Immortality phill

The young scientist, David Samson, spoke to a spider trapped in a net-covered bottle in his hand to avoid loneliness. David Samson is a fun-loving character. Possessing a pair of bright blue eyes, he was a strange Syrian man. He lived a relaxed life in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, researching a species of black spider he discovered by chance. In the bottle in his hand was one of those spider species.

He developed an antibiotic for HIV / AIDS based on a protein found in spider web fibers of that species. He wrote a series of research papers on the subject. Many believed that he would even claim the Nobel Prize for this important discovery. This species of spider is endemic to the Amazon rainforest. Furthermore, in order to make the AIDS antibiotic, the relevant protein had to be extracted from the spider web or from the spider's body.

AIDS was already rampant around the world, and a vast spider colony was needed to eradicate it. However, when the spider species is artificially cultivated in colonial form, they become violent, devouring their own species and destroying colonies. (cannibalism). Therefore, the creation of spider colonies was not a successful solution

As a solution to this, David Samson introduced a wonderful method. That is, the genes involved in making that antibiotic protein are grafted into a bacterial genome, producing bacterial colonies, and the protein is excreted by the bacteria. It was a success. According to the vaccine, which was extracted from the antibiotic protein, 1,500 patients who volunteered for the first clinical trial were completely cured of AIDS.

The discovery was colorful in 2050. It was embraced by the world as a protein pill. It blocked all the viruses known to man, it stopped the growth of cancer and even prevented natural death. The tablets did all this by freezing you at the cellular level and locking every cell in forever

It was the 2050’s and old North Korea and war was forgotten. Technologies that had long since thought to be beyond the reach of man were appearing daily across the world. Cold fusion was being commercially refined into a nearly infinite source of power for the planet, the genome was being tuned like a common guitar string–though full human cloning remained strangely elusive–and even strides in inorganic teleportation and brain-internet interfacing were happening in leaps and bounds.

In this euphoria, the Pill was readily embraced by enthusiastic masses, despite its one, single, permanent side-effect: infertility. Once the cells were trapped in eternal stasis, no procreation could take hold within the now solid-state biology of the individual.

While a small number rallied against this side-effect, the vast majority considered infertility a minor price to pay for a chance to be immortal. Some even applauded this side-effect as a solution for global over-population. Whatever their reasons, justification, and rationalizations, men and women everywhere were taking the Pill.

Mankind would never be the same.

***

The death count was higher than the world had seen for many decades, but the ironically named Living terrorists were successfully contained and their remnants exterminated or incarcerated. At the time, this was for the betterment of the majority, but in the end, this was actually the beginning of the end.

By now the vast majority of the global population had taken the Pill–or their children or their children’s children had taken it–and their immortality had brought unfounded wealth accumulation over their long lives. Death was expensive as knowledge and experience were lost and taxes triggered while empires were taken over by inferior heirs.

The Pill had solved all of this as even the lowliest person now could accumulate wealth and even minor savings would compound into great fortunes over enough time.

This was a good thing for the majority of the global population that had taken the Pill, but the opposite was true for the small percentage that had decided not to take the Pill and retain their fertility.

Growing immortal wealth had driven inflation while the normal frictional costs of life, death and children ate into the so-called Livings’ savings and saw them increasingly marginalized in a fast-changing global economy.

Humanity had two classes: the immortals were both the majority and the have’s while those that had chosen to be mortal were the minority and the have-not’s.

What happened is what always happens when the well-resourced majority have a conflict with the poorly-resourced minority: laws were passed and events smoothed over to favor the majority and the minority was more and more marginalized over time.

.

Then, after a hundred years had passed, the end result was the same: no one in the world was fertile anymore. Not one single human being could bear or produce a child.

***

No matter how small the probability of a fatal accident, a violent end or suicide, if a human life is given enough time these same odds rise to a near certainty. Eventually, something will happen somehow and somewhere, and the person will die.

In the thousand-odd years that passed after the final Living had passed in prison and mankind had become infertile, the eight billion immortals on Earth were whittled down to a handful of survivors.

Leading up to this, over the millennia, some immortals died in car accidents, some were mugged or murdered, some died in freak accidents while a good number just eventually committed suicide. Finally, there were even a number of small skirmishes that killed a number but that was the exception.

The vast majority just died in statistically probable accidents or suicide. Mankind’s end came slowly and with great attrition that saw the species slip slowly into oblivion.

The great cities of the world were all self-sufficient with cold fusion power grids and autonomous AI and robots running everything. No new skills or knowledge were introduced into civilization and, slowly, those who knew how died and their knowledge left the world.

Eventually, no one knew how anything worked. They only knew that it did. And the cities and, indeed, entire countries and then continents ran themselves.

Medical bots scampered forth and emergency lights blinked, but mankind was no more. The funeral bots took the body, labeled it and buried while admin bots updated the official records.

And then the City–as all the rest of the cities in the world–carried on running itself on sustainable energy with AI and robots scurrying around its corners.

But there were no people anywhere anymore. Mankind was no more. It had paid the price of immortality.