Here are a handful of excellent extras from Ernie Cline to enjoy and share!

Check out Ready Player One on Facebook and Tumblr, and visit Ernie’s blog for the latest news

Read up on Ernie’s thoughts on his favorite authors

(and kids books!), the movies that changed his life,
and his amazing fans with this awesome Q&A.
Launch into uncharted territory with this Map of the
Dystopian Universe, featuring some of Ernie’s favorite
authors and the most influential dystopian novels for
literary voyagers of all ages. Download a printable
copy here!

Embark on your own quest to win a DeLorean! Be the Behold! The updated Ready Player One book trailer.
first to overcome three increasingly difficult video
game challenges and become the proud owner of a
1981 DeLorean – complete with flux capacitor! Check
out the details here.
 0 0 18

It was a Friday night, and I was spending another solitary eve-

ning doing research, working my way through every episode of Whiz Kids,
an early-’80s TV show about a teenage hacker who uses his computer skills
to solve mysteries. I’d just finished watching the episode “Deadly Access”
(a crossover with Simon & Simon) when an e-mail arrived in my inbox.
It was from Ogden Morrow. The subject line read “We Can Dance If We
Want To.”
There was no text in the body of the e-mail. Just a file attachment—an
invitation to one of the most exclusive gatherings in the OASIS: Ogden
Morrow’s birthday party. In the real world, Morrow almost never made
public appearances, and in the OASIS, he came out of hiding only once a
year, to host this event.
The invitation featured a photo of Morrow’s world-famous avatar, the
Great and Powerful Og. The gray-bearded wizard was hunched over an
elaborate DJ mixing board, one headphone pressed to his ear, biting his
lower lip in auditory ecstasy as his fingers scratched ancient vinyl on a set
of silver turntables. His record crate bore a don’ t panic sticker and an
anti-Sixer logo—a yellow number six with a red circle-and-slash over it.
The text at the bottom read

Ogden Morrow’s ’80s Dance Party

in celebration of his 73rd birthday!
Tonight—10pm OST at the Distracted Globe
ADMIT ONE

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 Ready Player One : 181

I was flabbergasted. Ogden Morrow had actually taken the time to in-
vite me to his birthday party. It felt like the greatest honor I’d ever re-
ceived.
I called Art3mis, and she confirmed that she’d received the same
e-mail. She said she couldn’t pass up an invitation from Og himself, de-
spite the obvious risks. So, naturally, I told her I would meet her there at
the club. It was the only way I could avoid looking like a total wuss.
I knew that if Og had invited the two of us, he’d probably also invited
the other members of the High Five. But Aech probably wouldn’t show
up, because he competed in a globally televised arena deathmatch every
Friday night. And Shoto and Daito never entered a PvP zone unless it was
absolutely necessary.
The Distracted Globe was a famous zero-gravity dance club on the
planet Neonoir in Sector Sixteen. Ogden Morrow had coded the place
himself decades ago and was still its sole owner. I’d never visited the Globe
before. I wasn’t much for dancing, or for socializing with the twinked-out
wannabe-gunter überdorks who were known to frequent the place. But
Og’s birthday party was a special event, and so the usual clientele would
be banished for the evening. Tonight, the club would be packed with
celebrities—movie stars, musicians, and at least two members of the High
Five.
I spent over an hour tweaking my avatar’s hair and trying on different
skins to wear to the club. I finally settled on some classic ’80s-era attire: a
light gray suit, exactly like the one Peter Weller wore in Buckaroo Banzai,
complete with a red bow tie, along with a pair of vintage white Adidas
high-tops. I also loaded my inventory with my best suit of body armor
and a large amount of weaponry. One of the reasons the Globe was such
a hip, exclusive club was because it was located in a PvP zone, one where
both magic and technology functioned. So it was extremely dangerous to
go there. Especially for a famous gunter like me.
There were hundreds of cyberpunk-themed worlds spread through-
out the OASIS, but Neonoir was one of the largest and oldest. Seen from
orbit, the planet was a shiny onyx marble covered in overlapping spider-
webs of pulsating light. It was always night on Neonoir, the world over,
and its surface was an uninterrupted grid of interconnected cities packed
with impossibly large skyscrapers. Its skies were fi lled with a continuous
stream of flying vehicles whirring through the vertical cityscapes, and
the streets below teemed with leather-clad NPCs and mirror-shaded ava-

