I see the player you mean.
[Player Name]?
Yes. Take care. It has reached a higher
level now. It can read our thoughts.
That doesn't matter. It thinks we are
part of the game.
I like this player. It played well. It
did not give up.
It is reading our thoughts as though they
were words on a screen.
That is how it chooses to imagine many
things, when it is deep in the dream of a game.
Words make a wonderful interface. Very
flexible. And less terrifying than staring at the reality behind
the screen.
They used to hear voices. Before players
could read. Back in the days when those who did not play called the
players witches, and warlocks. And players dreamed they flew
through the air, on sticks powered by demons.
What did this player dream?
This player 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.
Hah, the original interface. A million
years old, and it still works. But what true structure did this
player create, in the reality behind the screen?
It worked, with a million others, to
sculpt a true world in a fold of the [scrambled], and
created a [scrambled] for [scrambled], in the
[scrambled].
It cannot read that thought.
No. It has not yet achieved the highest
level. That, it must achieve in the long dream of life, not the
short dream of a game.
Does it know that we love it? That the
universe is kind?
Sometimes, through the noise of its
thoughts, it hears the universe, yes.
But there are times it is sad, in the
long dream. It creates worlds that have no summer, and it shivers
under a black sun, and it takes its sad creation for reality.
To cure it of sorrow would destroy it.
The sorrow is part of its own private task. We cannot
interfere.
Sometimes when they are deep in dreams, I
want to tell them, they are building true worlds in reality.
Sometimes I want to tell them of their importance to the universe.
Sometimes, when they have not made a true connection in a while, I
want to help them to speak the word they fear.
It reads our thoughts.
Sometimes I do not care. Sometimes I wish
to tell them, this world you take for truth is merely
[scrambled] and [scrambled], I wish to tell them that
they are [scrambled] in the [scrambled]. They see so
little of reality, in their long dream.
And yet they play the game.
But it would be so easy to tell
them...
Too strong for this dream. To tell them
how to live is to prevent them living.
I will not tell the player how to
live.
The player is growing restless.
I will tell the player a story.
But not the truth.
No. A story that contains the truth
safely, in a cage of words. Not the naked truth that can burn over
any distance.
Give it a body, again.
Yes. Player...
Use its name.
[Player Name]. Player of
games.
Good.
Take a breath, now. Take another. Feel
air in your lungs. Let your limbs return. Yes, move your fingers.
Have a body again, under gravity, in air. Respawn in the long
dream. There you are. Your body touching the universe again at
every point, as though you were separate things. As though we were
separate things.
Who are we? Once we were called the
spirit of the mountain. Father sun, mother moon. Ancestral spirits,
animal spirits. Jinn. Ghosts. The green man. Then gods, demons.
Angels. Poltergeists. Aliens, extraterrestrials. Leptons, quarks.
The words change. We do not change.
We are the universe. We are everything
you think isn't you. You are looking at us now, through your skin
and your eyes. And why does the universe touch your skin, and throw
light on you? To see you, player. To know you. And to be known. I
shall tell you a story.
Once upon a time, there was a player.
The player was you, [Player
Name].
Sometimes it thought itself human, on the
thin crust of a spinning globe of molten rock. The ball of molten
rock circled a ball of blazing gas that was three hundred and
thirty thousand times more massive than it. They were so far apart
that light took eight minutes to cross the gap. The light was
information from a star, and it could burn your skin from a hundred
and fifty million kilometres away.
Sometimes the player dreamed it was a
miner, on the surface of a world that was flat, and infinite. The
sun was a square of white. The days were short; there was much to
do; and death was a temporary inconvenience.
Sometimes the player dreamed it was lost
in a story.
Sometimes the player dreamed it was other
things, in other places. Sometimes these dreams were disturbing.
Sometimes very beautiful indeed. Sometimes the player woke from one
dream into another, then woke from that into a third.
Sometimes the player dreamed it watched
words on a screen.
Let's go back.
The atoms of the player were scattered in
the grass, in the rivers, in the air, in the ground. A woman
gathered the atoms; she drank and ate and inhaled; and the woman
assembled the player, in her body.
And the player awoke, from the warm, dark
world of its mother's body, into the long dream.
And the player was a new story, never
told before, written in letters of DNA. And the player was a new
program, never run before, generated by a sourcecode a billion
years old. And the player was a new human, never alive before, made
from nothing but milk and love.
You are the player. The story. The
program. The human. Made from nothing but milk and love.
Let's go further back.
The seven billion billion billion atoms
of the player's body were created, long before this game, in the
heart of a star. So the player, too, is information from a star.
And the player moves through a story, which is a forest of
information planted by a man called Julian, on a flat, infinite
world created by a man called Markus, that exists inside a small,
private world created by the player, who inhabits a universe
created by...
Shush. Sometimes the player created a
small, private world that was soft and warm and simple. Sometimes
hard, and cold, and complicated. Sometimes it built a model of the
universe in its head; flecks of energy, moving through vast empty
spaces. Sometimes it called those flecks "electrons" and
"protons".
Sometimes it called them "planets" and
"stars".
Sometimes it believed it was in a
universe that was made of energy that was made of offs and ons;
zeros and ones; lines of code. Sometimes it believed it was playing
a game. Sometimes it believed it was reading words on a screen.
You are the player, reading words...
Shush... Sometimes the player read lines
of code on a screen. Decoded them into words; decoded words into
meaning; decoded meaning into feelings, emotions, theories, ideas,
and the player started to breathe faster and deeper and realised it
was alive, it was alive, those thousand deaths had not been real,
the player was alive
You. You. You are alive.
and sometimes the player believed the
universe had spoken to it through the sunlight that came through
the shuffling leaves of the summer trees
and sometimes the player believed the
universe had spoken to it through the light that fell from the
crisp night sky of winter, where a fleck of light in the corner of
the player's eye might be a star a million times as massive as the
sun, boiling its planets to plasma in order to be visible for a
moment to the player, walking home at the far side of the universe,
suddenly smelling food, almost at the familiar door, about to dream
again
and sometimes the player believed the
universe had spoken to it through the zeros and ones, through the
electricity of the world, through the scrolling words on a screen
at the end of a dream
and the universe said I love you
and the universe said you have played the
game well
and the universe said everything you need
is within you
and the universe said you are stronger
than you know
and the universe said you are the
daylight
and the universe said you are the
night
and the universe said the darkness you
fight is within you
and the universe said the light you seek
is within you
and the universe said you are not
alone
and the universe said you are not
separate from every other thing
and the universe said you are the
universe tasting itself, talking to itself, reading its own
code
and the universe said I love you because
you are love.
And the game was over and the player woke
up from the dream. And the player began a new dream. And the player
dreamed again, dreamed better. And the player was the universe. And
the player was love.
You are the player.
Wake up.
