by Jason Segel
“Do you really want to know?” she whispers, and I nod. “I think it means maybe your friend Gorog was right all along.”
Gorog started the One bullshit. It’s exactly the sort of thing you’d hear from a kid who’s watched too many dumb movies. I can’t believe Kat’s starting to buy into it. I don’t need to be put under that kind of pressure. If he were here right now, I’d give Gorog a good kick in the ass. Then I think of the last time I saw him. He’d transformed from an Otherworld ogre into a thirteen-year-old boy named Declan Andrews. I gave him a fortune and sent him away with his parents to hide from the Company. I had to do it to keep him safe, but I wish like hell he was here with me.
“Stop it,” I tell Kat. “Or you’re going to get a cold shoulder just like Elvis.”
“Highly unlikely,” she replies, giving me a kiss. “You wouldn’t last five minutes.”
I’m afraid she knows me all too well.
* * *
—
It doesn’t take long to locate the play-through of Max’s last visit to Albion. It was the final video he ever shared—posted less than two weeks before he slaughtered his stepfather. I scroll through the comments. Everyone’s sharing theories about what drove Max to murder. No one knows Max was testing OtherEarth, of course. Most of the commenters seem to be either stoned or stupid. But a few of them manage to get close to the truth. At some point, Max lost touch with reality. He couldn’t tell what was real and what wasn’t.
It’s just the four of us huddled around the computer, but I’m sure Nasha Ogubu and her buddies are watching remotely. It’s so obvious that we’re under surveillance that none of us bothered to search for mikes or cameras. Elvis and Busara are seated side by side. Every time Elvis shifts his body, Busara adjusts her position to keep at least six inches between them.
I start the video and settle back on the couch next to Kat. The play-through begins with a close-up of Max speaking to the camera. The guy in the video isn’t the walking disaster I visited at Rikers Island, but he’s hardly the picture of health, either. This Max has the bloodshot eyes and pasty skin of someone who hasn’t slept in days. The stubble on his cheeks has turned into a mangy beard.
“Hey there, I’m back!” he says with forced cheer. “I’d like to thank everyone out there for your thoughts, prayers, death threats and booty calls. As you can see, I have not fallen off the face of the earth. I’ve been testing a new game, and let me tell you, this shit’s gonna rock your world. I can’t say anything about it right now unless I want a bunch of lawyers up my ass. But I don’t want to leave you guys bored and restless. You start sending me pics of your junk when I do. So today we’re gonna take another trip to the OG of altered-reality games, Otherworld.”
The camera pulls back to show Max on a multidirectional treadmill. He’s wearing a custom-made full-body haptic suit that must have set him back hundreds of thousands of dollars. It’s a little looser than it should be. Max has already shed some serious weight.
“Hold on, I’m gonna stop the video for a sec,” Elvis announces as Max begins to put on his Otherworld headset. He reaches over and hits pause. “This video’s dated June fourteenth. Let’s see when his previous one was uploaded.”
Elvis navigates to Max Prince’s YouTube page. “Here it is,” he says. “The previous video was uploaded on May twenty-first—over three weeks earlier.”
He clicks Play. On the screen is the cute, pudgy Max we’ve all known for years.
“What the hell happened to him between May and June?” Kat wonders out loud.
“OtherEarth happened to him,” Elvis says. “Who knows what else.”
Elvis switches back to the last video and starts it up once again. Max has slipped on his headset, and the video has become a split screen. On the left is a kid in a black haptic suit. On the right is a bald, buff avatar with a black mustache and a shag carpet sprouting from his chest. We know what he looks like because he’s kneeling over a silvery pool of water so we can see his rugged face on-screen. Then the avatar stands up, and his surroundings are revealed. He’s in a forest, walking beneath a canopy of gnarled tree branches without any leaves. No sunlight filters down from above, and a thick mist rises from the forest floor. It’s everything you’d want a magical, mystical realm to be. It’s weird to be watching Otherworld on a screen, with only two of my senses engaged. I find myself yearning to know what Albion smells like.
