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“I’m sorry, ” he said to Art3mis. “But I can’t go in there. ”

“What? ” she replied, grabbing him by his satin lapels. “Why the hell not? You promised! And I already gave you all of Bender’s weed! ”

“I know, ” RDJ replied. “And I want to help you out. But I can’t go in there. Not like this. I wouldn’t know what to do. Or say. ”

“You don’t have to say anything! ” Art3mis said, prodding him toward the entrance. “Just go in there, find the hot redhead in the atrocious pink nightgown, and ask her to dance. That’s it! Done! ”

The RDJ NPC shook his head and didn’t budge. Art3mis nodded at me, and I grabbed him around the waist, lifted him off the ground, and attempted to carry him across the threshold. But I couldn’t do it. It was like he kept bouncing off an invisible force field that somehow prevented him from going inside.

I tried a few more times anyway, to no avail. Then RDJ began to struggle, trying to get free of my grip.

“I’m sorry! ” he cried. “But I’m just not emotionally prepared, at this exact juncture, to go in there. I mean, look how I’m dressed…. And I never know what to say at formal social gatherings such as this! ”

Art3mis gave me a nod and I let go of him. He straightened his suit and gave me an indignant glare. I thought he might bolt, but instead, he folded his arms and began to absentmindedly tap his foot—an indication that he was running an idle animation.

I turned to Art3mis.

“ ‘Recast the foul, restore his ending, ’ ” I recited. “This whole time, we thought the clue meant we were supposed to restore Duckie’s ending. But what if ‘restore his ending’ means we need to restore John Hughes’s ending? The ending of Pretty in Pink he originally wrote in his screenplay? ” I nodded at the RDJ NPC. “What if we need to find a copy of the original script and give it to him? ”

Art3mis threw up her hands. “And how are we supposed to do that? ”

I smiled at her. “We go to the writer’s house, ” I replied.

She gave me a puzzled look for a few seconds, then her eyes lit up with understanding.

“Holy shit! ” she cried. “That might be it! Z, you’re a genius! ”

Before I knew what the hell was happening, she grabbed my face and planted a kiss on me. She wasn’t wearing an ONI headset, so I knew she didn’t feel that kiss. But I did. Then she turned to RDJ.

“Don’t go anywhere, ” she told him. “We’ll be right back. ”

Then she grabbed me by the arm and pulled me back in the direction of the car.

Art3mis knew a shortcut through the rich side of town, and was somehow able to navigate from memory, racing through the dark, undifferentiated maze of identical streets, each lined with identical houses. She managed to get us there in just a few minutes, but her erratic driving triggered another needle drop—“March of the Swivel Heads” by the English Beat. I don’t think she touched the brake pedal once, until we finally screeched to a halt in the Johnson family’s driveway.

As soon as our feet touched the driveway, another needle drop went off: “Modigliani (Lost in Your Eyes)” by Book of Love. Hearing it, Art3mis glanced over at me, and we shared a brief smile of recognition. Then we both turned and ran to the front door. She rang the doorbell, and a second later, Mrs. Johnson opened it, wearing an annoyed scowl. Her young daughter was standing in the doorway behind her, and she was scowling at us too. I recognized both of them from their brief scene in The Breakfast Club when they drop Anthony Michael Hall’s character, Brian, off at detention, and his mom says, “Well, mister, you better figure out a way to study! ” and then his little sister says, “Yeah! ” (Another piece of trivia I’d learned from Artie’s blog, years ago, was that they were played by Anthony Michael Hall’s real-life mother and sister. )

“I’m sorry, ” Mrs. Johnson said, after she spent a few more seconds scowling at us. “We don’t allow solicitors. ” She pointed to a small No Solicitors sign with gold lettering nailed to their front door.

“Oh, we’re not selling anything, Mrs. Johnson, ” Art3mis said. “My name is Art3mis, and this is my friend Parzival. We’re here to speak with your husband—about our mutual friend, Duckie? Philip F. Dale? ”

Mrs. Johnson’s scowl vanished, and she gave Art3mis a huge smile. In the next moment, her face melted and morphed, and she transformed into a completely different woman. Now the NPC in front of us was a slender woman with long blond hair and a warm, friendly smile. I didn’t recognize her at all—but Art3mis did. Instantly.

