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snarktheater · 2 years

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Ready Player Two — Chapter 30 & "Continue?"

We open the final chapter of the book with an act of nepotism, where Wade revives his friends' avatars, as well as the Low Five, but not all the other people whose avatars got zeroed out by Anorak's acolytes.

“The next time Lo and her friends logged back in, they would discover that their slain avatars had been restored to life, along with their inventories. They would also find their inboxes filled with offers to buy the film rights to their story. By the end of the week, there would be several Quest for the Dorkslayer movie and TV projects in development.”

There's just something scrumptious about assuring us that they'll be able to profit off of this as a reward for helping Wade. This book may have tried to awkwardly fit in a power of friendship angle, but it strikes me as though that friendship is extremely mercenary.

Samantha catches up with him at the Shrine of Leucosia, and they bring the shards together to reform the Siren's Soul, which then quickly turns into Leucosia herself. Also, the narration shifts between calling her Leucosia and Kira, and I guess we're just gonna have to accept that and move on.

“I know you both must have a lot of questions for me,” Kira said. “But first, I need to ask one of my own. Where is my husband? Is he still alive?”

So Wade and Samantha recount everything that happened, assuring her that Ogden died to save millions of lives. Lives that apparently weren't in danger at all—they just confirmed that to us in the last chapter. Leucosia takes it well, because no one in this book is allowed to grieve.

“Thank you, dear,” she said, turning her face away to hide the anguish on it. “I am proud of him. And I always will be. He was my Og.”

Well, really, he was Kira's Og, but I'm starting to realize the book has already made up its mind about the question of whether or not Leucosia and Kira are the same person and landed on a resounding yes.

Leucosia then…starts infodumping us about how Halliday made these user brain scans to create Anorak and then herself. None of this is new information, so I'm not really sure why this is here. In your final chapter. Your conclusion. That sure is a choice.

“I was actually the world’s first stable artificial intelligence. And I guess I still am.”

Yeah, apparently the only reason Anorak got corrupted is that Halliday tried to tamper with his memories, and otherwise he would have been stable? I have some serious doubts about that, given all we know about the man.

She keeps going through all the things Anorak already told us, and finally concludes that while Halliday using the ONI to relive Kira's memories was the "ultimate invasion of privacy" (her words), ultimately it was also what allowed him to understand her and see her as a person. So in the final chapter, I think the book is trying to find a silver lining to Halliday's creepy behavior. Which, again. Sure is a choice. And more than a little telling.

“Then he was horrified by what he’d done. He saw himself as a monster. He apologized to me. He also offered to try to make it up to me.”

Well, no, first he offered to destroy his technology to ensure no more of these AIs would be created. But of course, the book has already decided the technology was good, so instead, she told him to share it with the world, and Halliday's the one who argued the world wasn't ready for it.

You know, I'm starting to get the impression Halliday just wanted to make toys for himself.

And so, after that, Halliday made it up to Leucosia by…locking her up and broke the prison into seven shards? Yeah, that's roughly it. She insists it was his idea, though she gave her blessing for the inclusion of the flashbacks that Wade got. And it doesn't seem like it bothered her at all to be locked away for short of a decade.

So yeah, Leucosia gives Wade the "Rod of Resurrection", which allows him to make copies of anyone. Even though she just said the point was to release the gift to the world, arguing that thanks to the ONI, people realized that, and I quote, "the mind and body are separate". But then only one guy gets the ability. Leucosia also tells him not to worry about potentially creating more rogue AIs, because Anorak was "corrupted" and the tech is totally safe, now.

What happened to not trusting AIs? I didn't like that part of the book, but is it too much to ask for some ideological consistency in your science fiction?

“James told me he wanted to make sure of this, so he built safeguards into the software to ensure it. Only a user’s most recent unaltered UBS file can be used. When you give it a try, you’ll see what I mean….”

UBS stands for User Brain Scan. It was mentioned in the prologue, and I don't think I mentioned it at the time, but yeah, the ONI has been recording and storing those without users' knowledge all along for this exact purpose. Like, the copies are essentially already made; all Wade has to do is bring them to life.

