The tricky medicine (part I)

***

The distant and quite ancient dream of humankind were finally achieved as the old order crumbled. For centuries, humanity had waged wars and engaged in petty politics centred on land share and resources. But the final global conflict and the catastrophic economic downturn that followed nearly ruined civilisation, threatening to bury every scrap of progress made from the earliest empires to the modern age.

The last fading strongholds of national government rule were the long-term projects -- those that spanned beyond a single human lifespan. Even with the staggering advances in medicine, tasks like deep-space travel and investments in megastructure construction remained unachievable for individuals. This was the final justification for the state's existence, but it was also a boiling point; inevitably, through accident or arrogance, authoritarian stupidity would rise, leading to yet another cycle of wars.

The old order was simply too unstable and too slow to adapt to a reality sculpted by emerging technologies. In many cases, state authorities had even tried to stifle the pace of innovation, attempting to halt the spread of technology just to hide the growing obsolescence of a rudimentary government. Furthermore, in times of peace, taxes were squandered on impractical research, useless projects, and foolish social experiments -- a systemic waste of human potential and valuable resources.

Then came the rise of gene therapy.

As lifespans extended, the horizon of commercial activity shifted. A long life allowed corporations to outpace national governments in both economic stability and long-term influence. It took nearly a century to dismantle the old nations and establish the Clusters, replacing borders with a global web of policies and protocols. Finally, commercial operations grew large enough to afford the projects of a truly astronomical scale. An investor could now place their capital and wait a hundred years for a profit, only to reinvest it even further.

This evolution came with a price. To seise control, military contractors across the globe -- organised into powerful unions in Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Oceania -- had to consolidate and sacrifice immense amounts of capital and investment to weaponise their agenda. They began providing highly automated drones, advanced intelligence infrastructure, and orbital bombardment satellite networks to the standing governments at a fraction of their actual cost. It was a calculated manoeuvre; they armed the states only to seise the control to those weapons at a precisely engineered moment.

Where democratic governments had been too timid to end the plague of authoritarianism and dictatorship, the commercial unions made the decision for them. This brave decision led to a century of cold, soft confrontation with the remnants of the old rule, but the past could never hope to defeat the future. All the old fashioned regimes and their bloated bureaucracies were destined to fall.

Mutual commercial interests and the rigid bureaucracy of global regulations pushed ancient wars to the dustiest shelf of history. Society did not become social-oriented; instead, it forged a new deal -- a mixture of technocratic cold steel, the absolute freedom of trade, and a culture that prised privacy and the optimisation of human potential above all else.

The key to this transition was the extension of the human lifespan. However, this enormous longevity came with a price and was not fit for everyone. The first century of this new era did not see exponential population growth, as even the longlivings were not immortal: accidents and unfixable diseases remained a threat. To address this, strict biological regulations were introduced. Gene therapy was never intended as a universal cure for the young or the frail; instead, it became a duty -- a mandate to push humankind beyond its ancient biological limits and to pave a way beyond the terrestial life. This therapy required a constant intake of specialised medications at predetermined intervals, with the dosage and frequency strictly regulated by the inter-Cluster policies and protocols.

The mechanism of the therapy was straightforward but demanding: it effectively halted the ageing process by manipulating specific gene pairs, essentially switching off the expiration date of the human cell. However, the effect was not permanent; it degraded over time, requiring constant refreshing through the globally controlled meds. It was not a miracle cure for existing illness, nor could it reverse the damage of age once it had occurred; it simply held the human body in a biological stasis.

Unregulated usage of the therapy was considered a severe crime, largely because of how precisely the math of profit and interest was calculated across such long horizons. In this new society, it was not uncommon to have a sibling who was a hundred years older than oneself, provided the family's assets and management duties justified the cost of their extension.

***

Twenty years before the fatal accident, Lizzie had been contacted by a medical doctor who introduced himself as a lead gene therapist from a Research and Development department of the very Cluster's division she partially owned. The approach had been executed in a strictly formal, entirely unsuspicious manner. The electronic message originated from a legitimate source; every signature was verified, and the cryptographic seals were all in their proper places.

At first glance, it appeared to be the kind of common, tedious official research report sent from R&D to major stakeholders. But this time, the tone was unexpectedly personal.

"I am sending this report to you personally because it may be of your specific interest," the introduction began.

"At the moment, it has already been rejected as non-significant by the Shareholders committee. Please read it carefully; I hope you will find more within these pages than they did."

It was a second passage in the introduction, however, that truly captured her attention:

"I know you are quite concerned about the current stagnation in further gene therapy development. Please review this report. More is coming."

