Ready Player Two (9781524761356)

by Cline, Ernest

  I was so happy to hear this that I felt like hugging Shoto. So I did, and he was so overjoyed at that moment he tolerated it. He’d always been our Sega scholar, and our resident expert on pretty much any videogame ever made in Japan. And in recent years, he’d become a well-known ninja nut. After the contest, when he abandoned his avatar’s samurai attire out of respect for his late brother, he’d changed his avatar to a ninja and became a ninja addict. He live-streamed himself playing ninja videogames all day, every day, for a month. And he aired ninja movies on his POV channel every night. So this riddle was a bull’s-eye in his gunter knowledge sweet spot.

  “Sega Ninja?” Aech repeated as her eyes slowly lit up with recognition. “Oh shit! I remember this game now! I was addicted to it. You play this badass princess named Kurumi, who has to take back her castle from the punks who usurped it.”

  Shoto activated a hologram projector and a rotating three-dimensional image of an original Sega Ninja arcade cabinet appeared. Then he grinned and presented it to us, as if it were the grand prize on a game show.

  “And guess what?” Shoto continued. “When Sega ported Ninja Princess to their Master System home console, they retitled the game once again, this time as ‘The Ninja.’ And because Sega thought it would improve sales, they changed the main character from a woman, the badass ninja princess Kurumi, to a man—a generic male ninja named Kazamaru.”

  “Yeah, I remember this shit now,” Aech said. “In the console version, they also turned the princess from a kunoichi into a damsel in distress that Kazamaru rescues at the end of the game.” She shook her head. “That still pisses me off.”

  “Seriously?” I said, with genuine surprise. “They did that?”

  Shoto and Aech both nodded.

  “So…” I said. “That’s got to be it, right? The Ninja Princess, Kurumi, was the ‘very first heroine, demoted to hero’!”

  “Oh! Yo! I said God damn, Shoto!” Aech suddenly began to sing, as she half hunched over and began to dance sideways toward him. Shoto moved toward her in the same fashion, and they launched into an elaborate five-part high-five ritual.

  “Let’s wait until we have the shard to celebrate, OK?” I said.

  Shoto nodded and opened his OASIS atlas. I saw him do a quick search for Rieko Kodama’s name. He got several hits in the Console Cluster, a group of worlds in Sector Eight where the landscape of each planet resembled the distinctive graphics of different classic game consoles.

  “There’s a planet near the center of the Sega quadrant called Phoenix-Rie,” he said, reading off his display. “It’s the most popular shrine to Rieko Kodama’s life and work, and it dates back to the early days of the OASIS. And Kira Morrow is listed as one of its original creators in the planet’s colophon.”

  “Phoenix-Rie was Kodama’s alias,” Shoto said. “I visited that planet a few times during the contest. It contains quest portals that lead to OASIS ports of every game Kodama ever worked on, including Ninja Princess. That must be where we need to go.”

  “Boom!” Aech said. “Then let’s make like a tree and get outta here.”

  I selected Aech and Shoto’s avatars on my HUD and prepared to teleport all three of us to the planet Phoenix-Rie in Sector Eight. But of course, I couldn’t take us anywhere. Anorak had taken my teleportation powers away from me, along with my other superuser abilities, when he stole the Robes of Anorak from my inventory. My avatar was still maxed out at ninety-ninth-level, but now I was mortal once again, just like any other avatar. And I wasn’t properly equipped. I’d collected plenty of new weapons, magic items, and vehicles over the past three years, but I didn’t lug all of that stuff around with me. Everything was in my old stronghold on Falco, and we didn’t have time to waste making a detour back there so that I could gear up.

  “Hey, Faisal,” I said, trying to conceal my embarrassment. “Can you hook me up with one of those Admin rings you gave to everyone else during our first co-owners meeting?”

  Faisal smiled and removed a small silver ring from his inventory and then tossed it to me. I caught it and slipped it onto the pinky of my right hand. It appeared in my avatar’s inventory as a Ring of OASIS Administration. It gave me the ability to teleport anywhere in the OASIS for free, and enclosed my avatar in a shield that made me immune to attacks from other OASIS avatars, even in PvP zones. Faisal had offered me one of these Admin rings when he’d given them to Art3mis, Aech, and Shoto, but I’d declined because the Robes of Anorak already gave me those abilities and many more—and I was also showing off for Art3mis.

