Turpendium

After years of searching, we found it. The solution. The miracle. The cure to our most calamitous afflictions.

                The drug.

                We called it Turpendium.

                Like all great inventions, it was discovered by accident. The effects were noticed in environmentalists first. Those who had been studying methods of removing “greenhouse gases” from the atmosphere lived ages after their retirement. You could say they did not age at all.

                At least, that is how it would appear if your body still matured at the 21^st-century rate.  

                They were, of course, aging. Slowly. Still fighting-fit in their eighties, these retired chemists and atmospheric scientists lived to be at least 140- and longer with each new generation.

                It took humanity many years to understand that which remained a mystery to even those old environmentalists.

                It didn’t take humanity much longer to figure out how to bottle it.

                Turpendium- fashioned from removing gases from the sky. Soon, we figured out we could make it from water pollution as well- as long as we used the molecules needed to create life,  we could replace dying cells and extend that life.

                What was that? How long could they live? We did our best to find that answer. We ran tests, but the doctors died out long before they could see the full effects in their patients. Ever impatient for a new fad, wealthy and influential started ordering it without waiting for test results. Politicians in their fifties and sixties took Turpendium as a pill, in a spray bottle, and lived to be over 150. The miracle.

                It wasn’t long before someone decided to market Turpendium to the worldwide masses. The every-day man sure had some creative uses for the drug. A seasoning for food, dumped in the water supply, a gas that sprays as you exit the shower. Turpendium was everywhere, because there was so much contamination to clean up. Mothers would only buy baby formula if it contained Turpendium. Not that the newborns wouldn’t already be saturated- Turpendium crossed into embryos naturally through the placenta. Designer-drugged-dogfood became the norm as well. Of course, Turpendium was already so prevalent in air and water that livestock and pets lived just as long as the owners.

                Turpendium broke boundaries. The line of rich and poor disintegrated where Turpendium was concerned- whether we liked it or not. Some resisted, thought this method of extending human life was unnatural. But the rest of the world was in love with long life, and equated the drug with penicillin and vaccines in its importance and safety. Those individuals and cultures who spoke out against Turpendium were ostracized. Labeled as outcasts and backwater freaks. But there was so much Turpendium to go around- even before we reverted all technological machinery back to the highest polluting states- that we enlightened drug addicts of the world decided we had enough Turpendium to go around. We forced our gifts on the remote corners of the world, isolating the unadulterated into red dots on a globe that were eventually stamped out. We even gassed from the air. Nothing was too extreme in order to distribute our large supply of miracles.

                That mindset is what led wasteful and hedonistic lifestyles- thus continuing the production of Turpendium- to become patriotic and moral. Pollute and you will save lives. Beautiful, isn’t it?

                It started in the children. Those who were middle-schoolers when Turpendium went mainstream. These now middle-aged 3000 somethings had difficulty having children of their own. It began with a few isolated cases that went ignored in the papers. It was somebody else’s problem. Then suddenly it became an epidemic. As generations progressed, pregnancy became rarer and rarer, and children grew up with the knowledge they were the last of a dying race.

                In order to gain everlasting life, you must take that life from somewhere else. That truth didn’t stop hordes of depressed woman from flocking to understaffed fertility clinics. Baby dolls, now customized with the latest in artificial intelligence and facial recognitive technology available, were in-vogue for adults. But- ah, I do hope you understand someday that a doll can never replace the joy of raising your own- for me, you were the closest I ever had to…

                I am sorry you were never able meet your father. He was a great man, a noble man. A brilliant doctor labeled a quack when he advised patients to skip their daily Turpendium. But there were others like him, others who were willing to form this organization back when mass infertility was a strange coincidence. As he himself chose to refuse the pills soon after college, he had the lowest concentration of Turpendium on the planet. That is why, even after his death, we preserved his-

                Locating your mothers proved much harder. I was the nurse, you know. I held the hand of every contracted candidate who had only been told half the reason why she was needed as she underwent decades of surgery to remove as much Turpendium from her system as possible. I played their favorite music and telecasted their favorite shows, I told them how brave they were as they thrashed in pain. But that’s not the story your mothers wanted you to hear. I know because I helped every potential mother write a story, of their childhood and dreams and hopes for their unborn children, now all contained in the red volumes on the table. Those of your mothers are marked with a special binding, but you may read that of those who failed the procedure as well.

     I argued with the other members- back when they were still alive, about what else to provide for you. I won. So, there is so much more for you to read, the history of the world and all our mistakes to learn from, instructions on how to build a fire, a wall, and atomiculator, how-to’s chronicling man’s greatest successes and falls. There are textbooks to continue your learning, as my dear, you must teach him to read as I have taught you. At least, we hope you will learn to read, as there is so much valuable knowledge provided for you both traditionally and digitally. You can see all around us we have also provided for you the raw materials to create anything in those books, or anything new you envision. And if anything goes wrong….there are 357 identical facilities around the globe. The transporter instantly registers 27 different identity tests so that only you two may access it.

    You look confused. You must know that the world of the story I told, where those who gave their lives for you lived and died, no longer exists. Without those to take care of the elderly, the physically and mentally incapacitated are clustered into pockets of dying men and women across the earth. Many of those who still have their wits have gotten it into their heads that this is a punishment- that humanity is cursed to wither and fade. And that can happen, if you choose. The trace amounts of Turpendium we were unable to remove from your nervous system make it impossible to determine your lifespan, but we predict you will outlive the 100 years it will take for the opposition to expire. The world will be a void for your children to play- if you choose to have them. For we realize we no longer have the right to decide the future. That’s why we entrust the choice to the innocent, to the last uncorrupted children in the world. You may fall in love and repopulate the world- Oh, what's with that face? I know you are only fourty-eight, but indulge me. You may instead live as brother and sister and have the world’s last and greatest two person- party. You may take Turpendium- if you decide that is right, that is also your prerogative. And of course…we have left you with nuclear weapons. If you decide that the Earth is no longer worth saving, we will not condemn you. If I still live to see it, I will smile as destruction quickens my death, because I-…we trust your innocence to guide the Earth. But I will not lie- I hope you choose life.

But there is not much time- not for this story, not for my breath, I-Don’t cry, I…please, Jackie, you must let go of me. Candace, I will be fine. That’s a good dear.

I wait to see what you choose.