“Mrs. Hughes! ” she said, lowering her eyes and bowing her head, as if she’d just encountered royalty. Then she glanced sideways at me and whispered, “Nancy Hughes! I’ve never seen her here before! I didn’t even know you could! ”

“John is upstairs working, ” Nancy said, stepping back to open the door the rest of the way for us. “But I believe he’s expecting you. Please, come on in…. ”

She ushered us into the foyer and closed the front door. I looked around for Brian Johnson’s little sister, but she’d vanished along with her mother. However, I did catch a glimpse of two young boys chasing each other around the dining-room table with Nerf guns. I realized they must be NPC re-creations of the Hugheses’ two sons, James and John. Seeing them reminded me of an interview John Hughes gave, where he mentioned that his screenplay for Mr. Mom was based on his experience caring for his two boys on his own for a year, when his wife, Nancy, spent a lot of time traveling for work.

Hughes’s children and marriage had directly inspired so much of his work—it seemed fitting that this interactive tribute to his family was hidden here on Shermer, among all of his fictional creations.

Art3mis and I continued to gaze around us in wonder, like museum patrons on their first visit, until Nancy politely cleared her throat to get our attention. Then she pointed to the long, curved wooden staircase behind her.

“He’s upstairs in his office, at the end of the hall, ” she said, lowering her voice to a whisper. “But make sure to knock before you go in. He’s writing. ”

“Thank you, ma’am, ” I whispered back. I motioned for Art3mis to lead the way and followed her up the stairs. When we reached the top, we could hear a typewriter clacking down the hall. Treading as softly as we could on the wooden floorboards, we followed the sound to a closed door at the end of the hall. The thick aroma of tobacco wafted in the air, rising from the crack at the bottom of the door, along with the sound of music—Dream Academy’s instrumental version of the Smiths’ “Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want. ”

I gave Art3mis a nod, then I took a deep breath and rapped three times on the door.

The clacking of typewriter keys ceased, and we heard someone get up, followed by approaching footsteps. Then the door opened, and there he was, standing right in front of us, in the simulated flesh: John Wilden Hughes Jr.

He looked different from how he’d looked when I’d caught a glimpse of him a few hours earlier, as he was collecting his morning paper with the other middle-aged men of Shermer. His hair was longer and spikier. His glasses were bigger and rounder and had different frames. He had the same rounded features and the same sad, wise eyes. But he no longer wore the stern, impassive expression he’d had back when he was Mr. Johnson. Now that he was Mr. Hughes, he was full of energy and emotion—along with epic amounts of nicotine and caffeine, judging by all of the empty coffee cups on his desk, and the overflowing ashtray beside his enormous green IBM Selectric typewriter.

Behind his desk, carefully displayed on some shelves, were dozens of pairs of shoes—his famous sneaker collection, which continued to grow throughout his life.

“Art3mis! ” he bellowed in an extremely deep voice, smiling wide in recognition as soon as he saw her. “I’ve been expecting you! ”

Then, to our shock, he went in for a hug. Art3mis laughed and hugged John Hughes back, while giving me a can-you-believe-this-is-happening look over his shoulder. Then he let go of her and turned to me.

“And you brought a friend along, ” he said, offering me his hand. “Hi there. I’m John. ”

“Parzival, ” I replied, shaking it. The guy had a firm grip! “It’s an honor to meet you, sir. I’m a big fan of your work. ”

“Really? ” he said, placing his right hand over his heart. “That’s so wonderful to hear. And kind of you to say. Please, won’t you both come on in? ”

After we stepped into his office, he closed the door, then hurried over to a row of filing cabinets in the corner and began to dig through its drawers.

“You’re here for a copy of my Pretty in Pink script, right? ” he asked. “Which draft did you want? ”

“Your favorite draft, ” Art3mis said. “The one with your original ending, where Duckie and Andie dance together? ”

He gave her a big smile, then resumed digging through his filing-cabinet drawers.

