One morning in Columbus, Ohio. There was a teenager named Wade Watts. He lives in an apartment. He is a teenager whose world OASIS is the main thing in life. The Oasis is a virtual world that allows users to play different roles. After Halliday, the creator of the oasis is dead. He left a will stating that whoever was in possession of the Easter Egg, that person will have possession of all his possessions. Wade goes all in on hunting down the Easter Egg. This competition brings Wade to a real friend and archenemy IOI, an organization that wants to take over the OASIS and wipe out everyone who gets in his way in this tournament. For this reason, Wade must bet it all with his life to win the tournament and survive IOI.
Wade is watching the Explorers. After that, he sees IOI's debt-paying employee's car stop in front of the building. Now they are coming up to the floor where Wade is. Wade activated several security commands that he had previously programmed. The security system was switched to a deadlock mode in a fraction of a second
When four policemen and an IOI guy are standing in front of the door. A young IOI informed Wade through the door that "I am here because you have failed to make the last three payments on your IOI Visa card, which has an outstanding balance of over $20,000, and these gentlemen are here to assist me in apprehending you and escorting you to your new place of employment."
Wade decides not to open the door. One of the policemen immediately turned on the metal cutting machine. Another metal cutter punched a hole directly into the wall of Wade's room. Wade closed all windows on the monitor and set the account security to the highest level to protect personal information. The cop who was busy with the door completed the task.
A cop with a defibrillator step in first, holding a defibrillator in Wade's face. A second cop immediately puts a ball in Wade's mouth. They tore off the haptic suit, leaving Wade naked before handing Jack a jumpsuit with plastic shoes
They drove Wade into the detention vehicle. Then push him inside and strap him in place. Two policemen climbed up behind him. The car then headed towards IOI.
A thick film of neglect still covered everything in sight. The streets, the buildings, the people. Even the snow seemed dirty. It drifted down in gray flakes, like ash after a volcanic eruption. The number of homeless people seemed to have increased drastically. As the transport rolled deeper into the city’s skyscraper core, Wade saw people clustered on every street corner and in every vacant lot.
Finally, Wade reached 101 IOI Plaza, in the heart of downtown. Wade stared out the window in silent apprehension as the corporate headquarters of Innovative Online Industries Inc. came into view: two rectangular skyscrapers flanking a circular one, forming the IOI corporate logo. The IOI skyscrapers were the three tallest buildings in the city, mighty towers of steel and mirrored glass joined by dozens of connective walkways. and elevator trams. The top of each tower disappeared into the sodium-vapor-drenched cloud layer above. The buildings looked identical to their headquarters in the OASIS on IOI-1, but here in the real world they seemed much more impressive.
The other indents and Wade were herded off the transport. Their handcuffs were removed; then another guard began to swipe each of us with a handheld retina scanner. The line fed into a series of security checkpoints. At the first checkpoint, each indent was given a thorough scan with a brand-new Meta-detector to make sure they weren’t hiding any electronic devices on or in their persons.
Once Wade’d cleared a few more checkpoints, he was ushered into the testing area, a giant room filled with hundreds of small, soundproofed cubicles. Wade was then given a battery of increasingly difficult aptitude tests intended to measure Wade's knowledge and abilities in every area that might conceivably be of use to my new employer. Wade made sure to ace all of the tests on OASIS software, hardware, and networking, but he intentionally failed the tests designed to gauge my knowledge of James Halliday and the Easter egg. Wade definitely didn’t want to get placed in IOI’s Oology Division. There was a chance Wade might run into Sorrento there. Hours later, when Wade finally finished the last exam, he had been “awarded” the position of OASIS Technical Support Representative II.
They led Wade down another corridor, into the Indenturement Processing Area. Wade was placed on a conveyor belt that carried me through a long series of stations. First, they took wade's jumpsuit and shoes and incinerated them. Then they ran him through a kind of human car wash. At the next station, a bank of machines gave Wade a complete physical, including a battery of blood tests.
