Ready-player-one Review

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.

They didn't play to win. They played to own .

"I'm shutting down the Sixers' indentured program," I said. "And I'm making the OASIS a co-op. No ads. No paywalls. Just the game." ready-player-one

And then I saw it. Halliday had once written in his journal: "The greatest enemy is the part of you that refuses to let go."

I finished the game. My score: 1,000,000 exactly. The score Halliday never achieved. I went to the Third Gate: a perfect

The tomb of horrors was a retro arcade. Halliday had hidden the First Key inside a perfect simulation of the Dungeons of Daggorath —a text-based maze from 1982. Thousands of gunters (egg hunters) had died there, torn apart by pixelated demons.

She laughed. "You're insane."

Behind me, the sky filled with avatars. Art3mis. Aech. Daito and Shoto. And then hundreds. Thousands. Millions.