Ready Player Two (9781524761356)

by Cline, Ernest

  Then she was gone, running down the street again. I sprinted to catch up with her. Then I continued to follow her for several blocks, into a section of the simulation where it was always night, and the season appeared to be set to sometime in the spring or early summer. We were still on the rich side of town, in another upscale neighborhood near the lake shore, on a street lined with large, expensive homes. And there appeared to be a wild party going on in every single one of them.

  “Parents are in Europe,” Art3mis said, pointing at one house, then another, and another. “Parents are in Europe. Parents are in Europe. All of the rich kids’ parents are in Europe.”

  The first house we passed on our left was one I recognized from Some Kind of Wonderful. It belonged to Craig Sheffer’s character, Hardy Jenns. I could see him inside, through one of the big picture windows, plotting with his yuppie pals. A few seconds after we walked past his house, a black-and-gray limousine pulled up out front, and Mary Stuart Masterson got out. She opened the door for Eric Stoltz, and then he opened Lea Thompson’s door. Eric and Lea went into Hardy’s house, and Mary Stuart stayed behind and leaned against the limo’s bumper.

  A few seconds later, a black cargo van pulled into Hardy’s driveway, and a skinhead named Duncan (Elias Koteas) jumped out, along with a whole gang of mean-looking hoods, and they all ran into Hardy’s house too. We could hear the song “Beat’s So Lonely” by Charlie Sexton blasting from within.

  “That party is about to become a historical fact,” Art3mis said.

  That made me laugh out loud, which somehow earned me another one of her smiles.

  We continued down the street. The neighboring house belonged to Steff McKee (James Spader’s character in Pretty in Pink). He was greeting guests at his front door. For a split second I mistook the NPC for the male form of L0hengrin’s avatar, which looked nearly identical but had shorter hair.

  A few minutes later, we reached the Donnelly residence, where the events depicted in Weird Science were transpiring in and around the house. A few seconds after we arrived, a half-naked girl shot up out of the chimney and landed in a small pond in the front yard with a loud splash.

  “Here we go,” Art3mis said. “We’re looking for two NPCs from Weird Science. Hang here for a minute. I’ll be right back!”

  She drew her guns and ran inside the house. I heard a rapid volley of gunfire, followed by what sounded like a grenade going off. A few seconds later, Art3mis rejoined me on the sidewalk in front of the house.

  “They’re not in there,” she said. “Sometimes Max and Ian leave to party-hop when things get too crazy at the Donnelly residence. Sometimes they stick around and get turned into farm animals—but that usually doesn’t happen until after midnight.”

  “Max and Ian?” I said. “The two assholes who dump an ICEE on Gary and Wyatt in Weird Science? Why the hell do we need them?”

  “So that we can get the Third Shard, Z,” she replied in the tone of someone explaining something obvious to a very small child. “Just trust me, OK? That’ll save us a lot of time.” She pointed behind her. “We need to look for them at the parties being held on that side of the street now. I’ll go see if they’re at Stubby’s. You go check out the shindig next door.”

  She pointed to another huge house across the street. Long strands of toilet paper were hanging from all of the trees out front. Beer cans, pizza boxes, and horny teenagers were strewn across the lawn. Music was blaring from within.

  “Who lives there?” I asked.

  “Jake Ryan,” she said. “If you spot Ian or Max, I need you to restrain both of them and then call me. If I spot them at Stubby’s, I’ll do the same. Okie-dokie, Augie Doggie?”

  I grinned and replied, “Okie-dokie, Doggie Daddy.”

  Art3mis took off, sprinting toward Stubby’s house. I stared after her uncertainly for a moment, then I took a deep breath and ran in the opposite direction, toward Jake Ryan’s house.

  The front yard looked like a war zone. Teenagers were milling around in the yard and the street, leaning on vintage Porsches, Ferraris, and Trans-Ams, dancing, drinking, and making out. Parked in the middle of the driveway, there was a red BMW with a drive-in food tray hanging from its passenger window. A mud-covered blue sedan was parked on top of a beemer, and two teenagers were making out in its back seat.

