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They all studied my face to see if I was kidding, and saw that I wasn’t.

“I was eleven years old at the time, ” I said. “And my mother had just died of a drug overdose a few days earlier. I went back to Halcydonia because my mom and I had spent so much time here together. I thought it might bring me some comfort, but it didn’t. It just pushed me over the edge. ”

“I’m so sorry, Z, ” Art3mis said. “But this time you aren’t alone. Your friends are with you. And we are going to stay with you, the whole time. OK? ”

I nodded. Then I bit my lower lip to keep it from trembling.

Shoto rested a hand on my shoulder. Then Aech did the same thing and said, “We got your back, Z. ”

“Thanks, guys, ” I said, once I found my voice again. Then I took out the Third Shard and pointed at the coat of arms etched into its surface. “This is the coat of arms of Queen Itsalot, the sovereign ruler of the kingdom of Itsalot, which is a small continent to the south, where most of the math-related quests are located. ”

I opened a map of the planet and made it visible to everyone. It looked just like the Map from Dora the Explorer, but I quickly muted it before it could start singing its own name.

“We’re here, ” I said, pointing to the Friendship Forest. “The queen lives in Castle Calculus, which lies to the south, beyond the MoreStuff Mountain Range and across the SeeSaw Sea. No teleportation is permitted on this planet, and it would take us several hours to get there on foot. But I know a shortcut. That’s the exit, over there. ”

I motioned to the spiral staircase inside the hollow tree trunk at the center of the room. Shoto ran over and began to descend it first, with Aech close behind. But she had to stop and shrink her avatar to half-size to make it onto the tiny staircase. As she was doing that, I went over to grab my tiny Halcydonia Adventurers’ Club backpack off its hook on the wall. These backpacks couldn’t be added to your avatar’s inventory, and the items inside were only useful on this planet, so everyone left them in storage lockers, or in their Be-Free Treehouse, like me.

My mother’s identical backpack was hanging right beside it. I tried to avoid looking at it, but then I went right ahead and looked at it anyway. Including the word stitched onto the back flap in cursive with pink yarn: Mama.

I hit the emotion-suppressing software on my HUD, so Art3mis wouldn’t see me start to sob. I managed to keep moving. I put my own backpack on my avatar’s back. As I did, it automatically enlarged itself to fit my twenty-one-year-old frame. I turned to follow the others down the staircase. But Art3mis was standing there, blocking my way. The emotion-suppressing software was working—there was no way she should have known I was crying, but somehow she did. I tried to go around her. But just like the first time we met, she refused to let me pass.

Instead, she opened her arms and wrapped them around me—something I had long ago accepted that she would never do again. She held me tight, until I finally got my sobbing under control.

Samantha knew all about my mother, and how I found her dead of a drug overdose on our couch when I was eleven. It was heroin mixed with some other stuff, I think. That was the reason I’d avoided all ONI recordings made by heroin users for the entire first year the ONI-net was online. Then curiosity finally got the best of me, and I went all the way down the ONI-net heroin-addict-high rabbit hole. I wanted to experience what my mother had experienced firsthand. To find out exactly the sort of high my mother had been chasing when she’d unwittingly overdosed. I’d always assumed that it must be a pretty great feeling, if my mother thought it was worth losing her life for it. Doing a drug via ONI playback wasn’t the same as shooting it into your own bloodstream. It felt the same, but it didn’t cause the same long-term damage or physical addiction symptoms. And it removed the risk of accidental death. So ONI recordings allowed me to experience the same high my mother had, without destroying my brain and my body in the process. I didn’t find it all that enlightening.

I wiped my eyes and took several deep breaths until I got myself back under control. Then I gave Art3mis a forced smile and a thumbs up. She nodded and took me by the hand, then she led me down the spiral staircase. Once we reached the bottom, I pushed open the heavy wooden door, and together, we stepped outside, into the Friendship Forest, where Aech and Shoto were waiting for us. The two of them were standing side by side in a beam of sunlight breaking through the treetops, illuminating tiny insects and motes of dust floating in the air around them.

I thought Art3mis would let go of my hand before Aech and Shoto saw her holding it, but she didn’t. She let them see. And Aech and Shoto pretended not to notice.