The report was dense, saturated with data from a vast array of simulations and raw physical experiments. While meticulously prepared, it was clearly not yet ready for formal peer review -- it was too raw, perhaps too dangerous for public scrutiny. As Lizzie scanned the findings, the outcome left her stunned. The objective of the research wasn't the mere optimisation of existing therapy; it wasn't about holding the line against time. It was about reversing the process entirely.

At this point in her life, Lizzie had already begun her slow retreat into agoraphobia. She spent more and more of her days sequestered within the artificial safety of her habitat, rarely venturing into the public events. She was terrified of death, haunted by the realisation that current medicine technology could only pause the clock, never turn it back. In her isolation, the research report had found its most desperate and attentive reader.

The race between competing corporations to find more effective ways to sustain genetic integrity was nothing new. However, every competitor remained focused solely on halting the aging process entirely. The existing therapies were already capable of slowing biological decay to a crawl, with the most optimistic estimates projecting a lifespan of several thousand years.

From a pragmatic standpoint, there was no commercial interest in reversing the process. Even for those whose ambitions reached far beyond the boundaries of the Solar System, rejuvenation was seen as a luxury without a purpose. Interstellar travel remained, at its core, a brutal engineering problem. No vessel yet designed was capable of self-maintenance for the millennia required to reach a neighbouring star. Even if a hull could hold, navigation across such vast distances was a nightmare of signal delays and autonomous drift. In a world where you could already live for thousands of years, the whole global community saw no reason to turn the clock back -- they only cared about keeping it running.

***

Mikko returned to his home to find it empty. His mindset was far less driven by curiosity than Adrian’s; perhaps because he was still able to find contentment in the simple, quiet things of his prolonged life. He had joined the longevity program centuries after Adrian, and for him, the transition had been smooth. One year bled into the next in a rhythm that felt almost perfect.

His way of thinking and his approach to challenges had long since adapted to the long-life scheme. No one knew for certain what caused these mental and behavioural shifts: was it a natural adaptation of the human brain, a forced evolution, or merely a side effect of the gene therapy? Science had become a practical tool for engineering and commerce, and since there was no immediate profit in studying the root cause of these psychological changes, the question remained unanswered.

Regardless of the cause, the benefits were undeniable: more detailed, hyper-logical planning and a significant reduction in primal fears. Yet, the old human ghost still lingered. Occasionally, during the depth of winter, Mikko would experience heart-beating emotions -- visceral, unbidden surges of feeling. Decades ago, his second son had died in an space construction accident, an event far removed in both space and time, yet this piece of memory still had a way of salting his blood. It was exactly this cold, sharp emotion that welcomed him into the silence of his home.

The first thing he did was check his messages; only one of them held his interest -- the upcoming anniversary event. His wife, Virta, had decided to host a gathering at their home, a rare occasion in their social circle. Such events, filled with discussions and clashing opinions on everything from new regulatory policies to cutting edge engineering solutions, were a welcome distraction from wandering thoughts and useless emotions. However, that was scheduled for a later point on time line.

For now, his mind remained anchored to his late son. Memories of the kid's graduation and his first assignment to the space structure engineering department remained as vivid as if they had occurred only days ago. Mikko had been profoundly proud of him, despite their sharp disagreement over his son's assignment to the Mars Orbital Ring construction.

Mikko had never been fond of Mars; to him, it was a dull, small, toxic and cold piece of rock. Every logical thought he had on the subject suggested that such a useless sphere was better suited for dismantling -- broken down for raw materials and ancient museum collectibles from the era of early robotic exploration.

He scrolled through his saved archives, text chats with his son popping up on his terminal. The communication lags were preserved in the timestamps: sometimes ten minutes for a reply, sometimes an hour or more, all depending on the orbital alignment and relays involved. The logs were a depiction of a colossal scale endeavour -- tricky engineering puzzles, logistics nightmares, and simple, human talk.

But on one particular winter day, when the light-speed lag was only five minutes, every connection abruptly closed. During a shift on the construction site, a cargo tug had slammed into an incomplete section of the orbital ring. At the tug's velocity, the kinetic energy was enough to shatter the unfinished megastructure entirely, taking the engineering personnel with it. That was the end of the story. The wreckage of the orbital construction was swallowed by the martian gravity well, dragging everyone down into the dust. That was how Mars became a grave—and in Mikko's mind, it gave the planet one more reason to be dismantled for materials.

Mars had always been plagued by bad luck -- a small, dry, and frozen wasteland choked with toxic perchlorates and iron oxide rust. Yet, for some reason, this godforsaken spot had always attracted humanity's attention. In the old ancient times, it was even considered a candidate for terraforming -- a naive, stupid dream of transforming a lifeless rock into a green, living world.

