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This place had life, once.

When children fight, do they feel empathy when they scratch each others' eyes with sand? I was never in a position to find out, I guess. My childhood was taken with me when I was found out. Six? Maybe seven, it was too long ago to remember now. How many years has it been? I've lost count since I turned ninety.

She told me at that age. Six, or seven. She was a geneticist. She experimented on people, often. My fondness for her slipped after some time. When the agency denied her subjects when they deemed her alterations 'unethical'. She never cared for ethics, so she experimented on herself instead. She had scars from the needles, I remember asking about them. She met my father. He loved her. While I was not yet alive, she continued to experiment. When I was born, she named me Tithonus.

Was this the breakthrough humanity so desired for? If history or myth told me anything, it would have been. She kept me a secret, but sold my genes. Made herself a billionaire. Was the formula flawed? Possibly. It honestly doesn't concern me. When the cure became scarce, I was used by her. She farmed my genes. There was never enough for humanity.

I remember watching it unfold on the TV. Countries over continents, millions lost. The cure was the death of us. Wars were fought over my genes. Europe was the first to succumb to the nuclear crossfire. Asia, next. Billions were killed in a matter of days.

The Americas fell for a different reason. The cure was flawed, and not enough of it was made. The men became sterile and the women became infertile. She didn't consider this. It was unexpected to her, somehow. My cells were limited. Well into my teens, the farming continued, the flawed cures were made.

Then, they died off. They could not breed, and they decayed more rapidly than before. When they aged, their skin fissured. Humanity died because her actions and my genes gave them a flawed cure. She was one of the last to die, constantly supplying herself with her own doses of the cure. When she finally did, I did not mourn her.

I'm sitting here, now, in the old home of my parents. The roof caved in many, many years ago. Dust had piled on the yellowed and faded pictures. I am in one of them. I looked young, then. The carpet is packed with mould, and the plants have penetrated the bricks. I am left here with nobody. I am left here to live for as long as I will. That may be forever; I've already lived a thousand years.

This place had life, once.