Ready Player Two (9781524761356)

by Cline, Ernest

  “Shoto?” Aech asked. “Buddy? Did you happen to notice that we are sitting in a little red Corvette right now? And that no other song will play on its radio?”

  “Listen to it again,” Shoto said. “ ‘Living correct’ works too. I’m telling you!”

  Aech looked up at the sky expectantly.

  “I can’t believe that shit didn’t warrant a lightning bolt, but OK,” she muttered.

  Aech continued to give me driving directions until we reached the Seven Corners area, located near the neon-lit intersection of three streets—Washington, Cedar, and Nineteenth Avenues, all of which were paved with red bricks instead of asphalt.

  Despite the name, I only counted four corners. There was a different music club located on each one, each with its own giant stylized neon sign bearing the venue’s name. On one corner was a club called Clinton’s House. Directly across the street was a venue with an ice-blue neon sign that said MELODY COOL, located in a gray stone building with stained-glass windows that made it look more like a church than a dance club. Across the street from it, on yet another corner, was a club called Glam Slam, which had a giant neon Mars symbol encircling its front entrance.

  When we reached another little club with a big neon sign—this one called the Baby Doe Bar—Aech told me to pull over. I parked the car and we all jumped out.

  “OK, here’s the deal,” Aech said. “Avatars can come down here and audition for any of the local bands playing in one of these clubs. If we pass and they let us join their band, they’ll fight beside us later on when we have to enter the arena. Got it?”

  Shoto pointed to a flyer stapled to a nearby utility pole, announcing open auditions for a band called Dez Dickerson and the Modernaires. The picture on the flyer featured the band’s lead singer (Dez, I presumed) wearing a Japanese flag bandanna.

  “How about these guys?” Shoto asked. “They look totally wicked.”

  Aech rolled her eyes.

  “Oh, that’s a fantastic idea, Shoto,” she replied. “Who better equipped to do sonic battle against the greatest musician in history than Dez Dickerson and the Modernaires! That would really have Prince quaking in his six-inch heels!” Aech pointed down the street. “Better yet, why don’t we just stroll down that way a few blocks and audition for Apollonia 6!”

  “OK!” Shoto replied cheerfully. “If they have six members and the three of us join forces with them, there will be nine of us total! We’ll have the Seven Princes outnumbered!”

  I pulled up an Apollonia 6 album cover in a browser window and turned it toward Shoto. It showed three young women in lingerie, surrounded by mist, posing in front of a bunch of obelisks. One of them had a large teddy bear wrapped around her fishnet stocking–covered leg.

  “I think Apollonia 6 only has three members,” I said. “Unless you count the teddy bear.”

  We both turned to Aech for confirmation, but she was already walking away from us, shaking her head at our ignorance. Shoto and I ran after her….

  Then we ran into her. Aech had come to a sudden halt just ahead of us, after only taking a few steps. And once we recovered from our collision with her, we saw why. Nolan Sorrento’s black-armored avatar was standing directly in front of us, blocking our path.

  The guy who murdered my aunt and a bunch of my neighbors in an attempt to kill me. Back on the street. Free as a bird.

  “Boo!” he shouted, making all three of us flinch. This, in turn, made him cackle with delight. He looked extremely happy to see us, and I found that extremely unsettling.

  “Wow!” Sorrento said, once he regained his composure. “Look at you guys! The A-Team is back in action. Just like old times….”

  He took a menacing step toward us, but we all held our ground.

  “Don’t you kids ever get tired of picking through the wreckage of a past generation’s nostalgia?” He stretched his arms out wide. “I mean, look around. The entire OASIS is like one giant graveyard, haunted by the undead pop-culture icons of a bygone era. A crazy old man’s shrine to a bunch of pointless crap.”

  “Why are you here, Sorrento?” I asked. “We’re kinda busy at the moment.”

  “Anorak sent me to check in on you,” he replied. “You’re burning an awful lot of time on this planet. And your friend Art3mis appears to have abandoned you.” He smiled. “I suspected that might happen. After all, if the three of you fail, you die, and that would leave her in control of your company….”

