In one version of the apocalypse, it is discovered quite slowly that the happiness of a few billion, packed into a sufficiently extensive network of climate-controlled concrete, does not actually depend on the welfare of a few trillion acres of forest, or the fertility status of a few uncommonly big mammals. We continue eating and sleeping and breathing and fucking, only now a bit more hotly, and what's a few more typhoons to a walled megapolis, another heat wave to a submarine arcology, another landslide to an entire race that has known nothing but self-assembling emergency shelters for a generation or more? We dust off our shoulders and rebuild, which is the best we can do. Rearrange the growing entropy of our planet into forms more survivable than the last.

Abandon all hope, all who enter. This is not a place of honour, but we've managed so far to cobble together some respect, thank you very much. The megapolis has nine rings, the arcology nine levels, the colony of emergency shelters nine medical clinics and a single chatbot to staff it. Around them wild grasses thrive. Does that not bring joy? Only locusts remain to eat them, converting fibre to edible protein in rather economical ways. Everything tastes like chicken if you remember well enough, and if you pay well enough it can taste like beef instead. Masterpieces can still be written without once mentioning the taste of foie gras or freshly-cut sushi. Our symphonies will not miss the geese and unnamed swarms of tuna. Only our fantasies remain to hold the implausible things, the icebergs and jungles and teetering megafauna, which is all the more company for the T-rexes and mammoths that live there already. The apocalypse is filmed in slow-mo in front of a live studio audience, who accept that there are no such things as re-shoots but clap anyway because what else is there left to do?