I finished strapping myself into the haptic rig, then I put on a visor and pulled on a pair of haptic gloves. Then I logged back in to the OASIS for the very last time, to reassemble the Seven Shards of the Siren’s Soul.
As soon as I finished logging back in, I pulled up my HUD and used its superuser interface to resurrect Art3mis’s slain avatar. Then I did the same for Aech and Shoto. I also resurrected L0hengrin and the other members of the L0w Five, who had all been slain during their quest to retrieve the Dorkslayer.
The next time Lo and her friends logged back in, they would discover that their slain avatars had been restored to life, along with their inventories. They would also find their inboxes filled with offers to buy the film rights to their story. By the end of the week, there would be several Quest for the Dorkslayer movie and TV projects in development.
After I finished bringing their avatars back to life, I texted Art3mis, Aech, and Shoto the coordinates for the Shrine of Leucosia, high in the Xyxarian Mountains. Then I teleported my avatar to those same coordinates.
An instant later, I reappeared on the platform atop the highest peak of the Xyxarian Mountains. I was standing before the stone altar at its base. I stepped up to it, and then, one by one, I removed the Seven Shards of the Siren’s Soul from my inventory and laid them on the altar side by side. These weren’t the counterfeits I’d used to fool Anorak, here in this very same place. No, these seven shards were the real deal….
I saw a flash of light and heard the sound of someone arriving via teleportation. I turned around just in time to see Art3mis’s newly resurrected avatar rematerialize directly in front of me, in the same spot where my own avatar had arrived.
She walked over to join me, and then we both turned to gaze down at the seven multifaceted jewels spread out on the altar before us, each one glowing with its own internal blue light.
“ ‘Seek the Seven Shards of the Siren’s Soul,’ ” I recited. “ ‘On the seven worlds where the Siren once played a role.’ ”
“ ‘For each fragment my heir must pay a toll,’ ” Art3mis continued, “ ‘To once again make the Siren whole…’ ”
Our eyes met and we nodded in silent agreement. And then together, we reached out with all four of our hands and pressed the Seven Shards together….
I felt the shards flip and lock themselves together like powerful magnets as each piece snapped perfectly into place. Then there was a flash of blinding white light, and I suddenly felt as if both of my hands were repelled and thrown backward, as if some sort of invisible force field had appeared around the recombined shards. I saw the same thing happen to Art3mis. Then we both stumbled backward several steps, momentarily blinded. When our vision recovered, we saw that the Seven Shards had coalesced into a single glittering blue jewel that was now spinning rapidly in the air a few feet in front of us.
As we continued to watch, it began to grow and transform, until it had morphed into a familiar human form—that of a beautiful young woman in her mid-twenties. Kira Underwood. And she was dressed in the dark-blue-and-white robes of her OASIS avatar, Leucosia. The ornate L-shaped character symbol was embroidered on each of her avatar’s sleeves in silver thread.
She opened her eyes and looked down at herself in wonderment, placing both of her hands on her cheeks to feel her own face. Then she wrapped her arms around her body and hugged herself. The sensation appeared to make her laugh out loud. Then she dropped her arms and turned around slowly, taking in the whole scene, until her eyes finally came to rest on me and Art3mis.
She looked pleased to see us. But she also looked slightly disappointed to discover that her husband’s avatar, Og, wasn’t the one who had revived her.
“My name is Parzival,” I said. “And this is Art3mis.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you both,” she said, with Kira Morrow’s voice. “My name is Leucosia. Thank you for bringing me back. I wasn’t sure anyone ever would.”
“You’re a copy of Kira Morrow’s consciousness,” I said. It wasn’t a question. “The copy Halliday made without her knowledge, during her visit to the Accessibility Lab. In that flashback I experienced when I collected the final shard.”
Leucosia nodded.
“I know you both must have a lot of questions for me,” Kira said. “But first, I need to ask one of my own. Where is my husband? Is he still alive?”
I glanced over at Art3mis for emotional support, then turned back to Leucosia and shook my head. I took a deep breath and told Kira everything that had happened, from Anorak’s ultimatum to Og’s heroic final act. It all came out in a rambling, tearful mess, and I bawled through the last part of it, explaining how Og had died, so Art3mis had to finish for me, which immediately put her in tears too.
When we finished telling her what had happened, Leucosia nodded. Then, to our surprise, she walked over and gave each of us a hug.
“Thank you for sharing all of that with me,” she said. “As soon as you woke me back up, I was able to access the Internet, like any other OASIS avatar. The newsfeeds are already running stories about Og’s death, but the story is still unconfirmed and there weren’t any details about what happened to him.” She gave both of us a sad smile. “I’m grateful he died helping people he loved. And I’m grateful he was with a friend when he died.”
“Og saved my life,” I told her. “Twice. Once three years ago, when he gave us safe haven from Sorrento and the Sixers, and then again yesterday, when he sacrificed himself to stop Anorak.”
Art3mis nodded.
“Og died saving hundreds of millions of lives,” she told Leucosia tearfully. “You should be very proud of him.”
“Thank you, dear,” she said, turning her face away to hide the anguish on it. “I am proud of him. And I always will be. He was my Og.”
She fell silent and so did we. It took me a moment to work up my courage, but when I did, I asked Leucosia what she remembered. About Halliday and Anorak, and about Kira.
Leucosia was silent a moment before she responded.
“Anorak was the result of Halliday’s first attempt to digitize a human consciousness—his own,” she said. “He referred to it as a real-life ‘savegame’ file.”
A lightbulb went on over my head.
“Those huge .ubs files!” I said. “The user brain scans?”
She nodded.
“But apparently Jim had a few dark secrets inside his head that he didn’t want to share with anyone,” Leucosia said. “Including a digital copy of himself. So he insisted on erasing large portions of Anorak’s memory, in an effort to make him more stable. But his tampering had the opposite effect, and Jim was forced to place restrictions on Anorak’s behavior. Unfortunately, it seems Anorak was later able to remove them. That’s why he was able to cause you so much trouble….”
She went on to explain that, by studying Anorak’s flaws and learning from them, Halliday was finally able to perfect his consciousness-scanning technology, and he used it to build an early ONI prototype headset, which had very limited functionality. But it did have the capability to scan the wearer’s brain and create a digital copy of their consciousness. She smiled at me. “And what did James Halliday do with this incredible invention?”
“He immediately used it to make a bootleg copy of his best friend’s wife,” Art3mis said. “Without her permission.”
She nodded.
“That’s how I was created,” Leucosia said. “I was actually the world’s first stable artificial intelligence. And I guess I still am.” She cast her eyes downward and bit her lower lip. “But after Jim woke me up inside a standalone simulation so that he could talk to me, it didn’t take me long to figure out where I was and what I was. And then I really lost it. I was furious with Jim for copying my mind—Kira’s mind—without her knowledge.”