A room is built like a chapel and lit like an auction, and at its center a pedestal holds nothing at all. The people who paid to be here weep with relief, because nothing cannot disappoint them and nothing cannot prove them fools. A woman who sells absence for a living watches the market for it to climb, and learns too late what the asset takes: not the lie, but the proof. Careers thin, archives go blank, a donor wall forgets the names it was paid to keep. The price keeps rising, and somewhere a man is losing the last evidence he was ever a person, reaching for anyone left who might remember he was here.
