Vacant 'verse
Turning his head to the noise as he passed through the door frame, Joe noticed that there was a radio on across the room, sitting alone on a shelf held up by a broomstick. He leaped over the counters in his way, traversing the distance quickly. The crunching wall of sound that was the music made by the heavy-metal guitars emanating from the tiny speakers was all he'd heard in hours besides his own breathing - since his alarm clock had gone off and awakened him that morning. It was funny, he thought to himself as he turned the radio off, that his alarm had played the same song: "The Day the World Went Away" by Nine Inch Nails. Only, the former time he'd heard instead the slower section of the song. The soft cadence of Trent Reznor's vocals caressed his ears and - as would a gallant pallbearer - gently carried him from repose into the land of the living. Or so he had initially assumed; the truth was that since then he hadn't seen a single other individual on the floating space station.
He stepped outside of the residential building into the garden. There were real clouds in the "sky" that had formed due to the moisture, as was intended by its engineers to create an atmosphere like home while the astronauts aboard the vessel orbited the Earth; it was no surprise to Joe that it started to rain. The soft pattering on the huge leaves of the exotic plants was a fleeting solace to his anxiety. Still no one, he thought.
He went into the cockpit, just as the mellow, acoustic solo to "Planet Caravan" - as covered by Pantera - gracefully began on the loudspeaker. He looked at the wall-sized monitor, designed to look like a window, and his heart slowed in pulsation as he viewed the stars outside, seeing a small blue and green globe getting smaller in the distance.
The potential meaning of relief in desperation speaks to me more strongly in this piece. This one is more relaxing to me than the last, counterintuitively. I think that is because the pathos is more pronounced and the soothing sense of the sentiment affects me more profoundly. Also, I realize that most people won't find the end comforting, but I do, if only for a moment.