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I think I may have had a panic attack. But I’m better now.”
Several of these survivors described being trapped in an endless loop of the final second of the simulation they were experiencing before they lost their connection. A loop that seemed to stretch on for months or years. (GSS never allowed the public to find out about that last bit, though.)
When the redundancies failed, it was almost always a result of sabotage, either by a user who was looking to end it all,
What an awful way to commit suicide. “Yeah, I think I want my last memories to be an endless loop of my last second in a video game stretching on for what feels like eternity until my body succumbs to dehydration.”
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As a result, GSS wasn’t held legally accountable for any of these incidents—although thanks to the licensing agreement our users clicked past before each login, if our ONI headsets suddenly started making people’s heads explode like watermelons at a Gallagher concert when they put them on, we probably wouldn’t be liable for that either. It was real comforting.
Oh good, more end-user contracts, just when I was starting to get bored
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People often jokingly referred to OIVs as “coffins.” Now that felt terrifyingly prophetic.
“I see those wheels of yours turning over there. What’s your assessment of our situation?” “That we’re totally screwed, pal,” I said.
Aech let out a roar and punched the wall ...
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“In the meantime, we’ll try to give the Dixie Flatline what he wants,
Boooooooo!
“Hey!” Art3mis said, snapping her fingers at us like an annoyed schoolteacher. “I don’t want to hear one more word of negativity, guys!
“Right,” I said. “I’m sorry I lost my cool before. I’ve got my game face on now.”
I turned to address everyone. “He has the Robes of Anorak now. If they give him all of the same abilities they gave me—when I wore them, they gave me unrestricted superuser access to the OASIS. They also made my avatar invulnerable and invincible in combat. And they allowed me to go anywhere I wanted to in the simulation. Anywhere. And they let me remain invisible and undetected to other avatars, even in null-tech and null-magic zones. I could also eavesdrop on private phone calls. And access private chatrooms too. Just like Og did, when he eavesdropped on us in Aech’s Basement.”
Just say “I told everyone what the robes of Anorak did.”
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“Why am I thinking of that scene in Heat?” Art3mis asked us. “The one where Pacino is starting to close in on De Niro and he tells his crew, ‘Assume they got our phones, assume they got our houses, assume they got us—right here, right now as we sit, everything. Assume it all.’ ”
I found myself wondering
“And I honestly couldn’t foresee a single reason why I would ever need to press it.” That made Art3mis laugh out loud. “Well, can you ‘foresee’ one now, Nostradamus?” she asked. I gave her a sober nod. “Yes, ma’am,” I replied. “Now I can think of several.”
Cline’s trademark witty banter shines again
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Unless…” “Unless what, Faisal?” Shoto asked.
“Like that one TNG episode with Professor Moriarty,” Shoto said. “ ‘Ship in a Bottle,’ ” Aech and Art3mis said in unison.
We told the ONI users the logout issue was due to a minor firmware bug, apologized profusely for the temporary inconvenience, and announced that all teleportation fares would be waived until the problem was fixed. We also offered to deposit a thousand credits in each ONI user’s OASIS account, to help them “make the most of this unfortunate situation”—in return for digitally signing an agreement stating they wouldn’t sue us over this incident. Faisal told us this was just an extra precaution, because each time our users logged on they were already clicking Agree to an end-user license that
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More legal speak, how thrilling. And it’s all the info they just said they would say in the last scene.
“Agreed,” Arty said
Wade’s narration switches to “Arty” for some reason. I guess Cline got tired of typing “Art3mis” for every scene she appears in.
By this point we had all started shouting at her to reconsider, as if she could hear us. Samantha stepped away from the applicator, now wearing the parachute on her back. She pulled on a pair of goggles. Then she went to the emergency exit and pulled down on the manual-release handle with all of her weight, briefly hanging from it before it finally gave. The door detached itself from the fuselage and flew off, depressurizing the cabin and sucking everything outside through the opening. Including Samantha.
Real-life Samantha just jumped out of a plane without a second’s hesitation. Why isn’t this our main character?
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Her parachute unfurled and opened, revealing the Art3mis Foundation logo printed on top of it—the one where the adjacent letter t and number 3 in her name resembled an armored woman in profile, drawing back on a futuristic hunting bow.
Nothing like interrupting an action scene to discuss corporate logos
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I stared at the images on the viewscreen in shock as an aching hollowness spread across my limbs and torso and slowly made its way to my heart.
My mind played a montage of every moment I’d ever spent with Samantha, both in the OASIS and in reality, while I tallied up the long list of stupid things I’d said and done to her in the years since our breakup. And all of the apologies I’d never made.
This montage has to take like a solid 20 minutes, right? What songs would Wade’s shame montage be set to?
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I was too overcome with grief and rage to respond with words. But I managed to nod slowly.
