I died.
No, to be precise, I evaporated.
That is simply what nukes do.
When you’re stabbed with a knife or shot with a gun, there is a process to death. Pain is felt, and there is time for your consciousness to fade—things like that.
But nukes are different. In a single instant, they erase everything within a radius of several kilometers.
With the sensation of my entire body burning and evaporating, I died.
And yet.
I could still feel the presence of “me.”
It was strange.
Very much so.
Descartes came to mind.
“I think, therefore I am.”
That man probably hadn’t said it with a situation like this in mind.
But looking only at the conclusion, he was right.
I definitely existed.
Only.
I had no body, no sound, nothing at all—just the sensation of floating about as nothing more than the subject of thought.
Was the world after death the sensation of consciousness alone drifting around as an ontological being?
Or was it a special privilege from God for those who died by nuclear bomb?
Just then.
Something pricked the tip of my nose.
It was a terrible smell.
A difficult-to-describe stench of things rotten, soaked, and burned, all mixed together, seeped deep into my lungs.
“Urgh, what is that smell?”