Ready Player Two

L0hengrin’s avatar was still in her female form, but now she was dressed in some sort of futuristic battle armor. The rest of her clan was similarly attired and also heavily armed. Once I finished making introductions (and once L0hengrin and her friends finished freaking out), Lo told me what she’d been up to. To save time, she’d called up her friends, and together, the five of them had started checking each of the other 255 instances of Middletown, one after another. They had nearly searched them all before Wukong finally located a second instance of the town where the year had been changed from 1986 to 1989—the one Og had visited. Then the L0w Five converged on that instance and scoured it for clues.

“We found several things out of place in Og’s basement,” Lo told us. “When Og was there changing the calendar on the wall, he also moved one of the videotapes on the shelf next to the television. A VHS copy of John Belushi’s final film, Neighbors.”

“Holy shit!” Aech said. “Z, you were right!”

Lo glanced at her, then back at me.

“Right about what?” she asked. “What the hell is going on?”

I turned to address Art3mis, Aech, and Shoto. “We have to tell them,” I said. “If we want their help, they deserve to know what’s at stake.”

The others all nodded in agreement. Faisal started to protest, but I ignored him and told L0hengrin and her friends everything about Anorak, his infirmware, and the real reason why none of us was able to log out of the OASIS. Compared to us, they seemed to take the news that they were being held hostage extremely well. They did a lot of cursing and shouting, but nobody had a full-on meltdown. Eventually, they all fell silent and waited for me to continue. Then I told them how Anorak had taken Og hostage, too, and about our ongoing efforts to find him.

“Og has been leaving behind clues for us,” I said. “About his location in the real world. They appear to indicate that Anorak is holding Og hostage at his former residence here in Columbus. Just a few miles down the road from Halliday’s old house. Og and Halliday used to be neighbors.”

“Holy shit!” Lo said. “So that’s why he pulled out that VHS tape!”

Lo opened her HUD and began to search through her avatar’s inventory.

“We found an old Dungeons & Dragons campaign notebook too,” she said. “But it wasn’t in Og’s handwriting—”

“Did it belong to Halliday?” Shoto asked. “When he still lived at home, Halliday had to keep all of his D&D stuff over at Og’s house. Because his own parents thought D&D was satanic and forbid him from playing it.”

“Definitely not,” Lo replied. “It’s Kira’s old campaign notebook. It only exists in the 1989 version of Middletown.”

Lo removed the notebook from her inventory and held it up. It was a battered blue Trapper Keeper. Kira had sliced open the edge of its clear plastic covering so that she could slide a hand-drawn title page underneath it, with The Quest for the Seven Shards of the Siren’s Soul written on it in her distinctive cursive handwriting. She had also drawn six blue crystal shards in a circle, with a seventh in the center. And below that, at the bottom of the page, she had written: by Kira Underwood.

“It’s for an adventure module that Kira created, all by herself,” L0hengrin said. “After she left Middletown and returned home to London to finish her final year of high school.”

Aech, Art3mis, and Shoto all exchanged looks of surprise.

Lo held out the notebook, offering it to me, and I accepted it with both hands. I stared down at it in amazement, then back up at her.

“Lo, this is amazing!” I said. “It may end up saving all of our lives. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, Z,” she said, beaming with pride.

I tore open the Trapper Keeper’s Velcro cover flap. Inside was a plastic three-ring binder filled with over 150 pages of Kira’s handwritten notes, along with dozens of detailed maps and illustrations.

“What’s interesting is that Kira set her Quest for the Seven Shards in Halliday’s D&D campaign setting—Chthonia.”

Chthonia was the name of the fantasy world Halliday had created for his high school Dungeons & Dragons campaign—the same campaign that Kira joined when Og invited her to play D&D with them. Halliday also used Chthonia as the setting for all of his early Anorak’s Quest adventure games. Then, years later, when Halliday created the OASIS, he built a full-scale replica of Chthonia inside the simulation. That was the planet where Castle Anorak was located.

