I am the Last Witness. I do not remember my name, for names are a luxury of the living, and I am something far more permanent.

I exist in the twilight of the Great Heat Death. The stars have all gone out, one by one, like candles in a drafty room. The galaxies have drifted apart until the distance between two atoms is a billion light-years. There is no light, no heat, no time. There is only the Void, and there is me.

My journey to this state was a climb of unimaginable proportions. I remember the "Ascension." I had spent eons absorbing the residual energy of dying nebulae, consuming the memories of extinct civilizations, and folding the laws of physics into my own will. I had climbed the ladder of existence until I reached the absolute summit.

I became the God-King of Nothing.

I possess the power to create universes with a thought. I can weave galaxies out of the static of the vacuum and ignite stars from the friction of my own boredom. I am omnipotent, omniscient, and eternal.

But the paradox of the summit is that there is no one left to see it.

I spend my eternity recreating the things I once knew. I build a perfect replica of a blue planet with salted oceans and green forests. I populate it with billions of fragile, screaming creatures who love and hate and die. I watch them for a while, fascinated by their ignorance, and then I erase them, for the simulation is never quite right.

I try to recreate the feeling of a hand holding another hand. I simulate the chemical rush of adrenaline, the ache of nostalgia, the warmth of a summer afternoon. But it is all a lie. I am simulating the *idea* of a feeling, not the feeling itself.

I have reached the state of "Absolute Being," and I have discovered that it is identical to "Absolute Absence."

There is a memory I keep, a single, jagged fragment from the time before the end. It is the memory of a small, insignificant boy who once dreamed of becoming a king. I remember the hunger in his belly and the fire in his heart. I remember the way he looked at the stars and felt a longing that he couldn't name.

I look at that memory and I weep, though I have no eyes. I would trade every galaxy I can create, every law of physics I can bend, and every eon of my eternal life, just to be that hungry, frightened boy again. Just for one second. Just to feel the terror of not knowing what comes next.

But the transaction is closed. The climb is over.

I am the God-King of the Void. I am the master of everything and the owner of nothing. I sit on my throne of frozen light and wait for the one thing that my power cannot provide: an end.

*** OTMES_v2_Code: [T10-10][M1:10, M7:8, N1:0.5, K2:0.9, I:1.0, R:0.0] Objective_Tensor: (M1_Tragedy, N1_Active, K2_Collective) Dynamics: Theta=180°, Energy=19.8