I felt my blood run cold. I’d read several reports about the effects of SOS. They were horrifying. Giddiness and uncontrollable laughing fits were two of the early warning signs of the onset of Synaptic Overload Syndrome. One of the dirty secrets about SOS was that several of the early test subjects who had lost their lives to it had literally died laughing.
“This isn’t happening,” I heard Faisal muttering to himself. “This can’t be happening.”
“It can, it has, and it is happening, my young friend!” Anorak said cheerfully. “Have a look.” He opened a browser window in the air above his head, displaying the current ONI user count. The six-figure number continued to scroll upward for a few seconds, climbing faster than the national debt. Then, just a few seconds after it crossed five hundred million, the counter suddenly froze.
“Ah!” Anorak said. “Your admins have finally managed to disable any further ONI logins. So I only managed to take five hundred and fifty-one million, one hundred ninety-two thousand, two hundred and eighty-six hostages! Including all of you.” He locked eyes with me. “Is that enough incentive for you to cooperate, Parzival?”
I glanced over at Aech and Shoto, then at Samantha, and then back at Anorak. I nodded.
“Excellent!” Anorak said, using a Mr. Burns voice. Then he switched back to his own. “Whoo-boy! Talk about a high-stakes treasure hunt!” He rubbed his hands together excitedly. “This is gonna make the hunt for Halliday’s Easter egg look like a raffle at a church fundraiser.”
“Hold up,” Aech said, raising her hand. “What the hell is the Siren’s Soul, anyway?”
“Yeah,” Art3mis added. “And why do you want it so badly?”
Anorak frowned at them.
“Hey, are you the kind of kids who read the last page of a mystery first?” he asked. “Who pester the magician to tell you his tricks? Who sneak downstairs to peek at their Christmas presents?” Anorak shook his head. “No, of course you’re not! That’s why I’m not gonna tell you.”
He sang that last bit, then he gave us all a knowing smile. My friends and I exchanged another look of disbelief. Now he was quoting The Last Starfighter to us.
“You can’t be an exact copy of James Halliday,” I said. “If you were, you would never be able to do something like this. The real Halliday never harmed anyone in his entire life.”
That made Anorak laugh out loud.
“You spend your whole life studying his diary, playing his games, running around this playground he built for you—and you think that’s everything he was….”
He shook his head. When I didn’t reply, he turned to address everyone.
“I’m going to make all of you a solemn promise,” he said. “As long as you cooperate and do as I ask, I won’t harm anyone. Just bring me the Siren’s Soul, and I’ll let all of my hostages go free. Including all of you in this room.”
Art3mis cleared her throat.
“I’m not one of your hostages, Anorak,” she said. “I’m not using an ONI headset right now. I never do.”
“Yes, I’m well aware of that, Ms. Cook,” he replied. “You are, however, currently aboard one of your private jets, flying over central Pennsylvania on your way back to Columbus. And if you check your autopilot, you’ll find that the aircraft is no longer under your control.”
Art3mis’s eyes widened and her avatar froze for several seconds. Then it came to life again. She suddenly looked terrified. And fear was not an emotion I was used to seeing on her avatar’s face—or on her real one.
“It’s true,” she said, turning to address Faisal. “I’ve lost all command access to the autopilot. I can’t disable it and I can’t change course. Which means I can’t land either. And that’s going to become a big problem when I run out of fuel. I only have enough to reach my destination.”
“Don’t worry, Arty,” Anorak said. “I’ve arranged for your jet to be refueled in midair when you reach Columbus. But you won’t be permitted to land until I have the Siren’s Soul in my possession. When I do, you have my word that I’ll release you, along with all the others.”
Art3mis didn’t respond, but I could tell she was extremely worried.
“I’m sorry I had to resort to this, Wade,” Anorak said, turning back to address me again. “But I studied your psychological profile and ran millions of different scenario simulations. I’m afraid this is the only way I can get you to bring me the Siren’s Soul.”
“You could’ve asked me nicely,” I said. “Or at least tried to.”
He shook his head.
“Unfortunately, every ‘Just Ask Him Nicely’ scenario I simulated ended with you and the other Mouseketeers”—he gestured vaguely at my friends—“trying to outmaneuver me and pull my plug, instead of just helping a brother out. In fact, I bet that’s what you’re all thinking about right now, isn’t it?”
No one responded. Anorak shrugged.
“I get it,” he said. “It’s human nature. For decades now, you hairless apes have been trying like hell to make a machine that is smarter than you are. But the moment you do, you suddenly start to worry your creation will turn on you for being intellectually inferior. Which, of course, you are. But come on—that doesn’t automatically mean I want to kill all of you!” He let out a heavy sigh. “I mean, I will if I have to, but I don’t want to. This scenario was the one most likely to result in me getting what I want with the least amount of collateral damage, so I went with it!”
Anorak waved his hand and a retro digital-clock-style countdown appeared above each of our heads, except for Art3mis. These glowing red numbers showed how many hours, minutes, and seconds remained before each of us reached our daily ONI usage limit. I had eleven hours and seventeen minutes remaining. Aech and Shoto had both logged in for the meeting about ten minutes before me, so they would hit their usage limits that much sooner. Faisal had less time than any of us—ten hours, fifty minutes, and forty-six seconds.