I pointed to a path leading south, through the dense forest of treehouses all around us.

“The MoreStuff Mountains are that way, ” I said. “Just follow me closely, single-file, and only step where I step. Don’t stop to talk to anyone—avatars or NPCs. Also, don’t touch anything, and if you can help it, try not to look at anything either—not for longer than a second or two. Otherwise you might trigger some educational minigame or side quest that you’ll be forced to complete, and we’ll have to go on without you. We don’t have time to stop and play Blue’s Clues. Understood? ”

They all nodded, and the four of us took off, running north along the path at top speed.

Once we reached the edge of the Be-Free Forest, we entered Holden’s Field—a large, flat, open field of rye, perched precariously on the edge of the Cliffs of Salinger, a place where I had completed several different book-report quests at several different grade levels. I had also played countless games of tag in this field, with other kids from around the world. Kids I had never met and would never meet in the real world, with usernames that they had probably changed long ago.

Art3mis rested a hand on my shoulder, bringing me back to the present.

“We need to keep moving, ” she said.

I led them along the edge of the rye field, onto a narrow paved road that snaked to the north, through a rolling countryside and toward the MoreStuff Mountains in the distance. My surroundings seemed even more vibrant and realistic than I remembered—then I realized it was because this was the first time I had experienced this place with an ONI headset.

I heard a gleeful shriek and glanced overhead. There were a few kids flying around in their spellicopters. I had one in my inventory, but they only had room for one person, and that person had to keep spelling new words to stay airborne. We had to find other transportation.

We followed the road until it led us to a small farmhouse with a red barn behind it. There was a wooden wheelbarrow out by the road, with a rake leaning against it. I led Aech, Shoto, and Art3mis to the wheelbarrow and stood on a specific spot on the road beside it, then began to sing at the sky, as loudly as I could.

“It’s the Great Space Coaster! ” I yelled. “Get on board! On the Great Space Coaster! We’ll explore! ”

As I continued to sing, accompanying music began to play out of nowhere. Art3mis laughed and nodded with recognition, then she began to sing along with me. I displayed the lyrics in a browser window, so that Aech and Shoto could join in too.

As we sang, a flying yellow aircar swooped down out of the sky and flew under us, scooping our avatars up and into its fine Corinthian-leather seats.

“Welcome aboard the Great Space Coaster, ” I said, placing my hands on the coaster’s flight stick. “Free transportation to Castle Calculus! Everyone buckle up, otherwise you’ll fall out. ”

I aimed the Great Space Coaster at the MoreStuff Mountains on the horizon and floored the accelerator. Then I kept the hammer down until we were soaring over them. We passed over the starting point for the legendary Oregon Trail quest. A moment later, we flew over Mister Rogers’ neighborhood. Then we continued south, down along the coast of the SeeSaw Sea, and a few minutes later we passed over Gullah Gullah Island.

When I pointed the island out to Aech, it put a huge smile on her face, and as she began to talk about how much she loved that show as a kid, I caught myself smiling too. I didn’t realize how much I’d missed this place. Why had I spent so much time running away? It felt genuinely good to be back here, despite the circumstances.

Once we cleared the mountain range, I set the coaster down just outside the golden front gate of Halcydonia City. It was the only entrance, and it was guarded by the Subtraction Sentinel, a stoic stone giant who would only open the gates for you after you solved a series of simple subtraction problems for him. Once I did this, the Subtraction Sentinel gave me a solemn nod, then he let me enter the city. Then Aech, Shoto, and Art3mis all had to do the same thing. Once we were all inside the gate, I took off at a run, leading my friends through the city’s tangled maze of streets.

As we were making our way down a cobblestone side street, I spotted something strange and completely out of place: a gorgeous cream-colored 1949 Buick Roadmaster convertible that I instantly recognized from Rain Man. Inside it was a young Tom Cruise—or rather, his character from the movie, Charlie Babbitt. He was just sitting there behind the steering wheel, tapping it with his right hand, almost like he was drumming along to music. But there was no music, and his drumming had an odd rhythm to it. Steady, like a metronome, except that every few taps, it seemed like he was pressing on the wheel for an extra moment. The pattern reminded me of a scene in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, for some reason it took me a moment to place, but then it clicked—was he tapping out a message in Morse code?

