Эрнест Клайн - Ready Player Two [calibre]

I continued to make a complete circuit of the house but didn’t see Ian or Max anywhere.

I had just made my way back to the living room when I received a text from Art3mis on my HUD, telling me to meet her at Stubby’s house next door, in the backyard.

I sprinted outside and across the perfectly manicured lawn, to the rear of the adjacent house, which was also in the process of being trashed by reckless, drunken teenagers. In Stubby’s backyard, I found Art3mis holding two extremely handsome teenage boys at gunpoint—Ian and Max from Weird Science . Max was played by the actor Robert Rusler, whom I also knew from his role as Ron Grady in A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge. And Ian was played by an impossibly young Robert Downey Jr.

“Holy shit,” I said. “The OG Iron Man! I forgot he was in a John Hughes movie….”

“Just one,” Art3mis said. “A supporting role in Weird Science. But—little-known fact—Robert Downey Jr. almost played the lead in another Hughes film. That’s why we need him.”

Art3mis pointed at Max. “Him, we can let go,” she said. She lowered her assault rifle, so that it was no longer pointed at Max’s head. Max stood there frozen for a second, then he turned tail and took off running across the expansive green lawn, in the direction of Jake Ryan’s house. He never looked back.

Art3mis turned her attention back to Ian. She removed the bag of weed she’d taken from Bender’s locker and dangled it in front of him. The expression on his face suddenly went blank, as if he’d been hypnotized.

“Would you like some of this?” Art3mis asked.

“Why yes, madam!” Ian replied. “I certainly would.”

He reached for the bag, but she yanked it back out of his reach.

“I’ll make you a deal,” Art3mis said. “I’ll give you this whole bag of doobage if you just perform two simple tasks for me.”

“Sure,” Ian said, batting his eyelashes at her. “Anything you say, doll.”

“I figured out this little trick by playing through all the official Weird Science quests,” Art3mis said. “The NPC re-creations of Max and Ian are both total hedonists, and they’ll perform nearly any task in exchange for sex or drugs.” She turned to smile at him. “Isn’t that right, Ian?”

RDJ batted his eyelashes at her again and nodded. Art3mis opened her inventory and took out the wingtip shoes and bolo tie she’d looted from Duckie back at the high school, then held them out to Ian.

“First, I need you to put these on,” she said. “Then I need you to go dance with Andie Walsh at the senior prom tonight. Deal?”

“Deal,” Ian said. He took the shoes from her and put them on. Then he put the bolo tie around his neck. As soon as he did, his wardrobe and hairstyle changed. He no longer looked like Robert Downey Jr. as Ian in Weird Science. Now he looked like Robert Downey Jr. in Back to School, in the role of Derek Lutz. But he was dressed in the same vintage suit that Jon Cryer wore in the original ending of Pretty in Pink.

When his transformation completed, it triggered another music cue. At first I thought I was hearing the song “I Want a New Drug” by Huey Lewis and the News, but as soon as the lyrics kicked in, I realized it was actually Weird Al Yankovic’s parody—“I Want a New Duck.”

The song only played for five or six seconds, while the newly anointed Robert Duckey Jr. did a little dance to show off his new attire. Then the song cut out and he struck a pose and said, “I remain now, and will always be, a Duck Man.”

He pointed down at his shoes, turned his left foot left, then his right foot right, before realigning them both. Then he looked back up at us. When we failed to applaud, he frowned and sniffed each of his armpits before asking, “Do I offend?”

Art3mis let out a victorious cry, then ran over and slapped him on the back.

“Robert Downey Jr. was originally supposed to play the role of Duckie,” she explained. “But the studio decided to cast Jon Cryer in the role instead. And when the first cut of the film was screened, no one in the test audience wanted Duckie and Andie to end up together. So on short notice, Hughes was forced to write a new ending—one in which Andie ends up with that rich douchebag Blane instead.”

“Really?” I said. “I never knew that.” I shook my head. “Pretty impressive, Arty.”

“Why, thank you, Parzival,” she replied, sounding genuinely pleased with herself. “I remembered reading an old interview with Molly Ringwald, where she said she believed Hughes’s original ending of Pretty in Pink would’ve worked if Robert Downey Jr. had played the role of Duckie as originally intended, because the two of them would’ve had a lot more onscreen chemistry.”

I recited the inscription again, this time from memory. “ ‘Recast the foul, restore his ending. Andie’s first fate still needs mending.’ So that was Andie’s first fate?” I said. “To wind up with RDJ as Duckie? And the only way to ‘mend’ that fate is to ‘recast the foul’?” I smiled at Art3mis and shook my head. “Arty, you’re a genius!”

I gave her a round of applause, and she took a small bow. Then she grabbed Robert Duckie Jr. by the arm and took off running again. I ran after them as they sprinted across Stubby’s lawn, and then over to a Rolls-Royce convertible that was parked in Jake Ryan’s driveway. Art3mis shoved Duckie into the back seat and then got behind the wheel. I jumped into the passenger seat beside her.

“Hey,” I said. “Wouldn’t we get there faster…in a Ferrari?”

I pointed to the woods behind Jake Ryan’s house. There, visible through the trees, was a secluded house on stilts. I recognized it as Cameron Frye’s residence. And from here, we could see the separate glass-walled garage at the back of the house.

“Forget it,” Art3mis said. “Cameron’s dad has a state-of-the-art security system. You can only steal that car in the daytime, with the keys and with Cameron’s help. If you try to steal it now, you’ll end up in the Shermer jail, with the kid from Reach the Rock . It’s easy enough to escape, but we’d waste thirty minutes.” She smiled. “We could steal the same Ferrari from Alec Baldwin, in a church parking lot just a few blocks from here,” she said, pointing off to the south. Then she glanced at her watch. “But the Briggs-Bainbridge wedding doesn’t start for another hour. Sorry, but I’m afraid Mr. Ryan’s Rolls-Royce is our best option at the moment.”

“Fine,” I muttered. “We’ll take this brown shit box.”

“Buckle up, ace,” Art3mis said, glancing over at me. She waited for me to comply. Once I did, she gave me a devious smile.

“This is getting good,” she said as she shifted the car into drive and floored the gas. This triggered another needle drop—the “Peter Gunn Theme,” which continued to play as the Rolls-Royce peeled out, carrying us off into the night.

As Art3mis drove through the moonlit labyrinth of suburban streets at breakneck speed, Robert Downey Jr. and I were jerked around in our seats again and again as she whipped the Rolls around sharp corners. For a few minutes I felt like we’d been transported into a game of Grand Theft Auto: Shermer, until Art3mis turned onto the highway and our ride smoothed out. (Taking the onramp triggered a fresh needle drop—“Holiday Road” by Lindsay Buckingham—which cut back out when we got off the highway a few exits later.)

At some point we must’ve crossed over the railroad tracks and entered the poor side of town, because the houses around us became smaller, crappier, and closer together. As we were driving down one of these streets, I spotted Harry Dean Stanton, dressed in a bathrobe, sitting on a lawn chair in his darkened front yard, reading a newspaper. A few houses down, I saw John Bender standing in an open garage, smoking a cigarette while he stirred a can of paint. Then I noticed the house right next door, which looked completely abandoned. The lawn was overgrown, the windows were all boarded up, and a Foreclosed sign was nailed to the front door. Then I noticed the name printed on the rusted mailbox out front: D. GRIFFITH.