Conclusions

I am perfect… and there's only 100 of me.

I’m the first though, and that's got to count for something, right? Every last nanometer of my genetic code was engineered to military-grade perfection. Not unlike every day of my childhood.

“Adam Blue,” my eye colour, topped the charts for 75 years.

Society agrees that I’m the ideal in every way. I’m the kind of guy people envy, because their coders didn’t have the resources. While other people have to pay the debts for their telomere rejuvenation, mine are paid for, because I am a decorated soldier. I served my full hundred years and now I’m set for eternal life.

The world is my oyster as they say, except that I never liked oysters and they’ve been extinct now for about 103 years. It's my understanding that the Ph of the ocean cooked them all. Basically, because humans are stupid fuckers…

The availability heuristic of 2051, that considered the demise of the oysters, was lacking in vision. It didn't factor in the real reason that everything turned to shit. In the end, it wasn't global nuclear war, or a poorly aimed asteroid from the heavens. Rather, it was the simple mathematical problem of overpopulation. All those people, in their billions, didn't realise that the doomsday clock was an actual thing. So they kept making more people, well past midnight. It’s fair to say that some people, and some terrorists, had considered this a possible issue. However, during the global, mass extinction of oysters and most other creatures, everyone was too anxious to recall that.

Thankfully, at the time, the authorities didn't have to decide who got to “go on '' after the apocalypse. When pruning the Garden of Eden, God gave us just what we’d asked for; a harrowing worldwide cascade of viruses, fires, tsunamis and famine.

I was created afterward, to tie up loose ends, when all the panic had mostly died down or been subdued.

In 2058, the laws of descendants came in. Capping the amount of children a person can have at one, perfect eternal infant. In theory, Earth's population could be kept safely below apocalyptic levels. Nowadays, all anyone really has to worry about is global nuclear war or a poorly aimed asteroid.

Given the longer lives we now live, it's worth mentioning the conclusions. “Just in case'', the government will sometimes organise a Random Mass Conclusion of Lives. Which is exactly what it sounds like. It is always carefully planned. Usually so few and far between, so that anyone who got angry about it last time has forgotten about it, or is dead.

The RMCL is always carried out inside of the least admired demographics of humanity. Always carefully blamed on something like a terrorist or a virus. A thing that people can universally hate, without anyone actually claiming responsibility.

You might remember Joseph Stalin, from such genocides as the Great Purge, Gulag and many others. From about 1930 to 1953—when thankfully, he had a cerebral haemorrhage and died—Stalin had killed somewhere in the vicinity of nine million people. There’s a rumour he once said:

“The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of a million is a statistic.”

I suppose he would know...

Seems shocking, but it wasn’t anything new. That way of thinking was accepted by humanity long before

Stalin’s lifetime, and ever since. We've been blissfully killing millions for years, through social divides, war and starvation. We’re creative with it. Fuck, humanity has even used a lack of education and human rights to thin the herd. Eventually, we got so good at it we created the coup de gras of conclusions, our very own apocalypse. Maybe not happily, but generally, with little emotional consequence. The trick is, if you're going to kill lots of people, kill the ones who aren't important or well-liked and have someone whom everyone hates do it.

After all the dust of the last apocalypse settled, everyone, bar a few naturals and religious objectors, is engineered nowadays.

Finances permitting, if you can only have one child, you're permitted to make sure it's perfect. You also have the guarantee that none of your children will need to go to war, because the government makes chaps like me, by the hundreds. In this day and age, your life can be designed and planned before you're visible to the naked eye. The real irony is, that the moment you are born, who you are, still depends on the choices you make in life.

Like choosing to spend 20 years in the same bar. At Ben’s Bar, I spend my days gazing into my future through a familiar, weighted glass of liquid amber. If my telomeres would allow it, I would have developed a rounded belly, an inflamed liver and a hunched back, but I still look… perfect.

The counter actually has indentations from its long-term relationship with my elbows, though my elbows are incapable of earning grooves from the countertop in return. Not until I skip my next rejuvenation and let myself age.

The last few times I was due, I told myself that I’d skip the treatment. Death on my terms, finally. Just get old, like my best friend Ben, a natural. Each time I try to, his fragility freaks me out more and I end up turning myself in for rejuvenation. My body has remained in its late twenties for over a century. Long enough that people don’t recognise me anymore and I’ve been able to slowly slip into anonymity over the last 60 years. Even though Ben has been serving me Old Fashioneds, since they went out of fashion in 2223, I’ve always neglected to mention my heritage to him.

He is the only Natural I know personally, though I see them around, here and there. That makes Ben the only person I know blighted by old age. With horrified awe, I watch his nose and ears, which just keep growing incrementally each year. His eyesight and hearing have been deteriorating almost as fast as his knees. I’ve watched his hair fade from brown curls, to white locks that are as bleached as the ruins of the Great Barrier Reef. The whole situation is both distressing and fascinating at the same time.

