FINAL FRONTIER

Pracyon Particles

Year 3801, the planet is overrun with poverty and overpopulation. Crimes have been a natural occurrence every day that everyone seemed to be getting used to it. Dr. Rhend Prac, a 228-year-old neurological scientist goes to work every day knowing the risks of being mugged or ambushed by scraplers for centuries now. Scraplers refer to people who forcefully take Pracyon particles out of people. These particles discovered in the 36th century are found in the human brain particularly the hypothalamus. As discovery about it progressed, it was known that they are responsible for most humanly emotions like love, anger, lust, sadness, and the like. Dr. Prac was the one who pioneered the study about it that is why it was named after him.

Due to the current state of the planet, people try to escape their misery by living in a simulated world powered by these particles. Selling them is a big business in the black market because they are very valuable, highly expensive, and extracting them out of someone is already prohibited by law by the end of the 37th century due to the effects of extraction. When pracyon particles are extracted from the brain, a person becomes impassive for about 2 months before the brain starts to deteriorate and cause death within 3 weeks. These particles do not replenish in the brain when extracted. Also, they only last for 8 weeks at most depending on the quality of the pracyon tube used to contain it. Although a synthetic has been invented, they only lasts for weeks before it disintegrates and vanish. This is because the synthetic ones feed on memories so to avoid further damage to the brain, it was designed to only last for 5 weeks in order to buy some time to inject the lost natural pracyon particles back to the brain.