Эрнест Клайн - Ready Player Two [calibre]

I took a look around Og’s office, then his library, then his enormous home theater. I didn’t spot anything out of the ordinary, but I didn’t expect to. Neither the police nor the GSS security team had found any signs of a break-in or a struggle. According to the logs, Og had deactivated his own security system and surveillance cameras at 7:00 P.M. last night. Everything after that was a mystery.

I put on my imaginary Detroit Lions ball cap and shifted my brain into Magnum PI detective mode.

What if someone had figured out a way to hack Og’s unhackable security system and remotely disable it?

And what if the hacker hijacked Og’s missing telebot and then used it to force Og onto his private jet, and then hijacked the autopilot too?

Telebots had been used to perpetrate all sorts of crimes, but the perps were almost always caught, because users were required to log in to their OASIS account to operate them. Hijacking a telebot was supposed to be impossible, too, because of all their hardwired safeguards.

But if Og had been taken against his will, why didn’t he trigger any alarms? Why weren’t there any signs of a struggle? Og was in his mid-seventies, but he still would have put up a fight.

Unless his kidnapper had bound and gagged him. Or drugged him. Or knocked him unconscious with a blow to the head. But at his age, that might kill him….

I forced the image of Og being bludgeoned out of my mind and got the telebot moving again. I wandered the hallways aimlessly, not sure what I was looking for, until I found myself standing by the closed door of one of Og’s guest rooms. It was the room where Samantha had stayed during our weeklong retreat here. It was also the room where she and I made love for the first time. (And the second, third, and fourth.)

I stared at the door through the telebot’s eyes, with one of its hands resting on the knob.

Maybe I’d already missed my chance to fix things with Og. But it wasn’t too late with Samantha—as long as we were both still alive, there was a chance I could make things right with her.

I piloted the telebot through the labyrinth of rooms and hallways, to Og’s personal arcade, a huge carpeted room containing the vast collection of classic coin-operated videogames that Halliday had willed to him after his death. The antique games were all powered off, and their screens were dark.

I wandered back out of the arcade and continued on my circuit of the house. It was like touring a museum devoted to Og and Kira’s life together. The walls were covered with photos, some of Kira and Og with their arms wrapped around each other, others of just Kira (clearly taken by Og, because of how she smiled at the camera), taken in exotic locations all over the world. Snapshots of a blissful storybook romance that had ultimately ended in tragedy.

There were trophy cases, too, filled with awards, medals, and other honors bestowed on the Morrows over the years, for their charity work and their storied contributions to the field of interactive education. But noticeably absent were photos of children. Og and Kira had devoted the last half of their lives to making free educational software for underprivileged kids. Kids like me. But they had never been blessed with any children of their own. According to Og’s autobiography, it was his and Kira’s only real regret.

Back outside the house, I followed the path of polished stones across Og’s immaculately manicured lawn, taking in the stunning view of the snowcapped mountain range that surrounded the estate.

The path led me past the entrance to the hedge maze where Samantha and I met in person for the very first time. But I didn’t let myself go inside. Instead, I made my way over to the small gated-in garden where Kira Morrow was buried. As I stared down at her grave, I thought of L0hengrin, and the clue she’d discovered by visiting the re-creation of this place on EEarth—something it had never occurred to me to do.

The small garden that surrounded Kira’s grave was filled with flowers that were every color of the rainbow. I picked one at random—a yellow rose—and placed it at the base of her tombstone. Then I traced the telebot’s index finger along the letters of the inscription engraved into its polished marble surface: BELOVED WIFE, DAUGHTER & FRIEND.

I glanced over at the adjacent gravesite reserved for Og. I once again found myself hoping that I hadn’t already missed my last chance to repair my friendship with him.

Once I completed a circuit of the manicured grounds surrounding Og’s house, I walked down to have a look at his private runway, and the small aircraft hangar at the far end of it. There wasn’t much to see there, aside from an empty spot where Og’s missing jet should’ve been parked.

Like his home-security system and telepresence robots, the jet’s onboard computer should’ve been nearly impossible to hack. So either Og had left under his own free will, or somehow, someone had managed to disable the transponder and hijack the autopilot system without setting off a single alarm.

My thoughts on hypothetical alarms were interrupted by a real one—the security-alert klaxon in my home.

I cut my link to the telebot, leaving it to pilot itself back to its charging dock on the GSS transport, and was climbing out of my haptic rig when my phone rang. It was Miles Gendell, head of GSS’s executive security team. Halliday and Morrow had hired Miles in the early days of the company, because he was an ex–Green Beret who also happened to bear a distinct resemblance to a young Arnold Schwarzenegger. Now, after serving the company for over a quarter of a century, he resembled a much older, post–Governator Ahnold.

I accepted the call and Miles appeared on the wallscreen. He wore a grim expression.

“We have a situation, Mr. Watts,” he said. “Nolan Sorrento has escaped from prison.”

I felt like my blood had just turned to ice water.

Sorrento had been serving time on death row at the Southern Ohio Correctional Colony, a maximum-security prison located in Chillicothe, Ohio—exactly 56.2 miles due south of where I was currently standing.

“Do you have any reason to believe he’s headed this way?” I asked, walking over to peek out the nearest window. “I mean, has he been spotted by anyone?”

Miles shook his head.

“No, sir,” he said. “But I wouldn’t worry. It’s unlikely he would come here in an attempt to harm you. I’m sure he knows the sort of security you have in place.”

“Yeah,” I said. “The same sort of security that Ogden Morrow had.” I took another peek out the window. “What the hell happened, Miles?”

“Someone hacked into the prison’s security system and let Sorrento out. Then they locked the whole place down behind him,” Miles said. “The guards and the entire prison staff were trapped inside the prison along with the inmates, with no phone or Internet access. First responders had to break into the prison and restore order before anyone could even check the security footage. By that time, Sorrento had nearly an hour’s head start.”

I was starting to panic.

“Sorrento’s escape has to be connected to Og’s disappearance somehow,” I said, as calmly as I could. “This can’t be a coincidence.”

Miles shrugged. “There’s no evidence of that yet, sir.”

I didn’t respond. My mind was racing now. Sorrento was one of the world’s most famous and infamous criminals. But he’d spent the last three years rotting in a cell, and he no longer had any power or money or influence. So who was helping him? And why?

“We’ve got the entire area around your home under surveillance now, sir,” Miles said. “You can relax. We’ll remain on full alert and notify you the moment we see anything odd. All right?”