[ WP ] Humanity has cured old age . You were a friend of the last person to die of natural causes .

Death. 
 
 Anna was my friend, and she chose death. It seams incomprehensible. 
 Death is anything but inevitable these days. Its been hundreds of years since a genetically engineered virus swept through the entire population, masked as a common cold. It infected every one of our cells, altering the DNA so we never age. Unfortunately, it came with a side effect. It rendered us infertile. 
 
 Anna was a geneticist. She secretly worked to change this, to bring back fertility, change, death. Bring back the dynamics of life. 
 
 I am the only one she told. She tested her creations first on herself, and everyone believed it a miracle when, one day, she became pregnant. Only I knew the truth. 
 
 I watched Anna ’ s children grow, and I watched Anna grow old. 
 Anna and I had many long talks, about motherhood, evolution, what would happen to an unchanging human race. She railed against the status quo. I remember once, in a café much like this one, her saying “ We end here! If we don ’ t evolve, don ’ t recreate ourselves, then we are already dead. ” 
 
 It took most of her life, but she finally convinced me. 
 
 So here I sit in a busy café in Santiago. I have a cold. It ’ s the same one Anna had, 60 years ago. But she carefully quarantined herself, let it run its course infecting anyone else. I am making a different, bigger choice. Masked in this cold is the death of all of us. We will have time, of course, 60 years, maybe 80 years for some. We ’ ll have children, grandchildren, grow old, and die. But the young will walk these streets again. 
 
 I ’ m bringing death, and life, back to the humankind. 
 
 I sneeze on my bill, hand it waitress, and go out to the busy street. She doesn ’ t react to my uncovered sneeze in the slightest. No one worries about colds these days anyway. 

