Эрнест Клайн - Ready Player Two [calibre]

She took off running again. We ran after her.

Once we made it back outside, Art3mis took us on a shortcut across the football field, and as we walked past one of the goal posts, we triggered another needle drop on the simulation’s soundtrack. It happened to be one of Aech’s all-time least-favorite songs—“Don’t You (Forget About Me)” by Simple Minds. She already looked as if her nerves were hanging by a thread, and this nearly pushed her over the edge.

“Oh, give me a fucking break!” she cried, shouting to be heard over the opening of the song. “Seriously? Do all of us need to be here for this shit right now?”

I gave her a playful shove forward, and we ran to catch up with Art3mis and Shoto. As we did, the song continued to play, and when it reached its crescendo, Aech mockingly raised her right fist to the sky. It made the rest of us crack up.

A few seconds later, Aech’s smile vanished.

“I’m getting a call,” she said. “It’s Endira. I promised to check in. I gotta take this. Gimme one second.”

Aech walked several yards away and turned her back to us before she answered the call. I caught a glimpse of the worried face of her fiancée, Endira, in a vidfeed window in front of her. She was calling from their home in L.A., where she was still holding a vigil beside Aech’s sabotaged immersion vault. Aech muted their conversation, so we couldn’t hear what they were saying. But we didn’t need to. It was obvious that Endira was distraught and Aech was trying to calm her down.

Shoto sighed. “I know we don’t have time for this. But I’ve been dying to talk to Kiki too.”

Art3mis looked thoughtful for a moment. Then she turned to me. “It won’t take all four of us to collect this shard,” she said. “How about you and I keep moving and give Aech and Shoto a few minutes with their ladies? We can call them once we have it.”

The prospect of being alone with Art3mis for the first time in years rendered me momentarily speechless. After a few seconds of awkward silence I finally blurted out a response.

“Sure,” I said, as nonchalantly as I could. “That’s a great idea. And very thoughtful of you.”

Art3mis nodded to Shoto, then tilted her head at me and gave me an odd grin. “OK, Z. Let’s go snag this thing.”

Then she was gone, running down the street again. I sprinted to catch up with her. Then I continued to follow her for several blocks, into a section of the simulation where it was always night, and the season appeared to be set to sometime in the spring or early summer. We were still on the rich side of town, in another upscale neighborhood near the lake shore, on a street lined with large, expensive homes. And there appeared to be a wild party going on in every single one of them.

“Parents are in Europe,” Art3mis said, pointing at one house, then another, and another. “Parents are in Europe. Parents are in Europe. All of the rich kids’ parents are in Europe.”

The first house we passed on our left was one I recognized from Some Kind of Wonderful . It belonged to Craig Sheffer’s character, Hardy Jenns. I could see him inside, through one of the big picture windows, plotting with his yuppie pals. A few seconds after we walked past his house, a black-and-gray limousine pulled up out front, and Mary Stuart Masterson got out. She opened the door for Eric Stoltz, and then he opened Lea Thompson’s door. Eric and Lea went into Hardy’s house, and Mary Stuart stayed behind and leaned against the limo’s bumper.

A few seconds later, a black cargo van pulled into Hardy’s driveway, and a skinhead named Duncan (Elias Koteas) jumped out, along with a whole gang of mean-looking hoods, and they all ran into Hardy’s house too. We could hear the song “Beat’s So Lonely” by Charlie Sexton blasting from within.

“That party is about to become a historical fact,” Art3mis said.

That made me laugh out loud, which somehow earned me another one of her smiles.

We continued down the street. The neighboring house belonged to Steff McKee (James Spader’s character in Pretty in Pink ). He was greeting guests at his front door. For a split second I mistook the NPC for the male form of L0hengrin’s avatar, which looked nearly identical but had shorter hair.

A few minutes later, we reached the Donnelly residence, where the events depicted in Weird Science were transpiring in and around the house. A few seconds after we arrived, a half-naked girl shot up out of the chimney and landed in a small pond in the front yard with a loud splash.

“Here we go,” Art3mis said. “We’re looking for two NPCs from Weird Science . Hang here for a minute. I’ll be right back!”

She drew her guns and ran inside the house. I heard a rapid volley of gunfire, followed by what sounded like a grenade going off. A few seconds later, Art3mis rejoined me on the sidewalk in front of the house.

“They’re not in there,” she said. “Sometimes Max and Ian leave to party-hop when things get too crazy at the Donnelly residence. Sometimes they stick around and get turned into farm animals—but that usually doesn’t happen until after midnight.”

“Max and Ian?” I said. “The two assholes who dump an ICEE on Gary and Wyatt in Weird Science ? Why the hell do we need them?”

“So that we can get the Third Shard, Z,” she replied in the tone of someone explaining something obvious to a very small child. “Just trust me, OK? That’ll save us a lot of time.” She pointed behind her. “We need to look for them at the parties being held on that side of the street now. I’ll go see if they’re at Stubby’s. You go check out the shindig next door.”

She pointed to another huge house across the street. Long strands of toilet paper were hanging from all of the trees out front. Beer cans, pizza boxes, and horny teenagers were strewn across the lawn. Music was blaring from within.

“Who lives there?” I asked.

“Jake Ryan,” she said. “If you spot Ian or Max, I need you to restrain both of them and then call me. If I spot them at Stubby’s, I’ll do the same. Okie-dokie, Augie Doggie?”

I grinned and replied, “Okie-dokie, Doggie Daddy.”

Art3mis took off, sprinting toward Stubby’s house. I stared after her uncertainly for a moment, then I took a deep breath and ran in the opposite direction, toward Jake Ryan’s house.

The front yard looked likea war zone. Teenagers were milling around in the yard and the street, leaning on vintage Porsches, Ferraris, and Trans-Ams, dancing, drinking, and making out. Parked in the middle of the driveway, there was a red BMW with a drive-in food tray hanging from its passenger window. A mud-covered blue sedan was parked on top of a beemer, and two teenagers were making out in its back seat.

I walked up to the front door and pressed the doorbell. A loud gong sounded as it swung inward. A young Asian man was hanging from the inside of the door. He was extremely intoxicated. It took me a second to realize I knew him—it was Long Duk Dong, Gedde Watanabe’s infamous character from Sixteen Candles.

“What’s a-happening, hot stuff?” he said, speaking with a thick accent. When I failed to answer, the Donger motioned for me to come on inside. I thanked him and continued on into the house. It was packed with rich drunk white kids in full-on party mode. I bumped into a young Joan Cusack—dressed as the girl in the neck brace we’d seen earlier on the bus. She was trying to drink a beer by leaning her whole body backward, but then she leaned too far and fell on the floor.

Then I went to do a sweep of the living room, but was nearly crushed by a set of exercise weights that came crashing down through the ceiling. They continued to crash on through the floor, opening up an enormous hole into the wine cellar and smashing dozens of the bottles stored there.