Nowadays, that dream has been long buried. Mars is nothing more than a cold, dusty mineral extraction hub sitting on the jagged border of the Inner System. Despite the catastrophic construction accident that claimed Mikko's son, the Orbital Ring was eventually finished, decades behind schedule. Ironically, the primary purpose of the ring remained purely industrial: it provided a practical way to hoist raw goods from the claws of the planet's gravity well. Now, however, the structure is more heavily armed than an orbital deep-space crawler, bristling with defensive measures designed to ensure that no collision of such kind ever threatens its integrity again.

His immersion in the past was suddenly broken by a call from Virta. Her voice crackled in his ear, clear despite whatever distance lay between them.

"My medical forum just wrapped up," she said. "I'm heading home now."

"I'll be here," Mikko replied, leaning back in his chair. "See you soon. An hour? Two?"

"About two hours, maybe a little more. Wait for me there -- I have some interesting stuff I want to discuss."

"I'm not going anywhere," he promised. "See you then."

The call ended. Mikko and Virta had lived together for a long time, yet their lives were often defined by absence. As a medical researcher, her work frequently required long journeys to specialised labs located in deep space; weeks or even months of transit for a one way trip was a standard part of her career.

Earth itself was no longer used for the messy business of experimentation. Under the Preservation Regulations, the planet had been transformed into a luxurious cradle for humankind -- a pristine sanctuary designed to host endless conferences, high-level forums, Clusters think centres, and diplomatic summits. It was a deliberate evolution: the birthplace of the species had become its most exclusive resort, supported by a massive, highly regulated tourism industry that ensured the cradle remained as perfect as the day of dawn of the first civilisations.

Mikko decided to turn his attention back to the anomalous vehicle logs. He found the task a welcome distraction, a way to channel his restless energy into something productive. The painstaking nature of the work finally began to yield results; out of the chaotic pile of files, a series of templates and connections emerged, and eventually, a coherent timeline began to take shape.

The timeline had been a difficult nut to crack. Some logs adhered to the ancient, Earth based time systems, while others utilised the modern Universal Solar Time Measurement System (USTS). Most alarming, however, were the entries that seemed to be a total mess -- sporadically switching between timing systems without logic and pattern, while other data points were simply corrupted beyond recognition.

Despite the digital chaos, Mikko's persistence allowed him to restore order and bridge the gaps between the conflicting records. To gain a bird's eye view of the entire accident's time line, he highlighted several major events and established them as pivot points, anchoring the scattered data into a single, terrifying picture.

"Solar Pulse. A funny new name for what was once just a 'second' back in the old ages," Mikko muttered to himself.

Since the transition to USTS, the price of Cesium -- essential for the precision of atomic clocks -- had remained high and remarkably stable. Rumours suggested the German Cluster was exporting the element to the Outer System in massive quantities.

"What if ..." His flow of thought was abruptly severed.

Virta had arrived later than expected; it seemed the day had been more eventful than she had anticipated. Although the heavy oak door to their home was unlocked, she made no effort to enter quietly. The old wood swung shut with a distinctive, heavy thud that echoed through the house.

"Hi there! I'm back! Late and sorry ..." Virta called out, her voice was intentionally loud as if she expected her husband might already be asleep.

Mikko had been waiting for her, but having dug so deep into the technical wreckage of the logs, the passage of time had slipped away from him. He stood up slowly from his massive chair, leaving his unfinished thoughts scattered across the digital workspace on his table. They finally met near the kitchen -- a month of distance and silence finally closing between them.

"Hmm... hello there, stranger," he replied with a slight, ironic smile.

"It was only one Earth month this time," he continued, holding her gaze. "How are you feeling?"

"Oh, I was expecting all the homesick souls to be asleep by now," she replied, returning a friendly, tired smile.

They hugged tightly for a moment, standing in the silence of the house before sharing a long, familiar kiss.

"Should we eat first?" Mikko asked, stepping back.

"And drink," she confirmed. "I hope there's plenty of frozen stock in the pantry, and that your crazy friend has equipped you with his usual collection of ales."

They moved further into the deep of kitchen to prepare the meal. In this age, it was a simple task; the modern microwave units and high-speed cookware could have a full meal ready in under twenty minutes.

"Not this time," Mikko replied, programming the interface on the microwave. "Adrian is quite busy with that latest incident. I think the thing has fully consumed his hungry mind."

Virta checked the fridge for a drink, bypassing the soft drinks for a bottle of wine. She turned back toward Mikko, the bottle in her hand.

"I just hope his mind didn't consume yours as well," she whispered into his ear.