Ready Player Two

All Wade had to do was have the engineers at GSS reconnect the OASIS data uplink to ARC@DIA on board the Vonnegut. Then they were able to copy all of the resurrected AIs from the OASIS servers to the duplicate ARC@DIA servers. Og, Kira, and Ev3lyn all disappeared from the old, overcrowded simulation and reappeared inside the brand-new (and completely empty) one that had been prepared aboard the ship.

Wade no longer wanted to leave Earth. Now that he and Samantha were back together, they never wanted to be apart again. Surviving their experience with Anorak also taught them that they never wanted to risk losing each other again. They vowed to remain together forever. And then they figured out a way to do just that.

Since they didn’t want to send Og, Kira, and Ev3lyn off into space on their own, Wade and Samantha decided to send along copies of themselves, too, to keep them company.

Yes, you read that right. Samantha finally agreed to put on an ONI headset, for the first, last, and only time in her life. And she only put one on long enough for the system to finish creating a backup copy of her consciousness, so that it could be uploaded to ARC@DIA along with the copy of her grandmother Ev3lyn.

With Samantha’s help, Wade also convinced Aech and Endira and Shoto and Kiki to send copies of themselves along on this great adventure too.

And since there was still plenty of digital storage space left aboard the Vonnegut’s computer, Wade went ahead and uploaded the entire ONI consciousness database to the ARC@DIA. Billions of digitized human souls, which were to be kept stored in suspended animation for safekeeping. Copies of L0hengrin and the other members of the L0w Five were among them.

Wade made one more backup scan of his own consciousness, too, right before we left, to make sure that I would remember everything that happened to him, right up until the time of our departure. And I do. Right up until that final scan, our memories were identical. But from that moment on, our experiences and our personalities began to diverge, and we started to become different people.

He continued to be Wade Watts back on Earth. And I woke up inside ARC@DIA aboard the Vonnegut. And that’s where I’ve been ever since. That’s where I am right now, as I tell you my account of this story.

So now you know how I got here.

Now you know how we all got here.

Wade gave me administrative command of the Vonnegut and its computer just before he launched the ship out into space. The only organic human beings on board were the several thousand frozen embryos we had stored in the deep freeze, just in case.

We are able to maintain and repair the ship with telebots that we control from inside the ARC@DIA simulation. We don’t need food or life support. We get everything we need from the ship’s solar panel array and its batteries. And we have everything we will ever need, here inside ARC@DIA. Billions of digitized human minds, launched out into space, along with a complete record of our entire culture.

Of course, ARC@DIA doesn’t have enough processing power to simulate that many digital people at once. It can only handle a few dozen, which is fine by me and the rest of the tiny crew. We still have millions of NPCs to keep us company. And our own backup copy of the ONI-net, containing millions of human experiences recorded back home. And we’ll have one another….

Those billions of other digitized souls will lie dormant throughout our trip, held in suspended animation as giant UBS files stored on the ship’s computer, and on its redundant array of backup servers, so that, if and when we ever find a new home for humanity, we’ll have the means to colonize that new world digitally as well as physically.

Wade and I debated whether or not it would be ethical to resurrect these AIs without first asking permission from their counterparts back on Earth. But it seemed highly unlikely that this would even be possible, if and when the time came to make that decision. Ultimately, Wade left the choice up to me, since I was the one who actually knew what it was like to be reincarnated.

And what is it like? Well, there are a few downsides to becoming a completely digital person. We can’t log out of ARC@DIA—ever. But on the upside, we’ve stopped aging. And we no longer need to eat, sleep, or get out of bed to take a leak. We have been freed from all of the hassles that came with being trapped inside a physical body—including death.

In addition to being immortal, I also have a photographic memory, with total recall of every detail of every single moment I ever experienced. It’s like having access to an ONI recording of my entire life. I can recall and relive any part of it anytime I please. It’s like time travel.

Art3mis and I are both ageless, immortal beings now, living together in harmony, in a paradise of our own making, aboard a spacecraft carrying us to the nearest star.

Life is good. But it’s very different from our lives back home.

Once Wade finished uploading all of us, the Vonnegut quietly left Earth’s orbit. Now we’re on the way to Proxima Centauri, the nearest star system believed to contain Earthlike planets. It’ll take us decades to get there, but we don’t mind. We now have that kind of time on our hands. Not only are we going to live forever, we’re going to get to see some of the universe too. And since our crew is no longer organic, we didn’t have to bring along food or air, or worry about radiation shielding or micrometeors. As long as the ship’s computer or its backups survive, so will we.

