly lit room filled with hundreds of other new indents. They were all shuffling through a maze of guide ropes, like weary overgrown children at some nightmarish amusement park. There seemed to be an equal number of men and women, but it was hard to tell, because nearly everyone shared my pale complexion and total lack of body hair, and we all wore the same gray jumpsuits and gray plastic shoes. We looked like extras from THX 1138.

The line fed into a series of security checkpoints. At the first checkpoint, each indent was given a thorough scan with a brand-new Meta-detector to make sure they weren’t hiding any electronic devices on or in their persons. While I waited for my turn, I saw several people pulled out of line when the scanner found a subcutaneous minicomputer or a voice-controlled phone installed as a tooth replacement. They were led into another room to have the devices removed. A dude just ahead of me in line actually had a top-of-the-line miniature Sinatro OASIS console concealed inside a prosthetic testicle. Talk about balls.

Once I’d cleared a few more checkpoints, I was ushered into the testing area, a giant room filled with hundreds of small, soundproofed cubicles. I was seated in one of them and given a cheap visor and an even cheaper pair of haptic gloves. The gear didn’t give me access to the OASIS, but I still found it comforting to put it on.

I was then given a battery of increasingly difficult aptitude tests intended to measure my knowledge and abilities in every area that might conceivably be of use to my new employer. These tests were, of course, cross-referenced with the fake educational background and work history that I’d given to my bogus Bryce Lynch identity.

I made sure to ace all of the tests on OASIS software, hardware, and networking, but I intentionally failed the tests designed to gauge my knowledge of James Halliday and the Easter egg. I definitely didn’t want to get placed in IOI’s Oology Division. There was a chance I might run into Sorrento there. I didn’t think he’d recognize me—we’d never actually met in person, and I now barely resembled my old school ID photo—but I didn’t want to risk it. I was already tempting fate more than anyone in their right mind ever would.

Hours later, when I finally finished the last exam, I was logged into a virtual chat room to meet with an indenturement counselor. Her name was Nancy, and in a hypnotic monotone, she informed me that, due to my exemplary test scores and impressive employment record, I had been “awarded” the position of OASIS Technical Support Representative II. I would be paid $28,500 a year, minus the cost of my housing, meals, taxes, medical, dental, optical, and recreation services, all of which would be deducted automatically from my pay. My remaining income (if there was any) would be applied to my outstanding debt to the company. Once my debt was paid in full, I would be released from indenturement. At that time, based on my job performance, it was possible I would be offered a permanent position with IOI.

This was a complete joke, of course. Indents were never able to pay off their debt and earn their release. Once they got finished slapping you with pay deductions, late fees, and interest penalties, you wound up owing them more each month, instead of less. Once you made the mistake of getting yourself indentured, you would probably remain indentured for life. A lot of people didn’t seem to mind this, though. They thought of it as job security. It also meant they weren’t going to starve or freeze to death in the street.

My “Indenturement Contract” appeared in a window on my display. It contained a long list of disclaimers and warnings about my rights (or lack thereof) as an indentured employee. Nancy told me to read it, sign it, and proceed to Indent Processing. Then she logged out of the chat room. I scrolled to the bottom of the contract without bothering to read it. It was over six hundred pages long. I signed the name Bryce Lynch, then verified my signature with a retinal scan.

Even though I was using a fake name, I wondered if the contract might still be legally binding. I wasn’t sure, and I didn’t really care. I had a plan, and this was part of it.

They led me down another corridor, into the Indenturement Processing Area. I was placed on a conveyor belt that carried me through a long series of stations. First, they took my jumpsuit and shoes and incinerated them. Then they ran me through a kind of human car wash—a series of machines that soaped, scrubbed, disinfected, rinsed, dried, and deloused me. Afterward, I was given a new gray jumpsuit and another pair of plastic slippers.

At the next station, a bank of machines gave me a complete physical, including a battery of blood tests. (Luckily, the Genetic Privacy Act made it illegal for IOI to sample my DNA.) Then I was given a series of inoculations with an array of automated needle guns that shot me in both shoulders and both ass cheeks simultaneously.

As I inched forward along the conveyor, flat-screen monitors mounted overhead showed the same ten-minute training film over and over, on an endless loop: “Indentured Servitude: Your Fast Track from Debt to Success!” The cast was made up of D-list television stars who cheerfully spouted corporate propaganda while relating the minutiae of IOI’s indenturement policy. After five viewings, I had every line of the damn thing memorized. By the tenth viewing, I was mouthing the words along with the actors.

“What can I expect after I complete my initial processing and get placed in my permanent position?” asked Johnny, the training film’s main character.

You can expect to spend the rest of your life as a corporate slave, Johnny, I thought. But I kept watching as, once again, the helpful IOI Human Resources rep pleasantly told Johnny all about the day-to-day life of an indent.

Finally, I reached the last station, where a machine fitted me with a security anklet—a padded metal band that locked around my ankle, just above the joint. According to the training film, this device monitored my physical location and also granted or denied me access to different areas of the IOI office complex. If I tried to escape, remove the anklet, or cause trouble of any kind, the device was capable of delivering a paralyzing electrical shock. If necessary, it could also administer a heavy-duty tranquilizer directly into my bloodstream.

After the anklet was on, another machine clamped a small electronic device onto my right earlobe, piercing it in two locations. I winced in pain and shouted a stream of profanity. I knew from the training film that I’d just been fitted with an OCT. OCT stood for “observation and communication tag.” But most indents just referred to it as “eargear.” It reminded me of the tags environmentalists used to put on endangered animals, to track their movements in the wild. The eargear contained a tiny comlink that allowed the main IOI Human Resources computer to make announcements and issue commands directly into my ear. It also contained a tiny forward-looking camera that let IOI supervisors see whatever was directly in front of me. Surveillance cameras were mounted in every room in the IOI complex, but that apparently wasn’t enough. They also had to mount a camera to the side of every indent’s head.

A few seconds after my eargear was attached and activated, I began to hear the placid monotone of the HR mainframe, droning instructions and other information. The voice drove me nuts at first, but I gradually got used to it. I didn’t have much choice.

As I stepped off the conveyor, the HR computer directed me to a nearby cafeteria that looked like something out of an old prison movie. I was given a lime green tray of food. A tasteless soyburger, a lump of runny mashed potatoes, and some unrecognizable form of cobbler for dessert. I devoured all of it in a few minutes. The HR computer complimented me on my healthy appetite. Then it informed me that I was now permitted to make a five-minute visit to the bathroom. When I came out, I was directed onto an elevator with no buttons or floor indicator. When the doors slid open, I saw the following stenciled on the wall: INDENT HAB—BLOCK 05—TECHSUP REPS.

I shuffled off the elevator and down the carpeted hallway. It was quiet and dark. The only illumination came from small path lighting embedded in the floor. I’d lost track of the time. It seemed like days had passed since I’d been pulled out of my apartment. I was dead on my feet.

“Your first technical support shift begins in seven hours,” the HR computer droned softly in my ear. “You have until then to sleep. Turn left at the intersection in front of you and proceed to your assigned hab-unit, number 42G.”

I continued to do as I was told. I thought I was already getting pretty good at it.

The Hab Block reminded me of a mausoleum. It was a network of vaulted hallways, each lined with coffin-shaped sleeping capsules, row after row of them, stacked to the ceiling, ten high. Each column of hab-units was numbered, and the door of each capsule was lettered, A through J, with unit A at the bottom.

I eventually reached my unit, near the top of column number forty-two. As I approached it, the hatch irised open with a hiss, and a soft blue light winked on inside. I ascended the narrow access ladder mounted between the adjacent rows of capsules, then stepped onto the short platform beneath the hatch to my unit. When I climbed inside the capsule, the platform retracted and the hatch irised shut at my feet.

The inside of my hab-unit was an eggshell white injection-molded plastic coffin, a meter high, a meter wide, and two meters long. The floor of the capsule was covered with a gel-foam mattress pad and pillow. They both smelled like burned rubber, so I assumed they must be new.

In addition to the camera attached to the side of my head, there was a camera mounted above the door of my hab-unit. The company didn’t bother hiding it. They wanted their indents to know they were being watched.

The unit’s only amenity was the entertainment console—a large, flat touchscreen built into the wall. A wireless visor was snapped into a holder beside it. I tapped the touchscreen, activating the unit. My new employee number and position appeared at the top of the display: Lynch, Bryce T.—OASIS TECH REP II—IOI Employee #338645.

A menu appeared below, listing the entertainment programming to which I presently had access. It took only a few seconds to peruse my limited options. I could view only one channel: IOI-N—the company’s twenty-four-hour news network. It provided a nonstop stream of company-related news and propaganda. I also had access to a library of training films and simulations, most of which were geared toward my new position as an OASIS technical support representative.

When I tried to access one of the other entertainment libraries, Vintage Movies, the system informed me that I wouldn’t be granted access to a wider selection of entertainment options until I had received an above-average rating in three consecutive employee performance reviews. Then the system asked me if I wanted more information on the Indentured Employee Entertainment Reward Program. I didn’t.

The only TV show I had access to was a company-produced sitcom called Tommy Queue. The synopsis said it was a “wacky situation comedy chronicling the misadventures of Tommy, a newly indentured OASIS tech rep struggling to achieve his goals of financial independence and on-the-job excellence!”

I selected the first episode of Tommy Queue, then unsnapped the visor and put it on. As I expected, the show was really just a training film with a laugh track. I had absolutely no interest in it. I just wanted to go to sleep. But I knew I was being watched, and that every move I made was being scrutinized and logged. So I stayed awake as long as I could, ignoring one episode of Tommy Queue after another.

Despite my best efforts, my thoughts drifted to Art3mis. Regardless of what I’d been telling myself, I knew she was the real reason I’d gone through with this lunatic plan. What the hell was wrong with me? There was a good chance I might never escape from this place. I felt buried under an avalanche of self-doubt. Had my dual obsessions with the egg and Art3mis finally driven me completely insane? Why would I take such an idiotic risk to win over someone I’d never actually met? Someone who appeared to have no interest in ever talking to me again?

Where was she right now? Did she miss me?

I continued to mentally torture myself like that until I finally drifted off to sleep.

Chapter 30

lOI’s Technical Support call center occupied three entire floors of the headquarters’ eastern I-shaped tower. Each of these floors contained a maze of numbered cubicles. Mine was stuck back in a remote corner, far from any windows. My cubicle was completely empty except for an adjustable office chair bolted to the floor. Several of the cubicles around me were unoccupied, awaiting the arrival of other new indents.

I wasn’t permitted to have any decorations in my cubicle, because I hadn’t earned that privilege yet. If I obtained a sufficient number of “perk points” by getting high productivity and customer approval ratings, I could “spend” some of them to purchase the privilege of decorating my cube, perhaps with a potted plant or an inspirational poster of a kitten hanging from a clothesline.

When I arrived in my cubicle, I grabbed my company-issued visor and gloves from the rack on the bare cube wall and put them on. Then I collapsed into my chair. My work computer was built into the chair’s circular base, and it activated itself automatically when I sat down. My employee ID was verified and I was automatically logged into my work account on the IOI intranet. I wasn’t allowed to have any outbound access to the OASIS. All I could really do was read work-related e-mails, view support documentation and procedural manuals, and check my call time statistics. That was it. And every move I made on the intranet was closely monitored, controlled, and logged.

I put myself in the call queue and began my twelve-hour shift. I’d been an indent for only eight days now, but it already felt like I’d been imprisoned here for years.

The first caller’s avatar appeared in front of me in my support chat room. His name and stats also appeared, floating in the air above him. He had the astoundingly clever name of “HotCock007.”

I could see that it was going to be another fabulous day.

HotCock007 was a hulking bald barbarian with studded black leather armor and lots of demon tattoos covering his arms and face. He was holding a gigantic bastard sword nearly twice as long as his avatar’s body.

“Good morning, Mr. HotCock007,” I droned. “Thank you for calling technical support. I’m tech rep number 338645. How may I help you this evening?” The customer courtesy software filtered my voice, altering its tone and inflection to ensure that I always sounded cheerful and upbeat.

“Uh, yeah …” HotCock007 began. “I just bought this bad-ass sword, and now I can’t even use it! I can’t even attack nothing with it. What the hell is wrong with this piece of shit? Is it broke?”

“Sir, the only problem is that you’re a complete fucking moron,” I said.

I heard a familiar warning buzzer and a message flashed on my display:

IOI’s patented customer courtesy software had detected the inappropriate nature of my response and muted it, so the customer didn’t hear what I’d said. The software also logged my “courtesy violation” and forwarded it to Trevor, my section supervisor, so that he could bring it up during my next biweekly performance review.

“Sir, did you purchase this sword in an online auction?”

“Yeah,” HotCock007 replied. “Paid out the ass for it too.”

“Just a moment, sir, while I examine the item.” I already knew what his problem was, but I needed to make sure before telling him or I’d get hit with a fine.

I tapped the sword with my index finger, selecting it. A small window opened and displayed the item’s properties. The answer was right there, on the first line. This particular magic sword could only be used by an avatar who was tenth level or higher. Mr. HotCock007 was only seventh level. I quickly explained this to him.

“What?! That ain’t fair! The guy who sold it to me didn’t say nothing about that!”

“Sir, it’s always advisable to make sure your avatar can actually use an item before you purchase it.”

“Goddammit!” he shouted. “Well, what am I supposed to do with it now?”

“You could shove it up your ass and pretend you’re a corn dog.”

I tried again. “Sir, you might want to keep the item stored in your inventory until your avatar has attained tenth level. Or you may wish to put the item back up for auction yourself and use the proceeds to purchase a similar weapon. One with a power level commensurate to that of your avatar.”

“Huh?” HotCock007 responded. “Whaddya mean?”

“Save it or sell it.”

“Oh.”

“Can I help you with anything else today, sir?”

“No, I don’t guess—”

“Great. Thank you for calling technical support. Have an outstanding day.”

I tapped the disconnect icon on my display, and HotCock007 vanished. Call Time: 2:07. As the next customer’s avatar appeared—a red-skinned, large-breasted alien female named Vartaxxx—the customer satisfaction rating that HotCock007 had just given me appeared on my display. It was a 6, out of a possible score of 10. The system then helpfully reminded me that I needed to keep my average above 8.5 if I wanted to get a raise after my next review.

Doing tech support here was nothing like working from home. Here, I couldn’t watch movies, play games, or listen to music while I answered the endless stream of inane calls. The only distraction was staring at the clock. (Or the IOI stock ticker, which was always at the top of every indent’s display. You couldn’t get rid of it.)

During each shift, I was given three five-minute restroom breaks. Lunch was thirty minutes. I usually ate in my cubicle instead of the cafeteria, so I wouldn’t have to listen to the other tech reps bitch about their calls or boast about how many perk points they’d earned. I’d grown to despise the other indents almost as much as the customers.

I fell asleep five separate times during my shift. Each time, when the system saw that I’d drifted off, it sounded a warning klaxon in my ears, jolting me back awake. Then it noted the infraction in my employee data file. My narcolepsy had become such a consistent problem during my first week that I was now being issued two little red pills each day to help me stay awake. I took them too. But not until after I got off work.

When my shift finally ended, I ripped off my headset and visor and walked back to my hab-unit as quickly as I could. This was the only time each day I ever hurried anywhere. When I reached my tiny plastic coffin, I crawled inside and collapsed on the mattress, facedown, in the same exact position as the night before. And the night before that. I lay there for a few minutes, staring at the time readout on my entertainment console out of the corner of my eye. When it reached 7:07 p.m., I rolled over and sat up.

“Lights,” I said softly. This had become my favorite word over the past week. In my mind, it had become synonymous with freedom.

The lights embedded in the shell of my hab-unit shut off, plunging the tiny compartment into darkness. If someone had been watching either of my live security vidfeeds, they would have seen a brief flash as the cameras switched to night-vision mode. Then I would have been clearly visible on their monitors once again. But, thanks to some sabotage I’d performed earlier in the week, the security cameras in my hab-unit and my eargear were now no longer performing their assigned tasks. So for the first time that day, I wasn’t being watched.

That meant it was time to rock.

I tapped the entertainment center console’s touchscreen. It lit up, presenting me with the same choices I’d had on my first night here: a handful of training films and simulations, including the complete run of Tommy Queue episodes.

If anyone checked the usage logs for my entertainment center, they would show that I watched Tommy Queue every night until I fell asleep, and that once I’d worked my way through all sixteen episodes, I’d started over at the beginning. The logs would also show that I fell asleep at roughly the same time every night (but not at exactly the same time), and that I slept like the dead until the following morning, when my alarm sounded.

Of course, I hadn’t really been watching their inane corporate shitcom every night. And I wasn’t sleeping, either. I’d actually been operating on about two hours of sleep a night for the past week, and it was beginning to take its toll on me.

But the moment the lights in my hab-unit went out, I felt energized and wide awake. My exhaustion seemed to vanish as I began to navigate through the entertainment center operation menus from memory, the fingers of my right hand dancing rapidly across the touchscreen.

About seven months earlier, I’d obtained a set of IOI intranet passwords from the L33t Hax0rz Warezhaus, the same black-market data auction site where I’d purchased the information needed to create a new identity. I kept an eye on all of the black-market data sites, because you never knew what might be up for sale on them. OASIS server exploits. ATM hacks. Celebrity sex tapes. You name it. I’d been browsing through the L33t Hax0rz Warezhaus auction listings when one in particular caught my eye: IOI Intranet Access Passwords, Back Doors, and System Exploits. The seller claimed to be offering classified proprietary information on IOI’s intranet architecture, along with a series of administrative access codes and system exploits that could “give a user carte blanche inside the company network.”

I would have assumed the data was bogus had it not been listed on such a respected site. The anonymous seller claimed to be a former IOI contract programmer and one of the lead architects of its company intranet. He was probably a turncoat—a programmer who intentionally coded back doors and security holes into a system he designed, so that he could later sell them on the black market. It allowed him to get paid for the same job twice, and to salve any guilt he felt about working for a demonic multinational corporation like IOI.

The obvious problem, which the seller didn’t bother to point out in the auction listing, was that these codes were useless unless you already had access to the company intranet. IOI’s intranet was a high-security, standalone network with no direct connections to the OASIS. The only way to get access to IOI’s intranet was to become one of their legitimate employees (very difficult and time-consuming). Or you could join the company’s ever-growing ranks of indentured servants.

I’d decided to bid on the IOI access codes anyway, on the off chance they might come in handy someday. Since there was no way to verify the data’s authenticity, the bidding stayed low, and I won the auction for a few thousand credits. The codes arrived in my inbox a few minutes after the auction ended. Once I’d finished decrypting the data, I examined it all thoroughly. Everything looked legit, so I filed the info away for a rainy day and forgot about it—until about six months later, when I saw the Sixer barricade around Castle Anorak. The first thing I thought of was the IOI access codes. Then the wheels in my head began to turn and my ridiculous plan began to take shape.

I would alter the financial records on my bogus Bryce Lynch identity and allow myself to become indentured by IOI. Once I infiltrated the building and got behind the company firewall, I would use the intranet passwords to hack into the Sixers’ private database, then figure a way to bring down the shield they’d erected over Anorak’s castle.

I didn’t think anyone would anticipate this move, because it was so clearly insane.

I didn’t test the IOI passwords until the second night of my indenturement. I was understandably anxious, because if it turned out I’d been sold bogus data and none of the passwords worked, I would have sold myself into lifelong slavery.

Keeping my eargear camera pointed straight ahead, away from the screen, I pulled up the entertainment console’s viewer settings menu, which allowed me to make adjustments to the display’s audio and video output: volume and balance, brightness and tint. I cranked each option up to its highest setting, then tapped the Apply button at the bottom of the screen three times. I set the volume and brightness controls to their lowest settings and tapped the Apply button again. A small window appeared in the center of the screen, prompting me for a maintenance-tech ID number and access password. I quickly entered the ID number and the long alphanumeric password that I’d memorized. I checked both for errors out of the corner of my eye, then tapped OK. The system paused for what seemed like a very long time. Then, to my great relief, the following message appeared:

I now had access to a maintenance service account designed to allow repairmen to test and debug the entertainment unit’s various components. I was now logged in as a technician, but my access to the intranet was still pretty limited. Still, it gave me all the elbow room I needed. Using an exploit left by one of the programmers, I was now able to create a bogus admin account. Once that was set up, I had access to just about everything.

My first order of business was to get some privacy.

I quickly navigated through several dozen submenus until I reached the control panel for the Indent Monitoring System. When I entered my employee number my indent profile appeared on the display, along with a mug shot they’d taken of me during my initial processing. The profile listed my indent account balance, pay grade, blood type, current performance review rating—every scrap of data the company had on me. At the top right of my profile were two vidfeed windows, one fed by the camera in my eargear, the other linked to the camera in my hab-unit. My eargear vidfeed was currently aimed at a section of the wall. The hab-unit camera window showed a view of the back of my head, which I’d positioned to block the entertainment center’s display screen.

