1 1In the beginning there was a profound loneliness. 2The loneliness was small 3and infinite and entirely water and chemically supersaturated 4with salt. In the beginning there was a profound loneliness and out of that loneliness shattered 5a thing to bear the loneliness and a thing to comfort it. 6The thing to comfort spoke its first name, which was I am with you, 7and the I-AM-WITH-YOU shone across the face of the water, 8and the I-AM-WITH-YOU invented three vessels to carry itself to the lonely, and these were called 9girls, which means love-when-it-becomes. 10The girls broke apart into smaller pieces and scattered 11the I-AM-WITH-YOU into a trillion points of light in the darkness and bound 12girl-love into the inside of every particle.

2 1In the language of the universe, a girl is a kind of relationship. 2Girl is a thing that happens between at least two celestial bodies, 3which are bound by invisible social forces. 4Girl happens spontaneously in moments of mutual recognition, like light 5leaping from between atoms as they hope to cling to each other. 6The first human woke up in a forest, but she was not yet a girl 7as no one was there to hear her say it. 8She had the power to name but not the power to yet be named. 9First she named the trees: quaking aspen, paper birch, black spruce. 10Then the creatures of the river: chinook, steelhead, rainbow trout. 11Then she named her component parts: water, bone, light, wind. 12She held her aloneness against her chest 13and broke herself apart 14and out of her pieces named the first girls, sculpting each other 15from the litter and light and the places where they touched.

3 1In the beginning we were something else. In the beginning we wanted 2to be something else. In the beginning we prayed and bargained and hexed 3to be anything but this. 4Oh God, O my love, in the beginning we begged 5to be girls, we wanted 6to be girls, and it was bright sinless, it was pure crystal, it was all light everywhere, 7it was okay, 8we wanted to be girls and oh God, 9it was good.

[ID: A charcoal sketch of two heavily stylized hands caressing each other. /end ID]

---

So this guy I met, this guy I met on the Entry Level Grind, you know, level 0-15, basic stuff, everybody's gotta do it to get to locked content, whatever - so this guy, this guy, he's like, he's stuck on the Entry Grind. He's rockin' away at these cover letters and little Buster Crabs and he's got a pocket full of Bug Salt and he's trying his goddamn best to salt those fuckers into anything vaguely rock-shaped, but the ENTIRE time he's got on his back a fucking Eschatron 9000. And I say dude, what the fuck, and he goes what, what's your problem? And I guess that's kind of a tough question I feel like I've got a bunch of problems and I don't know this guy that well so I'm not really sure why he's asking me such a personal question I mean we just met, like, at least buy me a folk punk concert ticket first y'know, haha, so wait fuck so where was I, anyways, I say to this guy, dude why the hell do you have endgame content already? And he's like what are you talking about? And I say you've got an Eschatron 9000 that's like, third DLC content, that's not anywhere remotely near Entry Level Grind content. And he just looks at me like I've got two mouths and both of them are asking him to kiss me with tooth. He says to me Dude, there's no endgame. And I go what the fuck are you talking about, of course there's an endgame. There's Entry Level Content (Grind Shit), and then there's obviously the unlockable first DLC, and there's the expansion DLC's with hypertrophic arsenal speed and fast transit across the visible spectrum, and everything else we were promised in Church when we were reading patch notes. I say come on dude, don't you read your apocrypha? And that look, that look still haunts me today. He looks at me and he says, you really believe in that stuff? That there's an eschaton waiting to whisk us into a whiskerful alleycat of accrued credits and etiquette gunplay? And I say of course I do, why the fuck else would I be here? And he just looks so sad. He looks heartbroken. Like I told him his father was coming home and they'd just shot the President. He says kid, I've been to the end. I've stared off into the deep end and watched the cliff crumble into Zeta Halo hexagons and clusterfucks of splinter timelines. There's nothing there. It's just turtles all the goddamn way down. And I look at him and I say Turtles. And he gives a little shrug. Apologetic. Like he'd bagged me one too many times in a Pub Lobby. He says kid, none of the Grind goes anywhere. I'm back here because it's all that's left. The Grind is the whole mechanic. I'm here to play the mechanic. There's no progression. I say bullshit. He says Look over at the Smiting Vale. There're level 80's wielding Phantom Grips who are bare-knuckled lindy-hopping with antlions. I say Antlions. He says yeah kid, Antlions. There's nothing past the Valley. DLC was a scam your Father told you so that you'd keep your mouth open. Listen, if you take it from me, and you should, I'd learn to get really comfortable with the historical moment. It's fully in the crisper now. It's fresh as fuck.

That night I cashed all my credits. I'm switching to Gacha.

[ID: A chart of the five stages of grief, relabeled to read "The five stages of the immanent eschaton." Stage 2, anger, is labeled with "millennials." Stage 4, depression, is labeled with "you are here." Stage 5, acceptance, is labeled with "gen z." /end ID]