Every publication has a proof issue, whether it admits it or not. Someone prints eight pages, or publishes a page nobody linked to, and discovers that the headline does not fit, the form does not arrive, and the clever name is impossible to say out loud.
Vol. 00 is that proof, kept on purpose. It is short. It exists so the archive is not a single lonely issue pretending to be a tradition. A magazine with one number is a poster. A magazine with a previous number is a publication.
We would rather show the proof than hide it. The type got calmer after this one. The sections got their names. The promise, though, was already here: we would publish something a person could finish, and then we would publish the next thing.
If you are reading this after First Light, you are holding us to that. Good.