William Borroughs' text provides a contemporary, and sometimes humourous, version of the final end of humanity:

'Cherry-pickers with satin brushes big as a door inch through Wall Street, leaving a vast souvenir postcard of the Grand Canyon. Water trucks slosh out paint, outlaw painters armed with paint pistols paint everything in reach. Survival Artists, paint cans strapped to their backs, grenades at their belts, paint anything and anybody within range. Skywriters dogfight, collide and explode in paint. Telephone poles dance electric jigs in swirling, crackling wires. Neon explosions and tornados flash through ruined cities, volcanoes spew molten colours as the earth's crust buckles and splinters into jigsaw pieces.' (W. S. Burroughs, Apocalypse, 1988, p. 4)