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The challenge is to find three keys, but in five years, no one has even got one key, and the big scoreboard, still empty. Some long-forgotten Gunter cracked the first clue and found the first challenge, then this portal appeared. But the challenge to find the first key was a race designed by Halliday that was so hard, no one had ever finished it. The only ones still trying are the Gunters – as in "egg hunters" – like me and Sho and Daito and my best friend Aech. Oh, and of course, the Sixers. The Sixers work for IOI – Innovative Online Industries. They're the second largest company in the world, with desires on becoming the first, which is why they're putting everything they've got into winning Halliday's contest. We call them Sixers because that's the company rule – no name, just numbers. They have a support team made up of Halliday scholars. Like me, they spend all their time studying pop culture that Halliday was obsessed with, trying to find clues to solve the contest. They're just following the orders of the head of IOI, this dickweed named Nolan Sorrento.
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The contest has got to be about connecting with someone, connecting with the world.
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The Oasis was the brainchild of James Halliday. He and his partner, Ogden Morrow, released the first Oasis build in 2025. It was an instant success, and it made them both very rich. But Morrow was out of the picture after a few years. And Halliday, he wasn't just the owner of the world's biggest company; he was like a god. People loved him. They worshipped him as much as his creation. And then, on January 7, 2040...he died. What he left behind changed everything.
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These days, reality is a bummer. Everyone's looking for a way to escape, and that's why Halliday, that's why he was such a hero to us. He showed us that we could go somewhere without going anywhere at all. You don't need a destination when you're running on an omnidirectional treadmill with quadraphonic pressure-sensitive underlay. James Halliday saw the future, and then he built it. He gave us a place to go, a place called the Oasis.
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This is the Oasis. It's a place where the limits of reality are your own imagination. You can do anything, go anywhere. Like the Vacation Planet. Surf a 50-foot monster wave in Hawaii, you can ski down the Pyramids, you can climb Mount Everest with Batman. Check out this place. It's a casino the size of a planet! You can lose your money there, you can get married, you can get divorced, you can...you can go in there. People come to the Oasis for all the things they can do, but they stay because of all the things they can be: tall, beautiful, scary, a different sex, a different species, live action, cartoon, it's all your call. Yeah, that's me...well, that's my avatar, at least until I feel like changing it. Except for eating, sleeping and bathroom breaks, whatever people want to do, they do it in the Oasis. And since everyone is here, this is where we meet each other. This is where we make friends.
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This isn’t just a game. I’m talking about actual life and death stuff.
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Welcome to the rebellion, Wade.