I opened my Mandarax translation software and used it to translate the Morse code into letters, only to discover that he was spelling out M-O-R-S-E.

I’d never seen a Tom Cruise NPC of any kind on Halcydonia. Content from R-rated movies was expressly forbidden here. So what was going on?

Less than a minute later, I spotted another out-of-place NPC—Raymond “Rain Man” Babbitt, Dustin Hoffman’s character from the same film. He was staring off into space, while rocking slowly back and forth, shifting his weight from his left foot to his right foot. But I could see right away that he was making these movements in a pattern—a mix of short hops and long hops, like Morse code. According to my Mandarax translator software, his feet were tapping out the same word his brother had been tapping out on his steering wheel: M-O-R-S-E.

I didn’t have time to ponder it now, because we’d arrived at Castle Calculus, which was located at the city center. We mounted the ornate marble steps out front, which had a bunch of different math proofs and equations carved into them, and passed through the castle’s grand entranceway, then continued on into Queen Itsalot’s throne room.

Normally, she wouldn’t have granted us an audience so quickly. But I’d already met the queen once before, back when she awarded me the Silver Abacus of Itsalot for completing every math quest on the planet before my twelfth birthday. When I presented the abacus to the Itsalot master-at-arms, he bowed and stepped out of my way, allowing my friends and me to pass.

We walked up the long velvet carpet leading to the queen, who waved to me from her throne. She wore a gold crown with a large jewel-encrusted plus sign as its headpiece, and mathematical proofs and equations adorned her robes, stitched into their gold fabric with bright red thread. Her family’s coat of arms—the same coat of arms etched into the Third Shard—hung on the wall behind her.

She was currently reading a large storybook to a group of baby animals gathered around her feet. But when she saw me approaching, she closed the book and sent them away.

When I reached her throne, I knelt before her and bowed my head, and motioned for Aech, Shoto, and Art3mis to do the same.

“Rise, Sir Parzival! ” cried Queen Itsalot. “My noble subject and dear friend! How good to see you again, after so many years. What brings you back to my kingdom? ”

I rose to my feet, then took out the Third Shard and showed her the coat of arms engraved upon it.

“I’m on a quest to find the Seven Shards of the Siren’s Soul, ” I said. “And I think one of them might be hidden here in your kingdom. Can you help me find it, Your Majesty? ”

Her eyes widened in surprise. She looked utterly delighted.

“Indeed I can, dear boy! ” she replied. “The shard was given to me for safekeeping, a long time ago. I wondered if anyone would ever show up here looking for it, and now here you are, at long last. But before I can give it to you, you’ll need to earn all fifty Halcydonia Wearit-Merit Badges. ”

Behind me, I heard all three of my friends inhale sharply. I glanced back at them.

“Oh my God, ” Aech said. “Fifty? How long is that going to take? ”

“Relax, ” I said. “I spent years here, earning all those badges. With a lot of help from my mom…”

I opened my avatar’s inventory and dug around until I found my old Halcydonia Wearit-Merit Badge sash. Then I presented it to the queen with both hands.

She took the sash from me and looked it over, running her wrinkled fingers down the rows of embroidered patches, each one bearing a different symbol or icon. She counted them one by one, and when she reached fifty, she smiled and nodded to herself. Then she snapped her fingers and there was a blinding flash of light.

When my eyes recovered, I saw that my sash had vanished from the queen’s hand. Now she was holding the Fourth Shard. It sparkled in the bright sunlight pouring into the throne room, through the thousands of stained-glass windows that made up its domed ceiling. (Each one of these windows paid tribute to a different public school teacher, and had been placed here by one of their students. )

Queen Itsalot tilted the shard so that it reflected the different-colored shafts of light, turning the throne room into a giant kaleidoscope for a few seconds. Then she lowered it and held it out, offering it to me.

I knelt before her, then I reached up and took the shard from the queen’s hands, being careful not to meet her gaze. (If I did, there was a good chance she would send me off on a mandatory math quest to rescue one of her royal relatives—usually her husband, the clueless King Itsalot, who was constantly being taken prisoner by the evil wizard Multiplikatar, who tossed him into the Long Division Dungeons beneath Protractor Peak, located high in the MoreStuff Mountains. ) As I wrapped my fingers around the shard, once again I tried to prepare myself for the jolt of what I knew was coming, from the toll I had to pay….

