Ín the OASIS...

Taehyung as his avatar, Parzival

The Hatchery, one of the more popular gunter message boards, was set as Parzivals' homepage. The Hatchery's site interface was designed to look and function like an old dial-up message board system, complete with the screech of a 300-baud modem during the log-in sequence. That's awesome. He scanned the most recent message threads, taking in the latest gunter news and rumors.

Even though he checked the boards every day, Parzivals' rarely posted anything. This morning, he didn't notice much interest. The usual gunter clan feuds. Ongoing debates over the "correct" interpretation of a cryptic passage from Anorak's Almanac.

High-level avatars brag about a new magical item or artifact they've acquired. This nonsense had been going on for years. In the absence of genuine progress, the gunter subculture had devolved into arrogance, nonsense, and pointless infighting. It was truly heartbreaking.

His favorite message boards were those dedicated to criticizing the Sixers. Employees of Innovative Online Industries were dubbed "sixers" by gunters as a derogatory term.

IOI (pronounced eye-oh-eye) was a global communications conglomerate and the world's largest Internet service provider. The granting of access to the OASIS and the sale of goods and services within it constituted a significant portion of IOI's business. As a result, IOI attempted a number of hostile takeovers of H.Y.B.E Simulation Systems, all of which were unsuccessful. They were now attempting to seize control of HSS by taking advantage of a flaw in Bangs' will.

IOI had created a new division within the company called the "Oology Division," which meant ("the science" of looking for Bang's Easter egg.) The IOI's Oology Division had only one goal: to win Bang's competition and take control of his fortune, company, and the OASIS itself.

 Parzival, like most gunters, was terrified at the prospect of IOI seizing control of the OASIS. The company's public relations machine had made its intentions abundantly clear. IOI believed Bang had never properly monetized his creation, and they wanted to make that right.

 For simulation access, they would start charging a monthly fee. Every visible surface would be covered in advertisements. Anonymity and free expression for users would be rendered obsolete. When IOI took over, the OASIS would no longer be the open-source virtual utopia he had grown up in. It would turn into a corporate dystopia, a more expensive theme park for wealthy elitists.

The IOI needed egg hunters, It allowed employees, nicknamed "oologists," to use their employee numbers as their OASIS avatar names. Because these numbers were all six digits long and began with the numeral "6," they became known as the Sixers. Most gunters referred to them as "the Sux0rz" these days...because they sucked.

To become a Sixer, you had to sign a contract that stated, among other things, that if you discovered Bang's egg, the prize would be solely owned by your employer. In exchange, IOI provided you with a bimonthly salary, food, lodging, health-care benefits, and a retirement plan. In addition, the company provided your avatar with high-end armor, vehicles, and weapons, as well as covered all of your teleportation costs. Joining the Sixers was similar to entering the military.

Sixers were easy to spot because they all looked the same. They were all required to use the same hulking male avatar (regardless of the operator's true gender), with close-cropped dark hair and default facial features. And they were all dressed in the same navy blue uniform. The only way to distinguish these corporate drones was to look at the six-digit employee number stamped on their right breast, just beneath the IOI corporate logo.

Like most gunters, Parzival despised the Sixers and despised their very existence. IOI was perverting the entire spirit of the contest by hiring an army of contract egg hunters. Of course, one could argue that all gunters who joined clans were doing the same thing. Hundreds of gunter clans, some with thousands of members, were now working together to find the egg.

Each clan was bound by an unbreakable legal agreement that stated that if one clan member won the contest, the prize would be shared by all clan members. Solos like him didn't like the clans, but they respected them as fellow gunters—unlike the Sixers, whose goal was to hand over the OASIS to an evil multinational conglomerate bent on destroying it.

His generation had never known life before the OASIS. It was much more than a game or an entertainment platform to them. It had been a constant in their lives for as long as they could remember. They'd been born into a bad world, and the OASIS was their only happy place. The idea of IOI privatizing and blending simulation terrified them in a way that those born before its introduction found difficult to comprehend. It was like someone threatening to take away the sun or charging a fee to look up at the sky.

The Sixers provided gunters with a common enemy, and Sixer bashing was a popular pastime in their forums and chat rooms. Many high-level gunters had a strict policy of killing (or attempting to kill) any Sixer who came into their path. Several websites tracked Sixer activities and movements, and some gunters spent more time hunting the Sixers than searching for the egg. The larger clans held a yearly competition called "Eighty-Six the Sux0rz," with a prize awarded to the clan that killed the most of them.