  “Thanks, Faisal,” I said.

  “Here,” Aech said impatiently. She flashed her own admin ring at me, then selected Phoenix-Rie on her own OASIS atlas. “Let me do the honors.”

  She placed her right hand on Shoto’s shoulder and her left one on mine, then she uttered the brief incantation required to activate her teleportation spell, and our avatars vanished.

  * * *

  A split second later, we rematerialized on the surface of the planet Phoenix-Rie. It was a bright and beautiful little world, rendered in colorful 8-bit graphics, and its pixelated landscape was a patchwork of different environments that Rieko Kodama had created for a variety of games. The area where Aech, Shoto, and I arrived was modeled after the game Alex Kidd in the Miracle World. But as we began to traverse the planet’s surface, we found ourselves running through the Green Hill Zone from the original Sonic the Hedgehog. Then the landscape quickly changed to resemble environments from the very first Phantasy Star game. I recognized graphical elements from all three planets in the Algol system—in just a few minutes, we sprinted through the forests of Palma, the deserts of Motavia, and the icy plains of Dezoris.

  We also saw dozens of different nonplayer characters from Kodama’s games roaming around aimlessly, but like most OASIS NPCs, they wouldn’t attack or talk to you unless you attacked or talked to them first, so we just stayed out of their way.

  Eventually we reached the planet’s equator, where we found a line of game portals positioned along it, stretching to the pixelated horizon in each direction. The portals were arranged in chronological order by the games’ year of release.

  We found the Ninja Princess portal in less than a minute, positioned between the portals leading to OASIS re-creations of the games Championship Boxing and Black Onyx.

  Each glowing circular portal had an icon denoting the corresponding videogame’s original packaging hovering just above it, so the Ninja Princess portal had an arcade cabinet icon above it, while the portals to either side of it had Sega MyCards above them.

  As we approached the Ninja Princess portal, I began to notice a ringing in my ears, which began to increase steadily in volume the closer I got to it. Aech and Shoto didn’t seem to hear it at all, so I decided to check my inventory. That was when I realized the sound was emanating from the First Shard. The icon denoting it on my item list was pulsing in time with the ringing in my ears—as if the shard were calling out to me. Just like that green Kryptonian crystal that called to young Kal-El in Superman: The Movie. In fact, I was pretty sure Halliday had lifted the sound effect I was hearing directly from that film.

  When I took the shard out of my inventory to examine it, the ringing stopped, and the inscription on the shard changed before my eyes. Now it read:

  Ninniku and Zaemon aren’t alone on her roster

  Once you reclaim her castle, you must face her imposter

  I showed the new couplet to Shoto and Aech and their eyes lit up.

  “Ninniku and Zaemon are the two main bad guys in Ninja Princess,” Aech said. “Kurumi has to defeat both of them to win the game and ‘reclaim her castle.’ ”

  “Then ‘face her imposter,’ ” I recited. “That must be Kazamaru, the male ninja they replaced her with in the Master System port. I guess I’ll have to fight him too.” I cracked my knuckles. “Couldn’t be too dif
ficult, right?”

  “Share your POV feed with us so we can monitor your progress,” Shoto said. “I’m calling you now audio-only, so Aech and I can feed you tips as you go. Just like old times. Oh, and that reminds me…”

  Shoto changed out of his formal ninja attire and put on his ornate gold armor and then strapped on his swords. This prompted Aech and me to change into our old gunter attire too. Then Aech threw up a mirror so that the three of us could admire ourselves.

  “Look at those handsome devils,” she said, before blasting the mirror to smithereens with a shot from her assault rifle. “Now, let’s do this.”

  “OK, amigos,” I said, accepting Shoto’s audio call on my HUD. “Here goes nothing.”

  I bumped fists with both of them at once, then turned around, took a deep breath, and jumped into the Ninja Princess portal.

