She was currently reading a large storybook to a group of baby animals gathered around her feet. But when she saw me approaching, she closed the book and sent them away.
When I reached her throne, I knelt before her and bowed my head, and motioned for Aech, Shoto, and Art3mis to do the same.
“Rise, Sir Parzival!” cried Queen Itsalot. “My noble subject and dear friend! How good to see you again, after so many years. What brings you back to my kingdom?”
I rose to my feet, then took out the Third Shard and showed her the coat of arms engraved upon it.
“I’m on a quest to find the Seven Shards of the Siren’s Soul,” I said. “And I think one of them might be hidden here in your kingdom. Can you help me find it, Your Majesty?”
Her eyes widened in surprise. She looked utterly delighted.
“Indeed I can, dear boy!” she replied. “The shard was given to me for safekeeping, a long time ago. I wondered if anyone would ever show up here looking for it, and now here you are, at long last. But before I can give it to you, you’ll need to earn all fifty Halcydonia Wearit-Merit Badges.”
Behind me, I heard all three of my friends inhale sharply. I glanced back at them.
“Oh my God,” Aech said. “Fifty? How long is that going to take?”
“Relax,” I said. “I spent years here, earning all those badges. With a lot of help from my mom…”
I opened my avatar’s inventory and dug around until I found my old Halcydonia Wearit-Merit Badge sash. Then I presented it to the queen with both hands.
She took the sash from me and looked it over, running her wrinkled fingers down the rows of embroidered patches, each one bearing a different symbol or icon. She counted them one by one, and when she reached fifty, she smiled and nodded to herself. Then she snapped her fingers and there was a blinding flash of light.
When my eyes recovered, I saw that my sash had vanished from the queen’s hand. Now she was holding the Fourth Shard. It sparkled in the bright sunlight pouring into the throne room, through the thousands of stained-glass windows that made up its domed ceiling. （Each one of these windows paid tribute to a different public school teacher, and had been placed here by one of their students.）
Queen Itsalot tilted the shard so that it reflected the different-colored shafts of light, turning the throne room into a giant kaleidoscope for a few seconds. Then she lowered it and held it out, offering it to me.
I knelt before her, then I reached up and took the shard from the queen’s hands, being careful not to meet her gaze. （If I did, there was a good chance she would send me off on a mandatory math quest to rescue one of her royal relatives—usually her husband, the clueless King Itsalot, who was constantly being taken prisoner by the evil wizard Multiplikatar, who tossed him into the Long Division Dungeons beneath Protractor Peak, located high in the MoreStuff Mountains.） As I wrapped my fingers around the shard, once again I tried to prepare myself for the jolt of what I knew was coming, from the toll I had to pay…
* * *
I—or rather Kira—rushed into a cluttered office to find Og sitting at his desk, hard at work on his computer. He turned and Kira held out her sketchpad, and I saw that she’d drawn the Halcydonia Interactive company logo on it.
This was another moment I’d heard Ogden Morrow talk about in interviews and in his biography. Kira had just designed the logo in a fit of inspiration in her own office, down in the GSS Art Department, and then she’d run here to Og’s office to show it to him.
Og looked at the sketch, cried out, “It’s perfect!,” and rose to throw his arms around Kira.
* * *
Then I found myself back in Queen Itsalot’s throne room on Halcydonia, clutching the Fourth Shard. I didn’t even have to turn it over to see the clue engraved into it this time, because it already happened to be facing me when I held the shard up to look at it.
It was another symbol, created from a combination of symbols. It looked like the Mars and Venus gender symbols aligned and placed on top of each other, as if they were having intercourse, with a backward number 7, the top of which curled into a spiral, laid on top of that. Together, these shapes formed a symbol that was still instantly recognizable to any student of late-twentieth-century popular culture, and to any true fan of rock or funk music:
When I saw it, I began to chuckle in disbelief. Then I closed my eyes and shook my head, bracing myself for the unprecedented amount of grief that I knew Aech would be giving me in just a few seconds.
I bowed and thanked the queen, then backed away from her until I was able to step off the dais. When I turned around on the top step, I saw Art3mis, Aech, and Shoto studying my face anxiously, trying to read my expression. Art3mis had all of her fingers crossed and was holding them up to show me.