  I did my best to act as though he’d really gotten under my skin. If he and Anorak believed that Samantha had bailed on us, they wouldn’t be concerned with what she was really up to.

  “Anyway,” Sorrento said. “Anorak is preoccupied at the moment, so he sent me to remind you that every move you make is being watched. Time is running out. And your deadline is nonnegotiable.” He smiled and then added, “So keep your eyes on the prize or meet your demise.”

  And with that, Sorrento teleported away, and his avatar vanished.

  We all stared at the spot where he’d just been for a moment. Then, without a word, we kept on moving.

  As Aech led us toward the next intersection, we passed a copy of the Moulin Rouge, which was right next to a place called Ambulance Bar. Up ahead of us, mixed in with all of the music venues, I also spotted a video arcade called the Coin Castle. From what little I could see through its front windows, it was packed with nothing but purple pinball machines and videogame cabinets. I was hoping Aech was headed for it, but she ran right past the Coin Castle’s front entrance, and continued running until we reached a large nightclub located on the next corner. It had a neon sign over its entrance that spelled out the word PANDEMONIUM in fiery orange letters. There was a large clock mounted up above, with THE TIME printed directly above it in all-capital letters. This struck me as odd, like printing THE DATE above a calendar.

  Aech led us up to the club’s front entrance. It was guarded by the same bearded six-foot-tall bleach-blond muscle-bound zebra-vested gentleman we’d seen earlier, guarding Purple Rain Prince at Mann’s Chinese Theatre. He stepped in front of the door to block our way, then folded his giant arms across his tree trunk of a chest.

  “Wassup, Big Chick?” Aech asked, addressing the NPC like an old friend.

  Big Chick slid his sunglasses down the length of his nose and gave Aech the evil eye.

  “What’s the password?” he asked in a surprisingly kind voice.

  Aech cupped her right ear, turned it toward him, and said, “What?”

  Big Chick nodded, gave us all a friendly grin, and then stepped out of our way. Shoto and I exchanged a perplexed glance and followed Aech inside.

  I felt like we were walking into the hippest night spot on the ninth level of Dante’s Inferno. All the lighting was reddish in hue, and there were flames everywhere you looked—lit candles on every table, torches mounted on the walls and balcony railings, and dozens of burning fireplaces, upstairs and down. But the club didn’t even feel warm. And it was filled with happy, chattering NPCs—beautiful people in colorful attire, who were all busy drinking, smoking, dancing, and trying to seduce one another.

  “Gentlemen, please remember—you can’t stop the revolution if you don’t have the time,” Aech said, pointing across the club toward the empty stage, which was located inside a ring of fire, and said, “Dogs travel in packs of seven!”

  The stage was currently empty, except for a large drum kit. The bass drum had a familiar symbol on it—a large number 7, positioned off-center inside a large circle, with a much smaller circle set into its orbit, like an electron diagram….

  I took out the Fourth Shard and had another look at it. The symbol on the bass drum matched the eighth and final symbol etched into its surface—the one that came after the V.

  “Aech!” I said. “The symbols match!”

  She nodded.

  “It’s the logo of a
band called the Original 7ven,” she told me. “But they changed their name to that, later in their career, for the same reason Prince changed his—contract bullshit. They’re still much better known by their original name—”

  The crowd around us suddenly erupted into applause, drowning out her voice. We looked over and saw seven men running up onto the stage single-file. All seven of them were dressed in stylish suits. Four of them were carrying instruments. One of them was carrying a large mirror.

  They seemed familiar to me, but I couldn’t place them right away. Then the club DJ—who also looked very familiar—jumped on the PA to introduce them.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “Please welcome…the original seven members of the greatest band in the world…Morris Day and the Time!”

  That was when I realized how I knew them—from their cameo at the end of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. And the DJ who had just introduced them was an NPC of Jason Mewes, probably cut and pasted here from Askewniverse in Sector Sixteen.

  The lead singer, Morris Day, waited a moment for the crowd to quiet down, then he grabbed the microphone.

