Furzar awoke slowly, happy in the warmth of his blanket, jubilant before he even knew why. He pondered a moment, peacefully ignorant of the thunderous crashing outside which shook the very walls of his bungalow, but whatever the happy thing was, it was now gone. He waited, mind adjusting to his task, doing what warm-up stretches he could from his seated position as the earthquake threw pictures of boats and castles to the ground. Then he leapt from his bed and jogged, no, jigged over to the mess with exaggerated rises of his knees, twirling and bending like a ballet robot with a loose wire or ten. He could have just bent down and retrieved the fallen frames, but that would have been too easy. Too weak. Instead, he elegantly slid into effortless splits, snatched up the offending prints with a couple of toes, and rolled back into a pounding gallop two feet from the wall. Billows of shredded paper that he had kicked up from the floor fell like snowflakes as he replaced his prized scenes.

The bedroom, and the whole dwelling, for that matter, was a pretty good imitation of a house, he'd give them that. There was all the usual furniture, beds, tables, chairs, wardrobes, and some of it was even nice. Tasteful. Then there were the priceless glittery ones, encrusted with diamonds and laced with gold, but they could have only come from the compounds of the Elite, so at least they meant well. He'd never even seen an Elite mansion, back when he was free, but he just knew everything in them was like those monstrosities that he'd politely gathered in the 'guest room'. Once, before the street checkpoints, he'd wandered a bit too close to one of the towering plastic barricades that hid those mansions from view, and he'd been lucky to escape with a badly singed left buttock. And now, to think he had a whole trove of their shit in his very own place!

He was an Elite now, he supposed. He was alive.

The only clues that he wasn't in a house were the bidet, which they resolutely replaced with careful and mysterious precision in the middle of his kitchen after every single cleaning, and the shredded paper on every inch of floor available to him. Even on the painted greenery of the yard. He had absolutely no explanation for The White Elephant, as he had affectionately begun to call the bidet (in his head of course, given there was no-one to talk to) but he was forced to give them a concession on the paper. He'd never let them see him shit. He never would. It was the last shred of human dignity he had left to him. He wouldn't even think about what he did with it either. Just in case there was some sort of telepathy involved.

All of this he glossed over in his mind as he adjusted the HMS Resolute on its nail, because there wasn't much else to think about other than work. But now it was time, and it was also time to worry, because the trivial act of retrieving his pictures had left him with a slightly elevated respiration rate, and that was not good. Not good at all. He was only sixty.

And that, in the roundabout sideways path that seemed so much more efficient than actually trying to think these days, brought him back to his waking joy ninety seconds ago. His new toy. How could he have forgotten?

It was waiting on the wooden picnic table in the living room next door. Furzar calculated the toughest route possible and set off for the kitchen opposite. He couldn't wait to reach his find, and that would drive him on harder than ever through the first task of the day: the paper round.

In each of his six rooms, a wonderful obstacle awaited him as he looked. They were all of his own design, inspired by hazy memories of mandatory gym sessions in the City Sixteen of his youth, glued and nailed from the mounds of scrap they scooped up from the ruins to amuse him. Each course focused on a specific area of the body, and he visited each twice a day, once before breakfast, once after lunch, to ensure all-round physical perfection. His BMI was optimal, pulse as low as he could push it. Only recently had he detected the sharpness of breath, the burning in his lungs, after a hard day's work, and it gnawed at him day and night. At reading time, after supper, he found himself measuring breath instead, stepping carefully about his study, listening for the ragged tearing of air he recalled from visits to a grandma long since buried beneath the rubble.

It was important. His health was all he had left. His own tiny defiance.

Today, though, he cleared the cardio course with ease, wriggling through the tunnels and jumping through wire hoops like he was fifty again. On to the leg bars in the larder. From the shelf, a tape recorder, a gramophone and a PlayStation 7 admired the supreme curvature of his sweeping muscles amid the sacks of rough oats they left there for him. They were still overestimating his intake; there were parts of the stockpile decades old towards the back. He wondered why they didn't remove them, but there again, they would be edible if circumstances changed, if they cut off his supply. If they forgot, perhaps even accidentally. And there were still decades in him yet, he hoped.

All through the morning tour, as he stretched and tensed, lifted and dropped, his eyes remained carefully on his shifting carpet. It was the daily paper round, part of a carefully constructed series of rituals to divert focus and obstruct unwelcome consideration. He searched because if he deviated from his tasks too much, he might find a profound lack of reason behind his existence, and he didn't want that. So, as the papers moved about and his house lurched and groaned, and his precious scavenged things rolled across his floors, he picked through what they had unearthed. Shreds revealed shreds, revealed scraps beneath, torn remnants of all the records that had come to nothing in the end. He could have turned them with his bony fingers, but that would be much too quick. Fresh substrate only came once every ten or so days, he had found, less so than in previous years. He had to make it last.

