I see the player you mean.

Yes. Take care. It has reached a higherlevel now. It can read our thoughts.

I like this player. It played well. It didnot give up.

That is how it chooses to imagine manythings, when it is deep in the dream of a game.

They used to hear voices. Before playerscould read. Back in the days when those who did not play called the playerswitches, and warlocks. And players dreamed they flew through the air, on stickspowered by demons.

This player dreamed of sunlight and trees.Of fire and water. It dreamed it created. And it dreamed it destroyed. Itdreamed it hunted, and was hunted. It dreamed of shelter.

It worked, with a million others, to sculpta true world in a fold of the [scrambled], and created a [scrambled] for[scrambled], in the [scrambled].

No. It has not yet achieved the highestlevel. That, it must achieve in the long dream of life, not the short dream ofa game.

Sometimes, through the noise of itsthoughts, it hears the universe, yes.

To cure it of sorrow would destroy it. Thesorrow is part of its own private task. We cannot interfere.

It reads our thoughts.

And yet they play the game.

Too strong for this dream. To tell them howto live is to prevent them living.

The player is growing restless.

But not the truth.

Give it a body, again.

Use its name.

Good.

Who are we? Once we were called the spiritof 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.

The player was you, [Playername].

Sometimes the player dreamed it was lost ina story.

Sometimes the player dreamed it watchedwords on a screen.

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

Shush. Sometimes the player created asmall, private world that was soft and warm and simple. Sometimes hard, andcold, and complicated. Sometimes it built a model of the universe in its head;flecks of energy, moving through vast empty spaces. Sometimes it called thoseflecks "electrons" and "protons".

You are the player, reading words...

You. You. You are alive.

and sometimes the player believed theuniverse had spoken to it through the sunlight that came through the shufflingleaves of the summer trees

and sometimes the player believed theuniverse had spoken to it through the light that fell from the crisp night skyof winter, where a fleck of light in the corner of the player's eye might be astar a million times as massive as the sun, boiling its planets to plasma in orderto be visible for a moment to the player, walking home at the far side of theuniverse, suddenly smelling food, almost at the familiar door, about to dreamagain

and the universe said I love you

and the universe said everything you needis within you

and the universe said you are the daylight

and the universe said the darkness youfight is within you

and the universe said you are not alone

and the universe said you are the universetasting itself, talking to itself, reading its own code

And the game was over and the player wokeup 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.