Once my passphrase was accepted and I agreed to the ONI safety warning, the system finished logging me in. I heard myself breathe a sigh of relief as reality receded and the OASIS faded into existence all around me.
I materialized inside my stronghold on Falco, the small asteroid in Sector Fourteen that still served as my avatar’s home inside the OASIS. I’d tried relocating to Castle Anorak after I inherited it, but I didn’t really like the décor or the general vibe over there. I felt more at home here, in my old digs, which I’d designed and built myself.
I was seated in my command center. This was the same spot where my avatar had been sitting the previous night, when I’d reached my twelve-hour ONI usage limit and the system had automatically logged me out.
The control panels arrayed in front of me were crammed with switches, buttons, keyboards, joysticks, and display screens. The bank of security monitors on my left were linked to virtual cameras placed throughout the interior and exterior of my stronghold. To my right, another bank of monitors displayed vidfeeds from the real-world cameras mounted on the interior and exterior of my immersion vault. My sleeping body was visible from several different angles, along with a detailed readout of its vital signs.
I gazed out the transparent dome at the barren, cratered landscape surrounding my stronghold. This had been my avatar’s home during the final year of Halliday’s contest, and I’d cracked one of its major riddles while sitting in this very chair. I hoped the familiar setting would help me make a breakthrough in my quest for the Seven Shards. So far it hadn’t worked.
I accessed the teleportation menu on my avatar’s superuser HUD, then scrolled down the list of bookmarked locations until I found the listing for the planet Gregarious in Sector One, the home of Gregarious Simulation Systems’s virtual offices inside the OASIS. When I selected it and tapped the Teleport icon, my avatar was instantly transported to a set of previously saved coordinates, hundreds of millions of virtual kilometers away.
If I’d been a normal OASIS user, this trip would have cost me some serious coin. But since I wore the Robes of Anorak, I could teleport anywhere at any time, for free. It was a far cry from the days when I was a broke schoolkid stranded on Ludus.
My avatar reappeared on the top floor of Gregarious Tower, a virtual replica of the real GSS skyscraper in downtown Columbus. Our head of operations, Faisal Sodhi, was standing in the reception area waiting for me.
“Mr. Watts!” Faisal said. “Good to see you, sir.”
“It’s good to see you, too, man,” I replied. I’d given up on trying to convince Faisal to address me as Wade or Z years ago.
He walked over to greet me and I shook his outstretched hand. Being able to shake hands without any danger of spreading disease had always been one of the perks of the OASIS. But in the old days, before the ONI was released, it always felt like you were shaking hands with a mannequin, even with the best haptic gloves available. Without the sensation of skin-to-skin human contact, the ancient greeting lost most of its meaning. After we’d introduced the ONI, shaking hands had come back in vogue, along with high fives and fist bumps, because now they felt real.
The conference room itself was protected by both magical and technological means. We held our co-owners meetings here instead of in a standard OASIS chatroom because it allowed all sorts of additional security measures to be taken, to prevent anyone from recording or eavesdropping on us, including our own employees.
“Are the others already here?” I asked, nodding toward the closed doors behind him.
“Ms. Aech and Mr. Shoto both arrived a few minutes ago,” he said, opening the doors. “But Ms. Cook called to say she’s running a bit late.”
I nodded and went into the conference room. Aech and Shoto were standing over by the wraparound floor-to-ceiling windows, grazing from a ridiculously large assortment of snack trays that were laid out nearby, while they admired the impressive view. Gregarious Tower was surrounded by acres of pristine forestland, with snowcapped mountain peaks ringing the horizon. There were no other structures in sight. By design, everything about the view was calming and peaceful. Unfortunately, the same could never be said of the meetings we held here.
“Z!” Aech and Shoto shouted in unison when they spotted me.
I walked over and received high fives from each of them.
“How goes it, mis amigos?”
“It’s way too early for this shit, man,” Aech groaned. She was in L.A., where it was currently ten o’clock in the morning. Aech liked to stay up late and sleep in even later.