I hadn’t seen another Adam in three decades and I was starting to think I was the only one left. Being unique had morphed in me, from an oddly satisfying feeling, to a deep desire. I just can’t tell you how nice it is, not to run into yourself on the street. Whenever I do, I'm reminded of all the horrors of war that I keep locked tightly, in the fortified back room of my thoughts. Behind a door made of time and whiskey.

All was well in my world, until one fairly normal Tuesday evening. Ben's reminder for the six o’clock news sounded. This time, its chime didn't just mark its usual placeholder in the evening routine. Tonight it marked my own personal apocalypse.

Ben put the volume up on the Television, enough to hear the daily report. No one but us seemed to be sober enough to care about the news. I suppose that's the whole point of a bar. A place to forget.

Then all of a sudden, this shit happens. My face, all over the six o’clock news. Wide-eyed, Ben flicked the volume up several notches, his mouth hanging open deftly. The increased volume still didn’t garner any new interest and the bad news came floating, uninvited into my comfortable reality. The TV volume had won out against the cracking jukebox playing “Can't Fight the Moonlight '' and even overcame the groggy laughter and dull nocks of pints on tabletops.

“We are hearing today from Builders.co CEO Frank Albrite that the company has released the patent for the Adam Soldier back to the government. This is the first time it has released the patent since it originally filled the contract for the infamous 100 Adams, who famously ended the 2062 War of Descendants.”

Perhaps in homage to all the canaries who are no longer with us, the anchor was styled in yellow, right down to their heart-shaped locket and expensive watch. They spoke in a voice that understated the gravity of the extraordinarily shitty announcement. They stared at the camera with their careful emotionless news reader expression. A perfectly beautiful, non-binary face and the voice to go with it. A face that anyone could find attractive. Being a flesh and blood man, despite my shock, a very small part of my stunned body realised that I did too. They had been so successfully engineered for the job, that even when I hated them, I still wanted them to like me.

The footage shifted jarringly to a press conference. The expertly crafted and irritatingly handsome Frank Albrite was speaking. Son of my engineer Gergory Albright. The guy was the gene-split image of his father. Literally. A perfectly engineered match for his DNA. He was also the highest paid man in the world. As the “disher-out” out of telomere rejuvenation, he essentially held the corporate key to eternal life.

Frank adjusted the microphone and read the announcement from the teleprompter.

“Due to security risks, this announcement has been kept in strict confidence. However, I am now pleased to announce that one thousand new Adam units will be ready in spring. This announcement comes following the declassification of the government's plans for their new peacekeeping force. Units will roll out across all states. All earlier Adam models are invited to re-enlist or be decommissioned.”

I wasn’t surprised that the news then moved seamlessly on from essentially announcing war, to an interview with the oldest man alive on his three hundred and ninetieth birthday.

The shock on Ben's face, as his head pivoted slowly back from the screen to my face, was amusing enough to distract me for a split second. As he turned the TV right down again with his antique remote, my own shock set in. He shuffled in my direction as fast as his arthritic knees could carry him. Snatching up a couple of shot glasses with surprisingly nimble fingers, as he passed the stack that was drying by the sink. Without a word, he put them down between us on the counter, before filling them with the hardest liquor he could find. This liquor only came in very small, very expensive bottles. It could realistically double as rocket fuel and probably contributed to the extinction of oysters.

In the sacred, unspoken, social custom of two grown men drinking, we knocked the vessels back and each tried to pretend that we liked the way it burned down our throats. Three deep breaths later, the pointy edge of the issue at hand was less alarming.

Ben then raised his snowy eyebrows questioningly, accentuating the wrinkles that had already gathered on his forehead over time. I clenched my jaw as the alcohol and the preceding two minutes sank into my mind properly.

“FUCKERS!” I eventually snapped. I threw my empty glass as hard as I could against the nearest unsuspecting wall. Upon impact, it proceeded to satisfyingly shatter into many, small, unrecognisable pieces. Just what I’d like to see happen to the skull of, Frank Fucking Fuck Face Albright.

Several dozing drunks flinched and went back to sipping their spirits. Ben was similarly unmoved by my outburst. He only sighed a lone and flammable breath.

“Another conclusion I think.. Didn't think I'd see that in my lifetime.” As he spoke he lined up a replacement glass and filled it with whiskey.

“I shouldn't have stuck around for this long.” I decided.

Ben’s myopic brown eyes narrowed behind the thick lenses of his glasses. The corners of his mouth ticked up in a familiar comforting grin.

“Don't worry Adam, death is not that bad. I know loads of folks who have died and didn't complain about it afterward.”