I’d known Aech for a little over three years. He was also a student on Ludus, a senior at OPS #1172, which was on the opposite side of the planet from my school. We’d met one weekend in a public gunter chat room and hit it off immediately, because we shared all of the same interests. Which is to say one interest: a total, all-consuming obsession with Halliday and his Easter egg. A few minutes into our first conversation, I knew Aech was the real deal, an elite gunter with some serious mental kung fu. He had his ’80s trivia down cold, and not just the canon stuff, either. He was a true Halliday scholar. And he’d apparently seen the same qualities in me, because he’d given me his contact card and invited me to hang out in the Basement whenever I liked. He’d been my closest friend ever since.