We’re different people now. Me and Art3mis and Aech and Shoto and Og and Kira, and all the rest of us here aboard the Vonnegut. And our relationships with one another have also evolved, now that we’re immortal beings of pure intellect, freed from our physical forms and set adrift in the vastness of outer space, possibly for all eternity. Even though our perspectives may have changed, we still value those relationships above all else. Because out here, that’s all we have.

That, of course, includes our relationships with our counterparts back on Earth. We all still keep in touch. It’s been over a year since we left, but we still send each other video messages and emails all the time. It’s a bit strange—like being pen pals with yourself in an alternate universe.

Aech and Endira got married back on Earth, as planned, and their counterparts here aboard the Vonnegut exchanged vows, too, at the same exact time.

Shoto and Kiki had their baby boy, Daito. He’s happy and healthy, and we all have the honor of being his godparents. Shoto and Kiki send us a new photo of their son every week.

Wade and Samantha finally tied the knot a few months ago. Their first dance as husband and wife was an elaborate Bollywood number that they performed together. Aech and her wife, Endira, were the Best Man and the Matron of Honor, and they both joined in. The video they sent us, of the four of them dancing together in perfect synchrony, is my absolute favorite. I rewatch it every day.

Last week, Wade sent me a short email that said he and Samantha are expecting a little girl, and they plan to name her Kira. They both seem really happy—especially Wade. The prospect of becoming a father seems to have made him more hopeful and optimistic. He’s going to be a great dad, and I’m looking forward to experiencing fatherhood vicariously through him. It’s the closest to being a parent I’m ever going to get.

In the end, Samantha and Wade both had a change of heart about the ONI. He saw the ONI’s dangers much more clearly. And for the first time in her life, Samantha was willing to acknowledge its benefits.

“I was wrong,” she told me, after she’d told Wade. “This technology does make a lot of people’s lives infinitely better than they would be without it. People like L0hengrin and my grandmother. And it also saves people’s lives—it saves everything about who they were—forever. I have my grandma back. And she has me back too. It’s a miracle and I am grateful for it every day.” Then, because she’s the sweetest and the coolest, Samantha added, “And your stubbornness helped make that happen, Parzival. So thank you. I thank Wade all the time, too, but you deserve at least half the credit.”

Things aren’t perfect. The people who remain back on Earth are still facing plenty of huge problems. But they also still have the OASIS as their collective means of escape.

Despite the Anorak Incident, billions of people still use an ONI headset every day. Only a few dozen people died as a result of Anorak’s actions, nearly all of them when he crashed Samantha’s jet. The handful of others were killed by other people—murderous criminals who preyed on helpless ONI users while they were being held hostage by Anorak’s infirmware. But there wasn’t a single death caused by Synaptic Overload Syndrome. The ONI headsets hadn’t actually harmed anyone. So humanity collectively decided that the OASIS Neural Interface was completely safe—or at least worth the risk. The people of Earth still need an escape, and I don’t blame them. Neither does Wade. But he still says that he’ll never put on an ONI headset again. And I believe him.

Even with all of the problems confronting our counterparts back on Earth, it’s comforting to know that there are smart, resourceful people back there, doing everything in their power to make life better for their fellow human beings—while digital copies of many of those same people are out here in space, searching to find humanity a new home.

Stored inside the sprawling ARC@ADIA simulation, backed up on a redundant array of solid-state hard drives in the belly of the ship, is a digital library of humanity’s greatest hits. All of our books and music and movies and games and art—we brought it all along with us. A backup of our entire civilization that will survive as long as we do. All of human history and culture—a record of everything that humans were and are—it’s all stored here aboard this ship, like a cosmic ark, carrying a digital time capsule of who we were—and who we still are. And someday perhaps we will encounter another civilization like our own to share it with. Then we’ll finally get a chance to compare notes.

Until then, we have nothing but endless time and infinite space, stretching out ahead of us forever.

Our existence is filled with joy and happiness. I am alive. And I’m with Samantha. And our friends are all alive too. And we are all together, embarking on the greatest adventure in the history of our species. And best of all, we’re going to live forever. I will never have to lose them, and they will never have to lose me.

I grew up playing videogames. Now I live my whole life inside of one. That’s why I feel qualified to say that Kira Underwood was right, when she said that life was like an extremely difficult, horribly unbalanced videogame. But sometimes the game can have a surprise ending….

And sometimes, when you think you’ve finally reached the end of the game, suddenly you find yourself standing at the start of a whole new level. A level that you’ve never seen before.

And the only thing you can do is keep right on playing. Because the game that is your life still isn’t over yet. And there’s no telling how far you might be able to get, what you might discover, or who you might meet when you get there.