Part 1:

It is perhaps the most sorrowful and endlessly bewildering moments of one’s life that occur in an oddly joyful, serene finale; a strange resolution or cliffhanger that ends an existence on Earth. It is happiness that should surely be depression or agony. These moments have been the topics of fairytales for nearly a millennium. And now I must admit to myself that they are currently present in my life, as I hideously fade from a glory of health to a shriveled and lifeless wretch.

I must admit that I am much more baffled by such moments than a human was a millennium ago. A millennium ago, death was not a myth. Not a human has died; there are those who are over a thousand years old. A victory at glance, but there are many causalities. Colonies, endless colonies throughout an endless universe drink greedily from the wealth in our pockets.

An absolutely horrid effect of the cure is the pride, the sense of “Imperishable Humanity” that’s waved so temptingly before our noses. It was once so undeniably sweet, but we outlived the splendor and it became but another necessity, as beauty and love had before it. And the worst, the worst part… The dependency, the awful nagging elders and deformed who would not be alive if not for the cure. I knew for quite a while that we were running out of the substance. Its name I cannot recall (from that you can assume the mindless behavior of the current humanity). I cared not; the scent of “Imperishable Humanity” was so fresh, so guiltlessly alluring that I could not imagine its unreality.

The shortage is now not a shortage. The emergency stores expired. The materials that went into the cure are utterly finished. The shortage is about to cause the fall of humanity from its pride. What a long, steep fall that shall be. But, oh, if I could halt such a disaster I would not. I am the first to die in a thousand years. From those meaningless centuries piled upon another, I have learned one thing and one thing only: we must step down from our false Godhood and accept our mortality.

As my final breath weakly crawls out of my lungs, I distance myself from the agitating noises of frantic, panicking doctors and nurses. They know the delicate nature of the human race; we will fall to all diseases easily, our immunity gone. Perhaps if I knew what a fighting spirit was and could summon such a thing, I could hold on, for the sake of an endless population. But no one has ever had a need, and surely not a want, for such a thing.

My only dying hope is that humanity at least produced a tiny, minuscule amount of odd ones. People that possess fighting spirit. So the new human race will start out humble and definitely less bold than the disastrous, havoc-wreaking one before it.

As I die, the outbreak of riots tickle my fingertips.


Part 2:

The old died first, their deaths long out-run. Dodging death is a rather cowardly, crudely interesting game to play, if I might say so. It has no rules.

The horrid manor of their late demises was unimaginable; even if we had been used to the concept of our own immortality being a lie, we would still have be horrified. The first day of their withdrawal from the cure was simply age catching up to them. Their years caught up excessively; they aged, unendingly. After the first day it was terrifyingly grotesque. Their hearts and minds were kept mercilessly alive as their bodies rotted. Perhaps, after their nerves gave way, it was just a numb sensation. But for us, the young, it continuously twisted our pampered intestines into unforgivingly painful knots. Then an angry Death, perhaps, ceased their punishment for hiding from him, and what was left of them dissolved.

The people of the colonies, who were only immune to unheard-of diseases because of the cure, were wiped out almost immediately, as well. As were the deformed.

In less than a month, the young were the only ones who even stood a sliver of a chance. Many of us had no idea of our age until such a time; many of us were slaughtered in pointless riots, thinking that we, too, were old and needed the cure to live.

I know now that I am about twenty years of age. I made up a name for myself; the original slipped my fragile, traumatized mind. I am Zoline.

My irises are a dark shade of gold, my hair the color of blood and flames. I saw that color in the riots. It was a strangely magnificent color, highlighted by the dying sunshine's red rays. When I blocked out the shrieks, I enjoyed it.

Standing in the city, I watch those same rays die again. How odd to think we were once more powerful than the blazing, ever repetitive sun. It now dictates us. The world around me is ashes and skyscrapers, abandoned vehicles and debris, that all appear to be on fire in the warm colors of a late summer afternoon.

Silence echoes through the huge, empty halls of a city designed as a palace. I think it was a frivolous attempt to out-glorify the Home of the Gods, Mount Olympus. Its failure is both amusing and humiliating.

Eyes are everywhere, thinking themselves unseen. Carefully monitoring, as if we are the victims and the villain will appear out of a shadow. Humanity did the deed. Even I, a forgetful spawn of an idiotic, careless race, can accept that. We are our own victims, to put it shortly.

A twitching, blinded world fearfully surrenders to night as I curl myself into a ashen, crumbling wreck of a building. What they called "Lady Liberty", a crumbling figure of metal, stays upright in a sparkling field of water. She seems to comfort a gentler, more childish world. She will stay awake and watch for that awful demon we fear.


Part 3:

A year is 365 lives of the sun. 365 times I've been blessed to watch the sun extend ghostly limbs towards a frail world as they both descend into darkness.

Food is swift to find as life has been swift to die. A boundless amount of preserved, genetically engineered food lasts even longer when there are few left to eat it. As the sun submits to night in the late evening, there are no more eyes in the shadows. The city is essentially a graveyard.

Sometimes I spend an amaranthine amount of time in the now starlit night speaking. Perhaps I speak to Lady Liberty. Sound is so alien to hear. Even my voice carries the distinct ring of a fading echo from miles away.

I wake to a blistering heat. A year ago there were voices whispering, but the owners of them have been long silent. I despise sitting here uselessly, waiting for death. How strange to demand what I once hated.

Pulling myself up, to the screaming protest of my overworked limbs, I glance at Lady Liberty. I never looked at her in the daylight before.

Soon I am beside her. Her colossal height seems to mock my insignificance. So I climb her rickety sides.

And as I fall, I wonder why anyone ever hated death enough to kill it. Humanity was always a doomed race. Humanity was definitely, definitely not meant to be immortal. The next race of our kind? It will be the same.