by Jason Segel
“You and your parents are the only people who live up here?” I ask. “Aren’t there visiting professors or scientists or anything?”
“No,” says Elvis. “Most observatories are run by universities, but this one is private. My parents were hired to oversee it.”
“Someone actually owns all of this?” I ask. “Who buys a—”
Elvis holds his hand up to stop me. “I don’t want to keep any secrets from you,” he says dramatically. “So please—don’t ask. I’ve already caused enough trouble for my parents. I promise that while you’d find the answer entertaining, knowing who the owner is wouldn’t do you much good.”
I’m composing a mental list of possible suspects as Elvis leads me up to a metal platform situated on the highest point on the mountain. We have an almost three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view from where we’re standing. The land below is barren aside from a few mangy pine trees, and the Dark Skies gas station is just a speck in the distance. There’s a single paved road that cuts through the dirt. Nothing seems to be moving for hundreds of miles. It’s like the rest of the world has been put on pause. I feel safe for the moment, though I probably shouldn’t. I scan the sky for signs of drones. One could be hiding up there behind one of the puffy white clouds, and I’d probably never see it. Then my heart skips a beat when what I assumed were three black rocks suddenly lift off the ground.
“Hey, Simon, you okay?” Elvis asks.
I have to clear my throat before I can answer. “Do you see those?” I point at the objects, which are flying our way. I don’t know what will scare me more—if Elvis says they’re drones or if he doesn’t see them at all.
He’s studying my face. I do my best to look sane. “Of course. They’re birds,” he says.
I’m relieved. “You sure?” I ask. They’re close enough now so I can make out the wings, but they seem unnaturally large.
“Yeah, they’re turkey vultures,” Elvis tells me. “Ugliest things you’ve ever seen.”
“Right,” I say, though he’s wrong. I have seen far uglier things. I try to shake off the uneasiness by changing the subject. “What’s it like living out here in the middle of nowhere?”
Elvis takes the hint and lets me change the subject. “If you’re asking if I miss school, then the answer is hell no. But it does get pretty boring—especially when I’m offline. I had a project that was keeping me busy, but I had to give it up.”
“What was the project?” I ask.
Elvis grins. “See, now there’s an answer that might prove very useful for you. But before we get to it, let’s talk about you first. You must be in deep shit if you drove all the way out here,” he says casually. He doesn’t seem particularly worried. “Does it have something to do with Otherworld?”
My head instantly swivels in his direction. My reaction must give the truth away. “How did you figure it out?”
“Remember when you asked me to help you deal with Gina in Everglades City?” he asks. “I know you’re a competitive asshole, and you definitely aren’t above cheating. But taking down someone’s Internet connection is going a bit far, even for you.”
A wave of panic floods my brain. For a moment, it’s like I’m back in Mammon, the Otherworld realm where players butchered one another for profit. That’s where I met Gina—and where Gina almost made a buck or two off me. “That evil witch was going to sell me to a cannibal.”
I wipe my forehead and realize it’s damp with sweat. I’ve been out of the game for at least thirty-six hours, but I’m starting to wonder if I’ll ever really leave. Kat once told me that Otherworld changes you. I’m starting to think she was right.
“Just so you know, Gina’s a dude,” says Elvis. “A butt-ugly dude, to be more specific.”
The panic starts to recede when I laugh. I think of the buxom, black-clad beauty I met in Mammon. “Of course she is.”
“So what’s going on? You have me taking out people’s Internet and hacking into hospitals to find out where a bunch of coma patients have been sent. What’s the connection? I’m guessing it’s the Company. They’re always up to something.”
Elvis has committed more crimes than anyone I’ve ever met. And the fact that he’ll gleefully tell you all about them means his sanity is questionable too. I’m honestly not sure I can correctly pronounce his last name. But there’s no one I trust more than Elvis. I don’t hesitate to tell him everything I know.
“They’ve been using Otherworld to beta test something they call the disk. It’s a technology that speaks directly to your brain and lets you experience virtual worlds with all five senses. But it’s got a giant bug. If you get hurt in the virtual world, the disk tells your brain that your real body has been injured too. That’s why Kat’s limping right now. Her leg was crushed beneath some ice in Otherworld. The accident happened in the game, but her injury is real. If she’d been hurt badly enough, she could have died.”
The three vultures are circling above something on the ground in the distance, and Elvis is tracking the birds with his eyes. “How is the Company beta testing a technology that’s potentially lethal?” he asks. “Even if it weren’t illegal to experiment on humans, nobody’s going to sign up for something like that.”
“Not willingly. That’s why the Company’s been testing it on people who can’t say no. They found hospital patients who were unconscious and convinced their families that the Company had invented the disks as a new kind of therapy. They even built special life-support capsules to house the patients’ bodies while their minds are sent to Otherworld. Dozens of people have died so that the Company can get rid of the bugs in their disks.”
“And Milo Yolkin is letting this happen?” Elvis asks. “I never thought he was a saint like everyone else. If you ask me, he’s a creepy little bastard. But this seems totally out of character.”
