§aI see the player you mean.

§bPLAYERNAME?

§aThis player is very brave, beat their biggest fears.

§bThe player doesn't understand what we are, well, we're life.

§aHello, PLAYERNAME. We are life.

§aYou have two choices, PLAYERNAME, you can either return to your dream and continue on living in that dream

§bOr you can live life, and get away from the dream.

§aYour dream may be sad, lonely, and away from reality, but that doesn't mean to close off your reality to live a dream.

§aTo cure PLAYERNAME of sadness would be an undoable task, PLAYERNAME must learn how to cure themselves from sadness.

§eLife is sad, so I dream to help that.

§aPLAYERNAME, you need to live life, no matter what.

§aWe know your sad, PLAYERNAME

§bAnd yet you play the game.

§aBe sad, be happy, live life to the fullest.

§eBut this is so fun, dreaming of what I can do, and I'm in control

§aPLAYERNAME, you don't choose what do to. You think you choose what to do

§bThats too far, don't tell PLAYERNAME that much.

§aI will tell the player a story.

§bBut not the truth.

§aNo. A story that contains the truth safely, in a cage of words. Not the naked truth that can burn over any distance.

§bGive it a body, again.

§aYes. Player...

§bUse its name.

§aPLAYERNAME. Player of games.

§bGood.

§aTake 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.

§eI can feel my limbs.. I can breathe...

§aOnce upon a time, there was a player.

§bThe player was you, PLAYERNAME.

§aSometimes 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.

§aSometimes 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.

§bSometimes the player dreamed it was lost in a story.

§aSometimes 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.

§aSometimes the player dreamed it watched words on a screen.

§bSometimes the player dreamed it saved the world.

§aThe 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.

§aAnd the player awoke, from the warm, dark world of its mother's body, into the long dream.

§aAnd 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.

§bYou are the player. The story. The program. The human. Made from nothing but milk and love.

§aThe 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...

§bShush. 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".

§aSometimes it called them "planets" and "stars".

§aSometimes 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.

§bYou are the player, reading words...

§aShush... 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

§bYou. You. You are alive.

§aSometimes the player believed the universe had spoken to it through the sunlight that came through the shuffling leaves of the summer trees

§bSometimes 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

§bAnd 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.

§bYou are the player.

§aWake up, PLAYERNAME.
