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During the race Wade is also entranced by a female racer on a bike from the film "Akira." He soon finds out that this is Art3mis (Olivia Cooke), a well-known gamer and "sixer-fixer." Wade convinces Aech to help Art3mis repair her bike after the race. Wade and Aech attempt go on another race through the event, but like always, no one can get past King Kong near the end of the challenge. A number of persons eagerly searched for the keys, but in five years, the only thing uncovered was the first challenge: a racing game through a simulated New York City. Though mostly making their money off of products and other gear to allow one into THE OASIS, the company's CEO Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn) wants to find the egg to increase the amount of influence and money IOI can make from the virtual world. Their main competition comes from Gregarious Games' main competition: IOI (Innovative Online Industries). While many egg hunters (nicknamed "Gunters") have teamed up to search, Wade mostly searches on his own.
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Whomever gets all three keys and receives the egg, would inherit Halliday's personal fortune of $500 billion, and gain total control over THE OASIS. There would be three challenges to win (presided over by Halliday's avatar, Anorak the all-knowing), each one having a specific key. After his death, a video was sent out, telling how he had hidden an Easter egg within the Oasis. One of Wade's hobbies, is trying to decipher a contest that James Halliday created before he died. Wade's avatar in this world is named Parzival, and he frequently interacts with Aech (Lena Waithe), a huge muscular mechanic, as well as the samurai Daito (Win Morisaki) and fighter Sho (Philip Zhao), although he has never met any of them in person. However, like a video game, if you accumulate stuff in THE OASIS and your avatar dies, you end up losing everything.
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Created by James Halliday (Mark Rylance) and Ogden Morrow (Simon Pegg) of Gregarious Games, The OASIS is a place where one can do anything and be anyone (or anything). With the real world in such an impoverished state and no one really caring to do anything about it, Wade finds himself like millions of people, escaping into The OASIS (Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory Immersive Simulation), a virtual reality world where people can enter as avatars to play video games, entertain themselves, and seek pleasures they can't find so easily in the real world. The-low-income community is filled with a number of precariously stacked trailers and vehicles, where Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) lives with his Aunt Alice (Susan Lynch), and her boyfriend Rick (Ralph Ineson).
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