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I first looked death in the eye when I was eight. It swooped in, talons closing on my father as his heart gave way. He died of a heart attack at the age of thirty eight. I couldn’t believe it. I always assumed my dad would live forever. And just like that he dies, telling me how unfair life can be.
Ever since that day, I always thought how unfair death made things. All lives cut short, many threads left unfinished. Time people could do things with their lives, just gone. It made me wonder why death even existed at all. What was the point?
So one day I decided to research it. Investigate the cause of why people died. It started as a hobby. It was nothing more then a mild and morbid curiosity. Information came to me in such a way that soon I was consumed with the question. I skipped out on most things kids do. Nothing was more important to me then to figure out the answer to my questions. Nothing distracted me from this endeavor.
Well, almost nothing. I saw her one day, my nose coming out of my book for air, walking along the campus. She was blonde, beautiful and she quickly stole my heart. Before I even knew what happened, she surprised me one day in a wet t shirt. Ever since then, I found an obsession I loved even more then death.
We married almost immediately after we graduated. I received a job offer from Eternity Incorporated. My research had already earned me a stellar reputation. They were just as interested in discovering the answers to my questions as I was, and they were willing to pay for it. In the end, I accepted…who was I to argue?
I worked all day and made love all night. Life was good, if exhausting. It wasn’t long until I had a bun in the oven. My wife was quite happy at the prospect. She wanted children almost as much as she wanted to be successful in her field. Her field dealt with plants and botany. She believed in their powers to heal. I always was a prescription man before her. Learning from her plants told me a lot.
Trees for example live hundreds of years. One of the big reasons why they live so long is that they are always growing. Their growth takes hundreds of years to manifest to full adulthood. And kids when younger seem to regenerate from almost anything. It led me into the first step.
The second direction of course was white blood cells. White blood cells were directly linked to the immune system. The immune system deals with diseases and any invading radicals and parasites that target the body. As you get older the growth hormones cease, making you more prone to injury, slower recovery and all the infidelities of old age.
So what if there was a way to actually keep the growth hormones around? What if at age 45 you still had the same growth hormones you had at 25? You’d live longer. Now the challenge was to do it so at 105 you can say the same answers.
I didn’t want pills. Some things in the world do the trick nicely. DHEA for example was a vitamin that really helped the male population that way. It keeps the male hormones at a high level and slows down aging. But you had to constantly take it to maintain its effectiveness. In short it wasn’t powerful enough.
I wanted something permanent. Something that could make the person immortal without need of pills or re-administration of shots. I wanted something that reproduced on its own.
I thought of viruses. What if I could build one? I’d have to build one that attacked things on the molecular level. As smart as my wife was, I knew that she’d have no idea what caused that. So I looked it up for myself.
Nanites were the answer. They are cell sized or smaller and functioned like cells. As long as it had resources it could do anything. Finding a programmer took months, but I was confident and arrogant enough to believe I had the answers to the questions.
I knew what caused death. Now I sought out the way to conquer it once and for all. Never once did it occur to me that all things die for a reason.
My work was interrupted for a special joy. My wife gave birth to my son. His name was Joseph and I experienced the wonder of watching my little boy smile. He made me laugh, and gave me so much joy. If only I know that he had so little time.
The virus was built between rounds of baby talk. It was an ingenious design. The nanites would actually feed off growth hormones to produce even more growth hormones. They would live in symbiosis with whomever they hosted. Their function was to enhance what the body already did. Produce more white blood cells. Stronger white blood cells so nothing foreign could invade the body. Better growth hormones so that any injury inflicted on the body would heal quickly. Things that were once considered fatal would heal given just some time and resources. Oh, I realized that the virus couldn’t stop death forever. There were things out there that could still kill you. Still, it was the closest thing to immortality that was ever designed.
However, Eternity Inc didn’t want this virus in public hands. It turned out that they were interested in my formula, but that they wanted it only for those who could afford it. They made it very clear to me that if I didn’t find a way to make this virus more tailor made, I would be terminated and someone else would take over. Someone else would get the credit. Someone else would beat death.
My arrogance came out in full bloom. No way was anyone going to take away all the hard work I put into this thing. But I didn’t want to see it become an exclusive thing either. I remember my dad, working so hard to try and fix things. He wanted to build a soup kitchen. It’s not the greatest contribution to man, but he believed what I believed. That all life was sacred and deserved a chance to live. That’s what my father believed and that’s what I believed.
So that night, I took the first fateful step in changing the course of history. The virus had already been made, so slowly I began making some changes to it. I made the virus something that didn’t have to be ingested willingly by the body. But rather something that could travel in an airborne state. I wanted everyone to share the joy I had created. Finally, when all the programming and design was finished I held the finished canister in my hand. All I had to do was break it. Once broken, the virus would slowly spread across the planet. Everyone now would have a chance to live a long time. I thought about the possible consequences to my actions for approximately ten seconds, and then I destroyed it. I wanted eternal life and by golly I was going to share it with the rest of the world. So I unleashed the virus to the world.
You’d think I did a lot of people good doing this. Yet there was one thing I didn’t count on. That of course was the children.
There’s a reason why the white blood cells are only so strong. There’s a reason why the growth hormones stop pumping. But did I pause to consider those things? Not a chance. Instead I overlooked the one thing that made my life worthwhile to defeat death.
I walked home that night whistling an easy tune. I wasn’t worried about the repercussions from my company. I’m practically immortal now. What are they going to do? Fire me? I had an uncountable number of years of my life. I could start something else. In fact, I was looking forward to it. I fully intended to take on the next challenge, whatever that was. But first I wanted to see my boy before I went to bed. I always had a habit to read bedtime stories to him. Or make something up. Kids were so much fun that way.
But when I got there I saw him sleeping. I smiled and went to kiss him on the forehead goodnight. When I touched his forehead I panicked. He was so warm; it felt like he was burning from within. Which I found out later was exactly what happened not just to him, but to every child under the age of seven years old.
You see, I had forgotten the children. It never occurred to me that they themselves might not be ready for the gift I had given them. Their bodies were too young and too underdeveloped to live through what I had done.
I watched my son die from the very virus I created, powerless to stop death from claiming its last victims. I had won. I had cheated death. No one would die anymore. Nor would anyone ever be born again. The children that survived would be all that was left. Once they grew up, there would be no more children.
I’ve always hated death. Ironically, I became its greatest instrument doing of all things, granting eternal life. Such good intentions led me to this and I can’t say I don’t deserve it. I’m hated now, and deservedly so. My arrogance destroyed my world and many others as well.
All that’s left for me is to find the cure. When I do so, I will be the first to ingest it. For pain I find is as eternal as life itself, and I want to end it. Maybe in the end, I’ll find peace. Every night though I still see my little guy sleeping in his cradle. Knowing I’m the one that put him there.
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