What do you do when you eventually get there ? You're at the top. You're exhausted, exhilarated. The air is pure (what you had to inhale on the way up is something you'd rather choose to forget). The lack of oxygen makes you dizzy. You laugh. The challengers are still sweating far below, tiny flecks lost in the abyss of their inferiority. They'll keep tearing each other apart until the meanest gets the upper hand, and there are so many of them playing this game that you're safe for a while. But there's no reason to look down and make fun of them, because down is where you don't belong anymore. So you look in front of you, you behold the horizon, the faraway peaks and clouds, or you turn your eyes to the sky sphere, to the stars. It should be there. The Big Design, the Great Prize, the Ultimate Reward, what you've been toiling for, what you killed people for, what you've been expecting for so long. Someone will climb on the stage, open a little white envelope, say your name, and give you an art object with gold on it. One kiss on each cheek, and it will be over, and you'll live in perfect bliss ever after. Ha. It just doesn't happen, does it ? You start fidgeting, the air is cold, so thin that nothing could possibly be hidden in it. Clouds speed away, indifferent to your present torment. You turn around, and the landscape, for all its vastness, is just dull, the most boring thing you ever set your eyes upon. No fun. You seat yourself in the little chair that had been waiting for your noble backside for what seemed (to you) years, if not centuries. What are you going to do now ? No way you're going back down. No way you can't climb higher. Hey, seems that you're stuck here, that you've found your