Player 1

Chapter 14 Level 1(12)
The next moment, I'm in an old 80s phone box next to a bus stop.When you open the door, you feel as if you've just traveled in time.Several NPCs hanging around are wearing clothes from that era.A woman with an afro is nodding her head up and down to the music on her Walkman, and a child in a jacket that says "Members Only" is leaning against a wall and juggling a Rubik's cube.Mohawk-headed punks sat on cheap plastic chairs, watching reruns of Torrent on the coin-operated TVs.

After determining the direction of Halliday's house, I drew my sword and walked there.The whole of Middleton is a PVP area, and you must proceed with caution.

When the game started, 250 and the six Halliday hometowns were turned upside down by the hunters.The prevailing view is that the reason why Halliday designed so many Middletons is to allow people to search at the same time without fighting.Of course, in the end people came back with no keys and no clues.Since then, public interest in the planet has suddenly faded, but there are always a few scattered hunters who don't give up.

If I walked into Halliday's house and heard someone was already there, I'd walk away and steal a car and drive 25 miles (any direction) to the next Middleton, or the next, whatever Find a place where no one is there.

The weather outside the bus station was fine, with the orange-red sun hanging low in the sky.Although I have never been to Middleton, I learned from my research that Halliday designed the place to look like it was in the late fall of 1986, and it has never changed.

I opened the town map and ran along the route to Halliday's childhood home.It's about a mile to the north.The details determine success or failure, and the surrounding scene amazed me all the way.Halliday designed the entire town on his own, using atlases, phone books, photos and street videos from the time as references to restore his childhood hometown as perfectly as possible.

This reminds me of "Full of Strength" [66].Like the town in the movie, this place is not prosperous, full of rural atmosphere, the houses are not small, the distance between buildings is not short, and there are not many residents. Fifty years ago, low-income families could own their own houses, which seems almost impossible today. The NPC townspeople all seem to be taken from John Coorg Mellencamp's music video.I see people either hanging out, walking their dogs, or sitting on a bench enjoying the warm sun.Out of curiosity, I waved to them a few times, and each time they waved back to me.

Everything here is exactly the same as that era: NPCs drive antique cars slowly through the shady streets: Pontiac, Dodge Omni, Chevrolet Camaro 28, and Nissan K-car.Even the price of gas at the gas station is still marked at 93 cents a gallon.

As I walked down the street where Halliday's house was located, I heard a horn and the scoreboard refreshed.

Artemis succeeded.

Her name appeared below me, with a score of [-]—a thousand slightly lower than mine, and it seemed that this game gave the first player some advantage.

The scoreboard is finally not just a decoration. From now on, hunters can use it to observe the progress of their peers. While the scoreboard shows the world who is the leader, it also makes them a target of public criticism.

I bet right now, Artemis is looking at the brass key for clues.Surely she would also know where she was headed.Maybe she's already on the way.

I came to Cleveland Avenue, where Halliday grew up.Across the sidewalk is the home of little Halliday.It was the same as in the photo: a small two-story building with black and red fire-resistant paint on the walls.There are two Fords from the late 70s parked beside the road, one of which still has cinderblock underneath.

Standing in front of Halliday's hometown, I imagined his growth trajectory.I've seen Middleton now in pictures.All the old houses were demolished in the late 90s to make room for the commercial street.But Halliday preserved his childhood forever—in "The Oasis."

I cross the sidewalk, open the front door of the house, and step into the living room.I recognize this room from Anola's Invitation.The wood-grained walls, orange carpet and gaudy furniture look like they've been bought second-hand from a dance hall.

The house was empty.Halliday didn't design his parents as NPCs.Probably too weird even for him.But they still appear in the family portraits posted on the wall.This family photo was taken at a local fair in 1984, but Halliday's parents were still wearing old clothes from the late 70s. James, 12, stands between them, looking into the camera through thick glasses.They looked like a normal American family, the man in the brown lounge suit with the gritty face was not reminiscent of a drunkard, and the smiling woman in the lace jumpsuit did not seem like a manic-depressive patient; As for this little boy in a faded T-shirt, no one will know that he will become the creator of the new world.

I don't understand why Halliday always says that his childhood was painful, but he can't forget it.If I really escaped from my stacked building one day, I would definitely not look at it again, nor would I use a computer to simulate such a realistic scene of the past.