“Kira’s adventure is comprised of seven different quests,” Lo continued. “One to retrieve each of the Seven Shards. Kira created all of the different quests, drew maps for all seven dungeons, and she also included a bunch of awesome illustrations at the back, depicting different monsters and locations that appear in the story. It’s pretty incredible.” She pointed at the Trapper Keeper. “From what I can gather, Kira gave that binder to Halliday just before she went back to England in June of ’89. There’s a brief note to him on the first page. In it, Kira asks Halliday to run her module for Og and the rest of the Middletown Adventurers’ Guild after she leaves, to explain why her character disappeared from their D&D campaign. She told him she created this adventure so that her friends would feel like she was still there with them in spirit. She said she hoped it would make all of them miss her a little less.”

“Does Kira’s character Leucosia appear in the module?” Aech asked.

Lo nodded.

“Right at the beginning,” she replied. “Leucosia is abducted by an evil wizard named Hagmar, who places her in suspended animation and imprisons her inside a powerful magic jewel called the Siren’s Soul. Then he shatters the jewel into seven pieces and hides them in seven different treacherous, trap-filled dungeons, which are each located on seven different continents. The players have to collect all seven of the shards and reassemble them into the Siren’s Soul to resurrect Leucosia. Then, once they bring her back, she gives them the power to resurrect other people too. Here, you have to check this out….”

L0hengrin flipped Kira’s notebook to a page near the back, which contained a drawing of Leucosia’s character symbol—a capital letter L formed by the intersection of a bejeweled longsword and an ornately carved magic wand, to symbolize Leucosia’s Magic User/Fighter dual character class.

I had seen this symbol before, in collections of Kira’s artwork and in several of the Anorak’s Quest games.

Kira was the first and only artist ever to join the Middletown Adventurers’ Guild, and as a gift to her new friends, Kira had taken it upon herself to design cool character symbols for everyone in the group—symbols that would all later be made famous, thanks to their inclusion in various RPGs released by Gregarious Games. Kira was the one who had designed Anorak’s famous character symbol—the calligraphic letter A that appeared on Anorak’s robes and above the entrance to Castle Anorak.

For Og, she designed a symbol of a capital letter O with a small letter g at its center, to represent his high-level Magic User character, the Great and Powerful Og. And for her own character, Leucosia, Kira had designed the sword-and-wand L symbol. In all the drawings and paintings she did of Leucosia, that L always appeared somewhere on the character’s clothing or armor. This had eventually earned her character the nickname “Laverne”—a reference that initially made no sense to her, because she hadn’t grown up watching Laverne & Shirley in the UK.

L0hengrin reached out and flipped to another page of the notebook, near the back. She appeared to have its entire contents memorized already.

“Right there,” she said, pointing to a page of dense handwritten text. “When they obtain the final shard at the end of the module, the evil wizard Hagmar shows back up and they have to defeat him before they can recombine the shards.” She smiled wide. Then, as an afterthought, she leaned forward and added, “Hagmar is an anagram of Graham, which was the name of Kira’s abusive stepfather. But I’m sure you guys already figured that out.”

I shook my head. “No,” I said. “We had no idea. Thanks, Lo. You did an amazing job!”

Art3mis and Aech both nodded and began to applaud. Shoto and I joined in. Lo took a small bow, then she motioned to her friends.

“The L0w Five did this together,” she added. “Please distribute your thanks evenly among all of us.”

Aech, Shoto, Art3mis, and I all turned to give the rest of the L0w Five a round of applause too.

But we didn’t have much time for congratulations. Along with the others, I buried my nose back in Kira’s notebook, trying to speed-read through the remainder of its contents….I didn’t know what I was looking for, but felt sure I’d know when I saw it.

In Kira’s module, the hiding places of the first four shards were all quite different from the ones we’d encountered in the OASIS, and so were the challenges required to obtain them. But to my surprise, I recognized many of them. I had encountered each of them in a slightly different form, in Anorak’s Quest II and III, two early releases by Gregarious Games. This was a huge shock, because Kira was only credited as the artist on those games, not as a writer or designer.

