What if you could bottle happiness and sell it as a drug? 

  About ten years ago, some guy figured out how to do just that. It wasn't literal happiness, it was some hormone that made people feel happy already. They found a way to jump it up and put it in a pill. No side effects, just pure happiness. Or so people thought.

   Turns out, when you're perfectly happy all the time, you lose your drive to do things. You stop caring. You sit around all day and just be happy. Why does it matter? You're too happy to care. Then the drug started to run short. People crashed, hard. There were riots. There was sudden depression. It… it didn't end well. 

  The government outlawed the happiness drug. They still keep manufacturing some of it, but it's strictly for medical purposes, mental illness and such. Anyone caught using it unauthorized gets life in jail. 

   So, yeah, that happened. And ten years later, here we are. The world's kinda a mess. It always was, but now it's a messier mess. Some weird things happened in the interim. Honestly, we don't know what happened to the other countries. Everyone lost contact after the drug use skyrocketed. We're recovering, but if somewhere else has tried to contact us, we haven't heard them yet. As for us, half the country is empty now. Whoever's left clustered over in the east. That's where most people are now. That's where I was until yesterday. 

   My name doesn't matter. It never did. I'm trying to find a person. Someone I lost after the drug spread. I- I regret my choices every day now. I should have tried harder back when I had a chance. I've gone through the government offices. No luck. So now, I'm heading out west. Some people stayed out there, they had a chance to try their own hand at making civilization the way they wanted. Can't blame them. Everyone thinks they can do it better. 

  So here I go. Past the river is unknown territory. If I never make it. If I never find you… I hope you'll find this journal someday. I hope you'll know I never stopped looking. I hope you know I'm sorry. 

  I hope you know that I love you.