The avatar’s thunderous baritone is now the only voice we hear. He’s making his way toward a horse that’s tied to a tree in the distance.
“So today we’re in Albion, which has got to be one of the lamest realms, if you ask me. It’s basically a virtual Renaissance fair, which is the sort of shit that I’d avoid like herpes in real life. But a lot of you dorks have told me you’re into this kind of crap, so today we’re going to strap on our codpieces, battle a dragon, ogle some maidens and maybe screw a fairy or two.”
Max reaches the horse and hoists himself onto its back. From his vantage point, we can see three small beings cowering behind a bush, desperately trying to stay hidden. They’re Children—and if I had to guess, I’d say one parent was an Otherworld chipmunk.
“I don’t know what those freaks are supposed to be,” Max says to his viewers. He clearly finds them a little unnerving. “They aren’t really part of the game—and they don’t like players. For a while I thought it was fun to kill them, but they’re smart—we’re talking some seriously impressive AI—and sometimes they fight back. I lost a few lives that way. If you’re here to get shit done, I’d say it’s best to avoid them.”
He takes the horse’s reins and guides it down a path through the forest. Max’s voice-over continues as the beast jumps over fallen logs and races past ravenous bears the size of compact cars. Even the deer in this forest look dangerous. I wouldn’t be surprised if they are.
“Unless this is the first Otherworld video you’ve watched, you know each realm is ruled by a godlike creature called an Elemental. Albion’s Elemental takes the form of a wise old hermit who lives in a mountaintop cave. He won’t let you leave his realm until you’ve performed three quests. We’ve only got time for one quest today, but I’m gonna show you how to reach the realm’s big boss—and what happens if you approach him before your three quests are complete.”
This time, I’m the one who reaches over to hit Pause. “That’s the guy Max mentioned at Rikers—the old man who lives in a cave. Whatever clue we need is going to be somewhere near the Elemental. I’ll skip ahead to the end of the video.”
“Awww, come on!” Elvis complains. “Don’t skip over all of it! Can we at least see a few highlights?”
Busara shoots him the side eye. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Kidding?” Elvis was definitely not kidding. “Have you never watched a Max Prince video before? His shit is genius. There’s a reason he’s famous, you know. He’s seriously funny. He can fart the French national anthem.”
Kat nudges me with her elbow.
“Fine,” I say with a groan, though to be honest, I’m pretty intrigued by that last part. “I’ll play a few seconds here and there along the way. But that’s all you get.”
I click forward to a random spot in the video. Max’s avatar is in the bowels of a castle, fighting an onyx dragon. Everything around the combatants is aflame. Max dodges a timber that crashes down from the ceiling and raises his shield just in time to guard against a blast of the beast’s fiery breath. The action is pretty thrilling, and the dragon is terrifying, but Max sounds bored as hell.
“Seriously, if you’ve fought one dragon you’ve fought them all. You just gotta look for the weak spot.” The beast in front of him rears back on its hind legs, its mouth wide and its wings stretched open. “See what I mean? Look at that patch of unprotected skin just above its junk. It’s insulting, really. They didn’t even bother to design a real challenge—”<
br />
“You can move on,” Elvis says, waving his hand in the air like a traffic cop. “Max is right. The Company really phoned it in on that dragon.”
I click to another random spot. I don’t let three seconds pass before I quickly move on.
“Oh my God!” I hear Busara gasp.
“Were Max and that elf doing what I think they were doing?” Kat sounds completely revolted.
“That was technically a fairy, not an elf,” Elvis corrects Kat. “Go back, Simon, so I can show her the difference.”
“Are you out of your mind?” I demand. I’ve had enough. I point at the screen where Max’s avatar is now approaching the base of a rocky cliff. “Look—Max just found the Elemental’s cave. I’m not going to rewind so you can perv out.”