This includes the logs of any deceased user of the ONI, by the way. Wade sees it as a blessing, the ability to bring back the dead, even though they have no way of consenting to that. Actually, no one has been able to consent to this yet. Didn't we just talk about how Halliday doing it to Kira was a bad thing?

Oh, but it means that, since Ogden used an ONI headset in his last battle, he can be brought back. You know, despite never wanting to interact with Leucosia, I'm sure he'd totally approve of this. Yeah. Makes perfect sense.

I could clone the living or raise the dead, with the press of a button.

Ignoring for a second that this isn't actually raising the dead…you'd think this wouldn't be something you'd save for the end of your book. A book whose exploration of the topic has been extremely sparse, and mostly consisted of saying "don't" over and over.

My mind reeled at the implications. Were people going to suffer an identity crisis if they were suddenly forced to share the OASIS with an immortal backup copy of themselves? One that didn’t need to eat, sleep, work, or pay rent anywhere?

Gee, that sounds like an interesting quandary that a better science fiction book would have explored, rather than wasting most of its page count on pop culture trivia. Though the "pay rent" part is funny to me, because from everything we know about the OASIS, there would absolutely be someone who would eventually force these AIs to pay rent. And that someone has a high likelihood of being Wade himself.

But no, while Wade "reels at the implications", he immediately decides that this is effectively immortality made accessible to everyone, and goes on to immediately resurrect Ogden. Well, Og, since that's his avatar's name.

Og…doesn't seem to have any thoughts about any of this beyond "holy shit, my wife is here, gotta kiss her right this second". See? He's fine with it! The book said so! It goes contrary to everything we know about him, and lack of consent would still not be justified because the person is fine with the result, but it's fine! Don't worry about it!

“This thing can bring back anyone who ever used an ONI headset,” I told her. “Even if they’re not alive anymore.” […] “You can bring back a copy of any past ONI user?” she repeated.

Yes, that's right: remember how Samantha was still grieving her dead grandmother? Well Wade brings her back too! It's a digital necromancy party, baby! Moral quandaries averted!

Witnessing these two impossible, blissful reunions filled me with joy too. Genuine, unbridled joy. And I wasn’t playing back an ONI recording of secondhand joy experienced by someone else, somewhere else, at some time in the past. It was my own, hard-won and earned at great personal cost.

This is such a weird statement I have to include it here. I don't have any comments here. I just wanted you to know this is how Wade talks about feeling emotions. But yeah, sure, the ONI is an unabashed good.

He also angsts about how his parents and all the people who died before the ONI would still remain dead, but since he will live forever, their memories will live on as well.

We were witnessing the dawn of the posthuman era. The Singularity by way of simulacra and simulation. One final gift to human civilization from the troubled-but-brilliant mind of James Donovan Halliday. He had delivered all of us unto this digital paradise, but his own tragic flaws had prevented him from passing through its gates himself.

And there it is. Our thesis statement—or as close as the book's gonna come to. Okay, it's time for the transhumanism talk, part two.

Here's the thing: the idea of transhumanism, of humanity transcending their physical form, is one that I personally find very appealing. I'm not going to say I'm an expert on the subject, or one of the top thinkers. However, there are a few ways this "posthuman" version that the book proposes falls short, and they all come down to one big flaw. Ironically, that flaw happens to also be something that, of all books, Ready Player One exposed succinctly.

“I need to tell you one last thing before I go. Something I didn’t figure out for myself until it was already too late. […] I created the OASIS because I never felt at home in the real world. […] Right up until I knew it was ending. That was when I realized, as terrifying and painful as reality can be, it’s also the only place where you can find true happiness. Because reality is real. Do you understand?”

Look, just because the previous book didn't earn that quote in its own narrative doesn't mean I can't use it now.

But yes, the point is this: reality…exists. I know, I know, you can dig up schools of philosophy that will argue otherwise, and then you have the jerkoffs who will say "but what if this is also a simulation?" But it strikes me as though the simulation folks can be split into two categories: those that just want to impress their audience by how mind-blowingly advanced their opinions are, and those that want to use this as an excuse to do nothing about the state of the world. You know, kind of like a certain Wade Watts here.

