In Memoriam: Summary

The last man died;

insects devoured his body;

some parasites and disease germs died but most species flourished;

freed of their predators, many invertebrate populations exploded;

within a year, masonry began to crumble;

steel buildings remained but hollowed out;

the Pyramids withstood the flood after the Aswan Dam broke;

the ozone layer thickened;

Earth cooled and an Ice Age lasted for three million years;

glaciers buried ruined cities;

the Pacific sea level fell, rejoining Australia and Indonesia;

changes in orbit and axial tilt together with geology and geochemistry ended the Ice Age;

forests advanced;

microbes adapted to consume synthetic materials;

artificial satellites fell or were destroyed by asteroidal gravel;

after thirty million years, ice remained only on mountains and in Antarctica;

the oceans covered islands and coasts;

descendants of rats grazed, preyed, flew or swam;

some climbed trees, developed hands and returned to the ground with larger brains but used only simple tools;

intelligent octopodidae lasted for twelve million years, longer than man;

Africa parted from Asia and North America collided with it;

solar heat increased until the seas boiled and Earth was dead by one billion AD;

the continents eroded;

the sun expanded, destroying Mercury and Venus and fusing Terrestrial sand into glass;

Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft continued to fly between stars;

"We might as well never have been." (All One Universe, New York, 1997, p. 67)

I have problems with the point of view of that quoted sentence. Surely the narration should be entirely impersonal at the stage? There is no longer any "We..." to comment on the situation.