  I walked up to the front door and pressed the doorbell. A loud gong sounded as it swung inward. A young Asian man was hanging from the inside of the door. He was extremely intoxicated. It took me a second to realize I knew him—it was Long Duk Dong, Gedde Watanabe’s infamous character from Sixteen Candles.

  “What’s a-happening, hot stuff?” he said, speaking with a thick accent. When I failed to answer, the Donger motioned for me to come on inside. I thanked him and continued on into the house. It was packed with rich drunk white kids in full-on party mode. I bumped into a young Joan Cusack—dressed as the girl in the neck brace we’d seen earlier on the bus. She was trying to drink a beer by leaning her whole body backward, but then she leaned too far and fell on the floor.

  Then I went to do a sweep of the living room, but was nearly crushed by a set of exercise weights that came crashing down through the ceiling. They continued to crash on through the floor, opening up an enormous hole into the wine cellar and smashing dozens of the bottles stored there.

  I continued to make a complete circuit of the house but didn’t see Ian or Max anywhere.

  I had just made my way back to the living room when I received a text from Art3mis on my HUD, telling me to meet her at Stubby’s house next door, in the backyard.

  I sprinted outside and across the perfectly manicured lawn, to the rear of the adjacent house, which was also in the process of being trashed by reckless, drunken teenagers. In Stubby’s backyard, I found Art3mis holding two extremely handsome teenage boys at gunpoint—Ian and Max from Weird Science. Max was played by the actor Robert Rusler, whom I also knew from his role as Ron Grady in A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge. And Ian was played by an impossibly young Robert Downey Jr.

  “Holy shit,” I said. “The OG Iron Man! I forgot he was in a John Hughes movie….”

  “Just one,” Art3mis said. “A supporting role in Weird Science. But—little-known fact—Robert Downey Jr. almost played the lead in another Hughes film. That’s why we need him.”

  Art3mis pointed at Max. “Him, we can let go,” she said. She lowered her assault rifle, so that it was no longer pointed at Max’s head. Max stood there frozen for a second, then he turned tail and took off running across the expansive green lawn, in the direction of Jake Ryan’s house. He never looked back.

  Art3mis turned her attention back to Ian. She removed the bag of weed she’d taken from Bender’s locker and dangled it in front of him. The expression on his face suddenly went blank, as if he’d been hypnotized.

  “Would you like some of this?” Art3mis asked.

  “Why yes, madam!” Ian replied. “I certainly would.”

  He reached for the bag, but she yanked it back out of his reach.

  “I’ll make you a deal,” Art3mis said. “I’ll give you this whole bag of doobage if you just perform two simple tasks for me.”

  “Sure,” Ian said, batting his eyelashes at her. “Anything you say, doll.”

  “I figured out this little trick by playing through all the official Weird Science quests,” Art3mis said. “The NPC re-creations of Max and Ian are both total hedonists, and they’ll perform nearly any task in exchange for sex or drugs.” She turned to smile at him. “Isn’t that right, Ian?”

  RDJ batted his eyelashes at her again and nodded. Art3mis opened her inventory and took out the wingtip shoes and bolo tie she’d looted from Duckie back at the high school, then held them out to Ian.

  “First, I need you to put these on,” she said. “Then I need you to go dance with Andie Walsh at the senior prom t
onight. Deal?”

  “Deal,” Ian said. He took the shoes from her and put them on. Then he put the bolo tie around his neck. As soon as he did, his wardrobe and hairstyle changed. He no longer looked like Robert Downey Jr. as Ian in Weird Science. Now he looked like Robert Downey Jr. in Back to School, in the role of Derek Lutz. But he was dressed in the same vintage suit that Jon Cryer wore in the original ending of Pretty in Pink.

  When his transformation completed, it triggered another music cue. At first I thought I was hearing the song “I Want a New Drug” by Huey Lewis and the News, but as soon as the lyrics kicked in, I realized it was actually Weird Al Yankovic’s parody—“I Want a New Duck.”

  The song only played for five or six seconds, while the newly anointed Robert Duckey Jr. did a little dance to show off his new attire. Then the song cut out and he struck a pose and said, “I remain now, and will always be, a Duck Man.”

