When I rematerialized inside the study in Castle Anorak’s tallest tower, I was standing directly in front of the pedestal on which Halliday’s Easter egg was displayed. I ran over to a bookshelf set against the wall and pulled on the spine of one of the volumes it held—a novel called Simulacron-3. I heard a click and then the bookshelf slid aside, revealing a square metal plate set into the wall. In the center of the plate there was a comically large red button embossed with a single word: OFF.
I took a Cube of Force out of my inventory and activated it. A cube-shaped force field appeared around my avatar. This was a precaution—I knew from experience that no other avatars or NPCs could follow me inside this room. But I was still worried that Anorak might be the exception, because he had been in here at least once before, on the day I won the contest. But that was also the day he’d given me the Robes of Anorak. And he’d transferred all of his innate powers to me at the same time. So I was betting that he’d been stripped of his ability to reenter this room at the same time.
I heard the whoosh of Anorak’s teleportation sound effect—and to my relief, saw him reappear just outside the study’s open window. My assumption had been correct. Halliday had coded this room of the castle so that only I, the winner of his contest, could enter it. When Anorak cast a spell to teleport to my location, the system could not comply, so it teleported him just outside the room.
There was no ground under his feet, so he began to plummet for a few seconds before levitating back up to my level. Then he hovered just outside the window so that he could address me.
“Very sneaky, Wade,” Anorak said. “I didn’t anticipate this specific series of events. But that might be because your actions don’t make any sense. Nothing has changed….”
I deactivated the Cube of Force and stowed it, then I took out a Ring of Telekinesis and slipped it onto the middle finger of my left hand. Then I reached out with my right hand and placed it gently on the Big Red Button.
“We know where you and Sorrento are holding Og hostage,” I said. “In his old residence on Babbitt Road here in Columbus. GSS has a squad of telebots outside now to retrieve him. Let him go, right now, or I’ll press this thing.”
He smiled and shook his head.
“I can’t do that, man!” he replied cheerfully. “It would be a stupid move. Now that you and your friends have shown me exactly where and how to collect all seven shards, I can just walk Og’s avatar through the same steps—once I figure out his passphrase. It shouldn’t take much longer. I would’ve cracked it already, I’m sure, if Halliday hadn’t erased so much of my memory.”
“Anorak,” I said, “I’m not kidding. If you don’t release Og unharmed, I swear to Crom, I will press this fucking thing and delete your psychotic ass, along with the Seven Shards and the rest of the OASIS. To hell with the consequences.”
I took a giant boom box out of my inventory and placed it on the ground. Then I slapped in a tape and hit Play. The same Peter Wolf song that Anorak had used to taunt us earlier began to blast out of its speakers. I sang along with its opening lyrics:
Lights out ah ha. Blast, blast, blast.
Anorak didn’t seem to find this funny. He opened his mouth to shout something at me, but before he could get it out, I used the Ring of Telekinesis to slam the window shutters closed and bolt them, so that Anorak could no longer see or hear me, and vice versa. No form of magic or technology would allow him to spy on me while I was in this room either. But I was able to monitor Anorak through any number of the live vidfeeds of him being streamed by avatars who currently happened to be gathered outside the castle. He was still hovering outside the shuttered window, glaring at it in silence.
I opened my HUD and texted Art3mis the signal we’d agreed upon in advance:
WE CAN DANCE IF WE WANT TO
Her reply flashed across the top of my HUD a few seconds later:
IT’S ON LIKE RED DAWN!
I smiled and removed the tiny Tactical Telebot Control Station Art3mis gave me from my inventory and tossed it onto the stone floor. It instantly grew to its full size. Its height and appearance resembled that of a conventional OASIS immersion rig. It even had a built-in omnidirectional treadmill at its base. I found this similarity ironic, since the device served the exact opposite purpose. Instead of allowing me to use my real body to control an OASIS avatar, the Telebot Control Station allowed me to use my OASIS avatar to control a robotic body in the real world.
The Telebot Control Station automatically powered itself on when I climbed into it. Spindly robotic arms extended from the rig to place a virtual OASIS visor and haptic suit on my avatar. These allowed me to see, feel, hear, and touch the real world from inside the OASIS, through the sensory apparatus of the telebot I was now piloting.
Through its head-mounted cameras, I could see that my telebot was still in its charging dock, which was located in the back of an ATC—an armored telebot carrier—which was currently in motion. I was surrounded by about two dozen other identical telebots. I recognized them as brand new Okagami ACT-3000s—armored combat telebots with forearm-mounted machine guns and shoulder-mounted missile racks. The security team at my house used ACT-2000s, which were designed for home defense. The 3000s were designed for military use in all-out warfare. Miles and Samantha had apparently decided not to take any chances.
When I swiveled my telebot’s head around to take in my surroundings, I spotted both Samantha and Miles just a few feet away, on the other side of a bulletproof window that separated the cargo hold from the ATC’s heavily armored cab. They were both wearing OASIS visors and haptic gloves, because they were each controlling one of the telebots in the back of the transport too. Their bots both nodded at mine as soon as they saw it activate.
Then Samantha’s bot turned toward mine. It was a combat medic telebot, outfitted with surgical tools and medicine instead of weapons and ammo. Its armor plating was painted white, and it had a big red cross on its forehead. Its armored chest plate swung open like a pair of doors, revealing a small monitor that displayed a live vidfeed of her OASIS ravatar’s face, which looked like a live mirror image of Samantha’s face in reality, minus the OASIS visor she was currently wearing.
It took me a few seconds to find the button that opened my own bot’s chest plate. When I pressed it, she had an unobstructed view of my own avatar’s face too. Through all those layers of machinery and technology, we locked eyes. I saw determination in her eyes, but then her expression softened, and for a second I could swear I saw her looking at me the way she used to—with love and warmth and hope.
Then Miles addressed me through his telebot and the moment was over.
“Hello, Mr. Watts,” he said. “It’s very good to see you, sir.”
“Hey, Miles,” I replied. “Thanks for arranging all of this.” I turned back to address Samantha. “What are you doing here?” I asked her. “I mean, why are you physically here, in the cab of this truck? It isn’t safe.”
“Because Og is physically here too,” she replied. “And he isn’t safe right now either. He’s also sick. So if we manage to get him out of there, I don’t want him to be surrounded by telebots and total strangers. I want to be there to put my arms around him.”
I nodded, momentarily unable to speak. Unlike me, she was thinking about Og instead of herself. Her instinct was always to act out of kindness and generosity instead of self-interest. She was a better person than me, and I was a better person when I was around her. And I desperately wanted to get her back in my life. For that to happen, I needed her to be alive.