Unfortunately, the burden of proof is on you, and until you can prove that this world is not significantly more real than a simulation running on computers in this world, I'm not buying it. I mean, if the OASIS servers (or the Arcadia servers, because I'm sure we're headed in that direction) get smashed, shut down, hit by an EMP, or any other kind of damage, your immortality ends. Right there. Clearly, one reality is at least quantifiably realer than the other.

There's another problem, of course. I've been harping on this since the concept was first introduced, but this…isn't immortality. What's amazing about transhumanism to me is the idea of transcending the limitations of the human bodies, but here you are, claiming you're bringing people back from the dead, when in fact, Kira and Ogden Morrow and Evelyn Cook are in fact still dead. You just made a copy. So you really didn't transcend that limit known as "death". And since they live in a simulation, they in fact have a lot more limitations, as exemplified by Anorak needing a goon to do his dirty work.

But really, I want to harp on this transfer of consciousness aspect, and circle back to doing nothing to help the world. Because…that's where this is going, isn't it? Wade will grant immortality to humanity after they die as a way to justify doing nothing to improve their physical condition here and now. Why fix climate change? We can just bring everyone into Arcadia, fire off the Vonnegut's engines and fly off into space!

If this sounds eerily like how Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos talk about space colonization, that's because it's the exact same thing, with the added twist that Wade isn't even bringing actual colonists with him, except for frozen fetuses and maybe a dozen people. He's bringing the dead with him.

It's fitting, really, that the book would describe Halliday as a sinner bringing the rest of humanity to paradise. A quasi-messianic figure, come to Earth to die for our sins and deliver us unto Judgment Day, that we may be freed from this world and ascend to a better one. I don't know for a fact that Cline is one of those Christian branches that not only believe in the Apocalypse, but believe it's coming soon—actually I kinda got the impression he was an atheist? But regardless of his actual personal spirital beliefs, this is very much an example of how Christian theology permeates society not just as a matter of fact, but as a deliberate justification for wealthy people to do nothing to materially improve the living conditions of the rest of the world. Because the true salvation comes after death, didn't you know?

A propos of nothing, here's a video about Christian nationalism in the United States

So yeah, this is the failure of this book's philosophy. Not that there's something inherently bad about transhumanism, or about shedding your human form. It's that it's taking that concept, and using it as a justification to detach from the real world, and in particular from helping other people. When in fact, being able to occupy a form that's more durable and more suited to experience and help the world is exactly what would make transhumanism, you know, good. And also why it probably would never happen in reality.

For fuck's sake, "a character makes a database of all the dead across humanity so they can be brought back as AIs and maybe, like, occupy robots in the real world someday" is the plot of a Doctor Who episode. Literally, it's the series 8 finale of the reboot, Death In Heaven. And guess what: it was the villain's plan! Because it's a villainous thing to do? But here it's presented as salvation?

Holy fuck, the book isn't even over yet. Shoto and Aech join the party with their wives, who I just realized haven't even been characters in the book. They still aren't, by the way—they're mentioned but don't actually say or do anything in the scene.

No, instead the High Five—Og included—decide to have a meeting to decide what to do about these digitized humans. Apparently they all agree these are the real person, brought back from the dead, but decide that humanity at large isn't ready to accept it. You know, the thing Halliday did. Halliday, the guy we spent the entire guy deconstructing? We're just going to repeat his actions at the end.

Oh, but it gets worse.

Eventually, if humanity survived long enough, the world might acclimate to this new paradigm. […] Og and Kira didn’t want to wait around and find out. Neither did Ev3lyn or Samantha. And I wasn’t willing to risk it either. […] Luckily, I already had a fully formed plan—a way for the AIs to coexist with us in peace and safety, forever. […] And I knew it was a good plan, because Anorak had apparently thought so too. But unlike him, we actually managed to pull it off.

That's right. Did you really think that "let's all turn into AIs" was the final stage of abandoning humanity to its own doom? Did you forget about the part where Wade still has a fully-operational spaceship?

And this is where we get to "Continue?", which serves as the book's epilogue. This shifts us to what looks at first like third person narration but isn't. More on that in a moment.

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.

