Trainspotting

As he looked around the bar, he felt a glow of satisfaction was over him. This moment alone, was worth all of the hardships, the nights of frustration and the scores and scores of wasted test‐tubes and DNA samples. This moment, where social gatherings were once again populated by the young and the restless. Just like it had always been, till around 200 years ago, when suddenly the population pyramid began to completely invert itself. He thought about the weird chain of events that his life had been.

Birth control and increased life expectancy had come together with wholly unexpected consequences, and now there were just not enough young people in the world, and too many old ones. And the world was worried. The response was swift, and quite unnatural. The world’s governments got together and started a research station where they brought together ‘representative specimens’ of all the ‘diverse’ people from the world, to use all the politically correct terms. He had been one such chosen specimen, taken from his home when he had been 2. Or so the records he had been shown claimed, he had no memory of anything of course. Millennia of human evolution still hadn’t figured out a way to make the brain remember things from its first 2 years of existence. The important‐looking people at the research station had then proceeded to conduct a battery of tests on them, in an effort to separate the elusive ‘youth’ gene. The idea therefore was simple. Make all the old people younger.

All the nights of frustration, the scores of wasted test‐tubes and DNA samples later, the important-looking people proclaimed importantly, that they had it. People could now retain their youth forever, eternally, indefinitely. The pill would not mess with their aging process itself, but their vitality and appearance would be restored to that of a 25‐year old. Everyone agreed that this was the age that could be best described as the ‘prime of the youth’. And he had finally been released from the research station, along with the rest of the ‘representative specimens’. They were thanked profusely for their role in saving the world, in their selfless submission to all sorts of invasive procedures and characterization techniques. For having gone through the program to the end, with courage, even as they watched half the people they had grown up with in the station die around them from various effects of radiation, gene mutation and psychoanalyses. They were given a new start to life, set up in the biggest cities from their respective parts of the world, large house, high‐paying job, the works. And then, just as they were about to leave their home of the past 25 years, the most important-looking person had come up to them gravely and said ‘And remember, this research station never existed’.

Sure, it never existed, he thought to himself. He really had no complaints about the one year of his life after that. They really had taken care of him as they had promised. He didn’t especially feel for lost childhoods and missing the joy of growing up and all such. He lived for the moment, and this current moment was looking very promising indeed, with the girl smiling at him from across the bar. He finished his drink and started towards her, preparing the smile of his that just always worked.

As they were putting their dresses back on in his room, he had an uneasy feeling in his stomach about the past hour. It was not that the girl was familiar, he got that feeling with almost every girl, and he put it down to his growing up in a secluded environment. It was something else, something more involved than her, it was more about them. It was as if their intimacy was strained, was held up by something else that had happened before. And yet, nothing had happened before, he was sure of it. If there was one thing he was good at, it was remembering the faces of the ladies who had been in his room. And she most definitely hadn’t.

“Hey”, he called out to her, just as she was preparing to leave, “I didn’t quite catch your name.”

“Anna”, she smiled back, “Anna Chrystoweilen, and yours?”

He felt like he had been kicked in the gut. His head swam, as she faded in and out of his vision alternately. His stomach went for a toss, and he clutched at it involuntarily. He held on to the side of the bed to steady himself. He looked up at her; she was still smiling, looking enquiringly at him, with a hint of concern on her face. Maybe she’d noticed the marked change in him, the colour draining from his face. He hurriedly tried to regain composure, or as much of it as he could. He managed a weak smile and whispered “Philip”.

“That’s a nice name”, she said as she walked towards the door. She stopped at the door and looked back, a wistful look on her face, and for a moment the wonder pill or the youth pill or whatever it was they were calling it, lost all its effect, and she looked all of the 50 years she was. “That was the name of my son before...”, she shook her head, closing the door behind her.

He collapsed on to the floor, retching, a mixture of tears and saliva flowing down his face. No air would go in, as hard as he tried, and his heart was hammering away like it was putting in one last mighty effort before giving away. He punched the floor in front of him till his knuckles bled, and one of them showed the white of the bones. Blinding flashes of memory seared his brain, from his time at the station. He remembered the record, the same record where he’d seen he’d been admitted when he’d been two years old‐