I had a dream. I was standing alone in the center of a scorched battlefield, with several different armies arrayed against me. An army of Sixers stood in front of me, and several different gunter clans surrounded me on all other flanks, brandishing swords and guns and weapons of powerful magic.
I looked down at my body. It wasn’t Parzival’s body; it was my own. And I was wearing armor made of paper. In my right hand was a toy plastic sword, and in my left was a large glass egg. It looked exactly like the glass egg that causes Tom Cruise’s character so much grief in Risky Business, but somehow I knew that, in the context of my dream, it was supposed to be Halliday’s Easter egg.
And I was standing there, out in the open, holding it for all the world to see.
In unison, the armies of my enemies let out a fierce battle cry and charged toward me. They converged on my position with bared teeth and blood in their eyes. They were coming to take the egg, and there was nothing I could do to stop them.
I knew I was dreaming, and so I expected to wake up before they reached me. But I didn’t. The dream continued as the egg was ripped from my grasp, and I felt myself being torn to shreds.
I slept for over twelve hours and missed school entirely.
When I finally woke up, I rubbed my eyes and lay there in silence awhile, trying to convince myself that the events of the previous day had actually occurred. It all seemed like a dream to me now. Far too good to be real. Eventually, I grabbed my visor and got online to find out for sure.
Every single newsfeed seemed to be showing a screenshot of the Scoreboard. And my avatar’s name was there at the top, in first place. Art3mis was still in second place, but the score beside her name had now increased to 109,000, just 1,000 points less than mine. And, like me, she had a copper-colored gate icon beside her score now too.
So she’d done it. While I’d slept, she’d deciphered the inscription on the Copper Key. Then she’d gone to Middletown, located the gate, and made it all the way through WarGames, just a few hours after I had.
I no longer felt quite so impressed with myself.
I flipped past a few more channels before stopping on one of the major newsfeed networks, where I saw two men sitting in front of a screenshot of the Scoreboard. The man on the left, some middle-aged intellectual type billed as “Edgar Nash, Gunter Expert” appeared to be explaining the scores to the newsfeed anchor beside him.
“—appears that the avatar named Parzival received slightly more points for being the first to find the Copper Key,” Nash said, pointing to the Scoreboard. “Then, early this morning, Parzival’s score increased another one hundred thousand points, and a Copper Gate icon appeared beside his score. The same change occurred to Art3mis’s score a few hours later. This seems to indicate that both of them have now completed the first of the three gates.”
“The famous Three Gates that James Halliday spoke of in the Anorak’s Invitation video?” the anchor said.
“The very same.”
“But Mr. Nash. After five years, how is it that two avatars accomplished this feat on the same day, within just a few hours of each other?”
“Well, I think there’s only one plausible answer. These two people, Parzival and Art3mis, must be working together. They’re probably both members of what is known as a ‘gunter clan.’ These are groups of egg hunters who—”
I frowned and changed the channel, surfing the feeds until I saw an overly enthusiastic reporter interviewing Ogden Morrow via satellite. The Ogden Morrow.
“—joining us live from his home in Oregon. Thanks for being with us today, Mr. Morrow!”
“No problem,” Morrow replied. It had been almost six years since Morrow had last spoken to the media, but he didn’t seem to have aged a day. His wild gray hair and long beard made him look like a cross between Albert Einstein and Santa Claus. That comparison was also a pretty good description of his personality.
The reporter cleared his throat, obviously a bit nervous. “Let me start off by asking what your reaction is to the events of the last twenty-four hours. Were you surprised to see those names appear on Halliday’s Scoreboard?”
“Surprised? Yes, a little, I suppose. But ‘excited’ is probably a better word. Like everyone else, I’ve been watching and waiting for this to happen. Of course, I wasn’t sure if I’d still be alive when it finally did! I’m glad that I am. It’s all very exciting, isn’t it?”
“Do you think these two gunters, Parzival and Art3mis, are working together?”
“I have no idea. I suppose it’s possible.”
“As you know, Gregarious Simulation Systems keeps all OASIS user records confidential, so we have no way of knowing their true identities. Do you think either of them will come forward and reveal themselves to the public?”
“Not if they’re smart, they won’t,” Morrow said, adjusting his wire-rimmed spectacles. “If I were in their shoes, I’d do everything possible to remain anonymous.”