Ready-player-one Info

I called Art3mis. Her real name was Samantha. She lived in Canada. She picked up on the first ring.

Inside wasn't money or power. It was a simple room: a poorly lit arcade, the smell of stale pizza. And there he was—James Halliday's digital ghost, sitting at a Tempest cabinet. ready-player-one

I finished the game. My score: 1,000,000 exactly. The score Halliday never achieved. I called Art3mis

What followed was the largest digital battle in history. Mechagodzilla fought a Sixer dreadnought. Aech piloted the Serenity from Firefly . I summoned the Gundam from Mobile Suit Gundam —a 60-foot robot that punched through Sorrento's flagship. She picked up on the first ring

It was 2045, and the world smelled of burnt circuits and regret. Most of humanity lived in the Stacks—vertical trailers stacked like rusty Jenga towers—but no one really lived there. They lived in the OASIS.

I went to the Third Gate: a perfect replica of Halliday's childhood bedroom in Middletown, Ohio. The gate wasn't locked by a riddle. It was locked by regret. I had to play a perfect game of Tempest —Halliday's favorite—while watching a hologram of his younger self crying over a lost friendship with his partner, Ogden Morrow.