“Perv out?” Elvis repeats indignantly. “Who do you think you are, the pope? I was merely going to point out a few key anatomical differences between elves and fairies. It was meant to be educational.”
I ignore him. The video continues, and Max’s avatar climbs the steep cliff face. There’s an opening far above, not far from the top. We watch in silence as the avatar pulls itself inside. There’s not much room to maneuver. The ceiling is so low that Max’s avatar is forced to stoop. Against the far wall, a wizened old man sits cross-legged with his eyes closed. Behind him is a small pile of objects—goblets, daggers and golden trinkets—that are covered in a fine layer of dust. Spiders have spun elaborate webs between his body and the walls of the cave. The Elemental of Albion clearly hasn’t moved in quite some time. Max’s burly avatar sits down across from him. A few seconds pass, and I’m starting to wonder if anything’s going to happen when the Elemental’s eyes open. They’re a pale milky blue with sparks of golden fire that give them the appearance of opals.
“What have you brought for me?” the Elemental inquires in a somber tone.
“This tooth of the Dragon of Castle Le Fay.” Max passes an enormous canine to the sage.
The Elemental feels the tooth from top to bottom as if he sees with his fingers instead of his eyes.
“You are the first to complete this dragon quest.” He sets the tooth down. “Well done. What else have you brought me?”
“This sacred scroll,” Max tells him, handing the sage a rolled sheet of paper.
“Wait, where’d he get that scroll?” Elvis interrupts. “I knew we should have watched the whole video!”
“Shhhh!” Busara orders as she leans in.
The Elemental of Albion unrolls the scroll and passes his fingers over the words written on it. Then he rolls the paper back up again. “This is worthless.” He sends the scroll sailing over his shoulder, where it lands atop the pile of junk. “What else do you have?”
I hit Pause. “That’s what we need. The clue is on the scroll.”
“How can you be sure?” Busara asks.
“Max brought it to the Elemental because he knew the scroll would be safe in his cave,” I say.
“Safe?” Kat asks. “What’s to keep someone from climbing up there and taking it?”
“I think we’re about to find out,” Elvis answers. He reaches over and hits Play, and Max’s avatar comes back to life.
“I have nothing else to offer you,” Max tells the Elemental.
“You came to me without completing three quests?” the Elemental asks.
“Yup,” Max admits. “What are you gonna do about it?”
The Elemental’s jaw unhinges and his mouth opens wider than any mouth ever should. His entire face disappears, and all that’s left is pure darkness—a black hole of rage. Even watching it on YouTube, I shiver as I feel my blood thicken and cool. The noise that emerges from the Elemental’s mouth is unlike anything on Earth. The four of us instinctively clutch our ears, but there’s no way to filter out the inhuman shriek.
The force of the Elemental’s voice sends Max’s avatar sailing backward, out the entrance of the cave. We hear the crunch of bones as he hits the cliff wall several times, and the thud as he lands on the ground below. I’m surprised to see the screen go dark and Max’s avatar appear at setup. The plunge from the cliff should have counted as a single death—but instead it’s taken all three of Max’s lives.
The split screen disappears and real-life Max takes over full screen. When he pulls off his Otherworld helmet, his hair is sopping wet with sweat and his skin is the color of raw squid. It looks like the exertion came close to killing him.
“So there you go, guys.” He’s making an effort not to pant, but his body’s not cooperating. His hand is clutching the railing of his multidirectional treadmill as though to keep him from falling. “If you’re the kind of dork who likes a good joust, Albion may be the realm for you. But take it from me, don’t fuck with the Elemental.”
The video ends abruptly, and the four of us continue to stare at the screen.
“So,” says Busara. “If we want Max’s little clue, we’ll have to complete three whole quests and then ask the Elemental if we can root around in his discard pile?”
“If it’s really a clue Max wanted someone to find, why didn’t he leave it someplace a bit more accessible?” Kat wonders. “Who the hell did he think was going to be able to get to it?”
“I dunno. Maybe he had someone special in mind,” Elvis says coyly.
