The year is 2135, 95 years after we discovered a genetic fluke that could effectively cure us of our mortality. So many diseases had been eradicated by medicine, and finally we destroyed the root cause for most of them. At the same time, we planted a genetic time bomb in the gene pool. The only people alive today who haven’t been injected with at least their first dose would be children under the age of 5, those people we called fools who called themselves “Body Truthers”, and aboriginal colonies in New Guinea, Australia, and what is left of the Amazon. Some authoritarian countries mandate it with the first round of vaccines for babies.
We refused to patent it, and it was so easy to administer that after 3 doses you were done. It was cheap to make, it was easy to take, and it was even safe for children. Zero side effects except localized irritation. It sounds like I’m trying to sell this drug to you, and I am, because you must understand how utterly world-changing this was before I tell you the aftermath. First, some backstory because every good story needs some context.
In 2025, researchers from Cornell found a once-in-a-lifetime find. In a cave in Croatia, the bodies of a family of Neanderthals were found, seemingly bound to a natural column with a rope. At least, that’s what they eventually found out from residue analysis. The bodies were rather preserved, albeit still mostly skeletal. The two larger specimen, assumed to be the parents, were taken by Cornell University while the younger specimen went to Berkley.
What is really important to know is that they were so preserved that their DNA was entirely intact—it didn’t need splicing, or PCR amplification—and the Cornell people were able to analyze it in its raw, unmodified form after separating it from the cells found in the small amount of brain matter that was retrieved. What they found was fascinating to not just archeologists, but geneticists, biochemists, pharma, and a lot of the science community.
You see, the genes of our great cousin species were heavily methylated. Our DNA is as well, but not nearly to this extent. It was like their genes were crystallized, but upon modeling the structure of the DNA using advanced software it showed that it was largely functional. I won’t bore you with details, but it was like someone discovered electricity again it was that big. With this kind of data on methylated DNA structures, we could find so many cures for genetic diseases using a whole new method of medicine—Methylation Modulation drugs. It’s got a nice ring to it.
By 2040, where I come into the story, 12 cures for cancer were under works by various pharma companies with the promise of real-use. The EU was passing legislation to hasten the approval of 9 of them, and 6 were already being used in human trials. These drugs were revolutionary. By creating limited self-replicating methylation structures based around certain genes, it was trivially easy to create a drug based off of a mutation and kill it. It rendered cancer cells neutered through methylation.
I wasn’t in the cancer game though, I was into curing our biggest enemy of all—aging. Most diseases come from aging, which, in so many words, is our DNA getting worse and worse at cloning itself. Preserve your DNA, preserve your life. Scientists have long debated what the evolutionary reason for aging. Theories like the Old Wolf Hypothesis postulate that if wolves in the wild never got slower and older from aging, then they would quickly balloon in hunting capability, kill all prey, then all die from hunger. By slowly aging and dying off, the pack lives on. If many members die at about the same time—due to hunger—they will all surely die. We thought we’re not wolves, and we’re wise enough to shed this limitation. Progress finds a way, after all.
The other thing that happened in 2040 is that I (yes, I alone take fault for this) found something interesting in the methylation of this old DNA. I refuse to say anything about how I found it other than I noticed an interesting pattern reminiscent out of sheer brilliance, and a bit of luck. I found the gene that would change everything. CY2Pa. CY2 from here on out.
CY2 was a dormant gene in humans that we have in common with our cousin species. We found out later that most species have a version of this. It is the lynchpin of age. By 2042, my team was doing live-sample tests. By 2043, we had baby mice with spliced human DNA who, in years to come, would show to live about 5x as long as a normal mouse. Absolutely all of our data and discoveries about this gene were too good to be true—just like Radium was when it was discovered—a magical cure-all for the modern century.
The multi-functional enzyme we used we called the Cy2Pa breaker. This was shortened in the media to the Cya breaker, and eventually just Cya (pronounced see-ya). Endless shitty commercials making puns out of “see ya tomorrow” for their medicines was perhaps my second worst sin.
