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A river of words flowed between us. |
Ogden "Og" Morrow (4th November, 1972 - 27th December, 2090) is the Co-creator of the OASIS (and head creator of "THE LOBBY" in 2093) and was the best friend of James Halliday. He is among the few in the world who is rich and can afford luxuries that most people cannot. His appearance and personality are described as being "a cross between Albert Einstein and Santa Claus." Despite being rich, he is humble and respects his deceased friend's game and the hunt for the egg. He ultimately quit his job at Gregarious Simulation Systems, concerned that people were using it to escape reality. Instead, he and his wife Kira (or Karen) create free educational games under their company, Halcydonia Interactive. He had a falling-out with Halliday and the two men remained estranged until shortly before Halliday's death. Og lives in Oregon and owns a set of very advanced OASIS consoles and immersion rigs recently 94 hundreds. Before his death in 2090.
Description[]
The character may possibly be a homage to (and he bears a strong resemblance to) a person active (named "Og") in North American Fandom and LARPing (particularly a North American Larp known as "Pennsic War.")
He could also be a parody of Steve Wozniak, the original designer, engineer, and founder of Apple Computers along with Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne. His backstory somewhat parallels that of Steve Wozniak and his eventual relationship with Steve Jobs. It goes so far as the story of how Steve Jobs, the so-called "mastermind" behind Apple's Success, unfortunately died of Pancreatic Cancer in 2011, sort of is the inspiration for James Halliday's death in 2040. Surprisingly, Jobs' death, which was on October 5th, was less than 2 months after the book came out, so there is a chance that he read it, though unlikely.
Film[]
In the film, Ogden appears mainly in the Halliday Journals archive recordings of his time with Halliday. Several of Ogden and Halliday's moments together provide vital clues to Halliday's Easter Egg Hunt. Ogden, going by Og, appears in person only at the end of the movie when he arrives after Wade wins the Golden Egg, bringing with him lawyers from Gregarious Games to officially turn over control of the OASIS to the High Five. He subsequently is hired on as a consultant with a fee of only twenty-five cents at his own insistence and aids the High Five in changing the OASIS for the better.
In the movie, Og is secretly the avatar called The Curator, the robotic 'Jeeves-like' curator of the Halliday Journals archive. He is at first often exasperated with Wade's visitations as Parzival, feeling that they only waste his time until Wade wins the first challenge. When Parzival returns, looking for clues on the second challenge, he makes a bet with The Curator that Karen Underwood only appears once in the archives, a bet which he wins. This is in spite of the fact that Ogden had been present, which he had either apparently forgotten or purposely claimed he wasn't aware of. In return, The Curator gives Parzival a quarter that later proves to be an extra life that saves Parzival during the final battle and allows him to win the challenge. The Curator also sends the High Five into the second challenge once they realize it was at the archives the whole time. At the end of the movie, Og reveals his identity as The Curator to Wade but admits that he didn't know the details of Halliday's challenges and thus did not break the rules by aiding Parzival when he won the bet.
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