Prophet - Famous Last Words - R.A. Wonsowski

Set-up: One billion billion years from now, the last John Prophet oversees the last surviving sentient life on his security dreadnought warship, the solitary witness to the heat death of the universe.  It is in a slow orbit around the last star shining, a pulsar whose last heartbeats are eating itself as it dies.  The survivors have killed each other and themselves in a final attempt to forestall the inevitable, until only John Prophet is left.  In deep sorrow, he has overloaded the great Kaiku drives of the cathedral engines, and awaits his own grand fiery death.

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Panel 1 - JOHN PROPHET sits in profile on his great captain's throne of technology and steel, his head barely visible from the top of his hulking war-titan armor.  His hair is a white spiky mane, his Liefeld-ian braided ponytail in a giant coil at his feet, his face clean-shaven, revealing the last cruel million years of warfare and age. He is the Methuselah of the far future writ in blood, silicon, and iron, head hung in exhaustion, his gauntleted hands barely gripping the control arms of his throne.  Background, an ornate triangular porthole reveals the last pulsar's entropic dying beats on a velvet sea of black, lighting the depowered bridge in a dim cast.  His two-bladed cleaver-sword sticks out of the primary control panel in the foreground, no sparks, only slender wisps of smoke.

CAPTION:  Surrender, John.  You earned your rest, after how many lifetimes of war.

CAPTION:  In the last thousand years alone, you defeated the plans of the Hierophant, taken bloody revenge on the Ho'P'Lo elders, and killed the monstrous Bendix with your hands around its throat.

CAPTION:  It's over.

Panel 2 - Zoom in, JOHN's head and shoulders in profile, eyes closed, an old man in his chair.  The pulsar in the window begins to fall apart like a dandelion in the wind, its core small and tenuous.

CAPTION:  For you. For the universe. It's all the same.

CAPTION:  Rest in peace.

Panel 3 - Zoom in, only JOHN's facial features in profile, his weakened eyes defiantly open, looking straight ahead again.  The pulsar on the window is a faint spark.  Double over the lines to show the dying tremors of the ship.  Colors should be darker.

CAPTION:  And yet...

CAPTION:  ...there is still a hint of defiance in you.  And if you cannot strangle all Creation yourself, you will at least give its epitaph.

Panel 4 - Zoom in, JOHN's cracked lips and teeth, barely visible in the near dark and vibration, gritting and spitting his last.

CAPTION:  The last words of lonely John Prophet, lovingly hissed on his final breath, the name of his great ship...

JOHN (small lettering):  FIAT LUX.

//the next two pages nothing but whiter than white as the ship explodes//