Ready Player Two (9781524761356)

by Cline, Ernest

The street outside was crowded with NPC pedestrians and motorists, many of them cursing and honking at us for abandoning our purple UFO in the middle of a busy intersection. Aech ignored them and headed for a large, fortress-like black building on the opposite corner of the street. A curved sign over its front entrance read FIRST AVENUE, in large capital letters.

  Aech pointed farther down the street, at a side entrance that led into the same building. It had a small awning over the door with 7TH ST. ENTRY printed on it. She told us to wait for her there, then she sprinted straight toward the club’s front entrance, like Lancelot storming a castle single-handed.

  As she went inside, I pulled up her POV video feed on my HUD, giving me a glimpse of the interior. Aech was pushing her way through a dance floor that was packed with hundreds of NPCs of every race, creed, and social class. Teenagers and adults, packed in shoulder to shoulder, all getting their groove on. Then there was a flurry of movement, during which I couldn’t see much of anything. I heard what sounded like several rapid blasts from a plasma rifle. A few seconds later, Aech emerged carrying an all-white guitar, with gold knobs and tuning keys, and a gold Love Symbol painted on its body, just above the gold pickups. It was one of the most beautiful musical instruments I had ever seen.

  “Ka-ching!” Aech said, holding it triumphantly over her head for a moment before she added it to her avatar’s inventory. “It shoots sonic blasts that are almost as powerful as the Purple Special! Now we just need a few more things, and we’ll be ready to head to the arena.” She took off running again, motioning for us to follow. “Come on! We’ve got an audition.”

  * * *

  Aech led us down the brightly lit tunnel of neon that was Seventh Street. After several blocks she made a left onto Hennepin Avenue. We followed that for a few blocks, then she continued to zigzag her way east, leading us down a labyrinth of numbered streets and dark alleyways, filled with broken bottles, busted fire escapes, and enough randomly generated burning barrels to make Donkey Kong envious.

  Aech was very specific about each turn she took, like she was entering the combination to a safe. She led us right onto South Fifth Street, left onto Second Avenue South, right onto South Fourth Street, left onto Third Avenue South, and then right onto South Third Street.

  As we weaved through this maze, I glanced down a side street and finally spotted something I recognized—probably because it wasn’t directly related to Prince. Hanging out in an alley were characters and settings from Break Street and Ghetto Blaster, two (very) old-school hip-hop videogames I’d played as a kid, using the Commodore 64 emulator on my old laptop. Someone had converted them into photorealistic mini-quests, and then anchored them here in the back alleys of the Afterworld. When I asked Aech what they were doing here, she smiled and shrugged.

  “Nobody knows,” she said. “They’re a weird little Easter egg, left by one of this planet’s original designers.”

  “Do you think Kira could’ve been the one responsible?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Who knows?”

  Aech made a sharp right, leading us down another alley. But this particular alley seemed slightly darker and more ominous than the others, and Aech must’ve thought so too. Because I saw her take out a thermal detonator and arm it.

  Aech held up her hand to bring us to a halt. Then she pointed out a pack of feral NPC gangbangers who were stepping out of the shadows up ahead of us. They were all wearing large gold crucifixes around their necks. The NPC name tags hovering above their heads on my HUD informed me that there were ten of them, and that their gang was known as the Disciples. Each one was toting a machine gun, and without saying a word, they opened fire on us. Shoto and I took cover behind burning barrels, but Aech remained out in the open, letting their bullets ricochet off her shield. Then she casually tossed her thermal detonator into their midst. There was a brilliant flash of light, and all ten of the Disciples were incinerated in a single blast.

  Then Aech kept right on walking, fanning her hands in front of her face to clear the Disciple dust that now filled the air.

  When we emerged from the other end of the alley, Aech quickened her pace, and Shoto and I did the same to keep up with her as she continued to bob, sidestep, and weave through the crowd and the surreal landscape around us, which appeared to be a living mash-up of all of Prince’s different album covers and music videos. The streets were lined with music venues of all types and sizes.

