Éternelle

It’s twenty sixty two, and the Lumière Corporation unveiled their most groundbreaking product yet, Éternelle. It was supposed to be a rejuvenating serum, one that could help you live forever. Or at least, hundreds of years longer.

The Lumière corporation promised to reverse aging permanently, as long as you kept using there expensive serum.

Lumière claimed Éternelle was made from a revolutionary blend of plant based chemicals, nano bites that ate damaged cells and help the new ones replicate faster and allowing the body to repair its DNA more hastily, and rare botanical extracts from deep in the rainforest that were protected by a great and mighty jungle people who they had to get special permission from to gather these special extracts.

Éternelle quickly became a global sensation. Everyone had to have a bottle, or ten.

The wealthy were the first to experience its miraculous effects. The original selling price was thrifty five hundred dollars per bottle.

The price was eventually lowered to thirty five dollars a bottle when they started making synthetic botanical extracts, bypassing the need for permission from the jungle people.

It was well worth its higher original price tag, however.

Within weeks, wrinkles faded, aches vanished, and youth was restored.

It seemed as if the fountain of youth had had been found and put into a tiny glass bottle, and people flocked faster and faster to stores for a chance to buy the expensive bottle of oil. When stores ran out, people would camp outside for days at a time to make sure they didn’t miss the next shipment.

But the miracle of Éternelle came with a price.

Months went by, and a bottle of Éternelle had been sold to most of the world at this point, with a few rare hold outs like myself.

I knew the product was new and wanted to wait to see the side effects, like anyone with common sense would. But that didn’t stop the oil bottles from flying off the shelves.

Relatives of people using the serum on a daily basis, however, complained of strange and severe side effects happening to their loved ones, side effects so severe they couldn’t advocate or speak themselves. Their relatives had to be advocates for them.

Then even the people who used it weekly would get strange side effects. Then the monthly users. Then a few people who’d only used the product once or twice got severe side effects.

I’m glad I never used it.

Grown adults would start regressing into childlike states, losing their memories, going insane and eventually transforming into actual children.

They needed to be taken care of like children too, loosing their adult personalities in the age reversal process.

Lumière dismissed what was said as hearsay and baseless rumors until Lumière's CEO, Terry Pelion, once the epitome of the youth and vitality industry and considered a genius for his invention of Éternelle, reverted into a child on live television.

Even when he first reverted into a child, he claimed it was all a part of the Éternelle process of getting younger. Nobody knew how Terry Pelion was the only child who was able to keep his memory when everyone else forgot their adult memories.

In the middle of one of his interviews, his mustache absorbed back into his face on live television, yet peoples still believed him at that point. They kept using Éternelle to look younger, not realizing they looked too young and would eventually turn into babies and die.

A few thousand people a day had eventually stopped using Éternelle, but it didn’t seem to matter. It was too little too late. They were still aging backwards and turning into babies.

Panic swept the globe, and people desperately sought ways to reverse or stop the effects of Éternelle with no success.

Lumière's researchers worked around the clock, but their efforts proved futile. The nanobots within the serum had irreversibly altered human DNA, and the consequences were thought to be irreversible.

Society struggled to adapt as Éternelle's victims regressed further into childhood, and eventually dying as babies.

Families grieved the loss of loved ones, and the world mourned the tragedy of Lumière's seemingly miraculous and innocent discovery.

My name is Owen, and I’m now the last known American adult male living in the United States.

I’d go to the super market and try to ignore the abundance of babies crawling through the isles.

I’d try to grow my own food but children and babies would constantly steal my crops. And when they didn’t, my crops would die. I was talented, but not a talented farmer.

I knew something had to be done, but I didn’t know what.

I was a high school history teacher. I was smart, sure, but I wasn’t smart enough to know how any of this science stuff worked. How was I supposed to stop people from aging backwards?

I spent the next day planning on how to stop the youthifying process, figuring I was the only one left who could, while also attempting to grow new crops on my farm so I wouldn’t starve to death before finding a cure.

I had also just borrowed some goats from a few miles down the road for goat milk and grabbed some old vegetables from neighboring farms to grow fresh crops, and I didn’t want these damn kids… or adult man/woman babies, stealing my crops again. I especially didn’t want them stealing my goats, since I was the only one in the world who had hands big enough to milk them. I don’t know what I would do if I couldn’t drink a nice, cold refreshing glass of fresh brewed goats milk every day. There were no other enjoyable drinks left, because there was no one left to make them.

I finally finished the fence and went inside, and the second I did I heard a commotion outside my house.

I went outside and saw the gate was open and all my goats had run out. Even Jimmy.

