Ready Player Two (9781524761356)

by Cline, Ernest

  She smiled.

  “You don’t have to worry about that,” she replied. “Anorak was a corrupted copy of James Halliday’s mind,” she said. “An unfortunate by-product of his tortured psyche and abysmal self-esteem.” She shook her head. “If James hadn’t tampered with Anorak’s memory and his autonomy, he never would have become unstable. James learned from his mistake.”

  She pointed at the Rod of Resurrection.

  “The rod will only allow you to ‘resurrect’ an unaltered copy of a user’s consciousness,” she said. “You can’t tamper with their memory or modify their behavior in any way before you bring them back. James told me he wanted to make sure of this, so he built safeguards into the software to ensure it. Only a user’s most recent unaltered UBS file can be used. When you give it a try, you’ll see what I mean….”

  Now I was finally beginning to understand. The enormous user brain scan file that was created each time an ONI user logged in to the OASIS was, in reality, a backup copy of that person’s consciousness. And that copy got updated each time they logged in.

  I opened the item description for the Rod of Resurrection on my HUD and it explained the artifact’s powers in more specific detail. The rod allowed me to take any ONI user’s most recent UBS file and use it to create a digital duplicate of that person inside the OASIS, by housing their consciousness inside an OASIS avatar. If that user was still alive, I could create a digital clone of them that would never age or die.

  But there was more. When an ONI user died, GSS archived their last UBS file along with their account information. This meant that I now had the ability to bring people back to life—anyone who had logged in to the OASIS with an ONI headset even once prior to their death. Billions of digitized human souls, all trapped in limbo.

  Suddenly my heart was beating extremely fast. I opened my mouth to tell Leucosia what I was thinking, but I couldn’t seem to form words. She smiled and rested a hand on my shoulder.

  “It’s all right, Wade,” she said. “I’ve already read the bad news. Now that I’m awake, I have access to everything in the OASIS, including news archives. I know that Og never used an ONI headset, not even once—” Her voice grew hoarse, and I saw tears forming at the corners of her eyes. “So my Og was never backed up. I really have lost him forever.”

  “No, Leucosia,” I replied, once I finally found my voice. “You’re wrong. Og did use an ONI headset—just once. Less than a day ago. When he logged in to do battle with Anorak. He was too weak from blood loss to operate a normal OASIS rig. So he used an ONI headset to log in and save us—for the first and only time in his life.”

  Leucosia stared at me blankly, as if she weren’t sure how to react. I don’t think she believed me. Or maybe she was just afraid to.

  I held up the Rod of Resurrection.

  “Let’s see if this thing really works,” I said.

  I activated the artifact by holding it aloft, and a control menu appeared on my HUD. It contained a long, scrolling, alphabetized list of ONI user names, along with the name of their avatar, and the time and date they last accessed the OASIS.

  Below the list of names, there was a large Resurrect button.

  Every OASIS user who had ever put on an ONI headset was on the list. Most of those users were still alive, but a few of them were labeled as deceased.

  The Rod of Resurrection allowed me to create digital copies of real human beings as autonomous DPCs inside the OASIS. And it didn’t matter if those people were still alive or not. I could clone the living or raise the dead, with the press of a button.

  I continued to browse through the alphabetized list of digitized human souls. I quickly found backup copies of myself, and of Aech, and Shoto too.

  The brain-scan file attached to my account had the same timestamp as my last ONI login the day before.

  If I wanted to create a digital clone of myself inside the OASIS, all I had to do was highlight my name on the control menu and then press the Resurrect button.

  My mind reeled at the implications. Were people going to suffer an identity crisis if they were suddenly forced to share the OASIS with an immortal backup copy of themselves? One that didn’t need to eat, sleep, work, or pay rent anywhere?

  Of course, the implications of using ONI technology to resurrect copies of the deceased were equally huge. What Halliday had invented was no less than affordable, reliable, consumer-grade immortality.

  I scrolled through this “consciousness database” until I found the one and only scan of Ogden Morrow. The one made just the day before, during his final OASIS login. Then I selected and activated it.

  There was a flash of light and Og’s avatar appeared in front of us. He looked much younger now. His avatar looked like the real Og had when he was in his late twenties. Then I remembered I wasn’t looking at an avatar. It was really Og. An AI copy of his deceased counterpart, with the same personality and memories.

  The reincarnated copy of Og remembered everything the real Og had experienced, right up until the moment of his last brain scan. For all intents and purposes, I had just brought him back to life—and he had been made immortal in the process.

  I was about to explain to Og what had happened, and what he now was—but by then, he’d already spotted Leucosia, and she had already spotted him. The two of them ran into each other’s arms. She waited for him to kiss her first. And as soon as he did, she kissed him back—and for a much lengthier period of time.

  Art3mis and I turned our backs to give them some privacy. I was trying to think of something clever or profound to say about what we’d just witnessed. But before I could come up with anything, I felt Art3mis take my hand in hers and rest her head on my shoulder. She was crying.

  Once she calmed down a little bit, I held up the Rod of Resurrection once again.