I find it interesting that the book can't make up its mind about whether to refer to digitized humans as their human name or avatar name. I find it more interesting that, now that another simulation exists, the formerly idyllic OASIS is already referred to as old and overcrowded. It's almost like this isn't about finding paradise, but simply about refusing to do shit to fix problems and instead continuously finding new means of escape.

You know, escapism. The thing the book supposedly decried? Now taken to literal extremes, and as the heroic choice.

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.

You do realize that just because your copies are together forever in space, you'll still die at some point, right? And now since your copies are based on your current selves, they won't even have your future memories?

But mostly, I just don't really get when Samantha decided to forgive Wade. But yeah, she did, and not only that, she relented and used the ONI, since that's necessary to make that copy. That's right: our one voice of ideological dissent in the book, and she just decides to change her mind at the end.

The rest of the High Five also sent out copies of themselves and their wives into Arcadia. It is explicitly said to us that Wade convinced them, which I'm noting because this is what follows:

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.

You know. Billions of people who never got to consent to this.

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.

That's right: this supposed third person narration was a twist. The narrator is actually Parzival, and he's on board the Vonnegut, seeking an inhabitable planet for a bunch of frozen fetuses, all the while hanging out in Arcadia. If this is humanity's future, we are fucking doomed.

Parzival goes on to tell us what life is like, by which I mean it sounds like it's still the same, but without the physical limitations that prevented them from using the OASIS and/or the ONI-net full time.

And we’ll have one another….

Oh, yeah, be sure to tack on some lip service about human contact too.

Also, Wade did finally address the consent issue with making digital copies of people, but like…the file already exists, so I'd argue the breach of ethics has already been made, even if you don't activate it into a full digitized person. But it doesn't matter, because Wade's conclusion is to leave it up to Parzival's discretion, since he's the one who is an actual digitized person.

Except…Wade consented to becoming a digitized person when he made Parzival. So clearly his opinion is going to be biased. Shouldn't you be giving that responsibility to the ones who didn't get to choose, namely Leucosia, Og and Evelyn?

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.

What about the fetuses on board? …They're probably already dead, aren't they. I'd be surprised if they were ever viable with how shitty this whole operation was.

Parzival also updates us on the state of their human counterparts, because they're still in touch. Aech and Endira got married, Shoto had his baby Daito after all, and all the digitized crew are the baby's godparents, however that works. And yes, Wade and Samantha got married too.

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.

You know what, sure. Why not throw that in. Bollywood dance lessons were mentioned once in the book, as one of Wade's interests, not Samantha's. So of course this is where you wrap up their relationship. It's almost like Samantha has no say in any of it.

And yeah, Samantha totally changed her mind about ONI, but Wade finally started to acknowledge its flaws and has decided to never use the ONI again. Though of course, Samantha gets a whole speech about being wrong, while Wade won't even tell us what he thinks those flaws even are. Telling to the end.

Parzival then moves on to tell us about the state of the Earth. Which is to say: nothing has changed. Arguably, things got worse.

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.

Yes, that's right: the ONI didn't kill people, people (including one digitized person) killed people. That's the argument we're going to leave this on.

So that's where we end the book. Earth's still fucked, but hey, we have a backup humanity now, out there in space on several redundant hard drives so it'll probably last forever. Ethical problem solved! Let's keep playing video games.

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.

And we get this ending narration, which is somehow even more half-assed and unrelated to anything the book actually said up to this point than the first book's ending.

Closing remarks? I'm somewhat (and somehow) disappointed that Lohengrin turned out to be such a non-entity. Like, there would probably be many bigger problems had she become an actual love interest to Wade as I first thought. Because instead, we got a character be introduced just to reassure us that yes, Wade thinks trans women are attractive now, which is honestly pretty awful too. And then her role in the story could essentially be fulfilled by any of Wade's friends with little gained or lost. What an insulting waste of a character.

And then, because I hate myself, I skimmed the acknowledgments. Turns out, Ernest Cline mentions receiving feedback from a ton of people, including Steven Spielberg and George R. R. Martin, and I'm now certain we're not living in a meritocracy.

I honestly have no words. Well, no words left. I've been bitching for almost 58 thousand words. If you still need my conclusion after all this, I've only got one thing to say to you:

I had a horrible time, thanks for asking.

#ready player two #st: ready player two #ernest cline #book review

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