Got Extra Fat?

It all started with a discovery that didn’t seem particularly life-altering. A cosmetics company sponsoring research on human longevity figured out special properties of the cells that make up the outer human ear, scientifically known as Keratinized Stratified Squamous Epithelium (KSSE), or type of tissue characterized by multiple layers of flattened cells that are hardened and waterproofed by keratin. Specifically, KSSE have longer biological life and virtually do not age or form wrinkles.

You probably never wondered why human ears, once fully grown, never change their shape, sag, or develop wrinkles. But one brilliant scientist did.

He was a plastic surgeon who along with regular cosmetic procedures such as fat liposuction, nose and boobs jobs, had a hobby on the side with an expensive lab at his mansion's campus, where he tried to figure out how to extend the life of the cells making up human skin. When the cosmetics company came to him with the suggestion that ear cells could be the key, he was flabbergasted. It was so obvious, he couldn’t believe he hadn't come up with this idea on his own!

He started experimenting with KSSE cells, harvesting them from behind the ear of the participating subjects. He had no shortage of volunteers, usually rich women who wanted to look younger and would pay any amounts of money to do that without invasive plastic surgery. He then mixed the harvested cells with natural plant-based ingredients such as coconut, almond, and jojoba oils, ginger, tea tree and rosemary extracts, hyaluronic acid and other anti-aging and skin-firming substances. And then this substance in the form of creams and ointments was rubbed into the achy joints, face, neck, and hands of the subjects.

The first experimental results were great: the subjects’ process of ageing slowed down, arthritis virtually disappeared, and the participants felt younger and more energetic. Inspired by the results, scientists started to add more KSSE cells to the creams and figured out the way to inject them into the subjects directly rather than topically as creams and ointments. People’s life extended first to 150 and then to 200 years.

However, in about the third generation, scientists started to notice that these cells aggressively spread all over the human body, flattening and hardening the soft tissues of internal organs. The first victim was the female womb that completely lost its elasticity and ability to expand for the fetus. Before the problem was identified, many women died as a result of the fetus’ constrained growth, invitro death and infections from fetus decomposition. Over time, all women lost the ability to carry a baby to term. To continue the human race, scientists had to grow babies in special incubators.

With the KSSE cells still spreading aggressively in the human bodies, human skin started to harden as well. Eventually, it lost its elasticity and started to look like tree bark. When it began splitting from movement and tension, scientists came up with zipper-like contraptions that helped to keep the splitting skin together.

Meanwhile, due to the prolonged human life, overpopulation and overtaxing of resources including healthcare and agriculture, the gap between the poor and the rich continued to widen. Around 2090, the richest one percent of the population migrated into the heart of Russia and built a paradise for themselves there, guarded off from the poors by a tall impenetrable wall. However, even they couldn’t escape the degeneration of tissue cells transformed by KSSE. By 2140s, they poured money and resources into research to reverse the KSSE devastating effects, to no avail. So, money or no money, old money or new money, humans were walking around the planet Earth stiff and zipped, afraid of making a movement that would break their skin.

Until one day, the great-great-grandson of the plastic surgeon-scientist went to his ancestor’s sprawling mansion in Texas, to explore his roots and to look for some clues to the human devolution. In the basement of the plastic surgery clinic, he stumbled upon huge freezers of human fat collected from the countless liposuction procedures in the early 21st century. Since he was a scientist himself, he quickly patented the method of lubricating the human skin by injecting layers of fat under it.

However, due to the limited supply of fat cells, the procedure was so expensive that only one percent of the richest one percent could afford it. They walked around their guarded compounds like zipped up fat balls, dreaming of the technological wonder that would put them back into the human form of the 21st century.

And that, my friends, is the story of how the human race died out.

Author's note: I was working on this story for the most recent longevity challenge, but my life is so crazy busy this semester I didn't manage to finish it by the deadline. Besides, I don't think I would have been able to get it to the 1,000 words (it's at 750 now). But why let a good idea go to waste, right? Especially because it is based in true scientific properties of KSSE cells.