  He pointed down at his shoes, turned his left foot left, then his right foot right, before realigning them both. Then he looked back up at us. When we failed to applaud, he frowned and sniffed each of his armpits before asking, “Do I offend?”

  Art3mis let out a victorious cry, then ran over and slapped him on the back.

  “Robert Downey Jr. was originally supposed to play the role of Duckie,” she explained. “But the studio decided to cast Jon Cryer in the role instead. And when the first cut of the film was screened, no one in the test audience wanted Duckie and Andie to end up together. So on short notice, Hughes was forced to write a new ending—one in which Andie ends up with that rich douchebag Blane instead.”

  “Really?” I said. “I never knew that.” I shook my head. “Pretty impressive, Arty.”

  “Why, thank you, Parzival,” she replied, sounding genuinely pleased with herself. “I remembered reading an old interview with Molly Ringwald, where she said she believed Hughes’s original ending of Pretty in Pink would’ve worked if Robert Downey Jr. had played the role of Duckie as originally intended, because the two of them would’ve had a lot more onscreen chemistry.”

  I recited the inscription again, this time from memory. “ ‘Recast the foul, restore his ending. Andie’s first fate still needs mending.’ So that was Andie’s first fate?” I said. “To wind up with RDJ as Duckie? And the only way to ‘mend’ that fate is to ‘recast the foul’?” I smiled at Art3mis and shook my head. “Arty, you’re a genius!”

  I gave her a round of applause, and she took a small bow. Then she grabbed Robert Duckie Jr. by the arm and took off running again. I ran after them as they sprinted across Stubby’s lawn, and then over to a Rolls-Royce convertible that was parked in Jake Ryan’s driveway. Art3mis shoved Duckie into the back seat and then got behind the wheel. I jumped into the passenger seat beside her.

  “Hey,” I said. “Wouldn’t we get there faster…in a Ferrari?”

  I pointed to the woods behind Jake Ryan’s house. There, visible through the trees, was a secluded house on stilts. I recognized it as Cameron Frye’s residence. And from here, we could see the separate glass-walled garage at the back of the house.

  “Forget it,” Art3mis said. “Cameron’s dad has a state-of-the-art security system. You can only steal that car in the daytime, with the keys and with Cameron’s help. If you try to steal it now, you’ll end up in the Shermer jail, with the kid from Reach the Rock. It’s easy enough to escape, but we’d waste thirty minutes.” She smiled. “We could steal the same Ferrari from Alec Baldwin, in a church parking lot just a few blocks from here,” she said, pointing off to the south. Then she glanced at her watch. “But the Briggs-Bainbridge wedding doesn’t start for another hour. Sorry, but I’m afraid Mr. Ryan’s Rolls-Royce is our best option at the moment.”

  “Fine,” I muttered. “We’ll take this brown shit box.”

  “Buckle up, ace,” Art3mis said, glancing over at me. She waited for me to comply. Once I did, she gave me a devious smile.

  “This is getting good,” she said as she shifted the car into drive and floored the gas. This triggered another needle drop—the “Peter Gunn Theme,” which continued to play as the Rolls-Royce peeled out, carrying us off into the night.

  * * *

  As Art3mis drove through the moonlit labyrinth of suburban streets at breakneck speed, Robert Downey Jr. and I were jerked around in our seats again and again as she whipped the Rolls around sharp corners. For a few minutes I felt like we’d been transported into a game of Grand Theft Auto: Shermer, until Art3mis turned onto the highway and our ride smoothed out. (Taking the onramp triggered a fresh needle drop—“Holiday Road” by Lindsay Buckingham—which cut back out when we got off the highway a few exits later.)

  At some point we must’ve crossed over the railroad tracks and entered the poor side of town, because the houses around us became smaller, crappier, and closer together. As we were driving down one of these streets, I spotted Harry Dean Stanton, dressed in a bathrobe, sitting on a lawn chair in his darkened front yard, reading a newspaper. A few houses down, I saw John Bender standing in an open garage, smoking a cigarette while he stirred a can of paint. Then I noticed the house right next door, which looked completely abandoned. The lawn was overgrown, the windows were all boarded up, and a Foreclosed sign was nailed to the front door. Then I noticed the name printed on the rusted mailbox out front: D. GRIFFITH.

