He walked over to greet me and I shook his outstretched hand. Being able to shake hands without any danger of spreading disease had always been one of the perks of the OASIS. But in the old days, before the ONI was released, it always felt like you were shaking hands with a mannequin, even with the best haptic gloves available. Without the sensation of skin-to-skin human contact, the ancient greeting lost most of its meaning. After we’d introduced the ONI, shaking hands had come back in vogue, along with high fives and fist bumps, because now they felt real.
The conference room itself was protected by both magical and technological means. We held our co-owners meetings here instead of in a standard OASIS chatroom because it allowed all sorts of additional security measures to be taken, to prevent anyone from recording or eavesdropping on us, including our own employees.
“Are the others already here?” I asked, nodding toward the closed doors behind him.
“Ms. Aech and Mr. Shoto both arrived a few minutes ago,” he said, opening the doors. “But Ms. Cook called to say she’s running a bit late.”
I nodded and went into the conference room. Aech and Shoto were standing over by the wraparound floor-to-ceiling windows, grazing from a ridiculously large assortment of snack trays that were laid out nearby, while they admired the impressive view. Gregarious Tower was surrounded by acres of pristine forestland, with snowcapped mountain peaks ringing the horizon. There were no other structures in sight. By design, everything about the view was calming and peaceful. Unfortunately, the same could never be said of the meetings we held here.
“Z!” Aech and Shoto shouted in unison when they spotted me.
I walked over and received high fives from each of them.
“How goes it, mis amigos?”
“It’s way too early for this shit, man,” Aech groaned. She was in L.A., where it was currently ten o’clock in the morning. Aech liked to stay up late and sleep in even later.
“Yeah,” Shoto added, after a quarter-second delay from his translator software. “And it’s also way too late for this shit.” He was in Japan, where it was the middle of the night. But Shoto was nocturnal by nature. He was just complaining because he’d grown to dread these meetings, just like me and Aech.
“Arty’s running late,” Aech said. “She’s supposed to be logging in from Liberia, I think.”
“Yeah,” I said, rolling my eyes. “That’s the most recent stop on her ongoing tour of the world’s most depressing places.”
I still couldn’t fathom why Samantha felt the need to endure all of the hassles and risks of real-world travel when she could have visited safely via telepresence robot, or experienced any location in the world by downloading an .oni clip recorded there. She also could have visited any of those countries inside the OASIS. There was an incredibly detailed re-creation of the Earth in Sector Ten called EEarth (short for “Ersatz Earth”), that was constantly being updated with data taken from live satellite imagery, drone footage, and traffic, security, and smartphone-camera feeds to make it as accurate as possible. Visiting Dubai, Bangkok, or Delhi on EEarth was a lot easier and safer than visiting them in reality. But Samantha felt it was imperative for her to witness the true state of the world with her own two eyes, even when it came to the most dangerous, war-torn countries. In other words, she was crazy.
No, she’s selfless and principled, replied a nagging little voice in my head. And you’re neither of those things. Is it any wonder she dumped you?
I clenched my teeth. These co-owners meetings were always bad for my self-esteem, and not just because it forced me to see Art3mis. Aech and Shoto were also living glamorous and fulfilling post-contest lives. The reclusive, obsessive existence I’d carved out for myself seemed painfully bleak by comparison.
These days, if I wanted to hang out with Aech or Shoto, I had to make an appointment several weeks in advance. But I didn’t mind. I was grateful they still made time to hang out with me at all. Unlike me, they had more than two friends. And they also spent a lot more of their time offline than I did. Instead of downloading pieces of other people’s lives off the ONI-net, Aech and Shoto were out in the world having (and recording) experiences of their own. In fact, they were two of the most popular celebrity posters on the ONI-net. Every clip either of them threw up went viral within a few seconds, regardless of its content.
Like Art3mis, they were brilliant, charismatic people, leading rock-star lives while also working to improve the lives of the less fortunate. More than once it had occurred to me that my friends were my one saving grace. The thing I took the most pride in—even more than winning Halliday’s fortune—was the three people I’d chosen to share that fortune with. Aech, Shoto, and Art3mis were all kinder, wiser, and saner than I was or ever would be.
After the contest ended, Helen legally changed her name to Aech, with no surname, just like Sting and Madonna. And since her true identity, appearance, and gender were now public knowledge in the wake of Halliday’s contest, she’d promptly ditched the world-famous white male avatar she’d used to mask her true identity since childhood. Like Samantha and Shoto and many other real-world celebrities, Aech now used an OASIS ravatar—an avatar that re-created her unaltered real-world appearance, and was updated each and every time she logged in to the simulation.
I had never been a huge fan of my real-world appearance, so I still used the same OASIS avatar I always had—an idealized version of myself. A bit taller, fitter, and more handsome.
These days, Aech spent most of her real-world time chilling in her Santa Monica beach house, or touring with her new fiancée, Endira Vinayak, a famous singer and Bollywood star.
Becoming a billionaire hadn’t altered Aech’s personality at all, as far as I could tell. She still liked to have ridiculous arguments about old movies. She still loved to get her kills on in PvP arena tournaments, and she remained one of the league’s highest-ranked combatants, in both the Deathmatch and Capture the Flag leagues. In other words, Aech was still a total badass. Except now she was a total badass who also happened to be insanely rich and world famous.
I still considered Aech my best friend, but we weren’t nearly as close now as we’d been in the old days. I hadn’t seen her in person in over two years, although we still got together online once or twice a month. But these meet-ups were always my suggestion, and I was beginning to worry that Aech only spent time with me out of some lingering sense of obligation. Or because she was worried about me. Either way, I didn’t care. I was just grateful that she still made time for me, and that she still wanted me in her life.
I saw Shoto even less frequently than Aech, which was understandable. His life had changed drastically in the years since the contest. Shoto’s parents had helped him manage his inheritance when he was still a minor, but he’d turned eighteen a year ago, making him a legal adult in Japan. Now he had full control of his own life, and his share of Halliday’s fortune.
To celebrate, he legally adopted his avatar’s name, just like Aech. Then he got married to a young woman named Kiki, whom he met when he relocated to Hokkaido. He and his new bride moved into a remodeled Japanese castle right on the shore. Then, about five months ago, during one of our GSS meetings, Shoto announced that he was going to become a father. He and Kiki had just learned that they were going to have a boy, and together they had already decided to name him Toshiro. But in confidence, Shoto told us he’d already decided to nickname the baby “Little Daito,” so that was what I called him too.
It was still hard to believe that Shoto would be a father in a few months, at such a young age. I was concerned for him, though I had no idea why. It wasn’t like he wouldn’t be able to afford to send Little Daito to a good school. I just didn’t understand why he was in such a big hurry, until he sat me down and explained it to me. Japan was in the midst of an “underpopulation crisis” because so many of its citizens had opted to stop having children over the past three decades. As the country’s wealthiest and most famous young couple, he and Kiki felt obligated to lead by example and reproduce as quickly as possible. So they had. And after Little Daito arrived, they planned to start working on a Little Shoto—or perhaps a Little Kiki.