Finally, he reached the last station, where a machine fitted him with a security anklet—a padded metal band that locked around his ankle, just above the joint. According to the training film, this device monitored my physical location and also granted or denied Wade access to different areas of the IOI office complex. If Wade tried to escape, remove the anklet, or cause trouble of any kind, the device was capable of delivering a paralyzing electrical shock. After the anklet was on, another machine clamped a small electronic device onto Wade's right earlobe, piercing it in two locations. Wade knew from the training film that he’d just been fitted with an OCT. OCT stood for “observation and communication tag.” The eargear contained a tiny comlink that allowed the main IOI Human Resources computer to make announcements and issue commands directly into Wade's ear. It also contained a tiny forward-looking camera that let IOI supervisors see whatever was directly in front of Wade.
lOI’s Technical Support call center occupied three entire floors of the headquarters’ eastern I-shaped tower. When Wade arrived in my cubicle, he grabbed his company-issued visor and gloves from the rack on the bare cube wall and put them on. Then Wade collapsed into his chair. Doing tech support here was nothing like working from home. Here, Wade couldn’t watch movies, play games, or listen to music while he answered the endless stream of inane calls. During each shift, Wade was given three five-minute restroom breaks. Lunch was thirty minutes. Wade fell asleep five separate times during his shift. Each time, when the system saw that he’d drifted off, it sounded a warning klaxon in his ears, jolting Wade back awake. Then it noted the infraction in his employee data file.
When Wade's shift finally ended, he ripped off his headset and visor and walked back to his hab-unit as quickly as he could. “Lights,” he said softly. The lights embedded in the shell of his hab-unit shut off, plunging the tiny compartment into darkness. If someone had been watching either of Wade's live security vidfeeds, they would have seen a brief flash as the cameras switched to night-vision mode.
Then Wade would have been clearly visible on their monitors once again. But, thanks to some sabotage Wade’d performed earlier in the week, the security cameras in Wade hab-unit and his eargear were now no longer performing their assigned tasks. So for the first time that day, Wade wasn’t being watched. If anyone checked the usage logs for his entertainment center, they would show that Wade watched Tommy Queue every night until he fell asleep. Of course, Wade hadn’t really been watching their inane corporate shitcom every night.
About seven months earlier, Wade’d obtained a set of IOI intranet passwords from the L33t Hax0rz Warezhaus, the same black-market data auction site where he’d purchased the information needed to create a new identity. Wade would alter the financial records on his bogus Bryce Lynch identity and allow himself to become indentured by IOI.
Once Wade infiltrated the building and got behind the company firewall, he would use the intranet passwords to hack into the Sixers’ private database, then figure a way to bring down the shield they’d erected over Anorak’s castle. Keeping his eargear camera pointed straight ahead, away from the screen, Wade pulled up the entertainment console’s viewer settings menu and tapped the Apply button again. A small window appeared in the center of the screen, prompting him for a maintenance-tech ID number and access password.
Wade quickly entered the ID number and the long alphanumeric password that he’d memorized. Wade now had access to a maintenance service account designed to allow repairmen to test and debug the entertainment unit’s various components. Wade was now logged in as a technician, but his access to the intranet was still pretty limited. Still, it gave Wade all the elbow room he needed. Using an exploit left by one of the programmers, Wade was now able to create a bogus admin account. Once that was set up, he had access to just about everything.
Wade kept expecting to be discovered and locked out of the system, but it never happened. Wade's passwords continued to work. He’d finally managed to navigate his way through the intranet’s labyrinth of firewalls and into the main Oology Division database.
The Sixers’ private file pile. Eventually, Wade uncovered a restricted area called the Star Chamber. The information inside the restricted area was divided into two folders: Mission Status and Threat Assessments. There were five file folders, labeled Parzival, Art3mis, Aech, Shoto, and Daito. Daito’s folder had a large red “X” over it. Wade opened the Parzival folder first. A detailed dossier appeared, containing all of the information the Sixers had collected on him over the past few years. Wade closed the window, took a deep breath, and opened the file on Art3mis. At the very top was a school photo of a young girl with a distinctly sad smile. To wade's surprise, she looked almost identical to her avatar. If anything, the face Wade saw in the photo seemed even more beautiful to him than that of her avatar, because Wade knew this one was real. He opened Shoto’s file next and Aech seemed to be the one they knew the least about.
Shoto Art3mis After that, Wade opened the Mission Status folder. It appeared to contain an archive of the Oology Division’s status reports, intended for the Sixers’ top brass. The reports were arranged by date, with the most recent one listed first. When Wade opened it, he saw that it was a directive memo sent from Nolan Sorrento to the IOI Board of Executives. In it, Sorrento proposed sending agents to abduct Art3mis and Shoto from their homes to force them to help IOI open the Third Gate. Once the Sixers had obtained the egg and won the contest, Art3mis and Shoto would “be disposed of.” According to the time stamp, Sorrento had sent the memo just after eight o’clock, less than five hours ago. Wade couldn’t spend the rest of the week exploring the Sixer database like he’d planned. Wade had to grab as much data as I could and make my escape now
Wade worked frantically for the next four hours. When he finally finished, it was six thirty in the morning. He pulled up his indenturement profile, accessed his debt statement, and zeroed out his outstanding balance—money he’d never actually borrowed to begin with. Then Wade selected the Indentured Servant Observation and Communications Tag control settings submenu, which operated both his eargear and security anklet.
