Herbert needed groceries.

Specifically, he needed a bushel of cranberries (do cranberries even come in bushels? Well, they’d have to: the recipe called for a bushel, and deviating from the recipe could have… unpleasant results. That he knew.), a box of ant poison, several potatoes, two handfuls of kettle corn (kettle corn, of course, doesn’t come in handfuls, so the rest could be saved for later), Emmenthaler cheese, and a head of fresh lettuce.

Herbert watched himself sweat as he walked slowly into the scope of the security cameras that covered the entrance of the Piggly Wiggly in downtown Atlanta. He could deal with the heat – it was the list of directions, scrawled lazily onto a knockoff PostIt note in his jacket pocket, that caused his sweat glands to stir.

Ant poison was easy: who even goes to the household aisle, anyway? Herbert swung his cart past a stroller, past the lightbulbs and the plumbing supplies, and sprung for the fancy stuff. Why skimp? Money wouldn’t mean much after this, anyhow.

Potatoes and kettle corn were next. Herbert grabbed three lumpy, golden Idaho potatoes and a two-pack of kettle corn. “Several” meant three, right?

He had had doubts that the Atlanta Piggly Wiggly would even carry Emmenthaler, but, of course, Mr. Garman had been right again: a pound of the stuff was available for the modest price of $4.61 (before tax). Garman had also ordered a bushel of cranberries, but the clerk at the deli counter didn’t seem to know how much that was – truth be told, neither did Herbert – so Herbert decided to just buy every tiny berry the store had in stock. At least he couldn’t be accused of intentionally postponing the end of the world over a few measly berries.

Everything had been crossed off Herbert’s list. Everything. Everything except… lettuce. “Fresh lettuce” was, evidently, a key ingredient in the Doomsday Device’s cooling system. Something to do with wrapping and ventilation, Herbert thought. Anyway, every grocery store he had ever been to carried head upon head of the stuff, so Herbert strolled into the “Fresh Produce” section, past the frozen vegetable medley (which, in hindsight, was probably a bad sign) and straight up to a display that, Herbert thought, had probably been designed by someone who had played “Oregon Trail” once, died of disentary within five minutes, and stormed off, determined to ruin all depictions of wagons, including this dilapidated, crumbling, and generally pitiful excuse for a supermarket display.

The lettuce was as much of a facsimile as the wagon: dried, wilted, or “precut, washed, and ready-to-eat!” were Herbert’s options for the final ingredient on the list. More broadly, Herbert’s options were to admit defeat at the hands of the Atlanta Piggly Wiggly’s produce distributor (a Mrs. Howard, of Sandy Springs, as it happened) and return to Mr. Garman without the lettuce he had demanded for the Doomsday Device, or to take matters into his own hands.

It took him just over fifteen seconds to decide.

“Excuse me,” Herbert asked the deli counter clerk, “but could you lend me your knife? I’ll bring it right back.”

As he walked out into the Atlanta heat, no longer sweating, the security cameras showed a smile on Herbert’s face; Mr. Garman had set a date for the end of the world, and Herbert wouldn’t want him to miss it.