They were the last to leave. Their footsteps the last to be placed upon the dying Mother who had given birth to them all, generation after generation. All that was gone now after billions of years of time.

Their ancestors had left the surface long ago, either up and away into the beckoning stars, or the few who could not bare to abandon where they were born, where their blood line had long flowed… they had gone down deep below.

Close to the warming core that was slowly losing its spin, they had built a paradise that they had never had above. Some had even forgotten that they lived deep in a shell, that was until what they called The Rumblings came.

Their holowalls and artificial star were shaken so badly that all those comforting hues faded to gray, white, and black.

Death had begun its prowl. Death for material, both inert and biological.

Their sun, once a happy lemon yellow, had finally swollen red into a gaseous boil. The Earth would end in fire, but not in that caused by a war-incensed mankind. They had left that all behind long ago.

Humans had grown peaceful in the need for survival.

Sharah was the last handyman to move the controls and keep the possibility of life going. Now, there was no button to push, nor lever to pull to save their millennial old habitat.

They were beyond that.

His mother, Aradia, had stayed with him to care for his son, Bitameen. His wife had left with another, years before as the first shockwaves pounded the hull.

He no longer felt any sadness about that, but he did mourn the loss of his world. He had been the one to keep it alive like a doctor who has a bedridden patient.

No hope, but a deep feeling of responsibility.

That tunnel was long. Like the long stretch from out of the womb, or the long stretch that places you in a tomb.

That last mile of transformation. As they walked along, not saying a word, not even hearing the soft pad of their soles - the machinery hummed. Slowly, each cell and twist of DNA was being changed. They were adapting, evolving in a steady, sedate plodding.

At the end of The Tunnel, a new world awaited… far away around a very young star… a planet green and blue, just like theirs circling perfectly in the habitable zone. But, it was only a one-way. No transport or information could ever come back from the other side. The Interstellar Gate engineers had never been able to solve that problem.

Yet, they had found an escape. Old style communication had told them that they could survive there, before the satellites far above had been consumed by the first thin outer layers of the sun.

They really didn’t know what expected them, just a new life. Survival for some.

That new life had already begun, Sharah looked at his mother and son. Their skin had changed to accommodate for a bright burning blue star, their eyes had added a triple lid that winked from above and from each side. The light there during the day would be much brighter than where they had long evolved. Their hair was gone, replaced by shimmering scales. Their weight had changed, there was a bit less gravity in their new home.

He felt the quickening pain that he was losing it all.

They stopped and held their breath, maybe the last of this specific mix of oxygen.

There was a quake and a short loss of power before the machines hummed again. They stood at the edge of the light and a new world.

He took each one of them in his arms. A hug that held time in an eternity of a moment.

He finally let them go.

They looked at him with their triple blinking eyes. At least they could still form tears.

They stepped into the in between light of two worlds.

And then… they were gone.

Sharah was the only one - genetically unalterable - no one knew why. So, that meant he had to stay behind.

Either side meant his death.

He was the last man standing, he’s the one who turned the lights out.