The weeks and months following the “Endgame” as it became popularly known, were grueling. They were chalk full of lawyers, GSS company officials, and many many meetings. The public message I released on my POV channel before entering the third gate roped Art3mis, Aech, and Shoto into the mess as well. It was no simple task dividing the prize in four. James Halliday’s fortune was largely stock in GSS and because he personally owned over half of the company, my desire to divide the winnings helped appoint each of us to GSS’s board of directors. Og was gracious enough to let us stay with him through the entire ordeal. In fact, we all stayed in his majestic Oregonian home until the next company board meeting which was held on the estate that December. It became a bit of a tradition to hold the annual event there. After many treacherous full-day meeting with various GSS lawyers and company executives there was little energy to log into the OASIS. After all, there was quite a lot of reconstruction underway in the fallout of IOI and an appearance by any one of us might disrupt those efforts.

After the arrest of nearly every IOI executive, the full scale investigation into the company’s dealings did not stop making headlines. Hundreds of small IOI subsidiaries were dissolved or sold off to other companies. A major anti-trust suite was brought against what did remain and major public players, including GSS, lobbied for new federal legislature that would help prevent the power pendulum from swinging too far in favor of any single company. The Endgame also helped patch a tremendous degree political strife that had been ignited in the wake of the energy crisis. Several countries engaged in wars called armistice to settle the matter of OASIS reconstruction. Almost the entire planet feared an OASIS shut down as GSS and international governments scrambled to keep critical services online. It turns out that IOI had a contingency plan in place that essentially vaporized major internet service providers, OASIS edge services, and any other critical infrastructure that could help the company keep its seat of power.

Within a week of the Endgame Ogden Morrow himself launched a significant effort to form the International Alternate Reality Consortium (I-ARC for short). A surprising number of nations immediately joined, undoubtedly because it was led by the great and powerful Og. I-ARC quickly spurred an unprecedented bout of geopolitical cooperation as it began talks to redistribute the critical but crumbling power chips of IOI. A proposed treaty was drafted that allowed I-ARC member nations to nominate private companies from their countries to assume responsibility of IOI assets. The purpose was of course, to keep the millions of now ex-IOI employees paid and happy so the global economy didn’t plunge any further into recession. This all happened before Aech, Shoto, At3mis, and myself could even come up for air.

When Art3mis and I returned from Og’s hedge maze the night of the Endgame, Terence Yu was the first to greet us. He was in the long dining hall. The light from low torches lining the walls was swallowed by vaulted ceilings. He sat at the far end of a long banquet table, longer than I had ever seen, even in the OASIS. It could have seated 50 or more easily, and looked awfully strange with just Mr. Yu, Aech, and Shoto congregating at one end. Art3mis kept her gaze low as we made the long walk to the far end of the hall. There were papers strewn about on the table.

“Ah, Parzival and At3mis, or should I call you Wade and Samantha?,” he cooly hissed as we approached, eyes still fixed on the papers he was shuffling.

“Finally! What took ya so long?” said Aech.

“Navigating a hedge maze at sunset IRL is no Lady Bug alright!?”

Art3mis remained silent, even though I was sure I could get a giggle with a Coleco arcade classic reference. Something was off. I could feel it as much as I knew Art3mis did too.

We sat down on opposite sides of the table and Terence pushed us a bound stack of papers. “This was drafted as soon as you made your statement and entered the third gate,” he said, gesturing toward me. “It is long but it explains the basics of who gets what and how much. It also explains what each of you will be responsible for as company board members.”

Paging through quickly and intensely Shoto replied, “That seems simple enough.”

At3mis narrowed her eyes at Terence without even looking at the papers, “When did you say this was drafted?”

“Just after Parzi-, Wade, entered the third gate.”

“Isn’t that a little soon to have been placing bets? The sixers were in the gate right behind Parzival.”

“It was a preemptive maneuver on our part but we had an entire nerve center of lawyers working on the Endgame timeline and possible outcomes. Many contracts were drafted.”

Silence fell on the room as each of us looked at the documents, rubbed our eyes, and thumbed through pages. The sound of paper turning echoed off the stone walls. Flit after flit, pages were turned in silence as the four of us pondered our newfound wealth. The space between us suddenly felt cold and vapid, and my eyes glazed over.

Just as the awkwardness reached an unbearable zenith, Og burst into the hall.

“How is everything going in here,” he shouted down the long echoing corridor.

We got whiplash from how quickly we all turned our heads. Og was wearing a bathrobe, befitting of his role playing sensibilities, made up of old silk screened DnD manual covers quilted together.

“I am sorry to cut this rendezvous short but my staff needs to prepare our evening meal,” he announced as he approached.

“Very well,” Terence said, sucking the jovial reverberations of Og’s voice right out of the air. “You may keep your packets to review over your meal and we will reconvene to sign these documents later in the evening.”

Terence briskly exited the room, almost gliding across the stone floor. As the large wooden door closed behind him, Og let out a sigh of relief, “Ahh, that guy. He gets on my nerves.”

Aech laughed reluctantly.