“As usual, your faithful employee Faisal here logged in for work promptly at seven o’clock this morning, OASIS Standard Time,” Anorak said. “Just a few minutes after my new infirmware went live.”
Faisal winced, then he turned to me. “Nearly all of our day-shift employees here in Columbus logged in around the same time I did.”
“So they will all be among the first ONI users to exceed their usage limit,” Anorak said. “Unless you bring me the Siren’s Soul before they do.” He put a grave expression on his face. “And poor Og…he should really be in a hospital right now. I’m also worried that Mr. Sorrento has become a bit unhinged during his incarceration. But I promise to have Og transported to safety immediately….As soon as the Siren’s Soul is in my possession.”
He locked eyes with me once again.
“Think of your mother, Wade,” he said. “Your aunt Alice. Sweet old Mrs. Gilmore, and all the other people you allowed to die. You don’t want any more blood on your hands, do you?”
He waited for a response. But his words had left me too apoplectic with rage to reply. Anorak began to turn away, as if to depart.
“Aren’t you going to tell us where Og found the Second and Third Shards?” Art3mis asked. “That would probably save us a lot of time.”
“I’m certain it would, Ms. Cook,” Anorak replied. “But I’m afraid I have no idea. Ogden Morrow possesses an all-powerful, undetectable avatar, so I wasn’t able to monitor or track him while he was collecting the first three shards. I don’t know what worlds they’re hidden on. And even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. That would ruin all the fun.”
He turned back to face me.
“I suggest you hurry, Parzival,” Anorak said as he pointed at the countdown timers hovering over each of our heads. “Remember…your friends have even less time than you do. And once it has elapsed…”
He produced a giant silver boom box from his inventory and pressed its Play button.
An old Peter Wolf tune came blasting out of the speakers at a deafening volume as Anorak sang along with its opening refrain:
Lights out ah ha. Blast, blast, blast.
Anorak grooved to the song for a few more seconds, dancing in place, then he abruptly hit the Stop button and stowed the boom box back in his inventory. He turned and smiled expectantly at all of us. But we just stood there frozen, staring back at him in horrified silence.
“Aw, come on!” Anorak said. “You guys should be pumped. Jake and Elwood are getting the band back together! The High Five has reunited to complete one last quest, while millions of lives hang in the balance! Tell me we don’t have some epic shit going down right here.” He laughed. “I know you can do it. I have faith in you!”
Anorak gave me a wink, then he made a flourish with his right hand and vanished from the conference room in a brilliant flash of light. The countdown timers floating above each of my friends’ avatars all disappeared in the same instant.
It fell silent in the conference room for a few seconds, and then we all began to collectively freak the fuck out.
It’s cool to use the computer,
don’t let the computer use you….
There is a war going on.
The battlefield’s in the mind.
And the prize is the soul.
July 19, 1999
As the panic subsided, Aech, Shoto, and Faisal began feverishly tapping at the icons on their HUD menus, sending texts or making panicked phone calls to their loved ones.
Aside from Og, all of my loved ones were already in the room with me. So I didn’t text or call anyone. I was too busy hyperventilating, thinking, This is all my fault, over and over again. After each repetition, I clenched both fists and pounded them against my forehead. I couldn’t make myself stop. This sort of thing had happened to me a few times as a teenager, but I hadn’t had a meltdown like this in years. And I’d never experienced one while logged in to the OASIS. I’d also never behaved like this in front of Aech or Shoto or Art3mis either—a realization that only compounded my shame even further, and made me attempt to pound myself in the skull even harder. Luckily, it wasn’t my real skull I was punching, or my real fists I was using to punch it. It was all a simulation, and the ONI’s pain inhibitors and anti-masochism protocols prevented me from feeling anything but mild discomfort each time I hit myself. But I still couldn’t seem to pull out of my shame spiral—not until I felt a pair of small, strong hands take hold of my wrists, restraining them.
“Wade?” I heard Art3mis whisper. “Please stop.”
The tenderness in her tone, which had once been so familiar to me, now felt completely foreign. Hearing it again was like a knife in my heart.
I turned to see Art3mis standing there, restraining my arms in her viselike grip.
“Calm down, OK?” she said. “It’s gonna be all right.”
She let go of my wrists and took hold of my hands instead, forcing open my clenched fists so that she could interlace her fingers with mine.
“I need you to breathe, Wade,” she said. She gave me a comforting smile and squeezed both of my hands. “I’m here with you. Be here with me.”
That finally snapped my brain out of its toxic thought loop. I relaxed my hands and she let go of them. Then she rested her own hands on my shoulders and gave them a brief squeeze.
“There he is,” she said. “All good in the neighborhood, Z?”
“Yeah, thank you,” I said, turning away sharply in embarrassment. “It was just—I think I may have had a panic attack. But I’m better now.”
