Cline Ernest - Ready Player One

Finally, the rest of the Quatrain made sense.

The captain conceals the Jade Key

in a dwelling long neglected

But you can only blow the whistle

once the trophies are all collected

Decades ago, Zork and its sequels had all been licensed and re-created inside the OASIS as stunning three-dimensional immersive simulations all located on the planet Frobozz, which was named after a character in the Zork universe. So the dwelling long neglected —the one I’d been trying to locate for the past six months—had been sitting right out in the open on Frobozz this entire time. Hiding in plain sight.

I checked the ship’s navigational computer. Traveling at light speed, it would take me just over fifteen minutes to reach Frobozz. There was a good chance the Sixers would beat me there. If they did, there would probably already be a small armada of Sixer gunships waiting in orbit around the planet when I dropped out of light speed. I would have to fight my way through them to reach the surface, and then either lose them, or try to find the Jade Key with them still breathing down my neck. Not a good scenario.

Luckily, I had a backup plan. My Ring of Teleportation. It was one of the most valuable magic items in my inventory, looted from the hoard of a red dragon I’d slain on Gygax. The ring allowed my avatar to teleport once a month, to any location in the OASIS. I only used it in dire emergencies as a last-ditch means of escape, or when I needed to get somewhere in a big hurry. Like right now.

I quickly programmed the Vonnegut ’s onboard computer to autopilot the ship to Frobozz. I instructed it to activate its cloaking device as soon as it dropped out of hyperspace, then locate me on the planet’s surface and land somewhere nearby. If I was lucky, the Sixers wouldn’t detect my ship and blast it out of the sky before it could reach me. If they did, I’d be stuck on Frobozz with no way to leave, while the entire Sixer army closed in on me.

I engaged the Vonnegut ’s autopilot, then activated my Ring of Teleportation by speaking the command word, “Brundell.” When the ring began to glow, I said the name of the planet where I wished to teleport. A world map of Frobozz appeared on my display. It was a large world, and like the planet Middletown, its surface was covered with hundreds of identical copies of the same simulation—in this case, re-creations of the Zork playing field. There were 512 copies of it, to be exact, which meant there were 512 white houses, spaced out evenly across the planet’s surface. I should be able to obtain the Jade Key at any one of them, so I selected one of the copies at random on the map. My ring emitted a blinding flash of light, and a split second later my avatar was there, standing on the surface of Frobozz.

I opened my grail diary and located my original notes on how to solve Zork. Then I pulled up a map of the game’s playing field and placed it in the corner of my display.

Surveying the skies, I didn’t see any sign of the Sixers, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t already arrived. Sorrento and his underlings had probably just teleported to one of the other playing fields. Everybody knew that the Sixers had already been camped out in Sector Seven, waiting for this moment. As soon as they saw Aech’s score increase, they would have used Fyndoro’s Tablet of Finding and learned that he was currently on Frobozz. Which meant the entire Sixer armada would already be on its way here. So I needed to get to the key as quickly as possible, then get the hell of out Dodge.

I took a look around. My surroundings were eerily familiar.

The opening text description in the game Zork read as follows:

WEST OF HOUSE

You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.

>

My avatar now stood in that open field, just west of the white house. The front door of the old Victorian mansion was boarded up, and there was a mailbox just a few yards away from me, at the end of the walkway leading to the house. The house was surrounded by a dense forest, and beyond it I saw a range of jagged mountain peaks. Glancing off to my left, I spotted a path leading to the north, right where I knew it should be.

I ran around to the back of the house. I found a small window there, slightly ajar, and I forced it open and climbed inside. As expected, I found myself in the kitchen. A wooden table sat in the center of the room, and on it rested a long brown sack and a bottle of water. A chimney stood nearby, and a staircase led up to the attic. A hallway off to my left led to the living room. Just like the game.

But the kitchen also contained things that weren’t mentioned in the game’s text description of this room. A stove, a refrigerator, several wooden chairs, a sink, and a few rows of kitchen cabinets. I opened the fridge. It was full of junk food. Fossilized pizza, snack puddings, lunch meat, and a wide array of condiment packets. I checked the cupboards. They were filled with canned and dry goods. Rice, pasta, soup.

And cereal.

One entire cupboard was crammed with boxes of vintage breakfast cereals, most of which had been discontinued before I’d been born. Fruit Loops, Honeycombs, Lucky Charms, Count Chocula, Quisp, Frosted Flakes. And hidden way at the back was a lone box of Cap’n Crunch. Printed clearly on the front of it were the words FREE TOY WHISTLE INSIDE!

The captain conceals the Jade Key .

I dumped the contents of the box out on the counter, scattering golden cereal nuggets everywhere. Then I spotted it—a small plastic whistle encased in a clear cellophane envelope. I tore off the cellophane and held the whistle in my hand. It was yellow in color, with the cartoon face of Cap’n Crunch molded on one side and a small dog on the other. The words CAP’N CRUNCH BO’SUN WHISTLE were embossed on either side.

I raised the whistle to my avatar’s lips and blew into it. But the whistle emitted no sound, and nothing happened.

You can only blow the whistle once the trophies are all collected .

I pocketed the whistle and opened the sack on the kitchen table. I saw a clove of garlic inside, and I added it to my inventory. Then I ran west, into the living room. The floor was covered with a large Oriental rug. Antique furniture, the kind I’d seen in films from the 1940s, was positioned around the room. A wooden door with odd characters carved into its surface was set into the west wall. And against the opposite wall there was a beautiful glass trophy case. It was empty. A battery-powered lantern sat on top of the case, and a shining sword was mounted on the wall directly above it.

I took the sword and the lantern, then rolled up the Oriental rug, uncovering the trapdoor I already knew was hidden underneath. I opened it, revealing a staircase that led down into a darkened cellar.

I turned on the lamp. As I descended the staircase, my sword began to glow.

I continued to refer to the Zork notes in my grail diary, which reminded me exactly how to make my way through the game’s labyrinth of rooms, passageways, and puzzles. I collected all nineteen of the game’s treasures as I went, returning repeatedly to the living room in the white house to place them in the trophy case, a few at a time. Along the way, I had to do battle with several NPCs: a troll, a Cyclops, and a really annoying thief. As for the legendary grue, lurking in the dark, waiting to dine on my flesh—I simply avoided him.