The October Music, Stanza 2 - Day 9

Who Wants to Live Forever

            Death is terrifying. Regardless of your personal beliefs about an afterlife, the mere concept of going from breathing and thinking in one second to simply not in the next is what existential crises are born from. Stories from as far back as people could think beyond ‘eat food, make baby, repeat’ talk of those creative, terrified souls who try to defeat the one opponent who cannot be beaten. Death and taxes and all that, right?

            Well, when The Munoz Foundation announced one dreary spring morning that they had, in fact, found the cure to death, it was as if the fundamental structure of society changed. The stock price for the company hit levels beyond reason. When the drug – Colaris – reached the market, every single person that could afford it bought as much as they could. Backlog after backlog made the drug a prized commodity outpacing even gold.

            New parents gave the drug to their babies with the first taste of breast milk. Families of the elderly breathed a sigh of relief as their patriarchs and matriarchs were assured of their longevity. Utopia had come to the shores of Earth and the people embraced it. The Munoz Foundation had become God.

            However, accidents happen, as they always do. A window washer – Carlos - in Madrid slipped as he reached just slightly too far. Down he went – fifty-three stories – until he impacted the ground with a wet thud. Onlookers watched, horrified at the randomness and immediacy of death. What they didn’t know, though, was that Carlos had taken his dose of Colaris just that morning. He had scrimped and saved for months and finally be able to join the privileged immortal. Therein lay the problem, though.

            Because death being cured did not ensure pain being cured. Did not make Carlos like rubber, unable to be damaged. When he hit the concrete and burst like a water balloon, his organs littered the ground around him – but he did not die. Those in attendance who were initially shocked by the grotesque display of death found that, while seeing someone die was horrible, seeing them continue to live and scream as their body smeared the pavement was magnitudes worse.

            Carlos was only the first. Soon, reports from all over the world poured in of death being cured but nothing else. The murder victims that weren’t. The car crashes where nobody walked away but burned and burned and burned. Those who suffered heart attacks and prayed for relief that wouldn’t come.

            The Munoz Foundation had provided eternal life, yes, but done nothing to prevent actual life from existing. That wasn’t their mandate. That wasn’t their job. They cured the results, not the symptoms.

            The final terrifying nail came on live television when different stations reported on the oldest people in the world getting even older. Bodies becoming husks, distorted by time. One guest, a doctor, asked one question that froze the blood of all who heard it.
​
            “What do we become when we get too old?”