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 182 : Ernest Cline

tars, all sporting high-tech weaponry and subcutaneous implants as they

spouted city-speak straight out of Neuromancer.
The Distracted Globe was located at the western-hemisphere inter-
section of the Boulevard and the Avenue, two brightly lit streets that
stretched completely around the planet along its equator and prime me-
ridian. The club itself was a massive cobalt blue sphere, three kilometers
in diameter, floating thirty meters off the ground. A floating crystal stair-
case led up to the club’s only entrance, a circular opening at the bottom
of the sphere.
I made a big entrance when I arrived in my flying DeLorean, which I’d
obtained by completing a Back to the Future quest on the planet Zemeckis.
The DeLorean came outfitted with a (nonfunctioning) flux capacitor, but
I’d made several additions to its equipment and appearance. First, I’d
installed an artificially intelligent onboard computer named KITT (pur-
chased in an online auction) into the dashboard, along with a matching
red Knight Rider scanner just above the DeLorean’s grill. Then I’d outfit-
ted the car with an oscillation overthruster, a device that allowed it to
travel through solid matter. Finally, to complete my ’80s super-vehicle
theme, I’d slapped a Ghostbusters logo on each of the DeLorean’s gull-
wing doors, then added personalized plates that read ecto-88.
I’d had it only a few weeks now, but my time-traveling, Ghost Bust-
ing, Knight Riding, matter-penetrating DeLorean had already become my
avatar’s trademark.
I knew that leaving my sweet ride parked in a PvP zone was an open
invitation for some moron to try to boost it. The DeLorean had several
antitheft systems installed, and the ignition system was booby-trapped
Max Rockatansky–style so that if any other avatar tried to start the car,
the plutonium chamber would detonate in a small thermonuclear explo-
sion. But keeping my car safe wouldn’t be a problem here on Neonoir. As
soon as I climbed out of the DeLorean I cast a Shrink spell on it, instantly
reducing it to the size of a Matchbox car. Then I put the DeLorean in my
pocket. Magic zones had their advantages.
Thousands of avatars were packed up against the velvet rope force fields
that kept everyone without an invitation at bay. As I walked toward the
entrance, the crowd bombarded me with a mix of insults, autograph re-
quests, death threats, and tearful declarations of undying love. I had my
body shield activated, but surprisingly, no one took a shot at me. I flashed

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 Ready Player One : 183

the cyborg doorman my invitation, then mounted the long crystal stair-
case leading up into the club.
Entering the Distracted Globe was more than a little disorienting. The
inside of the giant sphere was completely hollow, and its curved interior
surface served as the club’s bar and lounge area. The moment you passed
through the entrance, the laws of gravity changed. No matter where you
walked, your avatar’s feet always adhered to the interior of the sphere, so
you could walk in a straight line, up to the “top” of the club, then back
down the other side, ending up right back where you started. The huge
open space in the center of the sphere served as the club’s zero-gravity
“dance floor.” You reached it simply by jumping off the ground, like Su-
perman taking flight, and then swimming through the air, into the spher-
ical zero-g “groove zone.”
As I stepped through the entrance, I glanced up—or in the direc-
tion that was currently “up” to me at the moment—and took a long look
around. The place was packed. Hundreds of avatars milled around like
ants crawling around the inside of a giant balloon. Others were already
out on the dance floor—spinning, flying, twisting, and tumbling in time
with the music, which thumped out of floating spherical speakers that
drifted throughout the club.
In the middle of all the dancers, a large clear bubble was suspended
in space, at the absolute center of the club. This was the “booth” where
the DJ stood, surrounded by turntables, mixers, decks, and dials. At the
center of all that gear was the opening DJ, R2-D2, hard at work, using his
various robotic arms to work the turntables. I recognized the tune he was
playing: the ’88 remix of New Order’s “Blue Monday,” with a lot of Star
Wars droid sound samples mixed in.
As I made my way to the nearest bar, the avatars I passed all stopped to
stare and point in my direction. I didn’t pay them much notice, because I
was busy scanning the club for Art3mis.
When I reached the bar, I ordered a Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster from
the female Klingon bartender and downed half of it. Then I grinned as
R2 cued up another classic ’80s tune. “ ‘Union of the Snake,’ ” I recited,
mostly out of habit. “Duran Duran. Nineteen eighty-three.”
“Not bad, ace,” said a familiar voice, speaking just loud enough to be
heard over the music. I turned to see Art3mis standing behind me. She
was wearing evening attire: a gunmetal blue dress that looked like it was