I selected both vidfeed cameras and accessed their configuration settings. Using one of the turncoat’s exploits, I performed a quick hack that caused my eargear and hab-unit cameras to display the archived video from my first night of indenturement instead of a live feed. Now, if someone checked my camera feeds, they’d see me lying asleep in my hab-unit, not sitting up all night, furiously hacking my way through the company intranet. Then I programmed the cameras to switch to the prerecorded feeds whenever I shut out the lights in my hab-unit. The split-second jump cut in the feed would be masked by the momentary video distortion that occurred when the cameras switched into night-vision mode.

I kept expecting to be discovered and locked out of the system, but it never happened. My passwords continued to work. I’d spent the past six nights laying siege to the IOI intranet, digging deeper and deeper into the network. I felt like a convict in an old prison movie, returning to my cell each night to tunnel through the wall with a teaspoon.

Then, last night, just before I’d succumbed to exhaustion, I’d finally managed to navigate my way through the intranet’s labyrinth of firewalls and into the main Oology Division database. The mother lode. The Sixers’ private file pile. And tonight, I would finally be able to explore it.

I knew that I needed to be able to take some of the Sixers’ data with me when I escaped, so earlier in the week, I’d used my intranet admin account to submit a bogus hardware requisition form. I had a ten-zettabyte flash drive delivered to a nonexistent employee (“Sam Lowery”) in an empty cubicle a few rows away from my own. Making sure to keep my eargear camera pointed in the other direction, I’d ducked into the cube, grabbed the tiny drive, pocketed it, and smuggled it back to my hab-unit. That night, after I shut off the lights and disabled the security cameras, I unlocked my entertainment unit’s maintenance access panel and installed the flash drive into an expansion slot used for firmware upgrades. Now I could download data from the intranet directly to that drive.

I put on the entertainment center’s visor and gloves, then stretched out on my mattress. The visor presented me with a three-dimensional view of the Sixers’ database, with dozens of overlapping data windows suspended in front of me. Using my gloves, I began to manipulate these windows, navigating my way through the database’s file structure. The largest section of the database appeared to be devoted to information on Halliday. The amount of data they had on him was staggering. It made my grail diary look like a set of CliffsNotes. They had things I’d never seen. Things I didn’t even know existed. Halliday’s grade-school report cards, home movies from his childhood, e-mails he’d written to fans. I didn’t have time to read over it all, but I copied the really interesting stuff over to my flash drive, to (hopefully) study later.

I focused on isolating the data related to Castle Anorak and the forces the Sixers had positioned in and around it. I copied all of the intel on their weapons, vehicles, gunships, and troop numbers. I also snagged all of the data I could find on the Orb of Osuvox, the artifact they were using to generate the shield around the castle, including exactly where they were keeping it and the employee number of the Sixer wizard they had operating it.

Then I hit the jackpot—a folder containing hundreds of hours of OASIS simcap recordings documenting the Sixers’ initial discovery of the Third Gate and their subsequent attempts to open it. As everyone now suspected, the Third Gate was located inside Castle Anorak. Only avatars who possessed a copy of the Crystal Key could cross the threshold of the castle’s front entrance. To my disgust, I learned that Sorrento had been the first avatar to set foot inside Castle Anorak since Halliday’s death.

The castle entrance led into a massive foyer whose walls, floor, and ceiling were all made of gold. At the north end of the chamber, a large crystal door was set into the wall. It had a small keyhole at its very center.

The moment I saw it, I knew I was looking at the Third Gate.

I fast-forwarded through several other recent simcap files. From what I could tell, the Sixers still hadn’t figured out how to open the gate. Simply inserting the Crystal Key into the keyhole had no effect. They’d had their entire team trying to figure out why for several days now, but still hadn’t made any progress.

While the data and video on the Third Gate was copying over to my flash drive, I continued to delve deeper into the Sixer database. Eventually, I uncovered a restricted area called the Star Chamber. It was the only area of the database I couldn’t seem to access. So I used my admin ID to create a new “test account,” then gave that account superuser access and full administrator privileges. It worked and I was granted access. The information inside the restricted area was divided into two folders: Mission Status and Threat Assessments. I opened the Threat Assessments folder first, and when I saw what was inside, I felt the blood drain from my face. There were five file folders, labeled Parzival, Art3mis, Aech, Shoto, and Daito. Daito’s folder had a large red “X” over it.

I opened the Parzival folder first. A detailed dossier appeared, containing all of the information the Sixers had collected on me over the past few years. My birth certificate. My school transcripts. At the bottom there was a link to a simcap of my entire chatlink session with Sorrento, ending with the bomb detonating in my aunt’s trailer. After I’d gone into hiding, they’d lost track of me. They had collected thousands of screenshots and vidcaps of my avatar over the past year, and loads of data on my stronghold on Falco, but they didn’t know anything about my location in the real world. My current whereabouts were listed as “unknown.”

I closed the window, took a deep breath, and opened the file on Art3mis.

At the very top was a school photo of a young girl with a distinctly sad smile. To my surprise, she looked almost identical to her avatar. The same dark hair, the same hazel eyes, and the same beautiful face I knew so well—with one small difference. Most of the left half of her face was covered with a reddish-purple birthmark. I would later learn that these types of birthmark were sometimes referred to as “port wine stains.” In the photo, she wore a sweep of her dark hair down over her left eye to try to conceal the mark as much as possible.

Art3mis had led me to believe that in reality she was somehow hideous, but now I saw that nothing could have been further from the truth. To my eyes, the birthmark did absolutely nothing to diminish her beauty. If anything, the face I saw in the photo seemed even more beautiful to me than that of her avatar, because I knew this one was real.

The data below the photo said that her real name was Samantha Evelyn Cook, that she was a twenty-year-old Canadian citizen, five feet and seven inches tall, and that she weighed one hundred and sixty-eight pounds. The file also contained her home address—2206 Greenleaf Lane, Vancouver, British Columbia—along with a lot of other information, including her blood type and her school transcripts going all the way back to kindergarten.

I found an unlabeled video link at the bottom of her dossier, and when I selected it, a live vidfeed of a small suburban house appeared on my display. After a few seconds, I realized I was looking at the house where Art3mis lived.

As I dug further into her file, I learned that they’d had her under surveillance for the past five months. They had her house bugged too, because I found hundreds of hours of audio recordings made while she was logged into the OASIS. They had complete text transcripts of every audible word she’d spoken while clearing the first two gates.

I opened Shoto’s file next. They knew his real name, Akihide Karatsu, and they also appeared to have his home address, an apartment building in Osaka, Japan. His file also contained a school photo, showing a thin, stoic boy with a shaved head. Like Daito, he looked nothing like his avatar.

Aech seemed to be the one they knew the least about. His file contained very little information, and no photo—just a screenshot of his avatar. His real name was listed as “Henry Swanson,” but that was an alias used by Jack Burton in Big Trouble in Little China, so I knew it must be a fake. His address was listed as “mobile,” and below it there was a link labeled “Recent Access Points.” This turned out to be a list of the wireless node locations Aech had recently used to access his OASIS account. They were all over the place: Boston; Washington, D.C.; New York City; Philadelphia; and most recently, Pittsburgh.

Now I began to understand how the Sixers had been able to locate Art3mis and Shoto. IOI owned hundreds of regional telecom companies, effectively making them the largest Internet service provider in the world. It was pretty difficult to get online without using a network they owned and operated. From the looks of it, IOI had been illegally eavesdropping on most of the world’s Internet traffic in an attempt to locate and identify the handful of gunters they considered to be a threat. The only reason they hadn’t been able to locate me was because I’d taken the paranoia-induced precaution of leasing a direct fiber-optic connection to the OASIS from my apartment complex.

I closed Aech’s file, then opened the folder labeled Daito, already dreading what I might find there. Like the others, they had his real name, Toshiro Yoshiaki, and his home address. Two news articles about his “suicide” were linked at the bottom of his dossier, along with an unlabeled video clip, time-stamped on the day he’d died. I clicked on it. It was handheld video camera footage showing three large men in black ski masks (one of whom was operating the camera) waiting silently in a hallway. They appeared to receive an order via their radio earpieces, then used a key card to open the door of a tiny one-room apartment. Daito’s apartment. I watched in horror as they rushed in, yanked him out of his haptic chair, and threw him off the balcony.

The bastards even filmed him plummeting to his death. Probably at Sorrento’s request.

A wave of nausea washed over me. When it finally passed, I copied the contents of all five dossiers over to my flash drive, then opened the Mission Status folder. It appeared to contain an archive of the Oology Division’s status reports, intended for the Sixers’ top brass. The reports were arranged by date, with the most recent one listed first. When I opened it, I saw that it was a directive memo sent from Nolan Sorrento to the IOI Board of Executives. In it, Sorrento proposed sending agents to abduct Art3mis and Shoto from their homes to force them to help IOI open the Third Gate. Once the Sixers had obtained the egg and won the contest, Art3mis and Shoto would “be disposed of.”

I sat there in stunned silence. Then I read the memo again, feeling a combination of rage and panic.

According to the time stamp, Sorrento had sent the memo just after eight o’clock, less than five hours ago. So his superiors probably hadn’t even seen it yet. When they did, they would still want to meet to discuss Sorrento’s suggested course of action. So they probably wouldn’t send their agents after Art3mis and Shoto until sometime tomorrow.

I still had time to warn them. But to do that, I would have to drastically alter my escape plan.

Before my arrest, I’d set up a timed funds transfer that would deposit enough money in my IOI credit account to pay off my entire debt, forcing IOI to release me from indenturement. But that transfer wouldn’t happen for another five days. By then, the Sixers would probably have Art3mis and Shoto locked in a windowless room somewhere.

I couldn’t spend the rest of the week exploring the Sixer database, like I’d planned. I had to grab as much data as I could and make my escape now.

I gave myself until dawn.

Chapter 31

I worked frantically for the next four hours. Most of that time was spent copying as much data as possible from the Sixer database to my stolen flash drive. Once that task was completed, I submitted an Executive Oologist Supply Requisition Order. This was an online form that Sixer commanders used to request weapons or equipment inside the OASIS. I selected a very specific item, then scheduled its delivery for noon two days from now.

When I finally finished, it was six thirty in the morning. The next tech-support shift change was now only ninety minutes away, and my hab-unit neighbors would start waking up soon. I was out of time.

I pulled up my indenturement profile, accessed my debt statement, and zeroed out my outstanding balance—money I’d never actually borrowed to begin with. Then I selected the Indentured Servant Observation and Communications Tag control settings submenu, which operated both my eargear and security anklet. Finally, I did something I’d been dying to do for the past week—I disabled the locking mechanisms on both devices.

I felt a sharp pain as the eargear clamps retracted and pulled free of the cartilage on my left ear. The device bounced off my shoulder and landed in my lap. In the same instant, the shackle on my right ankle clicked open and fell off, revealing a band of abraded red skin.

I’d now passed the point of no return. IOI security techs weren’t the only ones who had access to my eargear’s vidfeed. The Indentured Servant Protection Agency also used it to monitor and record my daily activities, to ensure that my human rights were being observed. Now that I’d removed the device, there would be no digital record of what happened to me from this moment forward. If IOI security caught me before I made it out of the building, carrying a stolen flash drive filled with highly incriminating company data, I was dead. The Sixers could torture and kill me, and no one would ever know.

I performed a few final tasks related to my escape plan, then logged out of the IOI intranet for the last time. I pulled off my visor and gloves and opened the maintenance access panel next to the entertainment center console. There was a small empty space below the entertainment module, between the prefab wall of my hab-unit and the one adjacent to it. I removed the thin, neatly folded bundle I’d hidden there. It was a vacuum-sealed IOI maintenance-tech uniform, complete with a cap and an ID badge. (Like the flash drive, I’d obtained these items by submitting an intranet requisition form, then had them delivered to an empty cubicle on my floor.) I pulled off my indent jumpsuit and used it to wipe the blood off my ear and neck. Then I removed two Band-Aids from under my mattress and slapped them over the holes in my earlobe. Once I was dressed in my new maintenance-tech threads, I carefully removed the flash drive from its expansion slot and pocketed it. Then I picked up my eargear and spoke into it. “I need to use the bathroom,” I said.

The hab-unit door irised open at my feet. The hallway was dark and deserted. I stuffed my eargear and indent jumpsuit under the mattress and put the anklet in the pocket of my new uniform. Then, reminding myself to breathe, I crawled outside and descended the ladder.

I passed a few other indents on my way to the elevators, but as usual, none of them made eye contact. This was a huge relief, because I was worried someone might recognize me and notice that I didn’t belong in a maintenance-tech uniform. When I stepped in front of the express elevator door, I held my breath as the system scanned my maintenance-tech ID badge. After what felt like an eternity, the doors slid open.

“Good morning, Mr. Tuttle,” the elevator said as I stepped inside. “Floor please?”

“Lobby,” I said hoarsely, and the elevator began to descend.

“Harry Tuttle” was the name printed on my maintenance tech ID badge. I’d given the fictional Mr. Tuttle complete access to the entire building, then reprogrammed my indent anklet so that it was encoded with the Tuttle ID, making it function just like one of the security bracelets that maintenance techs wore. When the doors and elevators scanned me to make sure I had the proper security clearance, the anklet in my pocket told them that yes, I sure did, instead of doing what it was supposed to do, which was zap my ass with a few thousand volts and incapacitate me until the security guards arrived.

I rode the elevator down in silence, trying not to stare at the camera mounted above the doors. Then I realized the video being shot of me would be scrutinized when this was all over. Sorrento himself would probably see it, and so would his superiors. So I looked directly into the lens of the camera, smiled, and scratched the bridge of my nose with my middle finger.

The elevator reached the lobby and the doors slid open. I half expected to find an army of security guards waiting for me outside, their guns leveled at my face. But there was only a crowd of IOI middle-management drones waiting to get on the elevator. I stared at them blankly for a second, then stepped out of the car. It was like crossing the border into another country.

A steady stream of overcaffeinated office workers scurried across the lobby and in and out of the elevators and exits. These were regular employees, not indents. They were allowed to go home at the end of their shifts. They could even quit if they wanted to. I wondered if it bothered any of them, knowing that thousands of indentured slaves lived and toiled here in the same building, just a few floors away from them.

I spotted two security guards stationed near the reception desk and gave them a wide berth, weaving my way through the thick crowd, crossing the immense lobby to the long row of automatic glass doors that led outside, to freedom. I forced myself not to run as I pushed through the arriving workers. Just a maintenance tech here, folks, heading home after a long night of rebooting routers. That’s all. I am definitely not an indent making a daring escape with ten zettabytes of stolen company data in his pocket. Nosiree.

Halfway to the doors, I noticed an odd sound and glanced down at my feet. I was still wearing my disposable plastic indent slippers. Each footfall made a shrill squeak on the waxed marble floor, standing out amid the rumble of sensible business footwear. Every step I took seemed to scream: Hey, look! Over here! A guy in the plastic slippers!

But I kept walking. I was almost to the doors when someone placed a hand on my shoulder. I froze. “Sir?” I heard someone say. It was a woman’s voice.

I almost bolted out the door, but something about the woman’s tone stopped me. I turned and saw the concerned face of a tall woman in her midforties. Dark blue business suit. Briefcase. “Sir, your ear is bleeding.” She pointed at it, wincing. “A lot.”

I reached up and touched my earlobe, and my hand came away red. At some point, the Band-Aids I’d applied had fallen off.

I was paralyzed for a second, unsure of what to do. I wanted to give her an explanation, but couldn’t think of one. So I simply nodded, muttered “thanks,” then turned around and, as calmly as possible, walked outside.

The frozen morning wind was so fierce that it nearly knocked me over. When I regained my balance, I bounded down the tiered steps, pausing briefly to drop my anklet into a trash receptacle. I heard it hit the bottom with a satisfying thud.

Once I reached the street, I headed north, walking as fast as my feet would carry me. I was somewhat conspicuous because I was the only person not wearing a coat of some kind. My feet quickly went numb, because I also wasn’t wearing socks under my plastic indent slippers.

My entire body was shivering by the time I finally reached the warm confines of the Mailbox, a post office box rental outlet located four blocks from the IOI plaza. The week before my arrest, I’d rented a post office box here online and had a top-of-the-line portable OASIS rig shipped to it. The Mailbox was completely automated, so there were no employees to contend with, and when I walked in there were no customers either. I located my box, punched in the key code, and retrieved the portable OASIS rig. I sat down on the floor and ripped open the package right there. I rubbed my frozen hands together until the feeling returned to my fingers, then put on the gloves and visor and used the rig to log into the OASIS. Gregarious Simulation Systems was located less than a mile away, so I was able to use one of their complimentary wireless access points instead of one of the city nodes owned by IOI.

My heart was pounding as I logged in. I’d been offline for eight whole days—a personal record. As my avatar slowly materialized on my stronghold’s observation deck, I looked down at my virtual body, admiring it like a favorite suit I hadn’t worn in a while. A window immediately appeared on my display, informing me that I’d received several messages from Aech and Shoto. And, to my surprise, there was even a message from Art3mis. All three of them wanted to know where I was and what the hell had happened to me.

I replied to Art3mis first. I told her that the Sixers knew who she was and where she lived and that they had her under constant surveillance. I also warned her about their plans to abduct her from her home. I pulled a copy of her dossier off the flash drive and attached it to my message as proof. Then I politely suggested that she leave home immediately and get the hell out of Dodge.

Don’t stop to pack a suitcase, I wrote. Don’t say good-bye to anyone. Leave right now, and get somewhere safe. Make sure you aren’t followed. Then find a secure non-IOI-controlled Internet connection and get back online. I’ll meet you in Aech’s Basement as soon as I can. Don’t worry—I have some good news too.

At the bottom of the message, I added a short postscript: PS—I think you look even more beautiful in real life.

I sent similar e-mails to Shoto and Aech (minus the postscript), along with copies of their Sixer dossiers. Then I pulled up the United States Citizen Registry database and attempted to log in. To my great relief, the passwords I’d purchased still worked, and I was able to access the fake Bryce Lynch citizen profile I’d created. It now contained the ID photo taken during my indent processing, and the words WANTED FUGITIVE were superimposed over my face. IOI had already reported Mr. Lynch as an escaped indent.

It didn’t take me very long to completely erase the Bryce Lynch identity and copy my fingerprints and retinal patterns back over to my original citizen profile. When I logged out of the database a few minutes later, Bryce Lynch no longer existed. I was Wade Watts once again.

I hailed an autocab outside the Mailbox, making sure to select one operated by a local cab company and not a SupraCab, which was a wholly owned subsidiary of IOI.

When I got in, I held my breath as I pressed my thumb to the ID scanner. The display flashed green. The system recognized me as Wade Watts, not as the fugitive indent Bryce Lynch.

“Good morning, Mr. Watts,” the autocab said. “Where to?”

I gave the cab the address of a clothing store on High Street, close to the OSU campus. It was a place called Thr3ads, which specialized in “high-tech urban street wear.” I ran inside and bought a pair of jeans and a sweater. Both items were “dichotomy wear,” meaning they were wired for OASIS use. They didn’t have haptics, but the pants and shirt could link up with my portable immersion rig, letting it know what I was doing with my torso, arms, and legs, making it easier to control my avatar than with a gloves-only interface. I also bought a few packs of socks and underwear, a simulated leather jacket, a pair of boots, and a black knit-wool cap to cover my freezing, stubble-covered noggin.

I emerged from the store a few minutes later dressed in my new threads. As the frigid wind enveloped me again I zipped up my new jacket and pulled on the wool cap. Much better. I tossed the maintenance-tech jumpsuit and plastic indent shoes in a trash can, then began to walk up High Street, scanning the storefronts. I kept my head down to avoid making eye contact with the stream of sullen university students filing past me.

A few blocks later, I ducked into a Vend-All franchise. Inside there were rows of vending machines that sold everything under the sun. One of them, labeled DEFENSE DISPENSER, offered self-defense equipment: lightweight body armor, chemical repellents, and a wide selection of handguns. I tapped the screen set into the front of the machine and scrolled through the catalog. After a moment’s deliberation, I purchased a flak vest and a Glock 47C pistol, along with three clips of ammo. I also bought a small canister of mace, then paid for everything by pressing my right palm to a hand scanner. My identity was verified and my criminal record was checked.

