But Og had never bothered to specify which local arcade it was, or the name of the game Kira had played, and other written accounts had given conflicting information about both. Now I knew he’d met Kira here at Happytime Pizza. And that the game he’d watched her beat with one quarter was Sega Ninja, aka Ninja Princess.
I was reenacting the moment Ogden and Kira Morrow first met.
If I recalled Og’s book correctly, he’d walked over to congratulate Kira after she finished her game. But then his socially inept shadow, Halliday, had interrupted them to ask Og for a ride home. He always waited until the last possible moment to return to his troubled home, so Og knew his friend didn’t really want to leave yet. Halliday was attempting to cock-block him. This shocked and amused Og, because he’d never seen him display jealousy over a girl before. Just computer hardware.
“Hi,” the teenage Og said, finally working up the nerve to make eye contact with me. “I’m Og. And you—you’re amazing! I can’t believe you defeated Sega Ninja on one quarter! This is the first time any of us have ever seen anyone do that. Way to go!”
Og awkwardly held up his right hand. It took a second before I realized he was offering me a high five. So I high-fived him. He looked extremely relieved when I did.
Then he locked eyes with me, and as he did, I felt my heart beat faster. My skin began to tingle with what felt like invisible tendrils of electricity. This was a sensation I was familiar with. It was how I’d felt the first time I met Samantha in the real world.
I couldn’t imagine how present-day Ogden Morrow had felt while going through this challenge. He must’ve been using a conventional haptic rig, thankfully—he’d never used an ONI by choice, and he’d still been without one in Anorak’s little blackmail livestream—so at least he’d been spared all the physical sensations. But reexperiencing this moment from Kira’s perspective must’ve still been heartbreaking for him.
“Thanks, Og,” I heard myself say, with Kira’s voice, and in her British accent. “I’m Karen Underwood—but my friends call me Kira.” I felt my head nod in the direction of the Sega Ninja cabinet beside me. “We have this game in one of the shops near my parents’ flat, back home in London. But over there, it’s called Ninja Princess. Not Sega Ninja.” I felt the corner of my mouth curl into a smirk, then I added: “I guess American boys don’t like to play with girls.”
“Yes, we do!” Og replied immediately. Then he began to turn red and stammered, “I mean, we’re not against playing games with girls! Videogames, that is. That have a girl main character. Like this one here.”
Og gave the Sega Ninja cabinet an awkward pat, as if it were an unfamiliar Labrador. Then he shoved both of his hands into his pockets and grinned at me like a lovestruck idiot. He looked as if his pupils might change into cartoon hearts at any second.
He opened his mouth to say something else to me, but right on cue, another extremely familiar-looking teenage boy interrupted our conversation. I immediately recognized him as James Halliday—at age seventeen. Wearing his half-inch-thick horn-rimmed eyeglasses, a pair of faded jeans, worn Nikes, and one of his beloved Space Invaders T-shirts.
Just as he appeared, the arcade’s sound system skipped forward from “Jessie’s Girl” to “Obsession” by Animotion. I knew that couldn’t be a coincidence.
“I gotta get home,” the young Halliday urgently told Og, without making eye contact with either him or me. “I’m out of quarters and…so…I need a ride home.”
Og stared at him for a moment in disbelief while Halliday kept his eyes on the carpet. Og gave me an embarrassed smile, then turned back to Halliday.
“Hold on just a few minutes,” Og said. “Or go wait by my car until I’m ready to leave. Or—” He fished a crumpled dollar bill out of the front pocket of his acid-washed jeans. “It’s too wrinkled for the token machine, but they’ll change it at the counter.”
Og tossed the bill in Halliday’s general direction and turned back to Kira without waiting for him to reply. The money hit him in the chest and then silently fell to the floor.
“No!” Halliday shouted, suddenly furious, stomping his right foot down like a toddler preparing to throw a tantrum. When his shoe made contact with the ground, Og and all of the other NPCs vanished, leaving me alone with the seventeen-year-old James Halliday.
And in the same instant, our surroundings changed too.