From first breath to last, we march to death's drumbeat. Each pulse marks time in this theater of absurdity, where we play at meaning while dancing toward dust. We craft elaborate gods to puppet-master our performance, preferring sweet lies to the void's bitter truth.

Life devours life in an endless feast. The gazelle feeds on grass, the lion on gazelle, the worm on lion. Death isn't life's shadow – it's life's face unmasked. Our consciousness, that precious mirror in which we admire ourselves, merely gilds our animal truth: we are breeding machines wrapped in poetry.

We build civilizations, launch rockets to stars, pen symphonies and sonnets. Yet beneath our noble pursuits writhes the same blind worm that drives bacteria – multiply, persist, deny the dark. We are quantum accidents briefly assembled into awareness, screaming meaning into an indifferent cosmos.

The universe blinks. We are gone. Not even echoes remain.