I heard a heavy metallic thunk as my purchases slid into the steel tray near my knees. I pocketed the mace and put the flak vest on underneath my new shirt. Then I removed the Glock from its clear plastic blister packaging. This was the first time I’d ever held a real gun. Even so, the weapon felt familiar in my hands, because I’d fired thousands of virtual firearms in the OASIS. I pressed a small button set into the barrel and the gun emitted a tone. I held the pistol grip firmly for a few seconds, first in my right hand, then my left. The weapon emitted a second tone, letting me know it had finished scanning my handprints. I was now the only person who could fire it. The weapon had a built-in timer that would prevent it from firing for another twelve hours (a “cooling-off period”), but I still felt better having it on me.

I walked to an OASIS parlor located a few blocks away, a franchise outlet called the Plug. The dingy backlit sign, which featured a smiling anthropomorphic fiber-optic cable, promised Lightning-Fast OASIS Access! Cheap Gear Rental! and Private Immersion Bays! Open 24-7-365! I’d seen a lot of banner ads for the Plug online. They had a reputation for high prices and outdated hardware, but their connections were supposed to be fast, reliable, and lag-free. For me, their major selling point was that they were one of the few OASIS parlor chains not owned by IOI or one of its subsidiaries.

The motion detector emitted a beep as I stepped through the front door. There was a small waiting area off to my right, currently empty. The carpet was stained and worn, and the whole place reeked of industrial-strength disinfectant. A vacant-eyed clerk glanced up at me from behind a bulletproof Plexiglas barrier. He was in his early twenties, with a Mohawk and dozens of facial piercings. He was wearing a bifocal visor, which gave him a semitransparent view of the OASIS while also allowing him to see his real-world surroundings. When he spoke, I saw that his teeth had all been sharpened to points. “Welcome to the Plug,” he said in a flat monotone. “We have several bays free, so there’s no waiting. Package pricing information is displayed right here.” He pointed to the display screen mounted on the counter directly in front of me; then his eyes glazed over as he refocused his attention on the world inside his visor.

I scanned my choices. A dozen immersion rigs were available, of varying quality and price. Economy, Standard, Deluxe. I was given detailed specs on each. You could rent by the minute, or pay a flat hourly rate. A visor and a pair of haptic gloves were included in the rental price, but a haptic suit cost extra. The rental contract contained a lot of fine print about the additional charges you would incur if you damaged the equipment, and a lot of legalese stating that the Plug could not be held responsible for anything you did, under any circumstances, especially if it was something illegal.

“I’d like to rent one of the deluxe rigs for twelve hours,” I said.

The clerk raised his visor. “You have to pay in advance, you realize?”

I nodded. “I also want to rent a fat-pipe connection. I need to upload a large amount of data to my account.”

“Uploading costs extra. How much data?”

“Ten zettabytes.”

“Damn,” he whispered. “What you uploading? The Library of Congress?”

I ignored the question. “I also want the Mondo Upgrade Package,” I said.

“Sure thing,” the clerk replied warily. “Your total comes to eleven thousand big ones. Just put your thumb on the drum and we’ll get you all fixed up.”

He looked more than a little surprised when the transaction cleared. Then he shrugged and handed me a key card, a visor, and some gloves. “Bay fourteen. Last door on your right. The restroom is at the end of the hall. If you leave any kind of mess in the bay, we’ll have to keep your deposit. Vomit, urine, semen, that kinda thing. And I’m the guy who has to clean it up, so do me a solid and show some restraint, will ya?”

“You got it.”

“Enjoy.”

“Thanks.”

Bay fourteen was a soundproofed ten-by-ten room with a late-model haptic rig in the center. I locked the door behind me and climbed into the rig. The vinyl on the haptic chair was worn and cracked. I slid the data drive into a slot on the front of the OASIS console and smiled as it locked into place.

“Max?” I said to the empty air, once I’d logged back in. This booted up a backup of Max that I kept stored in my OASIS account.

Max’s smiling face appeared on all of my command center monitors. “H-h-hey there, compadre!” he stuttered. “H-h-how goes it?”

“Things are looking up, pal. Now strap in. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”

I opened up my OASIS account manager and initiated the upload from my flash drive. I paid GSS a monthly fee for unlimited data storage on my account, and I was about to test its limits. Even using the Plug’s high-bandwidth fiber-optic connection, the total estimated upload time for ten zettabytes of data was over three hours. I reordered the upload sequence so the files I needed access to right away would get transferred first. As soon as data was uploaded to my OASIS account I had immediate access to it and could also transfer it to other users instantaneously.

First, I e-mailed all of the major newsfeeds a detailed account of how IOI had tried to kill me, how they had killed Daito, and how they were planning to kill Art3mis and Shoto. I attached one of the video clips I’d retrieved from the Sixer database to the message—the video camera footage of Daito’s execution. I also attached a copy of the memo Sorrento had sent to the IOI board, suggesting that they abduct Art3mis and Shoto. Finally, I attached the simcap of my chatlink session with Sorrento, but I bleeped the part where he said my real name and blurred the image of my school photo. I wasn’t yet ready to reveal my true identity to the world. I planned to release the unedited video later, once the rest of my plan had played out. Then it wouldn’t matter.

I spent about fifteen minutes composing one last e-mail, which I addressed to every single OASIS user. Once I was happy with the wording, I stored it in my Drafts folder. Then I logged into Aech’s Basement.

When my avatar appeared inside the chat room, I saw that Aech, Art3mis, and Shoto were already there waiting for me.

Chapter 32

“Z!” Aech shouted as my avatar appeared. “What the hell, man? Where have you been? I’ve been trying to reach you for over a week!”

“So have I,” Shoto added. “Where were you? And how did you get those files from the Sixer database?”

“It’s a long story,” I said. “First things first.” I addressed Shoto and Art3mis. “Have you two left your homes?”

They both nodded.

“And you’re each logged in from a safe location?”

“Yes,” Shoto said. “I’m in a manga cafe right now.”

“And I’m at the Vancouver airport,” Art3mis said. It was the first time I’d heard her voice in months. “I’m logged in from a germ-ridden public OASIS booth right now. I ran out of my house with nothing but the clothes on my back, so I hope that Sixer data you sent us is legit.”

“It is,” I said. “Trust me.”

“How can you be sure of that?” Shoto asked.

“Because I hacked into the Sixer Database and downloaded it myself.”

They all stared at me in silence. Aech raised an eyebrow. “And how, exactly, did you manage that, Z?”

“I assumed a fake identity and masqueraded as an indentured servant to infiltrate IOI’s corporate headquarters. I’ve been there for the past eight days. I just now escaped.”

“Holy shit!” Shoto whispered. “Seriously?”

I nodded.

“Dude, you have balls of solid adamantium,” Aech said. “Respect.”

“Thanks. I think.”

“Let’s assume you’re not totally bullshitting us,” Art3mis said. “How does a lowly indent get access to secret Sixer dossier files and company memos?”

I turned to face her. “Indents have limited access to the company intranet via their hab-unit entertainment system, from behind the IOI firewall. From there, I was able to use a series of back doors and system exploits left by the original programmers to tunnel through the network and hack directly into the Sixers’ private database.”

Shoto looked at me in awe. “You did that? All by yourself?”

“That is correct, sir.”

“It’s a miracle they didn’t catch you and kill you,” Art3mis said. “Why would you take such a stupid risk?”

“Why do you think? To try and find a way to get through their shield and reach the Third Gate.” I shrugged. “It was the only plan I could come up with on such short notice.”

“Z,” Aech said, grinning, “you are one crazy son of a bitch.” He walked over and gave me a high five. “But that’s why I love you, man!”

Art3mis scowled at me. “Of course, when you found out they had secret files on each of us, you just couldn’t resist looking at them, could you?”

“I had to look at them!” I said. “To find out how much they knew about each of us! You would have done the same thing.”

She leveled a finger at me. “No, I wouldn’t have. I respect other people’s privacy!”

“Art3mis, chill out!” Aech interjected. “He probably saved your life, you know.”

She seemed to consider this. “Fine,” she said. “Forget it.” But I could tell she was still pissed off.

I didn’t know what to say, so I kept plowing forward.

“I’m sending each of you a copy of all the Sixer data I smuggled out. Ten zettabytes of it. You should have it now.” I waited while each of them checked their inbox. “The size of their database on Halliday is unreal. His whole life is in there. They’ve collected interviews with everyone Halliday ever knew. It could take months to read through them all.”

I waited for a few minutes, watching their eyes scan over the data.

“Whoa!” Shoto said. “This is incredible.” He looked over at me. “How the hell did you escape from IOI with all of this stuff?”

“By being extra sneaky.”

“Aech is right,” Art3mis said, shaking her head. “You are certifiably nuts.” She hesitated for a second, then added, “Thanks for the warning, Z. I owe you one.”

I opened my mouth to say “you’re welcome,” but no words came out.

“Yes,” Shoto said. “So do I. Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it, guys,” I finally managed to say.

“Well?” Aech said. “Hit us with the bad news already. How close are the Sixers to clearing the Third Gate?”

“Dig this,” I said, grinning. “They haven’t even figured out how to open it yet.”

Art3mis and Shoto stared at me in disbelief. Aech smiled wide, then began to bob his head and press his palms to the sky, as if dancing to some unheard rave track. “Oh yes! Oh yes!” he sang.

“You’re kidding, right?” Shoto asked.

I shook my head.

“You’re not kidding?” Art3mis said. “How is that possible? Sorrento has the Crystal Key and he knows where the gate is. All he has to do is open the damn thing and step inside, right?”

“That was true for the first two gates,” I replied. “But Gate Three is different.” I opened a large vidfeed window in the air beside me. “Check this out. It’s from the Sixers’ video archive. It’s a vidcap of their first attempt to open the gate.”

I hit Play. The video clip opened with a shot of Sorrento’s avatar standing outside the front gates of Castle Anorak. The castle’s front entrance, which had been impregnable for so many years, swung open as Sorrento approached, like an automatic door at a supermarket. “The castle entrance will open for an avatar who holds a copy of the Crystal Key,” I explained. “If an avatar doesn’t have a copy of the key, he can’t cross the threshold and enter the castle, even if the doors are already open.”

We all watched the vidcap as Sorrento passed through the entrance and into the large gold-lined foyer that lay beyond. Sorrento’s avatar crossed the polished floor and approached the large crystal door set into the north wall. There was a keyhole in the very center of the door, and directly above it, three words were etched into the door’s glittering, faceted surface: CHARITY. HOPE. FAITH.

Sorrento stepped forward, holding out his copy of the Crystal Key. He slid the key into the keyhole and turned it. Nothing happened.

Sorrento glanced up at the three words printed on the gate. “Charity, hope, faith,” he said, reading them aloud. Once again, nothing happened.

Sorrento removed the key, recited the three words again, then reinserted the key and turned it. Still nothing.

I studied Aech, Art3mis, and Shoto as they watched the video. Their excitement and curiosity had already shifted into concentration as they attempted to solve the puzzle before them. I paused the video. “Whenever Sorrento is logged in, he has a team of consultants and researchers watching his every move,” I said. “You can hear their voices on some of the vidcaps, feeding him suggestions and advice through his comlink. So far, they haven’t been much help. Watch—”

On the video, Sorrento was making another attempt to open the gate. He did everything exactly as before, except this time, when he inserted the Crystal Key, he turned it counterclockwise instead of clockwise.

“They try every asinine thing you can imagine,” I said. “Sorrento recites the words on the gate in Latin. And Elvish. And Klingon. Then they get hung up on reciting First Corinthians 13:13, a Bible verse that contains the words ‘charity, hope, and faith.’ Apparently, ‘charity, hope, and faith’ are also the names of three martyred Catholic saints. The Sixers have been trying to attach some significance to that for the past few days.”

“Morons,” Aech said. “Halliday was an atheist.”

“They’re getting desperate now,” I said. “Sorrento has tried everything but genuflecting, doing a little dance, and sticking his pinky finger in the keyhole.”

“That’s probably next up on his agenda,” Shoto said, grinning.

“Charity, hope, faith,” Art3mis said, reciting the words slowly. She turned to me. “Where do I know that from?”

“Yeah,” Aech said. “Those words do sound familiar.”

“It took me a while to place them too,” I said.

They all looked at me expectantly.

“Say them in reverse order,” I suggested. “Better yet, sing them in reverse order.”

Art3mis’s eyes narrowed. “Faith, hope, charity,” she said. She repeated them a few times, recognition growing in her face. Then she sang: “Faith and hope and charity …”

Aech picked up the next line: “The heart and the brain and the body …”

“Give you three … as a magic number!” Shoto finished triumphantly.

“Schoolhouse Rock!” they all shouted in unison.

“See?” I said. “I knew you guys would get it. You’re a smart bunch.”

“ ‘Three Is a Magic Number,’ music and lyrics by Bob Dorough,” Art3mis recited, as if pulling the information from a mental encyclopedia. “Written in 1973.”

I smiled at her. “I have a theory. I think this might be Halliday’s way of telling us how many keys are required to open the Third Gate.”

Art3mis grinned, then sang, “It takes three.”

“No more, no less,” continued Shoto.

“You don’t have to guess,” added Aech.

“Three,” I finished, “is the magic number.” I took out my own copy of the Crystal Key and held it up. The others did the same. “We have four copies of the key. If at least three of us can reach the gate, we can get it open.”

“What then?” Aech asked. “Do we all enter the gate at the same time?”

“What if only one of us can enter the gate once it’s open?” Art3mis said.

“I doubt Halliday would have set it up like that,” I said.

“Who knows what that crazy bastard was thinking?” Art3mis said. “He’s toyed with us every step of the way, and now he’s doing it again. Why else would he require three copies of the Crystal Key to open the final gate?”

“Maybe because he wanted to force us to work together?” I suggested.

“Or he just wanted the contest to end with a big, dramatic finale,” Aech offered. “Think about it. If three avatars enter the Third Gate at the exact same moment, then it becomes a race to see who can clear the gate and reach the egg first.”

“Halliday was one crazy, sadistic bastard,” Art3mis muttered.

“Yeah,” Aech said, nodding. “You got that right.”

“Look at it this way,” Shoto said. “If Halliday hadn’t set up the Third Gate to require three keys … the Sixers might have already found the egg by now.”

“But the Sixers have a dozen avatars with copies of the Crystal Key,” Aech said. “They could open the gate right now, if they were smart enough to figure out how.”

“Dilettantes,” Art3mis said. “It’s their own fault for not knowing all the Schoolhouse Rock! lyrics by heart. How did those fools even get this far?”

“By cheating,” I said. “Remember?”

“Oh, that’s right. I keep forgetting.” She grinned at me, and I felt my knees go all rubbery.

“Just because the Sixers haven’t opened the gate yet doesn’t mean they won’t figure it out eventually,” Shoto said.

I nodded. “Shoto’s right. Sooner or later they’ll make the Schoolhouse Rock! connection. So we can’t waste any more time.”

“Well, what are we waiting for?” Shoto said excitedly. “We know where the gate is and how to open it! So let’s do it! And may the best gunter win!”

“You’re forgetting something, Shoto-san,” Aech said. “Parzival here still hasn’t told us how we’re going to get past that shield, fight our way through the Sixers’ army, and get inside the castle.” He turned to me. “You do have a plan for that, don’t you, Z?”

“Of course,” I said. “I was just getting to that.” I made a sweeping gesture with my right hand, and a three-dimensional hologram of Castle Anorak appeared, floating in the air in front of me. The transparent blue sphere generated by the Orb of Osuvox appeared around the castle, surrounding it both above- and belowground. I pointed to it. “This shield is going to drop on its own, at noon on Monday, about thirty-six hours from now. And then we’re going to walk right through the castle’s front entrance.”

“The shield is going to drop? On its own?” Art3mis repeated. “The clans have been lobbing nukes at that sphere for the past two weeks, and they haven’t even scratched it. How are you going to get it to ‘drop on its own’?”

“I’ve already taken care of it,” I said. “You guys are gonna have to trust me.”

“I trust you, Z,” Aech said. “But even if that shield does drop, to reach the castle, we’ll still have to fight our way through the largest army in the OASIS.” He pointed to the hologram, which showed the Sixer troop positions around the castle, just inside the sphere. “What about these fools? And their tanks? And their gunships?”

“Obviously, we’re going to need a little help,” I said.

“A lot of help,” Art3mis clarified.

“And who, exactly, are we going to convince to help us wage war against the entire Sixer army?” Aech asked.

“Everyone,” I said. “Every single gunter on the grid.” I opened another window, displaying the brief e-mail I’d composed just before logging into the Basement. “I’m going to send this message out tonight, to every single OASIS user.”

“Knavery?” Art3mis said after she’d finished reading it. “Were you using a thesaurus when you wrote this?”

“I was trying to make it sound, you know, grand,” I said. “Official.”

“Me likey, Z,” Aech said. “It really gets the blood stirring.”

“Thanks, Aech.”

“So that’s it? This is your plan?” Art3mis said. “Spam the entire OASIS, asking for help?”

“More or less, yeah. That’s the plan.”

“And you really think everyone will just show up and help us fight the Sixers?” she said. “Just for the hell of it?”

“Yes,” I said. “I do.”

Aech nodded. “He’s right. No one wants the Sixers to win the contest. And they definitely don’t want IOI to take control of the OASIS. People will jump at a chance to help bring the Sixers down. And what gunter is gonna pass up a chance to fight in such an epic, history-making battle?”

“But won’t the clans think we’re just trying to manipulate them?” Shoto said. “So that we can reach the gate ourselves?”

“Of course,” I said. “But most of them have already given up. Everyone knows the end of the Hunt is at hand. Don’t you think most people would rather see one of us win the contest, instead of Sorrento and the Sixers?”

Art3mis considered it for a moment. “You’re right. That e-mail just might work.”

“Z,” Aech said, slapping me on the back, “you are an evil, sublime genius! When that e-mail goes out, the media will go apeshit! The word will spread like wildfire. By this time tomorrow, every avatar in the OASIS will be headed to Chthonia.”

“Let’s hope so,” I said.

“Oh, they’ll show up, all right,” Art3mis said. “But how many of them will actually fight, once they see what we’re up against? Most of them will probably set up lawn chairs and eat popcorn while they watch us get our asses kicked.”

“That’s definitely a possibility,” I said. “But the clans will help us, for sure. They’ve got nothing to lose. And we don’t have to defeat the entire Sixer army. We just have to punch a hole through it, get inside the castle, and reach the gate.”

“Three of us have to reach the gate,” Aech said. “If only one or two of us make it inside, we’re screwed.”

“Correct,” I said. “So we should all try extremely hard not to get killed.”

Art3mis and Aech both laughed nervously. Shoto just shook his head. “Even if we get the gate open, we still have to contend with the gate itself,” he said. “It’s bound to be harder to clear than the first two.”

“Let’s worry about the gate later,” I said. “Once we reach it.”

“Fine,” Shoto said. “Let’s do this thing.”

“I second that,” Aech said.

“So, you two are actually gonna go along with this?” Art3mis said.

“You got a better idea, sister?” Aech asked.

She shrugged. “No. Not really.”

“OK then,” Aech said. “It’s settled.”

I closed the e-mail. “I’m sending each of you a copy of this message,” I said. “Start sending it out tonight, to everyone on your contact list. Post it on your blogs. Broadcast it on your POV channels. We’ve got thirty-six hours to spread the word. That should be enough time for everyone to gear up and get their avatars to Chthonia.”

“As soon as the Sixers catch wind of this, they’ll start preparing for an assault,” Art3mis said. “They’re gonna pull out all the stops.”

“They might just laugh it off,” I said. “They think their shield is impregnable.”

“It is,” Art3mis said. “So I hope you’re right about being able to shut it down.”

“Don’t worry.”

“Why would I be worried?” Art3mis snapped. “Maybe you’ve forgotten, but I’m homeless and on the run for my life right now! I’m currently logged in from a public terminal at an airport, paying for bandwidth by the minute. I can’t fight a war from here, much less try to clear the Third Gate. And I don’t have anywhere to go.”

Shoto nodded. “I don’t think I can stay where I am either. I’m in a rented booth at a public manga cafe in Osaka. I don’t have much privacy. And I don’t think it’s safe for me to stay here if the Sixers have agents out looking for me.”

Art3mis looked at me. “Any suggestions?”

“I hate to break it to you guys, but I’m homeless and logged in from a public terminal right now too,” I said. “I’ve been hiding out from the Sixers for over a year, remember?”

“I’ve got an RV,” Aech said. “You’re all welcome to crash with me. But I don’t think I can make it to Columbus, Vancouver, and Japan in the next thirty-six hours.”

“I think I might be able to help you guys out,” a deep voice said.

We all jumped and turned around just in time to see a tall, male, gray-haired avatar appear directly behind us. It was the Great and Powerful Og. Ogden Morrow’s avatar. And he didn’t materialize slowly, the way an avatar normally did when logging into a chat room. He simply popped into existence, as if he had been there all along and had only now decided to make himself visible.

“Have any of you ever been to Oregon?” he said. “It’s lovely this time of year.”

