The Eye of Minds

The Eye of Minds (2013) is a novel by James Dashner, the first book in the Mortality Doctrine trilogy. The Eye of Minds follows teenage gamer Michael and his friends as they investigate the VirtNet, a virtual reality world. The novel explores The Mental Repercussions of Virtual Reality, The Tensions Between Appearance and Reality, and Friendship as an Anchor in Unusual Circumstances.

Two further books were published in the series: The Rule of Thoughts (2014) and The Game of Lives (2015). Dashner also wrote a 2014 companion short story called “Gunner Skale.”

This guide uses the 2013 Random House eBook edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of death by suicide, graphic violence, and death.

Plot Summary

The Eye of Minds opens on teenage gamer Michael trying to dissuade Tanya, another young gamer, from jumping off a bridge and dying by suicide. Michael initially does not worry about Tanya’s threat, considering their negotiation a matter of earning points in the VirtNet, the virtual world he is exploring. However, Tanya removes her “Core,” the thing that separates her embodied consciousness from her digital self. Thus, when she jumps off the bridge, insisting that she will no longer let Kaine trap her in the “Sleep”—slang for the VirtNet—her death is real. Michael “wakes” in the real world, horrified at what he has experienced. Michael re-enters the VirtNet to confide in his friends, Bryson and Sarah, who are sympathetic about the trauma of witnessing the true death by suicide.

In Michael’s reality, he is kidnapped on his way to school by the VNS, law enforcement for the VirtNet. They assign him a quest to seek Kaine and discover the truth behind the “Mortality Doctrine.” Michael is forbidden from telling anyone but Sarah and Bryson about the quest. When Michael meets his friends in the VirtNet, they all agree to undertake the quest. Michael begins to suffer debilitating headaches, which he later learns are due to the “decay” that Tangents suffer when they have extended consciousness. Fear of Kaine makes Michael temporarily uncertain he wishes to undertake the VNS’ quest, but when they block his access to the VirtNet, he changes his mind.

The three teenagers go to a famed VirtNet club where they meet Ronika, who tells them about “the Path,” which leads to Kaine’s secret hideaway within the VirtNet. They are attacked by “KillSims,” who destroy Ronika’s digital identity. In the real world, her body dies from the resulting brain damage. Michael is attacked by the KillSims but escapes. The three teenagers use Ronika’s clue to finding the Path and enter Devils of Destruction, a brutal game in which they repeatedly die in brutal war scenarios. The teens find the game’s relentless violence demoralizing, but they eventually find the entrance to the Path. 

They meet a guardian of the Path, who warns them that if they die on the Path, they will never be able to return. They move through various challenges, including solving a riddle, finding weaknesses in the code to help them escape a seemingly endless hallway, and moving silently down a long expanse filled with bodies that attack when they hear a sound. During this long, quiet walk, Michael realizes he cannot remember the last time seeing his parents. Bryson makes a sound when he finds a coding weak point, and he is killed by the bodies in the hall.

Michael and Sarah pass through to a forest, where they meet Master Slake, who turns out to be legendary gamer Gunner Skale. Slake has begun living in the Path; he confirms that Kaine is a Tangent, an AI agent. Slake, apparently seeking to save Michael and Sarah from the dangers of the Path, leads demons to attack them; Michal and Sarah narrowly escape. They hack their way into the next stage of the Path, which leads them through a tunnel interspersed with pools of molten lava. Sarah is struck and killed by molten rock. Michael, grief-stricken, continues the path alone. He eventually reaches a “crossroads” where a robot destroys his Core, meaning that Michael will die for real if he dies virtually.

Michael passes through the Hallowed Ravine, Kaine’s stronghold. There, he finds Kaine preaching to an audience of Tangents: They have become self-aware and wish to be human. Kaine explains his plan to empty the minds of human gamers so that the Tangents’ intelligence can be uploaded into human bodies. VNS agents storm into the space. Michael flees; in the chaos, he and Kaine end up in a cottage alone. Kaine cryptically comments that Michael lacks understanding about his circumstances. Michael escapes Kaine by “obliterating instead of manipulating” (311) the code around him.

Michael wakes in what he assumes is the real world, determined to give up the quest to learn anything more about the Mortality Doctrine. He finds himself in an unfamiliar body and discovers a note from Kaine telling him that he is “the first subject to successfully implement the Mortality Doctrine” (318). It explains that he was previously a Tangent, but now his mind and experiences “have been transferred to the body of one [Kaine] determined to be unworthy to continue on his own” (318). The quest was to determine his suitability for being human. He has always lived in Lifeblood Deep, a hyper-realistic virtual world within the VirtNet. 

VNS Agent Weber arrives and confirms that Bryson and Sarah were real humans who didn’t know Michael was a Tangent. She tells him that he must feign being the human whose body he now inhabits, and alludes to having future plans for Michael.