Doomsday

Creative Project Proposal

The following is a working plot for my short story. This plot will, very likely, change through out the course of this semester:

In the year 2015, Islamic fundamentalists gained access to the atomic bomb. However, as the whole world waited for a nuclear explosion nothing happened. The American CIA developed and deployed (just in time) a neurotoxin that affected their capacity for emotion (positive or negative). With their passion for martyrdom gone, the terrorists were harmless.
Governments around the world see the potential for such a compound and, soon enough, the medication has begun to creep into the food supply (disguised as essential vitamins and minerals). The only capacity that humans are left with in this world is that of pleasure because “pleasure” is the result of much more primitive brain mechanisms. People do things because it feels good and not because they can anticipate long-term goals. Society is kept in line with severe punishments since humans since perceive pain very well.
This concept of the “normal” becomes the intellectual goal of the individuals in this society. In this constant search for normalcy, people have no time to consider any other philosophical problems. The only goal of academia is to make people more “normal.” There are no artists in this world because the chemicals make creative expression much more difficult.
However, despite the fact that humans do not have emotion, they do seem to want something other than this mundane life. A very small minority yearned for a Messiah to bring them into a world where thoughts and life was not so structured.

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