I wiped my sweaty palms on my thighs—I did not want to drop this—and removed the egg, then set it on a steel table in the center of the room. The bottom of the egg was weighted, so it wobbled slightly before standing perfectly upright—like a Weeble. (Weebles wobble, but they don’t fall down.) As I leaned in to examine the egg more closely, I spotted a small oval-shaped thumb scanner pad near the top, flush with its curved surface. When I pressed my thumb to it, the egg split in half and hinged open.
Inside it, resting in form-fitting blue velvet, was some sort of headset.
I lifted it out and turned it over in my hands. The device had a segmented central spine that appeared to stretch from a wearer’s forehead to the nape of their neck, with a row of ten C-shaped metal bands attached to it. Each band was comprised of jointed, retractable segments, and each segment had a row of circular sensor pads on its underside. This made the whole sensor array adjustable, so that it could fit around heads of all shapes and sizes. A long fiber-optic cable stretched from the base of the headset, with a standard OASIS console plug at the end of it.
My heart had been thudding against my rib cage, but now it almost stopped. This had to be some sort of OASIS peripheral—one unlike any I’d ever seen before, and light-years more advanced.
A short electronic beep emanated from the egg and I glanced back over at it. A flash of red swept across my vision as a tiny retinal scanner verified my identity a second time. Then a small video monitor embedded in the egg’s open lid turned itself on and the GSS logo appeared for a few seconds, before it was replaced by the withered face of James Donovan Halliday. Judging by his age and emaciated features, he’d made this video recording shortly before his death. But despite his condition, he hadn’t used his OASIS avatar to record this message like he had with Anorak’s Invitation. For some reason, he’d chosen to appear in the flesh this time, under the brutal, unforgiving light of reality.
“The device you now hold in your hands is an OASIS Neural Interface, or ONI.” He pronounced it Oh-En-Eye. “It is the world’s first fully functional noninvasive brain-computer interface. It allows an OASIS user to see, hear, smell, taste, and feel their avatar’s virtual environment, via signals transmitted directly into their cerebral cortex. The headset’s sensor array also monitors and interprets its wearer’s brain activity, allowing them to control their OASIS avatar just as they do their physical body—simply by thinking about it.”
“No fucking way,” I heard myself whisper.
“That’s just for starters,” Halliday said, as if he’d heard me. “An ONI headset can also be used to record its wearer’s experiences in the real world. All sensory input received by their brain is digitized and stored as a .oni (dot-oh-en-eye) file on an external data drive attached to their headset. Once that file is uploaded to the OASIS, the entire experience can be played back and reexperienced by the person who recorded it, or by any other ONI user with whom they choose to share the file.”
Halliday managed a thin smile.
“In other words, the ONI allows you to relive moments of other people’s lives. To see the world through their eyes, hear it through their ears, smell it through their nose, taste it with their tongue, and feel it through their skin.” Halliday gave the camera a matter-of-fact nod. “The ONI is the most powerful communication tool humans have ever invented. And I think it’s also probably the last one we will ever need to invent.” He tapped the center of his forehead. “Now we can plug right in to the old noodle.”
I heard the words, but I couldn’t process them. Was Halliday for real? Or had he been delusional when he made this recording, losing his grip on reality as he entered the final stages of his illness? The technology he was describing was still the stuff of science fiction. Yes, millions of physically disabled people used brain-computer interfaces every day, to see or hear or move paralyzed limbs. But these medical miracles could still only be achieved by cutting a hole in the patient’s skull and sticking implants and electrodes directly into their brain.
The concept of a brain-computer interface headset that allowed you to record, play back, and/or simulate a human being’s entire sensory experience had appeared in a bunch of Halliday’s favorite sci-fi novels, TV shows, and movies. There was SimStim—the fictional Simulated Stimulation technology William Gibson had envisioned in Neuromancer. And a similar form of experience-recording technology had also been featured in Brainstorm and Strange Days, two of Halliday’s favorite films…
If the ONI could do everything Halliday claimed, then he’d once again done the impossible. Through sheer force of will and brainpower, he’d once again turned science fiction into science fact, without much regard for the long-term consequences.
I also wondered about the name Halliday had chosen for his invention. I’d seen enough anime to know that oni was also a Japanese word for a giant horned demon from the pits of hell.
“The ONI’s software and documentation have already been emailed to your private OASIS account,” Halliday continued. “Along with complete schematics of the headset and the 3-D printer files necessary to fabricate more of them.”
Halliday paused and stared into the camera for a moment before continuing.
“Once you’ve tested the ONI yourself, I think you’ll realize—just as I did—that this invention has the power to drastically alter the nature of human existence. I think it could help humanity. But it could also make things even worse. It will all depend on the timing, I think. That’s why I’m entrusting its fate to you, my heir. You must decide when—or if—the world is ready for this technology.”
His frail body shook with a coughing fit. Then he took a rasping breath and spoke one final time.
“Take all the time you need to decide,” he said. “And don’t let anyone rush you. Once Pandora’s box has been opened, there’s no closing it again. So…choose wisely.”
He gave the camera a small wave goodbye. Then the recording ended and a VIDEO FILE DELETED message appeared on the monitor just before it powered itself off.
I sat there for a long time. Could this be some sort of posthumous practical joke? Because the alternative didn’t seem to make any sense. If the ONI really could do everything he said it could, then it would be the most powerful communication tool ever invented. Why would he have kept it a secret? Why not just patent it and release it to the world?
I glanced back down at the headset in my hands. It had been locked away in this vault for the past eight years, waiting patiently for me to find it. And now that I had, there was really only one thing left for me to do.
I put the headset back inside the egg, then I turned around and carried it out of the archives, planning to walk back to the elevator at a calm, dignified pace. But my self-control evaporated in seconds, and I began to run as fast as my legs would carry me.
The employees I encountered as I hurried back upstairs were treated to the sight of their wild-eyed boss sprinting through the hallowed halls of Gregarious Simulation Systems, clutching a giant silver egg.
Back in my office, I locked the door, lowered the blinds, and sat down at my desktop computer to read over the ONI documentation Halliday had emailed me.
I was grateful that Samantha wasn’t there. I didn’t want to give her the opportunity to talk me out of testing the ONI. Because I was worried she might try to, and if she did, she would’ve succeeded. (I’d recently discovered that when you’re madly in love with someone they can persuade you to do pretty much anything.)