"Wade, I want you to meet Charlie. He was my... first and only boyfriend," Helen said, blushing. I turned from the solar panel I was calibrating to see an enormously fat man with a handlebar mustache.

"Aech knew she'd never find a guy as awesome as me, so she had to switch teams," Charlie said, breathing heavily as he lumbered up the hill behind Helen.

"Dude, we were like 11 years old!" she exclaimed.

"Hi Charlie," I said extending my tanned arm to shake hands. Working outside had done wonders for my health. The changes had been even more dramatic for Helen, who now stood like a reed in the wind. Two years in the Garden and we had completely transformed our bodies and our lives.

Luckily for me, there was plenty to do out here besides dig in the dirt. I had found my place working on mechanical systems. I had a knack for troubleshooting, so I moved to where the problems were while Sam and our new baby stayed near home to help acclimate the steady stream of new arrivals. Being apart was a small sacrifice compared to the ones people were making every day to come and join us.

"I need to apologize, Wade," said Charlie. "I was kind of a dick to you in the OASIS."

"Don't worry about it, man. A lot of people hated me in there," I said, meaning it. The OASIS felt small and distant now and so did the problems it had caused me.

"Yeah but... I'm I-R0k," he said, looking down at his feet. So the great and powerful I-R0k, who first sold me out for street cred and almost got me killed, then took a million credits from me and set a trap to kill my avatar. All along he was Helen's old boyfriend?

I looked him over. He couldn't look more out of place in a field 15 miles from the nearest building. I noticed he still had indents where his OASIS headset used to rest on his cheeks.

Here was a person who had built himself a complete life in the OASIS. Charlie had reached the top of the food chain and had everything he could ever want. And yet he had left it all, like so many others, to leap into the desert of the unknown. To build something real. A seed cast to the winds of change.

"Water under the bridge, mi amigo," I said with a Cheshire grin of my own. "Welcome to the Garden."