After checking a few other gunter forums, he tapped a bookmark icon for one of his favorite websites, Arty's Missives, the blog of a female gunter named Art3mis (pronounced "Artemis"). He'd discovered it about three years ago and had been a regular reader since then. She published these fantastic rambling essays about her search for Bang's egg, which she called a "maddening MacGuffin hunt." for Bang's egg.

Her entries were filled with self-deprecating humor and witty, snarky asides, and she wrote with an endearing, intelligent voice. In addition to posting her (often hilarious) interpretations of Almanac passages, she also linked to the books, movies, TV shows, and music she was currently studying as part of her Bang research. Taehyung assumed that all of these posts were full of misdirection and misinformation, but they were still very entertaining.

He had a massive cyber-crush on Art3mis. Sorry, "real-life girlfriend." But this Cybergirl was HOT.

She would occasionally post screenshots of her raven-haired avatar, which he would save to a folder on his hard drive. Her avatar had a lovely face, but it wasn't flawless. You got used to seeing freakishly beautiful faces on everyone in the OASIS. However, Art3mis' features did not appear to have been chosen from a beauty drop-down menu on some avatar creation templates. Her face resembled that of a real person as if her true features had been scanned and mapped onto her avatar. Big hazel eyes, rounded cheekbones, a pointy chin, and a smirk that never goes away. He found her unbearably attractive, but her avatar resembled a real person in some ways.

Art3mis' physique was also unusual. Within the OASIS, you usually saw one of two body shapes on female avatars: the absurdly thin yet wildly popular supermodel frame, or the top-heavy, wasp-waisted starlet physique (which looked even less natural in the OASIS than it did in the real world). However, Art3mis' frame was short and Rubenesque. All curves. She was breathtaking.

He was well aware that his crush on Art3mis was both silly and foolish. What did he know about her? She'd never revealed her true identity, of course. Or her age or location in the real world. There was no way of knowing what she looked like. She could be fifteen or fifty. Many gunters even questioned whether she was truly female, but he wasn't one of them. but I probably because he couldn't bear the thought of the girl he was practically smitten with being some middle-aged dude named Minho, with back hair and male-pattern baldness. or crooked brown teeth Yuck!

Arty's Missives had grown to become one of the most popular blogs on the Internet in the years since he first started reading it, now receiving several million hits per day. And Art3mis had become a celebrity, at least in gunter circles. But her celebrity hadn't gotten to her head. Her writing remained as amusing and self-deprecating as ever. 

Her most recent blog post was titled "The John Hughes Blues," and it was a detailed examination of her six favorite John Hughes teen films, which she divided into two trilogies: The "Dorky Boy Fantasies" trilogy (The Breakfast Club, Weird Science, and Ferris Bueller's Day Off) and the "Dorky Girl Fantasies" trilogy (Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink, and Some Kind of Wonderful).

An instant message window appeared on his display just as he finished reading it. It was Aech, his best friend. (OK, to split hairs, he was his only friend, excluding Mrs. Gilmore.)

Aech: Top o' the morning, amigo.

Parzival: Hola, compadre.

Aech: What are you up to?

Parzival:Simply surfing the turf. You?

Aech: Got the Basement online. Come and hang out before school, fool.

Parzival: Sweet! I'll be there in a sec.

Parzival checked the time after closing the Messaging window. He still had about a half-hour until class began. He grinned and tapped a small door icon at the edge of his screen, then chose Aech's chat room from my favorites list.

The system confirmed that he was on the chat room's access list and let him in. His view of the classroom shrank from the edges of my peripheral vision to a small thumbnail window in the lower right corner of my screen, allowing him to monitor what was in front of his avatar. The interior of Aech's chat room now filled the rest of his field of vision. His avatar appeared just inside the "entrance," which was a door at the top of a carpeted staircase.

 The door was not led anywhere. It never even opened. This was due to the Basement and its contents not being a part of the OASIS. Chat rooms were standalone simulations—temporary virtual spaces accessible to avatars from anywhere in OASIS. The avatar of Parzival was not "in" the chat room. It was only an illusion. TaeTae3/Parzival was still sitting with his eyes closed in his World History class. Logging into a chat room felt like being in two places at the same time.

