[ WP ] The four last people on earth decide to commit suicide one by one . The last man decides he can not bring himself to end his own life . Describe the remainder of his life .

The sun beats down on me as I try to find some small respite from its omnipresent heat. Early man saw the sun as a god. Later, he learned that it was just another star, a giant ball of ordinary hydrogen collapsing under its own weight. It was man who placed undue importance on the sun, just as I place undue importance on my own life. I imagine myself as the last member of a noble species, but really I ’ m just a walking hourglass, an ecological vestige. I am no better than the animals that fill the forest with their cries, laughing uproariously at my pretensions. Long after I am dead, it is those animals, or beings like them, who will inherit the earth. They will grow and learn and become intelligent. Eventually, they will discover our monuments, our cities, our artifacts. They will wonder and marvel at the vestigial remnants of a foolish species which caused its own destruction. Eventually, they may even piece together the events that led to the end of humanity as a whole. But they will never know where mankind died. Nobody will tell them about the four companions who decided that the period at the end of humanity would be written 20 miles out of Asheville, under the cool shade of a beech tree. Nobody will tell them about the solemn stares passed among three pairs of empty eyes, and how those eyes remained just as empty as three shots rang out through the forest. Nobody will tell them about the man who pried the gun from his best friend ’ s fingers and stared at it for a long while before almost absentmindedly letting it fall to the ground and walking away. That, I believe, was the moment humanity died. Now I live as a wanderer, an animal, almost, living to live until I die. It has occurred to me, in my more pensive moods, that I am quite unique in history, the only man whose passing will not be mourned, or even known. Once again, my mind wanders to memories of my friends and my eyes begin to prickle, though my tears were all shed long ago. Undoubtedly they would be upset, thinking that I broke our pact, but they would be wrong. I did not run from death. I just chose the longest, most agonizing form of suicide. 
 
 Living. 