Chapter 33

We all stared at Ogden Morrow in stunned silence.

“How did you get in here?” Aech finally asked, once he’d managed to pick his jaw up off the floor. “This is a private chat room.”

“Yes, I know,” Morrow said, looking a bit embarrassed. “I’m afraid I’ve been eavesdropping on the four of you for quite some time now. And I hope you’ll accept my sincere apologies for invading your privacy. I did it with only the best intentions, I promise you.”

“With all due respect, sir,” Art3mis said. “You didn’t answer his question. How did you gain access to this chat room without an invitation? And without any of us even knowing you were here?”

“Forgive me,” he said. “I can see why this might concern you. But you needn’t worry. My avatar has many unique powers, including the ability to enter private chat rooms uninvited.” As Morrow spoke, he walked over to one of Aech’s bookshelves and began to browse through some vintage role-playing game supplements. “Prior to the original launch of the OASIS, when Jim and I created our avatars, we gave ourselves superuser access to the entire simulation. In addition to being immortal and invincible, our avatars could go pretty much anywhere and do pretty much anything. Now that Anorak is gone, my avatar is the only one with these powers.” He turned to face the four of us. “No one else has the ability to eavesdrop on you. Especially not the Sixers. OASIS chat-room encryption protocols are rock solid, I assure you.” He chuckled lightly. “My presence here notwithstanding.”

“He knocked over that stack of comic books!” I said to Aech. “After our first meeting in here, remember? I told you it wasn’t a software glitch.”

Og nodded and gave us a guilty shrug. “That was me. I can be pretty clumsy at times.”

There was another brief silence, during which I finally worked up the courage to speak to Morrow directly. “Mr. Morrow—,” I began.

“Please,” Morrow said, raising a hand. “Call me Og.”

“All right,” I said, laughing nervously. Even under the circumstances, I was completely starstruck. I couldn’t believe I was actually addressing the Ogden Morrow. “Og. Would you mind telling us why you’ve been eavesdropping on us?”

“Because I want to help you,” he replied. “And from what I heard a moment ago, it sounds as though you could all use my help.” We all exchanged nervous looks, and Og seemed to detect our skepticism. “Please, don’t misunderstand me,” he continued. “I’m not going to give you any clues, or provide you with any information to help you reach the egg. That would ruin all the fun, wouldn’t it?” He walked back over to us, and his tone turned serious. “Just before he died, I promised Jim that, in his absence, I would do everything I could to protect the spirit and integrity of his contest. That’s why I’m here.”

“But, sir—Og,” I said. “In your autobiography, you wrote that you and James Halliday didn’t speak during the last ten years of his life.”

Morrow gave me an amused smile. “Come on, kid,” he said. “You can’t believe everything you read.” He laughed. “Actually, that statement was mostly true. I didn’t speak with Jim for the last decade of his life. Not until just a few weeks before he died.” He paused, as if calling up the memory. “At the time, I didn’t even know he was sick. He just called me up out of the blue, and we met in a private chat room, much like this one. Then he told me about his illness, the contest, and what he had planned. He was worried there might still be a few bugs in the gates. Or that complications might arise after he was gone that would prevent the contest from proceeding as he’d intended.”

“You mean like the Sixers?” Shoto asked.

“Exactly,” Og said. “Like the Sixers. So Jim asked me to monitor the contest, and to intervene if it ever became necessary.” He scratched his beard. “To be honest, I didn’t really want the responsibility. But it was the dying wish of my oldest friend, so I agreed. And for the past six years, I’ve watched from the sidelines. And even though the Sixers have done everything to stack the odds against you, somehow you four have persevered. But now, after hearing you describe your current circumstances, I think the time has finally come for me to take action, to maintain the integrity of Jim’s game.”

Art3mis, Shoto, Aech, and I all exchanged looks of amazement, as if seeking reassurance from one another that this was all really happening.

“I want to offer the four of you sanctuary at my home here in Oregon,” Og said. “From here, you’ll be able to execute your plan and complete your quest in safety, without having to worry about Sixer agents tracking you down and kicking in your door. I can provide each of you with a state-of-the-art immersion rig, a fiber-optic connection to the OASIS, and anything else you might need.”

Another stunned silence. “Thank you, sir!” I finally blurted out, resisting the urge to fall to my knees and bow repeatedly.

“It’s the least I can do.”

“That’s an incredibly kind offer, Mr. Morrow,” Shoto said. “But I live in Japan.”

“I know, Shoto,” Og said. “I’ve already chartered a private jet for you. It’s waiting at the Osaka airport. If you send me your current location, I’ll arrange for a limo to pick you up and take you to the runway.”

Shoto was speechless for a second; then he bowed low. “Arigato, Morrow-san.”

“Don’t mention it, kid.” He turned to Art3mis. “Young lady, I understand that you’re currently at the Vancouver airport? I’ve made travel arrangements for you, as well. A driver is currently waiting for you in the baggage claim area, holding a sign with the name ‘Benatar’ on it. He’ll take you to the plane I’ve chartered for you.”

For a second I thought Art3mis might bow too. But then she ran over and threw her arms around Og in a bear hug. “Thank you, Og,” she said. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

“You’re welcome, dear,” he said with an embarrassed laugh. When she finally released him, he turned to Aech and me. “Aech, I understand that you have a vehicle, and that you’re currently in the vicinity of Pittsburgh?” Aech nodded. “If you wouldn’t mind driving to Columbus to retrieve your friend Parzival here, I’ll arrange for a jet to pick up both of you at the Columbus airport. That is, if you boys don’t mind sharing a ride?”

“No, that sounds perfect,” Aech said, glancing at me sideways. “Thanks, Og.”

“Yes, thank you,” I repeated. “You’re a lifesaver.”

“I hope so.” He gave me a grim smile, then turned to address everyone. “Safe travels, all of you. I’ll see you soon.” And then he vanished, just as quickly as he’d appeared.

“Well, this blows,” I said, turning to Aech. “Art3mis and Shoto get limos, and I have to bum a ride to the airport with your ugly ass? In some shit-heap RV?”

“It’s not a shit-heap,” Aech said, laughing. “And you’re welcome to take a cab, asshole.”

“This is gonna be interesting,” I said, stealing a quick glance at Art3mis. “The four of us are finally going to meet in person.”

“It will be an honor,” Shoto said. “I’m looking forward to it.”

“Yeah,” Art3mis said, locking eyes with me. “I can’t wait.”

After Shoto and Art3mis logged out, I gave Aech my current location. “It’s a Plug franchise. Call me when you get here, and I’ll meet you out front.”

“Will do,” he said. “Listen, I should warn you. I don’t look anything like my avatar.”

“So? Who does? I’m not really this tall. Or muscular. And my nose is slightly bigger—”

“I’m just warning you. Meeting me might be … kind of a shock for you.”

“OK. Then why don’t you just tell me what you look like right now?”

“I’m already on the road,” he said, ignoring my question. “I’ll see you in a few hours, OK?”

“OK. Drive safe, amigo.”

Despite what I’d said to Aech, knowing that I was about to meet him in person after all these years made me more nervous than I wanted to admit. But it was nothing compared to the apprehension I already felt building inside me at the prospect of meeting Art3mis once we reached Oregon. Trying to picture the actual moment filled me with a mixture of excitement and abject terror. What would she be like in person? Was the photo I’d seen in her file actually a fake? Did I still have any kind of chance with her at all?

With a Herculean effort, I managed to put her out of my mind by forcing myself to focus on the approaching battle.

As soon as I logged out of Aech’s Basement, I sent out my “Call to Arms” e-mail as a global announcement to every OASIS user. Knowing most of those e-mails wouldn’t get through the spam filters, I also posted it to every gunter message board. Then I made a short vidcap recording of my avatar reading it aloud and set it to run on a continuous loop on my POV channel.

The word spread quickly. Within an hour, our plan to assault Castle Anorak was the top story on every single newsfeed, accompanied by headlines like GUNTERS DECLARE ALL-OUT WAR ON THE SIXERS and TOP GUNTERS ACCUSE IOI OF KIDNAPPING AND MURDER and IS THE HUNT FOR HALLIDAY’S EGG FINALLY OVER?

Some of the newsfeeds were already running the video clip of Daito’s murder I’d sent them, along with the text of Sorrento’s memo, citing an anonymous source for both. So far, IOI had declined to comment on either. By now, Sorrento would know I’d somehow gained access to the Sixers’ private database. I wished I could see his face when he learned how I’d done it—that I’d spent an entire week just a few floors below his office.

I spent the next few hours outfitting my avatar and preparing myself mentally for what was to come. When I could no longer keep my eyes open, I decided to catch a quick nap while I waited for Aech to arrive. I disabled the auto-log-out feature on my account, then drifted off in the haptic chair with my new jacket draped over me as a blanket, clutching in one hand the pistol I’d purchased earlier that day.

I woke with a start sometime later to the sound of Aech’s ringtone. He was calling to let me know he’d arrived outside. I climbed out of the rig, collected my things, and returned the rented gear at the front desk. When I stepped out into the street, I saw that night had fallen. The frozen air hit me like a bucket of ice water.

Aech’s tiny RV was just a few yards away, parked at the curb. It was a mocha-colored SunRider, about twenty feet long, and at least two decades old. A patchwork of solar cells covered the RV’s roof and most of its body, along with a liberal amount of rust. The windows were tinted black, so I couldn’t see inside.

I took a deep breath and crossed the slush-covered sidewalk, feeling a strange combination of dread and excitement. As I approached the RV, a door near the center of the right side slid open and a short stepladder extended to the pavement. I climbed inside and the door slid shut behind me. I found myself in the RV’s tiny kitchen. It was dark except for the running lights set into the carpeted floor. To my left, I saw a small bedroom area at the back, wedged into a loft above the RV’s battery compartment. I turned and walked slowly across the darkened kitchen, then pulled back the beaded curtain covering the doorway to the cab.

A heavyset African American girl sat in the RV’s driver seat, clutching the wheel tightly and staring straight ahead. She was about my age, with short, kinky hair and chocolate-colored skin that appeared iridescent in the soft glow of the dashboard indicators. She was wearing a vintage Rush 2112 concert T-shirt, and the numbers were warped around her large bosom. She also had on faded black jeans and a pair of studded combat boots. She appeared to be shivering, even though it was nice and warm in the cab.

I stood there for a moment, staring at her in silence, waiting for her to acknowledge my presence. Eventually, she turned and smiled at me, and it was a smile I recognized immediately. That Cheshire grin I’d seen thousands of times before, on the face of Aech’s avatar, during the countless nights we’d spent together in the OASIS, telling bad jokes and watching bad movies. And her smile wasn’t the only thing I found familiar. I also recognized the set of her eyes and the lines of her face. There was no doubt in my mind. The young woman sitting in front of me was my best friend, Aech.

A wave of emotion washed over me. Shock gave way to a sense of betrayal. How could he—she—deceive me all these years? I felt my face flush with embarrassment as I remembered all of the adolescent intimacies I’d shared with Aech. A person I’d trusted implicitly. Someone I thought I knew.

When I didn’t say anything, her eyes dropped to her boots and stayed on them. I sat down heavily in the passenger seat, still staring over at her, still unsure of what to say. She kept stealing glances at me; then her eyes would dart away nervously. She was still trembling.

Whatever anger or betrayal I felt quickly evaporated.

I couldn’t help myself. I started to laugh. There was no meanness in it, and I knew she could tell that, because her shoulders relaxed a bit and she let out a relieved sigh. Then she started to laugh too. Half laughing and half crying, I thought.

“Hey, Aech,” I said, once our laughter subsided. “How goes it?”

“It’s going good, Z,” she said. “All sunshine and rainbows.” Her voice was familiar too. Just not quite as deep as it was online. All this time, she’d been using software to disguise it.

“Well,” I said. “Look at us. Here we are.”

“Yeah,” Aech replied. “Here we are.”

An uncomfortable silence descended. I hesitated a moment, unsure of what to do. Then I followed my instincts, crossed the small space between us, and put my arms around her. “It’s good to see you, old friend,” I said. “Thanks for coming to get me.”

She returned the hug. “It’s good to see you too,” she said. And I could tell she meant it.

I let go of her and stepped back. “Christ, Aech,” I said, smiling. “I knew you were hiding something. But I never imagined …”

“What?” she said, a bit defensively. “You never imagined what?”

“That the famous Aech, renowned gunter and the most feared and ruthless arena combatant in the entire OASIS, was, in reality, a …”

“A fat black chick?”

“I was going to say ‘young African American woman.’ ”

Her expression darkened. “There’s a reason I never told you, you know.”

“And I’m sure it’s a good one,” I said. “But it really doesn’t matter.”

“It doesn’t?”

“Of course not. You’re my best friend, Aech. My only friend, to be honest.”

“Well, I still want to explain.”

“OK. But can it wait until we’re in the air?” I said. “We’ve got a long way to travel. And I’ll feel a lot safer once we’ve left this city in the dust.”

“We’re on our way, amigo,” she said, putting the RV in gear.

Aech followed Og’s directions to a private hangar near the Columbus airport, where a small luxury jet was waiting for us. Og had arranged for Aech’s RV to be stored in a nearby hangar, but it had been her home for many years, and I could tell she was nervous about leaving it behind.

We both stared at the jet in wonder as we approached it. I’d seen airplanes in the sky before, of course, but I’d never seen one up close. Traveling by jet was something only rich people could afford. That Og could afford to charter three different jets to retrieve us without batting an eyelash was a testament to just how insanely wealthy he must be.

The jet was completely automated, so there was no crew on board. We were all alone. The placid voice of the autopilot welcomed us aboard, then told us to strap in and prepare for takeoff. We were up in the air within minutes.

It was the first time either of us had ever flown, and we both spent the first hour of the flight staring out the windows, overwhelmed by the view, as we hurtled westward through the atmosphere at ten thousand feet, on our way to Oregon. Finally, once some of the novelty had worn off, I could tell that Aech was ready to talk.

“OK, Aech,” I said. “Tell me your story.”

She flashed her Cheshire grin and took a deep breath. “The whole thing was originally my mother’s idea,” she said. Then she launched into an abbreviated version of her life story. Her real name, she said, was Helen Harris, and she was only a few months older than I was. She’d grown up in Atlanta, raised by a single mother. Her father had died in Afghanistan when she was still a baby. Her mother, Marie, worked from home, in an online data-processing center. In Marie’s opinion, the OASIS was the best thing that had ever happened to both women and people of color. From the very start, Marie had used a white male avatar to conduct all of her online business, because of the marked difference it made in how she was treated and the opportunities she was given.

When Aech first logged into the OASIS, she followed her mother’s advice and created a Caucasian male avatar. “H” had been her mother’s nickname for her since she was a baby, so she’d decided to use it as the name of her online persona. A few years later, when she started attending school online, her mother lied about her daughter’s race and gender on the application. Aech was required to provide a photo for her school profile, so she’d submitted a photorealistic rendering of her male avatar’s face, which she’d modeled after her own features.

Aech told me that she hadn’t seen or spoken to her mother since leaving home on her eighteenth birthday. That was the day Aech had finally come out to her mother about her sexuality. At first, her mother refused to believe she was gay. But then Helen revealed that she’d been dating a girl she met online for nearly a year.

As Aech explained all of this, I could tell she was studying my reaction. I wasn’t all that surprised, really. Over the past few years, Aech and I had discussed our mutual admiration for the female form on numerous occasions. I was actually relieved to know that Aech hadn’t been deceiving me, at least not on that account.

“How did your mother react when she found out you had a girlfriend?” I asked.

“Well, it turns out that my mother had her own set of deep-seated prejudices,” Aech said. “She kicked me out of the house and said she never wanted to see me again. I was homeless for a little while. I lived in a series of shelters. But eventually I earned enough competing in the OASIS arena leagues to buy my RV, and I’ve been living in it ever since. I usually only stop moving when the RV’s batteries need to recharge.”

As we continued to talk, going through the motions of getting to know each other, I realized that we already did know each other, as well as any two people could. We’d known each other for years, in the most intimate way possible. We’d connected on a purely mental level. I understood her, trusted her, and loved her as a dear friend. None of that had changed, or could be changed by anything as inconsequential as her gender, or skin color, or sexual orientation.

The rest of the flight seemed to go by in a blink. Aech and I quickly fell into our old familiar rhythm, and before long it was like we were back in the Basement, trash-talking each other over a game of Quake or Joust. Any fears I had about the resiliency of our friendship in the real world had vanished by the time our jet touched down on Og’s private runway in Oregon.

We’d been flying west across the country, just a few hours ahead of the sunrise, so it was still dark when we landed. Aech and I both froze in our tracks as we stepped off the plane, gazing in wonder at the scene around us. Even in the dim moonlight, the view was breathtaking. The dark, towering silhouettes of the Wallowa Mountains surrounded us on all sides. Rows of blue runway lights stretched out along the valley floor behind us, delineating Og’s private landing strip. Directly ahead, a steep cobblestone staircase at the edge of the runway led up to a grand, floodlit mansion constructed on a plateau near the base of the mountain range. Several waterfalls were visible in the distance, spilling off the peaks beyond Morrow’s mansion.

“It looks just like Rivendell,” Aech said, taking the words right out of my mouth.

I nodded. “It looks exactly like Rivendell in the Lord of the Rings movies,” I said, still staring up at it in awe. “Og’s wife was a big Tolkien fan, remember? He built this place for her.”

We heard an electric hum behind us as the jet’s staircase retracted and the hatch closed. The engines powered back up and the jet rotated, preparing to take off again. We stood and watched it launch back up into the clear, starry sky. Then we turned and began to mount the staircase leading up to the house. When we finally reached the top, Ogden Morrow was there waiting for us.

“Welcome, my friends!” Og bellowed, extending both his hands in greeting. He was dressed in a plaid bathrobe and bunny slippers. “Welcome to my home!”

“Thank you, sir,” Aech said. “Thanks for inviting us here.”

“Ah, you must be Aech,” he replied, clasping her hand. If he was surprised by her appearance, he didn’t show it. “I recognize your voice.” He gave her a wink, followed by a bear hug. Then he turned and hugged me, too. “And you must be Wade—I mean, Parzival! Welcome! Welcome! It’s truly an honor to meet you both!”

“The honor is ours,” I said. “We really can’t thank you enough for helping us.”

“You’ve already thanked me enough, so stop it!” he said. He turned and led us across an expansive green lawn, toward his enormous house. “I can’t tell you how good it is to have visitors. Sad to say, I’ve been all alone here since Kira died.” He was silent a moment; then he laughed. “Alone except for my cooks, maids, and gardeners, of course. But they all live here too, so they don’t really count as visitors.”

Neither I nor Aech knew how to reply, so we just kept smiling and nodding. Eventually, I worked up the courage to speak. “Have the others arrived yet? Shoto and Art3mis?”

Something about the way I said “Art3mis” made Morrow chuckle, long and loud. After a few seconds, I realized Aech was laughing at me too.

“What?” I said. “What’s so funny?”

“Yes,” Og said, grinning. “Art3mis arrived first, several hours ago, and Shoto’s plane got here about thirty minutes before you arrived.”

“Are we going to meet them now?” I asked, doing an extremely poor job of hiding my apprehension.

Og shook his head. “Art3mis felt that meeting you two right now would be an unnecessary distraction. She wanted to wait until after the ‘big event.’ And Shoto seemed to agree.” He studied me for a moment. “It probably is for the best, you know. You’ve all got a big day ahead of you.”

I nodded, feeling a strange combination of relief and disappointment.

“Where are they now?” Aech asked.

Og raised a fist triumphantly in the air. “They’re already logged in, preparing for your assault on the Sixers!” His voice echoed across the grounds and off the high stone walls of his mansion. “Follow me! The hour draws near!”

Og’s enthusiasm pulled me back into the moment, and I felt a nervous knot form in the pit of my stomach. We followed our bathrobed benefactor across the expansive moonlit courtyard. As we approached the main house, we passed a small gated-in garden filled with flowers. The garden was in a strange location, and I couldn’t figure out its purpose until I saw the large tombstone at its center. Then I realized it must be Kira Morrow’s grave. But even in the bright moonlight, it was still too dark for me to make out the inscription on the headstone.

Og led us through the mansion’s lavish front entrance. The lights were off inside, but instead of turning them on, Morrow took an honest-to-God torch off the wall and used it to illuminate our way. Even in dim torchlight, the grandeur of the place amazed me. Giant tapestries and a huge collection of fantasy artwork covered the walls, while gargoyle statues and suits of armor lined the hallways.

As we followed Og, I worked up enough courage to speak to him. “Listen, I know this probably isn’t the time,” I said. “But I’m a huge fan of your work. I grew up playing Halcydonia Interactive’s educational games. They taught me how to read, write, do math, solve puzzles …” I proceeded to ramble on as we walked, raving about all of my favorite Halcydonia titles and geeking out on Og in a classically embarrassing fashion.