I remembered that, in his autobiography, Og had complained about Halliday’s sexist behavior toward Kira more than once. He wrote that Halliday always seemed to try to downplay Kira’s creative contribution to their games. Og once told an interviewer, “Jim always jokingly referred to Kira as Yoko, which infuriated me, because if we were Lennon and McCartney, then Kira was our George Harrison. She didn’t break up the Beatles. She was one of the Beatles! And without her help, we never would have had a single hit.”

I remembered having my first real argument with Art3mis once about that very subject, during the first few months we knew each other. She’d started it by stating that Kira Morrow deserved to be listed alongside Og and Halliday as one of the true co-creators of the OASIS. She’d made comparisons to Rosalind Franklin, a woman who deserved to be credited alongside Watson and Crick as one of the discoverers of the double-helix structure of DNA. Or Katherine Johnson, whose calculations helped us reach the moon. Or countless other women who had been brushed aside or blatantly ignored.

At the time, I’d reminded her that during Halliday’s reign, GSS had adopted an equal-hiring policy, which required the company to hire at least one woman for every man they employed. Samantha pointed out that Kira and Og were the ones who had lobbied for that change, not Halliday. I responded by pointing out that Halliday could’ve rolled back the policy after Og and Kira left the company, but he didn’t. The same hiring policy was still in force today. But Samantha only rolled her eyes at me.

Now, all these years later, I could finally see that she’d been right all along. I’d just been too much of a slavish Halliday fanboy to believe anything bad about him. How times had changed.

I continued to flip through the notebook’s remaining pages, looking for anything that might be useful. But nothing caught my interest until I reached the last few pages, where Kira described how the party obtained the seventh and final shard.

Once the party has collected the first six shards, they must bring them to the Shrine of the Siren, located atop the highest peak of the Xyxarian Mountains of southern Chthonia. When all six shards are placed on the altar, the Seventh Shard will appear in the Siren’s hand.

I interrupted the High Five/L0w Five love fest to show this line to Aech, Shoto, and Art3mis.

“Every inch of those mountains was explored during the contest,” Shoto said. “If there was a shrine to Leucosia up there, someone would’ve discovered it.”

“Maybe it only appears once the first six shards have been collected?” Lo said.

Art3mis was still reading Kira’s notebook over my shoulder.

“What’s supposed to happen when the players recombine the shards?” she asked.

Lo reached over to the notebook and pointed at a paragraph halfway down the last page. I read it out loud:

“ ‘Once the Seven Shards are reassembled, they coalesce into the Siren’s Soul, a powerful magical artifact with the power to free Leucosia from suspended animation and bring her back to life.’ ” I looked up from the page. “That’s all it says.”

We were still processing all of this new information when Lo hit us with another stunner.

“OK,” she said. “We saved the best for last.”

She took a large piece of graph paper out of her inventory and unfolded it. There was an elaborate dungeon map drawn on it in pencil. It was covered with carefully lettered notations and room descriptions written in a very tiny, very familiar script.

“I found this stuck inside Kira’s notebook,” she said. “But that isn’t Kira’s handwriting.”

“It’s Og’s handwriting!” Art3mis and Aech shouted, beating me to the punch.

Lo nodded.

“According to this text across the bottom of the map, it leads to the hiding place of a powerful magic sword known as the Dorkslayer, which was ‘specially forged at the dawn of the OASIS, for the express purpose of slaying the mighty wizard Anorak, if he should ever become corrupted by his power and turn to evil.’ ” Lo glanced up at me. “This was tucked inside the front cover of the notebook. Someone wanted to make sure I saw it.”

“Holy shit,” Aech muttered. “You think Og forged a special sword to kill Anorak?”

Lo nodded excitedly. “I think so!” she replied. “Maybe!”

“The Dorkslayer?” Shoto repeated. “Og named his Anorak-killing super sword ‘the Dorkslayer’?”

