Cline Ernest - Ready Player One

As I stepped through the entrance, I glanced up—or in the direction that was currently “up” to me at the moment—and took a long look around. The place was packed. Hundreds of avatars milled around like ants crawling around the inside of a giant balloon. Others were already out on the dance floor—spinning, flying, twisting, and tumbling in time with the music, which thumped out of floating spherical speakers that drifted throughout the club.

In the middle of all the dancers, a large clear bubble was suspended in space, at the absolute center of the club. This was the “booth” where the DJ stood, surrounded by turntables, mixers, decks, and dials. At the center of all that gear was the opening DJ, R2-D2, hard at work, using his various robotic arms to work the turntables. I recognized the tune he was playing: the ’88 remix of New Order’s “Blue Monday,” with a lot of Star Wars droid sound samples mixed in.

As I made my way to the nearest bar, the avatars I passed all stopped to stare and point in my direction. I didn’t pay them much notice, because I was busy scanning the club for Art3mis.

When I reached the bar, I ordered a Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster from the female Klingon bartender and downed half of it. Then I grinned as R2 cued up another classic ’80s tune. “ ‘Union of the Snake,’ ” I recited, mostly out of habit. “Duran Duran. Nineteen eighty-three.”

“Not bad, ace,” said a familiar voice, speaking just loud enough to be heard over the music. I turned to see Art3mis standing behind me. She was wearing evening attire: a gunmetal blue dress that looked like it was spray-painted on. Her avatar’s dark hair was styled in a pageboy cut, perfectly framing her gorgeous face. She looked devastating.

She shouted at the barkeep. “Glenmorangie. On the rocks.”

I smiled to myself. Connor MacLeod’s favorite drink. Man, did I love this girl.

She winked at me as her drink appeared. Then she clinked her glass against mine and downed its contents in one swallow. The chattering of the avatars around us grew in volume. Word that Parzival and Art3mis were here , chatting each other up at the bar, was already spreading through the entire club.

Art3mis glanced up at the dance floor, then back at me. “So how about it, Percy?” she said. “Feel like cutting a rug?”

I scowled. “Not if you keep calling me ‘Percy.’ ”

She laughed. Just then, the current song ended, and the club grew silent. All eyes turned upward, toward the DJ booth, where R2-D2 was currently dissolving in a shower of light, like someone “beaming out” in an original Star Trek episode. Then a huge cheer went up as a familiar gray-haired avatar beamed in, appearing behind the turntables. It was Og.

Hundreds of vidfeed windows materialized in the air, all over the club. Each displayed a live close-up image of Og in the booth, so that everyone could see his avatar clearly. The old wizard was wearing baggy jeans, sandals, and a faded Star Trek: The Next Generation T-shirt. He waved to the assembled, then cued up his first track, a dance remix of “Rebel Yell” by Billy Idol.

A cheer swept across the dance floor.

“I love this song!” Art3mis shouted. Her eyes darted up to the dance floor. I looked at her uncertainly. “What’s wrong?” she said with mock sympathy. “Can’t the boy dance?”

She abruptly locked into the beat, bobbing her head, gyrating her hips. Then she pushed off from the floor with both feet and began to float upward, drifting toward the groove zone. I stared up at her, temporarily frozen, mustering my courage.

“All right,” I muttered to myself. “What the hell.”

I bent my knees and pushed off hard from the floor. My avatar took flight, drifting upward and sliding alongside Art3mis. The avatars who were already on the dance floor moved aside to clear a path for us, a tunnel leading to the center of the dance floor. I could see Og hovering in his bubble, just a short distance above us. He was spinning around like a dervish, remixing the song on the fly while simultaneously adjusting the gravity vortex of the dance floor, so that he was actually spinning the club itself, like an ancient vinyl disc.

Art3mis winked at me, and then her legs melted together to form a mermaid’s tail. She flapped her new tail fin once and shot ahead of me, her body undulating and thrusting in time with the machine-gun beat as she swam through the air. Then she spun back around to face me, suspended and floating, smiling and holding out her hand, beckoning me to join her. Her hair floated in a halo around her head, like she was underwater.

When I reached her, she took my hand. As she did, her mermaid tail vanished and her legs reappeared, whirling and scissoring to the beat.

Not trusting my instincts any further, I loaded up a piece of high-end avatar dance software called Travoltra, which I’d downloaded and tested earlier that evening. The program took control of Parzival’s movements, synching them up with the music, and all four of my limbs were transformed into undulating cosine waves. Just like that, I became a dancing fool.

Art3mis’s eyes lit up in surprise and delight, and she began to mirror my movements, the two of us orbiting each other like accelerated electrons. Then Art3mis began shape-shifting.

Her avatar lost its human form and dissolved into a pulsing amorphous blob that changed its size and color in synch with the music. I selected the mirror partner option on my dance software and began to do the same. My avatar’s limbs and torso began to flow and spin like taffy, encircling Art3mis, while strange color patterns flowed and shifted across my skin. I looked like Plastic Man, if he were tripping out of his mind on LSD. Then everyone else on the dance floor also began to shape-shift, melting into prismatic blobs of light. Soon, the center of the club looked like some otherworldly lava lamp.

When the song ended, Og took a bow, then queued up a slow song. “Time After Time” by Cyndi Lauper. All around us, avatars began to pair up.

I gave Art3mis a courtly bow and stretched out my hand. She smiled and took it. I pulled her close and we began to drift together. Og set the dance floor’s gravity on a counterclockwise spin, making all of our avatars slowly rotate around the club’s invisible central axis, like motes of dust floating inside a snow globe.

And then, before I could stop myself, the words just came out.

“I’m in love with you, Arty.”

She didn’t respond at first. She just looked at me in shock as our avatars continued to drift in orbit around each other, moving on autopilot. Then she switched to a private voice channel, so no one could eavesdrop on our conversation.

“You aren’t in love with me, Z,” she said. “You don’t even know me.”

“Yes I do,” I insisted. “I know you better than I’ve ever known anyone in my entire life.”

“You only know what I want you to know. You only see what I want you to see.” She placed a hand on her chest. “This isn’t my real body, Wade. Or my real face.”

“I don’t care! I’m in love with your mind—with the person you are. I couldn’t care less about the packaging.”

“You’re just saying that,” she said. There was an unsteadiness in her voice. “Trust me. If I ever let you see me in person, you would be repulsed.”

“Why do you always say that?”

“Because I’m hideously deformed. Or I’m a paraplegic. Or I’m actually sixty-three years old. Take your pick.”

“I don’t care if you’re all three of those things. Tell me where to meet you and I’ll prove it. I’ll get on a plane right now and fly to wherever you are. You know I will.”

She shook her head. “You don’t live in the real world, Z. From what you’ve told me, I don’t think you ever have. You’re like me. You live inside this illusion.” She motioned to our virtual surroundings. “You can’t possibly know what real love is.”