I—or rather Kira—rushed into a cluttered office to find Og sitting at his desk, hard at work on his computer. He turned and Kira held out her sketchpad, and I saw that she’d drawn the Halcydonia Interactive company logo on it.

This was another moment I’d heard Ogden Morrow talk about in interviews and in his biography. Kira had just designed the logo in a fit of inspiration in her own office, down in the GSS Art Department, and then she’d run here to Og’s office to show it to him.

Og looked at the sketch, cried out, “It’s perfect!, ” and rose to throw his arms around Kira.

Then I found myself back in Queen Itsalot’s throne room on Halcydonia, clutching the Fourth Shard. I didn’t even have to turn it over to see the clue engraved into it this time, because it already happened to be facing me when I held the shard up to look at it.

It was another symbol, created from a combination of symbols. It looked like the Mars and Venus gender symbols aligned and placed on top of each other, as if they were having intercourse, with a backward number 7, the top of which curled into a spiral, laid on top of that. Together, these shapes formed a symbol that was still instantly recognizable to any student of late-twentieth-century popular culture, and to any true fan of rock or funk music:

When I saw it, I began to chuckle in disbelief. Then I closed my eyes and shook my head, bracing myself for the unprecedented amount of grief that I knew Aech would be giving me in just a few seconds.

I bowed and thanked the queen, then backed away from her until I was able to step off the dais. When I turned around on the top step, I saw Art3mis, Aech, and Shoto studying my face anxiously, trying to read my expression. Art3mis had all of her fingers crossed and was holding them up to show me.

“Well? ” Aech said.

I lowered my head in defeat and held out the shard so they could all see the symbol engraved on it. Then I closed my eyes and silently began to count to three. I only made it to one….

“Oh-my-fucking-God! ” Aech cried. “No way! It can’t be! ” She started to do a funky dance toward me, then she started to dance around me. “That’s Love Symbol #2, Z! It’s Prince! ”

“Prince who? ” Shoto asked.

“The Prince, ” Aech said. “As in ‘the Artist Formerly Known as’? The Prince of Funk! The High Priest of Pop! His Royal Badness. The Purple One! ”

“Oh yeah, ” Shoto said. “He’s the dude who changed his name to a Glyph of Warding back in the ’90s, right? ”

Aech pointed a finger of warning at him, then smiled wide.

“We’re in luck, guys, ” she said, still dancing in place. “My dad left me his entire collection of Prince’s music and films when he moved out. I grew up listening to them and watching them. I probably know more about Prince and his artistic output than any other human being in history. ”

“I know, ” I said. “Do you have any idea how many times you tried to make me watch Purple Rain with you? ”

She stopped dancing and pointed an accusing finger at me. “And do you remember how many times you actually sat through the entire film with me? Nada. Never. Not once. And we both know why, don’t we? It was because Prince always made you feel a little sexually confused and uncomfortable, didn’t he? ”

The old Wade would have denied this. But like I said, the ONI had broadened my horizons. Enough, at least, for me to recognize the truth about my adolescent self.

“OK, maybe that’s a little true, ” I said, smiling. “Whenever I was watching old episodes of Friday Night Videos and ‘When Doves Cry’ came on, I always averted my eyes when he was getting up out of that bathtub. Every single time. ” I placed my right hand over my heart. “Please accept my sincere apologies, Aech. I’m sorry I never let myself appreciate Prince’s genius. ”

Aech closed her eyes and raised one palm to the sky like a gospel singer and shouted, “Finally! The truth! ”

“So where do we need to go? ” Shoto said. “I take it there’s a Prince planet somewhere? ”

Aech scowled at him.