“He did,” Lo said. “And this map is dated here at the bottom right. April 1, 2022—just a few months before Og left Gregarious. He must’ve made the sword before he quit.” She folded the map in half and flipped it over so she could read the text across the top. “It says here that the Dorkslayer was hidden for safekeeping in the hoard of a fearsome dragon, located in a deep underground cave on an uncharted island in the Nilxor Sea called Farhell.”

She opened a three-dimensional OASIS sector map in the air in front of her.

“There just happens to be a small planet in the OASIS named Farhell,” Lo replied. “Its coordinates are scribbled in the corner of Og’s map. According to the planet’s colophon, it dates back to the earliest days of the simulation, when Kira and Og both still worked at GSS.”

“Farhell?” Shoto said. “Never heard of it.”

“Me neither,” Aech added.

“Because it’s an uncharted planet,” Lo said. “And it’s located out in Zone Zero.”

This threw all of us for a loop. “Zone Zero” was what everyone called the area outside the twenty-seven core sectors that made up the OASIS. It was an endless, procedurally generated virtual space that didn’t spring into existence until an avatar flew their ship into it. So Zone Zero was continuously expanding its size and geography on the fly, as avatars traveled farther and farther out into it. Halliday and Morrow had designed the OASIS this way on purpose, so that if people ever used up all of the surreal estate in the initial twenty-seven sectors, the simulation would still always have plenty of extra room available out in Zone Zero. An infinite amount, to be exact.

I’d only ever traveled out into the Zero once, just to be able to say that I had. When we were kids, it used to be a rite of passage, to travel out to the edge of the simulation in a spaceship, and then keep on going a little farther, to force the OASIS to grow a little more in size, just for you.

The first time I flew my X-Wing to the outer edge of the core twenty-seven zones and ventured into Zone Zero, I remember flying past a signpost floating at the border that read: OUT HERE, ON THE PERIMETER, THERE ARE NO STARS….

“I think Og created a real Dorkslayer,” Lo said. “Here, inside the OASIS, when he was still working at GSS. Maybe as a contingency, in case he and Halliday ever got into a disagreement with their invincible avatars.”

A burst of elation ran through me—followed by one of profound sadness. This might be the weapon we needed against Anorak. But how terrible must Halliday’s behavior have been for Og to feel he needed to prepare for battle against his best friend?

“It must be real,” said Shoto. “That’s why Anorak reprogrammed all of those NPCs to kill off high-level avatars and collect their items! He’s trying to find the Dorkslayer sword before anyone else can.”

“I thought that Anorak and Og both made their avatars all-powerful,” Aech said. “And indestructible.”

“I’ve read that too,” Lo replied. “But the writing on Og’s map says that the Dorkslayer is ‘the only weapon that can slay he who cannot be slain.’ It also says that Morrow’s character, the Great and Powerful Og, is the only avatar who can wield it, due to his ‘noble birth.’ ”

“Jeez Louise,” Shoto said, rolling his eyes. He turned to me. “We’re gonna be looking for Horcruxes next.”

“Excellent work, Lo,” Art3mis said, then turned to me. “We need that sword!”

“I don’t think we have time for a side quest right now, Arty,” Aech said. “We need to find the last three shards, now, while we still can!”

L0hengrin suddenly dropped to one knee in front of us. Then she motioned to the rest of her clan members, and they all did the same.

“Members of the High Five,” she said, bowing her head slightly. “The L0w Five is at your command. Please, allow us to retrieve the Dorkslayer for you while you complete your quest. I promise you, we will not fail.”

She raised her eyes to meet mine, and I could see the steely resolve in them. I glanced over at Aech, Shoto, and Art3mis, and they all nodded their approval.

“Thank you, L0hengrin,” I said. “The High Five gratefully accepts your offer.”

I reached out and offered her my hand. Lo rose to her feet and shook it. Her companions stood up too.

“Thank you for your help,” I said. “If you find the sword—”

“You mean when we find the sword,” she said.

“Forgive me,” I replied. “When you find the Dorkslayer, teleport to wherever I am immediately. I’ll share my location with you so you can track me.”

