INT. LIBRARYLANCE
TYE goes to visit a VIRTUAL LIBRARY in The Oasis which is curated by a SNARKY ROBOT.
ROBO-LIBRARIAN
Welcome to this library which Mark Rylance set up before he died. Some rich people set up libraries dedicated to natural history or indigenous cultures or whatnot; Mark set up a library dedicated to Mark Rylance, which chronicles every single thing he did, said and thought throughout his entire life.
TYE SHERIDAN
Yep, and then he made several clues in the Easter Egg hunt relate specifically to obscure biographical details about himself, thus offering people a five-hundred-billion-dollar bribe to memorize everything about him.
ROBO-LIBRARIAN
A fitting tribute to the most self-obsessed egomaniac who ever lived.
TYE SHERIDAN
Anyway, I want to be shown the day that Mark Rylance ended his business partnership with co-creator of the Oasis, Simon Pegg. I’ve been reminded of it by an offhand comment Olivia made, which kinda had nothing to do with anything, so if this clip actually DOES tell me how to win the race then it’ll be the mother of all coincidences.
The ROBO-LIBRARIAN pulls up a VIDEO CLIP of MARK and SIMON.
SIMON PEGG
Damnit Mark, it wounds me that I, the charismatic businessman of our partnership, have been marginalized and not allowed a voice in this company to the point that I have to walk away and leave it entirely in the hands of you, the actual tech genius behind our most successful product line! This... this appears to be somebody’s Jobs/Wozniak alternate universe fanfic???
MARK RYLANCE
Look I wish we could have agreed on a direction for the company to take, but that was never going to happen as long as you kept insisting that we “progress” and “grow”. We need to wallow in nostalgia and crawl ever further into the comfortable warmth of our own buttholes, like I do with every other aspect of my life! I want to GO BACKWARDS VERY FAST!
TYE SHERIDAN
“Go backwards very fast”? That’s the clue! I’ve got to drive BACKWARDS at the start of the race!
ROBO-LIBRARIAN
Are you sure that’s the clue? A single offhand comment Mark made at one point of his entire life? As video game puzzles go, that’s some next-level Nintendo Power bullshit right there.
TYE SHERIDAN
Hmm, you’re probably right. I mean I’ll give it a try, but surely people have been trying to find hidden shortcuts in the race for years, and when it comes to hidden secrets in games, “go left at the beginning instead of right” is kindergarten stuff. It’d be like trying to fool a team of professional magicians by pulling coins out of their ears.
But lo and behold, next time he tries the RACE he goes backwards and immediately finds the entrance to a SECRET TRACK NOBODY EVER FOUND BEFORE, which lets him just drive straight past every single obstacle and WIN.
TYE SHERIDAN
YES! I did it, I won the race and got the first key and the second riddle!
OLIVIA COOK3
And now that you’ve figured out the secret to the race, the next time I just copied what you did and ALSO got the first key and the second riddle!
LEONARD WAITHE
Me too!
PHILIP ZHAO AND WIN MORISAKI
And us, who are characters who barely show up in this movie!
TYE SHERIDAN
Which means that the playing field has immediately been leveled again, and being the one who actually does the work and figures this shit out offers no advantage whatsoever. Brilliant. Oh well, at least getting the key won me some in-game money I can use to buy a fancier VR suit.
LEONARD WAITHE
Wait, you can use fake money won by playing a free game to purchase real, expensive items in the real world?
TYE SHERIDAN
I know, right? It’s like EA but in reverse.
INT. NIGHTCLUB
TYE and OLIVIA meet up at a virtual dance club.
TYE SHERIDAN
So how do you figure the next clue points us here?
OLIVIA COOK3
I dunno, some tortured logic that turns out to be wrong anyway. This is really just a contrived way to get us slow-dancing together on a non-date date and force the romantic subplot forward.
TYE SHERIDAN
Ew, we’re supposed to hook up? Who wants to see that, my avatar has the complexion of a lamprey eel and yours looks like a meth-addicted pixie.
OLIVIA COOK3
Yeah well, we’re the male and female protagonists and it’s movie law. Now hold still and let me awkwardly dry-hump you in public.
Suddenly BAD GUYS BURST IN and try to KILL THEM!
OLIVIA COOK3
Oh fuck! Fight these guys, Tye! Fight them with guns rather than just unplugging from The Oasis and instantly getting away!
TYE SHERIDAN
What the fuck? Who are these people?
OLIVIA COOK3
They’re from the evil corporation, IOI! They’re a company that sells... uh, that makes... actually it’s not clear what they are, they seem to just make money for a living.
TYE SHERIDAN
I see, and they’re out to kill us because why?
OLIVIA COOK3
IOI want to win the contest so they can take over The Oasis and ruin it with pop-up ads! You’d think we’d have gone with something more satirically on-point like pay-to-win microtransactions, but no, pop-up ads are the current scourge of online multiplayer as far as our seventy-one-year-old director is aware.
TYE SHERIDAN
So, wait... there’s an evil corporation oppressing innocent people, and the only way to thwart their evil scheme is to beat them in a geek contest? You’re telling me that Ernest Cline did all this world-building just to justify a premise where being the world’s most obsessive pop culture junkie allows you to SAVE THE FUCKING WORLD?
OLIVIA COOK3
Hey, blame not the shameless self-insert fic, blame the people who bought a million copies of it.
A LASER BLAST nearly hits TYE!
