The language of this planet doesn’t have a word for ‘home’.

“It seems fitting,” I say, in English, to a fellow who looks like a bad mix between a Prentogian and a Glorb-shhh, but may have just been a particularly ugly P681er. “In a poetic sort of way.”

“Graak pleeeek” he says, which a tiny implant inside my brain translates immediately to “shut up, ugly”.

I turn back to my drink, and sigh deeply. I just never thought it would end like this you know?

The end of Earth, now that was a party. There weren’t many of us left by then, but we were really psyched to have figured out the whole immortality thing. Well, for the most part, it was a shame about Barry. We managed to eliminate the need for drinking and eating, and even stopped aging; but there was nothing we could do about falling off the ship’s light up dance floor and being incinerated by a massive gamma blast from a dying star. Barry never could hold his liquor.

I wonder if any other Earthlings are here, if they’ve made it all the way to the end without getting stabbed or executed or worse, it's been ages since I've seen any of them. We were survivors, but maybe we weren’t the easiest to assimilate into other cultures. Personally I've only had one close call (how was I to know 200 was under the legal age on Axer 15? No one can prove anything), I'm still amazed I lasted this long.

Outside the bar, the soil glows a soft matte grey that gets kicked up by my boots. The moon, a green orb, blinks red counting down until the last rays of the last sun in the universe. The most efficient way for everyone to see exactly when we’re due to disappear. I fucking hate this planet.

There isn’t much around the collection of temporary huts, the refugee camp isn’t even close to full, just a ragtag bunch of weirdos who refused to go down with their respective ships. There were a few natives milling about earlier but they’ve mostly abandoned us since the dying star became a more sinister threat. So now there’s just the waiting.

I start to walk, and I time my steps with the red blinking. Fifteen seconds. Ten. There’s a weird sort of peace in the last seconds of a universe, all I can hear is my heart, 100 trillion years old and still beating by a literal miracle. I’ve had forever to accept this, to accept that there’s nothing beyond, because there’s nothing here either. Of all the places I've been, nowhere has ever compared to OG Earth.

Three seconds. I am totally ready for this.

Pop.

A hand wraps around my wrist, and pulls. The last thing I see of the universe is an all consuming darkness surrounded by what looks like a shiny gold rip in a big piece of fabric. Like I’ve been pulled through a curtain.

I can’t hear anything, I feel like all the air has been sucked out of me - and then a familiar smell hits me like a brick.

Home.