As a child, she played the video game Pokémon Pearl on a folding thing that she adorned with stickers and that her parents termed "the Nintendo." Buried under the covers to later and later hours, she explored the Underground. She tapped the screen repetitively with her stylus to mine Spheres from the rocky walls. She carted large quantities of Spheres to various merchants in trade for decorations she rearranged around her hideout. When she finally fell asleep, her face cradled the still-unfolded console and burned with shuffling visions of Spheres and furniture and endless tapping. When she awoke, she plugged the console in to recharge and made some portion of her dreams into reality. She showed off her improved hideout to strangers beamed in from the internet that she never saw again.

Growing older, she played games less often, focusing her energy on school and friends. She excelled, but when she graduated college, she left those friends behind and struggled to land a job in the area she studied. She reapplied to her old position as a waitress and felt too awkward about her lack of success to keep in contact with many of her friends. In her little free time, she took up playing games again. She couldn't afford to buy new consoles and titles, so she poured over piracy forums learning how to torrent and emulate. She managed a life thrown together from many partial lives. She built dream houses she knew could never exist. She played as a woman. She played as a man. She played sex.

One day, her mouse broke. She couldn't play anything until she ordered a new one. Not knowing which to buy, she spent days on enthusiast forums, where people debated the merits of different technical features. She took her mouse apart to see how it worked. She imagined the perfect mouse and could not find one on the market that lived up to it. She taught herself how to use a 3D printer at the local makerspace. She taught herself how to make an injection mold from a 3D-print. She studied electronics. But after failed attempts at casting shells and soldering circuits, she realized that she did not have the resources to make what she wanted. She ordered a pretty nice mouse from some business.

She was evicted from her apartment due to rent increases and moved back into her parent's home. She learned the basics of programming. She began designing games that she felt expressed something the others hadn't satisfied. She posted them on the internet and got no attention. They were too obscure, she thought. She tried making some that were more conventional. The game engine she was using announced a pricing change that she could no longer afford. She began to design her own game engine.