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End Poem
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I see the player you mean.
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"Player Name"?
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Yes. Take care. It has reached a higher level now. It can
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read our thoughts.
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That doesn't matter. It thinks we are part of the game.
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I like this player. It played well. It did not give up.
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It is reading our thoughts as though they were words on a
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screen.
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That is how it chooses to imagine many things, when it is deep
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in the dream of a game.
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Words make a wonderful interface. Very flexible. And less
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terrifying than staring at the reality behind the screen.
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They used to hear voices. Before players could read. Back
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in the days when those who did not play called the players
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witches, and warlocks. And players dreamed they flew
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|
through the air, on sticks powered by demons.
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|
What did this player dream?
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|
This player dreamed of sunlight and trees. Of fire and water.
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It dreamed it created. And it dreamed it destroyed. It
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dreamed it hunted, and was hunted. It dreamed of shelter.
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|
Hah, the original interface. A million years old, and it still
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works. But what true structure did this player create, in the
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|
reality behind the screen?
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It worked, with a million others, to sculpt a true world in a
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|
fold of the [scrambled], and created a [scrambled] for
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|
[scrambled], in the [scrambled].
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It cannot read that thought.
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|
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
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game.
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|
Does it know that we love it? That the universe is kind?
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|
Sometimes, through the noise of its thoughts, it hears the
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|
universe, yes.
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But there are times it is sad, in the long dream. It creates
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|
worlds that have no summer, and it shivers under a black
|
|
sun, and it takes its sad creation for reality.
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|
To cure it of sorrow would destroy it. The sorrow is part of
|
|
its own private task. We cannot interfere.
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|
Sometimes when they are deep in dreams, I want to tell them,
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|
they are building true worlds in reality. Sometimes I want to
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|
tell them of their importance to the universe. Sometimes, when
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|
they have not made a true connection in a while, I want to
|
|
help them to speak the word they fear.
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|
It reads our thoughts.
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|
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].
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|
They see so little of reality, in their long dream.
|
|
And yet they play the game.
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|
But it would be so easy to tell them...
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Too strong for this dream. To tell them how to live is to
|
|
prevent them living.
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|
I will not tell the player how to live.
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|
The player is growing restless.
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|
I will tell the player a story.
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But not the truth.
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No. A story that contains the truth safely, in a cage of
|
|
words. Not the naked truth that can burn over any distance.
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|
Give it a body, again.
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|
Yes. Player...
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Use its name.
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"Player Name". Player of games.
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|
Good.
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|
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,
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|
as though you were separate things. As though we were
|
|
separate things.
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|
Who are we? Once we were called the spirit of the mountain.
|
|
Father sun, mother moon. Ancestral spirits, animal spirits.
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|
Jinn. Ghosts. The green man. Then gods, demons. Angels.
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|
Poltergeists. Aliens, extraterrestrials. Leptons, quarks.
|
|
The words change. We do not change.
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We are the universe. We are everything you think isn't you.
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|
You are looking at us now, through your skin and your eyes.
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|
And why does the universe touch your skin, and throw light
|
|
on you? To see you, player. To know you. And to be known.
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|
I shall tell you a story.
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|
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.
|
