Character plot
Eighteen-year-old Wade Watts is one of these people, and he has a mission: to find an Easter egg hidden inside the OASIS by its wackadoodle creator, James Halliday. In order to get to the egg, a player must first find three keys and unlock three gates. Wade—playing as his avatar, Parzival—finds the first key, the Copper Key, inside the Tomb of Horrors. There he also meets Art3mis, a young blogger with a sexy, shapely avatar that catches Wade's eye. Ooh-la-la the flirtmance begins. Wade handily unlocks the First Gate by re-enacting the entire movie WarGames. He gets a hint to the location of the Jade Key, but it's a doozy. While he tries to decipher it, he and Art3mis go on a variety of digital dates. Their relationship comes between Wade and his best friend, Aech, and they start to drift apart. Art3mis soon cuts off communication with Wade, too, because she wants to focus on winning the big prize. While trying to find the Jade Key, Wade investigates the planet Archaide. There, he plays a perfect game of Pac-Man and wins a quarter. Not even a real quarter—it's an item for his inventory, and it doesn't appear to have any practical use whatsoever. Gee, thanks.