“Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Possible signs and symptoms include a lump, abnormal bleeding, prolonged cough, unexplained weight loss, and a change in bowel movements. While these symptoms may indicate cancer, they can also have other causes. Over 100 types of cancers affect humans.

Tobacco use is the cause of about 22% of cancer deaths. Another 10% are due to obesity, poor diet, lack of physical activity or excessive drinking of alcohol. Other factors include certain infections, exposure to ionizing radiation and environmental pollutants.[3] In the developing world, 15% of cancers are due to infections such as Helicobacter pylori, hepatitis B, hepatitis C, human papillomavirus infection, Epstein–Barr virus and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). These factors act, at least partly, by changing the genes of a cell. Typically, many genetic changes are required before cancer develops. Approximately 5–10% of cancers are due to inherited genetic defects from a person’s parents. Cancer can be detected by certain signs and symptoms or screening tests. It is then typically further investigated by medical imaging and confirmed by biopsy.”

-Wikipedia, “Cancer”

Once upon a time there was this disease, let’s call it “cancer”. It terrorized the globe with its insidious cunning. No one was safe from the intra-uterine lovecraftian tentacles, its icy grip, its cockroach-like tenacious spreading, the way it would fester and breed and infect, and god damn it, it really shook people to the core, it was a horrible, horrible, thing, it had the human race cowering in fear of its malignancy. But NOW, in the FUTURE, we are safe from cancer, AT LAST.

But back then, in the PAST, cancer was a scary and horrible thing. Let me tell the strange but incredible story of how cancer’s terrible reign finally came to an end, at the hand of a crack-team of brilliant physicists operating under the moniker L.U.N.A.C.Y. (Looking Underneath every rock of Nature to Activate the cure of Cancer, Yes!). One of their first innovations (under the direction of a new super-government, a total global arrangement of perfect political power that met in rooms filled with Juul vapor and cold-brew coffee caffeination) were cigarettes up to ten times as carcinogenic as normal, which were now required throughout the world, in order to discourage people from activities that would give them cancer but also to intensify cancer’s local effects exponentially, so that it could be isolated and studied in a more thoroughgoing way. The cigarettes contained a radioactive chemical called ARGON-6.859, which, once it had been fully implemented, installed, if you will, would “infect” the subject-to-cancer, after smoking only a single ARGON-6.859 cigarette, with cancer, in only a matter of days, and would prove absolutely fatal after as little as two weeks (during which the subject, doubled-over in continuous pain, in spite of all appeal to various religious icons and rituals, would perish, although not before going through a series of disgusting mutations that I cannot describe to you here… these sad individuals nevertheless served a purpose, as you will see if you dare to read on and be filled with the knowledge of what in the FUTURE will inevitably come to pass, thanks to the supreme powers of science and its unstoppable machinations).

During this horrifying transitional period, the cancer could be studied with utmost accuracy, due to a residue deposited in the body by the chemical which was in turn transmitted by a sort of radio signal, beamed through a convoluted network of satellite dishes which projected the results of the experiment, the signature signal of its central experimental core, its sacred scientific essence, in the most deeply encoded form possible (so as to be immune to the efforts of even the most cunning hackers who would dare try to sabotage the unstoppable project), deeply coded data, projected to a secret base on the upper East side of Mannhattan where the powerful and heroic scientists, fascinated by this amazing and miraculous experiment, worked furiously to decode the DNA of cancer’s killer code.

To finally stop this cunning illness, it was necessary to summon all the powers of modern medical-scientific industry, and then some. L.U.N.A.C.Y., it had been rumored, was also dabbling in a form of necromancy that was in some ways reminiscent of Nazi occultism, in fact in many ways it reeked of pseudoscience and fascism, yet the human race, desperate to transition to a more hygienic and healthy stage could nevertheless never deny that these were some of the most brilliant scientists around, culled from the most elite research institutions in the world, working as hard as they could to the point of endangering the hale of their own health (which all the same was overflowing, these scientist were some of the most robust, courageous and pure specimens of human, their tissues were taut and any undue tumescence was generally straightened-out by the sovereign molecular constitution of their imperious physical construction)… rushing to cure a dangerous disease that no one had yet had the courage to tackle head on with such swift, decisive power. By God they would find the solution! And as they experimented further with cigarettes which were even more deadly, they vaped like crazy, and drank massive quantities of cold-brew coffee. Some did meth, or crack, which, in spite of their obviously dangerous qualities, never impaired the perfect vigilance and focus of these scientific geniuses, who were a cut above the average cretinous degenerates who form the encysted masses of a humanity that was soon to be enhanced in cutting-edge ways and cured of its pathetic impotence. “Anything it takes” was their mantra, “anything it takes to end this horrible plague and restore the human race to its most proper purity.”