It had been a while since the last clean-out, so he didn't expect much. The dwelling was never still. They were ceaseless in their gargantuan works, and the tumult of papers must have turned outside in twenty times. But, after a great upheaval which rattled the dining room weights from their stands, there it was. Right in front of him: a page. Not a piece or strand, but a full column of text, unsmudged, crumpled and faded but possibly legible. He would whisk it up with his prehensile toes just as soon as he had a personal weekly best, just before he thundered on to the agility slalom down the hall. Sweat dripped down his bare, rippling chest; veins throbbed treacherously in his wrinkled neck; still he pressed on, harder and harder. He was just getting started. Two more rooms was all, but he had chanced a dangerous glance in his shard of mirror above the square of blank orange metal where the drone control panel would be in real life, back in the day. He hadn't liked the signs of pained exertion on his face, nor the trace of a shudder in the lean flesh above his pounding heart. He would try cardio again after breakfast. Then a sprint about the narrow caged walkway he called the street.

He was alive, and he intended to keep it that way.

A violent upheaval, sudden and unprovoked, shivered through the dwelling. A perfect square of roof, an access hatch for their meddling, dislodged from its latch and fell into the room. It broke the table and the illusion of peace in his seclusion.

Carefully, Furzar laid down his weights and peered up through the opening. Hundreds of feet above, a papery, pale rock-like shell reflected the whiteness of his carpet. The shuddering ceased, then started again. A thin, warbling whine pierced his cadenced reality of breath and beat. Outside, the ceiling of the cocoon showered lilac light down into his home.

How his mind was failing. Cleaning day was today.

He felt nothing but disgust for himself. His routine would have to be halted, incomplete. If he'd kept track better, he could have arisen far earlier. He pictured his physicality withering away as he waited, hours without exercise. But it was too late for that. It was time to save the record.

He wasn't playing now. He dashed for the inky paper, just within sight in a flurry by the door, snatched it up in one desperate stretch of his arm. His back popped, a horrid, aching spasm, but he had to ignore that for now. In a moment, he was back in his bedroom, staggering against the thrashing tilt of his home. The pictures were back off the wall, and he flung them into a crate by his wardrobe, lest they be lost in the chaos. Then, he squeezed left, into the awkward alcove which they had so meticulously purified when he was young and hadn't touched in so long. He'd left a big pile of rubbish on the floor here, just to be sure. It obviously wasn't worth the effort any more.

That was fine by him. This was where his archives were, and where they would always be. Some things came from the armfuls of scrap they occasionally dumped into his yard with the ear-splitting clatter of breaking glass and twisting metal. Husks of once important things, like empty shells on a beach. His radio was one - he listened to the static for hours at a time on lonely nights, tuning only occasionally, to alter the qualities of the dead waves. Nothing had been broadcast for twenty years or more. Even the National Emergency Protocols had ceased eventually. Emergencies had to stop in the end, Furzar reasoned. Think of the word; it was something that had just emerged, and the bones of all his kin had long since turned to dust.

But most of his archives came from the paper round. Almost everything underfoot was utterly unreadable. But he certainly had time to catch what wasn't.

He lifted today's find quickly, outwards at arm's length to give his old eyes a chance. He couldn't help but smile at the headline. Attempted break-in terrorises Suburb 26. Before the segregation, before the protests and uprisings that had allowed them to seize their opportunity... they really had had it good, hadn't they?

With great solemnity, he brought down a box file from one of the shelves above his mound of crap, flicked through the crumbling contents, and slotted his new find into place. This particular file chronicled life before the war. How bizarre, he reflected, that differences could be so valued above brotherhood so as to kill another human being. Somehow, it became more tragic the more time went on.

It was a very lucky acquisition. Right before clean-out, and something from the very suburb where the civil war would break out some eight years after this article. He was beginning to put things together now, and he could only hope he could live to slot the final pieces into place. There were endless and relentless series of puzzles on a night to sharpen his mind. And the paper round would maintain a body to exist about it.

But what would it matter? His history was absolutely meaningless to them. He put the file back. The adjacent box held his personal records, the memoirs he had written when he was still grieving for the world he had lost. He would never open it again. There was a different identity in there, but for the rest of his life he would keep the name they gave him, Furzar, the name his limited estimations of their crooning vocals led him to assume was some term of affection. It was easier that way. That was who he was now. And they had been good to Furzar, after the elimination of his entire civilization. He had to be grateful.

Yes, what would his records matter when he was gone? Nothing here, he thought. Yet, even though another human would never walk here again, it was obvious he was not the only one left. They would have loved him all the greater as time went on in that case, when the opposite was true. Greater ones would have come to see him, perhaps even take him away to learn his ways. Perhaps even attempt to speak to him.

And that gave him hope. One day, when he was gone, his dwelling would be cleared away, all the tiny things he had clung to would be emptied into the crushed tomb-city of his past life. And then, one day beyond that, maybe centuries beyond, another kind one may take up his battered files with one jelly-like appendage and, thinking of their very own human at home, and the excitement that the embers of history may conjure on their pet's face, deposit it through a feeding hatch of an almost-perfect facsimile house in a discreet corner of the cocoon.

