Эрнест Клайн - Ready Player Two

We also invited Og to return to Gregarious Simulation Systems as our chief adviser. After all, he was the company’s co-founder, and the only one of us with any experience running it. But Og declined our offer, saying he had no desire to come out of retirement. Though he did still promise to give us advice, whenever we felt like asking for it.

The morning we finally left Og’s estate and went our separate ways, he walked down to his private runway to bid us all farewell. He gave each of us one of his bear hugs, promising to stay in touch via the OASIS.

“Everything will be fine,” he assured us. “You’re all going to do a fantastic job!”

At the time, we had plenty of reasons to doubt his prediction. But we all acted as though we believed him, and that his faith in us was justified.

“Our future’s so bright, we gotta wear shades!” Aech declared as she slipped on a pair of Ray-Bans and boarded her jet, bound for her ancestral homeland.

When Samantha and I kissed each other goodbye on the runway that morning, I never would have imagined it would be our last kiss. But I discovered the OASIS Neural Interface headset the very next day, and everything changed.

I knew Samantha might be upset with me for testing the ONI before discussing it with her first. But since it had worked flawlessly and I wasn’t harmed in any way, I assumed she would forgive my risky behavior. Instead she got so pissed off she hung up on me before I even had a chance to finish describing all of the different things I’d experienced with the ONI—and the ones I had chosen not to experience.

Aech and Shoto reacted to my news far more enthusiastically. They both dropped everything and flew to Columbus to try the ONI out for themselves. And when they did, they were just as blown away by the experience as I had been. It was transcendental technology. The OASIS Neural Interface was the ultimate prosthesis. One that could temporarily cure any ailment or injury of the human body by disconnecting the mind and reconnecting it to a new, perfectly healthy, fully functional body inside the OASIS—a simulated body that would never feel any pain, through which you could experience every pleasure imaginable. The three of us talked ourselves into a frenzy, listing all the ways this device was going to change everything.

But when Samantha finally arrived on the scene, things began to go drastically downhill.

I still remember every word of our exchange that day, because I’d brazenly recorded it with an ONI headset while it was happening. In the three years since, I’d relived our conversation on an almost weekly basis. To me, it felt like our breakup had just happened a few days ago. Because for me, it had.

“Take that stupid thing off!” Samantha says, glancing up at the ONI headset I’m wearing. The original headset I found in Halliday’s vault lies on the conference table between us, along with three duplicates, fresh from the 3-D printer.

“No,” I say angrily. “I want to record how ridiculous you’re being right now, so you can play it back later and see for yourself.”

Aech and Shoto are sitting between us, on either side of the conference table, swiveling their heads back and forth like they’re watching a tennis match. Shoto is hearing our conversation with a slight delay, through the Mandarax translator earpiece he’s wearing.

“I told you,” Samantha says, snatching one of the headsets off the table, “I am never going to let one of these things take control of my brain. Not ever.”

She hurls the headset against the wall, but it doesn’t break. They’re very durable.

“How can you form an educated opinion when you haven’t even tried it?” Aech asks quietly.

“I’ve never tried sniffing paint thinner either,” Samantha snaps back. She sighs in frustration and runs her hands through her hair. “I don’t know why I can’t make you guys understand. This is the last thing humanity needs. Can’t you see that? The world is a complete mess right now….”

She pulls up half a dozen different world newsfeeds on the conference-room viewscreen, filling it with images of poverty, famine, disease, war, and a wide array of natural disasters. Even with the audio muted, the barrage of images was pretty horrific.

“Half the world already spends every waking moment ignoring reality inside the OASIS. We already peddle the Opiate of the Masses. And now you want to up the dosage?”

I roll my eyes and shake my head. I can feel my adrenaline rising.

“That’s total bullshit, Arty, and you know it,” I say. “We could turn off the OASIS tomorrow, and it wouldn’t solve any of humanity’s problems. It would just rob people of the only escape they have. I mean, I get where you’re coming from—and I agree that everyone should balance their time in the OASIS with equal time in reality. But it’s not our place to mandate how our users live their lives. Growing up in the stacks would have been hell for me if I hadn’t had access to the OASIS. It literally saved my life. And I’ve heard Aech say the same thing.”

We both glance over at Aech. She nods in agreement.

“We weren’t all lucky enough to grow up in some ritzy Vancouver suburb like you, Samantha,” I say. “Who are you to judge how other people deal with reality?”

Samantha clenches her jaw and narrows her eyes at me, but she still doesn’t reply. And I apparently take this as my cue to shove my foot even further into my mouth. All the way, in fact.

“ONI technology is also going to save hundreds of millions of lives,” I say self-righteously. “By preventing the spread of all sorts of infectious diseases—like the flu pandemic that killed both of your parents.” Now it’s my turn to level a finger at her. “How can you be against an invention that could’ve prevented their deaths?”

She snaps her head around and looks at me in wounded surprise, like I’ve just slapped her across the face. Then her gaze hardens and that’s it—the exact instant her love for me disappears. I’m too amped up on adrenaline to notice it there in the moment, but I spot it plain as day on every single one of my repeat viewings. The sudden change in her eyes says it all. One second she loves me, and the next she loves me not.

She never responds to my question. She just stares daggers at me in silence, until Shoto finally chimes in.

“We’re going to make trillions of dollars selling these headsets, Arty,” he says calmly. “We can use that money to help the world. To try and fix all of the things that need fixing.”

Samantha shakes her head. “No amount of money will be able to undo the damage these headsets are going to cause,” she replies, sounding defeated now. “You guys read Og’s email. He thinks releasing the ONI is a bad idea too.”

“Og hasn’t even tried the ONI,” I say, letting too much anger creep into my voice. “He’s like you. Condemning it without even trying to understand its potential.”

“Of course I understand its potential, you idiot!” Samantha shouts. She looks around the table. “Christ! Haven’t any of you rewatched The Matrix lately? Or Sword Art Online ? Plugging your brain and your nervous system directly into a computer simulation is never a good idea! We’re talking about giving complete control of our minds to a machine. Turning ourselves into cyborgs…”

“Come on,” Aech says. “You’re overreacting—”

“No!” she shouts back. “I’m not.” Then she takes a deep breath before glancing around the table at all three of us. “Don’t you see? This is why Halliday never released the ONI technology himself. He knew it would only hasten the collapse of human civilization, by encouraging people to spend even more time escaping from reality. He didn’t want to be the one responsible for opening Pandora’s box.” She looks at me, and now her eyes are filling with tears. “I thought you wanted to live here. In the real world. With me. But you haven’t learned a goddamn thing, have you?”