  Like an overly knowledgeable tour guide, Aech explained how each of the venues we saw here on the Afterworld was a replica of a real club or concert hall or stadium where Prince had once performed, and that you could walk into any one of them, sit down in an audience of period-appropriate NPCs, and watch a re-creation of the gig or gigs that Prince had once performed there—detailed, immersive simulations, extrapolated from old photographs and archived video and audio recordings.

  According to Aech, the best ones to check out were Prince playing in the middle of a rainstorm in Miami at Super Bowl XLI, and his midnight show on New Year’s Eve in 1998—when everyone finally got to party like it was 1999.

  We also passed a replica of Mann’s Chinese Theatre, where, Aech explained, the Purple Rain movie premiere on July 24, 1984, was always happening, over and over, on a continuous loop. We saw Pee-wee Herman pull up in a miniature hot-rod, just a few cars ahead of Purple Rain Prince himself, arriving in a purple limo, dressed in a glittering purple tuxedo, solemnly holding a single purple rose with both hands as his bodyguard—a giant gray-bearded gentleman with a bleach-blond mullet and a striped zebra vest—cleared the great one’s path onto the red carpet.

  Just a few doors down from Mann’s, we passed a replica of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, where Aech told us it was always March 25, 1985, and the Fifty-Seventh Academy Awards were always being held, just in case any visitors wanted to watch Prince walk up onstage (with Wendy on one arm and Lisa on the other) to receive his Oscar statuette from Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner.

  Farther down the street, we passed a nightclub with a neon sign that said SUGAR WALLS. An NPC of Sheena Easton was strutting up and down the street out front, and when we spotted her, it triggered another needle drop, this time for the Prince song “U Got the Look.” Aech and I both paused to stare at her as she swaggered by, grooving and lip-syncing to her 1987 hit single.

  “You know,” Shoto said, “it’s pretty obvious that Prince was plagiarizing those old Jordache Jeans commercials when he wrote this song.”

  He laughed and began to mix up the song and the jeans jingle, using a set of holographic turntables that he produced from his inventory. “You’ve got the look!” he sang. “You’ve got the look. The Jordache look!”

  Aech didn’t respond. She just quietly backed away from him several steps, pulling me with her. A split second later, a big, fat purple bolt of electricity descended from the sky and struck Shoto directly on the top of his head, knocking him flat on the pavement. The bolt also apparently caused enough hit points of damage to nearly kill his avatar—I saw his health bar indicator start flashing red for a few seconds, until he could cast a few healing spells on himself.

  Aech walked over and helped him up off the ground.

  “I warned you, didn’t I?” she said. “I told you not to blaspheme against the Purple One here? But did you listen to me?”

  Shoto shook his head but didn’t say anything. A few seconds later, I realized that he couldn’t speak. The gods of the Afterworld had apparently muted his avatar as punishment for his blasphemy, in addition to the lightning bolt. I felt bad for him. When you were wearing an ONI headset, getting hit by lightning was no joke—it was almost as bad as getting tasered.

  “Remember how much grief you gave me when you found out I don’t like watching scary movies?” Aech said, pointing an accusing finger at us. “Well, guess what. Now the shoe is on the other foot! So listen up, ass-heads, and listen good. Do not crack jokes
at the Artist’s expense. In fact, just stop speaking altogether, and don’t do anything I don’t tell you to do. Just keep your trap shut and stick to my heels. Got it, Larry?” She glared at Shoto until he nodded. Then she turned to me. “What about you, Curly?”

  “Yes, Moe,” I said, stepping out of her way. “We heard you. Lead on, O Wise One….”

  Aech gave me an impolite shove, then she turned and led on. We rounded another corner, onto Hennepin Avenue, and immediately passed a small one-room schoolhouse. It caught my eye because it looked incredibly out of place in the middle of a crowded downtown Minneapolis street. Through one of the schoolhouse’s open windows, I could see and hear Prince dancing with a whole classroom full of Muppets while singing about having starfish and coffee for breakfast. One of the kid Muppets singing along with Prince bore a distinct resemblance to him.

