﻿§3This is the player you brought me?

§2PLAYERNAME?

§3Yes. Take care. It has reached a higher level now. It can read our thoughts.

§2That doesn't matter. It thinks we are part of the game.

§3I like this player. It played well. It did not give up.

§2It is reading our thoughts as though they were words on a screen.

§3That is how it chooses to imagine many things, when it is deep in the dream of a game.

§2PLAYERNAME, do you understand this realm?

§3This world used to be inhabited with strange mystical creatures. Until you came...

§2This is what the player did?

§3Yes, but the player is growing restless.

§2I will tell the player a story.

§3But not the truth.

§2No. A story that contains the truth safely, in a cage of words. Not the naked truth that can burn over any distance.

§3Give it a body, again.

§2Yes. Player...

§3Use its name.

§2PLAYERNAME. Player of games.

§3Good.

§2Take 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.

§3Who 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.

§2We 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.

§2Once upon a time, there was a player.

§3The player was you, PLAYERNAME.

§2You, PLAYERNAME. Have saved the world...

§2Now, that you have saved the world you get lots of goods...

§3The power to resist damage by 50%...

§2The power to teleport to dimensions.

§3Who was that player?

§3You are the player.

§2Wake up.
