Ready Player Two (Ready Player One #2)

by Ernest Cline

In one of his favorite TV shows, Max Headroom, Network 23’s hidden research-and-development lab was located on the thirteenth floor. And The Thirteenth Floor was also the title of an old sci-fi film about virtual reality, released in 1999, right on the heels of both The Matrix and eXistenZ.

There it was: number 42. Another of Halliday’s jokes—according to one of his favorite novels, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the number 42 was the “Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.”

Then I punched in the seven-digit combination from the egg’s inscription into the code pad beside the vault door: 8-6-7-5-3-0-9, a combination no self-respecting gunter would have trouble remembering. Jenny, I’ve got your number. I need to make you mine….

If the ONI could do everything Halliday claimed, then he’d once again done the impossible. Through sheer force of will and brainpower, he’d once again turned science fiction into science fact, without much regard for the long-term consequences.

also wondered about the name Halliday had chosen for his invention. I’d seen enough anime to know that oni was also a Japanese word for a giant horned demon from the pits of hell.

This was it—the final, inevitable step in the evolution of videogames and virtual reality. The simulation had now become indistinguishable from real life.

My friend Kira always said that life is like an extremely difficult, horribly unbalanced videogame. When you’re born, you’re given a randomly generated character, with a randomly determined name, race, face, and social class. Your body is your avatar, and you spawn in a random geographic location, at a random moment in human history, surrounded by a random group of people, and then you have to try to survive for as long as you can. Sometimes the game might seem easy. Even fun. Other times it might be so difficult you want to give up and quit. But unfortunately, in this game you only get one life.

To win the videogame of life you just have to try to make the experience of being forced to play it as pleasant as possible, for yourself, and for all of the other players you encounter in your travels. Kira says that if everyone played the game to win, it’d be a lot more fun for everyone.

Like Marty McFly, I woke up at exactly 10:28 a.m., to the song “Back in Time” by Huey Lewis and the News.

I’d had it modified to play the same song at the same time Marty hears it, after he finally makes it back to the future.

Aech set up a similar charity in North America called Helen’s House, which provided a safe haven for homeless LBGTQIA kids throughout the United States and Canada, along with another foundation devoted to providing impoverished African nations with self-sustaining technology and resources. And for kicks, she called it the Wakandan Outreach Initiative.

would. I wore the same outfit every day, so I never had to expend any thought on what to wear next. I got the idea from Jeff Goldblum in The Fly, and he, in turn, got it from Albert Einstein.

Human beings were never meant to participate in a worldwide social network comprised of billions of people. We were designed by evolution to be hunter-gatherers, with the mental capacity to interact and socialize with the other members of our tribe—a tribe made up of a few hundred other people at most. Interacting with thousands or even millions of other people on a daily basis was way too much for our ape-descended melons to handle. That was why social media had been gradually driving the entire population of the world insane since it emerged back around the turn of the century.

I was even beginning to wonder if the invention of a worldwide social network was actually the “Great Filter” that theoretically caused all technological civilizations to go extinct, instead of nuclear weapons or climate change. Maybe every time an intelligent species grew advanced enough to invent a global computer network, they would then develop some form of social media, which would immediately fill these beings with such an intense hatred for one another that they ended up wiping themselves out within four or five decades. Only time would tell.

And if we kept growing at our current rate, before too long we might be the only one. That was the reason a lot of our own users had started to refer to GSS as the “New Sixers” and me, Aech, Shoto, and Samantha as the “Four Nerds of the Apocalypse.” Two-Face was right. You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

According to all of the intensive studies and tests we’d conducted, there was no link between the OASIS Neural Interface and the lymphoma that had ended Halliday’s life.

We’re turning an entire generation of children into ONI junkies, before they even have a chance to experience life in the real world.” “News flash,” I said, as soon as she stopped speaking. “Life in the real world totally sucks for most people.