  I considered asking Aech if one of the Seven Princes we would have to face was “Muppet Prince,” but then I thought better of it. She still didn’t appear to be in the mood for jokes. Her face was stoic with concentration as she led us through the Afterworld’s surreal urban landscape, and her eyes were constantly scanning the area around us, looking for anything that would slow us down.

  We passed the Gotham Art Museum, which I recognized as a set from Tim Burton’s Batman film from 1990, a movie for which Prince wrote the soundtrack—another of the few meager pieces of Prince-related knowledge I didn’t need to get from my HUD.

  We rounded a corner, onto Washington Avenue, which took us along the border of Downtown and Erotic City. Just across it, glittering like the Golden Gate, there was a nightclub with a vulva-shaped entrance. The pulsing pink neon sign above it read A LOVE BIZARRE. Shoto took a few steps toward it, as if hypnotized, but Aech pulled him back, shaking her head.

  “You’re a married man, Shoto,” Aech said. “And we definitely don’t have time to go in there right now….”

  “I didn’t want to anyway!” Shoto replied, revealing that he was no longer muted.

  Aech swiveled her head 180 degrees to ogle an NPC of Sheila E in a tight-blue dress that had just emerged from the club. She sauntered right up to the Erotic City border and beckoned us to cross it and join her on the other side.

  Aech looked tempted for a second. Then she shook it off and continued running. We followed her down the street, weaving our way through the oncoming crowd of NPCs in colorful costumes. One of them caused me to do a double take—a young black woman who bore an uncanny resemblance to Aech when I’d first met her. When I pointed Aech’s NPC doppelgänger out to her, she smiled and nodded.

  “That’s Boni Boyer,” she said. “She played keyboards for both Prince and Sheila E. And she was a total badass. She gave me hope. If a girl who looked like her could wind up performing with Prince, I figured there might still be a chance for me.”

  “And look at you now,” I said.

  “Running for my life inside a computer simulation that I willingly plugged my brain into?” she said.

  “No, fool!” I said. “I meant that now you’ve become an inspiration too.”

  She grinned her giant grin at me. “I know what you meant, Z,” she said. “Thanks.”

  She was silent for a moment. Then she stopped walking and turned to face me.

  “What you were going through on Halcydonia…I get it now,” she said. She motioned at our surroundings. “The Prince records and videotapes I inherited from my dad when he moved out, they were the only things he left behind. Besides me, I guess.” She shrugged. “Growing up knowing he’d been such a huge Prince fan always made me wish he’d stuck around. I figured he probably would’ve been OK with my sexuality. Or at least more accepting of it than my mother.”

  I nodded, but didn’t say anything. Neither did Shoto.

  About a year after we won Halliday’s contest, I’d asked Aech if she ever thought about trying to get back in touch with her mother. Aech told me her mother, Marie, had already come looking for her, as soon as she learned that her estranged lesbian daughter had become one of the world’s wealthiest and most famous people. Apparently that prompted Marie to abruptly change her homophobic tune and before long she showed up on Aech’s doorstep.

  Aech didn’t let her mother come inside. Instead, she reached out and pressed her thumb to Marie’s phone, and transferred her a million dollars.

  Then, before Marie even had a chance to thank her, Aech threw her mother’s own words back at her.

  “Your choices have made me ashamed of you,” Aech told her. “Now, leave me be. I never want to see you again.”

  Then she slammed the door in her mother’s face, and told her security guards never to let her on the property again.

  “You know what really sucks, Z?” Aech asked me as we continued to walk down Washington Avenue.

  “No, Aech,” I replied. “What really sucks?”

  “Later in life, after he became a Jehovah’s Witness, Prince came out as anti-gay,” she said. “He believed that God didn’t approve of homosexuality, so he couldn’t either. Can you believe that, Z?” She shook her head. “For decades he was an icon and a role model to generations of sexually confused kids and adults. He spoke for us, through his lyrics: ‘I’m not a woman, I’m not a man. I am something that you’ll never understand.’ ”

  She started to get choked up and had to pause for a few seconds to collect herself.

