The last man was standing on the edge of a sand dune, looking over a huge plain of desert, when the devil appeared. The last man only knew he was the devil because he was wearing a name-badge that said “Satan, Lord of silly goose, The First Traitor, The Fallen Angel” on it. Aside from the badge, the devil didn't look particularly sinister: his eyes were too wide to be piercing, his nose too dainty and effeminate to be hideous, his lips too straight and wide to give the appearance of a perpetual smirk. Indeed, if the last man had heard of game shows, he would have concluded that the master of damnation looked exactly like one of their hosts. That the devil was wearing a bright red two-piece suit and a black shirt, finished off with a red cravat and a pair of pointy-toed black snakeskin shoes, certainly didn't help alleviate this impression. The last man looked from under his ragged mane of greasy hair at the devil, then shuffled down the sand dune, ignoring the diabolic visitor. He didn't get far before he was addressed by Satan, whose modulated pitch and received pronunciation were hypnotising to the last man:
“Good afternoon, sir! It's seven minutes past two on the twenty-first of July, year twenty-two thirty-two! Surely you must know what that means?”
The last man peered up at the devil, shook his head weakly, and shuffled onwards, tripped over, hit his head on a rock jutting from the base of the dune, and started bleeding. A look of glee flickered across the devil's face.
“That's right, sir! As you've just shown our audience,” here the last man heard a peal of applause, “today is the day when the human species finally dies out. Isn't that just something, folks?”
Another peal of applause, louder this time, and a few whoops, echoed through the frigid desert. The devil knelt down next to the last man, and whispered in his ear.
“Come on, sir, get up, or the audience will be annoyed.”
The last man dimly reached out one rough hand. The devil took him under the arm and hoisted him up with one arm. When the last man found his footing, the devil stepped away from him and addressed a spot just above his head:
“Would you like the last human in the studio, Erinyes and Incubi?”
A peal of laughter and a wave of positives.
“Sorry, I can't hear you!”
More positives, less laughter.
“What was that again?”
As one, three hundred voices shouted “Yes!”
Although his vision was blurry with tears of pain, the last man vaguely saw the sand around him rise up and form a roof over his head – or perhaps he was sinking? He struggled not to choke on the sand, but only fell, faster and faster, through the earth, until at last the sickening falling sensation stopped and he felt able to open his eyes.
“And here he is, daemons and demons! The last man himself!”
Faint laughter and clapping around the last man cleared his senses for the first time in years, the first time since he'd run from the disease-ridden remnants of civilisation into the ever-expanding desert to survive the plague that had finished off all the others. Three days later he had decided to go back, only to find that the desert had swallowed the last village and the corpses of his friends. He'd taken what few supplies he could find, but the earth was baked dry and the water was toxic, and when – a day before the devil had come – he'd run out of purifying tablets, he knew he was doomed. But the dehydration and the hunger of the last week were a distant memory as he straightened up; his hair was clean and unmatted, and he was dressed in an exact replica of the devil's suit instead of his familiar filthy rags.
What he saw around him was even stranger to the last man than his own appearance. In place of the eternally-glaring sun shone stage lights attached to steel girders; in place of the endless sand from horizon to horizon, he was standing on a stage as red as his suit, staring out at the sea of hideous abominations that crowded the stalls and stared at him. Tentacles and fangs, dripping with venom, gleamed at him: a woman with a mutilated, eyeless face and a man with a jackal's head were just two of the unearthly creatures that gazed back at him. Yet, overwhelmed by the atmosphere of the hellish television studio, the last man felt nothing at the sight of these ghastly apparitions; when the devil gestured and asked for him to sit down on a sofa in a now-familiar shade of red, he obeyed without argument.
With one delicate hand the devil gestured at a projected display behind the sofa, facing the audience, and the lights dimmed. The background music, subtle until now, reached a crescendo in volume and in spirit, and the screen was illuminated with an image of a man struggling across a savannah with a spear in one hand. The image changed again and he ran, madly, leg muscles aching as he continued to run, the spear held back as his father and his father before him had taught generations of hunters to hold it. The prey – a gazelle, trying to run but obviously exhausted. Arching his back, the hunter threw the spear and the gazelle fell. Dinner was ready.