“Yes, fool, ” Aech said. “There is an entire OASIS planet devoted to Prince, his life, his art, and his music. But we don’t call it ‘the Prince planet. ’ Its name is an unpronounceable symbol. The symbol on that shard. But you can refer to it by its nickname, ‘The Afterworld. ’ It began as a shrine created shortly after the Purple One’s death, during the first decade the OASIS was online. Kira Morrow was one of the fans who helped build it. ”

Aech threw up a 3-D hologram of the Afterworld. It wasn’t a sphere, like most other OASIS planets. It was shaped exactly like the symbol etched into the Fourth Shard—what Aech had referred to as Love Symbol #2.

“It’s in Sector Seven, located right next to Beyoncé, Madonna, and Springsteen, in the superstar cluster, ” Aech said. “The Afterworld’s surface is covered with a stylized re-creation of downtown Minneapolis in the late 1980s, along with locations from Prince’s other movies and music videos. You can walk into a simulation of every club gig and concert he ever performed during his career. It’s a big place…. It’s easy to get lost and wander around in circles there. And we don’t even know where to start looking for the shard…. ”

“Hopefully the shard will give us another clue once we get there, ” I said.

Aech nodded.

“There’s no time like the present, ” she said. “Ready to roll? ”

I nodded and turned around to wave farewell to Queen Itsalot, who was once again reading to her baby-animal subjects. She waved back at me, and it occurred to me that I should ask her if she’d seen Ogden Morrow here earlier today. But no—Og had only collected the first three shards before he’d called it quits. Which was pretty strange, now that I thought about it. Og was one of Halcydonia’s creators. This should have been the easiest shard for him to obtain. And this also would have been an extremely easy place for him to hide clues about his location, since he had admin permissions on the whole planet, and total control of its NPCs, so he could’ve changed anything he wanted….

That was when it hit me. Maybe Og had left more clues for me here. I’d already seen them—the unauthorized, R-rated Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman NPCs. But what the hell was he trying to say? Like his high score on Ninja Princess, I just needed to figure out why he…

Just then, a flashing alert icon appeared on all of our HUDs. I reached out and tapped the one flashing on mine.

“We just got a group text from Faisal, ” I said. “Saying he needs to see us right away. He wants us back at the conference room on Gregarious, so Anorak can’t eavesdrop. ”

“Sorry, Aech, ” Art3mis said, resting a hand on her shoulder. “It looks like we need to make a quick pit stop before we head to the Afterworld. ”

“OK, ” she said. “But Faisal better make it quick! ”

“Yeah, ” Shoto said. “And this time he better have some good news for us. ”

Before I could say how unlikely I thought that was, Aech used her admin ring to teleport us directly back to the conference room on Gregarious.

Sure enough, as soon as we took our seats, Faisal told us he had “even more bad news to share. ” But as he began to relay it, it quickly became clear that “bad” wasn’t a strong enough adjective, and that “downright apocalyptic” would have been far more accurate.

Once we were all back inside the conference room, seated in our usual spots around the table, Faisal had our OASIS engineers confirm that Anorak wasn’t in the vicinity, or on the planet. They also said they had placed Anorak on the planet’s block list, so Anorak should no longer even have been able to visit Gregarious. We also had our admins add several extra layers of security to our conference room, which effectively sealed it off from the rest of the OASIS, making it impossible to eavesdrop on us through any magical or technological means.

Once we had taken all the precautions we could think of, Faisal stepped up to the podium and cleared his throat a few times. Then, in a defeated voice, he asked us if we wanted the “bad news” or the “even worse news. ”

Bad news first won by unanimous vote.

“Another problem has arisen due to Anorak’s firmware hack, ” he said. “I’ve kept it from you until now because I didn’t want to distract you while you were looking for—”

“Spill it already, Faisal! ” Aech shouted.

“It’s OK, ” Art3mis said. “Just tell us what’s going on. We’re not going to fire you. ”

Faisal pursed his lips, and for a few seconds he looked like he might break down and cry.

“Anorak has figured out a way to alter the behavior of our NPCs, ” he said.

We all shouted “What?! ” in unison, so loud it made Faisal flinch. He closed his eyes for a few seconds, then he opened them and continued.

