Let me paint a picture...

He was born early in the year 1945, and they called him, "Bill", after a loved uncle that had died in the war. He was born in the middle of southwestern America, and led an average life, albeit with a slightly above-average grasp on English, enough to notice, but not enough to get him into a university with a scholarship. Still, all throughout school, he had average grades - C's and B's - except for English class, where he usually got high B's. During middle school, he took a few foreign language classes, because his parents had wanted him to, although he still got average grades. Still, he was good at English.

As he matured, he had quite a few acquaintances, but very few true friends. He had a good relationship with his brother (younger than him by two years, named after an old friend who had also died in the war), and they did things together quite a lot. The reason he had so many acquaintances was because he was good at listening. He was good at sitting down and listening to someone talk about themselves, and after asking a few general, unoffensive questions, he could gauge to an uncanny degree whether almost any given statement would be offensive and thus, while talking to people, he came across as someone who you could trust and as someone who could keep your secrets safe and sound. Thus, when someone wanted to say something, they told him and he wouldn't say anything about it.

He made a fair amount of money as someone who talked to customers who called over phone. He would see what products they wanted, and politely tell them whether they were in stock, and if they were, he'd take their order and take it to some other people who did something... he didn't quite understand it all, but did it really matter? He got paid nicely.

Unlike most people, he didn't watch television much. He had a subscription to whatever papers were local, and got his news that way. He also didn't have a radio. He spent most of his time reading mystery novels, and he figured he was quite good at solving the mysteries.

Surprisingly enough, he got married. He got married to a nice girl who also liked reading, and disliked going fancy places, and they could sit and talk for hours and hours, so they got married. He was happy with his rather peaceful existence, despite the chaos of the Cold War, and he wasn't concerned with the war. He lived in a small suburb that didn't contribute much of anything to society and wasn't located near any major weapons plants or air bases, so he figured he was safe.

When he received the news of 9/11, he was 56 and was just finishing his early morning run. He showed it to his wife, and they took work off for a few days to sit and think about the events that had happened.

Eventually, Bill's wife died and he was left alone. He hadn't, throughout all the years of his marriage, had any children at all. She had gotten a disease one day and had been in the hospital for a few weeks and just didn't make it. She had died.

He was left alone, so each day became a drag, rather than the new, interesting life he had when his wife was still alive. He went to work and came back, expecting some hot dinner to eat while he discussed interesting concepts with his wife. His health deteriorated for a few months while he still learned how to cook, but he managed. After a year, he was just as healthy as he was a week before she died.

During this time, to combat the loneliness, he invited a few of his closest friends (who he had been friends with since his childhood) and his brother to play cards with him every Sunday. They would eat sandwiches and play some card games, and then they'd say good-bye and see each other next Sunday.

This continued until he died, which had been a decade or two since he retired. He had always had plenty of money, and he could have retired much earlier, considering how much money he earned and how little he spent, other than groceries and the occasional mystery novel. "Which," he said, as one of the last things he had said before he died, not having been a man of many words, "had been deteriorating in quality. I should be very surprised to find a mystery like the ones forty years ago."

He died on September 9th, 2024 of old age and a few other, unrelated things. He had simply gone to sleep and not waken back up, the way that everyone expected him to go. He wasn't a man of adventure, or anything, really. He was quite, respectable and wise.

"I'm glad that I knew him," his brother said at the funeral. "We went hiking together and in the months before he died, we played cards a lot. We would hold conversations with one another over the phone, and I think that there are few men who were better than he is, as far as brothers go. He was always there for me when I needed him, and he was always ready to listen."