Finally, Wade did something he’d been dying to do for the past week—He disabled the locking mechanisms on both devices. Wade felt a sharp pain as the eargear clamps retracted and pulled free of the cartilage on his left ear. The device bounced off his shoulder and landed in his lap. In the same instant, the shackle on his right ankle clicked open and fell off, revealing a band of abraded red skin.
Wade performed a few final tasks related to his escape plan, then logged out of the IOI intranet for the last time. He pulled off my visor and gloves and opened the maintenance access panel next to the entertainment center console. There was a small empty space below the entertainment module, between the prefab wall of his hab-unit and the one adjacent to it. Wade removed the thin, neatly folded bundle he’d hidden there. It was a vacuum-sealed IOI maintenance-tech uniform, complete with a cap and an ID badge. Wade pulled off his indent jumpsuit and used it to wipe the blood off my ear and neck. Then Wade removed two Band-Aids from under his mattress and slapped them over the holes in his earlobe. Once he was dressed in his new maintenance-tech threads, Wade carefully removed the flash drive from its expansion slot and pocketed it. Then he picked up his eargear and spoke into it. “I need to use the bathroom,” Wade said
The hab-unit door irised open at Wade's feet. Wade crawled outside and descended the ladder. He passed a few other indents on his way to the elevators, but as usual, none of them made eye contact. Wade rode the elevator down in silence, trying not to stare at the camera mounted above the doors. The elevator reached the lobby and the doors slid open. Wade half expected to find an army of security guards waiting for him outside, their guns leveled at his face. But there was only a crowd of IOI middle-management drones waiting to get on the elevator.
Wade was almost to the doors when someone placed a hand on my shoulder. I froze. “Sir?” Wade heard someone say. It was a woman’s voice. Wade almost bolted out the door, but something about the woman’s tone stopped him. Wade turned and saw the concerned face of a tall woman in her midforties. Dark blue business suit. Briefcase.
“Sir, your ear is bleeding.” She pointed at it, wincing. “A lot.” Wade reached up and touched his earlobe, and his hand came away red. At some point, the Band-Aids Wade’d applied had fallen off. Wade was paralyzed for a second, unsure of what to do. He wanted to give her an explanation, but couldn’t think of one.
So Wade simply nodded, muttered “thanks,” then turned around and, as calmly as possible, walked outside.
Once Wade reached the street, he headed north. Wade's entire body was shivering by the time he finally reached the warm confines of the Mailbox. The week before his arrest, Wade’d rented a post office box here online and had a top-of-the-line portable OASIS rig shipped to it. He located my box, punched in the key code, and retrieved the portable OASIS rig. then put on the gloves and visor and used the rig to log into the OASIS. Wade's heart was pounding as he logged in. He replied to Art3mis first. He told her that the Sixers knew who she was and where she lived, then Wade politely suggested that she leave home immediately and get the hell out of Dodge. Wade sent similar emails to Shoto and Aech, along with copies of their Sixer dossiers.
After that, Wade walked to an OASIS parlor located a few blocks away, a franchise outlet called the Plug. Wade has rented a room and equipment for logging into the oasis. He locked the door behind him and climbed into the rig. The vinyl on the haptic chair was worn and cracked. Wade slid the data drive into a slot on the front of the OASIS console. First, Wade e-mailed all of the major newsfeeds a detailed account of how IOI had tried to kill him, how they had killed Daito, and how they were planning to kill Art3mis and Shoto. Wade spent about fifteen minutes composing one last e-mail, which he addressed to every single OASIS user. Once Wade was happy with the wording, Wade stored it in his Drafts folder.
Then Wade logged into Aech’s Basement. When his avatar appeared inside the chat room, Wade saw that Aech, Art3mis, and Shoto were already there waiting for him. And it seems that everyone is prepared for this.
MEMBER 631011498 Rosenee Madman 631011515 Abdulloh Samae 631011518 Afit Maming 631011624 Hamdee Jijai Section 102 Facuty of Humanities and Social Sciences English Major Thaksin University