The aliens were finally leaving. Two years and two months too late.

When they first landed their giant reflective mansions – and yes, I mean the fee-fi-fo-fum kind – mankind tried to communicate. When that didn’t work, we used violence. We hardly scratched them, and they didn’t seem to take notice. They ignored us and instead focused on their massive drilling machines.

Eventually mankind agreed there was no point in fighting, so we might as well learn. I was part of a science team that investigated their rocketships and drilling apparatus. We didn’t understand much of what we saw, but we discovered fairly early on what they were after: and of course we didn’t tell the public since that would lead to mass panic.

So when the rockets fired again, and first one, then another lifted off, punching holes through the atmosphere, people celebrated. But I didn’t. I drove home and prepared myself to die. After all, the planet wouldn’t last long without its core.

I had already moved past denial. Considering the number of impossible things I’d witnessed in the past 26 months, I knew our fate. Now as I emptied my glass of whiskey, I suddenly grew furious. I threw it across the apartment and listened to it shatter against the wall. This was insane. How could they do this to us? I demanded. Leaving us here to slowly freeze to death?

It wasn’t fair. Why couldn’t I have been born in a different century? Why wouldn’t they listen to us? How was it even possible that after 26 months of interactions, they still wouldn’t talk to us and nothing we could invent in that time was powerful enough to dent their machines? It simply wasn’t fair.

I stood and swept up the glass pieces, taking a moment to breathe. Maybe the numbers were wrong. Maybe there was still hope. I knew some teams had been working on emergency core technology. Maybe we wouldn’t be murdered by solar radiation and then freeze to death. I mean, we still had approximately 8 weeks until the point of no return, right? Anything could happen in that time. I stared at the glass shards in the dust pan.

What was I doing? Who was I kidding? I dropped the pan on the floor and let the glass pieces find a new home across the linoleum. There was no way we could save the world in 8 weeks. We were finished. That’s why we were sent home early today. There was nothing to do. I flopped onto my back, stared up at the ceiling, and started a list of all the things I wanted to do before I died.

I wanted to get married. I wanted to get a tattoo. I wanted to visit Scotland again and see the rough-worn cliffs and hopeful greenery. I wanted to visit my sister and her family and say goodbye. Of course, I couldn’t tell them anything, so that would be depressing. I wanted to learn how to scuba dive. My brother-in-law did that for a while, and I always thought that was cool.

But what was the point of any of it? What was the point of anything? We were going to die. None of my work would mean anything. We’ll just become another lifeless rock. And it’s all the giants’ faults.

I let out a frustrated groan and struggled to my feet. I filled a new glass with whiskey and took my seat at the kitchen table. Stupid aliens. How could they be so careless? A little tickle ran through my head as a sentence from a high school classic pushed itself into my mind:

“They were careless people… they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

But we weren’t that different, were we? Even before this, most of the billionaires had plans to escape to the Moon or Mars when this planet got too crowded and the resources ran out. We have certainly been the giants to Earth’s ants and the millions of creatures we displaced with our concrete jungles, factories, and fracking.

I swirled the whiskey in my glass. I sipped, and the liquid burned bitter down my throat. Then I let out a little coughing laugh that surprised me. Actually, it was kind of ironic when you thought of it like that: All our plans, all our futures, and all our selfish, careless pasts had caught up with us, hadn’t they?

My forehead leaned into my palm with a groan. But how long would it really be before the public found out? Would they even believe it? Would the world go insane as everyone struggled to board the billionaires’ escape ships like in the movie, 2012? Or would we gather in the streets to bid each other a somber farewell like all the nerds did when their servers shut down.

Maybe we would even dance. Of course it would have to be a real classic, something like I Love Rock ’n Roll.

The corner of my mouth lifted into a smile at the thought, and a tear slipped down the opposite cheek. Yeah, I nodded in acceptance. I mean, what else would there be to do at the end of the world?