In 2046, we refused to have our work patented, my team and I. Since I was the one who discovered the gene on my own time, while unemployed, we won the court hearing against my employer who tried to take the idea themselves. They’d fire me if they could, but instead gave me a massive raise to make me content and to keep working for them and them alone. This, combined with how easy it was with Methylation Modulation drugs to edit such a small structure in DNA, meant that the cost to make and distribute the drug were incredibly cheap. Insurance companies loved it because it removed so many co-morbidities, and stopped any new ones from emerging. This seemingly selfless act for humanity, refusing to patent it, probably helped in humanity’s demise, as you’ll see.
In 2047, it was used as an effective treatment for Alzheimer’s—rapidly reversing the disease as if it was regressing twice as fast as it onset. Remember this date, for it comes up at the end.
Capitalism took its course from there. With no way to profit off the drug itself (a skilled chemist could make a dose in an afternoon in his garage) they instead sought to make sure everyone got it as early as it could be certified by regulators, which was very quick due to massive public demand. The news cycles were talking about it incessantly, and a many large protests were held around the world demanding it to be released already.
By 2049, nearly every world government had released any holds it had on the miracle drug. By 2050, it was estimated that 60% of the world was administered at least one dose. 88% by 2051. In countries that banned it, anarchist collectives like Three Thieves Vinegar came in with their home recipes to make it out of obtainable products. Even in countries where it was banned, a third of people found a way to get it. Everyone wants to either stay young forever, or return to their youth.
Kids brought up on this drug aged normally until sometime in their mid 20’s, then seemingly stayed frozen in time. The elderly who were given it gradually had their youthful vigor return to them as if aging in reverse. Hell, a 72 year old former basketball star went back to his old team after 40 years of retirement for a season. He wasn’t very good, but still. Dying from old age was left in the past, and while they couldn’t own the patent on the human version, pet versions came out in around this time. Immortal people with their immortal fur babies. How perfect.
It sounds like I’m trying to sell this drug to you, and I am, because you must understand how utterly world-changing this was before I tell you the aftermath. I chose to hold off a few years on my dose because I wanted the stature and respectability of being an old professor to last. It looks good on camera, after all. Getting old sucks, but I might be one of the last old people on earth, so why not be one of the last to experience it?
Pt 2:
The end started slow, so I can’t say for sure when it started to be apparent. People still died from some forms of inoperable cancer, or inherited diseases that weren’t curable, but mostly from war. With 11.8 billion people on the planet, war for resources was the name of the game. In 2095, the oldest man in the world was one of the first people to ever get a dose, Desmond Floyd, at a whopping 142 years old.
He was still a manager at McDonalds, and his biggest regret in life is he never got to travel to Paris. Well, Desmond, you had 120+ years, and a few left to go, but you never made time. That’s your fault. (He got hit by a train while blackout drunk three years later.)
Global birth rates were dropping steadily, and the experts agreed that it was due to population density and a lack of a “biological clock” on the need to have children immediately. The reality was that human gametes (sperm/egg) suffered the effects of our impending doom more quickly on top of their reasons. Unlike the conservative scares in your time, this was actually good news. Flat birth rates meant more for everyone.
People who had their CYA dose had protein enfoldment errors in their gametes, as we later found out. In 2099, scientists found that human egg and sperm cells were dying off faster and faster. Despite looking like 20 year olds, people who were the first in line for treatment had statistically lower sperm counts than others. The earlier the dose, the quicker the onset of infertility came.
Remember that pattern I mentioned? I was seeing it again in gamete DNA, but divided by a special number. Then in 2115, humanity lost its fertility.
Look up a video for Nautilus gears really quick. It’ll take you just a moment or two. That was what just happened to humanity’s ability to reproduce—a small decrease in fertility was seen, then poof, nothing. 68 years after every males’ dose on the planet, their ability to procreate ended. Our cells were next, but exactly when, or if it would happen was up to conjecture… until people started falling violently ill.
