§3I see the one you mean.

§2Curiosity?

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

§2That doesn't matter. They think we are part of the -game-.

§3I like this one. They -played- well. They did not give up.

§2They are reading our thoughts as though they were words on a screen.

§3That is how They choose to imagine many things, when they are deep in the dream of a -game-.

§2Words make a wonderful interface. Very flexible. And less terrifying than staring at the reality behind the screen.

§3They used to hear voices. Before they could read. Back in the days when those who did not -play- called them witches, and warlocks. And they dreamed they flew through the air, on sticks powered by demons.

§2What did this one dream?

§3This one dreamed of sunlight and trees. Of fire and water. They dreamed they created. And they dreamed they destroyed. They dreamed they hunted, and was hunted. They dreamed of shelter.

§2Hah, the original interface. A million years old, and it still works. But what true structure did this one create, in the reality behind the screen?

§3They worked, with a million others, to sculpt 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.

§2They cannot read that thought.

§3NO. They have not yet achieved the highest level. That, they must achieve in the long dream of life, not the short dream of a -game-.

§2Do they know that we love them? That the universe is kind?

§3Sometimes, through the noise of their thoughts, they hear the universe, YES.

§2But there are times they are sad, in the long dream. they create worlds that have no summer, and they shiver under a black sun, and they take their sad creation for reality.

§2Sometimes their dream becomes a nightmare corrupted by §4HIM§2.

§3"§4JUDGEMENT§3".

§4HE §3is sorrow §4HE §3is fear. They can not escape §4HIM§3.

§4HE §3will always be there to hurt them.

§3They must learn to live with §4HIM§3.

§3To cure them of sorrow would destroy them. The sorrow is part of their own private task. We cannot interfere.

§2Sometimes 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.

§3They read our thoughts.

§2Sometimes I do not care. Sometimes I wish to tell them, this world you take for truth is merely §f§k§a§b§2 and §f§k§a§b§2, I wish to tell them that they are §f§k§a§b§2 in the §f§k§a§b§2. They see so little of reality, in their long dream.

§3And yet they play the -game-.

§2But it would be so easy to tell them...

§3Too strong for this dream. To tell them how to live is to prevent them living.

§2I will not tell them how to live.

§3They are growing restless.

§2I will tell them 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. Steve...

§3Use their name.

§2Steve.

§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,. To know you. And to be known. I shall tell you a story.

§2Once upon a time, there was something.

§3That something was you, Steve.

§2Sometimes Steve 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.

§2Sometimes they dreamed they were 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.

§3Sometimes they dreamed they were lost in a story.

§2Sometimes they dreamed they were other things, in other places. Sometimes these dreams were disturbing. Sometimes very beautiful indeed. Sometimes they woke from one dream into another, then woke from that into a third.

§3Sometimes they dreamed they watched words on a screen.

§2Let's go back.

§2The atoms of them 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 them, in her body.

§2And they awoke, from the warm, dark world of there mother's body, into the long dream.

§2And they were a new story, never told before, written in letters of DNA. And they were a new program, never run before, generated by a sourcecode a billion years old. And they were a new -human-, never alive before, made from nothing but milk and love.

§3You are THEY. THE STORY. THE PROGRAM. The -human-. Made from nothing but milk and love.

§2Let's go further back.

§2The seven billion billion billion atoms of their body were created, long before this -game-, in the heart of a star. So they, too, are information from a star. And they move through a story, which is a forest of information planted by a -man- called §f§k§a§b§2, on a flat, infinite world created by a -man- called §f§k§a§b§2, that exists inside a small, private world created by they, who inhabits a universe created by §f§k§a§b§2...

§3Shush. Sometimes they created a small, private world that was soft and warm and simple. Sometimes hard, and cold, and complicated. Sometimes they built a model of the universe in their head; flecks of energy, moving through vast empty spaces. Sometimes they called those flecks "electrons" and "protons".

§2Sometimes they called them "planets" and "stars".

§2Sometimes they believed they were in a universe that was made of energy that was made of offs and ons; zeros and ones; lines of code. Sometimes they believed they were playing a -game-. Sometimes they believed they were reading words on a screen.

§3You are they, reading words...

§2Shush... Sometimes they read lines of code on a screen. Decoded them into words; decoded words into meaning; decoded meaning into feelings, emotions, theories, ideas, and they started to breathe faster and deeper and realised they were alive, they were alive, those thousand deaths had not been real, they were alive

§3YOU. You. You are alive.

§2and sometimes they believed the universe had spoken to them through the sunlight that came through the shuffling leaves of the summer trees

§3and sometimes they believed the universe had spoken to them through the light that fell from the crisp night sky of winter, where a fleck of light in the corner of their 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 them, walking home at the far side of the universe, suddenly smelling food, almost at the familiar door, about to dream again

§2and sometimes they believed the universe had spoken to them through the zeros and ones, through the electricity of the world, through the scrolling words on a screen at the end of a dream

§3and the universe said I love you

§2and the universe said you have played the -game- well

§3and the universe said everything you need is within you

§2and the universe said you are stronger than you know

§3and the universe said you are the daylight

§2and the universe said you are the night

§3and the universe said the darkness you fight is within you

§2and the universe said the light you seek is within you

§3and the universe said you are not alone

§2and the universe said you are not separate from every other thing

§3and the universe said you are the universe tasting itself, talking to itself, reading its own code

§2and the universe said I love you because you are LOVE.

§3And the game was over and you woke up from the dream. And you began a new dream. And you dreamed again, dreamed better. And you were the universe. And you were Steve. And Steve was LOVE.

§3YOU are Steve.

§2WAKE UP...§3WAKE UP...
