The cat looked at the shrouded body, sitting in the open grave. It was small, much smaller than it had been even a decade ago. But then, as he had come to understand about humans, they often shrunk in their old age. This one was no different.

Inside, he felt a peculiar emotion that he wasn't terribly familiar with. At first he thought it might be anger, but then realized that wasn't it at all. He was familiar with anger, this had a distinctly... different feeling.

Was he hungry? No, that wasn't it either. Besides, hunger wasn't an emotion. The human had kept telling him as much, even though the cat didn't agree with him on that point.

He knew the emotion, but it was hard to remember what it was. It was almost like... part of him wanted to jump outside his body and run away. He felt a strange sort of pain inside, and didn't like it one bit. He turned to his compatriot, who was standing silently beside him, staring into the grave.

"Hey, Plastic Percy. There's something wrong here. I'm feeling something and I don't know what it is."

His friend turned. "Are you cold? I could get you a jacket."

"No, numbnuts," the cat replied. "Not like, a body feeling. Like an inside feeling. Something ain't right."

His friend stared at him for several seconds quizzically, unsure what to make of the comment.

"It's like... part of me is hurting. And I don't know why. I just want to make it stop."

"Ah," the compatriot said, turning back to the grave. "I believe you are experiencing something called 'sadness'. You are upset over the death of our friend."

"I am?" the cat asked. "That doesn't make a lick of goddamn sense!"

"On the contrary," his friend replied. "It makes perfect sense. He was our friend, and now he is gone forever, surrendered to the Earth. It is also significant that he was the last human being in existence, after all."

"Pfft, he was only barely one at all," the man on the other side of the grave said dismissively. "If you ask me, he was more of a walking garbage disposal than a man. He would eat foods that might kill an actual human. I should know, I watched him do it, like some kind of piranha deliberately trying to commit suicide itself by gorging itself to death.

"Oh shut it, smeg-for-brains," the cat snapped at him. "He wasn't that bad, for a human."

"No, he wasn't," the other compatriot agreed, picking up a handful of dirt and throwing it onto the body below.

"So... this pain?" the cat asked. "When does it stop?"

"I do not know," his friend replied. "It may never stop. Or one day you may just wake up and stop thinking about it. It's hard to tell."

"Oh, wonderful," the cat muttered. "So his last trick from the grave is to make me miserable. Figures."

He leaned over the grave, pointing a finger at the corpse. "You're just doing this to me because I tried to eat your fish. Thanks a lot."

"We shall miss you, Dave Lister," his friend said sadly. "You were the finest human being alive."

"He was the only human being alive," Rimmer quipped. "The very definition of 'victory by default'".

"At least he was alive, you glorified walking mannequin," Cat quipped.