The fire sunset over Los Angeles was crisp. Thirty years ago it would have been smudged with smog, but that smog like most pollution not caused by fallout had receded. Now the city had a cleaness not known to man.
From the hills the city may have passed as just that, its arachnid layers of highway and concrete still intact, just missing its ants. 

In Cairo the pyramids lay dormant, no tourists snapping pictures while being amused by the natives and scared of the religion. It would surprise no one if the aliens returned to take what belonged to them. Perhaps under all the sand a spaceship would rise and float away from the wasteland.
 

In Moscow the snow fell. And fell. And fell some more. Bottles of unopened vodka lined the markets, clear death, single file, undisturbed but growing weary with decades of dust. A single radio station played at town square, a song on repeat, a song of brotherhood and remembrance.

In Shanghai people worked, as they always had. The government did not let them know otherwise. It was after all, the way it had always been for the world’s oldest civilization. New rulers perhaps, but the common good carried on. Even when the common good only benefited the few not so benevolent ones. 

The earth continued to spin. That was the victory. A small grace of wonder in the universe that had long ago gave up on this place, rotten with humans, and disease, greed and bad taste.