I glanced at the Zenith TV and the Atari 2600 on it. The game console looked lifelike, and the wood grain on its surface used the same texture as the TV cabinet and the wall.Next to the Atari are nine cassettes: The Battle, Little Bees, Dangerous Escape, The Big Bang, Star Raiders, The Empire Strikes Back, Master Star, Yar's Revenge, and Heavy. ".Oddly, the Adventure that Halliday mentioned isn't in it, which is pretty weird.The hunters scoured the planet for this, and tried to bring Adventure from elsewhere, but they couldn't run successfully on Halliday's Atari.reason?Nobody knows.

I quickly scanned the entire room, but no one was there.Opened Halliday's door, still empty, so I went in and locked the door.Screenshots and video recordings have been allowed in this room for several years, so I've done a lot of research on the place, but standing here with my feet on the ground still makes my heart pound.

The carpet is drab, as is the wallpaper, but the walls are covered with posters of movies and rock bands: Genius Strikes Back, War Games, Pink Floyd, Tron and Degenerate, Rush .The bookshelf by the door is filled with science fiction and fantasy paperbacks (I've read them all, no doubt).There is also a bookshelf next to the bed, piled with countless game magazines, and the Dungeon and Dragon handbook is also mixed in it.The boxes by the wall are labeled by category, and there are all kinds of comics inside.And Halliday's first computer was placed on a dilapidated wooden table.

Many home computers in that era had this look, and they were all-in-one computers with keyboards and chassis.I can see the words "TRS-80 Color Computer II, 16K RAM" printed on the keyboard.Wires from the back of the machine ran to disk storage, a small color-screen monitor, a dot-ink printer, and a 300-baud modem.There is also a telephone dial bulletin list that sits next to the modem.

I sat down and plugged it in, and heard the machine's hard drives turn from a creak to a low, steady hum.The screen lights up, and after a while, the green boot screen of TRS-80 appears, and a few words appear on the screen:
Extended version color BASIC1.1
Copyright Tandy 1982
start up
Below is a cursor, blinking in different colors, I type "hello" and press enter to confirm.

The four words "grammar error" will jump out. Words like "Hello" are not recognized in the BASIC language.It's really an old computer with an old system.

Research led me to learn that the "recorder" was actually the TRS-80's disk drive, which converts data into an analog signal and stores it on disk.When Halliday first started learning programming, the poor kid didn't even know what a disc was, so he could only save his own code on the disc.I rummaged through the box and found several read-only cassettes that would fit into the drive, among them Dungeons of Daggrass.The disk casing of the game has turned yellow, and the seal is an underground corridor viewed from the No.1 viewing angle, with a huge blue stone elemental giant blocking the front.

As soon as the list of games for Halliday's bedroom was published online, I downloaded and studied them all.About two years ago, I finished Dungeon of Daggrass, which took me almost a week.It's rough, but captivating.

Through various forums on the Internet, I learned that in the past five years, many hunters have passed "Dungeon of Daggrass" on Halliday's TRS-80.What's more, I played through all the games in this box to see if I could find something, but the results speak for themselves.And none of these hunters got the brass key.

Trembling slightly, I turned off the TRS-80, inserted the "Dungeon of Dagglass" cassette, and turned it on again.The screen suddenly went black, and a simple image of a wizard appeared on the screen. The sound effect was also very simple, but one could still feel the chilling meaning in it.Below the wizard with one-handed staff is a block of text: I ask you if you dare to enter...Daggrass dungeon?
Putting my hands on the keyboard, I started the game.Just then, the tape recorder on Halliday's closet played familiar music, Basil Praedoris's composition for Conan the Barbarian.

It must be Anola trying to tell me that I'm going in the right direction.

I quickly forgot the time, forgot that Parsifal was sitting in Halliday's room, and even more forgot that in reality I was staying in the secret cabin, curled up next to the electric heater, tapping the air in front of me, Inputting commands on the virtual keyboard.All of these are drifting away, I am addicted to the game of the game.

In the Dagograss dungeon, you control your character by entering commands, including turning left or holding a torch, advancing through a maze of vector dots, or fighting spiders, stone elemental giants, poisonous insects and ghosts .The underground palace is divided into five floors, and the difficulty increases layer by layer.You have to send the command first, and wait for the computer to respond before proceeding.Overall, though, the game isn't difficult.Because you can access files, it is difficult to die. (Saving and loading to disk is a dead thing, though, and you have to keep fiddling with that crap so it doesn't crash.) I was even able to temporarily leave the game while saving, and turn on the heater again to save myself Freeze.

