Um, hi, I guess. My name is Dewey, Dewey Longhorn. I'm 39 years old and my mother lives with me in my three-bedroom apartment in downtown Columbus, Ohio. She nags me about my weight, my job, my attitude, and my lack of a wife and therefore grandchildren. I'd murder her if I didn't love her to death.
Oh, and I was the first person to find the jade key but I couldn't tell anyone.
I'm an OASIS Object Texture Analyst for Gregarious Simulation Systems, which means I take updated texture files from the artists and apply them to objects. It's very satisfying work and it's always ongoing. You see, as new OASIS hardware continues to increase in speed and memory, more detail can be added to the environment and objects therein. A texture is the digital graphic wrapped around the 3D model, or wire-frame, of an object and the larger the texture (or skin, as it's colloquially called) is, the better the visual experience. There is a myriad of objects in the simulation and each can have many textures of all sizes depending on the component pieces that make up the object proper. When the artists finish updating a texture, it's my responsibility to replace the old texture with the new.
I enjoy talking shop. My mother always says "Dewey! No girl will marry you if you won't shut up with the tetrahedral mipmap interpolation!" Maybe she's right, but I'm a hopeless romantic.
I work in a brightly-lit cubical in a dark corner of the Continuous Renewal department of the Graphics floor in the GSS OASIS Development building, surrounded by pictures of my cats and my mother, and no one else. I have digestive issues and my co-workers have all found ways to relocate. I don't mind; I can listen to the radio at a reasonable volume with no complaints.
On my desk is my OASIS workstation, a low-end visor and gloves set and a dual CRT monitor display with physical keyboard and mouse. I simply refuse to access the simulation through the visor if it can be helped; the 3D and motion makes me queasy. LCD and LED flat panel displays also irritate my photo-sensitivity, so I make sure the internal Health & Safety committee is aware of my issues and my ergonomic requirements are met. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, after all. My mother says "Dewey! You'll never meet a nice girl if you won't talk to them the way they want to be talked to!", but my 2D interface is perfect for my work.
It was here at my desk that I found the jade key. I was working late that night ("Dewey! You'll never meet a nice girl with bags under your eyes that you could pack for a weekend away!"), updating breakfast food texture files shortly after the Copper Key had been found. I would open the texture container in XANADU (the oldest and editor of choice for OASIS professionals), make sure the import was successful and check the symbolic links to verify that all relevant objects looked appropriate with the new skin. I checked my task list; next up, C3PO's. Those crazy egg hunter kids and their 1980's obsession. I imported the new texture image, applied it to the 3D model and double-checked that it looked proper. It did, this time; you can never trust artists. The usage counter told me that the texture applied was only used by the C3PO's box object and that there were 314, 159 copies of that object currently in the simulation. On to Cabbage Patch Kids Cereal and The California Raisins Cereal. Rinse and repeat. Then, I came to Cap'n Crunch, object name obj_CAPN_CRUNCH_1971_FULL. I applied the texture and then noticed something strange in the links; the texture was reused by another object with exactly five-hundred and twelve instances.
Now, it's not usual for a texture to be reused. Even something as specific as a breakfast cereal box could have a pristine-looking version, a distressed version and a destroyed version, all with their own reusable layers for efficiency, but 512 is a special number in computing as it's divisible by 8 and can be easily expressed in binary as 1000000000. This object's name, obj_CAPN_CRUNCH_1971_FULL_001, wasn't a standard designation, either; it should've been more descriptive and obvious. Curiouser and curiouser ("Dewey! Stop being superfluous and weird!").
I pulled up the object in my editor and it looked just like the original object; a box of Cap'n Crunch, full of cereal objects. I then examined it's property sheet and noted another misnamed object, obj_SAGE_BOATSWAIN_WHISTLE_1977, grouped with and inside this new cereal box, so I accessed it too. The naming convention fit this object but the little plastic whistle was actually yellow in color. Again, curiouser and ("DEWEY!"). Right, moving it along.
