Samuel lived in a house with no noise. The walls were sound-proofed, the floors were carpeted in heavy grey wool, and the air was filtered to a sterile, scentless void. He was three hundred and twelve years old, and he was very, very tired.

He was a "First-Gen," one of the original beneficiaries of the Life-Extension serum. His body was a miracle of biological maintenance—no wrinkles, no disease, no decay. He looked like a man in his forties, but his eyes were the eyes of a mountain that had seen too many winters.

In the beginning, the centuries had been an adventure. He had learned seven languages, mastered four instruments, and read every book in the Great Library. But eventually, the novelty wore off. He had seen every plot twist the world had to offer. He had loved a dozen women and buried them all, or watched them become the same hollow shells that he was.

The world had become a repeat. The fashion changed, the politics shifted, the cities rose and fell, but the human heart remained the same—predictable, greedy, and small.

Samuel spent his days walking through the silent corridors of his community, a place where other immortals lived in a state of polite, mutual boredom. They didn't talk about the future; there was no future, only a permanent, unchanging present.

He began to frequent the "Under-City," a network of tunnels where the failed experiments and the serum-rejects lived. He wasn't looking for companionship; he was looking for the "Lethal Dose."

There were rumors of a chemist, a man who had found a way to reverse the serum, to re-introduce the concept of decay into the immortal body. A "Death-Drug" that could grant the one thing the rich had spent centuries trying to avoid: an end.

Samuel spent ten years searching. He paid fortunes in old-world gold, he traded secrets, he wandered through the ruins of forgotten cities. He met others like him—immortals who had spent centuries trying to find a way to die. Some had tried to jump from the highest spires, but the serum's regenerative properties simply knit their bones back together in a matter of minutes. Some had tried to drown, but their lungs had evolved to extract oxygen from the water.

Finally, in a damp cellar in the ruins of Old Prague, he found the chemist. The man was a withered husk, a rare mortal who had resisted the serum.

"It's not a drug," the chemist said, his voice a dry rattle. "It's a frequency. A specific vibration that tells the cells to stop repairing and start remembering how to die."

Samuel paid the man everything he owned. He lay down on a rusted metal table and let the chemist place the frequency-emitter against his temple.

As the vibration started, Samuel felt something he hadn't felt in three centuries: a chill. Then, a pain. A sharp, wonderful, agonizing pain in his chest. He felt his heart stutter. He felt his skin begin to pale.

He closed his eyes and smiled. For the first time in three hundred years, he was excited about tomorrow, because he knew, with a profound and absolute certainty, that he would not see it.

*** OTMES-T9-S13-M4-N2-K1-TH270