Situated a few miles outside the quaint Yorkshire Spa town of Los, Drake Farm was famous throughout the country.

The world was recovering from The Great Pandemic that claimed 5 billion lives. Our farm was among the rare ones that ensured the safety of their produce.

I remember one particular event more than any other from this time, especially the conversation I had with my mother that evening.

From my bedroom window, I watched my father and older brothers burning infected livestock, when mother called me down for supper.

It was a crisp Saturday evening, and the twilight painted the hedgerows with glazes of violets and splashes of emeralds. While death stained the scene with inky black smoke that twirled into anamorphic shapes of bad omens.

As for that talk with my mother, I shall not attempt to reproduce the entire conversation, which is now irrecoverable. I prefer to recall with veracity the content that will soon reveal its importance to the reader, in the peroration of my recollection.

I asked her, “When humans are extinct, what will come next?”