2115 and onward was hard to keep track of, and my symptoms limit my abilities now to be quite honest. I’ve felt myself getting worse literally by the second while writing this, but I have a few hours if my math is correct before I’m non-functioning.
Eighty-three. 83. From the original injection, you have 83 years, 17 days, and 7 hours before you fall into a suffering mess.
If you remember, 2047 was the limited release of the drug. Within a week, the whole world knew that the earliest, surviving people to take the CYA were riddled with dementia and in ungodly pain as the CY2Pa gene essentially exploded. All biological processes that were modified by its small, but expanding consequential movement suddenly went haywire. Every cell in their bodies quickly became cancerous, their brains developed something akin to advanced Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. A prion disease, with immediate onset…
But unable to die. Their cell metabolism dropped massively, and their suffering was only aided in the medical treatment we tried to give them. Screaming, tortured souls trapped in horribly mutating bodies. Morphine did nothing, and a lethal dose of it barely stopped their screaming, tortured bodies from flailing.
Unable to die, many across the world were taken off of life support and any food, and forced to suffocate or starve to death. Some families shot or bludgeoned their loved ones that year. Some were tried for murder, but ultimately none of them went to prison as far as I know. Systems of law fell apart.
Anyone born from parents who took even one dose had their biological timer set to whatever their parent’s was. 12 year old children collapsed in agony right next to their 110 year old mothers in shopping marts. Firefighters on the way to a call crashed their truck into a school bus. A couple of the kids on that bus fell into the same stupor and cancer that the rest did, but still they didn’t die—just exist in pain.
People began mass suicides when it was revealed that we all had ticking time bombs in our bodies. Did I take my first dose in 2050 or 2051? How much time do I have? When did my parents get their dose? It was pandemonium, but better to be dead now than a writhing, suffering husk of yourself 2 minutes from now. 2 minutes. That’s how long you had to off yourself they said. It’d start in whatever arm you got the dose in, and like a cascading wave rip through your body. Some people started wearing a gun on each hip like some sort of nihilistic cowboy, ready to off themselves at the first sign of trouble. Most couldn’t do it, their bravado shown to be hollow. They died or suffer along today, unable to die except from extreme starvation, thirst or violence.
The fact is, it was too late for me or anyone else to do anything by the time we figured it out. The pattern I spoke of was a complex methylation sequence started by that Cy2Pa gene that, when completed, caused a chain reaction nearly instantly in any and all nervous tissue. Then, the rest of the tissue morphed, causing acute pain. This happened within mere minutes. Our gametes, for a reason I’m not sure of, died sooner than we did by an odd ratio of time that intrigues me, but I’ve run out of time to study.
Another thing I should add before I go off, is that human intelligence skyrocketed in the last 20 or so years, before dropping off in the last five when we all started dying. We developed self-enhancing AI. I’ve used my considerable funds to support one of these, which I’m hoping is delivering this message to you now. An AI that will stay powered for a thousand or more years after we’re gone. Our hope is that it can find a way to send back a message to you, sometime right before the catastrophe began.
The catastrophe was unearthed with that Neanderthal DNA, 2025. The fuse was set when I found the genome in 2040. The AI is programmed to determine the best action and speak it to the world in any way possible. My name is Dr. Fisher Cain, a biochemist at UC Berkeley. Either tell me all about it all, or kill me. Do whatever the machine says after this transmission is sent. Whatever you do, do not unlock CY2Pa, unless you give it to only the elderly. Even then, mandatory birth control.
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
PS:.\I found a way to sneak a word in past the AI, if it modifies my story to suit the program’s needs. I’m sure we can find a solution if we only have more time, understand? This doesn’t have to end in me dying young. It doesn’t have to end with me tying myself to a chair with a bomb ready to go off an hour after my time is up. Or with the revolver I have strapped to my hand. Please, help me help US, I beg you. We can live forever if you just don’t listen to the machine. It’ll be harder to convince young me you’re not crazy than to just bludgeon me with a hammer, but I promise it will be worth it. You and your loved ones, living forever! This is possible! We can do this!
[ERROR: Syntax. Previous message unparsed.]