“Jesus, Arty,” Aech whispered. “Don’t sugarcoat it now.”
“We need to know what is at stake, Aech,” she replied, then glanced in my direction.
“Just to be clear,” Faisal interjected, “none of this has actually started to happen—yet. But Ms. Cook is right. If this goes on much longer, that sort of thing will start to occur. So…the sooner we can get Anorak to release everyone unharmed, the more lives we are likely to save.”
I resisted the urge to yell, No shit, Sherlock! But just barely. Things were beginning to spiral out of control, and I felt a sense of hopelessness setting in. Even if my friends and I managed to survive this ordeal, I no longer believed the OASIS would. It had already begun to self-destruct. I was powerless to prevent it…
“We have to find Og,” Art3mis suddenly announced, locking eyes with me. “He’s the only person in the world who might know a way to stop Anorak.”
I nodded.
“When Og collected the first three shards for Anorak,” I said, “I think he only did that so he could leave behind some clues of his own. I’m hoping they’ll lead us to him.”
I pulled up the screenshot I’d taken of the Ninja Princess high-score list—the one with Og’s score in first place—and threw it up on the conference room’s main viewscreen:
RANK
SCORE
NAME
1st
550750
KRA
2nd
365800
KRU
“Og outscored me by nearly two hundred thousand points,” I said. “I don’t think he could have earned that big of a lead in a single run to Kanten Castle. Could he, Shoto?”
Shoto thought for a second, then shook his head.
“No,” he said. “To get a score that high, he would have had to beat the final level of Ninja Princess, and then continue playing when the game started over on the first level, instead of quitting like you did.”
“That’s what I thought,” I replied. “But why bother racking up all of those extra points when he didn’t need to?”
Art3mis stood up and took a step toward the viewscreen, narrowing her eyes.
“To leave that specific score at the top of the high score list,” she said. “Where he knew you would see it.”
I stared up at those six digits, repeating them over and over in my head. Five-five-zero-seven-five-zero. The number 550750 didn’t ring any bells in my memory. I tried searching my grail diary for it, but there wasn’t a single hit. And those six digits didn’t appear to be map coordinates either. I did a general Internet search for that sequence of numbers, but the vast majority of the results were all prices and product numbers. If the number 550750 contained some secret message from Og, I still couldn’t decipher it.
“Those first three numbers,” Art3mis said. “Aren’t they part of the street address of your house?”
I stared at her, puzzled, and shook my head.
“No,” I said. “My street address is 2112 Monsalvat Boulevard.”
She smirked.
“The original address, back when Halliday lived there,” she said. “Before you moved in and had it changed…”
I searched my memory, and a few seconds later it produced the address, and I said it out loud.
“550 Babbitt Road!” I shouted. “B-A-B-B-I-T-T! Spelled just like the last name of the two brothers in Rain Man. Played by Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman…”
I pulled up the screenshots I’d taken of the Charlie and Raymond Babbitt NPCs and put them up on the viewscreen.
“I spotted these two NPCs on Halcydonia,” I said. “Charlie and Raymond Babbitt. They were both tapping out Morse code.”
I pulled up a street map of the New Albany neighborhood where I lived, located on the northeastern outskirts of the city. Then I zoomed in on my house, at 550 Babbitt Road.
“Guess who owns the property located a few miles down the street?” I said. “At 750 Babbitt Road, near the intersection with Morse Road?”
Art3mis jumped to her feet, eyes wide.
“Holy shit!” she whispered. “That used to be Og’s old house, right? Before he and Kira got married and left Ohio to move to Oregon?”
Faisal nodded.
“When Gregarious Games took off and they became multimillionaires, Halliday and Morrow both bought mansions located on Babbitt Road, just a few miles apart,” Faisal said. “Og moved out of his residence at 750 Babbitt Road when he got married, but he never sold the property.” He turned to me. “When he left GSS, Mr. Morrow told us he wanted to hold on to the house for sentimental reasons,” he said. “And just in case he ever needed to move back here. The place has been sitting vacant for decades. Guarded by automated security and maintenance drones, all of which are probably now under Anorak’s control.”