  I wasn’t sure what I was expecting. Maybe that I would find myself in an immersive VR re-creation of Ninja Princess, similar to the OASIS port of Black Tiger I’d encountered during the contest. Except that the rules of the old contest no longer seemed to fit, not after that flashback of Kira’s life I’d experienced when I touched the First Shard. It was impossible for her to have played a role in all this, I knew that. But what I’d experienced had seemed equally impossible.

  When I stepped through the portal, I didn’t find myself inside a videogame, or in a historical simulation of feudal Japan. Instead, I found myself standing in a place I’d visited once before—years ago, during the contest.

  Happytime Pizza.

  The original Happytime Pizza was a small mom-and-pop pizza parlor and video arcade that had existed in Middletown, Ohio, from 1981 to 1989. Halliday had spent countless hours there during his youth, and he’d re-created it in loving detail inside the OASIS, along with the rest of his hometown, on the planet he’d named after it. But during the contest I’d discovered another instance of Happytime Pizza, hidden in the subterranean videogame museum on the planet Archaide. That was where I’d played my perfect game of Pac-Man and earned the extra life quarter that allowed me to survive the detonation of the Cataclyst on Chthonia.

  Given my previous visits to Happytime Pizza, my surroundings should have felt familiar. But it was the opposite, because this time, I was wearing the ONI. This time, I could smell the tomato sauce and burnt pepperoni grease in the air. I could feel the subtle vibration of the sound system’s speakers through the floorboards, pulsing in time with the bass line as they blasted the song “Obsession” by Animotion. This time, I felt like I was really here, like I’d genuinely traveled back in time to Middletown, Ohio, sometime in the late 1980s.

  I was standing just inside the glass double doors that served as Happytime Pizza’s front entrance. Someone had carefully taped sheets of tinfoil over them, to prevent any sunlight from intruding upon the dark neon cave of the game room. I tried to open the doors, but they were locked, apparently from the outside. I peeled back a corner of the foil to peek outside, only to discover that the entire building appeared to be hovering in a pitch-black void. I smoothed the tinfoil back into place, then turned around and did a slow scan of my surroundings.

  Happytime Pizza was divided into two halves, the game room and the dining room. But actually they were both game rooms, because all of the tables in the dining room were sit-down cocktail videogame cabinets.

  I took a few steps into the dining room to get a better look, and I could feel the soles of my tennis shoes sticking to the dried soda residue on the checkerboard-pattern linoleum floor with each step I took. There were a couple of NPC pizza chefs back in the kitchen, both tossing dough in the air, and they each waved to me in mid-throw. I waved back, and that was when I noticed my right hand. It wasn’t my right hand at all….

  I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the two-way mirror adjacent to the manager’s office. I did an involuntary double take. I was no longer my avatar, Parzival. Now I was Kira Underwood, when she was in her late teens, instantly recognizable from the handful of photographs taken of her during her time in Middletown in the late ’80s. I had her adorable pixie haircut, her giant designer prescription eyeglasses (with clip-on, flip-up mirrored sunglasses), and her trademark acid-washed jean jacket, adorned with countless patches, buttons, and pins. I glanced down and took a quick inventory. I also had Kira’s boobs, and her hips, lips, fingertips—all of it. I even pulled my right sleeve to check the back of my forearm and there it was—Kira’s tiny birthmark. The one that distinctly resembled a map of Iceland.

  I didn’t just look like her. I was her.

  I turned around and walked back toward the game room. As I entered, Rick Springfield’s “Jessie’s Girl” began to play on the new compact disc–powered jukebox standing in the corner—a jukebox that hadn’t been present in the previous iterations of Happytime Pizza I’d visited. It was my first indication that this one was set in a more recent time period than the others—probably somewhere in the fall or winter of 1988 or the spring of ’89, when Kira Underwood had lived in Middletown.

  About two dozen videogames were packed into the game room, with about a dozen NPCs spread among them. They were all teenage boys in late-’80s attire, each one standing at a different game. They all had their backs to me, and they continued to keep them that way as I walked past them.