And indeed, they did eventually discover a cure. There was much rejoicing and carrying on, but the members of L.U.N.A.C.Y., ambitious as ever, were not satisfied by these results, which, however promising and reassuring, seemed meager in comparison with what their latest research seemed to suggest, which was that the human species as a whole was defective in more than just one way. They realized that they could do much more than just rid the population’s cellular makeup of its degenerate genetic malfunction (what was once upon a time known as “cancer”, what, in fabled days of yore were called “tumors”, from the latin “tumere”, to swell, to swell like a coddled, fat, miserable race of humans stifled by the entropy of its pathetic perversions, pusillanimous pampering and detrimental decadence), these admirable administrators discovered a form of medical control and biopolitical immunization that was so stunningly streamlined and efficient that it became possible to genetically improve the entire genetic stock of humans to the point of heretofore unseen potentiality, a race of stunning supermen and superwomen, free of any cellular degeneracy, free of disease entirely, beaming with health, and inflected with the heroic stance and ideal symmetrical physiognomy of godlike warriors… and indeed they literally beamed, for it was discovered precisely that by varying the chemical formula of ARGON-6.859 it was possible to generate a wholly new molecule (XYLON-7.5) which, by virtue of a form of radioactivity hitherto unseen, known as hyper-radioactive charismatic phosphorescence (H.R.C.P.), and this led to the production of an entirely new breed of cigarette which, contrary to the nature of its carcinogenic precursors, would turn the smoker (over a period of weeks, provided they followed the prescribed program of two to three packs per day), into an invulnerable übermensch. This was a form of health that was equally unforeseen (predicted neither by prophet nor scholar, an innovation so unbearably NEW, even if some of the rudiments of its conceptual essence could be traced back to Nietzsche, could only, in its finished form, have sprung from the hyper-alert, scientific-trained brains of the members of L.U.N.A.C.Y. themselves, who now, hundreds of years later, are embalmed in the world’s most popular and important museum, an archival tribute to the history of the world’s stunning progress towards ultimate potential [The Museum for the Archivization of the History of Humanity’s Self-Overcoming and the Glorious Salvation of L.U.N.A.C.Y.’s Brilliant Science, hailed as an architectural masterpiece and serving as a kind of temple by means of which visitors can pay tribute to the majesty of science and its fulfillment in the form of minds so brimming with brilliance that they shone like the sun itself, and indeed some claimed that they had seen manifestations of the miraculous in the vicinity of these dignified reliquaries, such as otherworldly halos, angelic apparitions, booming disembodied voices conveying cryptic messages, tattoos of indecipherable hieroglyphic runes which seemed to flicker evanescently across the features of the permanently sleeping scientists, or subtle changes in facial expression]).

As this stunning race of chemically enhanced supermen and superwomen extended their omnipotent probing tentacles into the furthest dark reaches of intergalactic space, heroically colonizing even the must uncivilized of alien planets and races, the descendents and successors of the scientists of L.U.N.A.C.Y. (now an intergalactic organization dedicated to the pacification and perfection of every nook and cranny of the accessible universe) grinned and gritted their teeth with more and more stunning resolve, athletic equipoise and focused determination, tweaking and optimizing and maximizing every variable, exterminating all rot, all bad odor, all sickness, wherever they might happen to sniff it out, they would snuff it out! Shit! Spacemen who zipped through the bounds of the known and now even the unknown universe, flaying every boundary and squelching anything that stunk of weak, diseased filth and replacing it with clean, hygienic and pure pneumatic HEALTH™.

And now, my beloved reader, in the present of the future from which I speak to you, we have reached the apex of our supremacy, the peak of our power, and cancer is not just a thing of the past, but a joke, a cause for the delighted laughter of children who we teach from early on to scoff at the pathetic weaknesses of past humanity and to glare with ultimate determination into the crystal ball of their chemistry sets, smoking child-size XYLON 7.5 cigarettes,  for who knows? One of them could one day be another Gore Sender, a Parker Glance, a Max Interest, or a Sharp Cutter [These are the code-names of some of the original members of L.U.N.A.C.Y., their real names will, alas, never be disclosed, can never be disclosed to the public, due to the admitted shadiness and unethicality of their methods… but look where these renegade methods got us! We try to instill, with the utmost care, in every child, throughout its utterly unsentimental and totally rigorous, ruthless education, that when it comes to human progress and efficiency, one must always be ethical “except in the case of genius / for genius is sovereign and defies all rules / the justice of genius defies every human law”. The didactic installation of our absolutely perfect ideological point of view in these innocent and utterly malleable little children is controlled by a system of robotic nurses called the KRYLON 8… but that’s another story entirely] .

The delicious cigarette that I smoke now contains .4 micrograms of XYLON-7.5, and it endows me with a superhuman glow, and I rise to face the sun with a sterner resolve than yesterday, and tomorrow I will rise with a resolve even sterner, smoking even more XYLON-7.5 cigarettes and pumping myself full of NUTRAFLEX-4000, the new superfood, and practicing the new galactic martial art which it is required that all post-humans learn, 心の拳 –

 3.8, and producing vast quantities of ART 6.8, and residing in the glow of this stunning resolve, for I am THE LAST SCIENTIST and this is my story, to be passed on from generation, to generation, to generation, to generation, to generation, to generation, to generation, to ——-

THE END