“That was my favorite ending, ” he said. “But it didn’t work for the test audience, so the studio made me change it. ”

He finally found the script he was looking for and shouted, “Victory! ” as he held it over his head. A golden shaft of light descended from the ceiling for a few seconds, bathing him and the script in its glow, as we heard the sound of angelic chimes. Then he held the script out and presented it to Art3mis. She took it from him with both hands, and as she did, the light vanished and the chimes ceased.

“Thank you, ” Art3mis said, bowing slightly. “Very much. ”

“My pleasure! ” he said. “If you need anything else, you know where to find me. ”

He gave us both another handshake, then he sat back down at his desk, and immediately began typing again—faster than I’d ever seen anyone type in my life. The clack of his keys sounded like machine-gun fire, and the carriage return moved rapidly from left to right in just a few seconds, like an ammo belt feeding it a steady supply of bullets.

Art3mis turned toward me, wearing a big, goofy grin, and held up the script so that I could see what was typed on its cover page: “PRETTY IN PINK by John Hughes. FIFTH DRAFT: 5/9/85. ”

“We got it! ” she said.

I nodded and offered her a high five. She laughed and slapped my hand.

“Let’s go get that shard! ” I said.

She nodded and we turned around to leave. But when I reached for the doorknob, I discovered something odd—a black computer keyboard was hanging on the back of Hughes’s office door, dangling from the coat hook by its cord.

“Weird, ” I said, grabbing the keyboard to examine it more closely. That was when we both saw the brand name and model number. It wasn’t just a keyboard. It was a Memotech MTX512—the vintage computer that Gary and Wyatt used to create Lisa in Weird Science, which had (in revolutionary-at-the-time fashion) hidden its 8-bit CPU in the chassis of the keyboard itself. It looked pretty beat-up. A few of the keys on the keyboard were missing.

I turned to address the John Hughes NPC.

“What’s this doing here? ” I asked. But Hughes didn’t even seem to hear me. He just kept on writing. I turned back to Art3mis and handed the computer to her.

“When I ran into Wyatt’s house earlier, I noticed that his computer was missing from his bedroom, ” she said. “The FDX hard-drive add-on was still there, but this keyboard was gone. Which would appear to indicate that someone took it from Wyatt’s and brought it here…. ”

I leaned forward to study the keyboard more closely. There were four missing letters—the R, A, I, and K keys were gone.

Then it hit me.

“Og! ” I said. “He was here earlier today, when he collected the Third Shard. And he put the computer here, where he knew we would see it. ”

I pointed at the Memotech MTX512. “In Weird Science, a nerd used this computer to create a simulation of his dream girl, ” I said. “Maybe Og is trying to tell us that Halliday did the same thing. That’s why he knocked out these four keys…K, I, R, and A. ”

“Holy shit! ” Art3mis said. “Kira! ”

I nodded. Then another lightbulb went on over my head.

“If Og was able to leave behind a hidden message for us here, maybe he did the same thing when he was collecting the first two shards! ” I said. “I should have realized it on Kodama. ”

I explained to Art3mis how Og’s strange high score on the Ninja Princess videogame had puzzled me.

“Did you spot anything else on Kodama? ” Art3mis asked. “Anything else out of place? ”

I thought it over for a moment, then shook my head.

“I don’t think so, ” I said. “I don’t remember seeing anything like that on Middletown either. But there are 256 different instances of Middletown spread across the planet, and Og could have obtained his shard from any one of them. ”

“That’s hopeless, ” Art3mis said, shaking her head. “We don’t have time to search all those instances. We still have four more shards to collect, and only about five hours to do it. ”

“You’re right, ” I said. “We don’t have time. But I bet I know someone who does. Hold on. Give me a minute…. ”

I pulled up my HUD and selected L0hengrin’s name from my contact list, then I tapped the icon to send her a text. Then, on the off chance that Anorak was monitoring my video feeds, I closed my eyes and typed out my entire message to Lo without looking at it:

Dear Lo,

I could use some more of your help after all.

I need you to go back and locate the instance of Middletown where Og obtained the First Shard. It should be the only other instance on the planet that is currently set to the year 1989. You’ll have to teleport around and check them all one at a time until you find it. Once you do, I need you to look for anything unusual or out of place. Something around Og’s home, or in Kira’s bedroom. If you find something, message me immediately and I’ll send you my coordinates so we can meet in a secure location.