  “Welcome to Pandemonium, y’all!” he said. “Tonight’s the night. We’re holding auditions, people! To fill out our roster with some new dancers for an upcoming tour. So anyone out there who thinks they got what it takes, this is your one and only chance to dance!”

  “All right,” Aech said. “Get ready! And try not to blow this, OK?”

  “Try not to blow what?” I asked. “Are you gonna tell us what we need to do? Aech?”

  Aech shook her head and began dancing backward, away from me. Then a huge grin spread across her face as the Time launched into “The Bird,” their hit dance single from 1984.

  “Y’all ready?” Morris asked from the stage. “OK! Anyone who wants to audition, I’m counting off ten seconds to get to the dance floor! Ten! Nine! Eight! Seven—”

  Aech continued to dance backward, out onto the dance floor, motioning for us to follow her. A second later, Morris Day let out an earsplitting “Whawk!” and the song kicked into high gear.

  That was when I began to see falling directional arrows on my HUD that matched the arrows lighting up on the dance floor directly beneath my feet, like a giant game of Dance Dance Revolution. Shoto saw them, too, and we both let out a jubilant roar.

  “DDR!” we shouted, as we both began to dance in sync to the arrows.

  Aech joined us, and the three of us danced side by side, hitting our marks on the floor in perfect sync.

  We managed to keep it up until the very end of the song.

  When it was over, Morris called us up onstage and announced that we had passed the audition with flying colors.

  “Say, ‘I pledge allegiance to the Time’!” Morris shouted. “Can y’all say that?”

  We each raised our right hand and pledged allegiance. Then Aech leaned over and whispered something in Morris’s ear. It sounded like “the kid.” Whatever it was, his expression changed and he stormed offstage, motioning for the rest of the band to follow him—including the three of us.

  “It worked!” Aech said. “They’ve agreed to come battle with us. Let’s go!”

  * * *

  We got back in the Little Red Corvette and sped south on Alphabet Street. Morris Day and the Time followed behind us in their tour bus, which had their logo for the Original 7ven painted across the side.

  Once we were a few miles outside the city limits, the landscape around us abruptly changed, and the road led us into a desert that appeared to stretch to the horizon in all directions.

  Every seven seconds, long tines of purple lightning descended from the sky to strike the desert sand, burning and melting it into strange pillared formations of purple fulgurite that dotted the barren landscape like sentinels.

  Eventually a small lone pyramid emerged in the distance ahead of us, just off the highway, like some sort of strange roadside attraction.

  When we reached it, Aech told me to me pull over, and motioned for the tour bus behind us to do the same thing. She told us all to wait while she ran inside to get something, and I watched from inside the Corvette as she ran across the barren sand, over to one corner of the pyramid, which appeared to have no entrance. I used my HUD to zoom in with maximum magnification and saw that she was running her fingertips across the surface of one of the large stones that made up the pyramid’s base. Then she leaned forward and blew a layer of sand and dust away from one tiny section of it, revealing several rows of hieroglyphs. She began to press them in a specific sequence, like buttons. I heard a loud grinding sound as a massive stone at the base of the pyramid slid aside, revealing a secret entrance. Aech ran through it.

  A minute later, she emerged again, now wearing a huge smile on her face. As she jumped back in the car beside me, I saw that she was clutching three gold chains, each with a gold pendant shaped like a different element of the Love Symbol. The first pendant was a golden circle, which Aech gave to me. The second was a golden horn, which she gave to Shoto. The last was a golden androgyne symbol, which Aech placed around her own neck.

  “All right,” she said, letting out a heavy sigh. “Now we’ve got the Three Chains of Gold too. I think we’re as ready as we’re ever going to be.” She pointed to the road ahead. “Let’s go face the music, fellas.”

  I pulled the Corvette back out onto the road, the tour bus behind me, and gunned the engine again, hurtling us forward toward the dark, luminous, purple horizon ahead.

