The Asteroid Cafe

Kevin Kyle Kane wanted to be left alone, so he booked the off-season at a satellite restaurant in orbit, where nobody else goes and nothing much happens. Then a nuclear exchange takes Earth and the moon with it, and the view from his table becomes the last chapter of the species.

That leaves two people alive: Kevin, who describes himself as a nihilist, and Burt, the restaurant's caretaker, who is not equipped for any of this and mostly wants someone to talk to.

The joke runs on for a while before it becomes clear that Kevin's calm about the end of the world is not detachment, and that Burt's simplicity is the only thing in the story worth protecting.

A sci-fi horror short, and the first of Zachry Wheeler's Twisted Simulations.