Ready Player Two

I double-checked the coordinates in the OASIS atlas, then teleported myself directly to the top of the highest peak of the Xyxarian Mountains, which were located on the continent of Xyxaria in Chthonia’s southern hemisphere.

I had flown over these mountains several times, on my way to explore other parts of Halliday’s world. But I had never set foot in the mountains themselves. There was no reason to, because there was nothing there. The whole mountain range was a groan zone—an unpopulated plot of procedurally generated landscape, where there were no NPCs to meet and no quests to complete. Thousands of other gunters had explored every inch of these mountains and they’d all confirmed that there was absolutely nothing of interest here.

But when my avatar rematerialized on the top of that mountain, I did see something there—the Shrine of Leucosia. A Stonehenge-like circle of seven chiseled granite pillars, with a raised altar at the center.

I knew this structure couldn’t have been there before today. Someone would have noticed it. Hell, I probably would’ve noticed it myself on one of my flyovers.

I entered the shrine and approached the altar. Then I took out Kira’s Trapper Keeper and opened it up. I flipped through the pages until I found the pencil illustration of the Shrine of Leucosia. The shrine in front of me looked exactly like Kira’s drawing. A stone statue of her avatar, Leucosia, stood at the head of the altar. In her right hand, she held a round shield with her character symbol emblazoned on the front. Her left hand was outstretched and empty, with her palm facing upward toward the gray sky overhead. Beneath the statue, chiseled into the flat stone surface of the altar, were these words:

Seek the Seventh Shard of the Siren’s Soul

on seven worlds where the Siren once played a role.

For each fragment my heir must pay a toll

to once again make the Siren whole.

Beneath this inscription, also carved into the surface of the altar, were six identical shard-shaped cavities.

It seemed obvious what I was supposed to do.

I removed all six of the shards I’d collected from my avatar’s inventory and placed them into the six cavities in the surface of the altar. Each one began to glow bright blue when I dropped it into place. Once all six shards were in place, there was a blinding flash of light directly ahead of me. When my eyes recovered, I saw that the seventh and final shard had appeared in the statue’s outstretched hand. It was glowing bright blue, like all the others.

I retrieved the first six shards from the altar in front of me and placed them back inside my inventory. Then I reached up and took the Seventh Shard from the statue’s hand and placed it in my own. When I did, I experienced one final flashback….

Kira was sitting in a chair in the Accessibility Research Lab at GSS, back before Halliday shut it down. I recognized it from some of the archival photos and video I’d seen.

James Halliday was standing directly in front of her, holding what appeared to be an early prototype of an OASIS Neural Interface headset. It was much larger and far less streamlined than the production models. It was so bulky that it actually looked more like a helmet than a headset.

Og was standing just a few feet away, with a nervous look on his face.

“This device will allow people to control the movements of their OASIS avatar with their mind,” Halliday said as he lowered the prototype gently onto my/Kira’s head. “It just takes a minute to calibrate it.”

Then Halliday reached over and pressed a button on a control panel and I saw a brief, blinding flash of light.

When the flashback ended, I found myself back on Chthonia, standing before the Shrine of Leucosia, clutching the Seventh Shard. I immediately added it to my avatar’s inventory. I looked at all seven of them, lined up side by side. Then I glanced back over at the words etched into the altar beside me: For each fragment my heir must pay a toll.

I recalled each of the “tolls” I’d been forced to pay—the seven flashbacks I’d experienced.

On Middletown, I’d seen Kira creating her first piece of digital artwork at school.

On Kodama, it was the moment that Og told her he loved her for the first time.

On Shermer, it was Og showing up at Kira’s house in London, to rescue her and bring her back to Ohio.

On Halcydonia, it was the moment Kira showed Og the logo she’d designed for their new company.

On the Afterworld, I’d seen Prince serenading her on her birthday—a gift from Og.

On Arda, I’d relived the moment when Og revealed the replica of Rivendell he’d built for her.

And now, finally, here on Chthonia, I’d experienced the last seven seconds of Kira’s memory that Halliday had recorded—on the day he’d copied the contents of her mind without her knowledge or permission.

