Only time would tell.
* * *
One thing I had never shared with my therapist—or with anyone—was the comfort I took from knowing that I had access to the Big Red Button.
Not that I would ever actually press it. I’d read all of the worst-case scenarios and seen the disaster simulations created by GSS’s in-house think tanks, predicting what would happen if the OASIS went offline. The outlook was never pretty. The general consensus was this: if the OASIS stopped working for more than a few days, so would human civilization.
This had become even more of a certainty in the wake of our merger with IOI, because nearly all of the support operations that kept the global Internet backbone running were now dependent on the OASIS in some form. As were the vast majority of the security and defense systems around the world, at the national, state, local, and home level. If the OASIS went down, the Internet would probably suffer a catastrophic collapse of its infrastructure a short time later, and our already precarious human civilization would begin to rapidly collapse too. That was why GSS had so many backup server installations all over the world.
Nobody knew that the OASIS’s creator had rigged the whole simulation with a self-destruct button, and that I alone now had access to it.
Nobody knew that the fate of the whole world was literally in my hands. Except me. And I wanted to keep it that way.
* * *
Once my virtual therapy session was over, I headed downstairs and made the long trek to my office at the far end of the mansion’s east wing. This was the same enormous oak-paneled room that had served as Halliday’s office when he’d lived here. It was also the room in which Halliday had designed and programmed his elaborate Easter-egg hunt. He’d even included a recreation of this office in the hunt’s final challenge.
To me, this room was hallowed ground. And I’d spent three years and millions of dollars recreating the vast collection of classic videogame consoles and home computers Halliday had originally kept on display here.
The office contained over a hundred glass tables, arranged in a large egg-shaped pattern on the floor. On each table was a different vintage home computer or videogame system, along with tiered racks that held a collection of its peripherals, controllers, software, and games. Each collection was meticulously arranged and displayed, like a museum exhibit.
A conventional OASIS immersion rig sat in one corner of the room, collecting dust. I only used it for emergencies now, when I needed to access the OASIS after I’d hit my twelve-hour ONI daily usage limit. It was hard to believe that just a few years ago, I’d been completely content accessing the OASIS with my visor and haptic rig. Once you got used to an ONI headset, the old hardware made everything look and feel painfully fake—even with the best haptics money could buy.
My new prototype MoTIV—a mobile tactical immersion vault—sat on a circular elevator pad in the center of the room.
The MoTIV was a logical extension of the concept of the standard immersion vault—an armored coffin that protected your sleeping body while your mind roamed the OASIS. Except that my new device didn’t just provide passive protection. Part of GSS’s new SuperVault deluxe line of tactical OASIS immersion vaults, the MoTIV looked more like a heavily armed robotic spider than a coffin. It was an armored escape vehicle and all-terrain weapons platform, featuring eight retractable armored legs for navigating all forms of terrain, and a pair of machine guns and grenade launchers mounted on each side of its armored chassis—not to mention a bulletproof acrylic cockpit canopy for its occupant.
Our in-house ad agency had already come up with the perfect slogan: “If you’re gonna use lethal force to defend yourself, you better have a MoTIV!”
If I was awake, I could operate my MoTIV using the control panel located inside the cockpit. If I was logged in to the OASIS with an ONI headset, I could control the MoTIV from inside the simulation, via my avatar. So if my body came under attack while I was logged in, I wouldn’t need to log out before I could defend myself. And I could hurl insults at my would-be assailants through the earsplittingly loud speakers mounted on its heavily armored exoskeleton.
The MoTIV was overkill, considering the small army of security guards and defense drones guarding my house. But state-of-the-art toys like these were a perk of my position at GSS—and I had to admit, having it made me feel a lot less anxious about leaving my body unattended for twelve hours every day.
Most ONI users couldn’t afford a standard immersion vault, let alone a personal armored attack vehicle. Some settled for locking themselves in a room or closet before they entered the sleeplike state induced by the ONI headset. Others asked someone they trusted to watch over their helpless body while their mind was temporarily disconnected from it.