“But you said he might have been abducted?”
“An intruder would’ve had to hack his home security system,” Faisal said. “And his robot sentries. And his jet’s security system. Who could pull that off?”
I nodded. I had the same Odinware system as Og. And the same robot sentries were guarding my estate at that very moment. It was the best home-security tech available—or at least the most expensive.
“But why would Og want to go ‘off the grid’? Where would he go? He already lives in the middle of nowhere, in total seclusion.”
Faisal shrugged. “We’re wondering if…if it’s somehow linked to your discovery last night,” he said. “Congratulations on that, by the way.”
“Thanks,” I said, feeling a tinge of shame instead of pride.
Og had asked me to abandon my search for the Seven Shards years ago. But he’d refused to give me a reason, or tell me anything about the riddle, which had only made me even more determined to figure it out on my own.
How had he reacted last night, when he saw that blue shard appear beside my name?
“Did Mr. Morrow contact you?” Faisal asked. “Or did you contact him?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Og and I haven’t communicated in over two years.”
Because I wouldn’t stop hounding him for information about his dead wife.
“I see,” Faisal said after an awkward silence. “Well, I think you should consider coming in to the office today, sir. PR thinks you should make a statement as soon as possible, before any of these conspiracy theories start to gain traction. We’re being bombarded with interview requests for you. And there are a few hundred reporters camped out downstairs in the lobby.”
“Forget the press, Faisal,” I said. “I just want to find out what happened to Og.”
“We’ve already got our security firm out searching for him, sir,” Faisal said. “And we’re sweeping the global sensor nets too. If his face, voice, retinas, or fingerprints get scanned anywhere in the world, we’ll know about it immediately.”
“Did you check his OASIS account log?”
He nodded. “His last logout occurred shortly after five o’clock last night.”
“Do we still have a GSS security team at Og’s estate?”
“Yes,” he said. “And we still have a telebot on site, if you’d like to have a look around.”
“I would,” I said. “Can you send me its access code?”
“Right away, sir.”
I got dressed and ran down to my office. Then I climbed into my conventional OASIS haptic rig and put on a visor and a pair of haptic gloves. Once I had logged in to the OASIS, I used the remote-access code Faisal sent me to take control of a telebot located at Og’s mansion in Oregon, over two thousand miles away.
Once my link to the bot was established, its head-mounted cameras gave me a live view of Og’s stunningly beautiful home. Judging by the angle of my POV, I was standing in front of Og’s small jet hangar. It was at the edge of his private airstrip, which he’d had constructed in a valley between several of the highest peaks of the Wallowa Mountains in eastern Oregon.
In the distance, beyond the runway, I saw the steep cobblestone staircase at the edge of the runway, which led up to Og’s multilevel mansion, constructed on a series of plateaus carved into the base of the mountain range. From the outside, it looked like a perfect replica of Rivendell, as it appeared in Peter Jackson’s film adaptations of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Several waterfalls were visible in the distance, spilling off the peaks beyond the enormous house and its grounds.
Even under these circumstances—and even though I’d spent an entire week of my life there—the scale and the beauty of it all still took my breath away. Og had literally moved mountains and rerouted rivers to make the fictional valley of Imladris a reality, here in this secluded place. He’d kept the cost of the project a secret, but some estimated he’d spent close to two billion dollars. A higher price tag than Buckingham Palace. Gazing at it now through the telebot’s eyes, it seemed like money well spent.
I disconnected the GSS telebot from its charging dock, which was built into the rear of an armored GSS security transport. Two GSS security officers standing nearby waved at me and I waved back. Then I turned my telebot around and piloted it over to the long, winding staircase leading up to the house.
At the top of the stairs, a stone path led me across the grounds and up to the main entrance of the house—a set of enormous wooden doors, with ornate Elvish runes carved into them. They swung open for me as I approached, but I still felt like a trespasser. If I’d shown up here unannounced a few days ago, when Og was still home, I wasn’t sure he would’ve invited me in.
I took a quick look around the foyer. Og owned four telebots, all brand-new Okagami TB-6000s with gleaming gunmetal-blue chassis and chrome trim. Three of them were still in their charging rack just inside the front entrance. But the fourth one was missing. It had disappeared the previous evening, along with its owner. Its transponder had been deactivated at the same time the house security system went offline.
I kept moving, through the entrance hall and on into the main house. It had been over three years since I last set foot here, but to my eyes everything looked the same. Giant tapestries and fantasy artwork covered the walls, and stone gargoyle statues and antique suits of armor lined the dark wood-paneled hallways.
I took a look around Og’s office, then his library, then his enormous home theater. I didn’t spot anything out of the ordinary, but I didn’t expect to. Neither the police nor the GSS security team had found any signs of a break-in or a struggle. According to the logs, Og had deactivated his own security system and surveillance cameras at 7:00 P.M. last night. Everything after that was a mystery.
I put on my imaginary Detroit Lions ball cap and shifted my brain into Magnum PI detective mode.
What if someone had figured out a way to hack Og’s unhackable security system and remotely disable it?
And what if the hacker hijacked Og’s missing telebot and then used it to force Og onto his private jet, and then hijacked the autopilot too?
Telebots had been used to perpetrate all sorts of crimes, but the perps were almost always caught, because users were required to log in to their OASIS account to operate them. Hijacking a telebot was supposed to be impossible, too, because of all their hardwired safeguards.
But if Og had been taken against his will, why didn’t he trigger any alarms? Why weren’t there any signs of a struggle? Og was in his mid-seventies, but he still would have put up a fight.
Unless his kidnapper had bound and gagged him. Or drugged him. Or knocked him unconscious with a blow to the head. But at his age, that might kill him….
I forced the image of Og being bludgeoned out of my mind and got the telebot moving again. I wandered the hallways aimlessly, not sure what I was looking for, until I found myself standing by the closed door of one of Og’s guest rooms. It was the room where Samantha had stayed during our weeklong retreat here. It was also the room where she and I made love for the first time. (And the second, third, and fourth.)
I stared at the door through the telebot’s eyes, with one of its hands resting on the knob.
Maybe I’d already missed my chance to fix things with Og. But it wasn’t too late with Samantha—as long as we were both still alive, there was a chance I could make things right with her.
I piloted the telebot through the labyrinth of rooms and hallways, to Og’s personal arcade, a huge carpeted room containing the vast collection of classic coin-operated videogames that Halliday had willed to him after his death. The antique games were all powered off, and their screens were dark.