There is a website that records slaughtered animals on a live tally. Across the top of the page, just below the menu, it reads ‘2023 Australia Animal Kill Clock’. Below that, a calculator that runs up, hundreds of deaths by the second. I stared at this clock for a while, hypnotised by its mounting numbers.

Can there be an ‘after’ to the horrors executed by the human race over the course of millennia? Is there a clean slate for the humans and the nonhumans, where we can all coexist, as equals, like we once did? We may never get an answer to that question. As land becomes increasingly unliveable and many species edge closer to extinction, it’s starting to look like this planet might soon be too small for us all.