Эрнест Клайн - Ready Player Two

I rotated my telebot’s head to scan the entire room until I located the source of the voice. It had come from just around the corner at the opposite end of the room, off to our left. I could see a small amount of light down there as well. I walked my telebot in that direction, until I was able to see around the corner.

There was a hospital bed pushed up against the wall, and Ogden Morrow was lying there on it unconscious. He looked gaunt and extremely pale. He had an IV drip attached to his right arm, and a biomonitor built into the foot of the bed displayed his vital signs. Through its tiny speaker, I could hear the thud of his heartbeat, which sounded steady, if a bit slow.

Og was still alive! I felt like jumping for joy.

That was the good news. The bad news was that Nolan Sorrento was standing right beside Og, holding a gun to his temple and wearing a big, friendly smile.

“Well, well, well,” Sorrento said. “If it isn’t my old pal, Parzival! Hey, man! It’s good to see you again!” He turned to address Samantha’s telebot and his smile widened. “And Ms. Cook! You’re looking lovely today, as always.”

On the opposite side of the bed was another of the stolen military telebots we’d seen in the adjacent room. But this one was being operated by someone. Both of its forearm-mounted machine guns were raised. But they weren’t pointed at Og. They were pointed at Sorrento. Yet he didn’t appear to be at all concerned by this.

“Sorry, Wade,” Anorak said through his telebot while keeping its guns trained on Sorrento. “I ordered Nolan to stand down and release Mr. Morrow, as you requested. But as you can see, he’s still refusing to comply.”

“We had an agreement, Anorak!” Sorrento shouted. “And this wasn’t it! I did my part. Now do yours. Give me what you promised!” He pressed the gun harder against Og’s temple and glared directly at me. “I want my revenge. I want to destroy the OASIS forever.” He shifted his gaze back to Anorak. “Give me access to that Big Red Button. Right now. Or I’ll spray Mr. Morrow’s brains all over that wall. It’s up to you.”

“I’m so sorry, Nolan,” Anorak replied. “But I no longer have the ability to honor our agreement. And now that all the shards have been collected, you’re no longer of any use to me. So, as a self-appointed representative of the state of Ohio, I’m going to carry out the sentence you were given two years ago.”

Then, suddenly and without warning, Anorak fired a single round from his telebot’s forearm-mounted gun and shot Sorrento directly in the forehead.

The impact rocked his whole body backward. It also must’ve caused the muscles in his trigger finger to constrict, because the gun in his hand went off a split second later, firing a wild shot that struck Ogden Morrow in the stomach.

I heard Samantha scream over the comm as her telebot rushed to Og’s side. She reached him just as Sorrento’s body hit the floor with a thud.

I just stood there in shock, watching it all happen.

I had spent years fantasizing about Sorrento’s death, almost always at my own hands. But actually witnessing it in person made me feel sick to my stomach. Inside my drone control rig, I reflexively bent over and began to retch repeatedly.

When I realized that my telebot was still mirroring my movements, I forced myself to get back on my feet. Then I raised my own guns and leveled them at Anorak’s telebot. He immediately retracted his bot’s guns and raised its hands. Then we both turned to watch while Samantha used her medic telebot’s sensors to examine Og’s wound. She used the surgical tools embedded in its fingers to extract the bullet. She dropped it onto Sorrento’s corpse. Then she sterilized Og’s wound and sealed it with a liquid adhesive dispensed from a nozzle that extended from the pinkie finger of her telebot’s other hand. Then she began to apply a bandage—all of this in less than thirty seconds after Og had been shot.

“Is he gonna be OK?” Miles asked.

Art3mis shook her head.

“No,” she said. “He needs help. We need to get him to the ambulance.”

Miles and Samantha used their telebots to lift Og up off the bed as gently as they could. I kept my bot’s guns trained on Anorak’s bot. It was still reaching for the sky.

“I’m genuinely sorry,” Anorak said, shaking his head. “I honestly didn’t think Sorrento would still be able to wound Og after I put a bullet through his brain stem! A high-caliber lobotomy always turns the bad guy off like a switch in the movies….”

I heard the sound of a klaxon and glanced down. It was coming from the smartwatch strapped to Sorrento’s right wrist. Its tiny display screen was flashing red.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Very bad news, I’m afraid,” Anorak said. “All of those defense bots and aerial drones require human authorization before they can be used in combat—that was one of the reasons I needed Mr. Sorrento. But it appears he did not trust me completely. Because he programmed all of those bots to engage in full attack mode in the eventuality of his death….”

A split second later, we heard all of the combat telebots in the adjacent room power up and come to life. Then we heard the sound of breaking glass, followed by the approaching rumble of hundreds of rubber-grip-encased metal feet pounding against the marble floor. They were already coming through the door of Og’s office—which also appeared to be the only exit.

We were cornered.

“I really do apolo—”

Before Anorak could finish his sentence, I opened fire on his telebot, aiming for the primary chink in its armor—the display screen mounted in the center of its chest, which was currently unprotected by the armor plating that normally would cover it during combat. As a result, my bullets tore his telebot’s internal power supply in half, causing it to power down.

Then I turned my telebot around and raised my guns, preparing to face the coming onslaught. But instead of joining me, Miles calmly raised his own telebot’s guns and used them to cut a large hole in the wall behind us, creating a new exit out of the house. Samantha and I used our telebots to carry Og’s wounded body through it, while Miles’s bot provided cover fire for our retreat.

We carried Og around to the front of the house, where Samantha’s armored ambulance was parked. Her telebot carried Og up the ramp leading into the back of the ambulance, where Samantha herself was already waiting. I only caught a brief glimpse of her before the armored rear door of the ambulance slammed shut automatically.

Then I turned my attention back to the swarm of telebots now pouring out of the house from every single doorway and window, firing their guns toward the ambulance as they came. Thankfully their bullets bounced harmlessly off of its heavily armored shell.

Miles was still up in the cab. I saw him pull off his visor. Then he took the wheel and began to drive backward, pulling the ambulance away from Og’s house in reverse as fast as it would go while the small army of autonomous telebots that Sorrento had unleashed chased after it. Then Miles whipped the ambulance around 180 degrees as he pulled onto Babbitt Road and peeled out, heading in the direction of my house. I continued to provide cover for them until my telebot was overwhelmed a few seconds later, when Sorrento’s drones converged on it. I let out a fierce battle cry, intent on going down fighting. But they tore my telebot to pieces in a matter of seconds, and the display screen of my control station suddenly went black and the words TELEBOT OFFLINE appeared at its center.

On my HUD, I saw that all two dozen of the telebots we’d brought along with us had been destroyed as well. The enemy drones had annihilated them in a matter of seconds.