The Properties sheet of an object lists the actions a player can perform on or with it. The whistle had all the normal "Holding" and "Showing" interactions, as well as "Use", but also has "Use::Special". The "Special" is a conditional tag that means that the player has to have something else or be something specific before this action will take the place of the usual "Use". I tried to open "Use::Special" but when I did, I got an error saying "LOCKED FOR EDITING BY USER: JHALLIDAY".
I was caught off guard. James Halliday, who had once fired me for not knowing what an "Oscillation Overthruster" was (forcing his then-partner, Ogden Morrow, to quietly reassure me that he was somehow kidding), had been dead for years. It didn't make sense. I took a look at the conditionals for this Special: a clockwork canary, a beautiful painting, a jewel-encrusted egg, and sixteen other items, but my memory jogged and my heart stopped when I read "egg". Could this have something to do with Halliday's Easter Egg? I knew I couldn't win, being an employee and having a completely unfair insider's advantage, but I still needed to know.
I loaded up a white-room in my editor, which is a networked test level used for development, and added obj_CAPN_CRUNCH_1971_FULL_001 as well as the nineteen objects needed to fulfill the Use::Special conditions. I then put on my dusty VISOR and haptic gloves and transferred myself into my whiteroom. If I was going to see this through, I might as well do it the way it was intended.
The white-room was silent and had an ambient glow like florescent lighting. All the objects I'd generated were in a 10ft by 10ft space, but there were no visible walls in the white-space. This would allow the room to "grow" as large as I'd need for any testing that needed to be done. I've been told that it's a creepy effect but I found the space pleasant and soothing, like being in a nicely lit white womb ("Dewey! That's not a thing!"). I picked up the trophies and then the cereal box, upturning it. The cereal pieces spread out on the white surface and the whistle hit the floor heavily with a thud much more resonant than you'd expect from a little piece of molded plastic. I picked it up with my right hand and waved my left over it with a downward swipe to bring up it's Properties. After confirming that the collected trophies completed the conditions, I brought the whistle up to my mouth and blew one long, high-pitched note. Before I could finish, the whistle soundlessly popped and I was kissing a rough-textured block of green stone.
The jade key.
I stared at it for what felt like an eternity. Then a voice behind me softly said "Mr Longh-", and I jumped out of my skin, whirled around and landed on my rear end.
I sputtered "How did you..." and Ogden Morrow, dressed in blue jeans and a faded Mr Spock t-shirt (giving his trademark salute and the text "Live Long and Proper"), chuckled apologetically and put out a hand to help me up.
"I'm really sorry I startled you like that, Mr Longhorn, but I need to speak to you before this goes any further."
"Call me Dewey," I mumbled, automatically. The Great and Powerful Og smiled kindly at me.
"Dewey. Then you can call me Og. Just to explain before getting to the point, I still have my administrator access to the OASIS and it's related systems from the old days. Jim never had them revoked even though he could have and rightfully should have."
"I see," I said, not really seeing. "Why are you here now, Mr Morr...Og?" It felt strange to refer to my former employer by his nickname, but I do what I'm told.
"Dewey, " he said, putting a hand on my virtual shoulder. "I need to ask you a favor."
"A...favor?" I said, more than somewhat confused.
"I need you to not tell anyone about the jade key. To keep it to yourself, at least until the contest is over. It would ruin the spirit of the game if word got out and I promised Jim I would keep an eye on things. I have flags on a few particular objects and I saw when you created them, so I thought I'd pop in. If you need monetary compensation..." he trailed off meaningfully.
"That's not necessary," I said. "I already owe you my job and I love what I do. I don't know what I would do with myself if I didn't have this."
"Well then, I'm sure I'll think of something," he said with a slightly frightening grin. "It was nice seeing you again, Dewey. And thanks."
"You're welcome, Mr...Og." I stuttered. At that, Og disappeared.
The next day, I was promoted to Senior OASIS Object Texture Analyst. As far as I can tell, I'm the only Senior OASIS Object Texture Analyst at GSS and I'm not really sure what to think about it. The work is the same, but the pay is better and my mother says "Dewey! Don't look a gift horse in the ass!", so I think I'll let it be. After all, no one else can say they were the first to find the jade key.