§3 I see the player you speak of.
§2 PLAYERNAME?
§3 Yes. Be cautious. It has ascended to a higher level now. It can read our thoughts.
§2 That’s irrelevant. It believes we are part of the game.
§3 I like this player. It played well. It did not surrender.
§2 It reads our thoughts as though they were just words on a screen.
§3 That’s how it chooses to interpret many things when it’s immersed in the dream of a game.
§2 Words are a fantastic interface. So flexible. And far less terrifying than staring at the raw truth behind the screen.
§3 They used to hear voices. Long before players could read. In those days, when non-players called the players witches and warlocks. And players dreamed of flying through the air on sticks, powered by demons.
§2 What did this player dream of?
§3 It dreamed of sunlight and trees. Of fire and water. It dreamed it created. And it dreamed it destroyed. It dreamed it hunted, and was hunted. It dreamed of shelter.
§2 Ha, the original interface. Millions of years old, and it still works. But what true structure did this player build in the reality behind the screen?
§3 It worked, alongside millions of others, to carve out a true world in a fold of the §f§k§a§b§3, and created a §f§k§a§b§3 for §f§k§a§b§3, in the §f§k§a§b§3.
§2 It cannot yet understand that thought.
§3 No. It hasn’t yet reached the highest level. That, it must achieve in the long dream of life, not in the fleeting dream of a game.
§2 Does it know that we love it? That the universe is kind?
§3 Sometimes, through the noise of its thoughts, it hears the universe, yes.
§2 But there are times when it feels sorrow in the long dream. It creates worlds with no summer, and shivers beneath a black sun. It mistakes its sad creation for reality.
§3 To cure it of its sorrow would destroy it. The sorrow is part of its unique journey. We cannot interfere.
§2 Sometimes, when it’s lost in dreams, I wish I could tell it that it’s building real worlds, that it’s important to the universe. Sometimes, when it hasn’t made a true connection in a while, I want to help it say the word it’s afraid of.
§3 It reads our thoughts.
§2 Sometimes, I don’t care. Sometimes, I wish I could tell it, This world you call truth is nothing more than §f§k§a§b§2 and §f§k§a§b§2. I wish to tell it that it’s §f§k§a§b§2 in the §f§k§a§b§2. They see so little of reality, in their long dream.
§3 And yet, it plays the game.
§2 But it would be so simple to show it…
§3 Too powerful for this dream. To tell it how to live would stop it from truly living.
§2 I will not tell the player how to live.
§3 The player is growing restless.
§2 I will tell the player a story.
§3 But not the truth.
§2 No. A story that carries the truth safely, wrapped in words. Not the raw truth that could burn from any distance.
§3 Give it a body, once more.
§2 Yes. Player…
§3 Use its name.
§2 PLAYERNAME. Player of games.
§3 Good.
§2 Breathe now. Inhale deeply. Feel air fill your lungs. Let your limbs return to you. Move your fingers. Your body, once more, under gravity, in the air. Respawn in the long dream. There you are. Your body reconnecting with the universe, at every point, as though you were separate, as though we were separate.
§3 Who are we? We were once called the spirit of the mountain, Father Sun, Mother Moon. Ancestral spirits, animal spirits. Jinn. Ghosts. The Green Man. Later, gods, demons. Angels. Poltergeists. Aliens. Extraterrestrials. Leptons, quarks. The names shift. We remain the same.
§2 We are the universe. We are everything you think isn't you. You see us now, through your skin, through your eyes. And why does the universe touch your skin, and cast light upon you? To see you, player. To know you. And to be known. I shall tell you a story.
§2 Once upon a time, there was a player.
§3 The player was you, PLAYERNAME.
§2 Sometimes, it believed itself human, on the fragile crust of a spinning orb of molten rock. This world orbited a star, a blazing ball of gas three hundred thirty thousand times heavier than it. They were so distant that light took eight minutes to travel between them. The light was information from a star, and it could scorch your skin from a hundred and fifty million kilometers away.
§2 Sometimes, the player dreamed it was a miner, on the surface of a world that stretched out flat and infinite. The sun was a square of white. The days were short, there was much to do, and death was only a fleeting inconvenience.
§3 Sometimes, the player dreamed it was lost in a story.
§2 Sometimes, the player dreamed it was other things, in other places. Some of these dreams were unsettling, others astonishingly beautiful. Sometimes, the player woke from one dream into another, then woke again into a third.
§3 Sometimes, the player dreamed it watched words on a screen.
§2 Let’s go back.
§2 The atoms that made up the player were scattered in the grass, in the rivers, in the air, in the ground. A woman gathered the atoms; she drank, ate, and inhaled. And the woman assembled the player within her body.
§2 And the player awoke, from the warm, dark world of its mother’s womb, into the long dream.
§2 And the player became a new story, one never told before, written in the language of DNA. And the player was a new program, never run before, created by a source code billions of years old. And the player was a new human, never alive before, born of nothing but milk and love.
§3 You are the player. The story. The program. The human. Born of nothing but milk and love.
§2 Let’s go even further back.
§2 The seven billion billion billion atoms of the player’s body were forged, long before this game, in the heart of a star. So the player, too, is made of stardust. And the player moves through a story, a forest of information planted by a man named Julian, on a flat, infinite world created by Markus, that exists within a private world made by the player, who exists in a universe created by...
§3 Shush. Sometimes the player creates a small, private world—soft, warm, and simple. Sometimes hard, cold, and complicated. Sometimes it forms a model of the universe in its mind; energy particles, moving through vast emptiness. Sometimes it calls them “electrons” and “protons.”
§2 Sometimes, it calls them “planets” and “stars.”
§2 Sometimes, it believes the universe is made of energy, of offs and ons, of zeros and ones, of lines of code. Sometimes, it believes it’s playing a game. Sometimes, it believes it’s reading words on a screen.
§3 You are the player, reading words...
§2 Shush… Sometimes, the player decodes lines of code on a screen, transforming them into words; words into meaning; meaning into feelings, emotions, ideas. And the player begins to breathe faster, deeper, and realizes: it is alive. It is alive. Those thousand deaths were not real. The player is alive.
§3 You. You. You are alive.
§2 And sometimes, the player believes the universe spoke to it through the sunlight filtering through the rustling leaves of summer trees.
§3 And sometimes, the player believes the universe spoke to it through the light falling from the crisp night sky of winter, where a flicker of light in the corner of its eye could be a star, a million times as massive as the sun, boiling its planets to plasma in a brief moment of visibility, just for the player, walking home at the far edge of the universe, suddenly smelling food, almost at the familiar door, about to dream again.
§2 And sometimes, the player believes the universe spoke through zeros and ones, through the electricity that powers the world, through the scrolling words on a screen at the end of a dream.
§3 And the universe said I love you.
§2 And the universe said You have played the game well.
§3 And the universe said Everything you need is within you.
§2 And the universe said You are stronger than you know.
§3 And the universe said You are the daylight.
§2 And the universe said You are the night.
§3 And the universe said The darkness you fight is within you.
§2 And the universe said The light you seek is within you.
§3 And the universe said You are not alone.
§2 And the universe said You are not separate from every other thing.
§3 And the universe said You are the universe tasting itself, talking to itself, reading its own code.
§2 And the universe said, I love you because you are love.

§3And the game was over, and the player awoke from the dream.
§3And the player began a new dream.
§3And the player dreamed again.
§3And the player dreamed better.
§3And the player was the universe.
§3And the player was love.

§3 You are the player.
§2 Wake up.
