Эрнест Клайн - Ready Player Two

Kira turned a full circle, and I could feel her heart pounding as she took in her beautiful surroundings. Then she looked into her husband’s eyes and said, “Oh, Og—I never want to leave.”

Then it was over, and I found myself back on Arda, standing next to Art3mis outside the Gates of Angband, clutching the Sixth Shard in my right hand. I glanced down at it. There was an ornate, calligraphic letter L etched into its crystalline surface. I immediately recognized it as Leucosia’s character symbol—the one that had adorned her Dungeons & Dragons character sheet. I’d seen that same letter L in Kira’s notebook, in her illustration of the Shrine of Leucosia. Her character symbol was etched into the stone altar’s surface, and it matched the symbol etched into the Sixth Shard exactly.

I pinpointed the shrine’s location on Chthonia in my OASIS atlas, and attempted to teleport us both there. But I couldn’t. We weren’t in a designated departure zone.

Suddenly, thunder rumbled from the gray sky overhead, and bolts of red lightning began to arc upward from the ground around us as the earth itself began to shake. What sounded like a series of explosions boomed from above, and we both looked up to see fire and smoke erupting from the three volcanic peaks of Thangorodrim. A moment later, a hail of flaming rock and molten metal began to rain down on the landscape below.

“Angband is awakened!” Art3mis shouted, pulling me away from the gate. I could already hear all sorts of foul creatures screaming and roaring and growling as they made their way to the surface. Morgoth’s minions began to pour out of the secret gate behind us. And we could hear even more of them approaching the main gate directly ahead of us. We were trapped in the middle of two dark armies, both of which were rapidly closing in on us.

There didn’t appear to be any way for us to escape. When I turned to Art3mis for guidance, she pointed toward the sky.

A pair of giant eagles were descending toward us, with their claws out. But Art3mis didn’t move, so neither did I, and a split second later, the eagles scooped both of us up and spirited us away.

Once we were safe and soaring high above in the clouds, we climbed up onto their backs and Art3mis introduced me to our new friends. She was riding on Gwaihir and I was astride Landroval.

“These are the eagles who rescued Beren and Lúthien when they were fleeing Angband,” Art3mis said. Then she pointed toward the three volcanic peaks that still loomed behind us, spitting fire and lightning into the darkening sky. “The Great Eagles used to roost back there, on the peaks of Thangorodrim. But now their eyrie is in the Crissaegrim mountain range in southern Echoriath.”

For some reason, her calm tour-guide demeanor made me laugh out loud.

“Sorry,” I said, when she looked over at me. “I just love listening to you geek out, Arty. I always have.”

She gave me a sad smile and then looked away. But I kept right on staring at her. In that moment, she looked more beautiful than ever. Like some warrior goddess, riding across the skies of Arda on the back of a Great Eagle, with her dark hair trailing out behind her in the wind.

Aech was right. I was still in love with her. And I always would be. I just wanted to live long enough to correct my mistakes and redeem myself in her eyes, if I could.

Looking at Art3mis, I felt a wave of pity for Anorak. In his warped mind, he was doing all this because he believed he was in love, too, with Kira, and longed to bring her back to life. And somewhere in his deluded soul, he was sure that he could convince her to return his feelings and end his loneliness.

But Anorak was crazy—not stupid. Surely, he didn’t really think we’d leave him to blissfully roam the OASIS forever, after everything he’d done. What was his endgame?

I shivered as I thought again of that “Ship in a Bottle” scenario—the standalone simulation where he could have Kira alone in his mad clutches, forever.

Maybe Anorak had built a server farm in a subterranean bunker somewhere, fed by solar panels up on the surface? Or maybe he intended to use a solar-powered satellite up in orbit?

I didn’t think Anorak would have constructed a virtual jail cell for himself. He’d need processors powerful enough to create a simulation he could spread out in, and roam for centuries. An OASIS of his own.

Except that Anorak didn’t have to create his own ship in a bottle, did he? I had already created the perfect one for him, aboard the Vonnegut . Its onboard computer held our own private simulated universe. ARC@DIA. And there wasn’t a single human-controlled avatar inside it yet. It was populated solely by NPCs. All Anorak would have to do was upload himself and Leucosia, using the same data uplink I already had in place for uploading new OASIS content. Then both AIs could hide inside the onboard computer unnoticed until after the ship left Earth.

Unless Anorak figured out a way to take control of the ship and launch it prematurely. And that probably wouldn’t be too difficult for him to pull off, since I had taken great pains to ensure that we would be able to control all of the ship’s functions and service telebots while we were logged in to ARC@DIA.

That had to be it. Once he had Leucosia, Anorak was planning to steal our interstellar spacecraft and flee Earth.

I considered sharing my new theory with Art3mis, but I decided it was better to keep quiet while we were still in the presence of NPCs. It didn’t seem at all paranoid to think that Anorak might have figured out a way to spy on us through them.

Soaring on their great feathery wings, Gwaihir and Landroval carried us over the scorched wasteland of Anfauglith, and over Taur-nu-Fuin, to the valley of Tumalden in the Encircling Mountains, where the hidden Elven city of Gondolin was located. They set us down in an open field just outside the city, and just inside a designated teleportation departure zone. We gave the eagles our thanks and then bade them farewell, just before they flew off into the brilliant red-and-purple sunrise.

As soon as they were gone, I told Art3mis my new theory about Anorak’s plan for the Vonnegut . I thought she might shoot holes in it, but she didn’t. Instead she simply nodded in agreement.

“As soon as I log out, I’ll relay all of this to Miles and our security team,” she said. “We’ll take it into account and formulate a plan while you go after the final shard. Sound good?”

I nodded. Art3mis took a small object out of her inventory and handed it to me. It looked like a miniature haptic rig, about two inches tall. The item description said it was a Tactical Telebot Control Station.

“This will allow you to sync with one of the telebots we’re going to deploy at Og’s old mansion,” Art3mis explained. “I’ll signal you to activate.”

“Thanks, Arty,” I said, adding the item to my own inventory. “For everything.”

“You’re welcome,” she replied, smiling. Then, to my surprise, Art3mis leaned over and gave me a kiss on the cheek.

“For luck,” she said, a split second before she teleported away and her avatar vanished.

I stood there for a moment, touching the spot on my cheek where she had kissed me. Then I noticed that my hands were starting to tremble a little. I was running out of time fast.

I took a deep breath and teleported myself to Chthonia, to obtain the last of the Seven Shards.

I double-checked the coordinates inthe OASIS atlas, then teleported myself directly to the top of the highest peak of the Xyxarian Mountains, which were located on the continent of Xyxaria in Chthonia’s southern hemisphere.

I had flown over these mountains several times, on my way to explore other parts of Halliday’s world. But I had never set foot in the mountains themselves. There was no reason to, because there was nothing there. The whole mountain range was a groan zone—an unpopulated plot of procedurally generated landscape, where there were no NPCs to meet and no quests to complete. Thousands of other gunters had explored every inch of these mountains and they’d all confirmed that there was absolutely nothing of interest here.