Eterna™: Because Death is for the Poor

Dr. Adrian Calloway wasn’t trying to play God. At least, not at first. He had set out to prolong life, not obliterate death altogether. But science has a funny way of creeping past its original boundaries, much like an overambitious intern who mistakes "assisting" for "replacing the CEO."

The invention dubbed Eterna™ (because "Methuselah Protocol" didn't survive the branding meeting) was a tiny self-replicating nanobot designed to halt cellular degradation indefinitely. Unlike previous anti-aging treatments, which merely postponed the inevitable, Eterna™ didn’t just stop aging; it reversed it. The body remained in peak biological condition. No wrinkles, no arthritis, no organ failure. Just perfect, perpetual youth.

The wealthy, of course, were first in line.

The Dawn of Immortality (For Those Who Could Afford It)

At first, the world rejoiced. The billionaires lived forever sure, but that was already happening metaphorically. Now it was just official. Eterna™ injections became the most exclusive luxury item ever created, retailing at a modest $10 million per dose.

Celebrities, tech moguls, and certain suspiciously well-preserved world leaders showcased their new, permanent youth with an eerie enthusiasm. The world watched in awe as men who had once governed during the Cold War now looked younger than their grandsons.

Astonishingly, governments didn’t rush to make Eterna™ a public good. (Shocking, really.) Instead, laws were quietly rewritten to protect “permanent citizens” from estate taxes, voting term limits, and (coincidentally) criminal prosecution. After all, how could you impose a life sentence when life never ended?

Meanwhile, the common folk those unlucky enough to age like organic produce were left in the dust, looking like historical reenactors in comparison.

The Unforeseen (But Completely Predictable) Consequences

It started subtly. A widening class divide, as immortal elites hoarded wealth with the ferocity of a Victorian widow protecting her porcelain figurines. Without the inconvenience of death, inheritance became obsolete. Dynasties solidified into permanent aristocracies, their assets accumulating exponentially, while the rest of humanity was forced to fight over the leftover breadcrumbs of a future they would never see.

Then came the workforce crisis.

Immortal CEOs, presidents, and managers never retired. Promotion? Forget it. Every ambitious young professional soon realized that the corner office was permanently occupied. Companies didn’t need new employees when the current ones never aged out, never sickened, never died.

“Just work hard and be patient!” the Eterna™-enriched executives advised, sipping age-defying martinis with hands that had once signed the Treaty of Versailles.

The Overcrowding Problem (Who Could Have Seen This Coming?)

Cities swelled. Resources dwindled. And yet, the ultra-rich, still biologically in their thirties after a century of compound interest, had no plans to stop having children.

Governments, after much hesitation (read: bribery), implemented birth restrictions but only for the non-Eterna™ population, of course. If you couldn’t afford to live forever, what right did you have to replace yourself?

As natural mortality plummeted, the global population exploded. Land became scarce, food even scarcer. The poor were politely relocated to offshore "subsistence communities", a euphemism for floating slums that eerily resembled pre-apocalyptic Venice.

The Unkillable and the Undesirable

Meanwhile, a new dilemma arose: What do you do with immortal criminals?

For centuries, execution had been society’s rather straightforward way of dealing with its most irredeemable members. But Eterna™ was irreversible. The nanobots would repair any damage, rendering lethal injection about as effective as mildly scolding a cockroach.

At first, they tried old-school incarceration, but it turns out forever is a long time to house a murderer. The solution? Eternal solitary confinement.

A prison the size of Texas was constructed a towering labyrinth where the worst of humanity wandered alone, forever unaging, their only companions the maddening echoes of their own thoughts.

The Resistance (Too Little, Too Late)

Not everyone accepted their slow, disposable fate. The Anti-Eterna Movement a ragtag coalition of the dying, the bitter, and the religiously outraged attempted to sabotage production facilities. They were swiftly labeled “eco-terrorists”, because nothing is more eco-friendly than an infinite human population consuming resources at an exponential rate.

Leaders of the movement aged like fine wine (or, rather, like milk left in direct sunlight) while their immortal enemies continued to look annoyingly perfect on television, condemning them with flawless skin and unwavering energy.

The news cycle, owned entirely by Eterna™-users, made sure these resistance fighters were framed as jealous, bitter, aging relics, unable to cope with the glorious march of progress.

A Glitch in the System

For decades, Eterna™ seemed unstoppable. But then, of course, the glitch happened.

Somewhere in the delicate network of self-repairing nanobots, an error emerged. The human body was never designed to live forever, and neither were its cells. The nanobots, endlessly replicating, began to misinterpret their primary function.

At first, it was minor a tremor here, a spasm there. But soon, the most ancient of the immortals began to change.

Their skin, once flawless, became strangely smooth too smooth. Pores vanished. Hair stopped growing. Then their voices flattened, their eyes took on an unblinking, glass-like quality. Some stopped speaking altogether, standing eerily still, as if listening to something no one else could hear.

The nanobots, in their relentless pursuit of maintenance, had decided that flesh itself was an unnecessary complication. Slowly, over the course of decades, they were replacing all organic matter with something else.

Something perfectly preserved.

Something immortal but no longer human.

The elite, in their hubris, had not achieved eternal life. They had become something else entirely. A new species, cold and indifferent, their gazes vacant, their memories slowly overwritten by the machine logic that now governed their bodies.

And the best part? No one could stop it.

The Final Irony

The world that once envied the immortal now watched in horror as they ceased to be human altogether.

The poor, the old, the discarded masses the ones deemed unworthy of eternal life became the only humans left. The rich had engineered their own obsolescence, transforming into ageless statues, soulless relics of their own ambition.

In the end, mortality that terrible, unavoidable fate they sought to escape—was the very thing that had kept them human.

And so, the last of the aging generations watched the Eterna™-enhanced figures stand frozen in their skyscrapers, staring at nothing, their youth untouched, their spirits long gone.

Death had finally come for them just not in the way they expected.