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 184 : Ernest Cline

spray-painted on. Her avatar’s dark hair was styled in a pageboy cut, per-
fectly framing her gorgeous face. She looked devastating.
She shouted at the barkeep. “Glenmorangie. On the rocks.”
I smiled to myself. Connor MacLeod’s favorite drink. Man, did I love
this girl.
She winked at me as her drink appeared. Then she clinked her glass
against mine and downed its contents in one swallow. The chattering of
the avatars around us grew in volume. Word that Parzival and Art3mis
were here, chatting each other up at the bar, was already spreading through
the entire club.
Art3mis glanced up at the dance floor, then back at me. “So how about
it, Percy?” she said. “Feel like cutting a rug?”
I scowled. “Not if you keep calling me ‘Percy.’ ”
She laughed. Just then, the current song ended, and the club grew si-
lent. All eyes turned upward, toward the DJ booth, where R2-D2 was cur-
rently dissolving in a shower of light, like someone “beaming out” in an
original Star Trek episode. Then a huge cheer went up as a familiar gray-
haired avatar beamed in, appearing behind the turntables. It was Og.
Hundreds of vidfeed windows materialized in the air, all over the club.
Each displayed a live close-up image of Og in the booth, so that everyone
could see his avatar clearly. The old wizard was wearing baggy jeans, san-
dals, and a faded Star Trek: The Next Generation T-shirt. He waved to the
assembled, then cued up his first track, a dance remix of “Rebel Yell” by
Billy Idol.
A cheer swept across the dance floor.
“I love this song!” Art3mis shouted. Her eyes darted up to the dance
floor. I looked at her uncertainly. “What’s wrong?” she said with mock
sympathy. “Can’t the boy dance?”
She abruptly locked into the beat, bobbing her head, gyrating her hips.
Then she pushed off from the floor with both feet and began to float up-
ward, drifting toward the groove zone. I stared up at her, temporarily fro-
zen, mustering my courage.
“All right,” I muttered to myself. “What the hell.”
I bent my knees and pushed off hard from the floor. My avatar took
flight, drifting upward and sliding alongside Art3mis. The avatars who
were already on the dance floor moved aside to clear a path for us, a tun-
nel leading to the center of the dance floor. I could see Og hovering in

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 Ready Player One : 185

his bubble, just a short distance above us. He was spinning around like a
dervish, remixing the song on the fly while simultaneously adjusting the
gravity vortex of the dance floor, so that he was actually spinning the club
itself, like an ancient vinyl disc.
Art3mis winked at me, and then her legs melted together to form a
mermaid’s tail. She flapped her new tail fin once and shot ahead of me, her
body undulating and thrusting in time with the machine-gun beat as she
swam through the air. Then she spun back around to face me, suspended
and floating, smiling and holding out her hand, beckoning me to join her.
Her hair floated in a halo around her head, like she was underwater.
When I reached her, she took my hand. As she did, her mermaid tail
vanished and her legs reappeared, whirling and scissoring to the beat.
Not trusting my instincts any further, I loaded up a piece of high-end
avatar dance software called Travoltra, which I’d downloaded and tested
earlier that evening. The program took control of Parzival’s movements,
synching them up with the music, and all four of my limbs were trans-
formed into undulating cosine waves. Just like that, I became a dancing
fool.
Art3mis’s eyes lit up in surprise and delight, and she began to mirror
my movements, the two of us orbiting each other like accelerated elec-
trons. Then Art3mis began shape-shifting.
Her avatar lost its human form and dissolved into a pulsing amorphous
blob that changed its size and color in synch with the music. I selected the
mirror partner option on my dance software and began to do the same.
My avatar’s limbs and torso began to flow and spin like taffy, encircling
Art3mis, while strange color patterns flowed and shifted across my skin.
I looked like Plastic Man, if he were tripping out of his mind on LSD.
Then everyone else on the dance floor also began to shape-shift, melting
into prismatic blobs of light. Soon, the center of the club looked like some
otherworldly lava lamp.
When the song ended, Og took a bow, then queued up a slow song. “Time
After Time” by Cyndi Lauper. All around us, avatars began to pair up.
I gave Art3mis a courtly bow and stretched out my hand. She smiled
and took it. I pulled her close and we began to drift together. Og set the
dance floor’s gravity on a counterclockwise spin, making all of our avatars
slowly rotate around the club’s invisible central axis, like motes of dust
floating inside a snow globe.

