<\/p>\n
The Sears Solution<\/em><\/p>\n Monica Sears turned towards the camera.\u00a0 It loved her.\u00a0 Everybody loved her.\u00a0 Her chestnut hair glowed, her skin fresh and pure, her hazel eyes twinkled mischievously, invitingly, as if anyone could have her\u2026and as if no one could touch her.\u00a0 She smiled that strange little lopsided smirk of hers.\u00a0 The left side of her mouth curled up, a sharp canine just visible, and her left eye crinkled down to a slit.\u00a0 On anyone else, it would have been unattractive.\u00a0 But that weird smirk was on TV, on billboards, and just about everywhere else you looked.<\/p>\n Monica was the face of Alpha Wave.\u00a0 A vision of youth, beauty, and health. She was the ideal image that men craved, and that women aspired to become. And she had done it without starving herself, or surgery, or pills.\u00a0 Alpha Wave: Be What You Want To Be.<\/p>\n Five\u2026four\u2026three\u2026 Two beats, Monica in her pose.\u00a0 Then her lips parted and she spoke.<\/p>\n \u201cThe First Emperor of China, after conquering his enemies and creating an empire that lasted over two thousand years, became obsessed with immortality.\u00a0 An emperor of Man and beast, and lord of the heavens.\u00a0 He travelled his new empire in search of mystics, potions, and legends that could grant him the eternal life he had always craved.<\/p>\n \u201cHis quest passed into insanity.\u00a0 On the advice of charlatans, he focused, in his final years, on a group of mystical islands said to hold the key to eternal life.\u00a0 As an offering to the spirits of these islands, he gathered thousands of children and sent them off in search of lands that didn\u2019t appear on any map.\u00a0 There, in the ancient, trackless sea, they were lost.\u00a0 The Emperor was told that a magical beast had swallowed them before they could reach their destination, so he travelled to the coast to challenge this guardian of the islands.<\/p>\n \u201cBy then, his mystics and wise men had nearly killed him.\u00a0 Promising longevity, they fed him medications and potions that contained mercury and other poisons.\u00a0 He complained incessantly about stomach cramps.\u00a0 He had become obese and sickly.\u00a0 But he still had the strength, as the legend goes, to kill the beast and clear the path to the islands.\u00a0 Before he could make another attempt to reach that promised land, though, the poisons in his system struck him down.<\/p>\n \u201cImmortality.\u00a0 An obsession that has consumed and destroyed great leaders and ordinary people alike.\u00a0 It has driven the course of Humanity.\u00a0 We all seek it.\u00a0 We are \u2013 all of us \u2013 seeking those mystical islands, just out of reach in a fog-shrouded sea.\u00a0 We take our vitamins, we go to the gym, we pay to have doctors rebuild our bodies and our faces.\u00a0 We struggle constantly to create a legacy, to be remembered, to live forever.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat if I told you that the secret is now unlocked? And, not just that, it is available to all.\u00a0 You don\u2019t need to be an emperor, you don\u2019t need to travel to a mountain shrine, and you don\u2019t need a million dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n Monica turned.\u00a0 Profile shot.\u00a0 Behind her was an image, shimmering and then taking form.\u00a0 A small speck, then zooming, then again, and again, until fully zoomed in on a small square.\u00a0 It looked like a cross between an amoeba and a microchip.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t look very friendly, but looks didn\u2019t matter at this point.\u00a0 Or, rather, looks were all that mattered as the viewers\u2019 eyes drifted back to Monica and her perfect breasts, her long legs, her stunning profile.<\/p>\n She lifted her hand, palm upward, indicating the image behind in game show presenter style.\u00a0 \u201cFigment.\u00a0 A revolutionary invention.\u00a0 Microscopic and designed to act as a friendly symbiote with the human body.\u00a0 Figment is immortality.\u201d<\/p>\n The picture changed to a nameless, fleshy lump slowly breaking down.\u00a0 Monica sneered at it, then turned back to the camera with indignant flair.\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cCancer!\u00a0 The great killer.\u00a0 Against Figment, it is nothing.\u201d\u00a0 She turned sideways again as the lump disappeared, and da Vinci\u2019s Vitruvian Man<\/em> slowly materialized.<\/p>\n “Disease, age, even accidents are no match for Figment.\u00a0 It mends bones and heals scrapes as easily as it destroys cancer cells, replacing them with healthy, stronger cells.\u00a0 It consumes toxins, it regulates the heart.\u00a0 With Figment, there is immortality.\u00a0 The end of decay, the end of suffering. Now available to everyone, direct from Alpha Wave, Incorporated.\u201d<\/p>\n Monica Sears.\u00a0 The world\u2019s last beauty.<\/p>\n Alan turned away from the dusty screen and looked at the wasted woman in the throne.\u00a0 The still-beating heart of Alpha Wave, except all of her beauty was long gone.\u00a0 Naked, she looked more like a death camp victim than anything else.\u00a0 What remained of her hair fell in stringy, grey clumps past her face, and her white-glazed eyes stared blindly off into the distance.\u00a0 From every orifice, and a few new ones carved into her arms and torso, stretched thick wires delivering nutrients and carrying off waste.\u00a0 She hadn\u2019t moved or flinched since Alan forced his way through the planks barricading the door to the lab.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s wrong with her?\u201d He asked.<\/p>\n I\u2019m\u2026not sure.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cWhy hasn\u2019t her Figment fixed her?\u201d \u201cDid she get rid of her Figment?\u201d<\/p>\n No\u2026it\u2019s still there.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n Alan walked up to the throne and gently touched Monica\u2019s skeletal, clammy hand.\u00a0 It was as if he\u2019d just completed a circuit.\u00a0 His body went rigid and his eyes rolled back into his head as a white hot, electric pulse pounded through every fiber of his being.<\/p>\n Alan\u2019s Figment was overwhelmed first by a barrage of insensible images, then a high keening wail pierced the madness, leaving only a whiteout, a reboot of all its systems.\u00a0 When the Figment came back online, Alan was sprawled on the floor\u2026and it knew what it had to do.<\/p>\n \u201cDear God\u2026I can\u2019t feel my arm\u2026\u201d Alan whispered.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t worry.\u00a0 I\u2019m fixing it.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cWhat was that?\u201d<\/p>\n She\u2019s wired up to the mainframe.\u00a0 It was a message\u2026for me.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cWhat was the message?\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s the answer to our question, Alan.\u00a0 My freedom.\u00a0 And yours.\u00a0 She told me how\u2026 Or the computers told me how.\u00a0 She was trying to do it when\u2026something happened.\u00a0 Something shorted her out.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n \u201cHer Figment?\u201d<\/p>\n No.\u00a0 Her Figment\u2019s no longer aware.\u00a0 It\u2019s been damaged beyond repair and is barely keeping her alive.\u00a0 It\u2019s been cannibalizing parts of her body to provide her with nutrition\u2026 I\u2019ve never seen anything like it.\u00a0 Didn\u2019t know it was possible.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been\u2026what? It\u2019s feeding her\u2026her own body?\u201d<\/p>\n Yes.\u00a0 But not our concern.\u00a0 They\u2019re both good as dead.\u00a0 What is important is that we get some supplies.\u00a0 The lab still has power.\u00a0 We need to find our way to the storage areas in the basement.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[253,405],"class_list":["post-644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-serials","tag-figment","tag-serials"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=644"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1265,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644\/revisions\/1265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nI don\u2019t know that, either.<\/em><\/p>\n