“Milo is dead,” I tell him. “The Company’s claiming he’s gone on sabbatical, but I saw his corpse with my own two eyes. Milo was the first person to use the disk, and he got hooked on the game. It gives you everything you want—even things you never realized you were into. Milo ended up staying in Otherworld too long, and it killed him.”
I pause. I never realized how crazy it would all sound. I keep waiting for Elvis’s head to explode, but he just nods like nothing surprises him.
“Makes sense,” he says.
“You’re not shocked?” I am.
Elvis offers a shrug. He’s spent his whole life expecting disaster. “What should shock me? That the tech finally exists? That the Company has turned evil? That Milo’s a putz who got killed by his own game? Come on, Simon. Don’t be naive. It was all just a matter of time before something like this happened. I told you before—the future is going to be bleak as hell. People get so excited that we have all this fun new technology. They never sit back and consider how dangerous it might be. We’re just a bunch of monkeys playing with a box of matches.”
“The good news is that it sounds like the Company’s plans are on hold for the moment,” I say. “We heard on the radio that they’ve shelved Otherworld. The Company must have figured out that they don’t have the brainpower to fix the tech without Milo Yolkin or Busara’s dad.”
Elvis turns to me, and I can see I’ve managed to surprise him. “Busara’s dad? What does he have to do with all of this?”
“His name is James Ogubu. He invented the disk.”
“He’s one of the bad guys?” Elvis sounds thrilled.
“No, Milo stole Ogubu’s tech to build the game. Until two days ago, Busara thought her father had been murdered. Then Kat and I saw his avatar in Otherworld. His real-world body must be stashed away in a capsule somewhere. Milo was keeping Ogubu’s Otherworld avatar frozen in ice in case he needed tech support in the future.”
Elvis stares dreamily into the distance. “The most beautiful girl in the world has genius in her blood? Our
children are going to be superheroes. How did I get so lucky?”
“You haven’t yet,” I remind him. “And I’d be willing to wager big bucks that you never do.”
“Deal,” he says, holding out a hand for me to shake. “One hundred US dollars says Busara Ogubu falls madly in love with me.”
“You’re on,” I say, shaking his hand. I don’t mind betting money I haven’t got because there’s no way in hell he’s ever going to win. “Can we get back on the subject now? What are all the hacker boards saying about the Company? Have you heard anything through the grapevine that could help us?” Even though he’s been exiled to a mountaintop with spotty Internet service, I’m betting Elvis knows a lot more than I do.
“Sure,” says Elvis. “You just said the Company is shelving Otherworld? Well, that’s not exactly true.”
I have a very strong hunch that I don’t want to hear what’s coming next, but I suppose it’s my duty to ask. “What do you mean?”
“Remember the headsets that went with the early-access version of Otherworld?”
Remember? Does he think I’d forget? When Milo realized the disks were dangerous, he decided not to sell them to the public. Instead, he made special VR headsets to go with his game. The headsets were considered a huge leap forward for virtual reality technology, despite the fact that they only let players experience Otherworld with two of their senses.
“Sure,” I tell Elvis. “I used to have a couple of them.”
“Where are they now?” Elvis asks.
“One was destroyed. The other was confiscated.”
Elvis sighs dramatically. “You’re going to wish you’d held on to them, man. The Company’s stopped production of the headsets, but they’re planning to keep the Otherworld servers up and running—and charge players a subscription fee.”
“But only two thousand of those headsets ever got made,” I say. “How are people going to play the game?”
“I guess two thousand lucky players are gonna get Otherworld all to themselves. And a lot of people seem to be into that sort of thing. Right now there are bidding wars all over the Internet. Each of those original headsets is going for serious change.”
This is not good. I was hoping to get my hands on a few of those headsets. We’ll need to go back to Otherworld to find James Ogubu, and the disks are too dangerous to use.
“How much are we talking about?” I ask.
“Gina got two hundred grand for his yesterday. Should have held out longer. A headset sold this morning for four hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.” I groan, thinking of the headset that my father smashed to smithereens with his nine iron. “Who spends that kind of cash on a video game?”
“That, my friend, is a fascinating question,” says Elvis. “Most of the buyers have preferred to remain anonymous. Saudi princes, I’d guess. Third world warlords. Heirs to hotel fortunes. Tom Cruise.”
“Tom Cruise?”
“I was joking!” Elvis chuckles maniacally. “How could you question Maverick? He’s always one of the good guys. Naw, the dudes buying the headsets are the usual suspects.” In other words, any sociopath with half a million dollars burning a hole in his tacky-ass pockets. Two thousand of them will soon be loose in Otherworld.
I think of the Children who’ve been battling for control of their world. They won’t have millions of guests to worry about now that Otherworld’s wide release has been canceled, but the two thousand they will have are going to be far worse than the last batch. Anyone who’s spent five hundred grand on a headset will be itching to get their money’s worth.
“There are a lot of guys guessing online—trying to figure out who might have a headset. Gina’s put up his own list of potential headset owners. There was only one name on it that I thought might be right.”
