“We trust you, Aech!” I replied. “Lead on.”
She led us on, to the front entrance of Paisley Park. As soon as we reached it, Aech opened one of the glass front doors and waved us inside. We could hear the opening of the cheerful song “Paisley Park” emanating from within.
“First we need to go in here,” she said. “And by ‘we’ I mean you, Z. This is your quest to complete. But I’ll walk you through it, step by step. OK?”
“OK,” I said, reluctantly peering inside.
A split second later, I felt Aech’s foot hit me squarely in the small of my avatar’s back, propelling me forward, through the doorway, and into Paisley Park.
The moment we reached the foyer, Aech began leading, prodding, and dragging me forward, through the building’s mazelike interior. Shoto followed close on our heels as we sprinted up and down Paisley Park’s marble hallways and through its ornately carved wooden doors, many of which were marked with either a moon or a star.
Aech led me from one padded purple velvet room to the next, occasionally stopping to tell me to touch a specific object (or undergarment) to gain access to a secret passage, which would lead us to yet another padded purple velvet room. By following her instructions, I was able to collect five hidden pieces of a Love Symbol–shaped power cell, which Aech said we needed to repair a spaceship that was parked up on the roof. Luckily, she already knew exactly where and how to obtain each of the five pieces.
As we sprinted from the Candle Room to the Music Club to the Boudoir to the Virtual Video Room, a song called “Interactive” played on a continuous loop in every room. Aech explained that this was a song Prince wrote exclusively for a Myst-like videogame he released with the same title. In the game, players had to collect five pieces of the Prince Symbol hidden throughout Paisley Park, and this was a re-creation of that quest.
After we collected the first four pieces, Aech led me and Shoto down another carpeted corridor, into a large open room filled with museum exhibits. Dozens of Prince’s outfits and instruments were on display inside glass cases. Aech hurried past them, toward the opposite side of the room, without stopping to look at anything. Shoto and I did the same, following behind her single-file, to ensure that we only stepped where she did.
When she reached the door at the other side of the room, she threw it open—but then I saw something catch her eye. Parked off in the far corner of this room, surrounded by velvet ropes, was a purple motorcycle. I tapped an icon on my HUD to zoom in on the placard mounted on the wall behind it, which identified the bike as the 1981 Hondamatic that Prince rode in the movie Purple Rain.
“Wait here!” Aech shouted over her shoulder as she ran across the room and leaped over the velvet ropes. I thought she was going to hop on the bike and steal it, but instead she pulled a giant serrated Rambo knife out of her inventory and slashed the motorcycle’s tires, then stabbed a large hole in the side of its gas tank. When she rejoined us at the exit, I saw tears glinting in her eyes, just before she wiped them away with her hand.
“I had to immobilize the Hondamatic now, so that later on, when we face Purple Rain Prince in the arena, he won’t be riding it. And that might save our ass, because he won’t be able to use it to run down Morris. That bike is his Achilles’ heel!”
“Morris who?” Shoto and I asked as we chased after her.
Aech blurted out a reply, but she was too far away and moving too fast for us to make out any of it. She led us out of the museum and down another series of corridors, to another door. When she opened it, there was a spiral staircase on the other side, suspended in an endless starry void. It corkscrewed downward, through a field of stars, galaxies, and nebulae. We followed Aech up this long spiral staircase, until we arrived at a door labeled STUDIO. Inside, we passed through a large wood-paneled control room filled with giant mixing boards and recording equipment, and then on into the main recording studio. Aech sidestepped the piano, then hustled over to a red painting of two women hanging on the wall, which she slid aside to reveal a safe hidden behind it. She entered the combination from memory and opened it. The fifth and final piece of the Love Symbol power cell was inside.
Once all five pieces were reassembled, the power cell began to glow.
Aech led us back up the surreal spiral staircase, all the way to the top, into a large domed room. Just as she had promised, a large purple spaceship sat parked in the center of it. It resembled a giant thimble, with half a dozen capsule-shaped tanks bolted to the outside. Aech pressed a button on its exterior and a hatch opened in its perfectly smooth hull. The three of us crammed into the ship’s tiny purple velvet-lined cockpit, and Aech pointed out a Love Symbol–shaped indentation in the control panel in front of us. I placed the Love Symbol power cell inside it. The control panel lit up, and we could hear its engine powering on directly beneath our feet. At the same moment, the domed ceiling above us split apart like the segments of an orange and retracted to reveal a starry night sky, filled with billowing purple clouds.
Aech gave me a thumbs-up, then she took the ship’s crushed velvet–covered steering yoke in her hands and launched us into the sky. She circled over Paisley Park a few times, then turned the ship east, toward the distant Minneapolis skyline on the horizon.
Aech pulled up a map of the Afterworld on the ship’s navigation display. The planet wasn’t a globe, but it still rotated like one, spinning like a Love Symbol pendant suspended from an invisible chain in virtual space. Most of the surface was covered by a surreal, shrunken-down version of mid-’80s Minneapolis, Minnesota, but it had streets and locations from L.A., Paris, and several other locations scattered throughout. The map divided the city into different neighborhoods, like Big City, Erotic City, Crystal City, Beatown, and Uptown. Aech flew us directly into the heart of Downtown and set the ship down in the middle of a busy intersection, directly in front of a place called the Huntington Hotel.
Aech opened the ship’s outer hatch. But before we exited, she removed the Love Symbol power cell from its cradle and stashed it in her inventory, causing the whole ship to go dark and power down.
The street outside was crowded with NPC pedestrians and motorists, many of them cursing and honking at us for abandoning our purple UFO in the middle of a busy intersection. Aech ignored them and headed for a large, fortress-like black building on the opposite corner of the street. A curved sign over its front entrance read FIRST AVENUE, in large capital letters.
Aech pointed farther down the street, at a side entrance that led into the same building. It had a small awning over the door with 7TH ST. ENTRY printed on it. She told us to wait for her there, then she sprinted straight toward the club’s front entrance, like Lancelot storming a castle single-handed.
As she went inside, I pulled up her POV video feed on my HUD, giving me a glimpse of the interior. Aech was pushing her way through a dance floor that was packed with hundreds of NPCs of every race, creed, and social class. Teenagers and adults, packed in shoulder to shoulder, all getting their groove on. Then there was a flurry of movement, during which I couldn’t see much of anything. I heard what sounded like several rapid blasts from a plasma rifle. A few seconds later, Aech emerged carrying an all-white guitar, with gold knobs and tuning keys, and a gold Love Symbol painted on its body, just above the gold pickups. It was one of the most beautiful musical instruments I had ever seen.
“Ka-ching!” Aech said, holding it triumphantly over her head for a moment before she added it to her avatar’s inventory. “It shoots sonic blasts that are almost as powerful as the Purple Special! Now we just need a few more things, and we’ll be ready to head to the arena.” She took off running again, motioning for us to follow. “Come on! We’ve got an audition.”