They’re hailed as a marvelous breakthrough in modern medi-cine. Their inventors, two scientists from South Africa, are awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine for their work. The tiny robots are too small to see with the naked eye, but are capable of cooperating to eradicate any disease and to repair any damage done to the human body. The Fixers, as they’re called, usher in what many refer to as the Golden Age of Humanity.
Despite warnings from paranoid extremist groups, governments around the world approve Fixers for widespread use. Billionaire philanthropists donate their entire fortunes to fund efforts that bring Fixers to impoverished nations, making certain that every human on the planet in need is able to receive treatment.
Within one year, cancer becomes little more than a -nuisance—-curable with one treatment and no side effects.
Within two years, HIV, cerebral palsy, Huntington’s disease, blindness, polio, and male pattern baldness are eradicated. They become footnotes in history.
Genetic defects are repaired in utero.
Two years, nine months, seven days, and two hours after Fixers are approved for public use, the world experiences its first full day without a single death. It is the day humanity becomes God.
It begins on 26 January 2016 at 7:35 a.m. EST at a Starbucks in Augusta, Georgia. Donald Catt, already irritated over having to wait in line, completely loses his cool when the barista doesn’t know how to make his drink the way he likes it. Despite the barista’s attempts to calm him, Donald refuses to leave until he gets what he wants, prepared exactly the way he wants it.
The store manager eventually calls the police. Donald Catt resists, and the officers have no choice but to Taser him. The electrical shock causes a Fixer, deployed to repair Donald’s erectile dysfunction, to malfunction. It scrambles the Fixer’s software and initiates self-replication.
Fixers were designed to replicate under strictly regulated conditions, but the damaged Fixer replicates uncontrollably, at an exponential rate, using whatever materials are at hand. That includes still-twitching, undercaffeinated Donald Catt.
Attempts to quarantine Georgia are unsuccessful, and the new Fixers, whose sole function is to replicate, consume the entire planet in three days, leaving behind nothing but an ocean of gray goo.
20 October 2015
My situation at school deteriorated. Marcus and Adrian glued my locker shut and wrote Space Boy gargles alien balls on the door in permanent marker, and I couldn’t walk the halls without being stalked by whispers and cruel laughter. I tried to ignore them, but that only made them meaner. In PE, Adrian’s been keeping his distance, but I’ve noticed the murderous glares he shoots me across the gym. I started something I’m certain he’s determined to finish.
Diego is still a mystery, but I enjoy spending time with him. He listens when I need to vent, talks when I don’t want to, and knows more about literature than anyone I’ve ever met. The only thing about him that unnerves me is the dark look that falls over him when I tell him about something that Marcus said or that Jay Oh and Adrian have done. It’s like a completely different person replaces the smiling Diego I’ve come to know. And then, quicker than a summer storm, it disappears, leaving me to wonder if I imagined his reaction.
Nothing will make me change my mind about the button, but I’m trying my best to maintain the status quo for the days that remain. I figure if I keep my head down, maybe I can serve out the balance of my life sentence in relative peace. Wake up, go to school, go home. Repeat until the world ends.
? ? ?
The house was quiet when I got home from school—Mom wasn’t screaming at anyone, and Charlie wasn’t being Charlie. It was nice. Living in a house with my mother, brother, and Nana means that someone is usually shouting or dashing from one room to the next as if everything is of monumental importance. I wish they understood how little their actions matter. With the end of the world looming, I can finally see the pointlessness of everything. How the whole of human civilization is nothing more than a mosquito’s annoying buzz to the universe.
My stomach rumbled, so I figured I’d make a snack and watch TV while there was no one around to bother me. The fridge was pretty barren, so I settled for peanut butter and jelly. The bread had some mold on it, but I cut it off, too hungry to care.