“I told you,” Samantha says, snatching one of the headsets off the table, “I am never going to let one of these things take control of my brain. Not ever.”
She hurls the headset against the wall, but it doesn’t break. They’re very durable.
“How can you form an educated opinion when you haven’t even tried it?” Aech asks quietly.
“I’ve never tried sniffing paint thinner either,” Samantha snaps back. She sighs in frustration and runs her hands through her hair. “I don’t know why I can’t make you guys understand. This is the last thing humanity needs. Can’t you see that? The world is a complete mess right now….”
She pulls up half a dozen different world newsfeeds on the conference-room viewscreen, filling it with images of poverty, famine, disease, war, and a wide array of natural disasters. Even with the audio muted, the barrage of images was pretty horrific.
“Half the world already spends every waking moment ignoring reality inside the OASIS. We already peddle the Opiate of the Masses. And now you want to up the dosage?”
I roll my eyes and shake my head. I can feel my adrenaline rising.
“That’s total bullshit, Arty, and you know it,” I say. “We could turn off the OASIS tomorrow, and it wouldn’t solve any of humanity’s problems. It would just rob people of the only escape they have. I mean, I get where you’re coming from—and I agree that everyone should balance their time in the OASIS with equal time in reality. But it’s not our place to mandate how our users live their lives. Growing up in the stacks would have been hell for me if I hadn’t had access to the OASIS. It literally saved my life. And I’ve heard Aech say the same thing.”
We both glance over at Aech. She nods in agreement.
“We weren’t all lucky enough to grow up in some ritzy Vancouver suburb like you, Samantha,” I say. “Who are you to judge how other people deal with reality?”
Samantha clenches her jaw and narrows her eyes at me, but she still doesn’t reply. And I apparently take this as my cue to shove my foot even further into my mouth. All the way, in fact.
“ONI technology is also going to save hundreds of millions of lives,” I say self-righteously. “By preventing the spread of all sorts of infectious diseases—like the flu pandemic that killed both of your parents.” Now it’s my turn to level a finger at her. “How can you be against an invention that could’ve prevented their deaths?”
She snaps her head around and looks at me in wounded surprise, like I’ve just slapped her across the face. Then her gaze hardens and that’s it—the exact instant her love for me disappears. I’m too amped up on adrenaline to notice it there in the moment, but I spot it plain as day on every single one of my repeat viewings. The sudden change in her eyes says it all. One second she loves me, and the next she loves me not.
She never responds to my question. She just stares daggers at me in silence, until Shoto finally chimes in.
“We’re going to make trillions of dollars selling these headsets, Arty,” he says calmly. “We can use that money to help the world. To try and fix all of the things that need fixing.”
Samantha shakes her head. “No amount of money will be able to undo the damage these headsets are going to cause,” she replies, sounding defeated now. “You guys read Og’s email. He thinks releasing the ONI is a bad idea too.”
“Og hasn’t even tried the ONI,” I say, letting too much anger creep into my voice. “He’s like you. Condemning it without even trying to understand its potential.”
“Of course I understand its potential, you idiot!” Samantha shouts. She looks around the table. “Christ! Haven’t any of you rewatched The Matrix lately? Or Sword Art Online? Plugging your brain and your nervous system directly into a computer simulation is never a good idea! We’re talking about giving complete control of our minds to a machine. Turning ourselves into cyborgs…”
“Come on,” Aech says. “You’re overreacting—”
“No!” she shouts back. “I’m not.” Then she takes a deep breath before glancing around the table at all three of us. “Don’t you see? This is why Halliday never released the ONI technology himself. He knew it would only hasten the collapse of human civilization, by encouraging people to spend even more time escaping from reality. He didn’t want to be the one responsible for opening Pandora’s box.” She looks at me, and now her eyes are filling with tears. “I thought you wanted to live here. In the real world. With me. But you haven’t learned a goddamn thing, have you?”
She reaches over and brings her fist down on the power button of the data drive connected to my ONI headset, ending my recording.
* * *
When we held an official vote on the matter, Aech, Shoto, and I voted to patent the ONI headset and release it to the world, with Samantha being the lone voice of dissent.
She couldn’t forgive me. She told me so right after I cast my vote against her. Right before she dumped me.
“We can’t be together anymore, Wade,” she said evenly, her voice suddenly devoid of emotion. “Not when we disagree on something so basic. And so important. Your actions today will have disastrous consequences. I’m sorry you can’t see that.”
Once my brain finally processed what had happened, I collapsed into a chair, clutching my chest. I was devastated. I was still in love with her. I knew I’d broken her heart. But I also believed releasing the ONI was the right thing to do. If I’d withheld it from billions of suffering people just to preserve our relationship, what would that have made me?
When I got her on the phone and tried to tell her this, she got furious once again. She said that I was the one who was being selfish, refusing to see the danger in what we were doing. Then she stopped speaking to me altogether.
Luckily, my new ONI headset offered an easy, ready-made escape from my misery. With the press of a button, it literally took my mind off of my broken heart, and focused it elsewhere. I could put on the headset and relive another person’s happy memories anytime I pleased. Or I could just log in to the OASIS, where I was treated like a god, and where everything now felt completely real—as real as the most vivid dreams feel while you’re having them.
When the Shard Riddle appeared, I’d seized on it as another distraction. But now, over three years later, my ongoing obsession with solving it had become a forced and desperate exercise and I knew it. It was really just an attempt to forget the mess I’d made of my personal life. Not that I ever would have admitted it out loud.
None of these distractions helped me fix what was broken, of course. I still thought about Samantha every day. And I still wondered what I could’ve done differently.