Cline Ernest - Ready Player One

When I put on the suit of magical armor, it shrank to fit my avatar perfectly. Its gleaming chrome appearance reminded me of the bad-ass armor worn by the knights in Excalibur . I actually switched to a third-person view for a few seconds, just to admire how cool my avatar looked wearing it.

The farther I went, the more confident I became. The tomb’s layout and contents continued to match the module description exactly, down to the last detail. That is, until I reached the Pillared Throne Room.

It was a large square chamber with a high ceiling, filled with dozens of massive stone columns. A huge raised dais stood at the far end of the room, atop which rested an obsidian throne inlaid with silver and ivory skulls.

All this matched the module description exactly, with one huge difference. The throne was supposed to be empty, but it wasn’t. The demi-lich Acererak was sitting on it, glaring down at me silently. A dusty gold crown glinted on his withered head. He appeared exactly as he did on the cover of the original Tomb of Horrors module. But according to its text, Acererak wasn’t supposed to be here. He was supposed to be waiting in a burial chamber much deeper in the dungeon.

I considered running but decided against it. If Halliday had placed the lich in this room, perhaps he’d placed the Copper Key here too. I had to find out.

I walked across the chamber to the foot of the dais. From here I could see the lich more clearly. His teeth were two rows of pointed cut diamonds arrayed in a lipless grin, and a large ruby was set in each of his eye sockets.

For the first time since entering the tomb, I wasn’t sure what to do next.

My chances of surviving one-on-one combat with a demi-lich were nonexistent. My wimpy +1 Flaming Sword couldn’t even affect him, and the two magic rubies in his eye sockets had the power to suck out my avatar’s life force and kill me instantly. Even a party of six or seven high-level avatars would have had a difficult time defeating him.

I silently wished (not for the last time) that the OASIS was like an old adventure game and that I could save my place. But it wasn’t, and I couldn’t. If my avatar died here, it would mean starting over with nothing. But there was no point in hesitating now. If the lich killed me, I would come back tomorrow night and try again. The entire tomb should reset when the OASIS server clock struck midnight. If it did, all of the hidden traps I’d disarmed would reset themselves, and the treasure and magic items would reappear.

I tapped the Record icon at the edge of my display so that whatever happened next would be stored in a vidcap file I could play back and study later. But when I tapped the icon, I got a RECORDING NOT ALLOWED message. It seemed that Halliday had disabled recording inside the tomb.

I took a deep breath, raised my sword, and placed my right foot on the bottom step of the dais. As I did, there was a sound like cracking bones as Acererak slowly lifted his head. The rubies in his eye sockets began to glow with an intense red light. I took several steps backward, expecting him to leap down and attack me. But he didn’t rise from his throne. Instead, he lowered his head and fixed me with his chilling gaze. “Greetings, Parzival,” he said in a rasping voice. “What is it that you seek?”

This caught me off guard. According to the module, the lich wouldn’t speak. He was just supposed to attack, leaving me with no choice but to kill him or run for my life.

“I seek the Copper Key,” I replied. Then I remembered I was speaking to a king, so I quickly bowed my head, dropped to one knee, and added, “Your Majesty.”

“Of course you do,” Acererak said, motioning for me to rise. “And you’ve come to the right place.” He stood, and his mummified skin cracked like old leather as he moved. I clutched my sword more tightly, still anticipating an attack.

“How can I know that you are worthy of possessing the Copper Key?” he asked.

Holy shit! How the hell was I supposed to answer that ? And what if I gave the wrong answer? Would he suck out my soul and incinerate me?

I racked my brain for a suitable reply. The best I could come up with was, “Allow me to prove my worth, noble Acererak.”

The lich let out a long, disturbing cackle that echoed off the chamber’s stone walls. “Very well!” he said. “You shall prove your worth by facing me in a joust!”

I’d never heard of an undead lich king challenging someone to a joust. Especially not in a subterranean burial chamber. “All right,” I said uncertainly. “But won’t we be needing horses for that?”

“Not horses,” he replied, stepping away from his throne. “Birds.”

He waved a skeletal hand at his throne. There was a brief flash of light, accompanied by a transformation sound effect (which I was pretty sure had been lifted from the old Super Friends cartoon). The throne melted and morphed into an old coin-operated videogame cabinet. Two joysticks protruded from its control panel, one yellow and one blue. I couldn’t help but grin as I read the name on the game’s backlit marquee: JOUST. Williams Electronics, 1982.

“Best two out of three games,” Acererak rasped. “If you win, I shall grant you what you seek.”

“What if you win?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“If I am victorious,” the lich said, the rubies in his eye sockets blazing even brighter, “then you shall die!” A ball of swirling orange flame appeared in his right hand. He raised it threateningly.

“Of course,” I said. “That was my first guess. Just wanted to double-check.”

The fireball in Acererak’s hand vanished. He stretched out his leathery palm, which now held two shiny quarters. “The games are on me,” he said. He stepped up to the Joust machine and dropped both quarters into the left coin slot. The game emitted two low electronic chimes and the credit counter jumped from zero to two.

Acererak took hold of the yellow joystick on the left side of the control panel and closed his bony fingers around it. “Art thou ready?” he croaked.

“Yeah,” I said, taking a deep breath. I cracked my knuckles and grabbed the Player Two joystick with my left hand, poising my right hand over the Flap button.

Acererak rocked his head from left to right, cracking his neck. It sounded like a snapping tree branch. Then he slapped the Two Player button and the joust began.

Joust was a classic ’80s arcade game with a strange premise. Each player controls a knight armed with a lance. Player One is mounted on an ostrich, while Player Two is mounted on a stork. You flap your wings to fly around the screen and “joust” with the other player, and also against several computer-controlled enemy knights (who are all mounted on buzzards). When you crash into an opponent, whoever’s lance is higher on the screen wins the joust. The loser is killed and loses a life. Whenever you kill one of the enemy knights, his buzzard craps out a green egg that quickly hatches into another enemy knight if you don’t scoop it up in time. There’s also a winged pterodactyl that appears once in a while to wreak havoc.

I hadn’t played Joust in over a year. It was one of Aech’s favorite games, and for a while he’d had a Joust cabinet in his chat room. He used to challenge me to a game whenever he wanted to settle an argument or some asinine pop-culture dispute. For a few months, we played almost every day. In the beginning, Aech was slightly better than I was, and he had a habit of gloating over his victories. This had really irked me, so I started practicing Joust on my own, playing a few games a night against an AI opponent. I honed my skills until I finally got good enough to beat Aech, repeatedly and consistently. Then I began to gloat over him, savoring my revenge. The last time we’d played, I’d rubbed his nose in defeat so mercilessly that he’d flipped out and vowed never to play me again. Since then, we’d used Street Fighter II to settle our disputes.