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One way or another, this will be the final entry in a journal of humanity’s fall. From the beginning I have chronicled the events since we found the actual Fountain of Youth. I shall now close this chapter in human history.
In the beginning it was an amazing thing. It had astounding restorative and regenerative abilities. The men who found it hid it well, even sending out missions to continue to search for it centuries after it was found. Lesser wells were found, but none like this. It would be many centuries after the Fountain was found before science would finally discover the properties of this God Water. It could not heal the sick - merely enhance your current state and put it in stasis of sorts. The health had to be supported though, and the ways some made sure they kept their youth created myths and stories that lasted millennium.
For hundreds of years they protected it, and as they continued to live they amassed wealth and power. They could not die and literally had all the time in the world. The way mortal men would play chess on a board, these men and women would play with the world as their plaything. They formed what became known as the Illuminati. They formed governments; they toppled kingdoms, all from the whim of men bored from centuries of time.
They could not get sick or be injured severely enough to kill them. Hunger would pain them, thirst would make their throat crack and bleed, but it was easy enough to bypass all that. They each found different ways. It seems that your nature decides how to replenish your body. I saw some men with dark souls, if I can even believe in souls any longer, which would feed on blood from the lesser species of man. I saw good men that replenished themselves with meditation and music.
In the thirteen hundreds a faction broke away, wanting to gift this to the whole world. They sought to share the source with everyone, but were blocked by the men in power of the site. Instead they turned to science and magic of the era, alchemy. They attempted to duplicate the God Water. It was a disaster and created the pandemic now known as the Black Death.
They brought new people into the fold over time, expanding their secret society. They brought in the elite, the beautiful, the rich, and the artistic. Some of the new, younger initiates did not agree with the established rules, and rebelled. They ran. And they were hunted. It was called the Inquisition. It was during this period they realized they had no way to reverse it or remove people from eternal life.
When science began catching up in the late 1900’s and after, they began to uncover what it was that allowed them to live forever. They found it was a virus of sorts, but different than any other. It was joined between each of them and linked them, but had mutated into a new and unique strain in each person. It wasn’t until quantum physics came into play they realized the full extent of this symbiotic life within them. It spanned worlds and realities. Some called it the God Virus and wanted to replicate it. They could not.
It started small, minor diseases which grew quickly out of control, until the virus would destroy other people’s immune systems and deliver that health to the men that began the research. It was like a worldwide vampire system, with home delivery by carrier pigeon made of microscopic creatures. Once again they realized their folly too late.
It wasn’t until the group split again, as it had done many times before, that things took a turn for the worse. The two groups bickered over who should have access to the Fountain of Youth. With the technology available, weapons were no longer personal though, and wars were fought from afar now. This one would not be any different. Politics, propaganda, and then the attack. It was a new weapon, it was not meant to hurt the huge protective structure, but instead vaporize the God Water source. And it did what it was meant to do, with unexpected results. The cloud that escaped from the ventilation system mutated again with the new radioactive elements introduced to it.
It traveled across the land, unseen and untrackable. It interacted with rain and electric storms. It was ingested by animals, plants, people, and machines. The machines became infected by the electricity in the air. Soon, life was changing. Humans became like animals, and vice versa. It was then that the governments began preemptive strikes and the machines rewrote their commands to suit their own newly born ideas.
I don’t know if humanity will survive, but the men that started it all did. Hours ago I threw the last shovelful of dirt on their metal casket at the foot of the unstable volcano. One large metal container the size of a back-yard shed and made from a reinforced trailer. All forty-two in one container, in the dark, forever. I leave them to their well-earned fate. And I will cross this broken, blasted, and diseased land hoping to find a new start for humanity. Or my final rest, though that may not be possible, because I once had a taste of forbidden fruit also and may now be doomed to wander forever, unable to die of thirst, hunger, or exposure. I shall live in this hell I helped create.