Dinner was brought in by Og’s personal chef. The meal itself was surprisingly simple, fitting for someone trying to recapture a suburban youth. Meat loaf and macaroni and cheese. Og was sure to point out that the mac was his absolute favorite and that not a week went by without him eating it at least once. The entire meal gave me a strange warmth. I had never had a proper sit-down dinner like this. Being so entrenched in the hunt gave real meaning to it, not just because I had scarcely eaten anything other than takeout for the past year, but also because it had a certain degree of sentimentality. I didn’t have this growing up. I have never had a meal at a table with friends. It gave me pause to realize it, but, I felt at home. For the first time in my life, I felt a sense of belonging somewhere not in the OASIS. The moment was full of hope, significant I thought. Then Aech broke me out of my stupor, “Compliments to the chef Mr. Morrow, this is some good stuff.”

“Please, call me Og. This is the least I can do you for you all. I expect you will be staying here for some time so please get comfortable. Everything is going to change now and it is important you don’t get overwhelmed. Oh, how things will change…” he trailed off as his gaze slowly rose to the cieling, lost in a thought.

I looked to Art3mis and she had a glare in her eye, a degree of uneasy I couldn’t place.

“What is that guy’s story anyways?” she bolted at Og, forgetting any semblance of manners.

Og snapped out of his day dream and replied with a suddenly serious tone, “Terence. He runs haptics at GSS. James personally brought him on. A bit of mad scientist if you ask me. He only came to GSS for the egregious paycheck we promised him. That, and the nearly bottomless amount of resources James poured into researching the next OASIS.”

“The next OASIS?” Art3mis asked.

“James always dreamed of complete escape. It was part of why we lost touch, in those years, when he really almost did escape entirely. He poured a lot into the Kyushu lab. That is where Terence’s team created the first embedables.”

“The lab is in Japan?” Shoto said in a hush.

“The operation is really quite advanced. Unfortunately I am not even privy to the things going on over there. I am just as mixed up by the rumors as anyone.”

“What rumors?” Art3mis pressed on.

“My guess is that they’re working on completely embedded haptics, but that is only a rumor.”

“Woah”, I whispered, immediately thinking about what IOI might have done to get their hands on something like that. I kept having minor flash backs to my time as an indent. The clinically sanitary walls of my HAB still managed to give me the chills. I touched my ear where I could feel the relatively fresh scab from my IOI ear gear. What would completely embedded haptics even look like?

Og continued, “There are other things Terence has done though, things that really made me question the direction of GSS. Things I still feel could be set right again.”

“Like what!?” Art3mis shouted, almost leaping from her chair, fork still in hand.

“Settle down now,” said Og gesturing a hand to stem her misplaced outrage, “Terence’s team also tests the limitations of current immersion rigs, that is why I have my own custom rigs here. I really shouldn’t be telling you all this but it might be time. GSS has always been pressured to program in a contingency plan, a backdoor, in case anything went really south. I speculate Terence might have caved to those demands in some form or another. Through the hardware division.”

I cut in abruptly, “Like what IOI was doing with hacked immersion rigs to swap multiple people behind a single avatar!”

“Precisely…”

“So you think Terence was working with IOI?” Art3mis asked.

“The pressure GSS received came from many places; the US government, other nations, and private companies for sure. I wouldn’t doubt it if IOI also tried to tighten the vice a bit too.”

“What about other haptic manufacturers?” asked Aech, wiping her mouth with one of Og’s monogrammed napkins.

“You would have to ask them, but I doubt they’d tell you. GSS is pretty ironclad and titanium reenforced if you know what I mean, but armor like that doesn’t come cheap for mom and pop haptics houses.”

“Is GSS still leading research into new haptic technologies,” asked Shoto, in a collected but enthusiastic tone.

“I have no doubt,” Og replied.

Art3mis, a bit more relaxed, “You have been mostly disconnected from GSS for a long time. Do you think…”

Og cut her off, “Terence is an extremely competent interim CEO. I should not be planting ideas in your heads, I am sorry. You will all be board members before this night is through. I should treat you all as such.” Og sat up a bit more in his chair, annunciating suspiciously well. “I trust you can all find Mr. Yu in the foyer, ready to accept those signatures. I doubt he has gone far without retrieving such important and lengthy reading material.”

I looked at Aech who wore the same confused grimace as I did, then at Shoto, then at Art3mis. We collectively shrugged as Og stood and dashed off toward the double doors at the end of the hall, his bathrobe floating behind him like a regal symbol of geekdom. He pushed both doors open wide as he passed. Terence bumbling aside as the large man barreled down the hall. The four of us shared a sideways glance.

Art3mis grabbed a pen and flipped to the final page of her packet. She signed the thing with pomp, letting her signature trail right off the edge of the page. As she got up from the table Shoto and Aech both looked at me. “I don’t know if we should be so hasty,” I said with another shrug. Shoto looked down at his packet contemplating, then flipped to the last page and signed it with a tightly grouped squiggle of the pen. Aech followed and they both got up. Did I miss something? What has gotten into Art3mis? I wasn’t exactly sure what I should do. Of course I dreamed of starting a life better than the one I knew in the stacks but there seemed to be too many strings. I hesitated a moment and my mind somehow went to Dagobah. Yoda cautions Luke in The Empire Strike Back not to rush his training, not to follow his instinct to leave Dagobah to help Han and Leia. Against his warning of course, Luke went to Cloud City and faced Vader. I knew I had to sign this paper. I knew that even if IOI had fallen, the OASIS needed me. The OASIS needed all of us.

Read on!

Chapter 2: ​Returning to the OASIS