But then, the computer’s last remaining set of open eyes noticed the time on the atomic clock, and the tick of the final second called its ancient memory to send out a weak signal to boot up the wake-up system. A nuclear magnetic resonance pulse melted the cellular liquid within the bodies of the advance-team captain and a hundred squad members from near absolute zero in a fraction of a second, and then elevated it to normal body temperature. A day later they emerged from the freezer. A week later, the ambassador and the entire migration commission were awakened.

When the huge freezer door was open just a crack, a breath of wind came in from the outside. The ambassador inhaled the outside air; unlike that of the previous three ages, it carried the scent of flowers. It was the smell of springtime, of home. She was practically certain that the decision she made ten thousand years ago was the correct one.

The ambassador and the commissioners crossed into the age of their final destination.

The ground beneath their feet was covered in green grass as far as the eye could see. Just outside the freezer door was a brook of clear water in which beautiful, colored stones were visible on the riverbed and fish swam leisurely. A few young advance-team members washed their faces in the brook, where mud covered their bare feet and a light breeze carried off their laughter. A blue sky held snow-white clouds and just one sun. An eagle circled languidly and smaller birds called. In the distance, the mountain range that had vanished ten thousand years ago during the Lobby Age was back again against the sky, topped with a thick forest….

To the ambassador, the world before them seemed rather bland after the previous three ages, but she wept hot tears for its blandness. Adrift for eleven thousand years, she—and all of them—needed this, a world soft and warm as goose down into which they could lay their fractured, exhausted minds.

The plain held no signs of human life.

The advance-team captain came over to face the focused attention of the ambassador and the commissioners, the stare of the day of judgment for humanity.

“It’s all over,” he said.

Everyone knew the significance of his words. They stood silent between the sacred blue sky and green grass as they accepted this reality.

“Do you know why?” the ambassador asked.

The captain shook his head.

“Because of the environment?”

“No, not the environment. It wasn’t war, either. Nor any other reason we can think of.”

“Are there any remains?”

“No. They left nothing behind.”

The commissioners gathered round and launched into an urgent interrogation:

“Any signs of an off-world migration?”

“No. All nearby planets have returned to an undeveloped state, and there are no signs of interstellar migration.”

“There’s really nothing left behind? No ruins or records of any kind?”