Эрнест Клайн - Ready Player Two

But before they died, the Original 7ven managed to take out all three female members of 3RDEYEGIRL, all of the New Power Generation, and every member of the Revolution, except for Wendy and Lisa, whom I managed to take out with blasts from my Cloud Guitar.

Four incarnations of Prince had gone down, but three had managed to survive the onslaught: Microphone Gun, Third Eye, and Mesh-Mask. But all three of them looked badly injured—and extremely angry about it.

I got off another lucky shot from the Cloud Guitar and managed to nail Third Eye Prince directly in his third eye. Apparently that was his weak spot, because he vanished in a shower of glittering purple dust. The last two incarnations gasped, and so did Aech.

I felt a glimmer of hope. Maybe we had a shot at winning this thing after all.

Then the Cloud Guitar—which had been rapidly overheating in my hands while I was mentally patting myself on the back—finally exploded, causing me to take several hundred more points of damage. My health bar began to flash bright red. My avatar was near death. By some cruel twist of fate, I happened to have exactly seven hit points remaining.

But it wasn’t over yet. There were three of us, and only two Princes.

“Yes!” Shoto cried. “Now we’ve got them outnumbered! Five down and two to go!”

And that was when we lost him. Shoto let out a long hysterical laugh—a clear sign that he was starting to suffer the effects of SOS. Then he signed his avatar’s own death warrant.

“One-two princes kneel before you,” he sang, while failing to suppress his synaptic-overload-induced laughter. “Princes! Princes who adore you!”

A horrified look crossed Aech’s face, and she threw her head back to study the sky. A split second later, a purple lightning bolt descended from it and struck Shoto, killing him instantly.

Aech and I watched in horror as Shoto’s avatar slowly faded out of existence, leaving all of his items in a pile on the ground. Acting on survival instinct, I ran over to scoop them up and add them to my inventory. Aech ran over to stand shoulder to shoulder with me.

At some point during the melee, Mesh-Mask Prince had descended to the ground behind us. He was facing us, standing with his back to the steps that led up to the Temple of Seven. He took a menacing step toward us, and as he did, the black stone floor of the arena beneath his feet turned to gold, and so did the floor directly ahead of him, creating a straight gold pathway up the center of the arena and out of its entrance. Where the gold path intersected with the desert highway outside, it began to transmute the asphalt to gold too.

I glanced over at Aech and saw that she was staring intently down at the transmuted gold beneath our feet in wonder, with a thoughtful look on her face. Then she looked back over at Mesh-Mask Prince. A woman in a glittering gold dress had appeared beside him. She was dancing and spinning in circles, with a large sword balanced on top of her head. My HUD informed me that this woman was Prince’s first wife, Mayte Garcia.

Floating in the air between Mesh-Mask Prince and Mayte was a brilliant gold light, like a tiny star. It was too bright to look at directly without being momentarily blinded, and I averted my eyes. But Aech stared intently at it, ignoring everything else.

“This is just like the music video for ‘Seven’!” she shouted.

“Is that helpful?” I shouted back. I glanced up and saw that Microphone Gun Prince seemed transfixed by the golden light too. His attacks forgotten, he just hovered above us, staring, and the arena fell silent for the first time since we’d stepped into it.

A second later, I heard a woman begin to sing, in a clear, beautiful voice. The voice went on singing for several more seconds before I realized that it was Aech. She was singing a cappella. The lyrics were to a song I had never heard before.

All seven and we’ll watch them fall

They stand in the way of love

And we will smoke them all…

One day all seven will die

As she sang, the two incarnations of Prince joined in. Somehow, their collective voices instantly resurrected the other five Princes, and they all joined too.

When the song was over, the seven incarnations of Prince all floated down and joined hands in front of Aech. She looked surprised. And elated.

Then the Seven Princes morphed and merged, coalescing into one single incarnation of Prince—the one wearing the black mesh mask. A split second later, he transformed into a glowing Love Symbol, which then melted and morphed into the Fifth Shard—a purple crystal spinning in the air.

I felt no sense of victory, because I had no idea what had just happened. All I felt were waves of exhaustion and amazement as I walked over and wrapped my right hand around the shard, bracing myself to relive another piece of Kira Underwood’s life….

I was Kira once again, and a now-middle-aged Ogden Morrow was standing next to me, holding my hand. We were in some sort of small theater or rock club, standing in front of a small, dark, empty stage, which was filled with a cloud of white smoke or fog, possibly created by a smoke machine or dry-ice condenser offstage. Hanging over this mist-covered stage was a small automated lighting rig, with a banner suspended from it that said HAPPY 40TH BIRTHDAY, KIRA!

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see James Halliday, dressed in an ill-fitting tuxedo, sitting alone in a corner, staring back at me forlornly. I could also hear what sounded like a large crowd of excited, whispering people behind me, but they were just beyond my peripheral vision, and Kira didn’t turn her head to look back at them.

A split-second after I clocked my surroundings, I felt Og squeeze my hand, and a dozen ultra-bright purple spotlights switched on, all converging on a lone figure standing on the stage directly in front of us. It was Prince, dressed in a glittering sequined purple suit. When she saw him, I felt Kira’s heart begin to beat so rapidly I worried she might pass out. I could feel myself swaying ever so slightly, and felt unsteady on my feet, because before I knew what was happening, the Purple One himself was approaching me. Then he was kneeling down on the stage in front of me, just a few feet away.

He raised a golden microphone and sang “Happy Birthday, Kira” to me, or rather—her.

And then I was back on the Afterworld, in the center of the courtyard arena in front of the Temple of the Seven, holding the Fifth Shard in my outstretched hand. I resisted the urge to immediately check it for an inscription. Shoto was more important. I pulled up my HUD and called Faisal, adding Aech to the call just before Faisal’s face appeared in front of us. We both began to bark questions at him, asking about Shoto’s condition. Once Faisal got us to quiet down, he told us that Shoto appeared to be fine, at least as far as they could tell.

“It’s the same as the rest,” Faisal explained. “All vital signs are normal, and he’s still logged in to his OASIS account. But we can’t locate his avatar anywhere in the simulation.”

Faisal shook his head and shrugged. “He appears to be stuck in limbo, just like all the other ONI hostages whose avatars have died.”

“What will happen when he hits his ONI usage limit?” I asked. “Will he still start to suffer the effects of Synaptic Overload Syndrome?”

Faisal nodded. “Yes. Our engineers think so, anyway. It seems likely that Anorak would have written his infirmware to ensure that all of his ONI hostages remain his captives, even after their avatars die.”

“But why doesn’t he just let their avatars respawn?” Aech asked. “They would still be his hostages.”

“We’re not sure,” Faisal said. “Perhaps he’s doing it to scare all of us? To keep all of his hostages in line, by making avatar death permanent? If so, it’s working. At least on me.”