The Pill

One day there will be another pill that we simply call "The Pill." Only the history blogs on the neural net will recall that there wuz ever another pill called "The Pill" because most pills will be long gone by the time the new The Pill arrives on the scene. By then, the little doctors--the nanobots--will be swimming in the streams of our blood and shooting us up with the cure for everything from a headache to cancer before the ills even begin to form in our too, too solid flesh. Somehow, the little doctors won't be able to do shit to counteract the effects of The Pill, though, nor even to detect the drug at all as it throttles the heart. What is The Pill? Simple: it's a suicide pill. It puts you to sleep forever with no pain in under one minute and dissolves completely so that the little doctors will record that the deceased perished from garden variety heart failure (hearts will always fail, inevitably, no matter how good the little doctors get). It'll be the blackest of black market drugs, of course , but suicide rates will shoot to the moon and--despite the most draconian measures taken by nearly all world governments for the first ten years after The Pill drops--notions about suicide will begin to change dramatically. Without fear of pain, without fear of shame, without worry that the act will enrage or greatly sadden those loved ones left behind (unless a note is offered, of course)--and all with a wee little pill that simply stops the breath and offers the most peaceful death ever invented--what percentage of the population will take the first train to Clarksville and blow this popsicle stand from hell? And which will be the first mainstream religion to denounce the notion that all suicides go to hell? We leave such speculations for another day, for the little doctors have just shot us up with a mild sedative after noting that our minds have grown agitated, infected with the most dangerous drug of all: a new idea.