Thanks, Lo. I can’t tell you anything more right now, but I promise, it’s important.

I owe you a Wookiee Life Debt for this.

Sincerely,

I used a keyboard shortcut to send the message without looking at it. Then I opened my eyes, closed my HUD, and turned back to face Art3mis.

“I emailed a friend who might be able to help, ” I said. “Fingers crossed. ”

Art3mis gave me a dubious look and folded her arms.

“A friend? ” she repeated. “What friend? ”

Was that a hint of jealousy in her voice?

“I’ll tell you later, ” I said as I threw open the door of Hughes’s office and sprinted off down the hall. “Come on! ”

As we headed down the stairs, I cast a glance back down the hall. Through his open office door, I caught one last, brief glimpse of John Hughes sitting at his desk, hunched over his typewriter in a thick cloud of cigarette smoke, clacking away furiously on his typewriter keys, writing as if his life depended on it.

Art3mis drove us back to the Shermer Hotel, where the NPC of Robert Duckie Jr. was standing frozen out front. She handed him the script we’d retrieved from John Hughes. RDJ opened it to the last few pages and scanned them in a matter of seconds. Then, as soon as he finished reading them, the script suddenly vanished in a shower of glittering gold dust.

“Got it! ” Duckie said as he put on his sunglasses. “Let’s plow. ”

Then he ran inside the hotel. We followed him through the hotel lobby and down a long marble-floored mezzanine, which led into the main ballroom where the senior prom was being held. Andie Walsh was waiting there, standing all alone in her homemade pink dress, biting her lower lip and looking around nervously. When she spotted Robert Downey Jr. walking toward her, decked out in his Duckie threads, her eyes widened in surprise, just as some piano music from Michael Gore’s Pretty in Pink score swelled on the soundtrack. Then, without hesitation, Andie ran toward Duckie. He started running, too, and when they reached each other, she leaped into his open arms. Then he twirled her around a few times before setting her back down. They both took a step back to admire each other’s outfits, exchanging a few words that we were too far away to make out. Then Andie took Duckie’s arm, and together, they walked through the ballroom entrance. Art3mis and I followed them inside.

It looked identical to the ballroom where the original ending of Pretty in Pink was filmed. There was a large dance floor in the center of the room, where a few hundred well-to-do Shermer teenagers dressed in retro tuxedos and pastel-colored prom dresses were grooving to the song “If You Leave” by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. Two DJs in matching bellhop outfits stood on the stage, surrounded by synthesizers and mixing boards. A giant black-and-white photograph of a conductor and his orchestra covered the wall behind them. Circular dining tables were arranged on either side of the dance floor, and I spotted Steph McKee again, sitting at one of them in a tuxedo, looking bored. Then he saw who had just walked into the room and sat bolt-upright.

As Andie and Duckie slowly made their way to the dance floor, every pair of eyes in the room turned to look at them. When the couples out on the floor spotted them, they too stopped dancing to stare. A few seconds after that, the DJs stopped the music too. Now everyone in the room was motionless, staring at Andie and Duckie, with bourgeois contempt burning in their eyes.

We watched from a distance as Blane McDonough emerged from the silent crowd and walked over to Andie and Duckie. He said something to Andie, but she only responded by shaking her head. Blane offered his hand to Duckie, and after considering it for a few seconds, Duckie shook it. Blane turned and walked away, disappearing back into the crowd.

“Boom! ” Art3mis shouted. “Andie’s first fate no longer needs mending! ”

We continued to watch as Andie took Duckie’s hand and the two of them walked through the sea of silent, staring faces, wearing proud and defiant looks of their own. When they reached the center of the dance floor, the DJs turned the sound system back on and cued up a new song: “Heroes” by David Bowie.

Duckie took Andie in his arms and the two of them began to dance, spinning around and around together, until they merged into a single whirling blur of pink. Then that pink blur vanished in a brilliant flash of neon-pink light.

When my eyes recovered, I saw the Third Shard floating in the air above the center of the dance floor, where the two star-crossed lovers had stood a second earlier.

Art3mis ran over and tried to grab the shard, but her hands passed right through. She laughed and turned back to look at me, then made a come-hither motion with her index finger. I joined her on the dance floor.