Aech must have thought I was brown-nosing, because she snickered throughout my stammering monologue, but Og was very cool about it. “That’s wonderful to hear,” he said, seeming genuinely pleased. “My wife and I were very proud of those games. I’m so glad you have fond memories of them.”

We rounded a corner, and Aech and I both froze before the entrance of a giant room filled with row after row of old videogames. We both knew it must be James Halliday’s classic videogame collection—the collection he’d willed to Morrow after his death. Og glanced around and saw us lingering by the entrance, then hurried back to retrieve us.

“I promise to give you a tour later, when all the excitement is over,” Og said, his breathing a bit labored. He was moving quickly for a man his age and size. He led us down a spiral stone staircase to an elevator that carried us down several more floors to Og’s basement. The decor here was much more modern. We followed Og through a maze of carpeted hallways until we reached a row of seven circular doorways, each numbered.

“And here we are!” Morrow said, gesturing with the torch. “These are my OASIS immersion bays. They’re all top-of-the-line Habashaw rigs. OIR-Ninety-four hundreds.”

“Ninety-four hundreds? No kidding?” Aech let out a low whistle. “Wicked.”

“Where are the others?” I asked, looking around nervously.

“Art3mis and Shoto are already in bays two and three,” he said. “Bay one is mine. You two can take your pick of the others.”

I stared at the doors, wondering which one Art3mis was behind.

Og motioned to the end of the hall. “You’ll find haptic suits of all sizes in the dressing rooms. Now, get yourselves suited and booted!”

He smiled wide when Aech and I emerged from the dressing rooms a few minutes later, each dressed in brand-new haptic suits and gloves.

“Excellent!” Og said. “Now grab a bay and log in. The clock is ticking!”

Aech turned to face me. I could tell she wanted to say something, but words seemed to fail her. After a few seconds she stuck out her gloved hand. I took it.

“Good luck, Aech,” I said.

“Good luck, Z,” she replied. Then she turned to Og and said, “Thanks again, Og.” Before he could respond, she stood on her tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek. Then she disappeared through the door to bay four and it hissed shut behind her.

Og grinned after her, then turned to face me. “The whole world is rooting for the four of you. Try not to let them down.”

“We’ll do our best.”

“I know you will.” He offered me his hand and I shook it.

I took a step toward my immersion bay, then turned back. “Og, can I ask you one question?” I said.

He raised an eyebrow. “If you’re going to ask me what’s inside the Third Gate, I have no idea,” he said. “And even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. You should know that.…”

I shook my head. “No, that’s not it. I wanted to ask what it was that ended your friendship with Halliday. In all the research I’ve done, I’ve never been able to find out. What happened?”

Morrow studied me for a moment. He’d been asked this question in interviews many times before and had always ignored it. I don’t know why he decided to tell me. Maybe he’d been waiting all these years to tell someone.

“It was because of Kira. My wife.” He paused a moment, then cleared his throat and continued. “Like me, he’d been in love with her since high school. Of course, he never had the courage to act on it. So she never knew how he felt about her. And neither did I. He didn’t tell me about it until the last time I spoke to him, right before he died. Even then, it was hard for him to communicate with me. Jim was never very good with people, or with expressing his emotions.”

I nodded silently and waited for him to continue.

“Even after Kira and I got engaged, I think Jim still harbored some fantasy of stealing her away from me. But once we got married, he abandoned that notion. He told me he’d stopped speaking to me because of the overwhelming jealousy he felt. Kira was the only woman he ever loved.” Morrow’s voice caught in his throat. “I can understand why Jim felt that way. Kira was very special. It was impossible not to fall in love with her.” He smiled at me. “You know what it’s like to meet someone like that, don’t you?”

“I do,” I said. Then, when I realized he had no more to say on the subject, I said, “Thank you, Mr. Morrow. Thank you for telling me all of that.”

“You’re quite welcome,” he said. Then he walked over to his immersion bay, and the door irised open. Inside, I could see that his rig had been modified to include several strange components, including an OASIS console modified to look like a vintage Commodore 64. He glanced back at me. “Good luck, Parzival. You’re going to need it.”

“What are you going to do?” I asked. “During the fight?”

“Sit back and watch, of course!” he said. “This looks to be the most epic battle in videogame history.” He grinned at me one last time, then stepped through the door and was gone, leaving me alone in the dimly lit hallway.

I spent a few minutes thinking about everything Morrow had told me. Then I walked over to my own immersion bay and stepped inside.

It was a small spherical room. A gleaming haptic chair was suspended on a jointed hydraulic arm attached to the ceiling. There was no omnidirectional treadmill, because the room itself served that function. While you were logged in, you could walk or run in any direction and the sphere would rotate around and beneath you, preventing you from ever touching the wall. It was like being inside a giant hamster ball.

I climbed into the chair and felt it adjust to fit the contours of my body. A robotic arm extended from the chair and slipped a brand-new Oculance visor onto my face. It, too, adjusted so that it fit perfectly. The visor scanned my retinas and the system prompted me to speak my new pass phrase: “Reindeer Flotilla Setec Astronomy.”

I took a deep breath as the system logged me in.

Chapter 34

I was ready to rock.

My avatar was buffed to the eyeballs and armed to the teeth. I was packing as many magic items and as much firepower as I could squeeze into my inventory.

Everything was in place. Our plan was in motion. It was time to go.

I entered my stronghold’s hangar and pressed a button on the wall to open the launch doors. They slid back, slowly revealing the launch tunnel leading up to Falco’s surface. I walked to the end of the runway, past my X-wing and the Vonnegut. I wouldn’t be taking either of them today. They were both good ships, with formidable weapons and defenses, but neither craft would offer much protection in the epic shitstorm that was about to unfold on Chthonia. Fortunately, I now had a new mode of transportation.

I removed the twelve-inch Leopardon robot from my avatar’s inventory and set it down gently on the runway. Shortly before I’d been arrested by IOI, I’d taken some time to examine the toy Leopardon robot and ascertain its powers. As I suspected, the robot was actually a powerful magical item. It hadn’t taken me long to figure out the command word required to activate it. Just like in Toei’s original Supaidaman TV series, you summoned the robot simply by shouting its name. I did this now, taking the precaution of backing away from the robot a good distance before shouting “Leopardon!”

I heard a piercing shriek that sounded like rending metal. A second later, the once-tiny robot had grown to a height of almost a hundred meters. The top of the robot’s head now protruded through the open launch doors in the hangar ceiling.

I gazed up at the towering robot, admiring the attention to detail Halliday had put into coding it. Every feature of the original Japanese mech had been re-created, including its giant gleaming sword and spiderweb-embossed shield. A tiny access door was set into the robot’s massive left foot, and it opened as I approached, revealing a small elevator inside. It carried me up through the interior of the robot’s leg and torso, to the cockpit located inside its armored chest. As I seated myself in the captain’s chair, I spotted a silver control bracelet in a clear case on the wall. I took it out and snapped it onto my avatar’s wrist. The bracelet would allow me to use voice commands to control the robot while I was outside it.

Several rows of buttons were set into the command console in front of me, all labeled in Japanese. I pressed one of them and the engines roared to life. Then I hit the throttle and the twin rocket boosters in each of the robot’s feet ignited, launching it upward, out of my stronghold and into Falco’s star-filled sky.

I noticed that Halliday had added an old eight-track tape player to the cockpit control panel. There was also a rack of eight-track tapes mounted over my right shoulder. I grabbed one and slapped it into the deck. Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap by AC/DC began to blast out of the robot’s internal and external speakers, so loud it made my chair vibrate.

As soon as the robot was clear of my hangar, I shouted “Change Marveller!” into the control bracelet (the voice commands appeared to work only if you shouted them). The robot’s legs, arms, and head folded inward and locked into new positions, transforming the robot into a starship known as the Marveller. Once the transformation was complete, I left Falco’s orbit and set a course for the nearest stargate.

When I emerged from the stargate in Sector Ten, my radar screen lit up like a Christmas tree. Thousands of space vehicles of every make and model were crawling through the starry blackness around me, everything from single-seater craft to giant moon-sized freighters. I’d never seen so many starships in one place. A steady stream of them poured out of the stargate, while others converged on the area from every direction in the sky. All of the ships gradually funneled together, forming a long, haphazard caravan of vessels stretching toward Chthonia, a tiny blue-brown orb floating in the distance. It looked like every single person in the OASIS was headed for Castle Anorak. I felt a brief surge of exhilaration, even though I knew Art3mis’s warning might still prove true—there was a chance most of these avatars were here only to watch the show and had no intention of actually risking their lives to fight the Sixers.

Art3mis. After all this time, she was now in a room just a few feet away from me. We would actually be meeting in person as soon as this fight was over. The thought should have terrified me, but instead I felt a zen calm wash over me: Whatever was going to happen down on Chthonia, everything I’d risked had already been worth it.

I transformed the Marveller back into its robot configuration, then joined the long parade of spacecraft. My ship stood out in the vast array of vessels, since it was the only giant robot. A cloud of smaller ships quickly formed around me, piloted by curious avatars zooming in for a closer look at Leopardon. I had to mute my comlink because so many different people were trying to hail me, asking who the hell I was and where I’d picked up such a sweet ride.

As the planet Chthonia grew larger in my cockpit window, the density and number of ships around me seemed to increase exponentially. When I finally entered the planet’s atmosphere and began to descend toward the surface, it was like flying through a swarm of metal insects. When I reached the area around Castle Anorak, I had a hard time believing my eyes. A concentrated, pulsing mass of ships and avatars covered the ground and filled the air. It was like some otherworldly Woodstock. Shoulder-to-shoulder avatars stretched to the horizon in all directions. Thousands more floated and flew through the air above, dodging the constant influx of ships. And at the center of all this insanity stood Castle Anorak itself, an onyx jewel gleaming beneath the Sixers’ transparent spherical shield. Every few seconds some hapless avatar or ship would inadvertently fly or careen into the shield and get vaporized, like a fly hitting a bug zapper.

When I got closer, I spotted an open patch of ground directly in front of the castle’s entrance, just outside the shield wall. Three giant figures stood side by side at the center of the clearing. The crowd around them was continuously surging inward and then receding as avatars pushed back against each other to try to keep a respectful distance from Aech, Art3mis, and Shoto, who each sat inside their own gleaming giant robot.

This was my first opportunity to see which robots Aech, Art3mis, and Shoto had selected after clearing the Second Gate, and it took me a moment to place the towering female robot Art3mis was piloting. It was black and chrome in color, with elaborate boomerang-shaped headgear and symmetrical red breastplates that made it look like a female version of Tranzor Z. Then I realized it was the female version of Tranzor Z, an obscure character from the original Mazinger Z anime series known as Minerva X.

Aech had selected an RX-78 Gundam mech from the original Mobile Suit Gundam anime series, one of his longtime favorites. (Even though I now knew Aech was actually a female in real life, her avatar was still male, so I decided to continue to refer to him as such.)

Shoto stood several heads taller than both of them, concealed inside the cockpit of Raideen, the enormous red-and-blue robot from the mid-’70s Brave Raideen anime series. The massive mech clutched his signature golden bow in one hand and had a large spiked shield strapped to the other.

A roar swept through the crowd as I flew in low over the shield and rocketed to a halt above the others. I rotated my orientation so that Leopardon was upright, then cut the engines and dropped the remaining distance to the surface. My robot landed on one knee, and the impact shook the ground. As I stood it upright, the sea of onlookers began to chant my avatar’s name. Par-zi-val! Par-zi-val!

As the chanting faded back to a dull roar, I turned to face my companions.

“Nice entrance, ya big show-off,” Art3mis said, using our private comlink channel. “Did you show up late on purpose?”

“Not my fault, I swear,” I said, trying to play it cool. “There was a long line at the stargate.”

Aech nodded his mech’s massive head. “Every transport terminal on the planet has been spitting out avatars since last night,” he said, motioning to the scene around us with his Gundam’s massive hand. “This is unreal. I’ve never seen so many ships or avatars in one place.”

“Me neither,” Art3mis said. “I’m surprised the GSS servers can handle the load, with so much activity in one sector. But there doesn’t seem to be any lag at all.”

I took a long look at the sea of avatars around us, then shifted my attention to the castle. Thousands of flying avatars and ships continued to buzz around the shield, occasionally firing bullets, lasers, missiles, and other projectiles at it, all of which impacted harmlessly on the surface. Inside the sphere, thousands of power-armored Sixer avatars stood in silent formation, completely encircling the castle. Interspersed through their ranks were rows of hover tanks and gunships. In any other setting, the Sixer army would have appeared formidable. Maybe even unstoppable. But in the face of the endless mob that now surrounded them, the Sixers looked woefully outnumbered and outmatched.

“So, Parzival,” said Shoto, turning his robot’s huge head in my direction. “It’s showtime, old friend. If that sphere doesn’t come down like you promised, this is going to be pretty embarrassing.”

“ ‘Han will have that shield down,’ ” Aech quoted. “ ‘We’ve got to give him more time!’ ”

I laughed, then used my robot’s right hand to tap the back of its left wrist, indicating the time. “Aech is right. It’s still six minutes to noon.”

The end of my sentence was drowned out by another roar from the crowd. Directly in front of us, inside the sphere, the massive front doors of Castle Anorak had just swung open, and now a single Sixer avatar was emerging from within.

Sorrento.

Grinning at the din of booing and hissing that greeted his arrival, Sorrento waved his hand at the Sixer troops stationed directly in front of the castle and they immediately scattered, clearing a large open space. Sorrento stepped forward into it, positioning himself directly opposite us, just a few dozen yards away, on the other side of the shield. Ten other Sixer avatars emerged from the castle and positioned themselves behind Sorrento, each of them standing a good distance apart.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Art3mis muttered into her headset.

“Yeah,” Aech whispered. “Me too.”

Sorrento surveyed the scene, then smiled up at us. When he spoke, his voice was amplified through powerful speakers mounted on the Sixer gunships and hover tanks, allowing him to be heard by everyone in the area. And since there were cameras and reporters from every major newsfeed outlet present, I knew his words were being broadcast to the entire world.

“Welcome to Castle Anorak,” Sorrento said. “We’ve been expecting you.” He made a sweeping gesture, indicating the angry mob that surrounded him. “I must say, we are a bit surprised so many of you showed up here today. By now it must be obvious, to even the most ignorant among you, that nothing can get past our shield.”

His proclamation was met with a deafening roar of shouted threats, insults, and colorful profanity. I waited a moment, then raised both of my robot’s hands, calling for quiet. Once a semblance of silence had descended, I got on the public comm channel, which had the same effect as turning on a giant PA system. I dialed my headset volume down to kill the feedback, then said, “You’re wrong, Sorrento. We’re coming in. At noon. All of us.”

A roar of approval erupted from the assembled gunters. Sorrento didn’t bother waiting for it to die down. “You’re welcome to try,” he said, still grinning. Then he produced an item from his inventory and placed it on the ground in front of him. I zoomed in for a closer look and felt the muscles in my jaw tighten. It was a toy robot. A bipedal dinosaur with armor-plated skin and a pair of large cannons mounted on its shoulder blades. I recognized it immediately, from several turn-of-the-century Japanese monster flicks.

It was Mechagodzilla.

“Kiryu!” Sorrento shouted, his voice still amplified. At the sound of the command word, his tiny robot instantly grew in size until it stood almost as tall as Castle Anorak itself, twice the height of the “giant” robots that Aech, Shoto, Art3mis, and I piloted. The mechanical lizard’s armored head almost touched the top of the spherical shield.

An awestruck silence fell over the crowd, followed by a rumble of fearful recognition from the thousands of gunters present. They all recognized this giant metal behemoth. And they all knew it was nearly indestructible.

Sorrento entered the mech through an access door in one of its massive heels. A few seconds later, the beast’s eyes began to glow bright yellow. Then it threw back its head, opened its jagged maw, and let out a piercing metallic roar.

On cue, the ten Sixer avatars standing behind Sorrento pulled out their toy robots and activated them, too. Five of them had the huge robotic lions that could form Voltron. The other five had giant mechs from Robotech and Neon Genesis Evangelion.

“Oh shit,” I heard Art3mis and Aech whisper in unison.

“Come on!” Sorrento shouted defiantly. His challenge echoed across the crowded landscape.

Many of the gunters on the front lines took an involuntary step backward. A few others turned and ran for their lives. But Aech, Shoto, Art3mis, and I held our ground.

I checked the time on my display. Less than a minute to go now. I pressed a button on Leopardon’s control panel, and my giant robot drew its gleaming sword.

I didn’t witness it firsthand, but I can tell you with some certainty that this is what happened next:

The Sixers had erected a large armored bunker behind Castle Anorak, filled with pallets of weapons and battle gear that had been teleported in by the Sixers before they activated their shield. There was also a long rack of thirty Supply Droids, which had been installed along the bunker’s eastern wall. Due to a lack of imagination on the part of the Supply Droids’ original designer, they all looked exactly like the robot Johnny Five from the 1986 film Short Circuit. The Sixers used these droids primarily as gofers, to run errands and fill equipment and ammo requisitions for the troops stationed outside.

At exactly one minute to noon, one of the Supply Droids, designation SD-03, powered itself on and disengaged from its charging dock. Then it rolled forward on its tank treads, across the bunker floor, to the armory cage at its opposite end. Two robotic sentries stood outside the armory’s entrance. SD-03 transmitted its equipment requisition order to them—an order that I myself had submitted on the Sixer intranet two days earlier. The sentries verified the requisition and stepped aside, permitting SD-03 to roll into the cage. It continued past long storage racks that held a wide array of weaponry: magic swords, shields, powered armor suits, plasma rifles, railguns, and countless other weapons. Finally, the droid rolled to a stop. The rack in front of it held five large octahedron-shaped devices, each roughly the size of a soccer ball. Each device had a small control panel set into one of its eight sides, along with a serial number. SD-03 found the serial number that matched the one on my requisition form. Then, following a set of instructions I’d programmed into it, the little droid used its clawlike index finger to enter a series of commands on the device’s control panel. When it finished, a small light above the keypad turned from green to red. Then SD-03 lifted the octahedron in its arms. As it exited the armory, one antimatter friction-induction bomb was subtracted from the Sixers’ computerized inventory.

SD-03 then rolled out of the bunker and began to climb a series of ramps and staircases the Sixers had built onto the castle’s outer walls to provide access to the upper levels. Along the way, the droid rolled through several security checkpoints. Each time, robotic sentries scanned its security clearance and found that the droid was allowed to go anywhere it damn well pleased. When SD-03 reached Castle Anorak’s uppermost level, it rolled out onto a large observation platform located there.

At this point, SD-03 may have drawn a few curious looks from the squadron of elite Sixer avatars guarding the platform. I have no way of knowing. But even if the guards somehow anticipated what was about to happen and opened fire on the little droid, it was too late for them to stop it now.

SD-03 continued rolling directly to the center of the roof, where a high-level Sixer wizard sat holding the Orb of Osuvox—the artifact generating the spherical shield around the castle.

Then, executing the last of the instructions I’d programmed into it two days earlier, SD-03 lifted the antimatter friction-induction bomb up over its head and detonated it.

The explosion vaporized the supply droid, along with all the avatars stationed on the platform, including the Sixer wizard who was operating the Orb of Osuvox. The moment he died, the artifact deactivated and fell to the now-empty platform.

Chapter 35

A brilliant flash of light accompanied the detonation, momentarily blinding me. When it receded, my eyes focused back on the castle. The shield was down. Now, nothing separated the mighty Sixer and gunter armies but open ground and empty space.

For about five seconds, nothing happened. Time seemed to stop and everything was silent and still. Then all hell broke loose.

Sitting alone in the cockpit of my mech, I let out a silent cheer. Incredibly, my plan had worked. But I had no time to celebrate, because I was now standing smack-dab in the middle of the largest battle in the history of the OASIS.

I don’t know what I expected to happen next. I’d hoped maybe a tenth of the gunters present would join our assault on the Sixers. But in seconds it was clear that every single one of them intended to join the fight. A fierce battle cry rose from the sea of avatars around us and they all surged forward, converging on the Sixer army from every direction. Their total lack of hesitation astounded me, because it was obvious many of them were rushing toward certain death.

I watched in amazement as the two mighty forces clashed all around me, on the ground and in the sky. It was a chaotic, breathtaking scene, like several beehives and wasp nests had been smashed together and then dropped onto a giant anthill.

Art3mis, Aech, Shoto, and I stood at the center of it all. At first, I didn’t even move for fear of crushing the wave of gunters swarming around and over my robot’s feet. Sorrento, however, didn’t wait for anyone to get out of his way. He crushed several dozen avatars (including a few of his own troops) under his mech’s titanic feet as he lumbered toward us, each of his footfalls creating a small crater in the rocky surface.

