Earth took its final breath decades ago, but they remain.

Chamber A13 was designed specifically for the Last Ones-the poor, the sick, and the disabled. The outliers in society await a call, hopeful gazes cast toward the bleak emptiness of the sky.

These people do nothing but wait and watch. They observe a unit: a family, usually called to the Chamber's centre. They hear an automated voice announcing the unit's relocation ticket number (always higher than ten billion). Then, the Chamber becomes still, emanating an eerie silence of jealousy, reverence, or separation (it's hard to tell) as the unit is sucked up by the nameless void hanging at the top of the facility.

Where does the unit go? Before leaving Earth, scientists invented the void to teleport units to habitable planets hidden in the depths of the universe. Nobody from the Chamber has come back to confirm the truth, though.

The Operator is not one of the Last Ones. He was selected to watch and live the rest of his life on this dismal shell of a planet. He chooses which units are fortunate enough to attain a relocation number.

He's the one who killed the last plant and sent Earth spiralling into utter chaos.

He thinks it's safe to say being the Operator is a fitting punishment. Nobody from the Chamber knows he exists, but he sees each and every soul contained within its steel walls. The guilt eats away at him every single day. How did he let the world descend into such an abysmal state?

The Operator vows that someday, he will resurrect his planet. It doesn't matter if it's in a few days or fifty years; he has all the time in the world, anyway. But he's done nothing so far. He looks up at the Chamber in the shadows, inhaling noxious pollutants like the Last Ones. Occasionally, he searches for something to help him turn the world around, but it is all for naught.

The best thing to just do is just sit and wait.

。

It's not until twenty more years that the Operator finds the slightest hint of a solution. Quite literally. But he whoops for joy; now he has a purpose, a will to live.

A tiny seed, no bigger than his pinky, is concealed in one of his tattered jackets. Heaven knows how it got there and still seems to thrive under Earth's current conditions, but all that matters to the Operator is that it's here. It's in his hands.

Chamber A13's residents are dwindling. Half the population hasn't been called to relocate; otherwise, they haven't been wasted away by all the artificial toxins permeating the air. They're still watching, still waiting.

He no longer watches and waits. He is rejuvenated; he digs.

He is desperate to find one—just one patch of clean soil. It seems impossible in these conditions, but he's done the research. When the world knew who he was, he discovered more fresh and uncontaminated ground would appear closer to the Earth's core. The Operator hopes—no, he knows that with his seed, he can and will make Earth flourish again.

Far below the nameless void connecting people to outer space, far below the small Chamber units that house millions of 'misfits,' the Operator flicks away handful after handful of ash and dust. He will make this atonement to rewrite his younger self's callous, selfish attitude against the world.

The planet had been crumbling long before he'd made that egregious mistake. Continents had been at war, depriving the Earth of precious agriculture and wildlife it once had.

But he tipped the scale. After his selfish annihilation of the last plant on Earth—a blade of grass—out of frustration over an unsolvable question, the world fell. It continues to fall. Earth crumbled without nature, the beauty that once was. As the ground turned to ash and the air began to fill with dust, evacuation orders were launched almost instantaneously. The rich and powerful fled immediately to another habitable solar system.

The Operator's fellow scientists discovered his irreversible mistake, so he was doomed to spend the rest of his days under Chamber A13. Now, the world has forgotten him.

And he digs relentlessly.

。

Under the shadow of nightmares and the atrocity that Earth has become, the Operator digs for another thirty years. The residents of Chamber A13 are all gone; they've given relocation ticket numbers to all units.

He is wrinkled, exhausted, and starved. His hands are calloused and bleeding. But after all that effort, after all the time he hopes he hasn't wasted, he finds one patch of good soil.

How far beneath the earth has he dug? The Operator inches his way forward to peer down at the vast hole. He takes a shaky sigh of relief, immediately accompanied by a series of hacks and coughs.

The toxins and pollutants have gotten to him--another consequence of an Earth with no plants to filter them.

But all that matters now is that he's done it. The lifelong goal to rectify his unforgivable mistake- even if all he can do is bring back a tiny seed to the soil- is accomplished. He's done it.

The Operator doesn't have the strength to celebrate: he's too frail. He'll crumble any moment, just like Earth has already done.

He takes the seed out of his pocket--the poor thing's shriveled up and near death like he is. With an aching, trembling hand, he drops the seed into the pile of soil. The Operator watches as it falls, falls, falls down into the freshly dug earth. Then, he buries it deep into the ground.

He emits a series of gut-wrenching coughs again, and blood spews onto the ash this time. Nobody will ever know about his sacrifice for Earth under Chamber A13.

A lone tear drops from the Operator's face onto the seed. Is it of hope? Of happiness? Of frustration that the end is still so dismal?

But he knows he can do no more. With that, the Operator collapses.

。

Earth had taken its final breath centuries ago, but a single green sprout remains.