Earl Madsen checked the oxygen recycler. It was making that noise again—the one that sounded like a cat trying to cough up a hairball. He'd been meaning to fix it for three cycles. He'd been meaning to fix a lot of things for three cycles.

The Ship didn't care. The Ship kept running. That was its job. Earl's job was to make sure it kept running. Same job for twenty-seven years.

He ate his breakfast from a tube that tasted faintly of metal and regret. It was lunch meat flavor, though Earl suspected the lunch meat had gone off sometime around year five. He ate it anyway. Waste was for people who had choices.

The navigation computer announced they were approaching the solar system. Earl looked up from the oxygen recycler, glanced at the viewport, and went back to work.

Earth was visible. It looked... different. Black and white. Like someone had taken a photograph and removed all the color.

Huh.

Earl went back to the oxygen recycler. The cat-noise had gotten worse.

The Ship's AI announced that a signal had been received from the surface. Earl looked at the screen. Some kind of video loop was playing—a city, people jumping around, a girl waving.

He watched it for a moment. Then he went back to the oxygen recycler.

The signal repeated. The girl was still waving. Earl could hear her voice through the speakers, though the speakers hadn't been properly cleaned in decades. Something about "seeing him" and "looking like a star."

Earl sighed. He put down his wrench and tapped the comm button.

"This is Earl Madsen, maintenance technician, third class. Who's calling?"

The girl's voice came through, bright and enthusiastic. "We see you! You look like a star! Are you the Ark?"

"I'm Earl."

"Oh! Hello, Earl! I'm—well, we're the Little People, and we've been waiting for you!"

"Waiting for me?"

"Yes! We have so much to show you! Please come down and visit!"

Earl looked at the oxygen recycler. The cat-noise had developed a new dimension—it was now wheezing as well as choking.

"Look," he said. "I'm busy."

"But—Earl, the Great Catastrophe happened twenty-five thousand years ago. The Macros are all gone. You're the last one. We want to welcome you to the new world!"

Earl thought about this. The oxygen recycler gave a particularly violent shudder.

"Alright," he said. "But I've got work to do."

He took the landing craft down. The atmosphere was thin and cold. The ground was black rock. In the distance, white ice caught the Sun's light.

He found the signal source—a transparent hemisphere, about a meter in diameter. He peered inside.

At first he saw nothing. Then he realized the city inside was very, very small. The buildings were the size of matchsticks. The people were the size of dust motes.

Huh.

He opened the comm. "You guys are tiny."

"We're ten micrometers tall!" the girl's voice said. "Isn't it wonderful?"

"It's... something."

The girl—she said her name was just "the Leader"—explained everything. The Great Catastrophe. The gene engineers who had shrunk humanity. The纳米technology. The war between the Macros and the Micros.

Earl listened while he tightened a loose bolt on the landing craft's door hinge.

"So you guys are still here," he said when she finished.

"Yes! We inherited everything! Philosophy, art, music—"

"Huh."

"Would you like to visit our city?"

Earl looked at the oxygen recycler back on the Ship. It was probably going to fall apart any moment now. He'd been meaning to fix it for three cycles.

"Sure," he said.

The Little People came to him on feather-like gliders, settling on his hand. He couldn't see them individually, but he could feel them—tiny lives, pressing against his skin.

Inside the landing craft, they marveled at everything. The metal sky. The artificial sun. The controls.

"Can we eat something?" the Leader asked.

Earl opened a can of lunch meat and put a small piece on the console. The Little People swarmed it. From their perspective, it was a mountain of pink rock. From his, it was the same piece of meat he'd been eating for twenty-seven years.

"It's not very good," the Leader said.

"It's what we've got."

"Can we have drinks?"

Earl opened a bottle of Maotai and poured a small amount into the cap. The Little People climbed up the side like mountaineers and drank from the top.

"Wow!" they said. "Macro-era wine is amazing!"

Earl watched them on the video lens. They were cheerful. Energetic. Completely without a care in the world.

He felt... nothing. Not sadness, not joy. Just the flat, gray neutrality of a man who had spent twenty-seven years alone in a metal box and had simply stopped expecting anything from life.

One of the Little People—someone who seemed to be a philosopher or intellectual—started talking about Macro-era philosophy. Marcus Aurelius. Laozi. Shakespeare.

Earl listened while he cleaned grease off his hands with a rag that had been clean sometime in the last decade.

"That's nice," he said.

"But don't you want to know more? Don't you want to explore the depths of human thought?"

Earl looked at the oxygen recycler. It was making a new sound now—a kind of gurgling that suggested internal fluid dynamics gone seriously wrong.

"Look," he said. "I spent twenty-seven years on a Ship. I fixed things. I ate food. I slept. That was my job. I came home. Earth is dead. You guys are alive. That's... good, I guess."

"But what about meaning? What about purpose?"

Earl thought about this for a moment. The oxygen recycler gave a particularly violent shudder and then went silent.

"Huh," he said. "It stopped making that noise."

"Earl, are you even listening to me?"

"Yeah. I'm listening. You guys have a nice city. Tiny buildings. Tiny people. Tiny wine. It's... quaint."

The Leader looked offended. "It's not quaint! It's a civilization!"

"I didn't say it was quaint. I said it was quaint."

Silence.

"Earl," the Leader said carefully. "What do you want?"

Earl looked around the landing craft. The metal walls. The flickering lights. The broken equipment. The can of lunch meat. The bottle of Maotai.

"I want to go back to my job," he said.

"But—Earl, you're the last Macro! You can help us! You can be part of our civilization!"

Earl thought about this. The oxygen recycler was definitely broken now. Completely silent. Which was good, because the cat-noise had been annoying. But also bad, because that meant the oxygen recycler was broken.

"Alright," he said. "I'll stay. But I'm keeping my job. I fix things. That's what I do."

The Leader smiled. "That's wonderful, Earl! Welcome to the new world!"

Earl nodded. He went back to the Ship and found the oxygen recycler. It was, as expected, completely broken. He opened it up and started looking for the problem.

It would probably take him a few cycles to fix it. Maybe more. He'd been meaning to fix it for three cycles already.

He got to work.

Outside, the Little People continued their tiny lives—cheerful, energetic, completely without a care in the world.

Earl Madsen tightened a bolt. Then another. Then another.

The Ship hummed. The Earth turned. The Sun shone.

And somewhere in the black rock and white ice, a tiny civilization continued—bright, urgent, oblivious to the fact that the last Macro human had come home, looked at their world, and gone back to work.