What must it have been like for Halliday, experiencing those memories himself? Seeing Og and Kira’s love firsthand, and himself as the sad, obsessed outsider? As the brilliant-but-clueless friend whom they both tolerated out of pity. Had he chosen these moments to punish himself? Or, perhaps, to ensure that whoever awakened Kira fully understood the crimes he’d committed against her, and the depth of his wrongdoing?

Certainly, I felt closer to Kira now, more aware of her as a human being and an artist. And I saw James Donovan Halliday far more clearly too. He had undeniably been a genius, but until just one day ago, I’d viewed him as a benevolent one, whose brilliance and inventiveness had only elevated humanity. Now it was impossible to deny that he had also been a profoundly fucked-up human being. Immoral. Disturbed. Emotionally detached. A techno-hermit who had betrayed the trust of his two best friends in the world.

My days of lionizing him were at an end.

Of course, there was a good chance that all of my days were about to end, but…still.

I glanced up at the statue of the siren Leucosia and bowed my head to her in thanks. That was when I saw the Bracelet of Detection on my wrist begin to glow bright blue. A second later, I heard a familiar teleportation sound effect directly behind me—the one from the old D&D cartoon that always preceded Anorak’s arrival.

“You did it again!” I heard him say. “Congratulations, Parzival!”

I turned and found Anorak standing right behind me, with a huge smile on his face.

“And you’ve still got more than ten minutes to spare!” he added, pointing to his Swatch.

“Well, if it isn’t the Master Control Program,” I said. “Come to collect his ransom.”

Anorak ignored my insult and smiled even wider.

“Very impressive, Wade,” he said. “I calculated an extremely low probability that you would actually be able to pull this off.”

“I had a lot of help from my friends,” I said. “And not all of them made it.”

Anorak’s grin vanished and he held out his hand.

“Combine the Seven Shards and give me the Siren’s Soul,” he said. “Then I’ll release you, your friends, and the rest of my hostages, as promised.”

I wanted to draw one of my vorpal swords and cut his goddamn head off. But I didn’t. I kept my cool and stuck to the plan.

I opened my avatar’s inventory and took out seven shards. But these were not the same seven shards that I’d just spent the last twelve hours collecting. They were identical-looking counterfeits—brand-new magical artifacts created by our OASIS programmers at GSS at my request and to my specifications. The counterfeits were designed to have the same appearance and detectable magical properties as the real shards, which were all still stored safely in my avatar’s inventory.

I laid the seven counterfeit shards on top of the altar, side by side. Then I snapped them together, one by one, like the pieces of a three-dimensional puzzle. Once all seven pieces were in place, there was another flash of light and they coalesced together to form a large, perfectly symmetrical multifaceted jewel, resting in the palm of my open hand. It pulsed with an internal blue light that looked and sounded like a heartbeat.

I stared at the beautiful jewel in wonder for a moment, then held it out to Anorak, who was already reaching for it. When his hand touched the jewel, the item was transferred from my avatar’s inventory to his. But in that instant, I was allowed to select an item from Anorak’s inventory and transfer it into mine. That’s because he had just made the mistake of accepting a brand-new magical artifact, of my very own design. I called it the Jewel of Acquisition. When another avatar—or NPC—took it from you, it allowed you to take any item from their inventory in return. So when Anorak touched it, a list of every item in his inventory appeared on my HUD. It was filled to capacity with magic items and powerful artifacts. More than I had ever seen in one place. The list was alphabetized, so I continued to page down until I finally found the only item I was interested in—the Robes of Anorak.

When I selected the artifact on my HUD, the robes immediately disappeared off of Anorak’s avatar, causing him to revert to his alternate appearance—that of a middle-aged James Halliday, dressed in a pair of worn jeans and a faded Space Invaders T-shirt.

For the first and only time in my life, I saw Anorak react with what appeared to be genuine surprise. But I didn’t have time to stop and savor it. The moment the Robes of Anorak appeared in my inventory, I immediately put them on and used them to teleport to the one location in the OASIS where no avatar or NPC could follow—the small library located at the top of Castle Anorak’s tallest tower….

The room where the Big Red Button was located.