Эрнест Клайн - Ready Player Two [calibre]

Then I realized: my avatar’s name had appeared on Halliday’s old Scoreboard last night with a blue shard icon beside it. That was trending at number one on the newsfeeds worldwide, no doubt. And the GSS PR department was probably getting inundated with questions for me.

I crawled out of bed, wincing at the sunlight that flooded into the room as the wraparound window shades retracted. When my vision returned, I cleared my throat and took Faisal’s call on the wallscreen. He looked worried, which usually meant I was about to be worried too.

“Hey, Faisal,” I muttered. “Good morning.”

“Good morning, sir,” he said. His video feed was shaky, because he was holding up his phone while running down an office corridor at GSS. The image stabilized as he boarded an elevator. “I apologize for waking you, but I wanted to—”

“To talk to me about finding the shard,” I said. “And making a public statement, et cetera—but can we do it in a few hours?”

“No, sir,” Faisal said. “I was calling to make sure you’d seen the news. About Mr. Morrow.”

I felt my heart rise into my throat. Og was in his mid-seventies. He’d appeared in good health the last time I’d seen him being interviewed, but that was months ago. Had he fallen ill? Or been in an accident? Had I waited too long to make amends with him and missed my chance?

“He’s missing,” Faisal said. “Possibly abducted. The police aren’t sure yet. The story is all over the newsfeeds.”

Max pulled all of the top video newsfeed channels up on my wallscreen, next to Faisal’s video-call window. My discovery wasn’t the day’s top news story after all. Photos or video clips of Og flashed in front of me, accompanied by headlines like OGDEN MORROW MISSING and OASIS CO-CREATOR MORROW VANISHES HOURS AFTER PARZIVAL FINDS FIRST SHARD.

“Jesus,” I muttered. “When did this happen?”

“Last night,” Faisal said. “Mr. Morrow’s home-security system, surveillance cameras, and robot sentries were all deactivated at exactly seven o’clock Pacific Time. They all just shut off. When his staff came in this morning, Mr. Morrow was gone. He didn’t leave a note, and there were no signs of a break-in. One of his telebots is missing, and so is his private jet. Transponders disabled. And Mr. Morrow’s phone has been turned off too.” He shrugged. “The police think he must’ve decided to go off the grid for some reason.”

“But you said he might have been abducted?”

“An intruder would’ve had to hack his home security system,” Faisal said. “And his robot sentries. And his jet’s security system. Who could pull that off?”

I nodded. I had the same Odinware system as Og. And the same robot sentries were guarding my estate at that very moment. It was the best home-security tech available—or at least the most expensive.

“But why would Og want to go ‘off the grid’? Where would he go? He already lives in the middle of nowhere, in total seclusion.”

Faisal shrugged. “We’re wondering if…if it’s somehow linked to your discovery last night,” he said. “Congratulations on that, by the way.”

“Thanks,” I said, feeling a tinge of shame instead of pride.

Og had asked me to abandon my search for the Seven Shards years ago. But he’d refused to give me a reason, or tell me anything about the riddle, which had only made me even more determined to figure it out on my own.

How had he reacted last night, when he saw that blue shard appear beside my name?

“Did Mr. Morrow contact you?” Faisal asked. “Or did you contact him?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Og and I haven’t communicated in over two years.”

Because I wouldn’t stop hounding him for information about his dead wife.

“I see,” Faisal said after an awkward silence. “Well, I think you should consider coming in to the office today, sir. PR thinks you should make a statement as soon as possible, before any of these conspiracy theories start to gain traction. We’re being bombarded with interview requests for you. And there are a few hundred reporters camped out downstairs in the lobby.”

“Forget the press, Faisal,” I said. “I just want to find out what happened to Og.”

“We’ve already got our security firm out searching for him, sir,” Faisal said. “And we’re sweeping the global sensor nets too. If his face, voice, retinas, or fingerprints get scanned anywhere in the world, we’ll know about it immediately.”

“Did you check his OASIS account log?”

He nodded. “His last logout occurred shortly after five o’clock last night.”

“Do we still have a GSS security team at Og’s estate?”

“Yes,” he said. “And we still have a telebot on site, if you’d like to have a look around.”

“I would,” I said. “Can you send me its access code?”

“Right away, sir.”

I got dressed and ran down to my office. Then I climbed into my conventional OASIS haptic rig and put on a visor and a pair of haptic gloves. Once I had logged in to the OASIS, I used the remote-access code Faisal sent me to take control of a telebot located at Og’s mansion in Oregon, over two thousand miles away.

Once my link to the bot was established, its head-mounted cameras gave me a live view of Og’s stunningly beautiful home. Judging by the angle of my POV, I was standing in front of Og’s small jet hangar. It was at the edge of his private airstrip, which he’d had constructed in a valley between several of the highest peaks of the Wallowa Mountains in eastern Oregon.

In the distance, beyond the runway, I saw the steep cobblestone staircase at the edge of the runway, which led up to Og’s multilevel mansion, constructed on a series of plateaus carved into the base of the mountain range. From the outside, it looked like a perfect replica of Rivendell, as it appeared in Peter Jackson’s film adaptations of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings . Several waterfalls were visible in the distance, spilling off the peaks beyond the enormous house and its grounds.

Even under these circumstances—and even though I’d spent an entire week of my life there—the scale and the beauty of it all still took my breath away. Og had literally moved mountains and rerouted rivers to make the fictional valley of Imladris a reality, here in this secluded place. He’d kept the cost of the project a secret, but some estimated he’d spent close to two billion dollars. A higher price tag than Buckingham Palace. Gazing at it now through the telebot’s eyes, it seemed like money well spent.

I disconnected the GSS telebot from its charging dock, which was built into the rear of an armored GSS security transport. Two GSS security officers standing nearby waved at me and I waved back. Then I turned my telebot around and piloted it over to the long, winding staircase leading up to the house.

At the top of the stairs, a stone path led me across the grounds and up to the main entrance of the house—a set of enormous wooden doors, with ornate Elvish runes carved into them. They swung open for me as I approached, but I still felt like a trespasser. If I’d shown up here unannounced a few days ago, when Og was still home, I wasn’t sure he would’ve invited me in.

I took a quick look around the foyer. Og owned four telebots, all brand-new Okagami TB-6000s with gleaming gunmetal-blue chassis and chrome trim. Three of them were still in their charging rack just inside the front entrance. But the fourth one was missing. It had disappeared the previous evening, along with its owner. Its transponder had been deactivated at the same time the house security system went offline.

I kept moving, through the entrance hall and on into the main house. It had been over three years since I last set foot here, but to my eyes everything looked the same. Giant tapestries and fantasy artwork covered the walls, and stone gargoyle statues and antique suits of armor lined the dark wood-paneled hallways.