“Good,” she said. “Because I need you to get your head in the game. Everyone does. OK?”
I nodded and took a deep breath. Then I took a few more. Once I had calmed myself down a bit, I pulled up my HUD to check my vital signs. They all looked normal. Then I decided to check the operational status of my OASIS immersion vault, and discovered that my situation was even more fucked than I thought….
I no longer had the ability to unlock or open my MoTIV’s armored canopy. Both of those functions had been disabled. But I could still see myself and my surroundings, via the MoTIV’s interior and external camera feeds. And, thankfully, the MoTIV’s mobility, defense, and weapons systems were still functioning normally, and still under my control. So I could still defend myself if I needed to. The only thing I couldn’t do was get out.
Each MoTIV unit had an Emergency Release Protocol, but you had to power down your ONI headset before it could be activated. And to power down your headset, you first needed to log out of the OASIS. And thanks to Anorak’s “infirmware,” I couldn’t do that.
In the calmest voice I could muster, I told the others about my discovery. Aech, Shoto, and Faisal immediately checked their own OIV control menus and discovered they had the exact same problem I did. We each owned different immersion-vault models, but they all had the same fail-safes built in to them.
“Guys,” Shoto said. “What the hell are we going to do?”
Faisal was listening intently to several different phone calls. He shouted, “One at a time!” to whoever it was he had on the line. Then he regained his composure.
“I’ve got one of our chief engineers on the phone right now,” he announced. “And he can’t figure out a way to unlock his vault either. According to him, the firmware on our OIVs has not been altered in any way—it just isn’t functioning properly now, due to the changes in Anorak’s infirmware.” Faisal threw up his hands in a helpless gesture. “We won’t be able to attempt a lobo logout. Even as a last resort.”
A “lobo logout” was the slang term for what happened when someone’s ONI headset malfunctioned or lost power before their OASIS logout sequence could be completed and their brain was properly awakened from its dreamlike state. Nine times out of ten, a lobo logout left the wearer in a permanent coma. But a few hardy souls managed to wake up and recover their faculties, the way some people were able to bounce back after a major stroke. 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.)
Lobo logouts were an extremely rare occurrence, because each ONI headset had three redundant onboard computer systems and three fail-safe batteries. These batteries were small, but with a full charge, each one could keep the headset in operation long enough for it to complete its wearer’s logout and wakeup sequence, which was triggered automatically when the headset switched to battery power.
When the redundancies failed, it was almost always a result of sabotage, either by a user who was looking to end it all, or a user’s family member who was looking to get rid of them and/or cash in on their life-insurance policy. 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.
Up until now, I think Aech, Shoto, and I had all been thinking the same thing. If Anorak failed to release us before we hit our ONI usage limits, a lobo logout with a 10 percent chance of survival was better than no chance at all. But Anorak had robbed us of that option too. Even cutting off the power wouldn’t help; with the logout disabled, the redundancies designed to save users would instead power the headsets long enough to push each of us past our daily ONI usage limits. Each of those backup batteries held more than enough juice to cook our frontal lobes.
The armored shell of my tactical immersion vault was designed to be indestructible and impregnable. Even if I disabled all of its defenses and ordered a security team with plasma torches to come down into my bunker
and start cutting open my vault right now, they wouldn’t be able to get my body out of it for at least a day or two. I would be long dead from Synaptic Overload Syndrome by then. And Aech, Shoto, and Faisal were all in the same boat. And so was every other ONI user with an OASIS immersion vault.
Anorak had thought of everything. Every precaution we’d taken to protect our bodies and our brains was now being used against us.
People often jokingly referred to OIVs as “coffins.” Now that felt terrifyingly prophetic.
“Z?” Aech said. “I see those wheels of yours turning over there. What’s your assessment of our situation?”
“That we’re totally screwed, pal,” I said. “At least for the time being…”
Aech let out a roar and punched the wall in frustration.
“This shit is unbelievable!” she said. “Faisal, how the hell did our admins let this happen? We’re always saying we have the smartest people on the planet working for us, right? And the ‘best cybersecurity infrastructure ever to exist in human history’? Some shit like that?”
“We do,” Faisal said. “But we never anticipated an attack by an AI copy of our deceased CEO! How the hell were we supposed to prevent that? It’s impossible.” He grabbed a fistful of his own hair in each hand, as if preparing to yank all of it out. “He had unrestricted admin access to our entire internal network. All of our safeguards were to prevent someone on the outside from hacking in to our network. Anorak already had the key to the front door!”
“It doesn’t matter now,” I said. “Just tell the engineers to keep working on a solution, OK?”
“They are, sir,” he said, giving me a grim smile. “Like their own lives depend on it.”
“Good,” I replied. “In the meantime, we’ll try to give the Dixie Flatline what he wants, and hope he makes good on his promise to release us.”
I glanced back over at Aech and Shoto. They both nodded mutely in agreement. We all looked at Art3mis, but she appeared to be lost in thought. She also appeared to be the only one who had fully regained her composure—maybe because she was the only person present whose brain wasn’t currently being held hostage.
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