  I pointed it out to Art3mis, and she smiled.

  “There are five different John Candy NPCs wandering around Shermer,” she said. “Can you name all of them?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Del Griffith, of course. Then there’s Chet Ripley, C. D. Marsh, and Gus Polinski, the Polka King of the Midwest. Oh, and I saw Buck Russell this morning.”

  She grinned at me, impressed.

  “Not bad, Watts,” she said. “Still sharp as a tack.” She pointed to a log cabin–style restaurant on the other side of the street called Paul Bunyan’s Cupboard, with large statues of Paul and Babe the Blue Ox by its front entrance.

  “Want to stop in and try to eat an Old Ninety-Sixer?” Art3mis asked. “It’s probably a lot harder when you’re using an ONI—”

  Appearing to realize what she’d just said, she cut herself off, and out of the corner of my eye I saw her wince.

  “Fuck yes,” I said, elbowing her in the ribs to let her know it was all right. “If we had time, I would destroy an Old Ninety-Sixer right now.” I lowered my voice. “You might think I’d be opposed to eating something with the word ‘sixer’ in its name, but I am not. At all.”

  Art3mis laughed her laugh again, and it was music to my ears.

  “When this is over, we’re coming back here to chow down, OK?” I said.

  She nodded and said, “It’s a date.”

  I felt myself turn several different shades of red.

  As we continued to drive, I stole a glance over at her in the driver’s seat. The top was down and the wind was in her hair. She looked beautiful. And happy. And I was still madly in love with her. No matter how much I denied it.

  Out of nowhere, another needle drop triggered and a new song began to play—“More Than a Feeling” by Boston. The same song plays during a brief flashback in She’s Having a Baby, when Jake falls in love with his future wife, Kristy, at first sight.

  As soon as it began, Art3mis snapped her head to the right and caught me staring at her. I glanced away, pretending to look out the windshield. But in the reflection in the glass, I thought I caught a glimpse of her smiling. Then I heard her laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked.

  “That song,” she replied. “It starts to play whenever one avatar stares at another avatar for longer than five seconds while also experiencing a drastic increase in their heart rate. It’s a little Easter egg they added for ONI users last year.”

  “Great,” I muttered. “Busted by my own bio monitors.”

  She laughed, keeping her eyes on the
road ahead. I sank down into my seat and pretended to look out the window, wishing that magic worked on this planet, so that I could turn myself invisible.

  * * *

  We arrived at the Shermer Hotel a few minutes later. Art3mis screeched Mr. Ryan’s Rolls-Royce up onto the curb, causing several NPC pedestrians to dive out of the way.

  The three of us jumped out of the car and sprinted toward the hotel’s main entrance. But RDJ skidded to a halt just shy of the threshold.

  “I’m sorry,” he said to Art3mis. “But I can’t go in there.”

  “What?” she replied, grabbing him by his satin lapels. “Why the hell not? You promised! And I already gave you all of Bender’s weed!”

  “I know,” RDJ replied. “And I want to help you out. But I can’t go in there. Not like this. I wouldn’t know what to do. Or say.”

  “You don’t have to say anything!” Art3mis said, prodding him toward the entrance. “Just go in there, find the hot redhead in the atrocious pink nightgown, and ask her to dance. That’s it! Done!”

  The RDJ NPC shook his head and didn’t budge. Art3mis nodded at me, and I grabbed him around the waist, lifted him off the ground, and attempted to carry him across the threshold. But I couldn’t do it. It was like he kept bouncing off an invisible force field that somehow prevented him from going inside.

  I tried a few more times anyway, to no avail. Then RDJ began to struggle, trying to get free of my grip.

  “I’m sorry!” he cried. “But I’m just not emotionally prepared, at this exact juncture, to go in there. I mean, look how I’m dressed….And I never know what to say at formal social gatherings such as this!”

  Art3mis gave me a nod and I let go of him. He straightened his suit and gave me an indignant glare. I thought he might bolt, but instead, he folded his arms and began to absentmindedly tap his foot—an indication that he was running an idle animation.

  I turned to Art3mis.