Summary
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“Ready Player One,” by Ernest Cline is a science fiction book that starts off on earth, specifically America, and talks about how there was an ongoing energy crisis, catastrophic climate changes, widespread famine, poverty, disease, and over half a dozen wars. The earth had gone to complete crap. That’s around the time where the world heard about James Halliday’s death on the news. Since he had no relatives or successors, he put up his fortune for one lucky soul as an easter egg in OASIS a.k.a. the Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory Immersive Simulation. it is basically super realistic virtual reality with haptic visors, chairs, and suits which let you feel what is going on, and even rooms that have moving floors so you can run and walk without going anywhere in real life, but be moving all over in OASIS. OASIS started as a game, but became a way of life. People would set up shops in OASIS, build houses, get jobs, or just play OASIS for fun to get away from the actual problems in the world. Halliday put his fortune, and the title of the game, in OASIS for whoever finds the 3 keys and beats the 3 gates first. His fortune is billions of dollars, so almost everyone on the planet was looking for it with no progress for 5 years. Many quit the hunt, and ridiculed others who still looked for the egg, known as gunters. That’s where we pick up with our main character, Wade Watts. He got permission to go to school in OASIS instead of regular schools, where he was bullied, and went to his hideout away from the stacks to go to school. Stacks are huge piles of R.V.s, up to 20 + high that the government made to preserve space. Wade lived with his aunt and 15 other people who were unrelated to him because his father died trying to steal supplies from a store, and Wade’s mother died of a drug overdose. His aunt only kept him around to collect his food vouchers, and Wade would fix computers or game systems and sell them for food vouchers. Wade, to help with the egg hunt, along with many others, learned all they could about Halliday and his 80’s obsession. No one made any progress until 5 years after the contest had started. It came to Wade while he was at school online in OASIS. The first riddle was “The Copper Key awaits explorers In a tomb filled with horrors But you have much to learn If you hope to earn A place among the high scorers.” Wade believes that the place to get the first key, the copper key, is on his school’s planet Ludus. He follows his hunch, and finds a cave remade from the dungeons and dragons map tomb of horrors. He finds the boss, the Lich King Acererok, and beats him in a game of Joust, the video game. He gets the copper key and the next riddle. He gains ten levels, as a result from defeating the Lich, and gets his name in the number one spot on the scoreboard, which shows who is closest to Halliday’s fortune.
As he’s exiting the cave, he comes across another OASIS player, a person he crushes on, Art3mis. She runs a popular blog online and talks about her ventures in OASIS. It turns out she found the location for the key weeks ago, but couldn't beat the Lich King in Joust. She sees that Wade, a.k.a. Parzival, beat it, and Wade gives her the hint to play on the left. She beats the Lich king too, and earned the second spot on the board for beating the Lich second. Wade, and Art3mis, quickly decipher the copper key’s riddle, find the copper gate in Halliday’s remade hometown, and beat the challenge by reenacting the movie War Games, as did Art3mis later. Aech, Wade’s longtime friend in OASIS, found and solved the copper key a day later, with a little hint from Wade. Being the first avatar to beat the copper key and gate, Parzival (Wade’s avatar) gets all sorts of endorsement deals, along with an email from IOI's high ranking worker, Sorrento. IOI
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was seen as an evil company along with their sixer workers. Sixers are people who work for IOI and have numbers, not names, that begin with 6. IOI wanted to charge a monthly fee for OASIS, which wouldn’t let a lot of people access it anymore, and no one wanted that. Parzival accepts Sorrento’s email, and they ask for help for finding the key. He says no, but they threaten to blow up where he lives, somehow knowing where he lives, and kill him if he doesn’t comply. Parzival doesn’t, and logs out. Seconds later, he hears an explosion to find his aunt, and the whole stack in a fiery ball of ash and scrap metal. Luckily he wasn’t killed because he was in his hideout. Other endorsements Parzival accepts, as long as they keep his anonymity because he needs the money. Parzival talks with Aech, and the three other people who have cleared the gate Daito, Shoto, and Art3mis to warn them not to talk to Sorrento. They find out later that one of Aech’s school mates I-rok, which no one really likes, told IOI that Aech and Parzival were students on Ludus, which led them to find the copper key. IOI put up a force field where the copper key was so other avatars couldn’t get the key, but the egg hunter (gunter) clans manage to defeat it with some powerful weapons. With the money from his endorsements, and since he was almost killed, Wade moves to Columbus, Ohio to be right where OASIS is