Somewhere, beyond blackness, some tyrant host swaps breathing for airlessness to test me. I had no concept of myself, no link to the things I knew. It is hard to explain the lack of anything concrete to people who live in a world of objects, but there are worlds that are nothing but sensations and lacks of things, worlds that are featureless, but the mind goes on inside them. I started with nothing but a concept of a thought and it evolved into one statute: I must protect my sanity, or everything that mattered to me would be lost. Of that, I was certain – but certainty is an illusion.