Эрнест Клайн - Ready Player Two [calibre]

“Look at this lily-white hellscape,” Aech said, shaking her head as she stared out her own window. “Is there a single person of color in this entire town?”

“Sure,” Art3mis replied. “But most of them hang out at a place called the Kandy Bar over in Chicago. This planet does have a serious diversity problem—like the whole of ’80s cinema….”

Aech nodded. “Well, maybe the next shard will be hidden in the kingdom of Zamunda.”

“Oh shit!” Shoto replied. “That would be dope!”

Just then, two freshman nerds in the seat directly in front of me and Shoto turned around to face us. At first I thought they were wearing bras on their heads, but they were rocking athletic supporters as headbands instead. In unison, these two space cadets raised their toy laser pistols and fired them at us, and then one of them shouted, “Score! A direct hit!” before they both cracked up and turned back around.

“This place is a nuthouse,” Shoto observed.

I nodded. “With some weird fashion trends.”

“You ain’t seen nothing yet,” Art3mis whispered.

A second later, someone across the aisle loudly cleared their throat. We all turned to see a girl with obscenely thick eyeglasses staring at us. She slowly held her closed fist out to Shoto, then opened it to reveal a moist red gummy bear resting in the center of her palm.

“Want one?” she asked. “It’s been in my pocket. They’re real warm and soft.”

“No,” Shoto replied, shaking his head vigorously. “No, thank you.”

“I’ll pass too,” I said.

“Hey, look,” Aech whispered, pointing to a redheaded girl seated near the front of the bus. I recognized her as Samantha Baker—Molly Ringwald’s character in Sixteen Candles .

“Maybe one of us should go wish her a happy birthday?” Aech said, chuckling softly.

“Every day is her birthday,” Art3mis said. “And the morning after it. All the movie simulations on Shermer operate on an accelerated concurrent timeline, with the events depicted in each film repeating over and over in a continuous loop. All these NPCs are stuck in their own private Groundhog Day. Including that poor sweetheart of a girl…”

She pointed to a tall girl who was sitting directly across the aisle from Sam. When she turned in profile, I saw that it was a young Joan Cusack. She was wearing an elaborate neck brace, probably to indicate that her character was an awkward dork. But even in traction, she still looked cute as hell.

“She’s my namesake, you know,” Art3mis said. I turned back and saw that she was nodding toward Samantha Baker. “I can’t watch it without ragequitting now, but Sixteen Candles was one of my mom’s favorite movies. She loved all of Hughes’s films.”

“I remember,” I said. “After she died, you would rewatch those movies, to feel closer to her, and to try and better understand who she was. I remember telling you that I did the same thing with my dad’s comic-book collection, after he died.”

Art3mis locked eyes with me. Then she nodded.

“I know,” she said. “I remember that too.”

She smiled at me again, and this time I smiled back. We continued to grin at each other for a few more seconds—then we remembered Aech and Shoto and turned to see them both watching us intently. Caught, they both quickly averted their eyes.

Just then, I got a glimpse of something strange out the bus windows behind them. We’d just crested a steep hill, and for a few seconds the Chicago skyline was visible in the distance, beyond a sea of suburban trees bursting with bright orange and red fall colors. And I also caught a glimpse of the Hollywood Bowl. The giant amphitheater had been incongruously cut-and-pasted into Shermer’s suburban landscape. Aech noticed it, too, and pointed it out to Art3mis.

“What the hell is that doing here?” she asked. “Doesn’t the Hollywood Bowl belong in Hollywood?”

“Indeed it does,” Art3mis replied. “But the Hollywood Bowl is where one of the date scenes in Some Kind of Wonderful takes place. It was one of the rare John Hughes teen films not set in the suburbs of Chicago. The designers decided to shoehorn it into the Shermer simulation anyway, along with Career Opportunities, which is set in Missouri.”

We all fell silent for a moment and gazed out the windows, taking in the strangely familiar sites that dotted the landscape around us.

“We’re getting close to the school,” Art3mis said. “Listen.”

The opening of the song “Kajagoogoo” (the instrumental version, by the band of the same name) began to fade in on the Sim soundtrack. This needle drop had apparently been triggered by our proximity to the high school, which was now visible in the distance, through the bus’s front window. We were approaching the school from the south, so the building’s exterior looked identical to the Shermer High School seen in The Breakfast Club. On my previous visit, I’d learned that when the school was viewed from the west, the building’s façade matched the version of Shermer High seen in Sixteen Candles. And the redbrick façade on the north and east sides matched the school’s appearance in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off . But all three entrances led into the same building, which was filled with painstakingly detailed re-creations of the various sets and practical locations used to create Shermer High’s interior in the various cinematic incarnations of the school.

“Kajagoogoo” continued to play, increasing in volume as our bus rolled up to the curb in front of the school, and Art3mis, Aech, Shoto, and I filed off of it and attempted to blend in with the swell of NPC Shermer students surrounding us.

We followed Art3mis as she led us up the broad concrete sidewalk leading to the south entrance of the school. Hundreds of NPC teenagers sat in long rows on the stone benches that flanked either side of the walkway, all dressed in colorful mid-’80s attire. As we made our way down this Day-Glo gauntlet, the kids all began to clap and stomp their sneaker-clad feet in time with the song, while chanting along with its only lyric, which spelled out its title: K-A-J-A-G-Double-O-G-Double-O !

“Welcome to Shermer High School,” Art3mis said, stretching her arms out wide as she continued to walk backward, toward the school building. “Shermer, Illinois. 6-0-0-6-2.”

Art3mis snapped her fingers and her avatar’s attire changed once again. Now she wore Annie Potts’s black latex outfit from her first scene in Pretty in Pink, along with her punk-rock porcupine hairdo, dangling earrings, and dinner-fork bracelet.

“Applause, applause, applause,” she said, doing a slow spin so that we could admire the attention to detail she’d put into her Iona cosplay.

Aech, Shoto, and I all gave her an enthusiastic golf clap. She scowled at us, then reached into her inventory and pulled out a pair of retro sunglasses—the same pair of Risky Business Ray-Bans she’d been wearing when we first met. Then she produced three identical pairs from her inventory and tossed them to me, Aech, and Shoto.

“For better hallway vision,” she said.

We all eyed her warily, then shook our heads.

“Come on, you wimps!” Art3mis said. “Those are Hoffman lenses. You’re gonna need them.”

She motioned for us to put them on. When we complied, the clothing on each of our avatars abruptly changed, so that the three of us were dressed like the “Dork Squad” in Sixteen Candles. I was now “The Geek,” played by Anthony Michael Hall; Aech was John Cusack’s character, Bryce; and Shoto was their pal Cliff.

Aech took a look at us and then glanced down at herself. She turned to glare at Art3mis.