Playing and playing, the music of "Conan the Barbarian" stopped, the tape recorder made a rewind sound and started to play the other side of the tape, which was the music of "The Legend of Eagle Wolf"!If Edge was here, it would definitely break down.

At four o'clock in the morning, I reached the last floor and faced the evil wizard of Daggrass.After reading the file twice, I finally defeated him with the Elven Sword and the Ring of Frost. Picking up his Lord of the Rings meant clearing the game.At this time, a mage appeared on the screen, his robe and staff were shining with stars.The text below the image reads: Look!Fate is in the hands of the new mage!

I wait.But a while passed and nothing happened.Then Halliday's antique printer clicked and spit out a sheet of paper, and the top of the printer slid off.It says:

Congratulations!You opened the first door!

Looking around, I noticed a brass door had appeared at some point on the bedroom wall, taking the place of the War Games poster.There is a brass-colored lock between the two doors.

The door was so high that you had to climb up Halliday's desk to reach the handle.After inserting the key and twisting it with a click, the entire door began to expand, like popcorn heated by high temperature.Finally, the door opens inwards, revealing a starry sky that seems to lead into an unfathomable universe.

"My God, there are stars everywhere." A voice said, and I recognized it as a line from the movie "2010".Then, with a low, ominous hum, Richard Strauss's "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" began.

I bent down and leaned into the gate, looking left and right, looking around.There are endless seas of stars everywhere, and a few nebulae and galaxies with faintly discernible shapes float in the distance.

I jumped into the open door without hesitation, and the space inside the door seemed to be pulling me too.Anyway, I started to fall, but kept going straight.It felt like the stars were falling with me.

0011
I found myself standing in front of the arcade playing Little Bees.

The game has been going on for a while, and the points on the screen have reached 41780.I glanced down and saw hands manipulating the joystick.After being stunned for a second or two, I realized that I quickly shook the joystick to the left to avoid being blown up by the computer.

While playing, I began to observe the surrounding environment.The arcade machine on the left is "Digging for Gold", and the right is "Space Escape", with the sounds of other games coming from behind.I decided to ignore that and focus on my own game, but the face reflected on the arcade screen...wasn't me.It was Matthew Broderick.Matthew Broderick before starring in "Spring Is Not a Book Day" and "The Eagle and Wolf".He was young then.

I understood where I was and what my role was.

I'm David Letterman, Matthew's character in "War Games," and that's where the movie opens.

I'm in the movie.

Quickly looking around, I found that this is indeed the "Twenty Halls" - the playground in the movie, which not only has arcade machines, but also catering business including pizza.As far as the eye can see, young people with 80s nostalgic hairstyles are gathering in front of the arcade, while others are sitting in their seats eating pizza and drinking soda.From the jukebox in the corner, disco music was blaring.Everything is exactly the same as the movie, and Halliday faithfully reproduces every detail in this virtual world.

Omg.

I've wondered about the challenges beyond the first door years ago, but it's still beyond my wildest imagination.Hell, I should have expected that, "War Games" is Halliday's favorite movie, and I've seen it over 30 times for it.The main character is a student, but already well-known in the hacker world, well, the protagonist of this film is exactly the type I want to be.

So it looked like the research I had done was about to pay off.

A beep came from my right trouser pocket.I held the joystick in my left hand, and reached into my pocket with my right hand and took out a digital watch.The time showed seven forty-five in the morning.I pressed the button to turn off the alarm, and a warning popped up on the screen: David, you're going to be late!

I called out the map of the oasis to see where the door had taken me, but I found myself not only not in Middleton, but not even in any known part of the oasis.The map was blank, and when I stepped through the door, I was sent to a simulation system that was running independently, a virtual location outside the oasis.It seems the only way to leave is to complete the missions here.But if it's a game, how do I play it?If this is a task, what is my goal?I continued to play the game while thinking about these questions.At this time, a boy came to me.

"Hey David!" He looked at my game.

I recognize the boy, his name is Howie, and in the movie Matthew gives him the game as he rushes to school.

"Hey, David!" the boy repeated, in exactly the same tone as in the movie, and this time his words scrolled across the bottom of the screen in text, like a news bulletin.A red light flashes on the screen: "Last conversation warning!"

I began to understand that the system was reminding me to speak the next line quickly.If I keep silent, the words "Game Over" will definitely pop up on the screen next.

I am very calm about this, because I have watched "War Games" many times, and I know all the scenes and dialogues in it like the back of my hand.

(End of this chapter)