“About an hour ago, all the NPCs in sectors one through four started to behave erratically and wander outside their designated operational boundaries. Some of these rogue NPCs have even gone off-world…. ”

“NPCs can’t go off-world, ” Art3mis said. “Unless they’ve been programmed to do so, as part of a user quest…”

“That’s true, ” Faisal replied. “Anorak must’ve altered their programming somehow. ”

“OK, ” I said. “What exactly are these rogue NPCs doing? ”

Faisal motioned to the viewscreen, where he began to play a rapid series of simcap clips. Each one gave us a first-person view of one or more NPCs suddenly breaking character, going berserk, and attacking an unwitting player avatar. We saw surfers, sidekicks, shopkeepers, pit mechanics, butlers, maids, background citizens, and wise old mentors all going postal, on hundreds of different OASIS worlds. Taken as a whole, the footage made it look like the OASIS had suddenly turned into a nightmarish mash-up of Westworld, Futureworld, and Jurassic World, with a smattering of Imaginationland, Tomorrowland, and Zombieland all mixed in for good measure.

“The NPCs in those sectors all turned homicidal at the same time, ” Faisal said. “A little over twenty minutes ago. And they’re able to use public teleportation terminals now, so they’re running amok all over the simulation, attacking and killing every avatar unlucky enough to cross their path. They appeared to be attacking players on sight and at random. Even in safe zones, where getting zeroed-out by an NPC is supposed to be impossible. The NPCs loot all of the money, weapons, magic items, and artifacts dropped by the avatars they kill. ” He motioned to the viewscreen. “And then they take all of that loot to Chthonia and deliver it to Anorak inside his castle. Watch…. ”

He showed another piece of simcap footage, which looked as if it had been taken from the POVs of several different hijacked NPCs. We saw a shot of Castle Anorak from a distance, and there were hundreds of thousands of NPCs lined up in front of it. They were slowly filing into the castle’s front entrance, and then back out one of its numerous exits, each of them now dressed in matching red-and-black studded leather armor. Once the NPCs were back outside, they joined the orderly ranks that were forming up around the castle. These ranks already stretched to the horizon in every direction, like orcs amassing around Isengard.

Then the simcap we were watching cut to another POV—that of an NPC standing inside the castle throne room. Anorak was sitting with one leg draped over the arm of his golden throne. Sorrento was standing off to his right with a malevolent smile on his face, trying to look imposing. He was dressed in black plate-mail armor that was covered in spikes. Both of his hands (enclosed in enormous black gauntlets) were resting on the hilt of a giant black-bladed bastard sword with magic runes carved into its blade. When I translated them, I realized that Sorrento’s avatar appeared to be wielding the cursed blade Stormbringer, and I suddenly felt ill.

Faisal paused the simcap file for a moment and zoomed in on Sorrento’s smug mug.

“We did find out how Anorak was communicating with Sorrento while he was in prison, ” Faisal said. “As we suspected, it was during his allotted weekly OASIS recreation time. For thirty minutes every Saturday, Sorrento was allowed to log in with a conventional haptic rig. His usage logs indicate he spent nearly all of that time at a free public library on Incipio, reading articles about Mr. Watts and the other members of the High Five. Anorak appears to have taken control of the library terminal Sorrento was using to open a line of text communication with him. The inmate-monitoring software didn’t catch it at the time, and Anorak erased any record of what they said to each other, but we think it must be how they coordinated Sorrento’s escape. ” He let out a sigh. “Still no sign of either him or Og. ”

“Can’t we track Sorrento’s location in the real world? ” Shoto asked. “Through his OASIS connection? ”

Faisal shook his head.

“Sorrento appears to be accessing the simulation through a series of overseas proxy servers, to mask his real-world location, ” he said. “Anorak clearly took security precautions on his behalf. ”

Faisal motioned back up at the viewscreen. He recentered the simcap footage on Anorak, sitting on his bejeweled throne. Anorak had his left hand held out toward the chain gang of NPCs who were rapidly filing past him, so that he could vacuum up the constant stream of weapons and magic items they were presenting to him. As he hoovered up all of this loot, I could see his eyes darting around rapidly, as if he were scanning each new item description on his HUD as it was added to his inventory. With his right hand, Anorak was also constantly discarding unwanted items, which were then picked up and carried out of the room by other NPCs, who were all now dressed in the same studded black-and-red armor, which matched the color scheme of his own robes. As each NPC donned this new attire, the name tag over their head would also change to read “Acolyte of Anorak. ”

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