Twenty-one-year-old Wade Watts recaps the events immediately following Ready Player One. In 2045, after winning the late virtual reality pioneer James Halliday’s Easter egg hunt, Wade inherited his massive fortune and became CEO of Gregarious Simulation Systems (GSS), the company that controls the virtual reality open-world environment, the OASIS. Wade also took over Halliday’s virtual avatar Anorak, which grants him unique powers within the OASIS, and retires his own avatar, Parzival.

Inside the virtual sanctuary of Anorak’s Castle—where only the wearer of the character’s robes can center—Wade discovers a message left by Halliday before his death, instructing him to open a specific vault in GSS’s Columbus, Ohio, headquarters. There, Wade discovers a new invention Halliday kept secret: the OASIS Neural Interface (ONI). Unlike existing OASIS interfaces, which allow users to control virtual avatars through haptic sensors, ONI forges a direct connection to users’ cerebral cortexes, letting them feel, see, hear, smell, and taste virtual environments as vividly as in the real world. Moreover, ONI can record a user’s real-life experiences so that other users may relive them in the OASIS. In a pre-recorded message, Halliday, acknowledging the power of his device, leaves it in Wade’s hands to decide when ONI should be made available to the public, if at all.