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 rollout 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.