I had a dream once where I was given an overview of the Metaverse. There was an old-fashioned radio with two dials. One dial, when turned, zoomed my perspective in and out, from human scale eyesight to muscular landscapes to cellular processes to atomic ka-jiggery and back. The other dial, when turned, put me in new universes. Think, I don’t know, Lovecraft but faster? After spending hours (or days or millennia, for all I know) rapt by micro- and macroscopic views of all different kinds of realities, the dials were turned to their original places, and I was back to sitting beside my parents and the radio. (I was very young in the dream, four to six years old)

They showed me which frequencies they’d just introduced me to, just a few inches along the face of the radio. I pointed to an arbitrary place on the line, outside of where they’d indicated. “What’s in this frequency?”

They replied, “We don’t know. No one’s ever been there.” And after a moment of quiet scrutiny, asked, “Would you like to be the first? We don’t know what will happen.”

I replied “Yes, I think I would.” They smiled, and said “We love you very deeply, and always will.” One of them reached for a knob. And then, I was born.