Эрнест Клайн - Ready Player Two

Faisal told us that Shoto’s pregnant wife, Kiki, and the rest of his extended family were still standing vigil beside his OIV at his home in Hokkaido. They could see his sleeping body on his immersion vault’s internal cameras, which were linked to a video monitor mounted on the wall above it. There was nothing GSS’s engineers could do for him. They weren’t even trying to cut him out of his OIV, because they knew they couldn’t get him out in time. And even if they could, it wouldn’t matter. As long as Shoto remained logged in to the OASIS, his ONI headset would stay locked into place around his head. And until we managed to free Shoto’s mind from the OASIS, his comatose body would continue to be locked inside his OIV, just a few feet away from his family, but totally out of reach.

When Faisal finished answering our questions about Shoto, he couldn’t help himself. In a panicked voice, he began to ask us how close we were to finding the Sixth Shard. I hung up on him without answering. Then I closed my HUD and looked down at the Fifth Shard, which I was still clutching in my right hand. I turned it over until I found an inscription on one of its facets. I held the shard out so that Aech could read it too.

Win her hand through a feat of dark renown

The last two shards are set in Morgoth’s Crown

When I saw the last two words of the inscription, I couldn’t believe my eyes.

I tried to think of a worse place for the last two shards to be hidden. There wasn’t one. Halliday had put them in the deepest, darkest, and deadliest dungeon fortress in the entire OASIS, in the possession of one of the most ridiculously overpowered—and evil—NPCs ever created. An NPC who was immortal, nigh invulnerable, and capable of killing most ninety-ninth-level avatars with his breath.

For all intents and purposes, the last two shards were located in the depths of hell, set into the crown of Satan himself.

I started to laugh.

It was just a rapid-fire giggle at first. But then I couldn’t stop, and it quickly grew into the loud, uncontrolled laughter of a sane soul pushed to the brink of madness by cruel chance, just before fate drop-kicked them over the edge of a cliff.

I checked my ONI usage countdown and I still had over an hour remaining, so I couldn’t be experiencing the onset of SOS. Not yet. Which meant I was just starting to lose it.

Aech stared at me with an uncertain look on her face until I managed to get my laughter under control.

“OK, Chuckles,” she said. “Now are you gonna tell me what’s so funny? I take it you know where we need to go next?”

I took a deep breath. Then I wiped away the tears at the corners of my eyes and nodded.

“Yeah,” I said. “Unfortunately, I do, Aech.”

“Well?” Aech said. “Don’t make me look it up. Who the hell is Morgoth?”

I studied her face. I could see that she wasn’t joking. She really didn’t know. And this realization nearly set me off again. But I managed to keep a lid on it.

“Morgoth Bauglir,” I said. “The Dark Lord formerly known as Melkor?”

Aech’s eyes lit up.

“Melkor?” she repeated. “Vin Diesel’s avatar? Named after his old D&D character?”

“Vin borrowed that name from the Silmarillion, ” I replied. “Melkor, who later became known as Morgoth, was the most powerful—and evil—being ever to roam the face of Arda. Also known as Middle-earth…”

When she heard the words “Middle-earth,” Aech inhaled sharply.

“Are you telling me that I have to spend the last hour of my life surrounded by a bunch of fucking Hobbits, Z?”

I shook my head.

“All the Hobbit NPCs live on Arda III.” I pointed to the name etched into the Fifth Shard. “Morgoth only resided on Arda during the First Age of Middle-earth. Which means we need to teleport to Arda I, and that planet is a completely Hobbit-free zone.”

“No Hobbits?” she said. “Seriously?”

“No Hobbits,” I replied. “Just Elves, Humans, and Dwarves.”

“Let me guess,” she said. “They’re all white, right? White Elves. White Men. And White Dwarves. I bet everyone we encounter on this Tolkien planet is gonna be white, right? Except, of course, for the bad guys! The black-skinned Orcs.”

“Saruman the White was a bad guy!” I replied, losing my temper. “We don’t have time for literary criticism right now, Aech, valid though it may be! OK?”

“OK, Z,” she replied, holding up both of her hands. “Jeez. Cool your tool. We’ll table that discussion until later.”

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“Sorry,” I said. “I’m just exhausted. And I’m scared. For Shoto—and Og and everyone else.”

“I know,” she replied. “I am too. It’s OK, Z.”

She gave my shoulder a squeeze, then nodded at me. I nodded back.

“Any word from L0hengrin yet?” Aech asked. “Or Arty?”

I checked my messages and shook my head.

“Not yet.”

Aech took a deep breath.

“OK, I’m ready,” she said. “Let’s get this over with.”

I nodded. Then I teleported both of us directly to the surface of Arda I, and into the First Age of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth.

Like Shermer and the Afterworld,Arda I had a limited number of designated teleportation arrival and departure points scattered across its surface. Unfortunately, all but one of them was grayed out for me, because I hadn’t completed any of the quests required to gain access to them. So I selected the only arrival point I could, which was located in the middle of a frozen wasteland called the Helcaraxë. On the map, the same region was also labeled as “The Grinding Ice.”

But when the teleportation process completed, and our avatars rematerialized on the surface of Arda I, we didn’t find ourselves in the environment we were expecting. There wasn’t any ice or snow in sight. Aech and I were standing beside a small lake located somewhere high in the mountains. The star-filled sky over our heads was reflected in the water’s still, smooth surface, creating the illusion that there was a blanket of stars both above and below us. It was quiet, save for the singing of crickets, and the distant howl of wind whipping over the dark hills that loomed all around us.

It was a beautiful scene. But I had absolutely no idea where the hell we were.

When I pulled up my map of Arda to check our location, I discovered that we were nowhere near the Helcaraxë. We were over four hundred miles east, up in the Dorthonion highlands, standing on the shores of a lake called Tarn Aeluin.

This wasn’t one of Arda’s designated arrival points, so it shouldn’t even have been possible for us to teleport to this location. It had to be the shards that’d brought us here—but I didn’t have the first clue as to why.

I continued to scan my map of Arda, looking for the name Udûn. I knew that was once the name of Morgoth’s fortress, because in The Fellowship of the Ring, when Gandalf faces off against the Balrog of Morgoth at the Bridge of Khazad-dûm, he calls it the “flame of Udûn.” But I couldn’t find any sign of it on my map—nor was there a label for its Sindarin equivalent, Utumno . And when I searched the index, it confirmed that there was no location known by either of those names anywhere on the planet.

I cursed myself once again for never bothering to study the First Age. Then I bit the bullet and opened Gunterpedia in a browser window in front of me and pulled up the entry on Utumno. I immediately saw my mistake. Utumno was the name of Melkor’s original dungeon stronghold. But it was completely destroyed just before the First Age began. So it wasn’t located on Arda I at all, but on the Springtime of Arda, another, much smaller, disk-shaped planet, located directly beneath Arda I, II, and III. Most gunters referred to it as Arda Zero. It was a simulation of Arda during the Years of the Trees, which took place before the First Age. I’d never even bothered to visit Arda Zero, because it was impossible to complete any of the quests there unless you had already completed every single quest on Arda I, Arda II, and Arda III.