“ ‘For each fragment my heir must pay a toll, ’ ” I recited as I reached out and wrapped my fingers around the shard.

As before, taking the shard triggered another flashback….

I was Kira again, this time standing in her childhood bedroom in her mother’s tiny cottage on the outskirts of London. I’d seen photographs Kira had taken of herself in this room, to mail to Og back in the States during his senior year of high school, which they spent apart.

Two open suitcases lay on the bed in front of me, filled with a jumble of clothing, sketchbooks, and boxes of floppy disks. Kira glanced up from her packing to look at eighteen-year-old Ogden Morrow, who was standing in the doorway, blocking it with his large frame. Beyond it I could just make out a short bald man in a ragged shirt, in the midst of yelling something in a thick Cockney accent. This had to be Kira’s drunken stepfather, Graham—who was clearly enraged, and only keeping his distance thanks to the cricket bat that Og was clutching with both hands and brandishing threateningly, like Shaun of the Dead.

This was another moment Og had described in his autobiography. Something that had occurred in April of 1990, after Kira told her family she intended to move back to the States that summer, to help Og and Halliday found Gregarious Games, instead of going to university like they wanted her to. Hearing this, her abusive stepfather had become enraged and slapped her. (I could still feel the dull ache of pain around her/my left eye at that very moment. ) When she called Og and told him, he jumped on the first flight to London to get Kira and bring her back home. And I was experiencing Kira’s memory of that rescue. Or a few seconds of it anyway…

Og glanced back over his shoulder, locked eyes with me/Kira, and gave her a warm smile that let her know everything was going to be all right, that she was safe, and that he would protect her. In that instant, I also felt her intense physical reaction to Og’s glance and his smile, and it gave me a sense of just how profoundly Kira had loved him. Samantha’s smile still gave me the exact same sensation—a sensation best described as devastation.

…Then, in a blink, the flashback was over. I found myself back on the dance floor with Art3mis. And when I looked down, I saw the Third Shard in my right hand.

I turned it over to read the clue. But instead of words, I saw an image engraved there. It was an ornate shield adorned with stylized math symbols for addition, subtraction, division, and multiplication. I recognized it immediately as the coat of arms of Queen Itsalot, sovereign ruler of the magical kingdom of Itsalot on the planet Halcydonia.

I felt a sudden surge of optimism, immediately followed by an overwhelming sense of dread. On one hand, this was a huge stroke of luck. I’d spent a huge chunk of my childhood on Halcydonia, and my knowledge of it was encyclopedic, even by gunter standards. But I hadn’t set foot on the planet in over ten years. And after my last visit, I’d vowed never to return.

Art3mis and I—along with Aech and Shoto, both looking shaken but eager to rejoin the quest—materialized on Halcydonia. Specifically, within my personal Be-Free Treehouse, located deep within the Friendship Forest of Faraway, which was where any Halcydonian was automatically transported when they returned to the planet. Any kid in the OASIS under the age of thirteen could earn a Be-Free Treehouse by completing the free educational quests spread across the planet. Once you earned your treehouse, it belonged to you for the rest of your life, and no one could come inside it without your permission. It was just a tiny virtual space, but growing up in the stacks, it was also the first space that I was able to call my own—and the only one, until I discovered my hideout.

When Kira and Og founded Halcydonia Interactive and created this planet, they’d cooked up the Be-Free Treehouses as a way to give kids around the world a free, happy, virtual home inside the OASIS that they could always escape to, and find themselves surrounded by an endless assortment of furry friends and anthropomorphic animal teachers who were always overjoyed to see them, and who just wanted to teach them how to read, write, spell, and do arithmetic, all while staying physically fit and being kind to others.

Being able to put on my OASIS visor and be transported to the magical kingdom of Halcydonia was one of the things that kept me sane, and it made my life in the Portland Avenue Stacks bearable. And it did the same thing for millions of other kids around the world.

If you were under age thirteen, you could teleport to Halcydonia for free from Incipio, or from any public transport terminal anywhere else in the OASIS. And once you got there, all the quests and learning games were free too. I never wanted to leave. And for a few years, I almost never did. Those were the last few years of my mother’s life, when she was slipping deeper into depression and the addiction that would end up killing her.

