“Wrong,” I said. “If I win, I’m going to split the prize money with you guys, regardless of whether you help me or not. So helping me is probably in your best interest.”
“I don’t suppose we have time to get that in writing?” Art3mis said.
I thought for a moment, then accessed my POV channel’s control menu. I initiated a live broadcast, so everyone watching my channel (my ratings counter said I currently had more than two hundred million viewers) could hear what I was about to say. “Greetings,” I said. “This is Wade Watts, also known as Parzival. I want to let the whole world know that if and when I find Halliday’s Easter egg, I hereby vow to split my winnings equally with Art3mis, Aech, and Shoto. Cross my heart and hope to die. Gunter’s honor. Pinky swear. All of that crap. If I’m lying, I should be forever branded as a gutless Sixer-fellating punk.”
As I finished the broadcast, I heard Art3mis say, “Dude, are you nuts? I was kidding!”
“Oh,” I said. “Right. I knew that.”
I cracked my knuckles, then flew forward into the gate, and my avatar vanished into the whirlpool of stars.
I found myself standing in a vast, dark, empty space. I couldn’t see the walls or ceiling, but there appeared to be a floor, because I was standing on something. I waited a few seconds, unsure of what to do. Then a booming electronic voice echoed through the void. It sounded as if it were being generated by a primitive speech synthesizer, like those used in Q*Bert and Gorf. “Beat the high score or be destroyed!” the voice announced. A shaft of light appeared, shining down from somewhere high above. There, in front of me, at the base of this long pillar of light, stood an old coin-operated arcade game. I recognized its distinctive, angular cabinet immediately. Tempest. Atari. 1980.
I closed my eyes and dropped my head. “Crap,” I muttered. “This is not my best game, gang.”
“Come on,” I heard Art3mis whisper. “You had to know Tempest was going to factor into the Third Gate somehow. It was so obvious!”
“Oh really?” I said. “Why?”
“Because of the quote on the last page of the Almanac,” she replied. “ ‘I must uneasy make, lest too light winning make the prize light.’ ”
“I know the quote,” I said, annoyed. “It’s from Shakespeare. But I figured it was just Halliday’s way of letting us know how difficult he was going to make the Hunt.”
“It was,” Art3mis said. “But it was also a clue. That quote was taken from Shakespeare’s final play, The Tempest.”
“Shit!” I hissed. “How the hell did I miss that?”
“I never made that connection either,” Aech confessed. “Bravo, Art3mis.”
“The game Tempest also appears briefly in the music video for the song ‘Subdivisions’ by Rush,” she added. “One of Halliday’s favorites. Pretty hard to miss.”
“Whoa,” Shoto said. “She’s good.”
“OK!” I shouted. “It should have been obvious. No need to rub it in!”
“I take it you’ve haven’t had much practice at this game, Z?” Aech said.
“A little, a long time ago,” I said. “But not nearly enough. Look at the high score.” I pointed at the monitor. The high score was 728,329. The initials next to it were JDH—James Donovan Halliday. And, as I feared, the credit counter at the bottom of the screen had a numeral one in front of it.
“Yikes,” Aech said. “Only one credit. Just like Black Tiger.”
I remembered the now-useless extra life quarter in my inventory and took it out. But when I dropped it into the coin slot, it fell right through into the coin return. I reached down to remove it and saw a sticker on the coin mechanism: TOKENS ONLY.
“So much for that idea,” I said. “And I don’t see a token machine anywhere around here.”
“Looks like you only get one game,” Aech said. “All or nothing.”
“Guys, I haven’t played Tempest in years,” I said. “I’m screwed. There’s no way I’m going to beat Halliday’s high score on my first attempt.”
“You don’t have to,” Art3mis said. “Look at the copyright year.”
I glanced at the bottom of the screen: ?MCMLXXX ATARI.
“Nineteen eighty?” Aech said. “How does that help him?”
“Yeah,” I said. “How does that help me?”
“That means this is the very first version of Tempest,” Art3mis said. “The version that shipped with a bug in the game code. When Tempest first hit the arcades, kids discovered that if you died with a certain score, the machine would give you a bunch of free credits.”
“Oh,” I said, somewhat ashamed. “I didn’t know that.”
“You would,” Art3mis said, “if you’d researched the game as much as I did.”
“Damn, girl,” Aech said. “You’ve got some serious knowledge.”
“Thanks,” she said. “It helps to be an obsessive-compulsive geek. With no life.” Everyone laughed at that, except me. I was much too nervous.
“OK, Arty,” I said. “What do I need to do to get those free games?”