“Some people define themselves by railing against all of the things they hate, while explaining why everyone else should hate it too. But not me. I prefer to lead with my love—to define myself through joyous yawps of admiration, instead of cynical declarations of disdain.”

It’s cool to use the computer, don’t let the computer use you…. There is a war going on. The battlefield’s in the mind. And the prize is the soul. July 19, 1999

Mrs. Johnson opened it, wearing an annoyed scowl. Her young daughter was standing in the doorway behind her, and she was scowling at us too. I recognized both of them from their brief scene in The Breakfast Club when they drop Anthony Michael Hall’s character, Brian, off at detention, and his mom says, “Well, mister, you better figure out a way to study!” and then his little sister says, “Yeah!” (Another piece of trivia I’d learned from Artie’s blog, years ago, was that they were played by Anthony Michael Hall’s real-life mother and sister.)

However, I did catch a glimpse of two young boys chasing each other around the dining-room table with Nerf guns. I realized they must be NPC re-creations of the Hugheses’ two sons, James and John. Seeing them reminded me of an interview John Hughes gave, where he mentioned that his screenplay for Mr. Mom was based on his experience caring for his two boys on his own for a year,

when his wife, Nancy, spent a lot of time traveling for work.

“Mother pus bucket,” Art3mis muttered.

According to Aech, the best ones to check out were Prince playing in the middle of a rainstorm in Miami at Super Bowl XLI, and his midnight show on New Year’s Eve in 1998—when everyone finally got to party like it was 1999.

Through one of the schoolhouse’s open windows, I could see and hear Prince dancing with a whole classroom full of Muppets while singing about having starfish and coffee for breakfast. One of the kid Muppets singing along with Prince bore a distinct resemblance to him.

One of them caused me to do a double take—a young black woman who bore an uncanny resemblance to Aech when I’d first met her. When I pointed Aech’s NPC doppelgänger out to her, she smiled and nodded. “That’s Boni Boyer,” she said. “She played keyboards for both Prince and Sheila E. And she was a total badass. She gave me hope. If a girl who looked like her could wind up performing with Prince, I figured there might still be a chance for me.”

“Later in life, after he became a Jehovah’s Witness, Prince came out as anti-gay,” she said. “He believed that God didn’t approve of homosexuality, so he couldn’t either. Can you believe that, Z?” She shook her head. “For decades he was an icon and a role model to generations of sexually confused kids and adults. He spoke for us, through his lyrics: ‘I’m not a woman, I’m not a man. I am something that you’ll never understand.’

After a few repetitions, we all started singing along with the chorus—until Aech suddenly snapped off the radio in disgust. “Hold up a second,” she said, turning around in her seat to address Shoto. “Did my ears just deceive me, or were you just singing ‘Living correct’?” Shoto nodded. “Yeah, so?” he said. “Those are the lyrics, aren’t they?” “No,” she replied. “No, those are not the lyrics, Shoto. The title of the song is ‘Little Red Corvette.’ It always has been.” Shoto furrowed his brow. “Seriously?” he said. Then he shrugged. “Wow. That really changes the whole meaning of the song for me.”

When it was over, Morris called us up onstage and announced that we had passed the audition with flying colors. “Say, ‘I pledge allegiance to the Time’!” Morris shouted. “Can y’all say that?”

Then Aech said what she always used to say to me, whenever we appeared to be facing a no-win situation: “Nice working with you, Dr. Venkman.” This always used to make me chuckle, but now it hit too close to home. “See ya on the other side, Ray,” I recited, clutching the neck of the Cloud Guitar like it was a particle-thrower.

My HUD informed me that this woman was Prince’s first wife, Mayte Garcia.

“One does not simply walk into Dor Daedeloth,” I said, assuming that Aech wouldn’t get the joke. She didn’t.

during the First Age, Sauron was just one of Morgoth’s demonic generals. And he was also a shapeshifter, who could transform into a wolf or a bat.”