Chapter XXXIII
This was it. The final clue.
I raced back to Satoshi. Finn was on his way too, just like dad and Sara.
When the Owlship arrived in orbit I teleported to Vermillion City in Kanto. One of the towns from the first games.
I materialized in front of the Pokémon Center and immediately summoned a bike. I kept on racing, heading for the port.
On Satoshi they made the towns a lot bigger than in the original games. People had shops and real estate in them. When passers-by started recognizing me, people started following me. Why was I riding that bicycle as if my life depended on it?
When I approached the waterfront, I started seeing glimpses of the S. S. Anne towering above buildings. That was my destination.
"Mew is under the truck."
That's what was written on the last Pokémon card. It was a famous urban legend as old as the original games.
Behind the S. S. Anne, a huge cruise liner, was a pier that players could only visit if they tricked the game a little by getting access to a certain move early. The only thing on those tiles was a truck, without any apparent use.
But in classrooms and on playgrounds boys told their friends that their big brother had a cousin whose classmate found Mew hiding under that truck. The rumor spread around the whole world.
In every Kanto remake, the truck was always included. But no one ever found a Mew under it. Today that would change.
On the boardwalk I dumped my bike and jumped on an Araquanid I carried for water transport. It sprinted for the pier and there it was. A rather small truck with shades of red and blue.
Finn, Sara, dad and a whole bunch of people were joining me there. Some of the bystanders started livecasting. Soon the whole world watched as I kneeled down and vanished under the vehicle.
After a minute I hadn't resurfaced yet and Finn asked me if everything was alright.
"Yes, it's just… Not what we expected," I told him.
"OK, take your time."
Another minute went by with hundreds of people now standing around the truck, completely silent, waiting for the big reveal.
I took my time to double check everything. When I climbed back from under the truck, I wasn't with a 40 centimeter flying cat fetus.
"What is that…" Finn wondered.
"A Tamagotchi," dad said.
"With a Mew in it," I confirmed.
Was it another clue? Or was this the prize I dedicated half a year of my life to? I of course knew about Tamagotchis, I had tried offering one of these 1996 toys to the bouncer at Superman's wedding party.
The OASIS considered it an anticlimax and I understood that, I had similar feelings. Nothing happened in the days after finding the Mew. No one officially came forward to claim responsibility for the contest, no one ever did.
Other players arrived at Deep Blue's lair in the museum and he would tell them to fuck off because the contest was over. I guess that was it.
The only thing left to do was raise the Mew in the Tamagotchi. The whole OASIS was speculating about what it would do. Would I eventually get a Mew from it to play with in the game?
Maybe it was a tool to instantly summon any Pokémon egg I wanted. Or would it create the long rumored new OASIS update? A new universe.
But first I would have to feed it, pet it, take care of it. I would play a game within a game, I realised.
I had no interest in that.
The first pay for Idiota came in and I spent it on an airplane ticket. Riley would make sure the Tamagotchi would survive in the meanwhile.
I was in a plane that just left Vancouver, ready for a fourteen hour flight to Argentina. I didn't pack my VR gear and declined a complimentary set from the first class stewardess.
I rather watched Vancouver getting smaller and smaller, until it just disappeared. I saw the entire area where I grew up and lived my whole life in a single gaze.
It was the first time I flew in real life, after doing it so many times in the OASIS. Somehow it felt less realistic. There were no special effects in reality, just noise and a lot of clouds.
Flying was pretty boring, actually. And I still had another thirteen hours to go.
"Miss," I asked the stewardess, "about those VR glasses…"
