A hot breeze blew through the morning glade, and the last of the human race stirred in their hole. It was a beautiful morning in an autumn valley, and the wind whispered through a thousand golden leaves. A metal door banged open, and people came out of the ground, blinking and squinting after a long time in the dark. They milled around, their long shadows making sharp angles on the earthen embankment that held back a lake at one end of the field. Eyes scanned the low mountains that closed in the valley. As yet there was no glint of metal on the horizon, nd doubt crept in that the terrible thing would even happen.

They were a sad-looking crowd waiting in the golden silence, dreading that the thing they called would appear. There was considerable surprise among them at the continued beauty of the Earth, as if it had hardley noticed their passing. Somehow they had expected the land to be as barren and scarred as their minds.
Suddenly a massive, unnatural thing loomed on the horizion. With hardly a sound, something like a great steel spider climed over the mountain and made its way toward the crowd. This was the creature of their nightmares, the ungodly menace that had haunted their thoughts throughout their long confinement. Fearfully they rembered a thousand of its companions floating languidly down from the sky, and the thump and bang of their guns and cannons as the spent their impotent rage on the giant steel flanks. Lastly the recalled the small red eye on the front of the steel beast, and how it would slowly but unstoppably take aim, and fire a bolt of light that would blossom into a flower of fire. Terror swept them, and a woman stared to weep.
Every eye was fixed on the spider as it strode to a halt, when suddenly someone in a spot noone had previously noticed cleared their throat. Startled, the crowd turned to see a woman in a lavender blouse. She was not pretty by human standards, short and stout with red hair and dark, flaring eyes. She looked like a human being, but something intangible gave away the fact that she was not. Her mouth opened and formed words, and a voice was heard, but the silence remained undisturbed. The leaves and the birds had fallen into an awed quiet, and the wind seemed to blow from an entirely different place. The woman sounded like cold, empty space and stale rage. She sopke briefly and without speaking, and conveyed a meaning far beyond words. When she was finished, she took a deep breath and was not there. The great spider strode off into the still rising sun. After it passed out of sight, the survivors looked at each other, dazed. The air was raw and new, and nobody dared to speak just yet. Later, none of them would be able to remember the woman's exact words, but they would never forget her message. They had transmitted a message of their own a few hours after they emerged, saying that they were done trying to fight and would like to talk, if only to learn the reason for their destruction. Now every one of them understood that there had been no reason. Like most violence, it had been a senseless, meaningless act. Their foes had done the only thing they knew how to do, the thing they had prepared to do for the entirety of their long, cold journey; kill. Now that the deed was done they had experienced something that all their plans and strategies had not forseen- guilt. They looked out upon the freshly conqured world and saw that there had been some good things here, and that the destruction brought upon this place had not been fully deserved. So, instead of one last bolt of manevoleant energy, this last remenant had gotten their lives back. Humanity had been spared. Instead of gloating over their conquests and having guilty consciences for the rest of their endless existence the terrible spiders had sentenced themselves to a long penance, a return to the endless void after such a short stay on the vibrant world. In the distance, they rose as if drawn on invisible threads of silk, climbing into the same blue sky they had come down from. The human race stood stupidly, stunned by the incredible idea of a second chance. One by one, they started to walk, tentaitively exploring the world that was the same but not the same. It was a long time indeed before someone made their way back to the door that led to the dank bunker and found it covered by a thousand spiderwebs.