Barty Butterfield's Final Precaution

Bartholomew "Barty" Butterfield considered life an elaborate obstacle course designed by a particularly malicious deity. For 78 meticulously sanitized years, he'd dodged every conceivable pitfall: no handshakes, no raw vegetables, no un-boiled water, and certainly no spontaneous outdoor adventures. His hermetically sealed, triple-filtered, hypoallergenic apartment was his fortress, his bespoke tomb against the wild, unpredictable chaos of existence. He’d outlived every adventurous cousin who’d ever bungee-jumped or even simply *jaywalked*, and he took a grim, hygienic pride in it.

"Prevention," he'd croaked to his bewildered online grocer delivery drone (his sole human-adjacent interaction), "is the only cure for living."

His days were a symphony of meticulous routines: dawn wipedowns, scheduled air-filter replacements, and the consumption of bland, lab-tested nutrient paste. He’d meticulously designed an emergency power system, a self-sustaining hydroponic garden, and a state-of-the-art oxygen recycling unit, all tucked away in a reinforced sub-basement bunker, just in case the outside world *really* went to pot. "Safety first, second, and perpetually," was his mantra.

One Tuesday, an unusually calm and sunny Tuesday, Barty was admiring his pristine, germ-free fingernails, reveling in the quiet hum of his flawless systems. Suddenly, a faint electrical crackle, followed by a puff of smoke. Not from the 'dangerous' outside, oh no. From his meticulously maintained, custom-built, industrial-grade generator in the sub-basement. A single, microscopic manufacturing defect, undiscovered despite decades of his obsessive inspections, had finally given way.

Within minutes, the generator, designed for peak performance, was a fiery, carbon-monoxide spewing inferno. The smoke alarms, being part of the 'unsafe' internet-of-things, had been meticulously disabled by Barty years ago to prevent 'false alarms'. He, the master of precaution, was trapped. The very fire-resistant walls he'd installed to protect him from external threats now perfectly contained the internal blaze, sealing him in his own meticulously crafted, burning casket.

Barty Butterfield, who had successfully evaded every peril the universe could throw at him, died of smoke inhalation in the safest room he could ever conceive. The irony, unlike the smoke, was perfectly clear.