Ready Player One Read-Through: Chapter 14

Content warning: references to poverty and class issues, death.



Wade finds himself "on a grand observation deck" looking out on black space where there are "a dozen OASIS worlds suspended."


I appeared to be on a space station or a very large transport ship, I couldn't tell which. (Page 134)


You're the sci-fi geek with no life, Wade. You tell us, the readers, reading your story.

Infodump on chatlinks and projections in the OASIS. Wade's avatar's projection is in a location where there is a reception desk:


As I approached the desk, an impossible beautiful blonde receptionist stood to greet me. (Page 134)


Oh like Art3mis is any more real.

Female presence in Ready Player One is extremely underutilized, as you can probably deduce.

So Sorrento waltzes in, and we know he's evil because he wears a suit, and gold and neutral colours define his appearance. He greets Wade, "grinning like a jackal" (how would a jackal grin?). The entire chapter is about Sorrento the villain taking our "hero" on a tour of his heartless, steel (despite being virtual), dodgy base of operations, the IOI. Then he invites him to step into his enormous office, where the offer of "you work for me now" begins. Wade tries to act cool and nonchalant about all of this, not giving Sorrento the satisfaction of seeing through his poker face how impressed and/or intimidated he is (hey, Wade, you chose to be there!).

It's like something out of a James Bond movie. Intentional homage? But that only adds to this scene's sense of been-there-done-that, good-guy-meets-bad-guy story template. Nothing new is added. We know what's coming.

Even more offers of money for a job at the IOI tempt Wade for a paragraph... but he does refuse. He equates life in the OASIS as "freedom" (BWAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!), and sees the big bad greedy evil IOI as wanting "to ruin the OASIS forever" (poor baby). Then he proceeds to do something worse than refuse in this situation: he gloats. He tries to do a Morrow and bullshit and outwit Sorrento, fucking around with the billion dollar corporation. Arrogant as ever, trying so damn hard to act like a smartass.

Just as he's about to leave (only his avatar's "projection" is present in the IOI, so no one can hurt or restrain him physically there, and he can leave whenever he wants. Deep, deeper down the rabbit hole he goes), Sorrento reveals that he knows Wade's real name and identity, and where he lives, his birthdate, everything about him. It is here where we find out that his full name is Wade Owen Watts. W. O. W. Seriously!?

Sorrento thinks that Wade's physical form is still in his aunt's trailer in the stacks. He has cameras everywhere there, except where Wade's path to his hideout is, conveniently. Wade speculates that they found him through his old school records.


"There you are," Sorrento said. His pleasant, condescending tone had returned. "You should really get out more, Wade. It's not healthy to spend all of your time indoors." (Page 142)


Once again, it's a bad guy who tells Wade to get a life and get out more.

And as if this didn't feel enough like a Bond film, Sorrento warns our young hero that high explosives surround his home, and the baddie's finger is on the detonator. I expected him to purr, "Mr. Bond" after delivering his threat.

Wade considers that he might be bluffing. Then he reassures himself that he is safe from the explosives anyway, with barely a thought to the dozens of innocent people living in the area of his aunt's trailer.

Sorrento confirms his suspicions that the villain had found him out through his old school records and report cards. IOI had bribed a few OPS administrators for information, with Sorrento remarking, "Do you know how little a school administrator makes a year, Wade? It's scandalous." A commentary on underpaid school teachers and educators is dropped and forgotten about just as quickly. Surprised?

Not that Ready Player One had ever shown any kind of respect for schools and education beforehand, highlighting their importance. Maybe Wade should be a Republican senator - hi-oh! Topical!

Sorrento has the upper hand. He'd been prepared, he'd outsmarted the little smartass. Nice move, Wade. The lesson here is: Good is dumb, evil is smart. Not a good look.

And yes Wade, IOI would kill to win a video game, when billions of dollars are at stake. This is a dystopia. You yourself would go to great, inhumane lengths to win a game, at the cost of your own sanity, health and dignity. You are naive and ignorant about the real world, thanks to a lifetime spent in the OASIS.

It's all Halliday's fault, again.

And yet, despite Sorrento confirming that he has all the bases and tracks covered, making Wade an offer he cannot refuse without looking like a monster, the short-sighted boy still thinks this is all a bluff. And even if it isn't, he wouldn't be killed, not right away anyway, and that's a plus for him!

The warnings that Art3mis and Morrow gave earlier about the IOI and other dangerous peoples? Never brought up. They never occur to Wade. It was all wasted foreshadowing.

So he logs out, calling Halliday smarter than the Sixers and Sorrento (fuck off). He's back in his safe little hidey-hole.

His next thought is to warn his gunter friends in the virtual world, and not the directly-endangered people - his actual fucking family - in the real world.

Guess what the explosives go off. It wasn't a bluff.

Wade, in his carelessness, selfishness, arrogance, and defection of reality, has caused the deaths of at least a dozen or more innocent people. Including the only family he has left.

He was indirectly responsible, but it was a responsibility nonetheless.

In agreeing to meet Sorrento and swagger into the IOI like a tosser, calling the bad man's bluff, lives have been lost. Horribly.

He is now completely, utterly, irreparably, alone in the real world.

And he barely cares. He gives more thought to the damaged property and getting away for his own sake than he does his aunt and her boyfriend and Mrs. Gilmore. They were barely one-dimensional pieces of meat who only ever appeared in a single page in Ready Player One, so who gives a crap? Not Wade, who knew the two women, who seconds ago have been blown up, all his life.

Our hero.

(Thanks for reducing the number of named female characters even more as well! Now there is literally only Art3mis left at this point, and it is questionable whether or not she is even real.)

Wade runs off to log onto the OASIS again, because that's what he's always done when reality becomes too much and too scary for him (not that this is indicated anywhere in the text). He worries that no one - the police or the media - will believe him if he says the IOI caused the explosion, which the corporation had counted on to be dismissed as a drug lab accident, given the general public view that the stacks are no better than the slums. (Loop-de-loop, social commentary on poverty and class never properly addressed). He can't risk revealing his true identity either, or compromising his famous avatar identity in the process.

The thing is, everybody hates the IOI and the Sixers - someone is bound to believe him, if in a conspiracy theory way.

Yeah, no help will come to him. Not immediately.

Back in the OASIS we go, then! For a gunter meeting. When a powerful, murderous, multi-billion dollar corporation operating there had just tried to kill you! SMRT!

Wade is... so distant. So detached from all the death and destruction. The writing gives no hint that he is merely in shock. No mention is made of the nightmare sequence back in chapter 11 - this particular waking nightmare parallels that brilliantly. This tragedy is a chance for the book to have a deep and meaningful reflection on itself.

But we don't get that. We never get anything like that. Wasted opportunity is wasted.

Wade feels nothing, so I, the reader meant to be invested and scared for him, feel nothing.

My only explanation is that Wade is desensitized from a lifetime in the OASIS, and from watching so much television and playing video games. His sense of reality isn't blurred with fiction - it's dead, like his family, who as it turns out truly mean nothing to him.

Our. Hero.

End of chapter 14.

End of an era, but not really, from our hero's reaction.