Ready Player One Fanfiction: Zompocalypse.

Chapter One: Zero Hour

Wade felt himself snap back into attention when he heard his name called. Suddenly, a balding man in his fifties wearing a brown suit came into view. He had a concerned look on his face and his lips were curled into a half-frown as he stared straight into Wade's eyes.

"Shall we do this another time?" His steely voice asked. Wade appreciated his attempt at trying to sound nice and not annoyed that he clearly was not interested in the conversation. Wade nodded, and the man made a swift gesture and a bunch of hologram documents that were floating in the air all disappeared back into a small projector that was built into the desk they sat at. He could barely remember what they were discussing about, his thoughts had been drifting about heading into the Oasis with Sam and slaying dragons.

"Please Percy, if we could. At your earliest convenience." Percy stood up almost immediately from the response, and smiled at Wade. He was the head of the law division for GSS, and he was a man who did not dwindle.

"You're the CEO of GSS, I make myself available at your earliest convenience. Remember?" He snorted friendlily, and Wade was reminded of why Ogden Morrow had mentioned his lawyer was like a pit bull. Wade let out a soft chuckle.

"Still getting used to this stuff, sorry." He apologized automatically, running his hands over his face as if trying to scrub off the sleep deprivation he felt.

"You don't have to apologize. In fact, you shouldn't. How about I send you a shout tomorrow and we can pick up afterwards?" Percy extended a hand, and the smile that had still not left his face became even warmer. A strange sight since Wade had witnessed first hand how aggressive, and tactfully savage Percy could be in a courtroom.

Wade took it and mentally flinched at how strong Percy's grip was. "Thank you," he said as Percy turned and briskly left Wade's office.

When the door closed he immediately reclined back in his chair, a floorboard opened slightly to allow the chair to sink a bit into the floor to allow him to stretch as far back as he wished. The chair was a Terraform-2500. It was mounted onto a sphere into the ground, and could transform into an omni directional harness that attached to an Oasis haptic suit. In fact, he appreciated the fact that the whole room, despite there being desks, chairs, a small kitchen, file cabinets, couches, TVs, and gaming equipment scattered everywhere, could be transformed into the best Oasis gaming hub money had to offer.

Suddenly, a soft electrical discharge sound filled his ears. He recognized it immediately as the sound effect for the BFG 9000 in the original Doom games. That was his designated communication tone for Aech. He flicked a finger towards him from his desk, and a user interface shot up from the projector that showed a myriad of information. The interface was split into two sections. One section had news bulletins and videos, stock exchange numbers, political bills that were being voted on, financial statements of various companies, GSS server load statistics, and other real world information. The other section was Oasis related information, from a map of the whole Oasis, Oasis news, community forums and pages, videos of random planet hotspots, current suspected hackers and bots, possible criminal activities within the Oasis, and an arsenal of buttons and tabs that allowed Wade to view, access, or do virtually anything to the Oasis. He easily found himself looking at the Oasis section more than the other.

"Open Aech's commlink." Wade spoke, making sure he enunciated clearly and a window enlarged to cover a good chunk of the Oasis section. A separate camera captured tiny chip implants that were embedded on Wade's clothes and the outline of his body. It projected him as his avatar to Aech, showing Parzival sitting at a desk in a private room in Castle Anorak on Cthonia. He smiled at the sight of his best friend. Aech was lying on his back, in a tight space in what Wade could only guess was some sort of vehicle he was working on. Aech's immaculate, young, caucasian face was in a close up, some sludge on his cheek.