It doesn't look like we'll be able to keep the planet's temperature at a reasonable level. Doom, who has mostly been lying on his daybed picking his teeth with a poker, groans, gets up and starts his little walk in our direction. He's been busy creating and extinguishing some solar systems and sorting through all the Red Dwarfs. Perhaps he should stop calling them that and say Little Red's instead? It's unclear, but for now they'll just have to keep their name. Otherwise, he's mostly been dabbling in his favourite material - dark matter. It's the least judgemental material you can work with, as it lacks mass. A couple of pots, some serving plates and three teacups, but the one he is most pleased with is an abstract troll. It's a good pastime and sometimes, when he's in the mood, he thinks of his work as non-figurative art.

He has visited us on Earth before, giving us ice ages, meteorites and other life-destroying events. But he was younger then and enjoyed being cruel for no reason. Now he's more mature and more of a middle-aged janitor wandering around the universe trying to keep some kind of order. That little blue planet, he thinks, shaking his head dejectedly and adjusting his sex in his carpenter's trousers with one hand. It looked so promising for a while, a planet that managed to create a sustainable atmosphere and conditions for life. And life came, first as tiny, insignificant bacteria that with numbing slowness eventually transformed and created everything that grows and lives.

Eventually, a species evolved that came to completely dominate the planet, which was somewhat surprising given its complete lack of consequentialist thinking. It may have been the smartest species on the planet after millions of years of evolution, but on the whole it was just a bunch of idiots. Full of themselves and their own excellence. Even when faced with the threat of extinction, they refused to change their lifestyle. Self-annihilation, isn't that what it's called?

So Doom grabs a stool and sits down to watch the show from the front row. He thinks this will be a bit like popping popcorn. Maybe something surprisingly tasty and edible can come out of this too? He knows that the planet will survive and that life will return in a new form. But it's a shame that no one will be around to tell the new life forms what went wrong last time.

But maybe it doesn't matter, he thinks, every generation wants the privilege of making its own mistakes, right?