“Uh-oh,” I heard Shoto mutter as his mech assumed a defensive posture. “Here he comes.”

The Sixer mechs were already taking an immense amount of fire from all directions. Sorrento was getting hit more than anyone, because his mech was the biggest target on the battlefield, and no gunter with a ranged weapon could seem to resist taking a shot at him. The intense barrage of projectiles, fireballs, magic missiles, and laser bolts quickly destroyed or disabled the other Sixer mechs (who never even got a chance to form Voltron). But Sorrento’s robot somehow remained undamaged. Every projectile that hit him seemed to ricochet harmlessly off his mech’s armored body. Dozens of spacecraft swooped and buzzed around him, peppering his mech with rocket fire, but their attacks also seemed to have little effect.

“It is on!” Aech shouted into his comlink. “It is on like Red Dawn!” And with that, he unleashed all of his Gundam’s considerable firepower at Sorrento. At the same moment, Shoto began firing Raideen’s bow, while Art3mis’s mech fired some sort of red energy beam that appeared to originate from Minerva X’s giant metal breasts. Not wanting to be left out, I fired Leopardon’s Arc Turn weapon, a gold boomerang that launched from the mech’s forehead.

All of our attacks were direct hits, but Art3mis’s beam weapon was the only one that seemed to do any real damage to Sorrento. She blasted a chunk out of the metal lizard’s right shoulder blade and disabled the cannon mounted there. But Sorrento didn’t pause in his approach. As he continued to close in on us, the Mechagodzilla’s eyes began to glow a bright blue. Then Sorrento opened its mouth, and a cascading bolt of blue lightning shot outward from the mech’s open maw. The beam struck the ground directly in front of us, then cut a deep smoking furrow in the earth as it continued to sweep forward, vaporizing every avatar and ship in its path. All four of us managed to leap out of the way by launching our robots skyward, though I nearly took a direct hit. The lightning weapon shut down a second later, but Sorrento continued to trudge forward. I noticed that his mech’s eyes were no longer glowing blue. Apparently, his lightning weapon had to recharge.

“I think we’ve reached the final boss,” Aech joked over the comlink. The four of us were now spread out and circling above Sorrento, making ourselves moving targets.

“Screw this, guys,” I said. “I don’t think we can destroy that thing.”

“Astute observation, Z,” Art3mis said. “Got any bright ideas?”

I thought for a second. “How about I distract him while the three of you cut around and head for the castle entrance?”

“Sounds like a plan,” Shoto replied. But instead of heading for the castle, he banked and flew straight at Sorrento, closing the distance between them in the space of a few seconds.

“Go!” he shouted into his comlink. “This bastard is all mine!”

Aech cut across Sorrento’s right flank and Art3mis banked left, while I rocketed upward and over him. Below me, I could see Shoto facing off against Sorrento, and the difference in the size of their mechs was disturbing. Shoto’s robot looked like an action figure next to Sorrento’s massive metal dragon. Nevertheless, Shoto cut his thrusters and dropped to the ground directly in front of the Mechagodzilla.

“Hurry,” I heard Aech shout. “The castle entrance is wide open!”

From my vantage point in the sky above, I could see that the Sixer forces surrounding the castle were already being overrun by the endless mob of enemy avatars. The Sixers’ lines were broken, and hundreds of gunters were streaming past them now, running up to the open castle entrance only to discover once they reached it that they couldn’t cross the threshold because they didn’t possess a copy of the Crystal Key.

Aech swung around directly in front of me. Still a hundred feet off the ground, he popped the hatch of his Gundam’s cockpit and leapt out, whispering the robot’s command word in the same instant. As the giant robot shrank back to its original size, he snatched it out of the air and stowed it in his inventory. Now flying by some magical means, Aech’s avatar swooped down, passed over the bottleneck of gunters clustered at the castle entrance, and disappeared through the open double doors. A second later, Art3mis executed a similar maneuver, stowing her own mech in midair and then flying into the castle right behind Aech.

I dropped Leopardon into a sharp dive and prepared to follow them.

“Shoto,” I shouted into my comm. “We’re going inside now! Let’s go!”

“Go ahead,” Shoto replied. “I’ll be right behind you.” But something about the tone of his voice bothered me, and I pulled out of my dive and swung my mech back around. Shoto was hovering above Sorrento, near his right flank. Sorrento slowly turned his mech around and began to stomp back toward the castle. I could see now that his mech’s weakness was its lack of speed. The Mechagodzilla’s slow movement and attacks counterbalanced its seeming invulnerability.

“Shoto!” I shouted. “What are you waiting for? Let’s go!”

“Go on without me,” Shoto said. “I owe this son of a bitch some payback.”

Before I could reply, Shoto dove at Sorrento, swinging a giant sword in each of his mech’s hands. The blades both cut into Sorrento’s right side, creating a shower of sparks, and to my surprise, they actually did some damage. When the smoke cleared I saw that the Mechagodzilla’s right arm now hung limp. It was nearly severed at the elbow.

“Looks like you’ll be wiping with your left hand now, Sorrento!” Shoto shouted triumphantly. Then he fired Raideen’s boosters and headed in my direction, toward the castle. But Sorrento had already swiveled his mech’s head around and was now taking a bead on Shoto with two glowing blue eyes.

“Shoto!” I shouted. “Look out!” But my voice was drowned out by the sound of the lightning weapon firing out of the metal dragon’s mouth. It nailed Shoto’s mech directly in the center of its back. The robot exploded in an orange ball of fire.

I heard a brief screech of static on the comm channel. I called out Shoto’s name again, but he didn’t reply. Then a message flashed on my display, informing me that Shoto’s name had just disappeared from the Scoreboard.

He was dead.

This realization momentarily stunned me, which was unfortunate, because Sorrento’s lightning weapon was still firing, moving in a fast sweeping arc, cutting across the ground, then diagonally up the castle wall, toward me. I finally reacted—too late—and Sorrento nailed my mech in the lower torso, just a split second before the beam cut off.

I looked down to discover that the bottom half of my robot had just been blasted away. Every warning indicator in my cockpit started to flash as my mech began to fall out of the sky in two smoking, burning halves.

Somehow, I had the presence of mind to reach up and yank the ejection handle above my seat. The cockpit canopy popped off, and I jumped free of the falling mech a split second before it impacted on the castle steps, killing several dozen of the avatars crowded there.

I fired my avatar’s jet boots just before I hit the ground, then quickly adjusted my immersion rig’s control setup, because I was now controlling my avatar instead of a giant robot. I managed to land on my feet in front of the castle, just clear of Leopardon’s flaming wreckage. A second after I landed, a shadow spilled over me, and I turned around to see Sorrento’s mech blotting out the sky. He raised its massive left foot, preparing to crush me.

I took three running steps and jumped, firing my jet boots in midleap. The thrust threw me clear just as the Mechagodzilla’s huge clawed foot slammed down, forming a crater in the spot where I’d stood a second before. The metal beast let out another earsplitting shriek, followed by hollow, booming laughter. Sorrento’s laughter.

I cut my jet-boot thrusters and tucked my avatar into a ball. I hit the ground rolling, tumbled forward, then came up on my feet. I squinted up at the metal lizard’s head. Its eyes weren’t glowing again—not yet. I could fire my jet boots again now and make it inside the castle before Sorrento could fire on me again. He wouldn’t be able to follow me inside—not without getting out of his oversize mech.

I could hear Art3mis and Aech shouting at me on my comlink. They were already inside, standing in front of the gate, waiting for me.

All I had to do was fly into the castle and join them. The three of us could open and enter the gate before Sorrento caught up with us. I was sure of it.

But I didn’t move. Instead, I took out the Beta Capsule and held the small metal cylinder in the palm of my avatar’s hand.

Sorrento had tried to kill me. And in the process, he’d murdered my aunt, along with several of my neighbors, including sweet old Mrs. Gilmore, who had never hurt a soul. He’d also had Daito killed, and even though I’d never met him, Daito had been my friend.

And now Sorrento had just killed Shoto’s avatar, robbing him of his chance to enter the Third Gate. Sorrento didn’t deserve his power or his position. What he deserved, I decided in that moment, was public humiliation and defeat. He deserved to have his ass kicked while the whole world watched.

I held the Beta Capsule high over my head and pressed its activation button.

There was a blinding flash of light, and the sky turned crimson as my avatar changed, growing and morphing into a gigantic red-and-silver-skinned humanoid alien with glowing egg-shaped eyes, a strange finned head, and a glowing light embedded in the center of my chest. For the next three minutes, I was Ultraman.

The Mechagodzilla stopped shrieking and thrashing. Its gaze had been pointed down at the ground, where my avatar had stood a second earlier. Now its head slowly tilted up, taking in the size of its new opponent, until our glowing eyes finally met. I now stood face-to-face with Sorrento’s mech, matching its height and size almost exactly.

Sorrento’s mech took several awkward steps backward. Its eyes began to glow again.

I crouched slightly and struck an offensive pose, noticing that a timer now appeared in the corner of my display, counting down from three minutes.

2:59. 2:58. 2:57.

Below the timer there was a menu listing Ultraman’s various energy attacks in Japanese. I quickly selected SPECIUM RAY and then held my arms up in front of me, one horizontal and the other vertical, forming a cross. A pulsing beam of white energy shot out of my forearms, striking the Mechagodzilla in its chest and knocking it backward. Thrown off balance, Sorrento lost control and tripped over his own mammoth feet. His mech tumbled to the ground, landing on its side.

A cheer went up from the thousands of avatars watching from the chaotic battlefield around us.

I launched myself into the air and flew half a kilometer straight upward. Then I dropped back down, feet first, aiming my heels directly at the Mechagodzilla’s curved spine. When my feet hit, I heard something inside the metal beast snap under my crushing weight. Smoke began to pour out of its mouth, and the blue glow in its eyes quickly dissipated.

I executed a backflip and landed behind the supine mech in a crouch. Its single functioning arm flailed wildly while its tail and legs thrashed about. Sorrento appeared to be struggling with the controls in an effort to get the beast back on its feet.

I selected YATSUAKI KOHRIN from my weapon menu: Ultra-Slice. A glowing circular saw blade of electric-blue energy appeared in my right hand, spinning fiercely. I hurled it at Sorrento, releasing it with a snap of my wrist, like a Frisbee. It whirred through the air and struck the Mechagodzilla in its stomach. The energy blade cut into its metal skin as if it were tofu, slicing the mech into two halves. Just before the entire machine exploded, the head detached and blasted away from the neck. Sorrento had ejected. But since the mech was lying flat, the head shot out on a trajectory parallel to the ground. Sorrento quickly adjusted for this, and the rockets sprouting from the head began to tilt it skyward. Before it could get very far, I crossed my arms again and fired another specium ray, nailing the retreating head like a clay pigeon. It disintegrated in an immensely satisfying explosion.

The crowd went wild.

I checked the Scoreboard and confirmed that Sorrento’s employee number had vanished. His avatar was dead. I couldn’t take too much satisfaction from this, though, because I knew he was probably already kicking one of his underlings out of a haptic chair so he could take control of a new avatar.

The counter on my display had only fifteen seconds remaining when I deactivated the Beta Capsule. My avatar instantly shrank back to normal size, and my appearance returned to normal. Then I spun around, powered on my jet boots, and flew into the castle.

When I reached the opposite end of the huge foyer, I found Aech and Art3mis standing in front of the crystal door, waiting for me. The smoking, bloodied bodies of over a dozen recently slain Sixer avatars lay scattered on the stone floor around them, slowly fading out of existence. Apparently, there had been a brief and decisive skirmish and I’d just missed it.

“No fair,” I said, cutting my jet boots and dropping to the floor beside Aech. “You could have saved at least one of them for me.”

Art3mis didn’t reply. She just gave me the finger.

“Congrats on wasting Sorrento,” Aech said. “It was an epic throwdown, for sure. But you’re still a complete idiot. You know that, right?”

“Yeah.” I shrugged. “I know.”

“You’re such a selfish asshole!” Art3mis shouted. “What if you’d gotten yourself killed too?”

“I didn’t, though. Did I?” I said, stepping around her to examine the crystal door. “So chill out and let’s open this thing.”

I examined the keyhole in the center of the door, then looked at the words printed directly above it, etched into the door’s faceted surface. Charity. Hope. Faith.

I took out my copy of the Crystal Key and held it up. Aech and Art3mis followed suit and held up their keys too.

Nothing happened.

We all exchanged concerned looks. Then an idea occurred to me, and I cleared my throat. “ ‘Three is a magic number,’ ” I said, reciting the first line of the Schoolhouse Rock! song. As soon as I spoke the words, the crystal door began to glow, and two additional keyholes appeared, on either side of the first.

“That did it!” Aech whispered. “Holy shit. I can’t believe this. We’re really here. Standing in front of the Third Gate.”

Art3mis nodded. “Finally.”

I inserted my key in the center keyhole. Aech inserted his into the keyhole on the left, and Art3mis placed hers in the keyhole on the right.

“Clockwise?” Art3mis said. “On the count of three?”

Aech and I nodded. Art3mis counted to three, and we turned our keys in unison. There was a brief flash of blue light, during which all of our keys and the crystal door itself vanished. And then the Third Gate stood open in front of us, a crystal doorway leading into a spinning whirlpool of stars.

“Wow,” I heard Art3mis whisper beside me. “Here we go.”

As the three of us stepped forward, preparing to enter the gate, I heard an earsplitting boom. It sounded like the entire universe was cracking in half.

And then we all died.

Chapter 36

When your avatar gets killed, your screen doesn’t fade to black right away. Instead, your point of view automatically shifts to a third-person perspective, treating you to a brief out-of-body replay of your avatar’s final fate.

A split second after we heard the thunderous boom, my perspective shifted, and I found myself looking at our three avatars, standing there frozen in front of the open gate. Then an incinerating white light filled the world, accompanied by an earsplitting wall of sound. It was what I’d always pictured being fried in a nuclear blast would be like.

For a brief moment, I saw our avatars’ skeletons suspended inside the transparent outlines of our motionless bodies. Then my avatar’s hit-point counter dropped to zero.

The blast wave arrived a second later, disintegrating everything in its path—our avatars, the floor, the walls, the castle itself, and the thousands of avatars gathered around it. Everything was turned to a fine, atomized dust that hung suspended in the air for a second before slowly settling to earth.

The entire surface of the planet had been wiped clean. The area around Castle Anorak, which had been crowded with warring avatars a split second before, was now a desolate and barren wasteland. Everyone and everything had been destroyed. Only the Third Gate remained, a crystal doorway floating in the air above the crater where the castle had stood a moment before.

My initial shock quickly turned to dread as I realized what had just happened.

The Sixers had detonated the Cataclyst.

It was the only explanation. Only that incredibly powerful artifact could have done this. Not only had it killed every avatar in the sector, it had even destroyed Castle Anorak, a fortress that, until now, had proven itself to be indestructible.

I stared at the open gate, floating in the empty air, and waited for the inevitable, final message to appear in the center of my display, the words I knew every other avatar in the sector must be seeing at this very moment: GAME OVER.

But when words finally did appear on my display, it was another message entirely: CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE AN EXTRA LIFE!

Then, as I watched in amazement, my avatar reappeared, fading back into existence in the exact same location where I’d died a few seconds earlier. I was standing in front of the open gate again. But the gate was now floating in midair, suspended several dozen meters above the planet’s surface, over the crater that had been created by the destruction of the castle. As my avatar finished materializing, I looked down and realized that the floor I’d been standing on earlier was now gone. So were my jet boots, and everything else I’d been carrying.

I seemed to hover in midair for a moment, like Wile E. Coyote in the old Roadrunner cartoons. Then I plummeted straight down. I made a desperate grab for the open gate in front of me, but it was well out of reach.

I hit the ground hard and lost a third of my hit points from the impact. Then I slowly got to my feet and looked around. I was standing in a vast cube-shaped crater—the space where the foundation and lower basement levels of Castle Anorak had stood. It was completely barren and eerily silent. There was no rubble from the destroyed castle, and no wreckage from the thousands of spaceships and aircraft that had filled the sky a few moments ago. In fact, there was no sign at all of the grand battle that had just been fought here. The Cataclyst had vaporized everything.

I looked down at my avatar and saw that I was now wearing a black T-shirt and blue jeans, the default outfit that appeared on every newly created avatar. Then I pulled up my stats and item inventory. My avatar had the same level and ability scores I’d had previously, but my inventory was completely empty except for one item—the quarter I’d obtained after playing my perfect game of Pac-Man on Archaide. Once I’d placed the quarter in my inventory, I hadn’t been able to remove it, so I’d never been able to have any divination or identification spells cast on it. I’d had no way of ascertaining the quarter’s true purpose or powers. During the tumultuous events of the past few months, I’d forgotten I even had the damn thing.

But now I knew what the quarter was—a single-use artifact that gave my avatar an extra life. Until that moment, I hadn’t even known such a thing was possible. In the history of the OASIS, there was no record of any avatar ever acquiring an extra life.

I selected the quarter in my inventory and tried again to remove it. This time, I was able to take it out and hold it in the palm of my avatar’s hand. Now that the artifact’s sole power had been used, it no longer possessed any magical properties. Now it was just a quarter.

I looked straight up at the crystal gate floating twenty meters above me. It was still sitting there, wide open. But I had no idea how I was going to get up there to enter it. I had no jet boots, no ship, and no magic items or memorized spells. Nothing that would allow me to fly or levitate. And there wasn’t a single stepladder in sight.

There I was, standing a stone’s throw from the Third Gate, but unable to reach it.

“Hey, Z?” I heard a voice say. “Can you hear me?”

It was Aech, but her voice was no longer altered to sound male. I could hear her perfectly, as if she were talking to me via comlink. But that didn’t make sense, because my avatar no longer had a comlink. And Aech’s avatar was dead.

“Where are you?” I asked the empty air.

“I’m dead, like everyone else,” Aech said. “Everyone but you.”

“Then how can I hear you?”

“Og patched all of us into your audio and video feeds,” she said. “So we can see what you see and hear what you hear.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Is that all right with you, Parzival?” I heard Og ask. “If it isn’t, just say so.”

I thought about it for a moment. “No, it’s fine with me,” I said. “Shoto and Art3mis are listening in too?”

“Yes,” Shoto said. “I’m here.”

“Yeah, we’re here, all right,” Art3mis said, and I could hear the barely contained rage in her voice. “And we’re all dead as doornails. The question is, why aren’t you dead too, Parzival?”

“Yeah, Z,” Aech said. “We are a bit curious about that. What happened?”

I took out the quarter and held it up in front of my eyes. “I was awarded this quarter on Archaide a few months ago, for playing a perfect game of Pac-Man. It was an artifact, but I never knew its purpose. Not until now. Turns out it gave me an extra life.”

I heard only silence for a moment; then Aech began to laugh. “You lucky son of a bitch!” she said. “The newsfeeds are reporting that every single avatar in the sector was just killed. Over half the population of the OASIS.”

“Was it the Cataclyst?” I asked.

“It had to be,” Art3mis said. “The Sixers must have bought it when it went up for auction a few years ago. And they’ve been sitting on it all this time, waiting for the perfect moment to detonate it.”

“But they just killed off all of their own troops, too,” Shoto said. “Why would they do that?”

“I think most of them were already dead,” Art3mis said.

“The Sixers had no choice,” I said. “It was the only way they could stop us. We’d already opened the Third Gate and were about to step inside when they detonated that thing—” I paused, realizing something. “How did they know we’d opened it? Unless—”

“They were watching us,” Aech said. “The Sixers probably had remote surveillance cameras hidden all around the gate.”

“So they saw us open it,” Art3mis said. “Which means they know how to open it now too.”

“Who cares?” Shoto interjected. “Sorrento’s avatar is dead. And so are all of the other Sixers.”

“Wrong,” Art3mis said. “Check the Scoreboard. There are still twenty Sixer avatars listed there, below Parzival. And their scores indicate that every single one of them has a copy of the Crystal Key.”

“Shit!” Aech and Shoto said in unison.

“The Sixers knew they might have to detonate the Cataclyst,” I said. “So they must have taken the precaution of moving some of their avatars outside of Sector Ten. They were probably waiting in a gunship just across the sector border, where it was safe.”

“You’re right,” Aech said. “Which means there are twenty more Sixers headed your way right now, Z. So you need to get your ass moving and get inside that gate. This is probably going to be your only chance to clear it.” I heard her let out a defeated sigh. “It’s over for us. So we’re all rooting for you now, amigo. Good luck.”

“Thanks, Aech.”

“Gokouun o inorimasu,” Shoto said. “Do your best.”

“I will,” I said. Then I waited for Art3mis to give me her blessing too.

