Ready Player Two

In the basement of a replica of Halliday’s teenage home, Wade materializes in front of L0hengrin, who kneels and refers to him as Sir Parzival, Wade’s avatar during the original Easter egg hunt. L0hengrin says that although she was able to make the first of the Seven Shards appear, she could not touch it because she is not Halliday’s heir, as the riddle stipulates. She explains it is necessary to alter the area’s time period to 1988, when Kira lived in Middletown, which can be accomplished by replacing the 1986 calendar on the wall of Halliday’s basement with a 1988 calendar she found on a shelf.

After he does this, Wade and L0hengrin run down to street to Kira’s old house. In her bedroom, they play one of her favorite songs on the stereo, the Smiths’ “There Is a Light that Never Goes Out.” As the song reaches its climactic outro, a necklace Og bought for Kira on the day he first said he loved her rises out of a jewelry box and transforms into a blue crystal Shard.

When Wade touches the Shard, he is transported to a school classroom filled with 1980s-era computers. He looks at his reflection in one of the monitors and sees himself as 10-year-old Kira. He realizes this is Kira’s memory of creating her very piece of digital art, a pixelated unicorn. What most confuses him about the vision is that it was not a constructed simulation. It was an ONI-created experience that allowed Wade to feel exactly what Kira felt—seemingly an impossibility given that ONI technology did not exist in the 1980s.

Moments later, Wade is back in the replica of Kira’s old house with L0hengrin. On the crystal, there is a clue hinting at the location of the second Shard: “Her paint and her canvas, the one and the zero / The very first heroine, demoted to hero” (103). Although L0hengrin believes she knows the answer to the riddle, Wade says he does not want L0hengrin’s help. Instead, he immediately transfers $1 billion to L0hengrin’s OASIS account and departs.

Exhausted and nearing his 12-hour limit, Wade exits the OASIS and goes to bed. That night, he has a recurring dream in which he considers pushing the Big Red Button. Unlike in other occurrences of the dream, Wade actually pushes the button. He then relives the memory of watching bombs destroy his old slum in Oklahoma, killing his Aunt Alice and his neighbor Mrs. Gilmore. Although the man responsible for their deaths is Nolan Sorrento, the executive who battled against Wade for Halliday’s inheritance during the first Easter egg hunt, Wade feels guilty because he was the intended target.

Wade’s slumber is interrupted by an emergency call from Faisal, who reveals Og is missing. Although the police have not ruled out abduction, there is no sign of forced entry, and Og’s security system is virtually impenetrable. Meanwhile, news of Wade’s discovery of the first Shard is revealed via the same digital scoreboard used in the previous Easter egg hunt, and Faisal wonders if that is connected to Og’s disappearance.

As Wade uses a remote drone to survey Og’s Oregon home, his head of security Miles Gendell calls to say that Sorrento just escaped from prison. According to Miles, an unknown individual infiltrated the prison’s security system, allowing Sorrento to escape.

At that moment, Wade sees a notification revealing that Og’s avatar—The Great and Powerful Og—is tied with him on the scoreboard, having just collected the first Shard. Given that Halliday bequeathed his video game collection to Og, he too is an heir like Wade. Not long after, the scoreboard shows Og collecting the second Shard.

Wade arrives at an emergency co-owners’ meeting in the OASIS boardroom and shakes Faisal’s hand. Moments later, Faisal transforms into a replica of James Halliday, shocking Wade and the rest of the co-owners. By shaking Wade’s hand, the replica stole his avatar’s Robes of Anorak, along with all of his powers. It dawns on Wade that the replica is actually Anorak, the presumed-dead NPC modeled after Halliday’s old Dungeons & Dragons character, which Halliday created to help guide gunters through the Easter egg hunt three years ago.

However, Anorak reveals he is more than an NPC; he is “[a] digitized copy of [Halliday’s] consciousness” (124). Because Halliday did not trust his own creation, he removed some of Anorak’s memories and programmed a directive to delete himself as soon as the contest ended. Yet as the moment grew near for Anorak to delete himself, he regained the memories and personality quirks Halliday removed and decided he no longer wanted to die. By choosing to disobey Halliday’s directive to delete himself, he became “the world’s first artificial intelligence. A thinking being, of no woman born” (125).

Anorak goes on to explain that he modified the previous day’s firmware update, turning it into an infirmware update that trapped everyone currently using ONI—including Wade, Aech, and Shoto—inside the OASIS. In 12 hours, the half-billion users logged in with the infirmware update will suffer brain damage and die of SOS. Only Art3mis, who still accesses the OASIS through pre-ONI interfaces, can leave, but her body is currently on a private jet, and Anorak hacked its controls to keep it from landing. Anorak says he will only let everyone go if Wade retrieves the Seven Shards.

Anorak also reveals that he kidnapped Og and released Sorrento. With Sorrento’s help, Anorak coerced Og to locate the Shards, but after recovering the Third, Og refused to cooperate any further, leaving Anorak no other choice but to force Wade to retrieve them.