Story about an immortality pill—or at least, a story that takes place after society has perfected this pill. Perhaps make it a political story? A threatening country decides to attack because it doesn’t have access to the pill? A third world country? Countries outside of the “civilized world” do not have access to the pill. This can create a lot of conflict, and perhaps the scientific advancement of the immortality societies has weakened its abilities to defend itself? Now this is turning into a story. The pursuit of one of younger members of the society to take on this conflict head-on instead of hiding out and appeasing its increasingly violent, uncivilized neighbor.

World

The government controls the distribution of the pill, and society has become very careful about people’s lives, e.g., cars and any fast moving transportation have been outlawed.

People jump from job to job every five or ten years, but there’s little going on in anyone’s life. The jobs all tend to be managerial, decision making jobs. Nobody wants to be a peon when they’ve lived for so long.

There are few children. The government controls the people that can have children by long lasting contraception drugs mixed in with the immortality pill. The pill must be taken daily to be effective. The children might also be community property because there are so few. I don’t want to get into the story of families that try to change that system.

Leaving the civilized countries (we’ll have to think of a better name for that) is possible, but you must forgo the I-pill. In the beginning, a lot of people left to live “normal” lives. There are fewer and fewer defectors—the longer people live, the more they become attached to their life.

The non-I countries do not have access to the pill or the technology to create the pill. They have attempted to invade the I-countries, but because of inferior technology, the robot sentries have rebuffed the non-I countries. This has not, however, stopped the technological growth of the non-I countries.

Since families became less important over time—after living for such a long time, whether they were your father or brother made little difference—people started going by their familiar names, which were changes to be unique.

Story

Synopsis: A young person realizes the meaningless of his immortal life. He has just finished a ten-year stint as a lawyer and is taking a few years off to decide on his next profession. He considers returning to school, etc. He becomes embroiled in a plot to save the I-countries from being destroyed by the more militant and technologically advanced non-I-countries. (How does he become embroiled? Spell it out!)

D meets S during a surprise birthday for a mutual friend. Ages are no longer celebrated, however. After you’ve lived a few hundred years, it doesn’t make a difference how old you are. It has little meaning in this society. During the birthday part, which takes place near a border town, the partygoers witness a failed invasion attempt by a non-I country. The robot sentries kill the attackers, but not before damage is done to the defense systems. There is a lot of carnage. The partygoers are awestruck by the deaths. After the fight, the robot sentries finally have time to put up a visual barrier that ends the partygoers view of the battlefield.

D and S return the next evening to check on the battlefield. After querying the robot sentries, they discover that the robot sentries are no longer able to repair the damage. The human overseers—which, like lawyer and doctech, is a decade-profession—are, like most immortals with too much time on their hands, rather lazy and probably won’t get around to reprogramming the sentries for a few years. After visiting a few more sites, they realize this problem is endemic to this part of the country and has been hidden by the government.

I want to include a character that is a defector. He lived in an I-society, but left to have a family outside. He has since returned to attempt to topple the consortium of I-governments that keep the pill out of the hands of the other countries. Or perhaps he has another mission? Should he be D or S? Betrayal? Not sure. But it would allow us to visit a non-I country and see what it’s like there. What’s his goal, though?

AT the end, D discovers that the I-countries are going to be overrun and leaves for a non-I country with S, seemingly accepting that his immortal life is over. Last scene shows him in his bedroom, in the morning—there will be an earlier scene describing this ritual—opening a false bottom in his closet and removing a crate of I-pills. He pops one and goes about his day. The box contains at least 100 years worth of pills.

Fragments

The problem with getting older is that eventually everyone falls in love with their own voice and stops listening to other voices.