The image on the screen flickered, reconstituted itself and another man, similar in appearance to the first, donned his battle-armour of furs and leather at the head of the formation, as the horsemen closed on the little settlement. The cries of a small child echoed out across the night, and the horsemen manoeuvred behind another ridge. At a signal from the fur-clad man, the riders pulled their reigns towards the sound of the infant's screams, raised their flaming torches, unsheathed their long knives, and charged. Not one man, woman, or child was spared the slaughter.
And then trebuchets battered at the walls of the fortress as priests offered prayers to Apollo, bringer of disease, and other priests offered sacrifices of human flesh to Agamemnon, lord of men, as the rocks shattered against the walls of Troy. Many men's blood was spilt that day for the wrath of a single king and the theft of a single woman.
Then men, gleaming in their heavy armour, cut down rows upon rows of their fellow men in the name of one god, and darker-skinned, mounted men cut down rows of their brethren in the name of a different – but still the one and only – God. Peace would never last between these two peoples, the one believing in a messiah, the other following a prophet. A tall, imperious, dusk-skinned man, clad in leather armour, took the head of the balding peasant facing him with a curved sword.
The peasant's distant grandchild stood at the gallows, a mask covering his face, but nonetheless allowing the roaring of the crowd to pass through his ears and make him silently cry hot tears. It just wasn't fair! Why couldn't she love anyone she chose, instead of being forced to stay in a loveless marriage so her avaricious old father could make his vast wealth still vaster? Why was he paying for his transgression with death? What would happen to his beloved and their child after he was gone? The floor dropped away beneath him, and his thoughts were silenced as he felt his vertebrae snap.
His great-grandchild leaned back in the carriage and fingered the top of his cane, blessing the queen and empire for his newly-found wealth and status. Those plebeians he commanded were nothing like him... no, nothing at all like him. Didn't his acquaintances all know that his family line was as long and illustrious as any of theirs? Yes, he was safe for now, despite that one upstart worker: some distant cousin or such like. She'd be summarily dismissed, and really, he hoped she ended up in the workhouse, defiant little bit- scallywag.
And then the lead bomber released the payload, watching as it fell and blossomed into little burning flowers, their bright petals incandescent against the darkness of the night. How many people was that? What did it matter, anyway? The ground was far, far away from the cosily military interior of the Vickers Wellington. Another strike against the silly goose, as though the silly goose administration would really be shattered by the death of some enlisted soldiers.
An image of a young city banker flashed by, his face contorted into a malevolent sneer, and the last man knew that the man was his grandfather; that he was about to destroy his company's main rival and make himself the rich and powerful man that had encouraged the last man's father to become Prime Minister. Then the last man saw his father writing a brief memo with explosions in his eyes. He saw the bombs destroying whole cities, whole countries, forming the parched land and the global desert. And then he saw himself, struggling along across the vast plains, and he saw the life draining from his own eyes to the chorus of demonic applause.
The devil turned to the audience again.
“Now, the thing you all came here to see. This is the third time we've had a person from this man's universe in the studio, folks, and each time they made the same choice. Will he? Sir, will you allow your world to be reborn, or would you rather it died? No more pain, no more cruelty – or pain, cruelty, love, and joy?”
The last man sat in silence for a brief while before opening his mouth and voicing his answer.

Aside from the badge, the devil didn't look particularly sinister: his eyes were too wide to be piercing, his nose too dainty and effeminate to be hideous, his lips too straight and wide to give the appearance of a perpetual smirk. Indeed if the last man had heard of game shows, he would have concluded that the master of damnation looked exactly like one of their hosts. That the devil was wearing a bright red two-piece suit and a black shirt, finished off with a red cravat and a pair of pointy-toed black snakeskin shoes, certainly didn't help alleviate this impression.

The devil took him under the arm and hoisted him up with one arm.

Although his vision was blurry with tears of pain, the last man vaguely saw the sand around him rise up and form a roof over his head – or perhaps he was sinking? He struggled not to choke on the sand, but only fell, faster and faster, through the earth, until at last the sickening falling sensation stopped and he felt able to open his eyes.

Then the last man saw his father writing a brief memo with explosions in his eyes. He saw the bombs destroying whole cities, whole countries, forming the parched land and the global desert. And then he saw himself, struggling along across the vast plains, and he saw the life draining from his own eyes to the chorus of demonic applause.