  “This thing can bring back anyone who ever used an ONI headset,” I told her. “Even if they’re not alive anymore.”

  I watched Art3mis’s face closely, to gauge her reaction. She looked at me uncertainly, as if to confirm that what I’d just said really meant what she thought it did. When I nodded, I saw a spark of what looked like hope flare in her eyes.

  “You can bring back a copy of any past ONI user?” she repeated.

  I nodded. Then I handed her the Rod of Resurrection and explained how to use it. She didn’t hesitate. She took it from me and activated it, then she spent a few seconds locating her grandmother’s name in the consciousness database and selected it.

  A split second later, Ev3lyn, her deceased grandmother’s OASIS avatar, appeared in front of her. She’d used a ravatar scan made before any signs of her illness had appeared, so she looked just like her real-world self. Samantha’s mother’s mother, Evelyn Opal Cook.

  “Grandma?” Arty whispered in a very shaky voice.

  “Sam?” she replied. “Is that you?”

  Apparently her grandma was the only person who could get away with calling her that, because she nodded. And then they ran into each other’s arms.

  I turned away to give them some privacy, but found myself staring back at Og and Kira, who were still making out a few feet away. I walked to the opposite side of the shrine, to be alone with my thoughts.

  * * *

  Witnessing these two impossible, blissful reunions filled me with joy too. Genuine, unbridled joy. And I wasn’t playing back an ONI recording of secondhand joy experienced by someone else, somewhere else, at some time in the past. It was my own, hard-won and earned at great personal cost. Humanity had just become the recipient of another strange and wonderful and unexpected gift—one that would change the very nature of our existence, even more than the OASIS or the ONI ever had.

  Staring down at the Rod of Resurrection in my avatar’s hand, I couldn’t help but think about my own mother once again. I would’ve given away all of my wealth and everything I owned to bring her ba
ck, even if it was just for a single day. So that I could talk to her again, and apologize to her for not taking better care of her, and tell her how much I’d missed her.

  But Loretta Watts died over a decade ago, long before the ONI was released. There were no backups of her consciousness stored on the OASIS servers. My mother wasn’t coming back. And neither was my father. Now they both only lived on in my memories.

  That was when I realized—those memories of my parents were going to live on forever, along with all of my other memories. Because I was going to live forever. We all were. Every person who had ever put on an ONI headset.

  We might be part of the last generation ever to know the sting of human mortality. From this moment forth, death would have no more dominion.

  We were witnessing the dawn of the posthuman era. The Singularity by way of simulacra and simulation. One final gift to human civilization from the troubled-but-brilliant mind of James Donovan Halliday. He had delivered all of us unto this digital paradise, but his own tragic flaws had prevented him from passing through its gates himself.

  * * *

  Aech and Endira’s avatars arrived a few minutes later, and Shoto and Kiki teleported in just a few seconds after that, joining us high on the mountaintop where the Shrine of Leucosia was located.

  As soon as their avatars finished rematerializing, all four of them ran over and pulled me into a group hug. When they released me, that was when they finally turned to see Leucosia and Og standing there, still locked in an embrace, nose-to-nose, whispering inaudible words to each other. And in the other direction, they could see Art3mis still in the midst of her tearful reunion with her grandmother’s avatar, Ev3lyn.

  Then all of their jaws dropped open in unison.

  “What’s wrong, guys?” I asked. “You look like you just saw a ghost.”

  “Two ghosts,” Aech said. “No, make that three! Holy shit. What the hell happened?”

  I told them all what had happened. Then I showed them the Rod of Resurrection and told them what it could do.

  After we gave Art3mis a few more minutes to catch up with Ev3lyn, I interrupted them and asked Arty to join us for a private conversation. I asked Og to join us too. Then the High Five held an impromptu co-owners meeting right there on the steps of Castle Anorak, to decide the fate of the newly resurrected AIs.

  It was clear to all of us that the world wasn’t quite ready to accept digitized human beings as people. Not yet—and maybe not ever. The “Anorak Incident” as it would come to be known, had further sowed the seeds of distrust against artificial intelligence. Damage that might never be undone.

  Eventually, if humanity survived long enough, the world might acclimate to this new paradigm. People in the future would be comfortable coexisting alongside AI copies of their dead friends and relatives. Or maybe not.

  Og and Kira didn’t want to wait around and find out. Neither did Ev3lyn or Samantha. And I wasn’t willing to risk it either. Not after everything I’d just been through. I thought I’d lost Samantha, the love of my life, forever. And we both did lose Og, before we miraculously got him back. If it was at all possible, I wanted to make sure I would never have to suffer the loss of someone I loved again. And I wanted that for all of us.

  Luckily, I already had a fully formed plan—a way for the AIs to coexist with us in peace and safety, forever. A way for all of us to have what Van Hagar referred to as “the best of both worlds.” And I knew it was a good plan, because Anorak had apparently thought so too.

  But unlike him, we actually managed to pull it off.

  All Wade had to do was have the engineers at GSS reconnect the OASIS data uplink to ARC@DIA on board the Vonnegut. Then they were able to copy all of the resurrected AIs from the OASIS servers to the duplicate ARC@DIA servers. Og, Kira, and Ev3lyn all disappeared from the old, overcrowded simulation and reappeared inside the brand-new (and completely empty) one that had been prepared aboard the ship.

