The Aging Cure

Content Warning: Brief mention of suicide.

It all started a few years ago, August 17th, 2078, and it quickly spread on the news. It was the only thing people could talk about for a bit. After years of testing, scientists from A&X Inc. finally released a treatment that promised to cure aging. Not much was known about this treatment; the company that created it was extremely secretive about how it worked or what the treatment actually was in order to protect their patented formula. Only the incredibly wealthy could afford to be waitlisted and receive the treatment. And so, they did.

Rumours about the treatment being fake surfaced; news about celebrities and big business people paying all the way up to $500,000 per person coursed through the internet–most people laughing at them in skepticism. “I mean, if they have the money to pay for something like that, then they can do whatever they want,” people said. Soon more disturbing reports came out about their mistreatment of the animals they used in their laboratories, going as far as claiming that they took homeless people off the streets to use them for free human trials (the veracity of this information was never confirmed).

The people kept harassing those who had undergone the treatment online to explain how it worked or what had happened. Most of them only explained the basics: they paid the fees and were put onto the list. After a while, they were called into one of the facilities, where they received the treatment, and were told that effects would start showing in a few years since aging is a slow process, and that was it. None of them ever explained what actually happened behind the scenes, and the number of people that thought it was a scheme for things like tax fraud or money laundering increased.

Most polls and surveys, conducted from the end of 2078 to the beginning of 2079, that asked respondents if they thought the aging cure was real, received a majority of votes against it. One poll even showed that 78% of respondents believed the aging cure was completely fake, with a mere 22% holding dearly to the possibilities. People asked for answers, but these pleas were ignored, and only those who actually paid the price knew the secret.

The news started dying down after a bit, with every new article about the treatment garnering less and less views for the news companies that posted about them. Those who still cared a little about it couldn’t do anything more than “wait to see the results” or “wait and see if these people were still looking young and lively 50 years from now.” They even made a list with every person that was publicly known to have undergone the aging cure treatment. After that, the general uproar died down.

It wasn’t until about 2100, between celebrations of the new century, that people started talking about “#NewCenturyResolutions,” a trend that was quickly picked up online with people making huge and almost impossible resolutions to be completed before 2200. One of the celebrities that underwent the aging cure treatment posted “My #NewCenturyResolution is to create a time machine so I could go back 21 years ago and stop myself from undergoing the aging cure treatment. I can’t do this anymore.”

Rapidly, people picked up on it and started asking questions, and the fire was set ablaze again, with everyone questioning what had happened and what the results had been.

Finally, some light was shed on the issue in a talk show, as actress Jennifer Russ compared pictures of how she looked 21 years ago, to how she looked now. She looked exactly the same, maybe even younger and more beautiful now. Everyone laughed and applauded as the number of people that believed the aging cure was real started rising, and the topic took strength again. Although some people started pointing out that Russ didn’t look so well in the videos. Physically, she looked outstanding and beautiful. But she also took a few seconds to answer, she was spacey, and she even looked uncomfortable at times. Most people brushed it off and told the critics to “stop being creeps and weirdos,” to “stop being so envious about her,” and to “get a life.” But the pressure on her social media profiles started rising.

And that was not the only one; more and more, those who had undergone the aging cure treatment were harassed online with demands for answers and the true reality behind whatever had happened. “Is it actually different?”; “Why do you look so tired now?”; “What was the treatment?” People even began harassing the company for answers, until they made an announcement simply stating: “throughout the years, we’ve ensured the confidentiality of our products, as well as our clients. We here at P&X assure everyone that we understand your inquiries and your curiosity. We do not disclose this information because of the money, but for the safety of our company, our employees, and our customers who have trusted us with it. Dearly, P&X Inc.”

Most people didn’t buy it and kept harassing everyone as much as they could, but after P&X’s statement, they understood that they would probably never get the answers they were seeking, and that the aging cure treatment would remain a mystery forever.

Until finally, in May of 2100, Jennifer Russ submitted a statement and a video to a big news company, and it quickly went viral. It read: “I am tired. I am tired of looking in the mirror and seeing myself. Who am I? What am I? It’s been 20 years, but for me, it feels like it’s been no more than a second. I don’t like it. I’m a fake, and I'm a fraud. I’m not real anymore. When my parents left me, I couldn’t even cry. There’ll be a point at which my daughter will look older than me soon enough.

“My body feels healthy, but my mind is the worst it’s ever been. I don’t even know who I am anymore. Time doesn’t matter to me anymore, so I don’t matter anymore. No matter what I do, I’ll remain. I don’t have that drive to do anything anymore, because I could do it whenever I want, so it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.

“I’m sorry for keeping it a secret from all of you. They told us to do it. And there’s a very clear reason why. The aging cure does work, and it is real. It is a long, tight and careful procedure of taking stem cells and replacing your own cells with them and then coding these cells through the manipulation of their own DNA in order for them to replenish themselves cyclically, over and over. So that in a way, they never age but rather, keep repairing themselves. Forever.

