Chapter XIX
It was nearing noon when I woke up to loud knocking. Someone was trying to smash in my door. The sound was getting familiar and I stumbled towards the door.
"Sorry, overslept. You wanted to shower?" I asked Riley.
My neighbor was looking at me with big eyes of disbelief.
"Dude! You're blowing up! That crying and howling you did yesterday? People love it!"
The pill's effect clearly wore out, because I immediately thought about how embarrassing it was that Riley heard me singing.
"You have no idea, do you?" Riley asked. "Go check it out!"
My smart device was blinking like a railroad crossing with every installed app overrunning it with alerts. The chat box on my OASIS monitor got a new message every second.
I opened up my social feed and saw the view count for my song. Morphynn's song Idiota already had over 200.000 views.
"Oh," I gasped. "Oh my."
"You see!" Riley yelled hanging over my shoulder. "You wanna be a rockstar, be a rockstar! You did it!"
She went on rambling about live shows. First in Emergency and then every other venue in North-America. Riley would of course be my manager, she explained. And she would carefully cherry pick the groupies for me after the show.
I didn't listen, because by now I had a strong suspicion that view count wasn't just for my artistic endeavour. It might also have something to do with the video I used as visuals.
I made something of a montage from the Mew hunt footage we collected the past few months and used it to accompany the 3.20 minute track. Every part of it we taped was now public to the world.
Another loud knock on my door. I opened the door and there was Finn. He must've driven at least three hours to get here.
"Dude. What, the, fuck…" he stammered.
"OK, don't blame me," I started explaining myself. "You know how they are with copyright infringement right? I needed original content for the visuals and these were all I had."
"Months! We spent months on this!" Finn yelled. "You just gave away everything. The Rainbow Road, the dancing, Westeros! Any lead we had, any chance there was at winning!"
"Oh fuck, Westeros too?" I said. "OK, I'll delete it now, see."
As I walked to the monitor, Riley intervened.
"No way! That weird video is out there now, you can't undo that no more. The song is top notch, believe me," Riley said, after which she faced Finn. "Right, random dude that just showed up?"
Now that he vented his original rage, built up over an hours-long drive, Finn seemed to calm down a bit.
"It's not your worst song," he said. "And this random girl that somehow is here, has a point. We can't undo this now, all we can do is try and spin it to our advantage."
"Exactly, you guys do that, I'll just be in the shower," Riley said. "Or maybe just back in my apartment watching Kardashians," she continued after Finn gave her a weird look.
We had to get an overview of the actual damage. People now knew my username, the solution to the first riddle and the solution to the second.
They did not know the tasks that followed after solving them. I had no footage of the Ghostface attack and didn't include any references to my current objective.
Competitors that had not yet solved the first riddle, were still far behind us. Especially if they didn't have a balanced team of high level Pokémon to clear the gyms on Westeros.
"Unless it's level scaled…" Finn murmured.
People would soon catch up, but not immediately. With my avatar waiting right in front of the door to Demon Gate we still had a discrete window of opportunity to finish the current quest before the masses would notice where I was and what I was doing.
"But you have to do it now," Finn said. "Right now."
Getting back in my seat with my VR gear, I waved away all flashing icons indicating the over 52.000 messages I received. There were a bunch of stories in news feeds about my video, but I had to ignore those as well.
I turned up every privacy switch available in the OASIS. People wouldn't be able to find out my current wherebeings unless they'd physically run into me, like I did with Matcheon. We guessed it would still be a couple of hours before that would happen.
Just like all players, I could access my private chat room whenever I wanted to. It wasn't a physical location in the OASIS. As soon I would leave it, I would be back where I left my avatar in the persistent universe.
There I was again, at the door of Demon Gate. Finn's presence soothed my nerves. And he could step in to do it in my place, if we needed to. Circumventing the biometric securities wasn't that hard when you were in the same room as the imposter. We could even borrow Riley's treadmill and sealing cables to get an edge.
I started another deathmatch and decided to make a run for the Green Armor in a central room. The rocket launcher trick was no use in this level, since it didn't seem to have elevated parts. Before I could reach the room, I already died from a Super Nailgun shot.
While failing match after match, Finn and I discovered more of the action girls running around the map. A lot of arcade-fighting games got released that year. We had Street Fighter Alpha 2's Chun-Li trying to murder me, just like Ling Xiaoyu from Tekken 3. Sarah Bryant from Virtua Fighter and Sophitia from Soul Edge were some of the few blondes in this contest.
I now literally got my ass kicked by my foes. This homage to the nineties action girl was getting humiliating. They were so fast, this would take ages to master for anyone. I was in my sixth deathmatch since we started and just got hit in the head with a metal circle.
While I was dying a very tall raven-haired woman in impractical leather armor came picking up her chakra. The name "Xena" hovered over her head.
"Wait, that's illegal," I said. "That weapon is not even on the map."
Every time I spawned I started with a simple gun. A handful of other ranged weapons were laying around to be picked up. But the enemies could use their signature equipment. I think Chun-Li even yelled "Spinning Bird Kick!" at one point.
There it was. The hunch. I turned towards Finn.
"I think this party is bring your own."
