If the Vonnegut’s fusion engines functioned as they were supposed to, and the radiation shielding held up, and the ship’s armored hull didn’t get punctured by any micrometeors or crushed by an asteroid, we would reach Proxima Centauri in approximately forty-seven years. There, we would search for a habitable Earthlike planet where we could make a new home for ourselves, our children, and the frozen human embryos we were going to bring along. （We’d been accepting embryo donations for over a year by this point, from every country around the world, with the hope of ensuring genetic diversity.）
The ship’s onboard computer contained a new standalone virtual-reality simulation for us to access on our long journey. After much debate over what we should call our new virtual realm, we finally agreed upon the name ARC@DIA. （It was Aech’s idea to replace the a in the middle with an @ sign, to give the name a l33t flourish and to help distinguish it from the geographic region in central Greece, the Duran Duran side project, the city on Gallifrey, the alternate plane of reality in Dungeons & Dragons, and all of the other Arcadias out there.） The addition of the @ was also fitting because, as Aech put it, “ARC@DIA will be where it’s at!”
ARC@DIA was going to serve as our own private scaled-down version of the OASIS during the voyage. It was still a work in progress, and likely would be until the day we departed. Due to various space and hardware limitations, our simulation wasn’t nearly as big—about half the size of one OASIS sector. But that was still a vast amount of virtual space for us and our tiny crew to inhabit. We had enough room to upload copies of more than two hundred of our favorite OASIS planets, along with their NPCs. We didn’t bother transferring any of the business content or retail planets over. Where we were going, we wouldn’t need stores or commerce. Besides, we had to be sparing with our data-storage space, since we were bringing along a backup copy of the entire ONI-net file database too. It was updated every night, along with new OASIS content.
There was one other thing that made our simulation different from its predecessor. Unlike the OASIS, ARC@DIA could only be accessed via a neural-interface headset. （We didn’t want to waste any time, space, or money bringing outdated haptic technology along.）
The Vonnegut was still about a year from being complete, but Aech, Shoto, and I were in no rush. We weren’t eager to leave the Earth behind for a long, cramped, and perilous voyage. And we weren’t ready to give up on Planet Earth yet either. Not while there was still a chance we could save it. What we were doing was doomsday-prepping on a multibillionaire scale, packing the ultimate bugout bag—the means to escape the planet if, and when, everything went to shit.
We’d concealed the details of the Vonnegut Project from the world （and from Samantha） for as long as we could. But eventually word of what we were up to leaked to the press. Of course, Samantha was furious when she found out we’d spent over three hundred billion dollars to build a ship to escape our dying planet instead of using that money and manpower to help her try to save it.
I told her we were saving a spot for her on the Vonnegut’s crew, but you can imagine how that went over. She stormed out, then she crucified us in the press. She accused us of sabotaging humanity by releasing the ONI to the masses and then using the profits to build a lifeboat to save our own skin.
But I didn’t see it that way. And thankfully, neither did Aech or Shoto. We admired Samantha’s optimism, and maybe—on a good day—even shared in it. But with Earth teetering on the brink of destruction, leaving our eggs in one basket was foolish. Sending a small contingent of humanity out into space was the only responsible thing to do—and at this precarious moment in history, we were the only three people on the planet with the resources to do it.
After two dozen laps in my heated indoor Olympic-size swimming pool—which, thanks to my AR swim goggles, was teeming with rare tropical fish and even a pod of friendly dolphins to keep me company—I was standing in my walk-in closet, surrounded by tailored suits and designer clothes I had never worn and probably never would. I wore the same outfit every day, so I never had to expend any thought on what to wear next. I got the idea from Jeff Goldblum in The Fly, and he, in turn, got it from Albert Einstein.
I was equally disciplined about my daily workout, even when I was feeling under the weather. Exercising for at least two hours every day was an absolute necessity, since I frequently spent over eleven hours a day logged in to the OASIS with my ONI headset, followed by another eight hours of sleep on top of that. For me, it seemed to take at least two hours of vigorous exercise to balance out the twenty or so hours of each day that I spent not moving at all.