  As I made my way to the back of the game room, I spotted the familiar Defender marquee, with the same handwritten note taped to it that I’d seen on my last visit: Beat the owner’s high score and win a free large pizza! But most of the other games I remembered seeing in the Archaide instance of Happytime Pizza had now been replaced with newer titles. Pac-Man, Galaga, and Dig Dug had been swapped out with Golden Axe, Final Fight—and way at the back, what appeared to be a brand-new Sega Ninja cabinet.

  “There it is!” Aech and Shoto shouted. I’d momentarily forgotten that they were monitoring me, and their disembodied voices nearly made me jump out of my skin.

  “Thanks, amigos,” I said. “But I saw it too. You’re watching my POV, remember?”

  “Right, sorry,” I heard Aech say. “We’re both just a little anxious is all!”

  “I can relate,” I said, walking over to the Sega Ninja cabinet to size up my opponent. Its illuminated marquee had the word NINJA printed on it in large stylized yellow and orange letters, with the smaller SEGA logo underneath it. But on the monitor, the title appeared as SEGA NINJA.

  The game’s attract mode cycled between its high-score list, short clips of automated gameplay on different levels, and a brief-but-beautiful piece of 8-bit animation, which showed Princess Kurumi being carried across a bamboo bridge on a palanquin by two masked ninja thugs. In the distance, beyond fields of red roses and forests of cherry-blossom trees, over a broad blue river, you could see the purple-roofed Kanten Castle, perched high in the clouds, atop a gorgeously rendered snowcapped mountain range that filled the distant horizon. Suddenly, Kurumi leaped out of the palanquin, wearing a fancy red Queen Amidala gown. Then, in a puff of ninja smoke, she changed into more battle-ready attire—a red silk kunoichi—and chased after her former captors, presumably to murder them just offscreen.

  I took a quarter out of my inventory and dropped it into the left coin slot. Then I removed my clip-on mirror shades and hung them on top of the game’s marquee. This allowed me to use their lenses as rearview mirrors, providing a wide-angle view of everything behind me. This was a trick I’d learned from Art3mis, during one of our early online pseudo-dates on Archaide. She liked to wear mirror shades back then too. When she was still deep in her Molly Millions phase.

  I glanced at the game’s colorful instruction card, located beneath the Plexiglas bezel that encircled the monitor:

  Regain the KANTEN CASTLE from the evil hands of the traitor, ZAEMON!!

  The NINJA group called PUMA is obstructing princess KURUMI’S way!!

  Defeat their leader, NINNIKU and proceed to th
e castle!!

  The instructions featured cartoon renderings of Kurumi, the gun-wielding big boss Zaemon, and his blond-haired underling Ninniku, along with a helpful diagram showing what the game’s three control buttons did. One turned the princess invisible for a few seconds, making her immune to attacks. The second made her throw a knife in the direction she was facing at the moment, and the third made her throw a knife in the forward direction only, toward the top of the screen, allowing the player to fire while moving in another direction.

  “Umm, Wade? Please tell me you’re not reading the instructions right now,” Shoto said, sounding deeply amused.

  “You’ve never played Ninja Princess before, have you?” Aech asked.

  I sighed. It sounded like Kira Underwood was the one sighing.

  “Yes, I have,” I replied. “But only once or twice. Six or seven years ago.”

  “Great,” Aech muttered. “This should go well.”

  “Relax,” Shoto said. “Sega Ninja is standard run-and-gun fun. I’ll walk you through each of the sixteen levels. Some of them are pretty difficult to clear. But you can handle it.”

  “Arigato, Shoto,” I said, as I slapped the Player One button. “Here goes nothing.”

  I rested my right hand on the joystick and my left over the three control buttons.

  The game began with a brief animation, showing Princess Kurumi changing out of a fancy silk kimono into her red kunoichi garb, as the poorly translated message PRINCESS’ES ADVENTURE STARTS is typed out above her, one letter at a time. Then a familiar warning appeared in the center of the screen: PLAYER 1 START, followed by a rectangular map of the kingdom showing my current position at the bottom, and the route I would have to follow to reach Kanten Castle.