“Good luck, Parzival,” she said after a long pause. “Aech is right, you know. You’re never going to get another shot at this. And neither will any other gunter.” I heard her voice catch, as if she were choking back tears. Then she took a deep breath and said, “Don’t screw this up.”

“I won’t,” I said. “No pressure, right?”

I glanced back up at the open gate, suspended in the air above me, so far out of reach. Then I dropped my gaze and began to scan the area, desperately trying to figure out how I was going to get up there. Something caught my eye—just a few flickering pixels in the distance, near the opposite end of the crater. I ran toward them.

“Uh, not to be a backseat driver or anything,” Aech said. “But where the hell are you going?”

“All of my avatar’s items were destroyed by the Cataclyst,” I said. “So now I have no way to fly up there and reach the gate.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Aech sighed. “Man, the hits just keep on coming!”

As I approached the object in the distance, it became gradually clearer. It was the Beta Capsule, floating just a few centimeters above the ground, spinning clockwise. The Cataclyst had destroyed everything in the sector that could be destroyed, but artifacts were indestructible. Just like the gate.

“It’s the Beta Capsule!” Shoto shouted. “It must have been thrown over here by the force of the blast. You can use it to become Ultraman and fly up to the gate!”

I nodded, raised the capsule over my head, then pressed the button on the side to activate it. But nothing happened. “Shit!” I muttered, realizing why. “It won’t work. It can only be used once a day.” I stowed the Beta Capsule and started to scan the ground around me. “There must be other artifacts scattered around here,” I said. I began to run along the perimeter of the castle foundation, still scanning the ground. “Were any of you guys carrying artifacts? One that would give me the ability to fly? Or levitate? Or teleport?”

“No,” answered Shoto. “I didn’t have any artifacts.”

“My Sword of the Ba’Heer was an artifact,” Aech said. “But it won’t help you reach the gate.”

“But my Chucks will,” Art3mis said.

“Your ‘Chucks’?” I repeated.

“My shoes. Black Chuck Taylor All Stars. They bestow their wearer with both speed and flight.”

“Great! Perfect!” I said. “Now I just have to find them.” I continued to run forward, eyes sweeping the ground. I found Aech’s sword a minute later and added it to my inventory, but it took me another five minutes of searching before I found Art3mis’s magic sneakers, near the south end of the crater. I put them on, and they adjusted to fit my avatar’s feet perfectly. “I’ll get these back to you, Arty,” I said, just as I finished lacing them up. “Promise.”

“You better,” she said. “They were my favorites.”

I took three running steps, leapt into the air, and then I was flying. I swooped up and around, then turned back toward the gate, aiming straight for it. But at the last moment, I banked to the right, then arced back around. I stopped to hover in front of the open gate. The crystal doorway hung in the air directly ahead, just a few yards away. It reminded me of the floating door in the opening credits of the original Twilight Zone.

“What are you waiting for?” Aech shouted. “The Sixers could show up any minute now!”

“I know,” I said. “But there’s something I need to say to all of you before I go in.”

“Well?” Art3mis said. “Spit it out! The clock is ticking, fool!”

“OK, OK!” I said. “I just wanted to say that I know how the three of you must feel right now. It isn’t fair, the way this has played out. We should all be entering the gate together. So before I go in, I want you guys to know something. If I reach the egg, I’m going to split the prize money equally among the four of us.”

Stunned silence.

“Hello?” I said after a few seconds. “Did you guys hear me?”

“Are you insane?” Aech asked. “Why would you do that, Z?”

“Because it’s the only honorable thing to do,” I said. “Because I never would have gotten this far on my own. Because all four of us deserve to see what’s inside that gate and find out how the game ends. And because I need your help.”

“Could you repeat that last bit, please?” Art3mis asked.

“I need your help,” I said. “You guys are right. This is my only shot at clearing the Third Gate. There won’t be any second chances, for anyone. The Sixers will be here soon, and they’ll enter the gate as soon as they arrive. So I have to clear it before they do, on my first attempt. The odds of me pulling that off will increase drastically if the three of you are backing me up. So … what do you say?”

“Count me in, Z,” Aech said. “I was planning to coach your dumb ass anyway.”

“Count me in too,” said Shoto. “I’ve got nothing left to lose.”

“Let me get this straight,” Art3mis said. “We help you clear the gate, and in return, you agree to split the prize money with us?”

“Wrong,” I said. “If I win, I’m going to split the prize money with you guys, regardless of whether you help me or not. So helping me is probably in your best interest.”

“I don’t suppose we have time to get that in writing?” Art3mis said.

I thought for a moment, then accessed my POV channel’s control menu. I initiated a live broadcast, so everyone watching my channel (my ratings counter said I currently had more than two hundred million viewers) could hear what I was about to say. “Greetings,” I said. “This is Wade Watts, also known as Parzival. I want to let the whole world know that if and when I find Halliday’s Easter egg, I hereby vow to split my winnings equally with Art3mis, Aech, and Shoto. Cross my heart and hope to die. Gunter’s honor. Pinky swear. All of that crap. If I’m lying, I should be forever branded as a gutless Sixer-fellating punk.”

As I finished the broadcast, I heard Art3mis say, “Dude, are you nuts? I was kidding!”

“Oh,” I said. “Right. I knew that.”

I cracked my knuckles, then flew forward into the gate, and my avatar vanished into the whirlpool of stars.

Chapter 37

I found myself standing in a vast, dark, empty space. I couldn’t see the walls or ceiling, but there appeared to be a floor, because I was standing on something. I waited a few seconds, unsure of what to do. Then a booming electronic voice echoed through the void. It sounded as if it were being generated by a primitive speech synthesizer, like those used in Q*Bert and Gorf. “Beat the high score or be destroyed!” the voice announced. A shaft of light appeared, shining down from somewhere high above. There, in front of me, at the base of this long pillar of light, stood an old coin-operated arcade game. I recognized its distinctive, angular cabinet immediately. Tempest. Atari. 1980.

I closed my eyes and dropped my head. “Crap,” I muttered. “This is not my best game, gang.”

“Come on,” I heard Art3mis whisper. “You had to know Tempest was going to factor into the Third Gate somehow. It was so obvious!”

“Oh really?” I said. “Why?”

“Because of the quote on the last page of the Almanac,” she replied. “ ‘I must uneasy make, lest too light winning make the prize light.’ ”

“I know the quote,” I said, annoyed. “It’s from Shakespeare. But I figured it was just Halliday’s way of letting us know how difficult he was going to make the Hunt.”

“It was,” Art3mis said. “But it was also a clue. That quote was taken from Shakespeare’s final play, The Tempest.”

“Shit!” I hissed. “How the hell did I miss that?”

“I never made that connection either,” Aech confessed. “Bravo, Art3mis.”

“The game Tempest also appears briefly in the music video for the song ‘Subdivisions’ by Rush,” she added. “One of Halliday’s favorites. Pretty hard to miss.”

“Whoa,” Shoto said. “She’s good.”

“OK!” I shouted. “It should have been obvious. No need to rub it in!”

“I take it you’ve haven’t had much practice at this game, Z?” Aech said.

“A little, a long time ago,” I said. “But not nearly enough. Look at the high score.” I pointed at the monitor. The high score was 728,329. The initials next to it were JDH—James Donovan Halliday. And, as I feared, the credit counter at the bottom of the screen had a numeral one in front of it.

“Yikes,” Aech said. “Only one credit. Just like Black Tiger.”

I remembered the now-useless extra life quarter in my inventory and took it out. But when I dropped it into the coin slot, it fell right through into the coin return. I reached down to remove it and saw a sticker on the coin mechanism: TOKENS ONLY.

“So much for that idea,” I said. “And I don’t see a token machine anywhere around here.”

“Looks like you only get one game,” Aech said. “All or nothing.”

“Guys, I haven’t played Tempest in years,” I said. “I’m screwed. There’s no way I’m going to beat Halliday’s high score on my first attempt.”

“You don’t have to,” Art3mis said. “Look at the copyright year.”

I glanced at the bottom of the screen: ©MCMLXXX ATARI.

“Nineteen eighty?” Aech said. “How does that help him?”

“Yeah,” I said. “How does that help me?”

“That means this is the very first version of Tempest,” Art3mis said. “The version that shipped with a bug in the game code. When Tempest first hit the arcades, kids discovered that if you died with a certain score, the machine would give you a bunch of free credits.”

“Oh,” I said, somewhat ashamed. “I didn’t know that.”

“You would,” Art3mis said, “if you’d researched the game as much as I did.”

“Damn, girl,” Aech said. “You’ve got some serious knowledge.”

“Thanks,” she said. “It helps to be an obsessive-compulsive geek. With no life.” Everyone laughed at that, except me. I was much too nervous.

“OK, Arty,” I said. “What do I need to do to get those free games?”

“I’m looking it up in my quest journal right now,” she said. I could hear paper rustling. It sounded like she was flipping through the pages of an actual book.

“You just happen to have a hard copy of your journal with you?” I asked.

“I’ve always kept my journal longhand, in spiral notebooks,” she said. “Good thing, too, since my OASIS account and everything in it was just erased.” More flipping of pages. “Here it is! First, you need to rack up over one hundred eighty thousand points. Once you’ve done that, make sure you end the game with a score where the last two digits are oh six, eleven, or twelve. If you do that, you’ll get forty free credits.”

“You’re absolutely positive?”

“Positively absolutely.”

“OK,” I said. “Here goes.”

I began to run through my pregame ritual. Stretching, cracking my knuckles, rolling my head and neck left and right.

“Christ, will you get on with it?” Aech said. “The suspense is killing me here!”

“Quiet!” Shoto said. “Give the man some room to breathe, will you?”

Everyone remained silent while I finished psyching myself up. “Here goes nothing,” I said. Then I hit the flashing Player One button.

Tempest used old-school vector graphics, so the game’s images were created from glowing neon lines drawn against a pitch-black screen. You’re given a top-down view of a three-dimensional tunnel, and you use a spinning rotary dial to control a “shooter” that travels around the rim of the tunnel. The object of the game is to shoot the enemies crawling up out of the tunnel toward you while dodging their fire and avoiding other obstacles. As you proceed from one level to the next, the tunnels take on gradually more complex geometric shapes, and the number of enemies and obstacles crawling up toward you multiplies drastically.

Halliday had put this Tempest machine on Tournament settings, so I couldn’t start the game any higher than level nine. It took me about fifteen minutes to get my score up above 180,000, and I lost two lives in the process. I was even rustier than I thought. When my score hit 189,412, I intentionally impaled my shooter on a spike, using up my last remaining life. The game prompted me to enter my initials, and I nervously tapped them in: W-O-W.

When I finished, the game’s credit counter jumped from zero up to forty.

The sound of my friends’ wild cheers filled my ears, nearly giving me a heart attack. “Art3mis, you’re a genius,” I said, once the noise died down.

“I know.”

I tapped the Player One button again and began a second game, now focused on beating Halliday’s high score. I still felt anxious, but considerably less so. If I didn’t manage to get the high score this time, I had thirty-nine more chances.

During a break between waves, Art3mis spoke up. “So, your initials are W-O-W? What does the O stand for?”

“Obtuse,” I said.

She laughed. “No, seriously.”

“Owen.”

“Owen,” she repeated. “Wade Owen Watts. That’s nice.” Then she fell silent again as the next wave began. I finished my second game a few minutes later, with a score of 219,584. Not horrible, but a far cry from my goal.

“Not bad,” Aech said.

“Yeah, but not that good, either,” Shoto observed. Then he seemed to remember that I could hear him. “I mean—much better, Parzival. You’re doing great.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Shoto.”

“Hey, check this out,” Art3mis said, reading from her journal. “The creator of Tempest, Dave Theurer, originally got the idea for the game from a nightmare he had about monsters crawling up out of a hole in the ground and chasing after him.” She laughed her little musical laugh, which I hadn’t heard in so long. “Isn’t that cool, Z?” she said.

“That is cool,” I replied. Somehow, just hearing her voice set me at ease. I think she knew this, and that was why she kept talking to me. I felt reenergized. I hit the Player One button again and began my third game.

They all watched me play in complete silence. Nearly an hour later, I lost my last man. My final score was 437,977.

As soon as the game ended, Aech’s voice cut in. “Bad news, amigo,” she said.

“What?”

“We were right. When the Cataclyst went off, the Sixers had a group of avatars in reserve, waiting just outside the sector. Right after the detonation, they reentered the sector and headed straight for Chthonia. They …” Her voice trailed off.

“They what?”

“They just entered the gate, about five minutes ago,” Art3mis answered. “The gate closed after you went in, but when the Sixers arrived, they used three of their own keys to reopen it.”

“You mean the Sixers are already inside the gate? Right now?”

“Eighteen of them,” Aech said. “When they stepped through the gate, each one entered a stand-alone simulation. A separate instance of the gate. All eighteen of them are playing Tempest right now, just like you. Trying to beat Halliday’s high score. And all of them used the exploit to get forty free credits. Most of them aren’t doing that well, but one of them has some serious skill. We think Sorrento is probably operating that avatar. He just started his second game—”

“Wait a second!” I interrupted. “How can you possibly know all this?”

“Because we can see them,” Shoto said. “Everyone logged into the OASIS right now can see them. They can see you, too.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“The moment someone enters the Third Gate, a live vidfeed of their avatar appears at the top of the Scoreboard,” Art3mis said. “Apparently, Halliday wanted clearing the final gate to be a spectator sport.”

“Wait,” I said. “You mean to tell me that the entire world has been watching me play Tempest for the past hour?”

“Correct,” Art3mis said. “And they’re watching you stand there and jabber back at us right now too. So watch what you say.”

“Why didn’t you guys tell me?” I shouted.

“We didn’t want to make you nervous,” Aech said. “Or distract you.”

“Oh, great! Perfect! Thank you!” I was shouting, somewhat hysterically.

“Calm down, Parzival,” Art3mis said. “Get your head back in the game. This a race now. There are eighteen Sixer avatars right behind you. So you need to make this next game count. Understand?”

“Yeah,” I said, exhaling slowly. “I understand.” I took another deep breath and pressed the Player One button once again.

As usual, competition brought out the best in me. This time, I managed to slip into the zone. Spinner, zapper, super-zapper, clear a level, avoid the spikes. My hands began to work the controls without my even having to think about it. I forgot about what was at stake, and I forgot about the millions of people watching me. I lost myself in the game.

I’d been playing just over an hour and had just cleared level 81 when I heard another wild burst of cheering in my ears. “You did it, man!” I heard Shoto shout.

My eyes darted up to the top of the screen. My score was 802,488.

I kept playing, instinctively wanting to get the highest score possible. But then I heard Art3mis loudly clear her throat, and I realized there was no need to go any further. In fact, I was now wasting valuable seconds, burning away whatever lead I still had on the Sixers. I quickly depleted my two extra lives, and GAME OVER flashed on the screen. I entered my initials again, and they appeared at the top of the list, just above Halliday’s high score. Then the monitor went blank, and a message appeared in the center of the screen:

Then the game cabinet vanished, and my avatar vanished with it.

I found myself galloping across a fog-covered hillside. I assumed I was riding a horse, because I was bobbing up and down and I heard the sound of hoofbeats. Directly ahead, a familiar-looking castle had just appeared out of the fog.

But when I looked down at my avatar’s body, I saw that I wasn’t riding a horse at all. I was walking on the ground. My avatar was now dressed in a suit of chain-mail armor, and my hands were held out in front of my body, as though I were clutching a set of reins. But I wasn’t holding anything. My hands were completely empty.

I stopped moving forward and the sound of hoofbeats also ceased, but not until a few seconds later. I turned around and saw the source of the sound. It wasn’t a horse. It was a man banging two coconut halves together.

Then I knew where I was. Inside the first scene of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Another of Halliday’s favorite films, and perhaps the most-beloved geek film of all time.

It appeared to be another Flicksync, like the WarGames simulation inside Gate One.

I was playing King Arthur, I realized. I wore the same costume Graham Chapman had worn in the film. And the man with the coconuts was my trusty manservant, Patsy, as played by Terry Gilliam.

Patsy bowed and groveled a bit when I turned to face him, but said nothing.

“It’s Python’s Holy Grail!” I heard Shoto whisper excitedly.

“Duh,” I said, forgetting myself for a second. “I know that, Shoto.”

A warning flashed on my display: INCORRECT DIALOGUE! A score of –100 points appeared in the corner of my display.

“Smooth move, Ex-lax,” I heard Art3mis say.

“Just let us know if you need any help, Z,” Aech said. “Wave your hands or something, and we’ll feed you the next line.”

I nodded and gave a thumbs-up. But I didn’t think I was going to need much help. Over the past six years, I’d watched Holy Grail exactly 157 times. I knew every word by heart.

I glanced back up at the castle ahead of me, already aware of what was waiting for me there. I began to “gallop” again, holding my invisible reins as I pretended to ride forward. Once again, Patsy began to bang his coconut halves together, galloping along behind me. When we reached the entrance of the castle, I pulled back on my “reins” and brought my “steed” to a halt.

“Whoa there!” I shouted.

My score increased by 100 points, bringing it back up to zero.

On cue, two soldiers appeared up above, leaning over the castle wall. “Who goes there?” one of them shouted down at us.

“It is I, Arthur, son of Uther Pendragon, from the castle of Camelot,” I recited. “King of the Britons! Defeater of the Saxons! Sovereign of all England!”

My score jumped another 500 points, and a message informed me that I’d received a bonus for my accent and inflection. I felt myself relax, and I realized I was already having fun.

“Pull the other one!” the soldier replied.

“I am,” I continued. “And this is my trusty servant Patsy. We have ridden the length and breadth of the land in search of knights who will join me in my court at Camelot. I must speak with your lord and master!”

Another 500 points. In my ear, I could hear my friends giggling and applauding.

“What?” the other soldier replied. “Ridden on a horse?”

“Yes!” I said. 100 points.

“You’re using coconuts!”

“What?” I said. 100 points.

“You’ve got two empty halves of coconut and you’re bangin’ ’em together!”

“So? We have ridden since the snows of winter covered this land, through the kingdom of Mercia, through—” Another 500 points.

“Where’d you get the coconuts?”

And so it went. The character I was playing changed from one scene to the next, switching to whomever had the most dialogue. Incredibly, I flubbed only six or seven lines. Each time I got stumped, all I had to do was shrug and hold out my hands, palms up—my signal that I needed some help—and Aech, Art3mis, and Shoto would all gleefully feed me the correct line. The rest of the time they remained silent except for the occasional giggle fit or burst of laughter. The only really difficult part was not laughing myself, especially when Art3mis started doing note-perfect recitations of all of Carol Cleveland’s lines in the Castle Anthrax scene. I cracked up a few times and got hit with score penalties for it. Otherwise, it was smooth sailing.

Reenacting the film wasn’t just easy—it was a total blast.

About halfway through the movie, right after my confrontation with the Knights of Ni, I opened up a text window on my display and typed STATUS ON THE SIXERS?

“Fifteen of them are still playing Tempest,” I heard Aech reply. “But three of them beat Halliday’s score and are now inside the Grail simulation.” A brief pause. “And the leader—Sorrento, we think—is running just nine minutes behind you.”

“And so far, he hasn’t missed a single line of dialogue,” Shoto added.

I nearly cursed out loud, then caught myself and typed SHIT!

“Exactly,” Art3mis said.

I took a deep breath and returned my attention to the next scene (“The Tale of Sir Launcelot”). Aech continued to give me updates on the Sixers whenever I asked for them.

When I reached the film’s final scene (the assault on the French Castle), I grew anxious again, wondering what would happen next. The First Gate had required me to reenact a movie (WarGames), and the Second Gate had contained a videogame challenge (Black Tiger). So far, the Third Gate had contained both. I knew there must be a third stage, but I had no idea what it might be.

I got my answer a few minutes later. As soon as I completed Holy Grail’s final scene, my display went black while the silly organ music that ends the film played for a few minutes. When the music stopped, the following appeared on my display:

And then, as the text faded away, I found myself standing in a huge oak-paneled room as big as a warehouse, with a high vaulted ceiling and a polished hardwood floor. The room had no windows, and only one exit—large double doors set into one of the four bare walls. An older high-end OASIS immersion rig stood in the absolute center of the expansive room. Over a hundred glass tables surrounded the rig, arranged in a large oval around it. On each table there was a different classic home computer or videogame system, accompanied by tiered racks that appeared to hold a complete collection of its peripherals, controllers, software, and games. All of it was arranged perfectly, like a museum exhibit. Looking around the circle, from one system to the next, I saw that the computers seemed to be arranged roughly by year of origin. A PDP-1. An Altair 8800. An IMSAI 8080. An Apple I, right next to an Apple II. An Atari 2600. A Commodore PET. An Intellivision. Several different TRS-80 models. An Atari 400 and 800. A ColecoVision. A TI-99/4. A Sinclair ZX80. A Commodore 64. Various Nintendo and Sega game systems. The entire lineage of Macs and PCs, PlayStations and Xboxes. Finally, completing the circle, was an OASIS console—connected to the immersion rig in the center of the room.