Aech's chat room was called the Basement. He'd set it up to look like a sizeable suburban rec room from the late 1980s. The wood-paneled walls were covered in the vintage movie and comic book posters. In the center of the room, a vintage RCA television stood connected to a Betamax VCR, a LaserDisc player, and several vintage videogame consoles in the center of the room The far wall was lined with bookshelves containing role-playing game supplements and back issues of Dragon magazine.

Hosting a large chat room wasn't cheap, but Aech could afford it. He made a lot of money playing televised PvP arena games after school and on weekends. Aech was a top-ranked combatant in both the Deathmatch and Capture the Flag leagues in the OASIS. He was even more well-known than Art3mis.

The Basement had become a highly exclusive hangout for elite gunters in recent years. Aech only let people in who he thought were worthy, so being invited to hang out in the Basement was a huge honor, especially for a third-level nobody like him

As he descended the stairwell, he noticed a few dozen other gunters swarming about, each with a wildly different avatar. Humans, cyborgs, demons, dark elves, Vulcans, and vampires were all present. The majority of them clustered around the row of old arcade games against the wall. A few others stood by the old stereo, which was currently playing "The Wild Boys" by Duran Duran, looking through Aech's massive rack of vintage cassette tapes.

Aech was sprawled on one of the three couches in the chat room, which were arranged in a U-shape in front of the TV. Aech had the appearance of a tall, broad-shouldered Caucasian man with dark hair and brown eyes. 

He'd once asked him if he resembled his avatar in real life, and he'd jokingly replied, "Yes." But in person, I'm even more good-looking."

He looked up from the Intellivision game he was playing as he walked over.

His characteristic Cheshire grin stretched from ear to ear. "Z!" he exclaimed. "How are you, amigo?" 

As he slid onto the couch opposite him, he extended his right hand and gave him a high five.

Soon after meeting him, Aech began calling him "Z."  shortly after he met him... He had a knack for giving people single-letter nicknames. Aech pronounced his avatar's name as if it were the letter "H."

"What's up, Humperdinck?" he inquired. We were playing a game. He always addressed him with some random H name, such as Harry, Hubert, Henry, or Hibo. He  was guessing his real first name, which he'd once told him began with the letter "H."

He'd known Aech for about three years. He was a senior at OPS #1172 on Ludus, which was on the other side of the planet from his school. They'd met one weekend in a public gunter chat room and clicked right away because they shared so many interests.

That is one obsession: a total, all-consuming obsession with Bang and his Easter egg. He knew Aech was the real deal a few minutes into their first conversation, an elite gunter with some serious mental kung fu. He knew all about the 1980s, and not just the canon stuff. He was an authentic Bangs scholar. And he'd seen the same qualities in 'him because he'd given him his business card and invited him to hang out in the Basement whenever he wanted. He'd been his best friend since then.

They gradually developed a friendly rivalry over the years. They made a lot of snide remarks about who would get his name up on the Scoreboard first. They were constantly trying to out-geek each other by knowing cryptic gunter trivia. They even conducted research together at times. This typically entailed watching cheesy '80s movies and TV shows in his chat room. Of course, they also played a lot of video games. 

He and Aech had squandered many hours playing two-player classics like Contra, Golden Axe, Smash TV, and Ikari Warriors. Aech was the best all-around gamer he'd ever met, aside from yours truly. They were evenly matched in most games, but he could easily beat him in others, particularly first-person shooters. After all, that was his area of expertise.

He had no idea who Aech was in the real world, but he had the impression his home life wasn't all that great. He seemed to spend every waking moment logged into the OASIS, just like him. And, even though they'd never met in person, he'd told him several times that he was his best friend, so he assumed he was just as isolated and lonely as he was.

"So, what happened after you left last night?" he asked, tossing him the other Intellivision controller. They'd spent the previous evening in his chat room for a few hours, watching old Japanese monster movies.

""Nothing," he stated flatly. "I was at home practicing a few classical coin-ops."

"Unnecessary."

"Yeah. But I was in the mood." He didn't ask him what he'd done the night before, and he didn't provide any information. 

