Aech looked as if I’d just slapped her across the face.
“What the frak, Z!” she shouted. “I thought you had this Hobbit shit handled. You told me you were an expert on Tolkien, man!”
I shook my head.
“I never said ‘expert’！” I replied. “Art3mis is the expert. I’m really only familiar with the Third Age of Middle-earth—that’s when The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings take place. I’m sort of an expert on Arda III. I mean, I’ve completed every single quest there…”
I didn’t mention that I’d completed them all years ago, during Halliday’s contest, back when I was still leveling up my avatar. Or that the quests on Arda III were a lot more up my alley. That planet was covered with OASIS ports of a bunch of different early video-and role-playing games set in Middle-earth, created by companies like Beam Software, Interplay, Vivendi, Stormfront, and Iron Crown Enterprises. In fact, one of the very first quests I’d ever completed in the OASIS was a port of the original Hobbit text adventure located on Arda III, which Kira Morrow was rumored to have helped create. （Just thinking of it made me recall a line of text from the game—one that it spat out over and over again, anytime I lingered too long in one location: Time passes. Thorin sits down and starts singing about gold.）
I’d even completed the incredibly hard-to-reach quests in the extreme eastern and southern regions of Middle-earth, in which you had to face off against the evil cults founded by Alatar and Pallando.
“I don’t give a shit about Arda III, Z!” Aech asked. “What about this planet? How many quests have you completed here, on Arda I?”
Aech could always tell when I was lying to her, so I didn’t even bother trying.
“Zero, OK?” I replied. “Not a single one. But there’s a good reason for that, Aech! Don’t make that face at me! All the quests here are trivia traps—you can’t complete them unless you possess an encyclopedic knowledge of Tolkien’s entire Legendarium! And I’m not just talking about the published version of The Silmarillion. You need to memorize details of a bunch of different, conflicting, unpublished early drafts! And all thirteen volumes of The History of Middle-earth! Sorry—I had research priorities…”
“Like what?” Aech asked, rolling her eyes. “Watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail for the two hundredth time?”
“That was one of Halliday’s favorite films, Aech!” I shouted. “Knowing it by heart helped us reach the egg, you may recall? And it also happens to be a comedic masterpiece, so—”
“You told me you’d ‘read every novel by every single one of Halliday’s favorite authors’！ And Tolkien was on his list of favorites, man!”
I sighed. “The Silmarillion isn’t a novel, Aech. It’s more like a campaign setting sourcebook for the Middle-earth role-playing game. It’s full of stories and poems about the creation of Middle-earth, its deities, history, and mythology. Alphabets and pronunciation keys for made-up Elven languages. I just never had time to finish it…”
Aech studied my face for a few seconds in silence. Then she pretended to sniff the air.
“I smell bullshit, Watts,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “You have never been one to half-ass your research. And you knew that Kira Morrow was a Tolkien fanatic! She lived in a replica of Rivendell, for God’s sake. Why wouldn’t you study every single—”
She paused for a moment, then her eyes suddenly widened in understanding.
“Aha!” she exclaimed. “Now I get it. You’ve been sleeping on this Elder Days shit because of Samantha, right? Because she’s a huge Tolkien fan too.” She shook her head. “You’re still hung up on her. Aren’t you, Watts?” She motioned to our surroundings. “What, does this place remind you of her or something?”
I started to deny it, but Aech was right and she knew it.
“Yes, OK!” I said. “This whole fucking place reminds me of her!” I motioned to our surroundings. “That music you hear right now? The Howard Shore film scores that play on a continuous loop everywhere you go on this godforsaken planet? They remind me of Samantha too! She likes to listen to this music while she falls asleep. At least, she used to…”
The memory of the moment I learned this about her began to surface, and I could feel it twisting my insides into knots as it did so, so I shook my head vigorously until it was banished from my thoughts. Then I locked eyes with Aech again.