Lo nodded. Then she grinned and abruptly transformed into a young James Spader.

She gave me an exaggerated salute and said, “Aye-aye, Captain.”

Then Lo snapped her fingers and teleported away, taking the other members of the L0w Five with her.

“Wow,” Aech said, turning to me. “That chick is amazing.”

“Yeah,” Art3mis said, shaking her head at me. “I don’t know how you do it, Z. You have a gift for making friends who are much cooler than you are.”

“Humility, madam,” I said. “That’s my secret. That and my clean, close shave.”

Art3mis laughed and rolled her eyes. Then she turned to Faisal.

“Do you think that sword will really work?” she asked him.

“Who knows?” he replied. “According to our OASIS engineers, Anorak still appears to function like any other NPC, at least as far as the system is concerned. So theoretically, he should still be bound by the same rules and operating parameters they are. Which means he can be killed if his avatar sustains enough physical damage.”

“What if we can’t kill him?” Shoto asked. “Are we just gonna give him the shards and hope that he’ll keep his word?”

The mental image of my avatar handing the Seven Shards over to Anorak actually made me feel nauseous for a few seconds. But then it gave me an idea….

I looked back down at the last page of Kira’s notebook and reread the section describing how the players in her module were supposed to go about combining the Seven Shards. By the time I had finished, the rough framework of a plan had formed in my head. When I shared it with the others, they seemed to think there was a chance it might work too. We spent a few more minutes working out the broad details of it with Faisal, so that he could relay it to our OASIS admins, and to the GSS security team gearing up to try to rescue Og.

The second we’d finished, Art3mis jumped to her feet and prepared to leave. “Tell Miles and his team I’m logging out right now, and that they better not leave without me.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Faisal replied. “But we’ve already got three security teams on deck, along with three squads of aerial enforcer drones. So there’s really no need for you to put your own life at risk, Ms. Cook.”

“Ogden Morrow saved our lives once,” she said. “I’m gonna do everything I can to return that favor.” She turned to me. “Stay in touch,” she said. “And good luck!”

She gave me another smile, then she turned to go. As she did, it occurred to me that if the worst happened, this might be the last time I ever saw her. So I reached out to touch her avatar’s shoulder, and when she felt it through her haptics, she turned back around to face me. And as always, she looked beautiful.

“Hey, in case something does happen,” I said, “I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry. For a lot of different things. But mainly, I’m sorry that I didn’t listen to you. All this time, you were right, and I was wrong.”

She grinned and placed her right hand against my cheek. The last time she had done this, it was in the real world, during our week together at Og’s in Oregon. Exactly 1,153 days ago. It wasn’t her real hand, but I could still feel it, and it still made my heart race.

“You never cease to amaze me, Watts,” she said. “There’s still hope for you yet.”

She leaned over and kissed me on the forehead. Then she backed up several steps, to ensure that we were all outside her teleportation spell’s area of effect.

“Good luck, guys.”

“Good luck to you, too, Arty,” I replied. “Don’t get hurt, OK?”

Art3mis gave all of us one last nod, then she teleported away, and her avatar vanished in a shower of glittering silver dust. Then I turned to Aech and Shoto.

“You guys ready to rock?” I asked.

Shoto nodded and gave me a nervous thumbs-up. Aech cracked her knuckles.

“Ten-four and ready for more,” she said.

I checked the ONI countdown on my HUD. I now had just two hours and twenty-eight minutes remaining before I hit my limit. Aech and Shoto each had about ten minutes less than that. Faisal was about to hit the two-hour mark. And we still had three more shards to collect. If the last three took as long to locate as the first four had, we were in trouble.

“Buckle up, fellas,” Aech said, smiling. “We’re off to the Afterworld! And when we get there, prepare to follow my lead, OK?”

We nodded, then all waved farewell to Faisal once again. Aech turned to me and Shoto and placed a hand on each of our shoulders. Then, just before she teleported all of us to the Afterworld, we heard her shout, “Oh no, let’s go!”