“Don’t,” I warn him.
“You mean like the One?” Busara teases. Whatever is going on between her and Elvis, it hasn’t prevented them from ganging up on me.
All three of them are suddenly looking at me. “Stop it!” I order. “This shit isn’t funny anymore.”
Kat insisted we all get a full night’s sleep. After we scarf down some breakfast, we hop on the treadmills. I’m the first one back in Otherworld. James Ogubu is sitting right where we left him—in the same spot on the same couch, in the same pair of dad jeans and slip-on shoes he’s been wearing since he got here. He says hello, but I don’t reply. I’m struck dumb by what’s happening outside in the White City.
The sky is thick with smog, and buildings have risen like a forest around us. The city’s driverless cars are now airborne. They zip past the surrounding apartment buildings, where every room I can see is filled with Children, all lounging on the floor with black masks over their eyes.
“How long has it been since our last visit?” I hear Kat ask.
“Almost fifty years,” Ogubu says as he stares out the window. “I’ve tried to warn them. I told them what technology has done to our world. Some of them have listened. Most have chosen to move on regardless.”
“Dad.” Busara’s avatar suddenly springs to life. “Did you know—” She stops. “Oh my God. What the hell is going on out there?”
“The Children have evolved,” I say.
“No,” James corrects me. “Their technology has advanced—well past our own, as a matter of fact. The Children, however, have remained the same.”
Busara joins me at the window. “The masks some of the Children are wearing—they’re virtual reality?”
“Something akin to it,” her father says.
“That’s not good,” Busara mumbles.
I suddenly feel Kat’s hand on my shoulder. “We need to go,” she tells me. “It’s going to take us a while to reach Albion.”
“Albion?” James Ogubu says. “Are you certain that’s where you want to go?”
“Oh, believe me, I don’t want to go there, but we don’t have much choice. Kat’s right. We need to start walking.”
“You can’t walk to Albion,” Ogubu tells us. “You must hire a guide to take you.”
“I think we’ll be okay,” I assure him. The truth is I’m eager to be alone with Kat. Our walks on the island seem like a long time ago. “We’re wearing headsets, and we’re pretty good at taking care of ourselves.”
“I don’t doubt it,” says James. “But I’m a
fraid it’s no longer possible to reach most of the realms by foot.”
I don’t want to ask the question, so I’m relieved when Kat chimes in. “Why not?”
“I know only what others have told me. But you two will soon have an opportunity to see for yourselves. There’s a Child by the name of Bird in the city. She visits me from time to time. She’s one of the few who will listen. I believe she has a business a short distance from here.”
“Her name is Bird?” I snicker.
“Many Children these days are named after things that no longer exist.”
“There are no birds left in Otherworld?” The first creature I encountered here in the White City was a beautiful bird with iridescent green feathers. It’s hard to imagine a world where only machines fill the skies.
“Perhaps you could find a bird in one of the far-distant realms,” James says. “The last one I encountered was a corpse on the balcony. I haven’t seen a live bird here in decades.”
I have a very bad feeling about all of this. All I need is a glance at Kat to know she shares it.
“Let’s get a move on,” she tells me. “I guess we need to find Bird.” I follow her reluctantly.
“Where is Elvis?” I hear James ask his daughter before we make it to the door.
“He wasn’t invited,” Busara responds. “I need to talk to you alone.” She turns to us. “Would you mind?”
“Of course not,” Kat says. She opens the door to leave but hesitates before stepping out into the hall. Time has stood still inside James Ogubu’s apartment, but the rest of the building hasn’t been spared. A thick layer of dirt and grime covers the floors, and strange graffiti has been scrawled on the walls. When we reach the atrium, we see that the glass elevator that once glided between the floors has stopped in the middle. Inside, two mummified corpses are slumped against the wall, their mouths stretched open in silent screams. I shudder to think how long they’ve been sitting there, waiting for rescuers who’ll never arrive.
