Ready Player One: Chapters 0000-0002

He was the videogame designer responsible for creating the OASIS, a massively multiplayer online game that had gradually evolved into the globally networked virtual reality most of humanity now used on a daily basis.

A second, much older Halliday lies inside the casket, his body emaciated and ravaged by cancer.

“My entire estate, including a controlling share of stock in my company, Gregarious Simulation Systems, is to be placed in escrow until such time as a single condition I have set forth in my will is met. The first individual to meet that condition will inherit my entire fortune, currently valued in excess of two hundred and forty billion dollars.”

He plops down in front of the Atari, picks up a joystick, and begins to play.

Most of the entries were his stream-of-consciousness observations on various classic videogames, science-fiction and fantasy novels, movies, comic books, and ’80s pop culture, mixed with humorous diatribes denouncing everything from organized religion to diet soda.

When the first anniversary of Halliday’s death arrived, the fervor surrounding the contest began to die down.

To me, they were hallowed artifacts.

She did it to get the extra food vouchers from the government every month.

The trailers on the bottom level rested on the ground, or on their original concrete foundations, but the units stacked above them were suspended on a reinforced modular scaffold) a haphazard metal latticework that had been constructed piecemeal over the years.

My avatar materialized in front of my locker on the second floor of my high school—the exact spot where I’d been standing when I’d logged out the night before.

My jab elicited laughter from a few of his friends and the other students standing nearby.

Now they were trying to seize control of GSS by exploiting a loophole in Halliday’s will.

To become a Sixer, you had to sign a contract stipulating, among other things, that if you found Halliday’s egg, the prize would become the sole property of your employer.

She wrote with an endearing, intelligent voice, and her entries were filled with self-deprecating humor and witty, sardonic asides.

Her newest blog post was titled “The John Hughes Blues,” and it was an in-depth treatise on her six favorite John Hughes teen movies, which she divided into two separate trilogies: The “Dorky Girl Fantasies” trilogy (Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink, and Some Kind of Wonderful) and the “Dorky Boy Fantasies” trilogy (The Breakfast Club, Weird Science, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off).