[ WP ] You are tasked with conducting the funeral of the human race .

`` What do I say?'' Jim asks. He was never a great orator, but he was always our leader. He knew I did n't want to speak the last words ever spoken. 
 
 
 `` It does n't matter; no one will hear.'' I was n't being helpful. 
 
 `` No one important.'' But Jim's not looking at me. He's looking at a fire on the horizon that looks like a sunrise we watched once, when we were vacationing at a mid-atlantic beach, taking a leave of absence from the real world. 
 
 
 The real world. There was no world to escape from now. It did n't comfort me like I thought it would. 
 
 
 Jim opens his mouth, inhaling the hard ash air like it was a salt water breeze. `` You and I, we're the most important people in the world right now.'' 
 
 
 `` And the least important.'' 
 
 
 He looks straight ahead again, and his mouth opens again, but the movement is different. `` So nothing has changed.'' He says, smiling madly, his arm slipping around my neck and back towards my chest. 
 
 
 For a moment, I wonder if he is going to choke me. *Better him than the air. * 
 
 
 He holds me like this for a few hours. The sun is actually setting now. The sky is streaked with purple and silver-grey streaks that I would have called clouds once. 
 
 
 `` We did something terrible here.'' I say. The pollution mist shifted from purple to red, and grey to gold. `` But it's beautiful.'' 
 
 
 Jim's arm tensed and moved, and he held me close. He had n't said a word in hours, but at that moment, I heard his breath catch, and his throat muscles strain to hold down the wheezing coughs I had heard so many times before. It was my worst fear unfolding before me. His time was ending soon, and he does n't want me to say another word. 
 
 
 His arms shifted, and now he speaks too, `` It's beautiful.'' and now another set of his muscles have tightened, and it is my own breath that is catching. `` It was beautiful.'' I watch the magenta sky fade to black. 
 
 

