Taking off one of my haptic gloves, I groped around in the dark for the long wooden rod under my rig. With little effort I raised it in the air like a medieval long sword and dropped it down onto the radiator in the corner. A slight hiss was drown out by the sound of the ringing metal. It was very cold in my hideaway despite being only a few subterranean meters from the geothermal vent that powered my entire cabin. The condenser dome was the only thing above ground that wasn’t snowed over because of the heat. A green glow emitted from the server racks behind me. They were all online. I could tell because the diffuse light against the far wall flicked green. When something went red, it only took a glance. Pulling off my other glove, I turned around to admire the machines. Despite running hot, the piercing cold of the basement left it unevenly warmed. This is why the radiator was the crucial final addition to the whole system.

I had been at it for two days straight. Cracking my knuckles, I stretched my arms out in front of me, then above to grab the last rung of the retractible ladder. I pulled hard and it fell to the floor next to my rig with a thud against concrete. I climbed up and opened the hatch. My cabin, was easily 10 degrees colder than the hideaway. I quickly pulled my self up, closed the hatch and pulled the carpet back into place. The heat went on automatically as Kate caught sight of my thermal signature. “Kate?,” I said, rubbing out the goose flesh on the back of my arms, “System update please…”

“No above-threshold seismic activity for the last 46 days, systems online. Power stores at maximum. Waste heat diverted to auxiliary conversion station.”

“And site 2?”

“Fully operational, 86% energy recapture, all systems online. Also…”

My eyes drifted to the ceiling as if Kate could read the curiosity in my raised eyebrow.

“You have a new message from a ‘Lacero’ on the Cyberdelia server.”

Kate scoffed after the announcement. I hadn’t programmed her to do that but the intonation algorithm was sure doing its work. Separate from my primary network, in a physically secured vault at site 2, I hid the most cryptographically secure server I had ever put into operation. That is not to say it was the best I could do, it was just very hard to crack. I seriously doubted anyone with today’s tech could even get it to budge. Yet, someone got in. I hid the server deeply in the network, behind all the tricks and trappings I had learned in my tenure as a reclusive self-identifying hacker, waiting for someone with worthy skills to find their way into my web.

The message read:

Dear Pontifex, You are a hard person to reach. It was no easy task getting this far. You might say I have ‘worthy traits’. My only question is about the prize that awaits… I believe you are in possession of something I want. Something that would give an avatar a decided advantage should they need to completely annihilate an entire sector. Name your price. -Lacero

Someone took the bait, but how they knew I had such a rare item eludes me. This, Lacero isn’t screwing around. That’s for sure. I came across the Cataclyst hidden spectacularly deep within the barren desserts of Arrakis. On the planet of Dune, one of the many believed to have been added by Halliday himself, the full realization of Frank Herbert’s world come to life. It was a designated technology zone but very little technology survived there. There was something beyond the fiction of the stories that was programmed into the sand, something that eroded all manner of metals. Even fictional alloys like adamantium-vibranium were reduced to dust in the worst of the storms crossing Arrakis’ equatorial regions. The only way to survive was to become a fremen. The fabled natives of this planet were programmed entirely as NPCs. Halliday did his work. You had to enter the world and play your part to gain access to some of the OASIS’s most secretive quests. The mechanics were truly unique. Once you landed on the planet, a moisture meter would appear in your HUD and you had to keep it at a certain level or suffer rapid hit point reductions from even the touch of a fly on your shoulder.

It took me months to find my way into a sietch and even then, I had to be a contributing member for some time before earning my keep and mounting a sand worm. I traveled with the fremen to many hidden bases, escaping all manner of smuggler, spice miner, and Harkonnen. When I was able to command a small operation on a south bound mission, we came across a sort of mirage at 0 degree latitude. The equatorial crossing was legendary to my sietch. They had many tales about worms that defied their nature and dove under the sand precisely at the threshold to the souther hemisphere. Some told of the creatures simply dropping dead with riders still on them. There was something haunted about the part of planet closest to the sun, something never referenced in any of Frank Herbert’s books. I knew then I had to make the crossing.

As I approached the 5th degree latitude north, my secondary on the back of the worm nearly drove a hook through my shoulder as he tried to get me to give an order to turn back. I resisted and took the worm into the 2nd degree. As we passed into the 1st, only a few kilometers from the equator, half my crew jumped ship and dove into the treacherous sand. Near the equator, patches of slip sand were unpredictable and very dangerous to navigate on foot. It was almost a death sentence to dismount. The moment I reached the equator, my entire crew was gone and the worm kept its course without any guidance. It slowly started to dive but I held my ground. I was going down with the thing. Anything to find out why Halliday left his mark here of all places.

At first it was slow but I could feel the worm going vertical underneath me. In an instant I was sucked under the sand, I forced myself to keep my eyes open as total darkness engulfed me. My hit points plummeted but I was still able to drink from my still suit, bolstering my last remaining life. Just as I ran out of water the darkness subsided and I was standing on the end of a black stone jetty, overlooking the Arrakeen sunset, orange pillars burning at the horizon. In my hands was a massive writhing grey thing. The heart of the maker. I stared at it for only a moment when it crystalized into an ashen orb. Once placed into my inventory, I inspected it. It said only, “Handle with care, for if you dare ignite this ware, death will come to you and the division ensnared.” Ominous I thought.

I replied back to this “Lacero”:

What’s in your wallet? Maybe I will just put this up for auction and see how far you are willing to go for it. -Pontifex

Chapter 4: Seven Sisters