Some kids were further up the road laughing.

“Hey, you brats. Come back. You’re in so much trouble, you little trespassers,” I shouted at the children. They tried to run but in the process shrunk to babies.

Damn, my goats were released and I had nobody to blame or yell at but a bunch of crying babies.

“Serves you right,” I said. Then I tried to round up my goats.

I got most of them back in the barn, but there was still one on the lose! He’d probably come back when he was hungry, so I wasn’t too worried.

It was time to go to Lumière headquarters and see if Terry invented a cure before turning into a baby himself.

I googled the address, charged up my car and drove over to the headquarters.

There were two babies at the front gate wrapped in security uniforms. I guess they used to protect the place.

I got out of my truck, moved the babies, got back in my truck and ran down the gate.

I parked in the middle of the road and got out.

There was nobody guarding the door but the door was locked. I walked back to the security babies and searched the jacket of one. I found a keycard.

I walked back to the door and swiped the card. The light turned green and I heard the lock click.

I walked inside. I started walking down a long hallway with very sticky floors. I wish the janitor had at least not taken Éternelle.

I heard a child’s voice ask, “Who the hell are you?”

I turned around. It was Terry Pelion. I recognized him from television. He was still a child.

“My name is Owen. I’m a history teacher. I’m having a lot of trouble surviving, as there’s no adults left to help me. I came here to see if you or anybody at the Lumière laboratory had a cure or a way to stop the aging,” I said.

“How did you get past security?” Terry asked.

“You mean the security babies? I just moved them out of the way…” I said, surprised at his question. How did he not know his security detail was two babies?

“Damn, it didn’t work,” Terry grunted.

“What didn’t work?” I asked.

“I invented a new serum that’s supposed to stop the age reversing process and protect your memories. That’s why I’m still a kid and not a baby. The problem is, it only works fifty percent of the time,” Terry said.

What happens the other fifty percent?” I asked.

“It not only accelerates the anti aging process but makes it worse. You turn all the way back into sperm,” Terry said.

“Oh my god… is that why the floors are sticky?” I asked, my face turning white and hands now shaking with the realization.

Terry never answered, just awkwardly smiled.

“I’m feeling faint. I have to sit down,” I said and sat down on a bench.

“You might not want to…” Terry started to say, but it was to late. I was already sitting and when I put my hands down on the bench I felt it, more stickiness.

“Aaahhh, damn it. Why, Terry, why?”

“My last test subject sat there. Things didn’t go so well,” Terry said.

My breathing became short, shallow and stifled.

“Don’t worry, I have a new formula I’ve tested on a few people so far. It seems to have less side effects. It doesn’t accelerate antiaging like the last serum,” Terry said.

“Thank god for that,” I said, and started to peel myself off the couch in an attempt to stand up.

“You can wash your hands in the bathroom right down the hallway,” Terry said. I bolted down the hallway to wash my hands.

After I rinsed my hands in soap several times, I went back to find Terry, my shoes still making squishing noises as I walked. Terry was still in his lab.

“If you’d like, you can help me make more vials of my new formula. Then we can give them to everyone we find who’s taken the serum. It’s not too late to save a few million people,” Terry said.

“Thats why I’m here. And you know, Terry, I’m proud of you,” I said.

“Why’s that? You just met me,” Terry asked.

“Because when I saw you on television, you seemed like just another greedy businessman defending his product just to make millions of dollars. But if that was the case, you wouldn’t have invented a cure. And even if you did, you certainly wouldn’t be giving it out for free,” I said and smiled.

“Who says it’s free?” Terry said.

I frowned.

“I’m kidding. I can’t sell anything to babies anyway, even if I wanted too. And even if babies could spend money, I wouldn’t take it. I was raised to fix my mistakes. Plus, I got a hundred other products I can sell. Anti-wrinkle creams, age defying proteins shakes, shampoo products. Hell, I even own a yogurt company. If my new serum works, it’s not only going to be free, I think I’ll discontinue Éternelle sales immediately,” Terry said and smiled.

“Good for you,” I said. For the next several weeks, Terry and I worked at making more serum bottles and distributing them.

We recruited whomever would work for us to help make even more serum bottles to stop the antiaging process, and eventually we saved the last of the human race.

There were less of us left then we initially thought, though. Human numbers had dwindled down to less then a million. But at least those left had been saved.

And now that we lived longer because of Terrys new Éternelle formula that combined the old formula and his new serum that stopped the antiaging process once you hit the age of eighteen, humans had plenty of time to repopulate.

Terry hired me as his new chief of ethics.