Ready Player One
Description
Vocal Characteristics
Language
EnglishVoice Age
Young Adult (18-35)Accents
North American (General)Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
everyone my age remembers where they were and what they were doing. When they first heard about the contest, I was sitting in my hideout watching cartoons. When the news bulletin broke in on my video feed, announcing that James Halliday had died during the night, I'd heard a valid A. Of course, everyone had. He was the video game designer responsible for creating the Oasis, a massively multiplayer online game that had gradually evolved into the globally networked virtual reality most of humanity now used on a daily basis. The unprecedented success of the Oasis had made Halliday one of the wealthiest people in the world. At first I couldn't understand why the media was making such a big deal of the billionaires death. After all, the people of Planet Earth had other concerns. The ongoing energy crisis, catastrophic climate change, widespread famine, poverty and disease. Half a dozen wars, you know, dogs and cats living together mass hysteria. Normally, the news feeds didn't interrupt everyone's interactive sitcoms and soap operas unless something really major had happened, like the outbreak of some new killer virus or another major city vanishing in a mushroom cloud. Big stuff like that as famous as he was, Halliday's death should have warranted only a brief segment on the evening news so the unwashed masses could shake their heads and envy when the newscasters announced the obscenely large amount of money that would be doled out to the rich man's Ares. But that was the rub. James Halliday had no heirs. He had died a 67 year old bachelor with no living relatives and, by most accounts, without a single friend. He'd spent the last 15 years of his life and self imposed isolation, during which time, if rumors were to be believed, he'd gone completely insane. So the rial, jaw dropping news that January morning the news that had everyone from Toronto to Tokyo crapping in their corn flakes, concerned the contents of Halliday's last will and testament and the fate of his vast fortune.