Эрнест Клайн - Ready Player Two [calibre]

I felt like a complete idiot. I’d visited Kira’s grave on EEarth several times to search for clues. But I’d never thought to try this. At least I could hide my embarrassment, since I wasn’t “rolling real.”

L0hengrin opened a browser window in front of her avatar, then spun it around so I could see it. It showed a screenshot of Kira’s headstone on EEarth. Below her name and the dates of her birth and death was an inscription: BELOVED WIFE, DAUGHTER & FRIEND. Below that were two additional lines of text, which did not appear on her headstone in the real world:

The First Shard lies in the Siren’s first den

So the question isn’t where, but when?

There it was. After all these years, a genuine clue. And it seemed likely that L0hengrin was the first and only person to discover it, because no one else had submitted it to me in an attempt to claim the reward.

“When I found that couplet,” Lo continued, “I thought the ‘Siren’s first den’ might be the place where Kira was living when she created Leucosia—her old guest bedroom here on Middletown. But the time period of this simulation is always set to 1986. Kira only lived in Middletown during her junior year of high school, from the fall of 1988 to the summer of 1989. So to reach the Siren’s Den, I figured I would need to alter the time period of the Middletown simulation, to a different ‘when.’ I tried everything I could think of, including time travel.” She held up an object that resembled an oversize pocket watch—a rare time-travel device called an Omni. “But no dice. Time machines don’t function here, the way they do on some other planets, like Zemeckis.”

This was something I already knew firsthand. I’d brought my own time machine, ECTO-88, to Middletown to try the same thing. I’d upgraded the car with a fully functional (and extremely expensive) Flux Capacitor, which allowed me to time travel on planets where doing so was an option. For example, on EEarth, I could travel as far back as 2012, when the OASIS was first launched, and GSS began backing up previous versions of the simulated Earth on their servers. But my flux capacitor wouldn’t function on Middletown, so I’d dismissed time travel as a possibility.

“But I knew from the riddle that changing the timeframe had to be part of the solution,” Lo continued. “So I kept on searching for another way…”

She turned around and continued to flip through the D&D modules on the bookshelf.

“Then, earlier this week, I was browsing through Og’s old gaming library here when I came across something strange.”

She finally located the item she was looking for and carried it back over to me. It was a shrink-wrapped wall calendar for the year 1989, featuring the work of a fantasy artist named Boris Vallejo. The painting on the cover depicted a pair of Valkyries riding into battle.

My eyes widened, then darted to the calendar already hanging on the basement wall. It, too, was a Boris Vallejo artwork calendar, for the year 1986. The month of October was currently displayed. It featured a painting of a bikini-clad female warrior astride a black steed, brandishing a magic ring at an incoming flight of dragons. Out of curiosity, I’d looked up the name of this painting once—it was called Magic Ring and it had also been used as the cover artwork for a 1985 fantasy novel called Warrior Witch of Hel.

Like the other wall decorations in Og’s basement, the calendar couldn’t be taken down or removed. And its pages couldn’t be flipped to another month.

“Halliday coded the Middletown simulation to re-create his hometown circa October 1986, right?” Lo said. “So why would there be a calendar for the year 1989 here?”

“Good question,” I said, glancing between the calendar on the wall and the one in her hand. “But gunters around the world spent years studying the contents of this room. Why didn’t any of them find it?”

“Because it wasn’t here,” Lo said, grinning wide. “I checked Gunterpedia. There’s an itemized list of every single object in this basement. The only calendar listed on it is the one hanging on the wall.” She held up the 1989 calendar. “So either they somehow missed this one, or—”

“It appeared on that bookshelf after Halliday’s contest ended,” I finished.

L0hengrin nodded and held the 1989 calendar out to me.

“Now try swapping it with the one on the wall.”

I took the calendar from L0hengrin, then, with my other hand, I reached out and tried to take the 1986 calendar down off the wall. To my surprise, it slid right off the nail it was hanging on. I carefully hung up the 1989 calendar in its place, and opened it to the month of January.

As soon as I let go of the calendar, its pages began to flip upward on their own, until the month of April was displayed. As the pages were flipping, the sky outside cycled rapidly between day and night, pulsing on and off like a strobe light. The entire Middletown simulation was fast-forwarding all around us, like time-lapse film footage played back at high speed.

When the strobing stopped, our surroundings had changed. The couches in Og’s basement had rearranged themselves, and two more bookshelves had appeared against the far wall, both filled with more gaming supplements. There were also several new posters on the walls. But the most striking difference was the time of day. Outside the basement windows, night had fallen. The streetlights were on and there was a full moon out.

“Whoa,” I heard myself whisper. I glanced at the digital alarm clock sitting on top of one of the bookshelves. Its glowing blue display said the local time was now 1:07 A.M.

I turned back to L0hengrin. She was beaming with pride.

“Swapping the calendars changes the time period of the Middletown simulation from October 1986 to April 1989,” she explained. “But only this one instance of the simulation has been updated. The other two hundred and fifty-five copies of Middletown spread out across the planet remain set to the 1986 version. I’ve checked.”

“If this is April in 1989,” I said, “then what happens if we go over to the Barnetts’ empty guest bedroom now?”

Lo grinned. “Before we head over there, you need to obtain an item located in this room. An audio cassette tape that Kira gifted to both Halliday and Og….”

She locked eyes with me, studying my reaction.

“What, are you actually quizzing me now?” I asked.

Lo nodded and folded her arms. The dubious expression on her face made me laugh out loud.

“It was called Leucosia’s Mix, ” I said. “Oscar Miller mentions it in his memoir, The Middletown Adventurers’ Guild . But he doesn’t give the full track list. He just mentions one song that was on it—‘There Is a Light That Never Goes Out’ by the Smiths.”

Lo nodded. “That’s exactly right,” she said. “And now that we’ve jumped ahead to 1989, there are two copies of Leucosia’s Mix in the Middletown simulation. One in Halliday’s Walkman in his bedroom, and one here.”

She walked over to the ground-level window at the opposite end of the basement, which looked out onto the Morrows’ moonlit backyard. Og’s boombox was resting on the window ledge. She pressed the Eject button and removed the tape inside.

“According to Miller’s book, Kira made two copies of this mixtape,” she said, holding it up. “She gave one to Og and one to Halliday, a few months before her school year abroad ended and she had to go back home to London.”

She tossed the tape to me and I held it up to read the sticker on its A side: Leucosia’s Mix was written on it in cursive, above a track-list insert filled out in the same handwriting.

“Thanks,” I said, adding the tape to my inventory.