hosted and changes his name to be safe from IOI. After he moves, him and Art3mis start going on “dates, at the cost of growing farther apart with Aech,” but when Wade tells her he loves her, at Ogden Morrow’s (the other developer of OASIS) birthday party, she breaks up with him. Later, Art3mis becomes the first person to find the jade key, and the sixers use an artifact they have to find out the sector (Oasis is broken up into quite a few sectors with hundreds of planets in each sector) Art3mis was in when she found the jade key. When all the sixers flock to sector 7, everyone else follows them, and Wade believes the key is on Archaide in sector 7. There he finds a Pac-man game with a score 10 points from a perfect store. He beats the game with a perfect score after a while, and gets a quarter in his inventory that he can’t take out. Aech gets the jade key, and then informs Parzival that the key is on a planet with the game Zork. Parzival heads to Frobozz, since it contains Zork, beats the game as if it were in real life, since Zork was a text adventure, and gets the jade key. Many sixers are approaching as Parzival leaves, and he barely makes it. As he is watching the scoreboard later, he sees Daito’s name disappear, and is contacted later by Shoto saying there was something in his will for Parzival. Shoto tells Parzival that IOI killed Daito in real life, and he left the beta capsule for Parzival, which they got together earlier in a secret mission. The capsule allows Parzival to transform into Ultra Man, who is really tall. The sixers figure out the jade key riddle, and obtain the final key, the crystal key while Parzival racks his mind to solve the jade key riddle. He realizes it is a reference to Blade Runner, and finds the nearest Tyrell building, beats the game Black Tiger, and is given the riddle to the crystal key.
He has an idea where it is, and heads into temple of Syrinx, named after a song from Rush, and plays on a guitar in the Rush song “Discovery,” and is told the crystal gate cannot be beat alone. He places the guitar in the center, and is given the crystal key. The sixers have already found the crystal gate, and have put up a shield around where it lays, Anorak’s Castle. Tons of members and clans of OASIS have tried blowing it up, but with no luck. To take the shield down, they would need an inside man. Wade hacks himself to be 20,000 credits in debt to IOI, and gets taken to be an indentured worker for IOI until his debt is paid off. There he uses hacks he got earlier off the OASIS black market to get into IOI’s intranet, and gives himself administrator powers. He sets the shield to fall in a few days, gathers information about IOI and the plans they have, and get Aech’s, Art3mis’, and Shoto’s profile information, and manages to escape by getting janitors clothes delivered to him. He goes to an internet cafe, and gives Aech, Art3mis, and Shoto all the information he downloaded, and told them of their plan to kill all of them. He also sends out information to the news stations all over, incriminating IOI. He also sends an email to every OASIS user he can to meet him at Anorak’s castle in a few days to take the crystal gate area. While he is talking to Aech, Art3mis, and Shoto, Ogden appears, and says he has been eavesdropping on them. He gives them all plane rides to his house to use his newest OASIS machines to carry out their plan. Parzival only meets Aech there, and finds out that the person who plays Aech definitely isn’t their avatar. They proceed with the plan, but does it work? Read Ready Player One to find out!
He has an idea where it is, and heads into temple of Syrinx, named after a song from Rush, and plays on a guitar in the Rush song “Discovery,” and is told the crystal gate cannot be beat alone. He places the guitar in the center, and is given the crystal key. The sixers have already found the crystal gate, and have put up a shield around where it lays, Anorak’s Castle. Tons of members and clans of OASIS have tried blowing it up, but with no luck. To take the shield down, they would need an inside man. Wade hacks himself to be 20,000 credits in debt to IOI, and gets taken to be an indentured worker for IOI until his debt is paid off. There he uses hacks he got earlier off the OASIS black market to get into IOI’s intranet, and gives himself administrator powers. He sets the shield to fall in a few days, gathers information about IOI and the plans they have, and get Aech’s, Art3mis’, and Shoto’s profile information, and manages to escape by getting janitors clothes delivered to him. He goes to an internet cafe, and gives Aech, Art3mis, and Shoto all the information he downloaded, and told them of their plan to kill all of them. He also sends out information to the news stations all over, incriminating IOI. He also sends an email to every OASIS user he can to meet him at Anorak’s castle in a few days to take the crystal gate area. While he is talking to Aech, Art3mis, and Shoto, Ogden appears, and says he has been eavesdropping on them. He gives them all plane rides to his house to use his newest OASIS machines to carry out their plan. Parzival only meets Aech there, and finds out that the person who plays Aech definitely isn’t their avatar. They proceed with the plan, but does it work? Read Ready Player One to find out!