Chapter XXV
Glasses of whiskey toasted at midnight to celebrate our father was now officially very old. And another round to commemorate our latest breakthrough. We decided to pick up the hunt after dad's birthday, mainly out of fear of Olivia's reaction if we'd spend the whole day in the OASIS.
Before going to bed I couldn't help logging in for a moment. Keeping a sharp eye on the time, not to get pulled into an all-nighter, I found myself in Finn's Air Patroller. I had to admit the ride was pretty cool. This was our generation's childhood nostalgia.
He had given me official permission to use it. I only needed it once more. I flew to a residential cluster and found my way to a lush planet in a system with two red suns. Parking the Air Patroller on a landing pad of an impressive villa, I was now at my father's virtual home as well.
The modesty he preferred in real life was in stark contrast with his enormous estate in the OASIS. His mansion was filled with memorabilia and collectibles of a life half-spent in this alternative universe.
Often I would find friends of his wandering the building. Dad collected a bunch of utilities all in one place. You could change your appearance, browse the markets and buy from almost every vendor in the OASIS without leaving the room.
Outside the fun didn't stop. There was a hidden cave behind a waterfall, a shipwreck in a large pond and an overgrown temple. Somehow dad managed to do all this without it looking like a tacky amusement park.
The place wasn't really inspired by a specific franchise, although it felt like somewhere a James Bond villain would live. But many cliches were present. Like a secret plane hangar hidden behind movable rocks.
That hangar was my reason to visit tonight. Father had an impressive collection of vehicles. I knew most of the rides and had some personal favorites. I walked along the Nautilus, Planet Express, Nebuchadnezzar and Owl Ship. All of them injected instant memories in my mind.
But the one I liked the most was a yellow airplane called the North American Harvard. An old training craft the Royal Canadian Air Force used a long time ago. Dad once saw it in a museum and spent months building a copy in the OASIS.
He wouldn't let me use it, I knew that already. Besides, ditching my yellow submarine for a yellow warplane was barely subtle. I chose the Owlship from Watchmen instead.
Rocks moved aside, revealing the secret hangar and I set off. I wanted to log out somewhere random tonight, somewhere no one would come looking for me.
As I left the exotic planet, an alert popped up. A contact I gave priority status just messaged me.
"Are you still up?" ShikaraStalker asked. "Up for that round of Wipeout?"
Determined to avoid an all-nighter, I tried to decline politely. I couldn't find the right words for that and ended up accepting the invitation.
My borrowed ride fitted its destination perfectly. I was heading for the planet Psygnosis that looked like a big round owl's head hovering through the OASIS. It was part of a cluster of classic Sony Playstation worlds, not too far from the Microsoft section where I had to do the Quake deathmatch.
I imagined it wasn't the first time this planet had a ship that belonged to my father in orbit. Developer Psygnosis made and published a lot of adventurous games in the nineties, right up father's sleeve. The Wipeout series was probably the British company's biggest claim to fame.
After selecting my spawn point my avatar materialized in a futuristic metropole. It wasn't a dystopia, but rather the opposite. The game was set in the second half of the 21th century and Psygnosis envisioned it as exciting times to be alive.
Near a gate with various monitors and panels, stood ShikaraStalker's avatar. Dressed in the same shadowy catsuit as her profile showed, but her hood was down.
If I had to guess, her avatar looked Indian or maybe Pakistani. No piercings, hysterical eye effects, bright hair. Just a sophisticated, almost posh face.
"Hello Miss Stalker, I'm Leo, nice to meet you," I said.
"Likewise," she smiled. "Please, call me Shikara."
"No real names?"
"I rather stay out of the spotlight until winning this thing, no offense."
"None taken. I wish I had done that."
We chatted a bit about the video and Shikara wondered why I did what I did. I told her it was sleep-deprivation combined with alcohol, hiding the drugs and loveache part.
I asked her how she beat Westeros if she wasn't a regular on Satoshi. How did she have the Pokémon needed to accomplish that?
"Satoshi is out for over a decade," she said with a gentle, almost belittling smile. "I played. A long time ago. Had some items and creatures laying around and bought everything I was missing."
Somehow the possibility didn't cross my mind that people would sell their competitive, max level Pokémon. But people sold everything they hadn't been using for a while in the OASIS. Or maybe inherited from a deceased relative.
"Did you also join Halliday's contest?" I asked.
"No, all that eighties stuff was before my time. But I love the nineties!"
"How so?"
"Because I remember them."
Her avatar seemed to be in her twenties or thirties, but if she consciously lived in the nineties she had to be well in her fifties.
"You should meet my dad sometime," I joked.
"Why? You don't like my company?"
"Uh… I didn't mean it like that," I stammered.
Again, the charming but slightly condescending smile.
"When I was young they said that age was only a number. But even that isn't true anymore."
"I guess so," I said.
Shikara proposed that we'd play a game of Wipeout 2097. There were better looking entries released after this 1996 title, but it seemed fitting to play this one.
"Is it related to the hunt you reckon," I asked.
"Not in the slightest. But once I played it, I kept playing. I'm surprised you didn't."
"There's so much of 1996 that's still present in the OASIS, I don't think it's possible to try it all."
"Sure, but you are a musician, are you not? There isn't a video game more rock 'n roll than this one," she smiled. "Check out the soundtrack."
I brought up a private tab and discovered how hard the developers tried to make this game cool. There was music from Underworld, The Prodigy and The Chemical Brothers. This entry in the Wipeout series came with a controversial ad campaign and it was rumored the stylized capital "E" in the title stood for ecstasy.
"Don't read it, experience it," she said.
I walked through the gate and got to choose a hovering craft, I picked a yellow one. Shikara set us up in one of the two multiplayer modes. Soon the anti-gravity circuit was loading with a whole bunch of computer controlled vehicles around us.
Even with the 1996 graphics the game immediately pulled me in like a psychedelic rollercoaster. The creators wanted to make a Mario Kart but with electronic music, and it was that and more. The crafts were going so fast all the time, the trick was to time your brakes just right.
Players could fire a big arsenal of weaponry at each other. It was even possible to explode after taking too much damage from missiles, mines and bumps. I had to be alert every nanosecond of this.
Shikara didn't hold back, but I quickly picked up the basics. Encouraged by the awesomely designed track, the rousing soundtrack and epic commentator's voice, I rode a wave of adrenaline.
It was difficult to keep track of the rules and current standings. But I didn't care about winning. This was just pure joy.
"I can't believe I never played this before," I yelled over a direct audio channel.
"If you aren't already, you should do this in a motorised 360 chair!" Shikara laughed, genuinely.
We played for over an hour, after which she said she had to run for dinner.
"You live in … wait, let me count… East Asia?" I guessed.
"Or Australia, or Russia," she teased. "Or I just have dinner really late, or maybe early. Being so old and all."
"All will be revealed when you will win this thing, right?" I said. "Unless you, you know, maybe don't win."
She just smiled with the serene confidence Shikara had about her.
"See you around, Morphynn. Maybe you can be my date to the wedding. That would be super."
