This is the prologue for a new story I'm writing. I know there's not that much about Pokémon yet, but it becomes much, much more important in later chapters.

The plotline for the beginning of the story is more or less based off a book called Ready Player One, but it's going to diverge after the first couple chapters.

I don't own Pokémon or Ready Player One.

Enjoy!

~Ravensong314

Ask anyone my age, and they can tell you where they were and what they were doing when they first heard about the contest. I was sitting in my living room, surfing the web on my laptop when the news bulletin came in a pop-up window, announcing that Rachel Kelly had died during the night.

I'd heard of Kelly, of course. Almost everyone had. She was the videogame designer responsible for creating the OASIS, a MMORPG that had eventually evolved into a globally connected virtual reality most of the world now used on a daily basis. The unprecedented success of the OASIS had made Kelly one of the richest people in history.

At first, I didn't understand why her death was such a big deal. As famous as she was, it really should have only gotten a short segment in the 11-o-clock news so the masses could shake their heads in jealousy as they announced the obscenely large amount of money that would be given to her heirs.

But that was the problem. Rachel Kelly had no heirs.

She had died unmarried at sixty-two, with no living relatives and few close friends. She's spent the last ten years of her life in self-imposed isolation, during which time she's been rumored to have gone completely insane.

She had prepared a short video message, with instructions in her will for it to be released to the media on the date of her death. She's also arranged for it to be sent to every OASIS user the same day. I still remember hearing the chime of that incoming e-mail hitting my inbox, about a minute after I'd first seen the news bulletin.

A famous eccentric, Kelly had been absolutely obsessed with video games. One stood out from the rest, in her mind. Pokémon had always been her favorite, ever since her parents had bought her first game back on her tenth birthday.

The video, entitled Kira's Invitation, wasn't much. It was just a three-minute film, but in the days and weeks that followed, it became one of the most viewed and analyzed films in the world. My entire generation came to know every second of Kelly's message by heart.

The video started with a black screen. After a few seconds, Kelly appeared. But she wasn't a sixty-two-year-old woman, ravaged by time and illness. She looked just as she did when she was in her early thirties, on the cover of Time magazine, a tall, healthy, thin woman with her dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, along with her trademark crooked smile and mischievous glint in her eyes.

She was alone in an empty room. After smiling at the camera for a few seconds, she turned around and clapped her hands. The room transformed into a funeral parlor, with an open casket at the far wall. A second, much older Kelly laid inside, looking much more like she had in recent years.

The younger Kelly looked down at the corpse of her older self for a few seconds in mock sadness, then turned and snapped her fingers causing a scroll to appear in her hand. She opened it with a flourish, then turned to address the camera.

"I, Rachel Joan Kelly, being of sound mind and disposing memory, do hereby make, publish, and declare this instrument to be my last will and testament, hereby revoking any and all wills and codicils by me at any time heretofore made…" She continued reading, faster and faster, bulldozing through several more paragraphs of legalese until the words she was speaking were almost unintelligible. Then she stopped abruptly. "Eh, screw that," she said. "Even at that speed, it'd take me forever to read the whole thing. Let me just give you the highlights."

She clapped again, and the room changed once more into a gigantic bank vault door. "My entire estate, including a controlling share of stock in my company, Gregarious Simulation Systems, is to be placed in escrow until such time as a single condition I have set forth in my will is met. The first individual to meet that condition will inherit my entire fortune, currently valued in excess of two hundred and sixty billion dollars."

The vault door swung open, revealing piles upon piles of gold coins, jewels, and other strange things, including various pokeballs, a pixelated blue pickaxe, and a cake. (They were, of course, references to three of her favorite video games-Pokémon, Minecraft, and Portal.) "Here's the dough I'm putting up for grabs," Kelly said, grinning maniacally. "What the hell. You can't take it with you, right?"

"So what do you have to do to get your hands on all this moolah? Be more patient, I'm getting to that…" She paused dramatically, her expression changing to that of a child about to reveal a huge secret.

Another clap, and Kelly morphed into her famous OASIS avatar, Kira-a tall, more beautiful version of Kelly with a small golden crown. She was dressed in her trademark dark blue long-sleeved dress, with her avatar's emblem (a calligraphic letter K) embroidered on each sleeve.

"Before I died," Kira said, smiling broadly and speaking in a dramatic voice, "I created an Easter egg and hid it somewhere inside my most popular game-the OASIS. The first person to find it will inherit my entire fortune."

