Эрнест Клайн - Ready Player Two [calibre]

“John is upstairs working,” Nancy said, stepping back to open the door the rest of the way for us. “But I believe he’s expecting you. Please, come on in….”

She ushered us into the foyer and closed the front door. I looked around for Brian Johnson’s little sister, but she’d vanished along with her mother. However, I did catch a glimpse of two young boys chasing each other around the dining-room table with Nerf guns. I realized they must be NPC re-creations of the Hugheses’ two sons, James and John. Seeing them reminded me of an interview John Hughes gave, where he mentioned that his screenplay for Mr. Mom was based on his experience caring for his two boys on his own for a year, when his wife, Nancy, spent a lot of time traveling for work.

Hughes’s children and marriage had directly inspired so much of his work—it seemed fitting that this interactive tribute to his family was hidden here on Shermer, among all of his fictional creations.

Art3mis and I continued to gaze around us in wonder, like museum patrons on their first visit, until Nancy politely cleared her throat to get our attention. Then she pointed to the long, curved wooden staircase behind her.

“He’s upstairs in his office, at the end of the hall,” she said, lowering her voice to a whisper. “But make sure to knock before you go in. He’s writing.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” I whispered back. I motioned for Art3mis to lead the way and followed her up the stairs. When we reached the top, we could hear a typewriter clacking down the hall. Treading as softly as we could on the wooden floorboards, we followed the sound to a closed door at the end of the hall. The thick aroma of tobacco wafted in the air, rising from the crack at the bottom of the door, along with the sound of music—Dream Academy’s instrumental version of the Smiths’ “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want.”

I gave Art3mis a nod, then I took a deep breath and rapped three times on the door.

The clacking of typewriter keys ceased, and we heard someone get up, followed by approaching footsteps. Then the door opened, and there he was, standing right in front of us, in the simulated flesh: John Wilden Hughes Jr.

He looked different from how he’d looked when I’d caught a glimpse of him a few hours earlier, as he was collecting his morning paper with the other middle-aged men of Shermer. His hair was longer and spikier. His glasses were bigger and rounder and had different frames. He had the same rounded features and the same sad, wise eyes. But he no longer wore the stern, impassive expression he’d had back when he was Mr. Johnson. Now that he was Mr. Hughes, he was full of energy and emotion—along with epic amounts of nicotine and caffeine, judging by all of the empty coffee cups on his desk, and the overflowing ashtray beside his enormous green IBM Selectric typewriter.

Behind his desk, carefully displayed on some shelves, were dozens of pairs of shoes—his famous sneaker collection, which continued to grow throughout his life.

“Art3mis!” he bellowed in an extremely deep voice, smiling wide in recognition as soon as he saw her. “I’ve been expecting you!”

Then, to our shock, he went in for a hug. Art3mis laughed and hugged John Hughes back, while giving me a can-you-believe-this-is-happening look over his shoulder. Then he let go of her and turned to me.

“And you brought a friend along,” he said, offering me his hand. “Hi there. I’m John.”

“Parzival,” I replied, shaking it. The guy had a firm grip! “It’s an honor to meet you, sir. I’m a big fan of your work.”

“Really?” he said, placing his right hand over his heart. “That’s so wonderful to hear. And kind of you to say. Please, won’t you both come on in?”

After we stepped into his office, he closed the door, then hurried over to a row of filing cabinets in the corner and began to dig through its drawers.

“You’re here for a copy of my Pretty in Pink script, right?” he asked. “Which draft did you want?”

“Your favorite draft,” Art3mis said. “The one with your original ending, where Duckie and Andie dance together?”

He gave her a big smile, then resumed digging through his filing-cabinet drawers.

“That was my favorite ending,” he said. “But it didn’t work for the test audience, so the studio made me change it.”

He finally found the script he was looking for and shouted, “Victory!” as he held it over his head. A golden shaft of light descended from the ceiling for a few seconds, bathing him and the script in its glow, as we heard the sound of angelic chimes. Then he held the script out and presented it to Art3mis. She took it from him with both hands, and as she did, the light vanished and the chimes ceased.

“Thank you,” Art3mis said, bowing slightly. “Very much.”

“My pleasure!” he said. “If you need anything else, you know where to find me.”

He gave us both another handshake, then he sat back down at his desk, and immediately began typing again—faster than I’d ever seen anyone type in my life. The clack of his keys sounded like machine-gun fire, and the carriage return moved rapidly from left to right in just a few seconds, like an ammo belt feeding it a steady supply of bullets.

Art3mis turned toward me, wearing a big, goofy grin, and held up the script so that I could see what was typed on its cover page: “PRETTY IN PINK by John Hughes. FIFTH DRAFT: 5/9/85.”

“We got it!” she said.

I nodded and offered her a high five. She laughed and slapped my hand.

“Let’s go get that shard!” I said.

She nodded and we turned around to leave. But when I reached for the doorknob, I discovered something odd—a black computer keyboard was hanging on the back of Hughes’s office door, dangling from the coat hook by its cord.

“Weird,” I said, grabbing the keyboard to examine it more closely. That was when we both saw the brand name and model number. It wasn’t just a keyboard. It was a Memotech MTX512—the vintage computer that Gary and Wyatt used to create Lisa in Weird Science, which had (in revolutionary-at-the-time fashion) hidden its 8-bit CPU in the chassis of the keyboard itself. It looked pretty beat-up. A few of the keys on the keyboard were missing.

I turned to address the John Hughes NPC.

“What’s this doing here?” I asked. But Hughes didn’t even seem to hear me. He just kept on writing. I turned back to Art3mis and handed the computer to her.

“When I ran into Wyatt’s house earlier, I noticed that his computer was missing from his bedroom,” she said. “The FDX hard-drive add-on was still there, but this keyboard was gone. Which would appear to indicate that someone took it from Wyatt’s and brought it here….”

I leaned forward to study the keyboard more closely. There were four missing letters—the R, A, I, and K keys were gone.

Then it hit me.

“Og!” I said. “He was here earlier today, when he collected the Third Shard. And he put the computer here, where he knew we would see it.”

I pointed at the Memotech MTX512. “In Weird Science, a nerd used this computer to create a simulation of his dream girl,” I said. “Maybe Og is trying to tell us that Halliday did the same thing. That’s why he knocked out these four keys…K, I, R, and A.”

“Holy shit!” Art3mis said. “Kira!”

I nodded. Then another lightbulb went on over my head.

“If Og was able to leave behind a hidden message for us here, maybe he did the same thing when he was collecting the first two shards!” I said. “I should have realized it on Kodama.”

I explained to Art3mis how Og’s strange high score on the Ninja Princess videogame had puzzled me.