Everyone my age remembers where they were and what they were doing when they first heard about the contest. — Ernest Cline

These three words were always the last thing an OASIS user saw before leaving the real world and entering the virtual one:

For years hunters had speculated that Anorak still roamed the OASIS, now as an autonomous NPC. Halliday’s ghost in the machine.

At first, these individuals were known simply as "egg hunters," but this was quickly truncated to the nickname "gunters."