Lolol!
When he called us “kids,” I finally snapped and went into a total berserker rage, lunging at the viewscreen, as if I could crawl through it and throttle him. “You’ll pay for this, you son of a bitch!” I shouted, because I’d obviously seen way too many movies, and because I was terrified and wanted desperately not to show it.
She winced. “I’ve got a few first- and second-degree burns, and I’m gonna need a few stitches. But I’m OK.”
and I can’t do them while Halliday-9000 is watching.” Her deadpan 2001 joke caused me to involuntarily snort-laugh.
*brain static noises*
I stood there for a minute, staring at the spot where her avatar had been, attempting to rein in my stampeding thoughts.
I told them how I’d used the Boris Vallejo calendar in Og’s basement to change the year of the Middletown simulation, and how I’d obtained the First Shard in Kira’s bedroom.
Normally I’d lambast this as pointless rehashing, but honestly I’m so relieved that we didn’t get a play-by-play of the entire sequence of events that I’ll let this one slide.
I think that’s a reference to Rieko Kodama, who was one of the very first women videogame designers. In one of her early interviews, Kira said that Kodama was one of the women who inspired her to work in the videogame industry, along with Dona Bailey and Carol Shaw.” I felt like kicking myself. In the head. Repeatedly. I knew all about Rieko Kodama.
Of course you did
But I still didn’t see a connection between Rieko Kodama and the second line of the clue. Probably because I didn’t have her entire credits memorized, when I clearly should have.
I searched my memory, but the only woman hero of a Rieko Kodama game I could think of was Alis Lansdale, the fifteen-year-old protagonist of Phantasy Star I—and that was a home console game. Released for the Sega Master System in Japan in 1987, and in the United States in 1988. “I’m talking about the first human female protagonist in an action videogame.” Shoto cupped his right ear. “Anyone?” “Wasn’t that Samus from Metroid?” Aech asked as she opened her own browser window to look up the answer. “No wait—Toby from Baraduke!” Shoto shook his head again, then he closed his eyes and raised his
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Wake me up when the Wikipedia article ends
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I was so happy to hear this that I felt like hugging Shoto. So I did, and he was so overjoyed at that moment he tolerated it.
he abandoned his avatar’s samurai attire out of respect for his late brother, he’d changed his avatar to a ninja and became a ninja addict.
this riddle was a bull’s-eye in his gunter knowledge sweet spot.
remember this game now! I was addicted to it. You play this badass princess named Kurumi, who has to take back her castle from the punks who usurped it.”
And because Sega thought it would improve sales, they changed the main character from a woman, the badass ninja princess Kurumi, to a man—a generic male ninja named Kazamaru.” “Yeah, I remember this shit now,” Aech said. “In the console version, they also turned the princess from a kunoichi into a damsel in distress that Kazamaru rescues at the end of the game.” She shook her head. “That still pisses me off.”
Feminism is gamer girls talking about how corporate decisions made by video game companies half a century earlier make them mad. Cline gets it.
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“Seriously?” I said, with genuine surprise. “They did that?” Shoto and Aech both nodded.
“Boom!” Aech said. “Then let’s make like a tree and get outta here.”
Uggggghhh
Faisal smiled and removed a small silver ring from his inventory and then tossed it to me. I caught it and slipped it onto the pinky of my right hand. It appeared in my avatar’s inventory as a Ring of OASIS Administration. It gave me the ability to teleport anywhere in the OASIS for free, and enclosed my avatar in a shield that made me immune to attacks from other OASIS avatars, even in PvP zones. Faisal had offered me one of these Admin rings when he’d given them to Art3mis, Aech, and Shoto, but I’d declined because the Robes of Anorak already gave me those abilities and many more—and I was
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Main character was mortal for two seconds before he was made immortal again
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The area where Aech, Shoto, and I arrived was modeled after the game Alex Kidd in the Miracle World. But as we began to traverse the planet’s surface, we found ourselves running through the Green Hill Zone from the original Sonic the Hedgehog. Then the landscape quickly changed to resemble environments from the very first Phantasy Star game. I recognized graphical elements from all three planets in the Algol system—in just a few minutes, we sprinted through the forests of Palma, the deserts of Motavia, and the icy plains of Dezoris.
*brain static noises intensify*
As we approached the Ninja Princess portal, I began to notice a ringing in my ears, which began to increase steadily in volume the closer I got to it. Aech and Shoto didn’t seem to hear it at all, so I decided to check my inventory. That was when I realized the sound was emanating from the First Shard. The icon denoting it on my item list was pulsing in time with the ringing in my ears—as if the shard were calling out to me. Just like that green Kryptonian crystal that called to young Kal-El in Superman: The Movie. In fact, I was pretty sure Halliday had lifted the sound effect I was hearing
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