Эрнест Клайн - Ready Player Two [calibre]

As we sang, a flying yellow aircar swooped down out of the sky and flew under us, scooping our avatars up and into its fine Corinthian-leather seats.

“Welcome aboard the Great Space Coaster,” I said, placing my hands on the coaster’s flight stick. “Free transportation to Castle Calculus! Everyone buckle up, otherwise you’ll fall out.”

I aimed the Great Space Coaster at the MoreStuff Mountains on the horizon and floored the accelerator. Then I kept the hammer down until we were soaring over them. We passed over the starting point for the legendary Oregon Trail quest. A moment later, we flew over Mister Rogers’ neighborhood. Then we continued south, down along the coast of the SeeSaw Sea, and a few minutes later we passed over Gullah Gullah Island.

When I pointed the island out to Aech, it put a huge smile on her face, and as she began to talk about how much she loved that show as a kid, I caught myself smiling too. I didn’t realize how much I’d missed this place. Why had I spent so much time running away? It felt genuinely good to be back here, despite the circumstances.

Once we cleared the mountain range, I set the coaster down just outside the golden front gate of Halcydonia City. It was the only entrance, and it was guarded by the Subtraction Sentinel, a stoic stone giant who would only open the gates for you after you solved a series of simple subtraction problems for him. Once I did this, the Subtraction Sentinel gave me a solemn nod, then he let me enter the city. Then Aech, Shoto, and Art3mis all had to do the same thing. Once we were all inside the gate, I took off at a run, leading my friends through the city’s tangled maze of streets.

As we were making our way down a cobblestone side street, I spotted something strange and completely out of place: a gorgeous cream-colored 1949 Buick Roadmaster convertible that I instantly recognized from Rain Man. Inside it was a young Tom Cruise—or rather, his character from the movie, Charlie Babbitt. He was just sitting there behind the steering wheel, tapping it with his right hand, almost like he was drumming along to music. But there was no music, and his drumming had an odd rhythm to it. Steady, like a metronome, except that every few taps, it seemed like he was pressing on the wheel for an extra moment. The pattern reminded me of a scene in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, for some reason it took me a moment to place, but then it clicked—was he tapping out a message in Morse code?

I opened my Mandarax translation software and used it to translate the Morse code into letters, only to discover that he was spelling out M-O-R-S-E.

I’d never seen a Tom Cruise NPC of any kind on Halcydonia. Content from R-rated movies was expressly forbidden here. So what was going on?

Less than a minute later, I spotted another out-of-place NPC—Raymond “Rain Man” Babbitt, Dustin Hoffman’s character from the same film. He was staring off into space, while rocking slowly back and forth, shifting his weight from his left foot to his right foot. But I could see right away that he was making these movements in a pattern—a mix of short hops and long hops, like Morse code. According to my Mandarax translator software, his feet were tapping out the same word his brother had been tapping out on his steering wheel: M-O-R-S-E.

I didn’t have time to ponder it now, because we’d arrived at Castle Calculus, which was located at the city center. We mounted the ornate marble steps out front, which had a bunch of different math proofs and equations carved into them, and passed through the castle’s grand entranceway, then continued on into Queen Itsalot’s throne room.

Normally, she wouldn’t have granted us an audience so quickly. But I’d already met the queen once before, back when she awarded me the Silver Abacus of Itsalot for completing every math quest on the planet before my twelfth birthday. When I presented the abacus to the Itsalot master-at-arms, he bowed and stepped out of my way, allowing my friends and me to pass.

We walked up the long velvet carpet leading to the queen, who waved to me from her throne. She wore a gold crown with a large jewel-encrusted plus sign as its headpiece, and mathematical proofs and equations adorned her robes, stitched into their gold fabric with bright red thread. Her family’s coat of arms—the same coat of arms etched into the Third Shard—hung on the wall behind her.

She was currently reading a large storybook to a group of baby animals gathered around her feet. But when she saw me approaching, she closed the book and sent them away.

When I reached her throne, I knelt before her and bowed my head, and motioned for Aech, Shoto, and Art3mis to do the same.

“Rise, Sir Parzival!” cried Queen Itsalot. “My noble subject and dear friend! How good to see you again, after so many years. What brings you back to my kingdom?”

I rose to my feet, then took out the Third Shard and showed her the coat of arms engraved upon it.

“I’m on a quest to find the Seven Shards of the Siren’s Soul,” I said. “And I think one of them might be hidden here in your kingdom. Can you help me find it, Your Majesty?”

Her eyes widened in surprise. She looked utterly delighted.

“Indeed I can, dear boy!” she replied. “The shard was given to me for safekeeping, a long time ago. I wondered if anyone would ever show up here looking for it, and now here you are, at long last. But before I can give it to you, you’ll need to earn all fifty Halcydonia Wearit-Merit Badges.”

Behind me, I heard all three of my friends inhale sharply. I glanced back at them.

“Oh my God,” Aech said. “ Fifty? How long is that going to take?”

“Relax,” I said. “I spent years here, earning all those badges. With a lot of help from my mom…”

I opened my avatar’s inventory and dug around until I found my old Halcydonia Wearit-Merit Badge sash. Then I presented it to the queen with both hands.

She took the sash from me and looked it over, running her wrinkled fingers down the rows of embroidered patches, each one bearing a different symbol or icon. She counted them one by one, and when she reached fifty, she smiled and nodded to herself. Then she snapped her fingers and there was a blinding flash of light.

When my eyes recovered, I saw that my sash had vanished from the queen’s hand. Now she was holding the Fourth Shard. It sparkled in the bright sunlight pouring into the throne room, through the thousands of stained-glass windows that made up its domed ceiling. (Each one of these windows paid tribute to a different public school teacher, and had been placed here by one of their students.)

Queen Itsalot tilted the shard so that it reflected the different-colored shafts of light, turning the throne room into a giant kaleidoscope for a few seconds. Then she lowered it and held it out, offering it to me.

I knelt before her, then I reached up and took the shard from the queen’s hands, being careful not to meet her gaze. (If I did, there was a good chance she would send me off on a mandatory math quest to rescue one of her royal relatives—usually her husband, the clueless King Itsalot, who was constantly being taken prisoner by the evil wizard Multiplikatar, who tossed him into the Long Division Dungeons beneath Protractor Peak, located high in the MoreStuff Mountains.) As I wrapped my fingers around the shard, once again I tried to prepare myself for the jolt of what I knew was coming, from the toll I had to pay….

I—or rather Kira—rushed into a cluttered office to find Og sitting at his desk, hard at work on his computer. He turned and Kira held out her sketchpad, and I saw that she’d drawn the Halcydonia Interactive company logo on it.

This was another moment I’d heard Ogden Morrow talk about in interviews and in his biography. Kira had just designed the logo in a fit of inspiration in her own office, down in the GSS Art Department, and then she’d run here to Og’s office to show it to him.