He knew he'd gone to Gygax, or somewhere equally wonderful, to speedrun through a few quests and rack up some XPs. He just didn't want to rub it in.

Aech could afford to spend some time off-world following up on leads and searching for the Copper Key. But he never lorded it over him or mocked him for not having enough internet currency to teleport anyplace. And he never insulted him by attempting to lend him a few credits. He could buy himself a lot of credits, but he'd have to use his card. It would also be a dead giveaway as to his whereabouts. Alternatively, his brothers will lend him some. 

His dad took away his monthly allowance after uncovering his obsession with the OASIS, as though it would discourage him from playing. It was an unspoken rule among gunners that if you were a solo, you didn't want or need anyone's support. Gunters who needed assistance formed clans, and he and Aech both thought that clans were for suckers. They'd both vowed to live their lives solo. They still discussed the egg on occasion, but these chats were always guarded, and they were careful not to disclose specifics.

He threw after defeating Aech in three rounds of Tron: Deadly Discs, In disgust, he threw down his Intellivision controller and grabbed a magazine from the floor. It was an old Starlog issue. He recognized Rutger Hauer from a Ladyhawke promotional shot on the cover.

"You mean Starlog?" Parzival nodded in agreement.

"Yep. Every issue from Hatchery's archive was downloaded. I'm still working my way through them. I was just reading an excellent article about Ewoks: The Battle for Endor." Aech expanded.

"Designed for television. It was first released in 1985 "Parzival explained. Star Wars trivia was one of his specialties. "It's a waste of time. A true low point in the history of the Wars."

"You're an idiot. It has some amazing moments "Aech laughs.

"No," he said with a shake of the head. "That is not the case. The caravan is far worse than the previous Ewok movie. Caravan of Courage is a film. They should have called it the Suck Caravan."

Aech rolled his eyes and resumed his reading. He wasn't going to take the bait. Parzival took a look at the magazine's cover. "Can I have a look at that when you're done?"

He smirked. "Why? So you can read the article on Ladyhawke?"

"Maybe."

"Man, you gotta love that crab burger, don't you?"

"Blow me, Aech."

"How many times have you seen that sapfest? I'm sure you made me sit through it at least twice." He was now teasing him. He knew Ladyhawke was one of his guilty pleasures, and he'd seen it more than a dozen times.

"I was doing you a favor by making you see it, idiot," Parzival explained. He inserted a new cartridge into the Intellivision machine and began a single-player game of Astrosmash. "You'll thank me one day. Wait and see. Ladyhawke is canon."

Canon was the phrase they used to describe any movie, book, game, song, or TV show that Bang was known to have enjoyed.

"Surely you're joking," Aech remarked.

"No, I'm not joking. And don't call me Shirley."

He lowered the magazine and leaned forward. "Bang could not possibly be a fan of Ladyhawke. I guarantee it."

"Where's your proof, dipshit?" Parzival enquired.

"The dude had a taste. That's all the proof I need."

"Could you possibly explain why he had Ladyhawke on both VHS and LaserDisc? "A list of all Anorak's Almanac included an appendix with a list of all the films in Bang's collection at the time of his death. They had both memorized the list.

"He was a billionaire! He owned millions of movies, the vast majority of which he most likely never watched! He also had DVDs of Howard the Duck and Krull. That doesn't mean he liked them, idiot. And it certainly doesn't make them canon."

"It's not really up for debate, Homer," he said. "Ladyhawke is an eighties classic."

"It's so lame! The swords appear to be made of tinfoil. And the soundtrack is epically lame. Full of synthesizers and shit. By the pointless Alan Parsons Project! Lame-o-Rama! Beyond lame. Highlander II lame."

"Hey!" Parzival pretended to throw his Intellivision controller at him. "You're just being insulting now!" The cast of Ladyhawke alone makes the film canon! Batty, Roy! Ferris Bueller's Day Off! And the guy from WarGames who played Professor Falken!" He rummaged through his memory for the actor's name. "Hello, John Wood! I'm back with Matthew Broderick!"

"A real low point in both of their careers," Aech joked. He enjoyed debating old movies even more than he did. The other gunners in the chat room had formed a small crowd around them to listen in. Our arguments were frequently entertaining.

"You should be stoned!" Parzival yelled. "Richard Donner directed Ladyhawke!  What about The Goonies? Superman: The Motion Picture? You're saying that guy sucks?"

