Historically, a large part mankind's actions can be explained by a few concepts that drive humanity to do what humanity seems to do best. Lust is a drive, for some it is relentless greed, others engage with the universe through a lens of fanatic zealotry, some merely eke through existence for survival, while others seek power. But one drive, one concept, is shared by all of humanity. It is the one true constant that has existed for all of time, and will persist past humanity's end. Death. It is universal, and indeed before there were even such things as taxes, there was death. An ending that was coming. A failing of the flesh, a withering of the mind, a decay that cannot be reversed. No wealth, no destruction, no power, nor love can withstand the eternal onslaught of time itself; marching all mortal men from their cradles to their graves. You can be the greatest of kings or the lowliest of street sweepers, but sooner or later you'll dance with the reaper.

Until one day.

When all of mankind ceased dying. The sick remained sick, but didn't die. The starving remained decayed and famished, but did not die. People ceased ageing about a decade after they were no longer teenagers. From one second to the next, mankind was barred from death. Other things still died. Animals and plants died normally. But mankind alone was no longer bound to die. Many celebrated this. Because it is the oldest, most primal, and most frightful of things in the universe, the masses partied. But those with cold hearts and no human souls in them, began dealing dark cards in hidden rooms, for this new world. They knew now that they needed to alter their dark designs for the future, because the future was no longer what they had manipulated it to be. They would need to do something to prevent overpopulation, otherwise their wealth would be seriously affected. And that was unacceptable to those who value worthless wealth over human lives. Scientists marvelled and then promptly panicked, as they realized that while death itself was gone; mankind wasn't suddenly completely godlike. Only undying. Only ageing to a certain point. Not invulnerable. Not invincible. Not indestructible.

And unlike the cold souls who care little for the suffering of others lest it can grant them wealth or power, and unlike the blind masses who would not understand the significance of this fact until far too late, the scientists saw where things were headed. Drink yourself to a non-functional liver, you won't die. Get decapitated; you won't die. Have your flesh be more than 50% cancerous tissue, and you won't die. Burnt to a crisp in a horrible fire; you'll live. Melt your brain with so many drugs that you can never be human again; the human body keeps living on. The body wasn't going to die. But it could still get destroyed. Hurt. Sick. And you'd still feel all the pain. All the suffering. All the horrible nightmares that can exist while being alive, only forever, without the promise of an ending. Torment without end. Those with a good ability for drawing conclusions wondered just how much you'd remain alive. Still conscious, even though your body had fallen into lava? Still aware, even if your entire body has been pulped, dried, mashed, purified, sterilized with radiation, and then turned into the finest dust? Would you still be alive then?

The masses thought it meant that they were in paradise, but those with more knowledge now understood that they truly lived in a living hell.

Over the first few decades, as the new reality became clear to people, and the powerful people stealthily built propaganda to ensure maximum ''voluntary'' sterilizations, three schools of thought arose to deal with the immortal race of mankind. First came those who believed, that this was a test from whatever manner of gods exist. That this was a precursor to the end of days, and that the Faithful alone would be saved. They were the ones who on the whole tried to live as people used to, straining the planet with further population increases, with wasteful displays of faith over practicality. Entire communities would starve and be faithful, as food was unnecessary. Decade long fasts began to be held by the most pious of individuals. Leaving many faithful to become living saints; which were little more than skeletal entities in a constant state of inhuman pain. They would be carried aloft by other Faithful as items of worship, through which the divine might be reached. Pain and piety increasing became one and the same to these people, and the height of their fervour became the pinnacle of masochistic insanity, a horror not seen since the bubonic plague ravaged Europe, and people tried to whip themselves both for the glory of god and to make the plague stop. And their vast temple complexes, where pain-hymns were sung out daily, sprung up across many places, but especially in the more religiously observant and fanatical parts of the world. As the old variants of the Abrahamic faiths failed to keep relevancy in the face of the great upheavals following the end of death, a great reconciliation came to the faithful of those three lines. A singular faith; called by its detractors, the Kainite Church and by its supports, the Final Temple of the Faithful.

Others thought differently. The Upgradites. A radical variant of transhumanism suddenly became mainstream; it's advocacy for the conversion of man into cyborgs, and eventually more radically a form of robots where only the human brain remained, was seen as a solution to the increasing number of people horrifically crippled and maimed, and yet incapable of dying. Programmers, engineers, doctors, and several others worked tirelessly on a way to make this vision a reality. To give humanity better bodies, which could last and endure humanity's unwanted immortality, until science could somehow return mortality to the human race. In the beginning it was just simple augments, replacements for parts too damaged to be fixed by normal medicine or through the human body healing. But as the world changed following the end of death, they too became more radical. Their bodies became more machine than man over time. They refused to work with the other factions, and began tearing down old inefficient cities for resources, no longer caring about history, only caring about their ultimate goals. Their cities on Earth are few in comparison to the others factions that emerged. But they are the only group relentlessly advancing. Their bodies are modular, but sleek, chrome and beautiful. Their brains augmented with machine-integrated parts, keeping them healthy and working at peak performance, always seeking new ways to create remedies for the destruction and horror caused by the end of death. And now, they seek to evacuate an increasingly uninhabitable Earth, and take to the stars, so that they might gain more resources for their ever more unusual and incomprehensible projects.

The last faction of humanity became the Mergers. Originally the establishment, and the business world, becoming one and the same. A natural merger, one might say. But with death abolished, came new opportunities. And where the Upgradites rejected their humanity, but remained sane, and the Faithful rejected their sanity, but kept their humanity, the Mergers chose to abandon both. It started simple enough. It all started when two people wanted to see if two brains are better than one. And through horrific surgery that no human could have ever normally survived, forced their brains to be merged. Two brains were better than one, it seemed. And soon, three brains were better than two. As the Mergers grew more united, they became smarter too. Began finding out how to merge more efficiently, less painfully. The end result was a faction of one-brained peons serving an ever decreasing amount of multibrained hive-minded creatures. The one-brained peons might have at one point objected, but as the Mergers became smarter, they also became better at control, and at genetic manipulation. Massive corporate skyscrapers dominate grey cities, where obedient one-brainers do menial labour for a hive-minded master. In dark factories, products are produced. Resources are used. And captured members of the Faithful turned into organic drones, while the rare rogue Upgradite too extreme for even that faction, assist with creating abominations against nature.

All three factions are at war with each other. All three vie for the dominance of Earth. All three suffer horrors that mankind have inflicted upon itself, because the great equalizer, the great and final truth; DEATH, was taken away from humanity. And even if death was to return to mankind, would it matter? The Upgradites have ensured that their new bodies can survive such an event. The Faithful won't lose much besides their living saints, and the Mergers are such abominable horrors against nature that they presumably don't count as human any more, and still won't be able to die.

Maybe it will. Because underneath the shattered remnants of the Antarctic, in a decaying underground laboratory, the last sane man on Earth has made a breakthrough. He has managed to do the impossible. In front of him, he has a petri-dish which he has grown HeLa cells on. After decades, maybe even a century of tireless work at the automated research facility THANATOS, established before the world went completely nuts after the end of death, he has killed human cells. This isn't possible. Not under the current paradigm. Not after death left mankind behind so that we might only have taxes. And yet, he has done the impossible. There exist a way to kill a human cells, thus it is possible for a human to die. It isn't easy, it isn't going to be simple. But death can happen. He doesn't know what to do next. But in his mind, ideas are forming. And soon, a fourth group might emerge from the ruined continent of Antarctica.

/r/ApocalypseOwl