I’d grown up seeing headlines about the ARL’s breakthroughs with brain implants on the newsfeeds, but like most people I’d never really paid much attention to them, because the technology was only available to people who were severely physically disabled and willing to undergo invasive (and possibly fatal) brain surgery.
But while they were making all of these astounding breakthroughs, the Accessibility Research Lab also spent those decades developing another, secret piece of technology, one that would ultimately stand as the ARL’s greatest achievement—a computer-brain interface that could accomplish everything their implants could, but without the need for surgery. Using the wealth of data they’d amassed on the inner workings of the human mind and an elaborate combination of EEG, fMRI, and SQUID technologies, the lab had developed a way to read brain waves and transmit them solely via dermal contact. Halliday compartmentalized each facet of the project, so that each team of scientists or engineers worked in isolation from the others, and he alone knew how it was all going to fit together.
It took billions of dollars and decades of work before they finally succeeded in creating a fully functional prototype of the OASIS Neural Interface headset. But as soon as they completed the final round of safety testing, Halliday shut the ONI project down and proclaimed it a failure. A few weeks later he shuttered the Accessibility Research Lab and fired its entire staff. They were all given severance packages that ensured they’d never need to work again—contingent upon their strict adherence to the nondisclosure agreements they’d signed when they were first hired.
This was how Halliday had created the world’s first noninvasive brain-computer interface without the world knowing it.
And now my friends and I had inherited this invention. It was ours—to bury or to reveal.
* * *
We didn’t make our decision lightly. We weighed all of the pros and cons. Then, after a heated debate, the four of us held a vote. The ayes had it. And just like that, we changed the course of human history forever.
After another series of safety trials, GSS patented the OASIS Neural Interface technology and began to mass-produce the headsets. We put them on sale at the lowest possible price, to make sure as many people as possible could experience the OASIS Neural Interface for themselves.
We sold a million units that first day. And the moment our headsets hit the store shelves, IOI’s entire line of VR goggles and haptic gear were instantly rendered obsolete. For the first time in history, GSS became the world’s leading manufacturer of OASIS hardware. And as word of the ONI’s abilities began to spread, sales continued to increase exponentially.
And then, just a few days later, it happened—the event that set this whole tale in motion.
A few seconds after the OASIS servers reached 7,777,777 simultaneous ONI users, a message appeared on Halliday’s long-dormant website, where the Scoreboard for his contest had once resided:
Seek the Seven Shards of the Siren’s Soul
On the seven worlds where the Siren once played a role
For each fragment my heir must pay a toll
To once again make the Siren whole
It came to be known as the Shard Riddle, and the first thing old-school gunters noticed was that its rhyme scheme and syllable count were identical to the “Three Hidden Keys Open Three Secret Gates” rap that Halliday had used to announce his famous Easter-egg hunt.
People assumed the Shard Riddle was just an elaborate publicity stunt, concocted by GSS’s new owners to help promote the roll-out of our ONI headsets. And we never did anything to deny or discourage these rumors, because they helped foster the perception that the OASIS was now under our complete control. But the four of us knew the unsettling truth. We had no idea what the hell was going on.
The Shard Riddle appeared to announce the existence of a second Easter egg—another object hidden somewhere inside the OASIS by its eccentric creator sometime prior to his death. And the timing of the riddle’s appearance couldn’t be a coincidence. It had clearly been triggered by our decision to release the OASIS Neural Interface to the public.
So what exactly was Halliday trying to tell us?
The “Siren” seemed to be a reference to Kira Morrow, Og’s deceased wife and Halliday’s unrequited love. Back when they were all in high school together in Ohio, Kira had named her Dungeons & Dragons character Leucosia, after one of the Sirens of Greek myth. Many years later Kira had given her OASIS avatar that same name. After her death, Halliday had used the name Leucosia as a computer password, which I’d had to guess to win the final challenge of his contest.
It wasn’t clear what would happen if someone managed to collect the Seven Shards and “once again make the Siren whole.” But I started searching for them anyway. Halliday had thrown down a gauntlet once again, and I couldn’t resist picking it up.
And I wasn’t alone. The riddle’s appearance spawned a whole new generation of gunters, and they all began to scour the OASIS for the Seven Shards. But unlike Halliday’s egg, no reward for finding the Siren’s Soul had ever been announced, so no one knew exactly what they were searching for, or why.
* * *
In what seemed like the blink of an eye, an entire year passed.
We hit three billion units sold. Then four.
It quickly became evident that our patented, proprietary brain-computer-interface headsets had an endless array of non-OASIS-related applications in the fields of science, medicine, aviation, manufacturing, and warfare.
Innovative Online Industries’ stock continued to plummet. When it fell low enough, we orchestrated a hostile takeover of the company. GSS absorbed IOI and all of its assets, transforming us into an unstoppable megacorporation with a global monopoly on the world’s most popular entertainment, education, and communications platform. To celebrate, we released all of IOI’s indentured servants and forgave their outstanding debts.
Another year passed. The OASIS reached a new benchmark—five billion individual users logged in each day. Then six. Two-thirds of the people on our overcrowded, rapidly warming little planet. And over 99 percent of the people who accessed the OASIS now did so using one of our neural interface headsets.
* * *
Just as Halliday predicted, this new technology began to have a profound impact on people’s day-to-day lives, and on human civilization at large. There were new experiences to download every day. Anything and everything you could imagine. You could go anywhere, do anything, and be anyone. It was the most addictive pastime imaginable—far more addictive than the OASIS had ever been, and that was saying something.
Other companies made attempts to reverse-engineer the ONI headset and steal our neural-interface technology—but the software and processing power required to make the ONI technology function was all part of the OASIS. Experiences could be recorded offline as an .oni file, even a bootleg one, but the file could only be played back by being uploaded to the OASIS. This allowed us to weed out unsavory or illegal recordings before they could be shared with other users. It also let us maintain our monopoly on what was rapidly becoming the most popular form of entertainment in the history of the world.