I realized that I was standing in a re-creation of James Halliday’s office, the room in his mansion where he’d spent most of the last fifteen years of his life. The place where he’d coded his last and greatest game. The one I was now playing.

I’d never seen any photos of this room, but its layout and contents had been described in great detail by the movers hired to clear the place out after Halliday’s death.

I looked down at my avatar and saw that I no longer appeared as one of the Monty Python knights. I was Parzival once again.

First, I did the obvious and tried the exit. The doors wouldn’t budge.

I turned back and took another long look around the room, surveying the long line of monuments to the history of computing and videogames.

That was when I realized that the oval-shaped ring in which they were arranged actually formed the outline of an egg.

In my head, I recited the words of Halliday’s first riddle, the one in Anorak’s Invitation:

I’d reached the end. This was it. Halliday’s Easter egg must be hidden somewhere in this room.

Chapter 38

“Do you guys see this?” I whispered.

There was no reply.

“Hello? Aech? Art3mis? Shoto? Are you guys still there?”

Still no reply. Either Og had cut their voice links to me, or Halliday had coded this final stage of the gate so that no outside communication was possible. I was pretty sure it was the latter.

I stood there in silence for a minute, unsure of what to do. Then I followed my first instinct and walked over to the Atari 2600. It was hooked up to a 1977 Zenith Color TV. I turned on the TV, but nothing happened. Then I switched on the Atari. Still nothing. There was no power, even though both the TV and the Atari were plugged into electrical outlets set into the floor.

I tried the Apple II on the table beside it. It wouldn’t switch on either.

After a few minutes of experimentation, I discovered that the only computer that would power on was one of the oldest, the IMSAI 8080, the same model of computer Matthew Broderick owned in WarGames.

When I booted it up, the screen was completely blank, save for one word.

I typed in ANORAK and hit Enter.

Then the computer shut itself off and I had to power it back on to get the LOGIN prompt again.

I tried HALLIDAY. No dice.

In WarGames, the backdoor password that had granted access to the WOPR supercomputer was “Joshua.” Professor Falken, the creator of the WOPR, had used the name of his son for the password. The person he’d loved most in the world.

I typed in OG. It didn’t work. OGDEN didn’t work either.

I typed in KIRA and hit the Enter key.

I tried each of his parents’ first names. I tried ZAPHOD, the name of his pet fish. Then TIBERIUS, the name of a ferret he’d once owned.

None of them worked.

I checked the time. I’d been in this room for over ten minutes now. Which meant that Sorrento had caught up with me. So he would now be inside his own separate copy of this room, probably with a team of Halliday scholars whispering suggestions in his ear, thanks to his hacked immersion rig. They were probably already working from a prioritized list of possibilities, entering them as fast as Sorrento could type.

I was out of time.

I clenched my teeth in frustration. I had no idea what to try next.

Then I remembered a line from Ogden Morrow’s biography: The opposite sex made Jim extremely nervous, and Kira was the only girl that I ever saw him speak to in a relaxed manner. But even then, it was only in-character, as Anorak, during the course of our gaming sessions, and he would only address her as Leucosia, the name of her D&D character.

I rebooted the computer again. When the LOGIN prompt reappeared, I typed in LEUCOSIA. Then I hit the Enter key.

Every system in the room powered itself on. The sounds of whirring disk drives, self-test beeps, and other boot-up sounds echoed off the vaulted ceiling.

I ran back over to the Atari 2600 and searched through the giant rack of alphabetized game cartridges beside it until I found the one I was looking for: Adventure. I shoved it into the Atari and turned the system on, then hit the Reset switch to start the game.

It took me only a few minutes to reach the Secret Room.

I grabbed the sword and used it to slay all three of the dragons. Then I found the black key, opened the gates of the Black Castle, and ventured into its labyrinth. The gray dot was hidden right where it was supposed to be. I picked it up and carried it back across the tiny 8-bit kingdom, then used it to pass through the magic barrier and enter the Secret Room. But unlike the original Atari game, this Secret Room didn’t contain the name of Warren Robinett, Adventure’s original programmer. Instead, at the very center of the screen, there was a large white oval with pixelated edges. An egg.

The egg.

I stared at the TV screen in stunned silence for a moment. Then I pulled the Atari joystick to the right, moving my tiny square avatar across the flickering screen. The TV’s mono speaker emitted a brief electronic bip sound as I dropped the gray dot and picked up the egg. As I did, there was a brilliant flash of light, and then I saw that my avatar was no longer holding a joystick. Now, cupped in both of my hands, was a large silver egg. I could see my avatar’s warped reflection on its curved surface.

When I finally managed to stop staring at it, I looked up and saw that the double doors on the other side of the room had been replaced with the gate exit—a crystal-edged portal leading back into the foyer of Castle Anorak. The castle appeared to have been completely restored, even though the OASIS server still wouldn’t reset for several more hours.

I took one last look around Halliday’s office; then, still clutching the egg in my hands, I walked across the room and stepped through the exit.

As soon as I was through it, I turned around just in time to see the Crystal Gate transform into a large wooden door set into the castle wall.

I opened the wooden door. Beyond it there was a spiral staircase that led up to the top of Castle Anorak’s tallest tower. There, I found Anorak’s study. Towering shelves lined the room, filled with ancient scrolls and dusty spellbooks.

I walked over to the window and looked out on a stunning view of the surrounding landscape. It was no longer barren. The effects of the Cataclyst had been undone, and all of Chthonia appeared to be have been restored along with the castle.

I looked around the room. Directly beneath the familiar black dragon painting there was an ornate crystal pedestal on which rested a gold chalice encrusted with tiny jewels. Its diameter matched that of the silver egg I held in my hands.

I placed the egg in the chalice, and it fit perfectly.

In the distance, I heard a fanfare of trumpets, and the egg began to glow.

“You win,” I heard a voice say. I turned and saw that Anorak was standing right behind me. His obsidian black robes seemed to pull most of the sunlight out of the room. “Congratulations,” he said, stretching out his long-fingered hand.

I hesitated, wondering if this was another trick. Or perhaps one final test …

“The game is over,” Anorak said, as if he’d read my mind. “It’s time for you to receive your prize.”

I looked down at his outstretched hand. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, I took it.

Cascading bolts of blue lightning erupted in the space between us, and their spiderweb tines enveloped us both, as if a surge of power were passing from his avatar into mine. When the lightning subsided, I saw that Anorak was no longer dressed in his black wizard’s robes. In fact, he no longer looked like Anorak at all. He was shorter, thinner, and somewhat less handsome. Now he looked like James Halliday. Pale. Middle-aged. He was dressed in worn jeans and a faded Space Invaders T-shirt.

I looked down at my own avatar and discovered that I was now wearing Anorak’s robes. Then I realized that the icons and readouts around the edge of my display had also changed. My stats were all completely maxxed out, and I now had a list of spells, inherent powers, and magic items that seemed to scroll on forever.

My avatar’s level and hit-point counters both had infinity symbols in front of them.

And my credit readout now displayed a number twelve digits long. I was a multibillionaire.

“I’m entrusting the care of the OASIS to you now, Parzival,” Halliday said. “Your avatar is immortal and all-powerful. Whatever you want, all you have to do is wish for it. Pretty sweet, eh?” He leaned toward me and lowered his voice. “Do me a favor. Try and use your powers only for good. OK?”

“OK,” I said, in a voice that was barely a whisper.

Halliday smiled, then gestured around us. “This is your castle now. I’ve coded this room so that only your avatar can enter it. I did this to ensure that you alone have access to this.” He walked over to a bookshelf against the wall and pulled on the spine of one of the volumes it held. I heard a click; then the bookshelf slid aside, revealing a square metal plate set into the wall. In the center of the plate there was a comically large red button embossed with a single word: OFF.

“I call this the Big Red Button,” Halliday said. “If you press it, it will shut off the entire OASIS and launch a worm that will delete everything stored on the GSS servers, including all of the OASIS source code. It will shut down the OASIS forever.” He smirked. “So don’t press it unless you’re absolutely positive it’s the right thing to do, OK?” He gave me an odd smile. “I trust your judgment.”

Halliday slid the bookshelf back into place, concealing the button once again. Then he startled me by putting his arm around my shoulders. “Listen,” he said, adopting a confidential tone. “I need to tell you one last thing before I go. Something I didn’t figure out for myself until it was already too late.” He led me over to the window and motioned out at the landscape stretching out beyond it. “I created the OASIS because I never felt at home in the real world. I didn’t know how to connect with the people there. I was afraid, for all of my life. Right up until I knew it was ending. That was when I realized, as terrifying and painful as reality can be, it’s also the only place where you can find true happiness. Because reality is real. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I said. “I think I do.”

“Good,” he said, giving me a wink. “Don’t make the same mistake I did. Don’t hide in here forever.”

He smiled and took a few steps away from me. “All right. I think that covers everything. It’s time for me to blow this pop stand.”

Then Halliday began to disappear. He smiled and waved good-bye as his avatar slowly faded out of existence.

“Good luck, Parzival,” he said. “And thanks. Thanks for playing my game.”

Then he was completely gone.

“Are you guys there?” I said to the empty air a few minutes later.

“Yes!” Aech said excitedly. “Can you hear us?”

“Yeah. I can now. What happened?”

“The system cut off our voice links to you as soon as you entered Halliday’s office, so we couldn’t talk to you.”

“Luckily, you didn’t need our help anyway,” Shoto said. “Good job, man.”

“Congratulations, Wade,” I heard Art3mis say. And I could tell she meant it too.

“Thanks,” I said. “But I couldn’t have done it without you guys.”

“You’re right,” Art3mis said. “Remember to mention that when you talk to the media. Og says there are a few hundred reporters on their way here right now.”

I glanced back over at the bookshelf that concealed the Big Red Button. “Did you guys see everything Halliday said to me before he vanished?” I asked.

“No,” Art3mis said. “We saw everything up until he told you to ‘try and use your powers only for good.’ Then your vidfeed cut out. What happened after that?”

“Nothing much,” I said. “I’ll tell you about it later.”

“Dude,” Aech said. “You’ve got to check the Scoreboard.”

I opened a window and pulled up the Scoreboard. The list of high scores was gone. Now the only thing displayed on Halliday’s website was an image of my avatar, dressed in Anorak’s robes, holding the silver egg, along with the words PARZIVAL WINS!

“What happened to the Sixers?” I asked. “The ones who were still inside the gate?”

“We’re not sure,” Aech said. “Their vidfeeds vanished when the Scoreboard changed.”

“Maybe their avatars were killed,” Shoto said. “Or maybe …”

“Maybe they were just ejected from the gate,” I said.

I pulled up my map of Chthonia and saw that I could now teleport anywhere in the OASIS simply by selecting my desired destination in the atlas. I zoomed in on Castle Anorak and tapped a spot just outside the front entrance, and in a blink, my avatar was standing there.

I was right. When I’d cleared the Third Gate, the eighteen Sixer avatars who were still inside had been ejected from the gate and deposited in front of the castle. They were all standing there with confused looks on their faces when I appeared in front of them, resplendent in my new threads. They all stared at me in silence for a few seconds, then pulled out guns and swords, preparing to attack. They all looked identical, so I couldn’t tell which one was being controlled by Sorrento. But at this point, I didn’t really care.

Using my avatar’s new superuser interface, I made a sweeping gesture with my hand, selecting all of the Sixer avatars on my display. Their outlines began to glow red. Then I tapped the skull-and-crossbones icon that now appeared on my avatar’s toolbar. All eighteen Sixer avatars instantly dropped dead. Their bodies slowly faded out of existence, each leaving behind a tiny pile of weapons and loot.

“Holy shit!” I heard Shoto say over the comlink. “How did you do that?”

“You heard Halliday,” Aech said. “His avatar is immortal and all-powerful.”

“Yeah,” I said. “He wasn’t kidding, either.”

“Halliday also said you could wish for whatever you wanted,” Aech said. “What are you gonna wish for first?”

I thought about that for a second; then I tapped the new Command icon that now appeared at the edge of my display and said, “I wish for Aech, Art3mis, and Shoto to be resurrected.”

A dialog window popped up, asking me to confirm the spelling of each of their avatar names. Once I did, the system asked me if, in addition to resurrecting their avatars, I wanted to restore all of their lost items, too. I tapped the Yes icon. Then a message appeared in the center of my display: RESURRECTION COMPLETE. AVATARS RESTORED.

“Guys?” I said. “You might want to try logging back into your accounts now.”

“We’re already on our way!” Aech shouted.

A few seconds later, Shoto logged back into his account, and his avatar materialized a short distance in front of me, in the exact spot where he’d been killed a few hours earlier. He ran over to me, grinning from ear to ear. “Arigato, Parzival-san,” he said, bowing low.

I returned the bow, then threw my arms around him. “Welcome back,” I said. A moment later, Aech emerged from the castle entrance and ran over to join us.

“Good as new,” he said, grinning down at his restored avatar. “Thanks, Z.”

“De nada.” I glanced back through the castle’s open entrance. “Where’s Art3mis? She should have reappeared right next to you—”

“She didn’t log back in,” Aech said. “She said she wanted to go outside and get some fresh air.”

“You saw her? What—?” I searched for the right words. “How did she look?”

They both just smiled at me; then Aech rested a hand on my shoulder. “She said she’d be outside waiting for you. Whenever you’re ready to meet her.”

I nodded. I was about to tap my Log-out icon when Aech held up her—his—hand. “Wait a second! Before you log out, you’ve got to see something,” he said, opening a window in front of me. “This is airing on all of the newsfeeds right now. The feds just took Sorrento in for questioning. They stormed into IOI headquarters and yanked him right out of his haptic chair!”

A video clip began to play. Handheld camera footage showed a team of federal agents leading Sorrento across the lobby of the IOI corporate headquarters. He was still wearing his haptic suit and was shadowed by a gray-haired man in a suit who I assumed was his attorney. Sorrento looked annoyed more than anything, as if this were all just a mild inconvenience. The caption along the bottom of the window read: Top IOI Executive Sorrento Accused of Murder.

“The newsfeeds have been playing clips from the simcap of your chatlink session with Sorrento all day,” Aech said, pausing the clip. “Especially the part where he threatens to kill you and then blows up your aunt’s trailer.”

Aech hit Play, and the news clip continued. The federal agents continued to usher Sorrento through the lobby, which was packed with reporters, all pushing against one another and shouting questions. The reporter shooting the video we were watching lunged forward and jammed the camera in Sorrento’s face. “Did you give the order to kill Wade Watts personally?” the reporter shouted. “How does it feel to know you just lost the contest?”

Sorrento smiled, but didn’t reply. Then his attorney stepped in front of the camera and addressed the reporters. “The charges leveled against my client are preposterous,” he said. “The simcap being circulated is clearly a doctored fake. We have no other comment at this time.”

Sorrento nodded. He continued to smile as the feds led him out of the building.

“The bastard will probably get off scot-free,” I said. “IOI can afford to hire the best lawyers in the world.”

“Yes, they can,” Aech said. Then he flashed his Cheshire grin. “But now so can we.”

Chapter 39

When I stepped out of the immersion bay, Og was standing there waiting for me. “Well done, Wade!” he said, pulling me into a crushing bear hug. “Well done!”

“Thanks, Og.” I was still dazed and felt unsteady on my feet.

“Several chief executives from GSS arrived while you were logged in,” Og said. “Along with all of Jim’s lawyers. They’re all waiting upstairs. As you can imagine, they’re anxious to speak with you.”

“Do I have to talk to them right now?”

“No, of course not!” He laughed. “They all work for you now, remember? Make the bastards wait as long as you like!” He leaned forward. “My lawyer is up there too. He’s a good guy. A real pit bull. He’ll make sure that no one messes with you, OK?”

“Thanks, Og,” I said. “I really owe you.”

“Nonsense!” he said. “I should be thanking you. I haven’t had this much fun in decades! You did good, kid.”

I glanced around uncertainly. Aech and Shoto were still in their immersion bays, holding an impromptu online press conference. But Art3mis’s bay was empty. I turned back to Og.

“Do you know which way Art3mis went?”

Og grinned at me, then pointed. “Up those stairs and out the first door you see,” he said. “She said she’d wait for you at the center of my hedge maze.” He smiled. “It’s an easy maze. It shouldn’t take you very long to find her.”

I stepped outside and squinted as my eyes adjusted to the light. The air was warm, and the sun was already high overheard. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

It was a beautiful day.

The hedge maze covered several acres of land behind the mansion. The entrance was designed to look like the facade of a castle, and you entered the maze through its open gates. The dense hedge walls that comprised the maze were ten feet tall, making it impossible to peek over them, even if you stood on top of one of the benches placed throughout the labyrinth.

I entered the maze and wandered around in circles for a few minutes, confused. Eventually, I realized that the maze’s layout was identical to the labyrinth in Adventure.

After that, it took me only a few more minutes to find my way to the large open area at the maze’s center. A large fountain stood there, with a detailed stone sculpture of Adventure’s three duck-shaped dragons. Each dragon was spitting a stream of water instead of breathing fire.

And then I saw her.

She was sitting on a stone bench, staring into the fountain. She had her back to me, and her head was tilted down. Her long black hair spilled down over her right shoulder. I could see that she was kneading her hands in her lap.

I was afraid to move any closer. Finally, I worked up the courage to speak. “Hello,” I said.

She lifted her head at the sound of my voice, but didn’t turn around.

“Hello,” I heard her say. And it was her voice. Art3mis’s voice. The voice I’d spent so many hours listening to. And that gave me the courage to step forward.

I walked around the fountain and stopped once I was standing directly in front of her. As she heard me approach, she turned her head away, averting her eyes and keeping me out of her field of vision.

But I could see her.

She looked just as she had in the photo I’d seen. She had the same Rubenesque body. The same pale, freckled skin. The same hazel eyes and raven hair. The same beautiful round face, with the same reddish birthmark. But unlike in that photo, she wasn’t trying to hide the birthmark with a sweep of her hair. She had her hair brushed back, so I could see it.

I waited in silence. But she still wouldn’t look up at me.

“You look just like I always pictured you,” I said. “Beautiful.”

“Really?” she said softly. Slowly, she turned to face me, taking in my appearance a little at a time, starting with my feet and then gradually working her way up to my face. When our eyes finally met, she smiled at me nervously. “Well, what do you know? You look just like I always thought you would too,” she said. “Butt ugly.”

We both laughed, and most of the tension in the air dissipated. Then we stared into each other’s eyes for what seemed like a long time. It was, I realized, also the very first time.

“We haven’t been formally introduced,” she said. “I’m Samantha.”

“Hello, Samantha. I’m Wade.”

“It’s nice to finally meet you in person, Wade.”

She patted the bench beside her, and I sat down.

After a long silence, she said, “So what happens now?”

I smiled. “We’re going to use all of the moolah we just won to feed everyone on the planet. We’re going to make the world a better place, right?”

She grinned. “Don’t you want to build a huge interstellar spaceship, load it full of videogames, junk food, and comfy couches, and then get the hell out of here?”

“I’m up for that, too,” I said. “If it means I get to spend the rest of my life with you.”

She gave me a shy smile. “We’ll have to see,” she said. “We just met, you know.”

“I’m in love with you.”

Her lower lip started to tremble. “You’re sure about that?”

“Yes. I am. Because it’s true.”

She smiled at me, but I also saw that she was crying. “I’m sorry for breaking things off with you,” she said. “For disappearing from your life. I just—”

“It’s OK,” I said. “I understand why you did it now.”

She looked relieved. “You do?”

I nodded. “You did the right thing.”

“You think so?”

“We won, didn’t we?”

She smiled at me, and I smiled back.

“Listen,” I said. “We can take things as slow as you like. I’m really a nice guy, once you get to know me. I swear.”

She laughed and wiped away a few of her tears, but she didn’t say anything.

“Did I mention that I’m also extremely rich?” I said. “Of course, so are you, so I don’t suppose that’s a big selling point.”

“You don’t need to sell me on anything, Wade,” she said. “You’re my best friend. My favorite person.” With what appeared to be some effort, she looked me in the eye. “I’ve really missed you, you know that?”

My heart felt like it was on fire. I took a moment to work up my courage; then I reached out and took her hand. We sat there awhile, holding hands, reveling in the strange new sensation of actually touching one another.

Some time later, she leaned over and kissed me. It felt just like all those songs and poems had promised it would. It felt wonderful. Like being struck by lightning.

It occurred to me then that for the first time in as long as I could remember, I had absolutely no desire to log back into the OASIS.