Ready Player One (Male Reader)

Chapter 3: Searching For the Second Key

At IOI, a meeting is being held.

IOI Worker 1: Who is this Red Hood, and how the hell is he winning?

Nolan: Well, here's a better question. Who cares? Halliday's contest is vitally important. I mean, it's nothing less than a war for control of the future. But this Red Hood? He's not even clanned up. He's alone. We have an army.

IOI Worker 2: And yet, he's got the first key.

IOI Worker 1: Yeah, he has a key, but you have to get three of 'em to win the contest.

IOI Worker 3: Our stock dove 6% yesterday.

Norlan: Loyalty division is reporting profits of 28%. F'Nale.

F'Nale: We're opening five new loyalty centers this month.

Norlan: Debt Services dwarfs Hardware. Now, you really wanna talk to me about stock prices?

IOI Worker 3: The shareholders won't be happy.

Norlan: It's not our job to make them happy. It's our job to make them money, but once we launch this little baby, they're gonna flip.

Norlan presents his plans.

Norlan: We call this Pure O2. This is the first of our planned upgrades. Once we can roll back some of Halliday's ad restrictions, we estimate we can sell up to 80% of an individual's visual field before inducing seizures, so picture this...

IOI Worker 1: All of this implies we win the contest.

Norlan: Indeed, it does.

Red Hood is in the OASIS looking through the shop.

Y/N (Narrating): After I won the key, I was rewarded 100,000 coins? As soon as I took the key, all the coins just appeared in my account. So, I'm going shopping.

Red Hood walks by a Cataclyst.

Y/N (Narrating): The Cataclyst, a bomb that kills every avatar on a planet, even the owner. IOI would definitely want that. They buy everything.

Red Hood then sees a holy hand grenade and it was the last one. He buys it.

Red Hood: Might be useful.

He then sees a Zemeckis Cube.

Y/N (Narrating): The Zemeckis Cube, a powerful artifact that has the ability to turn back time for everyone except the user and his/her choice of other avatars for sixty seconds.

Red Hood buys it.

Red Hood: Might get me out of tough situations.

He then sees the latest model of a X1 haptic bootsuit.

Red Hood: To heck with it.

He buys it and it gets delivered as he puts it on. Meanwhile, Norlan puts on his suit and goes to his chair as it scans his face and puts on his headgear and enters a destroyed planet as he finds i-Rok.

Norlan: i-R0k, old friend. How are you?

i-Rok: To be honest, I have kind of a neck thing. It's like a carpel-tunnel deal but with your neck, if that's even a thing. So, if you could just stand to your right. My right, your left. Thanks, it's the repetitive stress. Oh. Here he is.

He moves a piece of debris and pulls out a skull that looks like a pirate.

i-R0k: The steampunk pirate king. I knew him well, Sorrento. There are only three things in this world I hate, steampunk, pirates, and tabbouleh. I mean, why do they even have it?