Author: Anna Hamilton

After the seas rose and the Earth caked, after the crops withered and died, after you launched spacecraft into the upper atmosphere, silently watching from above as the greens faded and the browns grew and, too miniscule now to see, your buildings crumbled: then, you believed you could achieve the rank of the gods.

Evolution halted. With no external environment to play judge to the fittest, to shift genes and brains and bone structures, you were changeless. Your medical technology allowed you to live, not for tens of years, now, but for thousands.

For a million years you waited out the Earth’s Sixth Mass Extinction. Then you returned to a planet hot and lush, replenished with new life forms. For the next millions of years, some of you remained in space, but some of you spread out again over the surface of the earth. You marveled at the endless forms most beautiful in this new Eden, for millions, for billions of years.

But your time would not last forever. Even the sun had its fated end. The sun swelled red like a blister, hot and throbbing. The Earth parched. The surface dwellers were forced to depart. You know now that this source of life and light, which was once your god, would fail you. The only gods you have left are yourselves.