Ready Player One Read-Through: Chapter 29

Content warning: government corruption, homelessness, references to refugees, slavery, immigration, airport security, sexism.



Wade sees outside the truck that the real world has been neglected so badly that it is practically a wasteland.


The number of homeless people seemed to have increased drastically. Tents and cardboard shelters lined the streets, and the public parks I saw seemed to have been converted into refugee camps. (Page 276).


People are clustered wherever to get a good GSS wireless connection, using cheap and outdated visors and haptic gloves. Virtual reality is the only reality now to humans.

Halliday did all of this. He is responsible.

What did Wade expect? He's part of the problem, as well. Everything is taken in stride, unchallenged, as usual.

The homeless people, the refugee camps; these are never mentioned again, by the way.

They arrive at the 101 IOI (clever?) Plaza, one of its headquarters.


The buildings looked identical to their headquarters in the OASIS on IOI-1, but here in the real world they seemed much more impressive. (Page 276)


How? How are they more impressive? Reality more impressive than virtual? Explain!

In addition, there is overuse of the word "seemed".

They enter the "IOI INDENTURED EMPLOYEE INDUCTION CENTER". Wade gets into a queue, and luckily isn't recognized for his true self by any scanners (he remains Bryce Lynch to the government - how has no one picked up on the Max Headroom reference yet!?). Devices are removed from people in the line:


A dude just ahead of me in line actually had a top-of-the-line miniature Sinatro OASIS console concealed inside a prosthetic testicle. Talk about balls. (Page 277)


Okay, that is a funny quote that made me chuckle.

This could be seen as a parody of airport and/or other security post-911; except, again, issues such as race, class and immigration don't seem to exist in this book at this specific time. Ready Player One has no balls.

In a cubicle, Wade is then given a visor and gloves that don't log onto the OASIS but "I still found it comforting to put on." He answers test questions, wisely not revealing too much and not risking compromising his identity.


I was already tempting fate more than anyone in their right mind ever would. (Page 278)


He does learn, then.

He's still ridiculously lucky, though. So no stakes and tension, once again.

He is offered a job at an IOI cubicle, as an OASIS Technical Support Representative. It's to supposedly pay off debts to the IOI, but--


This was a complete joke, of course. Indents were never able to pay off their debt and earn their release. Once they got finished slapping you with pay deductions, late fees, and interest penalties, you wound up owing them more each month, instead of less. Once you made the mistake of getting yourself indentured, you would probably remain indentured for life. A lot of people didn't seem to mind this, though. They thought of it as job security. It also meant they weren't going to starve or freeze to death in the street. (Page 278)


A corrupt corporation - how original!

General complacency in corruption, slave labour, and the underprivileged being mistreated, tortured, and killed or left to die - that's... scarily true of our world right now.

This is the intentional dystopic part in Ready Player One - and it is set in the real world. Wade is now a tool of IOI instead of the OASIS. Halliday only made it slightly less obvious in the fake virtual world.

Either way, Wade is a tool.

Let's look at the implications here:

Reality = evil, bleak, hopeless, corrupt, full of poverty, no individuality (all the indents and other workers at IOI look the same and wear the same gray, drab colours), and no one is trying anything to make things better.

Escapism = good, colourful, full of hope, full of happiness, and is considered to be "freedom"; the only form of it. For those who are privileged enough to have access to it, of course, unlike the many, many homeless people trapped and dying in the real world.

Nobody cares about that. Certainly not Wade.

Our hero!

Wade is indoctrinated into the IOI job and life sentence, on a conveyor belt, just like a product - a disposable commodity. He is washed, rinsed and cleaned through a machine, and put into a gray jumpsuit.


At the next station, a bank of machines gave me a complete physical, including a battery of blood tests. (Luckily, the Genetic Privacy Act made it illegal for IOI to sample my DNA.) Then I was given a series of inoculations with an array of automated needle guns that shot me in both shoulders and both ass cheeks simultaneously. (Page 279)


Lucky lucky lucky! Wade is so lucky!

I should advise at this point not to continue with the "lucky" drinking game - from this moment forth, Wade will be shooting luck rainbows out of his arse. Death by alcohol poisoning is possible. So I'll cease it, indefinitely.

Why would the IOI care about any privacy act anyway? They're already corrupt, and clearly don't care about the law, as long as they don't get caught. Wade should be either trapped in Sorrento's office or dead by now.

Instead, he is fitted with a security anklet, to monitor his location and keep him in line, or else an electric shock or tranquilizer will doom him. An electronic device is pierced onto his earlobe, called an "eargear". Security is extremely tight in this facility.

Wade will still be fine and get to do what he'd planned, no problem.

He eats tasteless food at a prison cafeteria, is given permission to go to the toilet, and later is directed to his sleeping quarters. His bed is an eggshell sleeping capsule, where inside is a TV with only one IOI-made, produced and approved channel, with only their programmes on.

The brainwashing, corrupt, totalitarian, evil government corporation is very OTT. A bit more obvious than what the OASIS is intended for by Halliday. In fact, I think the IOI exists only to make the OASIS look better in comparison.


Despite my best efforts, my thoughts drifted to Art3mis. Regardless of what I'd been telling myself, I knew she was the real reason I'd gone through with this lunatic plan. What the hell was wrong with me? There was a good chance I might never escape for this place. I felt buried under an avalanche of self-doubt. Had my dual obsessions with the egg and Art3mis finally driven me completely insane? Why would I take such an idiotic risk to win over someone I'd never actually met? Someone who appeared to have no interest in ever talking to me again?
    Where was she right now? Did she miss me? (Page 282)


She has been avoiding you for over a year. She hasn't contacted you in over a year. I think she's alright without you.

Wade knows how insane the plan is, and how fucked up his reasons for concocting it are. Nonetheless, he doesn't care, even when his life is on the line.

How can somebody supposedly so smart and careful be so idiotic when it comes to priorities? Like with Art3mis, a girl he's never met and hasn't heard from in over a year?

Girls should come with warning tattoos marked on them like cattle, shouldn't they? "Warning: May cause boners, lack of thinking, lack of logic, and life risking based on no solid reasoning. Proceed with caution. Or just ignore and don't ever look, nor listen to. Any bare skin (that you are reading this on right now) may arouse predatory nature and cause sexual assault. Blame her, it's all her fault for existing, anyway, so don't worry at all. Treat however you want."

So ends chapter 29. Onto further un-ironic irony, un-self-awareness, disrespect of privacy, stalking, and of course, luck!