“Who is it?”
“A Russian oligarch. Alexei Semenov. He made billions in fertilizer before he screwed with the Kremlin and had to disappear. He keeps a very low profile—must not like polonium in his tea. But he resurfaced briefly awhile back. Bought a bunch of property in New York.” Suddenly Elvis turns to face me, his eyes sparkling and a grin on his lips that makes me wonder if he might be a little unhinged. “But why are we talking about Russians? It’s time for the big questions. Why are you here, Simon? What do you need to do?”
“Well, first we need to rescue the two people being held by the Company, along with Busara’s dad. Then we need to take down the entire organization.”
“That’s all?” Elvis laughs. “Any idea how to do that?”
“Nope,” I tell him honestly. “I thought you might be able to come up with a plan.”
“So you want me to help you fight the Company?”
“Yes. I know it’s a lot to ask.”
“Meh,” Elvis says dismissively. “Someone’s got to do it. I knew they were evil, but I didn’t know they were so far along with the VR tech. I was figuring their big play would be augmented reality.”
“Why?” I ask. He knows something. I can tell. But he’s not going to give anything away just yet.
“You say you brought some of the Company’s VR gear with you?” he asks.
“Yeah. We have two disks,” I tell him. “We also have a crazy hologram projector that the Company used to kill a bunch of people.”
“Wonderful!” Elvis slaps the railing with both hands, and his accent is suddenly back. “When the girls are clean we can all show each other our goods.”
I groan at his latest joke. “How long is that going to go on?” I ask, and Elvis cracks up.
“Until I get laid or I’m no longer amused!” he says. “Don’t be a douche, Simon! I’ve spent the last six months stuck on a mountain with two angry Ukrainian astrophysicists. The least you can do is let me have some fun.”
A black dot has appeared on the horizon, and I hear the sound of a helicopter.
“Yes, I do see that.” Suddenly Elvis’s voice is deadly serious. “Maybe we should go inside now. That one is definitely not a bird.”
I grab the equipment out of the car. Then Elvis opens the door to the residence and we both hurry inside. Until this moment, I actually felt bad for the guy—forced to live like a hermit on a New Mexican mountaintop. Now I realize that Elvis hasn’t exactly been roughing it. The house makes my parents’ faux château look like a maintenance shed. Elvis’s living room alone has the square footage of a Costco.
“Your house is insane,” I say. And that’s putting it mildly. There are no windows, but the space is lit by a series of glass enclosures that are open to the sky. Inside each is a garden filled with plants native to different climates. From where I’m standing, I can see a rain forest, a meadow, and what must be a swamp.
“Thanks, but this place isn’t mine,” Elvis says. “It’s just on loan until the apocalypse. The observatory is a cover. Something big goes down, the owner’s going to turn this whole place into his personal fortress. Those gardens?” He points to the glass-enclosed meadow a few feet away. “They’re decorative now, but they can grow food if he needs them to. When the time comes, maybe he’ll let my family stay on as his gardeners or something. Now follow me,” he says. “The ladies should be downstairs.”
As we descend the stairs, I assume the basement floor is blue. It’s only when we’re just a few feet above it that I realize I’m looking down at a massive pool of water. The stairs twist around and deposit us on a walkway.
“You can go for a dip if you like, but it’s not really for swimming,” Elvis explains as we cross to the other side of the pool. “It’s a reservoir. Doesn’t matter how fancy your fortress is if you end up running out of water.”
At the end of the walkway is a sitting area with plush white lounge chairs. There’s a waterfall nearby, and the sound conjures an uncomfortable sensation of déjà vu. Fortunately, m
y attention is quickly drawn to the framed photos on the walls. They’re movie stills, I see. Each shows the same man scaling skyscrapers, dangling from wires or escaping from fiery explosions.
“What the hell?” I say when I realize who I’m looking at. I think I’ve just discovered the secret identity of the doomsday prepper who built the house. “Elvis, is this place owned by Tom Cruise?”
“Who?” Elvis asks as if he’s never heard the name before.
A door opens in the distance, releasing a cloud of steam. Busara and Kat emerge from it dressed in fluffy white robes. Kat has her hair tied up in a terry-cloth turban. I see Busara tighten the belt of her robe as we approach.
“Hey! The facilities down here are amazing. And we found the laundry room, too,” Kat tells Elvis. “Our clothes were so dirty they could have gotten up and walked off without us. I hope it’s okay that we used your washer and dryer.”
“Of course!” Elvis says, looking straight at Busara. “Everything I have can be yours!” He’s gifted at making even the most innocent statements sound vaguely dirty.
“All right,” says Busara. “I think we’ve all had enough of the horny Ukrainian goat herder routine.” Her voice is as humorless as ever, but the sides of her mouth are twitching like she’s struggling to swallow a smile.
“I’m sorry?” I gotta give it to him. Elvis is a much better actor.
“We took a wrong turn and ended up in your parents’ room. It’s like a shrine to their beloved boy—who, judging by the photos on the wall, has been in this country for at least sixteen years.”