Another dramatic pause.

"The egg is well hidden. It's not like I just left it lying under a rock somewhere. I suppose you could say it's locked in a safe buried in a secret room hidden in the center of a maze located somewhere" –she reached up to tap her temple- "up here."

"But don't worry. I've left a few clues lying around to get you started. Here's the first one." Kira made a grand gesture with her right hand, and three keys appeared, spinning slowly in the air in front of her. They appeared to be made of copper, gold, and clear crystal. She then recited a piece of verse, which appeared in golden subtitles on the bottom of the screen as they were spoken:

Three hidden keys open three secret gates

Wherein the errant will be tested for worthy traits

And those with the skill to survive these straits

Will reach The End where the prize awaits

"I couldn't playtest this particular game, so I worry that I may have hidden my egg a little too well. Made it a little too difficult to reach. I'm not sure. But if that's the case, it's too late for me to change it, isn't it? So I guess we'll see."

"So without further ado," Kira announced, her voice echoing through the vault, "let the hunt for Kelly's Easter egg begin!" Then she vanished in a blinding flash of blue light, leaving the viewers to gaze at the keys and the piles of treasure waiting beyond the door.

The screen faded into darkness.

At the end of the video, Kelly included a link to her personal website, which had changed drastically on the morning of her death. For over a decade, the only thing posted there had been a short looping animation of her avatar, Kira, commanding her pokémon in an intense, never-ending battle.

But now that animation was gone, replaced by a high-score list not unlike those of old coin-operated videogames. The list had ten numbered spots, and each displayed the initials RJK - Rachel Joan Kelly-followed by a score of six zeros. It quickly became known as "the Scoreboard."

Just below the Scoreboard was an icon that looked similar to the 'save' notebook in pokémon games. It was a link to a free downloadable copy of Kira's Almanac, a collection of hundreds of Kelly's undated journal entries. It was over a thousand pages long, but contained few detail about her personal life. It was mostly a bunch of stream-of-thought type entries about video games.

The Hunt, as the contest came to be known, quickly wove its way into global culture. Finding the egg became a fantasy of children and adults alike. At first, there seemed to be no right or wrong way to play it. The only thing Kira's Almanac seemed to indicate was that a familiarity with Kelly's various obsessions would be essential to finding the egg. Pokémon and almost every other game Kelly had so much as mentioned in her journal sold by the million.

Something like a subculture was created, composed of the millions of people who now devoted every moment of their free time to searching for Kelly's egg. At first, they were simply called "egg hunters," but the name quickly truncated to the nickname "gunters."

During the first year of the hunt, being a gunter was highly fashionable, and nearly every OASIS user claimed to be one.

When the first anniversary of Kelly's death arrived, the fervor surrounding the contest began to die down. It had been an entire year, and no one had found anything. Not a single key or gate. Part of the problem was the sheer size of the OASIS. It contained thousands of simulated worlds where the keys might be hidden, many of which had a large significance pertaining to Kelly's interests. It could take a gunter months to conduct a thorough search of any one of them.

Despite all of the "professional" gunters claiming that they were getting closer to a breakthrough every day, the truth soon became clear: No one really even knew what they were looking for, or where to start looking for it.

Another year passed.

Then another.

Still nothing.

The general public more or less lost interest in the contest entirely. Many believed that it was an outlandish hoax created by a rich nut job. Others said that even if the egg did exist, no one would ever be able to find it. Meanwhile, the OASIS began to grow in size and popularity, protected by takeover attempts and legal challenges by the ironclad terms of Kelly's will and the army of rabid lawyers she had tasked with administering her estate.

Kelly's Easter egg gradually moved to the realm of urban myth, and the ever-shrinking mob of gunters started to become the object of ridicule. Each year, on the anniversary of Kelly's death, newscasters jokingly reported on their continued lack of progress. And each year, more and more gunters called it quits, concluding that Kelly had indeed made the egg impossible to find.

Another year went by.

Then another.

Then, on the evening of January 23, 2034, an avatar's name appeared at the top of the Scoreboard, for the whole world to see. After five long years of searching, the Copper Key had finally been found, by an eighteen-year-old kid living in an old apartment building in downtown Tampa.

That kid was me.

So... yeah. That's the prologue. Do you think it's worth continuing? Let me know.

Until next time,

~Ravensong314