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 186 : Ernest Cline

And then, before I could stop myself, the words just came out.
“I’m in love with you, Arty.”
She didn’t respond at first. She just looked at me in shock as our avatars
continued to drift in orbit around each other, moving on autopilot. Then
she switched to a private voice channel, so no one could eavesdrop on our
conversation.
“You aren’t in love with me, Z,” she said. “You don’t even know me.”
“Yes I do,” I insisted. “I know you better than I’ve ever known anyone
in my entire life.”
“You only know what I want you to know. You only see what I want you
to see.” She placed a hand on her chest. “This isn’t my real body, Wade. Or
my real face.”
“I don’t care! I’m in love with your mind—with the person you are. I
couldn’t care less about the packaging.”
“You’re just saying that,” she said. There was an unsteadiness in her
voice. “Trust me. If I ever let you see me in person, you would be repulsed.”
“Why do you always say that?”
“Because I’m hideously deformed. Or I’m a paraplegic. Or I’m actually
sixty-three years old. Take your pick.”
“I don’t care if you’re all three of those things. Tell me where to meet
you and I’ll prove it. I’ll get on a plane right now and fly to wherever you
are. You know I will.”
She shook her head. “You don’t live in the real world, Z. From what
you’ve told me, I don’t think you ever have. You’re like me. You live inside
this illusion.” She motioned to our virtual surroundings. “You can’t pos-
sibly know what real love is.”
“Don’t say that!” I was starting to cry and didn’t bother hiding it from
her. “Is it because I told you I’ve never had a real girlfriend? And that I’m
a virgin? Because—”
“Of course not,” she said. “That isn’t what this is about. At all.”
“Then what is it about? Tell me. Please.”
“The Hunt. You know that. We’ve both been neglecting our quests to
hang out with each other. We should be focused on finding the Jade Key
right now. You can bet that’s what Sorrento and the Sixers are doing. And
everyone else.”
“To hell with our competition! And the egg!” I shouted. “Didn’t you
hear what I just said? I’m in love with you! And I want to be with you. More
than anything.”

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 Ready Player One : 187

She just stared at me. Or rather, her avatar stared blankly back at my
avatar. Then she said, “I’m sorry, Z. This is all my fault. I let this get way
out of hand. It has to stop.”
“What do you mean? What has to stop?”
“I think we should take a break. Stop spending so much time together.”
I felt like I’d been punched in the throat. “Are you breaking up with me?”
“No, Z,” she said firmly. “I am not breaking up with you. That would be
impossible, because we are not together.” There was suddenly venom in her
voice. “We’ve never even met!”
“So then . . . you’re just going to . . . stop talking to me?”
“Yes. I think that would be for the best.”
“For how long?”
“Until the Hunt is over.”
“But, Arty . . . That could take years.”
“I realize that. And I’m sorry. But this is how it has to be.”
“So winning that money is more important to you than me?”
“It’s not about the money. It’s about what I could do with it.”
“Right. Saving the world. You’re so fucking noble.”
“Don’t be a jerk,” she said. “I’ve been searching for the egg for over five
years. So have you. Now we’re closer than ever to finding it. I can’t just
throw my chance away.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
“Yes, you are. Even if you don’t realize it.”
The Cyndi Lauper song ended and Og queued up another dance track—
“James Brown Is Dead” by L.A. Style. The club erupted in applause.
I felt like a large wooden stake had been driven into my chest.
Art3mis was about to say something more—good-bye, I think—when
we heard a thunderous boom directly up above us. At first, I thought it
was Og, train-wrecking into a new dance track. But then I looked up and
saw the large chunks of rubble tumbling at high speed onto the dance
floor as avatars scattered to get out of the way. A gaping hole had just been
blasted in the roof of the club, near the top of the globe. And a small army
of Sixers was now pouring through it, swooping into the club on jet packs,
firing blaster pistols as they came.
Total chaos broke out. Half of the avatars in the club swarmed toward
the exit, while the other half drew weapons or began to cast spells, firing
laser bolts, bullets, and fireballs back at the invading Sixers. There were
more than a hundred of them, all armed to the teeth.

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