Chapter 2: A Terrifying Thought

At 8:13 AM, QuickMart Convenience Store (Open 24 Hours)

A young man lifted his shopping basket and placed it on the counter, apologizing to the cashier, "You know, after the apocalypse hit, the power went out not long after, and the internet followed suit. So I can't use PayPal or any mobile payment. My cash ran out long ago, and the banks are closed, so I have no choice but to write you an IOU."

The cashier did not respond.

The young man continued talking to himself, "Two packs of cookies, three cups of instant noodles, one pack of sausages, two bottles of juice, two cups of Jell-O, three bags of chips, two cans of beef, and a ream of paper. I've calculated it—32 dollars and 60 cents in total. Since it's the new year, can we round it down? Uh, you're not saying anything, so I'll take that as a yes!"

He then took out a pen and paper, carefully wrote, "January 1, 2026, Raymond owes QuickMart 32 dollars for groceries," and signed it with his name.

After placing the IOU in a box on the counter—already filled with similar notes from him—Raymond packed his groceries into his bag, returned the basket, and was about to leave when he paused. Turning back, he smiled at the corpse of the cashier behind the counter, now thoroughly decomposed and emitting a foul stench, and said, "Oh, and happy New Year."

Have humans gone extinct? Maybe, maybe not.

Raymond only knew that until the internet completely gave out, he had been scouring it for any signs of life but found nothing. So, if anyone else survived, they must be incredibly scarce.

Finding them? The world is vast; where would he even begin? It would be a waste of time, energy, and emotion, with success almost impossible.

If you lose a cat in a city, you can't find it, and you expect to search the world for possibly nonexistent survivors? Reality is not a novel, comic, or movie. This 196 million square mile planet is just too big for one person.

Raymond would rather live out his remaining decades in peace and bid farewell to this messed-up world than chase a hope that probably doesn't exist. It's a desperate endeavor, better not to hope at all. Perhaps this was a form of escapism, but who cares?

So, maybe there were other survivors out there, but to Raymond, humanity ended. On that day six months ago, humanity was wiped out.

Looking around, all he saw were corpses. He knew the family of three next door was dead, the elderly couple across the hall was dead, the people upstairs and downstairs were all dead. He might be the only living person among 7 billion dead bodies.

Eventually, Raymond found and buried his relatives and friends, then the people in his apartment building, to prevent their bodies from rotting and stinking up the place. As for everyone else, he couldn't deal with it. He couldn't handle it.

"Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies..." With the main character Andy's gentle, magnetic voice, the movie ended amid soothing music.

A few minutes later, Raymond put down his bag of chips, hit the ESC key to exit full screen, clicked the X in the top right corner to close the media player, all in one go.

Though the power had been out for half a year, fortunately, there was something called a small generator. Diesel, gasoline, wind, solar—he found a solar-powered generator, solving his electricity problem.

After finishing the movie, Raymond closed his laptop. He had watched "The Shawshank Redemption" seven times now. In a post-apocalyptic world, life was incredibly dull, and with no internet, he often rewatched the movies he had downloaded.

"You tell me, what's the point of living like this?" he asked himself, then shook his head, sighing, "No point at all! It's really meaningless!"

Standing up, he stretched. "Movie's over, time to work out and then eat. Ugh, I'm so sick of cookies and instant noodles. Maybe I should learn how to cook?"

Thinking about it, he found it increasingly pointless. What's the meaning of doing anything? "Hahaha..." Raymond suddenly laughed, shouting, "It's all so boring! So boring! This world is too boring, there's no meaning at all!"

He threw his pen aside, "Might as well just kill myself!"

...

Living a life, there are countless "first times."

First meal, first steps, first day at school, first job, but the first time contemplating suicide, that's probably something most people never thought about.