The sky is dark, as it has been for millions of years.
The oceans are all foul and filthy, rank with oil and pollution that still hangs around, plentiful and merciless.
Every human and almost every other living thing on the planet has died out.
Their skeletons litter the ground, crumbling and weakening after so much time of solitude and undisturbed slumber.
Only small, thick shrubs thrive here, sucking every last drop of what little moisture coats the grass-less ground.
In between them, a hole, the edges hardened and cracking.
The owner of the hole, a tiny burrowing rodent smaller than a playing card, shuffles slowly around in a clump of dry dirt.
Even for an animal of its size, every movement is met by a sudden and agonising need for warmth, nourishment and as much as a single drop of water.
These are the only vaguely sentient animals on the planet.
The insects on which it feeds are incredibly rare, and contain deadly toxins that would render any creature from the past parylised for the remainder of its life.
The rodent is able to expel the toxins, but even so, the longest one of these animals have ever lived is two years.
Two years of pain, disease and lonliness.
This is what awaits life in the future.
This is what we reward the planet for giving us life,
Hell.
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