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.
GSS rolled out the ONI-net, a social-media platform built around .oni file-sharing. It allowed users to browse, purchase, download, rate, and review ONI experiences recorded by billions of other people around the world. It also allowed you to upload your own experiences and sell them to the rest of the OASIS.
“Sims” were recordings made inside the OASIS, and “Recs” were ONI recordings made in reality. Except that most kids no longer referred to it as “reality.” They called it “the Earl.” （A term derived from the initialism IRL.） And “Ito” was slang for “in the OASIS.” So Recs were recorded in the Earl, and Sims were created Ito.
Now instead of following their favorite celebrity on social media, ONI users could become their favorite celebrity for a few minutes each day. Exist inside their skin. Live short, heavily curated fragments of far more glamorous lives.
Now people no longer watched movies or television shows—they lived them. The viewer was no longer in the audience. Now they were one of the stars. Instead of just being in the audience at a rock concert, now you could experience the concert as each member of your favorite band, and be each one of them as they/you performed your favorite song.
Anyone with an ONI headset and an empty data drive could record a real-life experience, upload it to the OASIS, and sell it to billions of other people all around the world. You earned coin for every download, and GSS only took 20 percent off the top for making it all possible. If one of your clips went viral, the profits could make you rich overnight. Movie, rock, porn, and streaming stars were all scrambling to exploit this brand-new revenue stream.
For less than the cost of an iced latte, you could now safely experience just about anything that human beings could experience. You could take any drug, eat any kind of food, and have any kind of sex, without worrying about addiction, calories, or consequences. You could relive uncut real-life experiences, or play your way through scripted interactive adventures inside the OASIS. Thanks to the ONI, it all felt completely real.