"I don't care if it was directed by Spielberg. It's a chick flick masquerading as a sword-and-sorcery film. The only genre film with fewer guts is probably... Legend. Anyone who enjoys Ladyhawke is a complete moron."

The peanut gallery erupts in laughter. Parzival was becoming increasingly annoyed. He, too, was a Legend fan, and Aech knew it.

"Oh, so I'm an idiot? You're the one who has an Ewok fetish!" Parzival grabbed the Starlog from his grasp and tossed it against a Revenge of the Jedi poster on the wall. "Do you think your extensive knowledge of Ewok culture will aid you in finding the egg?"

"Don't start on the Endorians again, man," he warned, holding up an index finger. "I've warned you"I've already warned you. I'm going to ban you. I swear to you." He was about to push the Ewok thing even further, maybe give him some crap for referring to them as "Endorians," knowing this was a hollow threat.

But just then, a newcomer appeared on the staircase. I-r0k is a complete douchebag. He sighed and moaned. I-r0k and Aech went to the same school and shared a few classes, but he couldn't figure out why Aech had let him into the Basement. I-r0k thought of himself as an elite gunter, but he was nothing more than an obnoxious poseur. Sure, he spent a lot of time teleporting around the OASIS, completing quests, and leveling up his avatar, but he had no idea what he was doing. And he was always armed with a snowmobile-sized plasma rifle. Even in completely pointless chat rooms. He had no regard for formality.

"Are you cocks arguing about Star Wars again?" he said, descending the steps and walking over to join the crowd around them. "That shit is so played out, yo."

Parzival turned to Aech. "If you want to ban someone, why don't you start with this clown?" he hit Reset on the Intellivision and started another game.

"Shut your mouth Pissy-Ville!" I-r0k replied, using his favorite mispronunciation of my avatar's name. "He doesn't ban me 'cause he knows I'm elite! Ain't that right, Aech?"

"No," Aech said, rolling his eyes. "That ain't right. You're about as elite as my great-grandmother. And she's dead."

"Screw you, Aech! And your dead grandma!"

"Gee, I-r0k," Parzival  muttered. "You always manage to elevate the intelligence level of the conversation. The whole room just lights up the moment you arrive."

"So sorry to upset you, Captain No-Credits," I-r0k said. "Hey, shouldn't you be on Incipio panhandling for change right now?" He reached for the second Intellivision controller, but Parzival snatched it up and tossed it to Aech.

He scowled at me. "Prick."

"Poseur."

"Poseur? Pissy-ville is calling me a poseur?" He turned to address the small crowd. "This chump is so broke that he has to bum rides to Greyhawk, just so he can kill kobolds for copper pieces! And he's calling me a poseur!" Parzival just smirk as if he cared what people are thinking about his somewhat 'poor avatar'. If he could he could level up anytime, buy the latest modes or costumes, and even buy new changes to his avatar appearances. But in the OASIS, he wants to be the real him, not the rich, lonely kid in the real world.

This elicited a few snickers from the crowd, and he felt his face turn red under his visor. Once, about a year ago, He'd made the mistake of hitching a ride off-world with I-r0k to try to gain a few experience points. After dropping him in a low-level quest area on Greyhawk, the jerk followed him. He'd spent the next few hours slaying a small band of kobolds, waiting for them to respawn, and then slaying them again, over and over. 

His avatar was still only first level at the time, and it was one of the only safe ways for him to level up. I-r0k had taken several screenshots of my avatar that night and labeled them "Pissy-Ville the Mighty Kobold Slayer." Then he'd posted them to the Hatchery. He still brought it up every chance he got. He was never going to let him live it down.

"That's right, I called you a poseur, poseur. Parzival I stood and got up in his grille. You're an ignorant know-nothing twink. Just because you're fourteenth-level, it doesn't make you a gunter. You have to possess some knowledge."

"Word," Aech said, nodding his agreement. They bumped fists. More snickering from the crowd, now directed at I-r0k.

I-r0k glared at us a moment. "OK. Let's see who the real poseur is," he said. "Check this out, girls."

 Grinning, he produced an item from his inventory and held it up...

A/N Thank you for reading.Kinldy feel free to leave a comment or vote 

Shout out to Withered_Flowers12