Story Plots: Immortal

Given that I'm a math major and philosophy enthusiast, and only two or three people ever have gotten me to enjoy literature (shout-out here to my former English teacher in high-school, all-around nicest person ever to walk the Earth, who randomly gave me tea on cold days and made To the Lighthouse and Shakespeare (I would mention Tolstoy's Death of Ivan Ilych and the other one (can't remember the title) about a guy on a train talking about how he stabbed his wife (my favorite stories from that class), but I suspect I would enjoy Tolstoy even on my own) entertaining for even me, the most hard-headed and determined of Science and Math people - you can tell since I triple-nested parentheses in this shout-out) I tend to look for interesting plots in a book as opposed to writing, since I can't tell the difference between 'good' and 'great' writing (I can easily identify and discard boring stuff). I also tend to make up what I consider interesting plots (by the way, my all time winner for fantastic plot is Watchmen, with the exception of the Dr. Manhattan-is-God crap that never made any sense - 1984 is also quite good, as is Yudkowsky's Three Worlds Collide and the movie Blade Runner) and story-universes.

I will begin posting these up on my site. The first of these plots/universes is the universe of Immortal:

This is a story universe that takes place sometime in the 25th century. Space exploration and commercial development has largely been a flop, as has AI research. However, a massive and drawn-out biotech revolution has been going on since the mid-21st century. At the turn of the century (21st - 22nd) it was realized that every 20 years or so, medical technology expanded the average lifespan by 25 years - meaning everyone was expected to have remaining 5 years more than they started out with. This was hailed (rightfully) as a huge event - it meant effective immortality. This revolution reached a climax around 2200 (beginning of the 23rd century) with lifespan improvement of roughly 30 years for every 20 years of research.

During this time period, a huge number of political and demographic changes swept the world. For example, all the developed and most of the developing nations saw a massive burst in population since people were being born, but nobody was dying. By 2250, much of the world had declared birth outright illegal for economic reasons, with mandatory sterilization. Universities and schools closed down, with the occasional death being made up for by meager immigration from the Third World. Meanwhile, the third world continued to have normal birth and death rates since much of it was too mired in poverty to afford the expensive 'immortality' treatments. The obvious exceptions to this rule were the powerful families that dominated the third world. Realizing exactly how much the power gap between the oligarchs and the people had widened, and seeing the potential of immortality and ignorance to convince the people that the rulers were actual flesh-and-blood gods, bloody power struggles within these families produced a series of strongmen who ruled the third world. Each strongman was considered (because they were immortal) a god in his own country, and none allowed any other person, even family relations, to possess the modern western treatments. Thus the third world remained poor and underdeveloped, with the dictators trading raw materials to the increasingly flourishing and demanding 1st world economies in exchange for the immortality treatments.

However, by 2300, the immortality trend has begun to reverse - for every 25 years of medical research, only 20 years of expanded lifespan are achieved. The world is optimistic that a new technology can bring the world back into immortality, though, and things continue as they are. The medical revolution grinds to a halt around 2350, and all attention and resources are turned to the new technology. Then, in 2430, the new technology demonstrably and violently fails, just a few decades before the scheduled expiration of most of the 1st world's lifespan. Predictably, panic ensues, and people try to make denials, etc. The story picks up in 2450, with the major headline of the first natural deaths in the 1st world in 2 centuries. Shortly after, one of the strongmen dies, and rebellions and confusion sweep the third world. The story was to feature philosophical ideas about life and death (how would someone who for much of his life was convinced he would be immortal face death?) and a stonking great scene where a first world military force (employing hastily-created young mercenaries (created when immortality failed as a fail-safe for civilization), since all the real citizens are too old and frail) launches a military intervention in a collapsed third-world regime.