During those last years, as our tiny, grim trailer in the stacks became an increasingly unpleasant place to be, I spent more and more time hanging out inside my treehouse on Halcydonia, and sometimes after she got off work, my mom would log back in to the OASIS and join me there, so I could tell her about my day, or show her the artwork I’d made, or introduce her to one of my new virtual animal friends.

The inside of my Be-Free Treehouse was one large circular room, with a continuous band of windows all the way around the outside wall, giving us a panoramic view of the surrounding forest, which was filled with millions and millions of identical trees, each with an identical treehouse built into it. This dense forest of treehouses appeared to stretch on forever, in every direction.

Like all of the treehouses, mine had a large hollow tree trunk at the center, containing a spiral staircase leading to the ground. I’d decorated the interior so that it resembled the treehouse where Chewbacca’s family lived on Kashyyyk in the Star Wars Holiday Special. Aech noticed this a few seconds after we arrived and chuckled, then she let out a long Wookiee growl of recognition. I didn’t laugh. I was too busy teetering on the verge of an emotional breakdown, as I took a long look around the room.

There was a giant console television on one side of the room, positioned directly in front of an even more enormous blue couch. The TV was still running through a playlist of some of eleven-year-old Wade’s favorite shows. There was currently a green Muppet newscaster on the screen, and after a few seconds I placed him as Gary Gnu, the host of The Gary Gnu Show. He had orange hair and an orange goatee, and he was in the midst of uttering a phrase that I must’ve heard hundreds of times when I was growing up here: “No g’news is good g’news with Gary Gnu! ”

By turning the treehouse TV’s giant channel knobs, you could watch shows from a huge free library of old children’s educational programming from the late twentieth century. Shows like 3-2-1 Contact, The Big Comfy Couch, Captain Kangaroo, The Electric Company, The Great Space Coaster, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, Pee-wee’s Playhouse, Romper Room, Reading Rainbow, Sesame Street, Zoobilee Zoo, and many, many more. Kira and Og had used their vast fortunes to purchase the rights to these long-forgotten shows, then uploaded all of them to the free video archive here on Halcydonia, where future generations of kids could keep enjoying and learning from them forever.

But the Morrows didn’t stop there. They also re-created the sets from all of these old educational shows as virtual OASIS environments, and all of their characters as lifelike NPCs. Then they scattered these characters and environments all over the surface of Halcydonia, mixed in with the Morrows’ own educational quests and minigames. That was one of the many reasons Halcydonia had felt like such a magical place to spend my time as a lonely kid in the stacks. As I wandered across its magical landscape (which was completely devoid of advertising and microtransactions), I might see Elmo from Sesame Street talking to Chairy from Pee-wee’s Playhouse. Then they would both run over and invite me to play a game of Sorry! or Trouble on a nearby picnic table. That sort of thing happened everywhere on Halcydonia. For a kid like me, it hadn’t just been an escape. It had been a life preserver, a lone place of joy and belonging for a little boy desperate for both.

I’d always thought of the Morrows as two of my very first teachers. But now, I realized they had also served as my surrogate parents. That was why it had been so thrilling to meet Og in person and become his friend—and why it had been so devastating when he’d turned his back on me. Now I knew I’d given him no other choice.

The walls of my treehouse were covered with old drawings and artwork that my mother and I had created together. Lots of knights and wizards. And Ninja Turtles. And Transformers. There were also a bunch of framed selfies of our avatars posing together, taken in this very room. And just a few feet away, sitting atop a bookshelf, was a real photograph of me and my mother, taken in our trailer, just a few months before she died. In it, we were both making silly faces as we posed for a selfie.

I’d forgotten that photo was here, and seeing it again for the first time in a decade felt like having an old wound ripped open, right there in front of my friends.

Art3mis saw the photo, too, along with my reaction to it, and she immediately went over and placed it facedown on the bookshelf. Then she walked back over to me and gave my shoulder a comforting squeeze.

“You need a minute? ” she asked. “We could wait outside. ”

“You guys should know something, ” I said. “I had a nervous breakdown the last time I visited this planet. That’s why I haven’t been back in so long. ”

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