Ready Player One Read-Through: Chapter 37

Content warning: sexism.



This is Atari porn - the chapter.

Wade has to play Tempest on a (virtual) old Atari arcade machine. Miraculously, it appears to be the one game in the world that he isn't good at.

Luckily, Art3mis knows about it, and is there to help him out. She had already figured out the clue towards this game's reveal from a quote from Shakespeare's Tempest, on the last page of Anorak's Almanac, apparently. A Shakespeare quote in Ready Player One? Wow. Did not expect that, so points for not being predictable for once. Showing class and taste?

Showing class and taste. Ready Player One? Now that's a laugh.

Art3mis will be instructing Wade on how to play a video game. Hmm, a woman telling a man on a comlink how to play a game - he's out and part of the action, while she is placed in the backseat instead of doing shit herself? Where have I heard that before?

Oh yes, the exact same thing happens in bloody Pixels! This should go without saying, but a good book should not remind me of a bad Adam Sandler comedy!

So did Pixels rip off Ready Player One - before it was even a movie - as well as Futurama?

People begin to praise Art3mis for her smarts, and Wade is not happy:


"I never made that connection either," Aech confessed. "Bravo, Art3mis."
"The game Tempest also appears briefly in the music video for the song 'Subdivisions' by Rush," she added. "One of Halliday's favorites. Pretty hard to miss."
"Whoa," Shoto said. "She's good."
"OK!" I shouted, "It should have been obvious. No need to rub it in!" (Page 351)


What's wrong, Wadie-poo? Feeling emasculated? Don't like that a woman is getting more attention than you? Don't like that she's outwitted you? On something that really should have been obvious?

Seriously, there was no need to shout and lose your temper like that.

Wade and Art3mis are sure in for a healthy relationship.

Art3mis drops some more knowledge about Tempest and how it was played in the '80s.


"Damn, girl," Aech said. "You've got some serious knowledge."
    "Thanks," she said. "It helps to be an obsessive-compulsive geek. With no life." Everyone laughed at that, except me. I was much too nervous. (Page 351)


Not funny. Art3mis just admitted to being a loser like everyone else.

Shame, however, that Wade can't be happy for his love interest for actually having a brain. Does he ever praise her in the book? Immature dick, hating to be outclassed by a girl.

Yeah, this is another video game playing chapter. Yawn. Incredibly underwhelming.

There is mention of how Wade's initials spell out W-O-W. We know. It was obvious already. We get it, Wade is a god!


"Hey, check this out," Art3mis said, reading from her journal. "The creator of Tempest, Dave Theurer, originally got the idea for the game from a nightmare he had about monsters crawling up out of a hole in the ground and chasing him." She laughed her little musical laugh. which I hadn't heard in so long. "Isn't that cool, Z?" she said.
    "That is cool," I replied. Somehow, just hearing her voice set me at ease. I think she knew this, and that was why she kept talking to me. I felt re-energized. I hit the Player One button again and began my third game. (Page 353)


Woman gives emotional support to male hero - just like in every sci-fi movie ever made.

Also, Art3mis is helping Wade cheat. Everyone on his comlink is helping him cheat. I doubt that Halliday intended for the avatar playing this game to receive outsider help. On one of the final games for the Easter egg. Wouldn't he have prevented this?

The Sixers are on their way (finally, Wade has been playing Tempest for an hour!), and Wade finds out from his friends that the whole world can see him be a hero. He's understandably freaked out, at first, losing his stride. But wait for it, it all turns out okay!

Ready Player One - where playing video games saves the world! Where game players are real, world-saving heroes!

Pure fantasy. Pure adolescent male power fantasy - set in and around video games. Just like Pixels.

This is almost adorable.

Wade has to lose from already getting a high score (802,488 points, in case anyone cared), before he is transported into a simulation of Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Well, this should be interesting! More fun than what we previously had, at least. (points for the Grail reference back in chapter 2 - so that pop culture symbol did hint at something that concerned the plot). Though it does remind me that I could be watching that movie right now, instead of reading this published lite fanfiction.

Apparently Wade can master a British accent as Graham Chapman's King Arthur, and his friends are still helping him out on his comlink - with the lines and such. Still cheating. For the final stage of the egg hunt, Wade is winning by cheating.

How this makes him any different from how the Sixers operate completely went over Cline's head as he wrote this.

It's not like the simulation would have been hard to get through, even if you didn't know Grail by heart - there are a lot of sketches and side-plots in that movie, and they don't include Graham Chapman.

The amusement doesn't last long, sadly. Wade completes the movie simulation and is then transported to a warehouse full of game consoles and computers. Nearly all of the classics are listed. Great, back to more tedium.

It is a recreation of Halliday's office, where he had spent most of his time in before he died. An OASIS immersion rig stands in the middle.


I'd reached the end. This was it. Halliday's Easter egg must be hidden somewhere in this room. (Page 359)


Aren't you clever? How'd you figure that one out?

Can't hear your friends anymore to help you keep cheating? Wade doesn't call for them when he first appears in the room. Must be distracted by all the cluttered-up cartridges, blocky computers, and tangled wires.

But yes - it is the end! It is almost over! Hallelujah I'm nearly free at last!