  Wade no longer wanted to leave Earth. Now that he and Samantha were back together, they never wanted to be apart again. Surviving their experience with Anorak also taught them that they never wanted to risk losing each other again. They vowed to remain together forever. And then they figured out a way to do just that.

  Since they didn’t want to send Og, Kira, and Ev3lyn off into space on their own, Wade and Samantha decided to send along copies of themselves, too, to keep them company.

  Yes, you read that right. Samantha finally agreed to put on an ONI headset, for the first, last, and only time in her life. And she only put one on long enough for the system to finish creating a backup copy of her consciousness, so that it could be uploaded to ARC@DIA along with the copy of her grandmother Ev3lyn.

  With Samantha’s help, Wade also convinced Aech and Endira and Shoto and Kiki to send copies of themselves along on this great adventure too.

  And since there was still plenty of digital storage space left aboard the Vonnegut’s computer, Wade went ahead and uploaded the entire ONI consciousness database to the ARC@DIA. Billions of digitized human souls, which were to be kept stored in suspended animation for safekeeping. Copies of L0hengrin and the other members of the L0w Five were among them.

  Wade made one more backup scan of his own consciousness, too, right before we left, to make sure that I would remember everything that happened to him, right up until the time of our departure. And I do. Right up until that final scan, our memories were identical. But from that moment on, our experiences and our personalities began to diverge, and we started to become different people.

  He continued to be Wade Watts back on Earth. And I woke up inside ARC@DIA aboard the Vonnegut. And that’s where I’ve been ever since. That’s where I am right now, as I tell you my account of this story.

  So now you know how I got here.

  Now you know how we all got here.

  * * *

  Wade gave me administrative command of the Vonnegut and its computer just before he launched the ship out into space. The only organic human beings on board were the several thousand frozen embryos we had stored in the deep freeze, just in case.

  We are able to maintain and repair the ship with telebots that we control from inside the ARC@DIA simulation. We don’t need food or life support. We get everything we need from the ship’s solar panel array and its batteries. And we have everything we will ever need, here inside ARC@DIA. Billions of digitized human minds, launched out into space, along with a complete record of our entire culture.

  Of course, ARC@DIA doesn’t have enough processing power to simulate that many digital people at once. It can only handle a few dozen, which is fine by me and the rest of the tiny crew. We still have millions of NPCs to keep us company. And our own backup copy of the ONI-net, containing millions of human experiences recorded back home. And we’ll have one another….

  Those billions of other digitized souls will lie dormant throughout our trip, held in suspended animation as giant UBS files stored on the ship’s computer, and on its redundant array of backup servers, so that, if and when we ever find a new home for humanity, we’ll have the means to colonize that new world digitally as well as physically.

  Wade and I debated whether or not it would be ethical to resurrect these AIs without first asking permission from their counterparts back on Earth. But it seemed highly unlikely that this would even be possible, if and when the time came to make that decision. Ultimately, Wade left the choice up to me, since I was the one who actually knew what it was like to be reincarnated.

  And what is it like? Well, there are a few downsides to becoming a completely digital person. We can’t log out of ARC@DIA—ever. But on the upside, we’ve stopped aging. And we no longer need to eat, sleep, or get out of bed to take a leak. We have been freed from all of the hassles that came with being trapped inside a physical body—including death.

  In addition to being immortal, I also have a
photographic memory, with total recall of every detail of every single moment I ever experienced. It’s like having access to an ONI recording of my entire life. I can recall and relive any part of it anytime I please. It’s like time travel.

  Art3mis and I are both ageless, immortal beings now, living together in harmony, in a paradise of our own making, aboard a spacecraft carrying us to the nearest star.

  Life is good. But it’s very different from our lives back home.

  Once Wade finished uploading all of us, the Vonnegut quietly left Earth’s orbit. Now we’re on the way to Proxima Centauri, the nearest star system believed to contain Earthlike planets. It’ll take us decades to get there, but we don’t mind. We now have that kind of time on our hands. Not only are we going to live forever, we’re going to get to see some of the universe too. And since our crew is no longer organic, we didn’t have to bring along food or air, or worry about radiation shielding or micrometeors. As long as the ship’s computer or its backups survive, so will we.

  We’re different people now. Me and Art3mis and Aech and Shoto and Og and Kira, and all the rest of us here aboard the Vonnegut. And our relationships with one another have also evolved, now that we’re immortal beings of pure intellect, freed from our physical forms and set adrift in the vastness of outer space, possibly for all eternity. Even though our perspectives may have changed, we still value those relationships above all else. Because out here, that’s all we have.

  That, of course, includes our relationships with our counterparts back on Earth. We all still keep in touch. It’s been over a year since we left, but we still send each other video messages and emails all the time. It’s a bit strange—like being pen pals with yourself in an alternate universe.

  Aech and Endira got married back on Earth, as planned, and their counterparts here aboard the Vonnegut exchanged vows, too, at the same exact time.