It was hard going at first. The first billion years was pretty dead. However, to be fair, there hadn't been much in the way of advance advertising, no posters anywhere, so really, you couldn't expect much. The rat stagehands that hang the stars in the firmament were philosophical. Nobody saw them anyway, so the fact that nobody saw the show at all didn't weigh on them much. The rest of the cast, encouraged by this example of rodent stoicism, went on with the show. After a coupla billion years, however, it started to wear on them. People stopped scanning the seats every night looking for a new face—or indeed, any face. But they didn't quit. It was the theatre. The show had to go on. The temptation to slack off, to just hang the quasars anywhere and not bother lighting the nebulae, had to be intense, but the rats never did. It was craftsmanship, they said, and if they didn't have an audience, at least they had pride in a job done well. Again, the cast took heart, and they put in some of the finest performances of "Night" ever seen, except there was nobody to see it.