"But where do these 'donor cells' come from? Well, they come from children, of course. I don’t know their names or how they look, but I know they do. That’s why you were put on a list to wait for months, sometimes years. It was in order to wait until they had enough children to harvest.

The aging cure is the blood of children.”

The criticism soon went rampant. Against P&X, against every single person that had undergone the procedure. There were rumours of a heavy lawsuit going against Russ for disclosing extremely confidential information, but soon news spread that Russ had shot herself in her apartment that same night after submitting everything.

Normally, a lot of those under the public eye would rush to give explanations and to craft a PR plan to avoid repercussions as soon as possible. But most of them didn’t care. Most of them explained that with so much time, it had become impossible to live. With so much time to do anything, they had become apathetic.

Before long, another suicide story. And another one. In the next few years, those who underwent the treatment started to slowly disappear, either by taking their own lives, or simply by not showing their faces ever again.

Amongst the chaos, several voices were raised. Most of them questioned how this happened, how someone let this happen. How humanity had gotten to a point in which those with enough money and power could do anything they wanted. But to that, another side of the story came around, claiming that science had achieved something previously thought of as impossible, to cure humanity’s greatest affliction, aging. “And yeah, the methods were not ethical. But the results speak for themselves,” said the leading director of the aging cure team at P&X once questioned about it.

A long process flooded the news and the conversations of people. As investigations began to share information with the public, certain details were disclosed to everyone. The children used for harvesting were taken from the streets, or low-standards orphanages. Places that wouldn’t ask questions when they were gone. All around the ages of four to 12, each was labeled with a simple name and taken to different facilities in order to analyze their compatibility with the program, as well as with the ones who would become their hosts in the future.

The kids were given the most pleasant and comfortable life possible before they had to be sacrificed. The few people from P&X that spoke up explained how each kid was given a room, three meals a day, and a big leisure facility where they could play and enjoy their time with the other kids, as well as the caretakers there, until it was their time to go. None of the kids suffered, neither were they afraid. For their own protection, they didn’t even know what was waiting for them at the end. They all had the perfect lives, they never felt pain, not even at the end.

An anonymous employee from P&X that worked in the aging cure shared their thoughts with a few news outlets, who published them to everyone else. “You all claim how horrible this was, how we’re all monsters for engaging with something like this [the aging cure], but these kids had been removed from the real horrible places for years; the street, under bridges, dumpsters, orphanages that would be better just renamed to torture houses. They were taken from there years ago while everything was being prepared. Not suffering from hunger, laughing, sleeping in a warm bed, playing…up until now, none of these things had been an issue. And none of you, who are preaching so much now, ever cared for them.”

On the opposite end, several groups started to make themselves heard, calling themselves the voices for those kids who never got a chance to speak, who never got a chance to know what they were being used for. A spokesperson from one of these groups called everyone to action with a video in which she addressed everyone who was listening to get together against this. “They claim they did these kids a favour. That they broke the barriers of science and created something never seen before. The biggest scientific breakthrough of our era, they called it. Trying to make us turn a blind eye to how this goal was achieved. Don’t feed into their lies, their manipulations. They’re twisting their words to make it sound like we should be thankful to them. But all those kids were given a chance, taken out from these horrible places and given a chance to be something. Not to be a meatbag of cells for a rich person that they never even met. Never forget all the lives, all the children’s lives that were taken because of greed.”

Questions were raised if the aging cure could be recreated without the need for sacrifice, if these cells could not be synthesized in a lab, or if there was something from the process that could be done differently so that this doesn’t happen again. But there was nothing that could change. The aging cure uses young cells so that they can be modified accordingly. Older cells would be too deteriorated for the changes to have any significant value, which is why younger cells need to be harvested. And until someone is able to synthesize some in a lab and make them work even just close to how well the natural ones work, then there’s nothing to do on that end, either.

The hopes for a new aging cure quickly faded, and with that, more and more people started wondering if there are certain situations in which the process doesn’t matter, as long as the result is worth it. Getting rid of aging is something that has eaten at the mind of humanity forever, the pinnacle of medicine is to let humans live healthy forever. And the aging cure achieved this. “A lot of the mental issues that came with it could be solved if scientists were allowed to look into it,” said some people. “We achieved immortality, but at what cost? Why do we innovate if we’re afraid to take risks?” said others.

Most people remained heavily against the idea of bringing the aging cure back. Some groups got together and tried to push a case for it, with the mindset that for the evolution of humanity, there would always be sacrifices. These groups remained, while their voices became quieter and quieter with time. Humanity would never forget what had happened, but soon their focus shifted to different things.

P&X slowly crumbled under the pressure. Several of their employees were imprisoned and the company’s reputation shattered; they had no other choice than to be taken by time, and become a memory of the company that did it all. P&X’s headquarters were transformed into a memorial cemetery for all the kids that gave their lives without knowing, and slowly, time moved on, and so did everyone else. Or at least they tried.