For some reason, her calm tour-guide demeanor made me laugh out loud.
“Sorry,” I said, when she looked over at me. “I just love listening to you geek out, Arty. I always have.”
She gave me a sad smile and then looked away. But I kept right on staring at her. In that moment, she looked more beautiful than ever. Like some warrior goddess, riding across the skies of Arda on the back of a Great Eagle, with her dark hair trailing out behind her in the wind.
Aech was right. I was still in love with her. And I always would be. I just wanted to live long enough to correct my mistakes and redeem myself in her eyes, if I could.
Looking at Art3mis, I felt a wave of pity for Anorak. In his warped mind, he was doing all this because he believed he was in love, too, with Kira, and longed to bring her back to life. And somewhere in his deluded soul, he was sure that he could convince her to return his feelings and end his loneliness.
But Anorak was crazy—not stupid. Surely, he didn’t really think we’d leave him to blissfully roam the OASIS forever, after everything he’d done. What was his endgame?
I shivered as I thought again of that “Ship in a Bottle” scenario—the standalone simulation where he could have Kira alone in his mad clutches, forever.
Maybe Anorak had built a server farm in a subterranean bunker somewhere, fed by solar panels up on the surface? Or maybe he intended to use a solar-powered satellite up in orbit?
I didn’t think Anorak would have constructed a virtual jail cell for himself. He’d need processors powerful enough to create a simulation he could spread out in, and roam for centuries. An OASIS of his own.
Except that Anorak didn’t have to create his own ship in a bottle, did he? I had already created the perfect one for him, aboard the Vonnegut. Its onboard computer held our own private simulated universe. ARC@DIA. And there wasn’t a single human-controlled avatar inside it yet. It was populated solely by NPCs. All Anorak would have to do was upload himself and Leucosia, using the same data uplink I already had in place for uploading new OASIS content. Then both AIs could hide inside the onboard computer unnoticed until after the ship left Earth.
Unless Anorak figured out a way to take control of the ship and launch it prematurely. And that probably wouldn’t be too difficult for him to pull off, since I had taken great pains to ensure that we would be able to control all of the ship’s functions and service telebots while we were logged in to ARC@DIA.
That had to be it. Once he had Leucosia, Anorak was planning to steal our interstellar spacecraft and flee Earth.
I considered sharing my new theory with Art3mis, but I decided it was better to keep quiet while we were still in the presence of NPCs. It didn’t seem at all paranoid to think that Anorak might have figured out a way to spy on us through them.
Soaring on their great feathery wings, Gwaihir and Landroval carried us over the scorched wasteland of Anfauglith, and over Taur-nu-Fuin, to the valley of Tumalden in the Encircling Mountains, where the hidden Elven city of Gondolin was located. They set us down in an open field just outside the city, and just inside a designated teleportation departure zone. We gave the eagles our thanks and then bade them farewell, just before they flew off into the brilliant red-and-purple sunrise.
As soon as they were gone, I told Art3mis my new theory about Anorak’s plan for the Vonnegut. I thought she might shoot holes in it, but she didn’t. Instead she simply nodded in agreement.
“As soon as I log out, I’ll relay all of this to Miles and our security team,” she said. “We’ll take it into account and formulate a plan while you go after the final shard. Sound good?”
I nodded. Art3mis took a small object out of her inventory and handed it to me. It looked like a miniature haptic rig, about two inches tall. The item description said it was a Tactical Telebot Control Station.
“This will allow you to sync with one of the telebots we’re going to deploy at Og’s old mansion,” Art3mis explained. “I’ll signal you to activate.”
“Thanks, Arty,” I said, adding the item to my own inventory. “For everything.”
“You’re welcome,” she replied, smiling. Then, to my surprise, Art3mis leaned over and gave me a kiss on the cheek.
“For luck,” she said, a split second before she teleported away and her avatar vanished.
I stood there for a moment, touching the spot on my cheek where she had kissed me. Then I noticed that my hands were starting to tremble a little. I was running out of time fast.
I took a deep breath and teleported myself to Chthonia, to obtain the last of the Seven Shards.
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….