  A moment later, the desert was behind us and we were in a strange, otherworldly purple landscape, with purple mountain ranges in the distance, and a dark-purple sky over our heads that was filled with dark-purple thunderstorm clouds with bright-purple tines of lightning crackling across and between them. We put the top up on our Little Red Corvette convertible just in time—right before big fat droplets of purple rain began to fall, creating a strange syncopated rhythm as they drummed against the car’s roof and hood and on the asphalt road ahead as we continued to speed down it.

  A glittering at the end of the road caught my eye, and as we got closer, I could just make out that it was a structure of some sort, looming like a grand fortress or temple. As we drew near, I saw that it had seven spires vaulting toward the purple sky, each topped with a dome shaped like a Hershey’s Kiss. Six of the spires were wrapped in bands of blue neon, while the much larger seventh spire in the center was topped with a golden chhatri.

  At its perimeter, our road dead-ended in a Love Symbol–shaped parking lot, with a mirrored surface of volcanic black glass. As we gazed up in wonder at the giant structure, the tour bus pulled up and parked behind us, and Morris Day and the rest of the Original 7ven emerged. None of them spoke. They all just stood there waiting and looking extremely cool. Jerome walked over to Morris and pretended to dust off each of his shoulders.

  The other members of the Time all wore grim expressions. They looked ready for a war.

  Aech led us over to the temple’s jewel-encrusted gates, which appeared to be made of gold. They were standing wide-open, daring us to enter. Beyond the gates there was a large open courtyard that stretched all the way to the base of the temple steps. Surrounding both the courtyard and the adjacent temple was a seemingly endless field of purple flowers that stretched to the horizon behind them.

  Peering through the open gates, I caught a glimpse of several dark catlike shapes slinking around the courtyard’s perimeter—lions or panthers, maybe. Whatever they were, they all suddenly halted in midstride and turned to stare at us with their glowing purple eyes.

  “So, I take it this is the arena?” Shoto said.

  Aech nodded and spread her arms wide.

  “Dream, if you can, a courtyard,” she said. “An ocean of violets in bloom…”

  Shoto grinned and cracked his knuckles.

  “OK then,” he said. “Let’s do this.”r />
  He took a few steps toward the temple entrance, but Aech grabbed him and pulled him back.

  “Not yet,” Aech said. “As soon as we cross that threshold, the shit storm will begin. We need to gear up first.”

  She opened her inventory and took out the Cloud Guitar she’d retrieved from First Avenue. She flipped it over, revealing a Love Symbol–shaped cavity in the back of its body, just like the one in the cockpit of our UFO. Aech took the glowing purple Love Symbol power cell out of her inventory, too, and slapped it into the back of the Cloud Guitar. It fit perfectly, like a battery. Then she flipped the guitar over again and pressed a small Love Symbol–shaped power button directly beneath its bridge. I heard a low harmonic hum that rapidly increased in volume as the strings, fret markers, and pickups began to glow and crackle with purple energy.

  “You mentioned that you were taking guitar lessons,” Aech said. “To learn how to play a real guitar?”

  “Yeah,” I said, still staring at the instrument in her hands. “Why?”

  “Are you any good?”

  I shrugged and clenched my hands into fists, because I was worried they might start shaking.

  “Well, I’m no Yngwie Malmsteen or anything,” I said. “I’m still learning.”

  “School’s out, Yngwie,” she said, holding the Cloud Guitar out to me. “Duty calls.”

  I reached out and took it from her carefully, using both hands, while bowing my head slightly, thinking about the time Shoto presented me with his slain brother’s sword.

  “The Cloud Guitar is an Afterworld artifact,” Aech said. “Its most powerful sonic attacks can only be activated if the wielder actually knows how to play the guitar, and can properly finger the chord progressions. None of that Guitar Hero stuff you pulled on Megadon will fly. This has to be the real deal.”

  “OK,” I said, taking it from her. “Thanks, Aech.”

  “Open up its item description,” she said. “Right now. Before we go in there, you need to memorize all of the special attack licks and power chords. This is one of the few weapons that will affect all seven iterations of the Purple One. But the guitar will overheat and explode after you use it to take one of the Princes down. So try to take out as many of his henchmen as you can with it first, before you go after one of the Seven. Got it?”