  “Then, one day,” she went on, “Prince suddenly changes his mind, and says, ‘No, no. I was wrong all along. You really should hate yourself for being gay, because God says it’s a sin for you to be the person He made you to be….’ ”

  She shook her head. “It’s stupid. Why should I care if some old rock star gets religion?”

  “It makes total sense, Aech,” I said after a moment. “First your mom rejects you. And then Prince—who was like a surrogate for your dad—he rejected you too.”

  She nodded. Then she smiled. “Yeah, but you didn’t reject me. Even though I was catfishing you for all those years.”

  I smiled back at her. “Of course not,” I replied. “I fucking love you. You’re my best friend. You’re part of my chosen family, which is the only kind that matters. Right?”

  She smiled and nodded again, and she was about to respond when she suddenly came to a halt on the sidewalk.

  “Quick!” she said, pointing toward some sort of clothing thrift store on the street corner directly in front of us. “We need to stop in there! Hurry!”

  The sign above the entrance said MR. MCGEE’S FIVE-AND-DIME. I ran over and tried to open the front door, but it wouldn’t budge.

  “No, not that way!” Aech shouted. “Around back!”

  Shoto and I followed her around back, and this triggered another needle drop—“Raspberry Beret.” When we got to the rear of the store, Aech was holding open a back door, with a sign on the inside that said Out.

  “You can only get in through the Out door,” she explained, waving us inside.

  I let out a weary sigh. Then I checked my ONI usage countdown. I now had just one hour and forty-four minutes remaining.

  “Is all of this absolutely necessary, Aech?” I asked.

  “Yes!” Aech replied, pushing me through the door. “Now, keep moving!”

  Aech finished walking me through the elaborate process of purchasing the Raspberry Beret. (First I had to ask the owner, Mr. McGee, for a job. Then Aech instructed me to stand behind the counter and do “something close to nothing” until Mr. McGee told me several times that he didn’t like my kind, because I was “a bit too leisurely.” It felt like it took forever.)

  Once we had left the store, Aech forced me to put the Raspberry Beret on my avatar’s head.

  “Dude, if I find out that you’re messing with me right now, there will be hell to pay,” I said.

  “This is valuable, hard-won knowledge that I’ve bee
n sharing with your ungrateful ass!” she replied, tilting my beret at a rakish slant and then nodding with satisfaction.

  A few blocks down Washington Avenue, we spotted a beautiful 1958 Chevrolet Corvette up ahead of us, gleaming beneath the bright streetlights. For some reason, the car was parked sideways, with its front end jutting out into traffic and its rear wheels backed up against the curb, instead of parallel to it like every other car on the street. It was a red-and-white convertible, the top was down, and a set of keys was hanging from the ignition.

  “You drive, Z,” Aech said. “The Little Red Corvette won’t start for you unless you’re wearing the Raspberry Beret.”

  I jumped behind the wheel. Aech took shotgun, forcing Shoto to hop into the back. The Corvette’s engine roared to life, and I pulled away from the curb and out into traffic. Nearly all of the other vehicles on the road were either a sports car or a limousine.

  “Take that freeway on-ramp,” Aech said, pointing up ahead. “Onto I-394 West. Follow it all the way out of town. Drive as fast as you can.”

  I did as she instructed and took the on-ramp, then I put the hammer down, pushing the engine up over a hundred miles an hour. As we rocketed west, Aech switched on the car’s radio, and it began to play “Little Red Corvette.” When the song ended, it started over again—apparently it was the only song the radio would pick up. After a few repetitions, we all started singing along with the chorus—until Aech suddenly snapped off the radio in disgust.

  “Hold up a second,” she said, turning around in her seat to address Shoto. “Did my ears just deceive me, or were you just singing ‘Living correct’?”

  Shoto nodded.

  “Yeah, so?” he said. “Those are the lyrics, aren’t they?”

  “No,” she replied. “No, those are not the lyrics, Shoto. The title of the song is ‘Little Red Corvette.’ It always has been.”

  Shoto furrowed his brow.

  “Seriously?” he said. Then he shrugged. “Wow. That really changes the whole meaning of the song for me.”