Would it mean anything then? That was up to another.

Suddenly, with all the reason that came to an ageing man, he remembered his toy again. The earthquake's epicentre was drawing nearer, and now, the lilac light was broken into a thousand wavering refractions by something translucent. But there would be time to settle his mind.

Furzar hopped out of his secret space and into the living room. He found it by the upturned table, unbuckled the band, and got to work. The blood pressure machine still crackled into life after all these years, and after a moment's discomfort, a reading shone weakly through the cobweb of cracks across its monitor.

A hundred and twenty over seventy-five. Not too bad. Furzar closed his eyes, safe in the knowledge that the day of the final cleaning was a long way off yet. He'd add another column to his fitness chart later, but now, it was time for a little pride. He wobbled through the crashing vibrations of the approach and back to his wardrobe, where he selected his finest scavenged suit. He was representing the human race, and he had to look the part.

He waited a long time after his keeper reached his cage. The creature had halted uncertainly by the dwelling, cooing and bubbling in its fluid alien tongue. After a while, globular tentacles thicker than tree trunks stretched from the openings in his roof, slowly and then more frantically scouring the corners for the habitat's sole occupant. Furzar had lived among them for long enough to find forms of emotion in their language. When the limbs retreated and the cooings turned to a song of solemn hope, he strode boldly from his hiding place in the archives, face twisted into a mask half of fear, and half of wild, rebellious joy.

By the time he reached his scrapyard, the invader wasn't even looking at his cage. It had turned to greet the thundering advance of its family, who were gathering in the archway of the cavern. He watched from above as they jabbered, high on his shelf, and marvelled as he always did at their profound otherness. They were thin, tubular structures of clear, wobbling goo, the smallest at least thirty feet long; they stunk to high heaven; and they were the conquerors and reigning lords of Planet Earth.

The youngest child saw him then, perched as close to the precipice as he could reach, and when they turned at the brattish shriek, the fear melted away and he waved at them all with the biggest, meanest grin that he could muster stretched across his prune-like cheeks.

You didn't need to be imprisoned here at the mercy of gentle and caring murderers for forty years to see the disappointment now, he thought happily. The keeper sighed, or so it seemed, and dragged its suction equipment across the hard shell of its floor towards him with bitter weariness. The parents, gargantuan in their bulk and reeking of protoplasm, shrugged and put down the bulbed glass artifacts they had held in their suckers on the nearest table. They had leered out of that arch with them before when he'd disappeared for a while, and Furzar shuddered with glee at the thought that whatever those things were, they wanted them up on his shelf. But that shelf would be occupied as long as humanly possible.

He knew them well enough to be certain that the thought of just emptying his flailing, helpless body two hundred feet in the air onto the slag heaps of City Sixteen prematurely would never cross their enormous nuclei. That would be cruel.

And then, as he stood to attention by his miniature fence while the youngest jelly scraped out the filth of his continued existence with crazed reluctance, he allowed himself a rare indulgence of imagination. He saw the family, the ones that had kept him fed and sheltered for so painfully long, wandering the bizarre twisting channels of their unnameable city. Mum and dad talking of the party ahead and what dad's boss would want for dessert. The kids dragging along behind, waiting for it to end so they could get back to playing Apes and Invaders behind the cocoon.

A wink of movement in a nearby window. Three young bloblings pressing as close to the animal as they could get, rippling a hundred quivering tendrils all at once to get its attention. It might be a hippo, an elephant, perhaps a giraffe. Something bigger that the merchant says can roam the floor, eating leftovers and not requiring that awkward specialist cage with walls and fences and painted lawns that needs to go up on a nice isolated shelf where mum's new ornaments would look best. Dad would agree again to their excited babblings, cautiously, reminding them of his rule of only one pet at a time. Then he would pause, deep in troubled thought, thinking of their own animal. As nasty as it was, everyone was getting bored of it, and he had to admit that he'd been a little glad to see it go grey and start to shrivel up. But that had been years ago and it was still going strong, and one of mum's vases had already been knocked from its temporary place on the table and shattered beyond repair, and every time they went out shopping the kids would witter on and on and on about that new floor pet they had so desperately needed for the past ten years.

And so, curious, dad would tell them all to wait outside, slip into the shop, and let out his most guilty thought to a passing assistant.

"Excuse me, could you tell me how long a human is supposed to live?"

It was probably just fantasy. Probably. And yet, as he watched the smallest glob sulkily toss in his new papers and roll off down the hall without even bothering to fasten his feeding hatches, Furzar thought not. He saw the big ones regarding him stiffly from their place by the orbs they had carried in, and he smiled his most charming smile. He wasn't certain they had eyes, and yet he could feel them on his back as he sped off into his nice clean home for another good hard paper round.

His own tiny defiance.