For the first and only time in my life, I saw Anorak react with what appeared to be genuine surprise. But I didn’t have time to stop and savor it. The moment the Robes of Anorak appeared in my inventory, I immediately put them on and used them to teleport to the one location in the OASIS where no avatar or NPC could follow—the small library located at the top of Castle Anorak’s tallest tower…
The room where the Big Red Button was located.
The mind is the only thing about human beings that’s worth anything. Why does it have to be tied to a bag of skin, blood, hair, meat, bones and tubes?
No wonder people can’t get anything done, stuck for life with a parasite that has to be stuffed with food and protected from weather and germs all the time. And the fool thing wears out anyway—no matter how much you stuff and protect it!
—Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
When I rematerialized inside the study in Castle Anorak’s tallest tower, I was standing directly in front of the pedestal on which Halliday’s Easter egg was displayed. I ran over to a bookshelf set against the wall and pulled on the spine of one of the volumes it held—a novel called Simulacron-3. I heard a click and then the bookshelf slid aside, revealing a square metal plate set into the wall. In the center of the plate there was a comically large red button embossed with a single word: OFF.
I took a Cube of Force out of my inventory and activated it. A cube-shaped force field appeared around my avatar. This was a precaution—I knew from experience that no other avatars or NPCs could follow me inside this room. But I was still worried that Anorak might be the exception, because he had been in here at least once before, on the day I won the contest. But that was also the day he’d given me the Robes of Anorak. And he’d transferred all of his innate powers to me at the same time. So I was betting that he’d been stripped of his ability to reenter this room at the same time.
I heard the whoosh of Anorak’s teleportation sound effect—and to my relief, saw him reappear just outside the study’s open window. My assumption had been correct. Halliday had coded this room of the castle so that only I, the winner of his contest, could enter it. When Anorak cast a spell to teleport to my location, the system could not comply, so it teleported him just outside the room.
There was no ground under his feet, so he began to plummet for a few seconds before levitating back up to my level. Then he hovered just outside the window so that he could address me.
“Very sneaky, Wade,” Anorak said. “I didn’t anticipate this specific series of events. But that might be because your actions don’t make any sense. Nothing has changed…”
I deactivated the Cube of Force and stowed it, then I took out a Ring of Telekinesis and slipped it onto the middle finger of my left hand. Then I reached out with my right hand and placed it gently on the Big Red Button.
“We know where you and Sorrento are holding Og hostage,” I said. “In his old residence on Babbitt Road here in Columbus. GSS has a squad of telebots outside now to retrieve him. Let him go, right now, or I’ll press this thing.”
He smiled and shook his head.
“I can’t do that, man!” he replied cheerfully. “It would be a stupid move. Now that you and your friends have shown me exactly where and how to collect all seven shards, I can just walk Og’s avatar through the same steps—once I figure out his passphrase. It shouldn’t take much longer. I would’ve cracked it already, I’m sure, if Halliday hadn’t erased so much of my memory.”
“Anorak,” I said, “I’m not kidding. If you don’t release Og unharmed, I swear to Crom, I will press this fucking thing and delete your psychotic ass, along with the Seven Shards and the rest of the OASIS. To hell with the consequences.”
I took a giant boom box out of my inventory and placed it on the ground. Then I slapped in a tape and hit Play. The same Peter Wolf song that Anorak had used to taunt us earlier began to blast out of its speakers. I sang along with its opening lyrics:
Lights out ah ha. Blast, blast, blast.
Anorak didn’t seem to find this funny. He opened his mouth to shout something at me, but before he could get it out, I used the Ring of Telekinesis to slam the window shutters closed and bolt them, so that Anorak could no longer see or hear me, and vice versa. No form of magic or technology would allow him to spy on me while I was in this room either. But I was able to monitor Anorak through any number of the live vidfeeds of him being streamed by avatars who currently happened to be gathered outside the castle. He was still hovering outside the shuttered window, glaring at it in silence.