In the year 2126, the Universal Artificial Respirator was invented. Actually, “respirator” was a bit of a misnomer, because what the device actually did was bypass, or transcend, the human body’s need for respiration, meaning that homeostasis could be achieved without any breathing at all. This was hailed as a victory for asthmatics and chronic sufferers of diseases of all sorts. A few voices worrying about atrophying muscles in the diaphragm were scorned as troglodytes.
By 2131, the UAR was in common use. The next year, it was expanded to be available to anyone who wanted it. By 2148, 93% of citizens in developing countries used one every day. Charity organizations sprang up to expand access to UARs for people living in low-income countries. By 2179, 89% of Westerners were on UARs permanently.
The UAR was a triumph of the scientific enterprise, the dream of which for a long time had been the relief of man’s estate. Studies done in the early 2110s reportedly had found evidence that the activity of respiration acted as a kind of built-in lifespan regulation valve for the human body. Put in layman’s terms, it was the act of breathing which caused the sand to run out through the hourglass. Breath itself, doomed men and women to death. Later allegations of fraud in those studies, which failed to replicate, were dismissed as the work of antiscientific cranks. Science had shown that breathing sowed the seeds for a shortened lifespan.
The UAR was widely credited with increasing the average lifespan, which had now reached 81 years in the United States. Critics who pointed out that, in the 2020s, American average lifespan hovered around 78 or 79, were roundly lampooned. Everyone knew that Americans in the 2020s weren’t living into their 70s. Figures from that era must have been overstated, and the real average lifespan must have been around 49.
It was widely believed that manual respiration had important benefits for growing infants, but that after age 3 or 4, the costs outweighed the benefits. Most parents waited until their children started school to have them use the respirator every day, but certainly by secondary school most children were permanently on a UAR. Of course, just like adults, they could take their UARs off anytime they pleased. But most people found it easier not to breathe manually, especially after they’d been using a UAR for a while.
So, it was with trepidation that Rancon Jast took off his UAR for the first time in nine years for a brief bit of huffing and puffing. He was a first-year medical student living on the Baltimore-side of the District Megacity. A few of his friends were into respiratory fitness, and it sounded like fun, though he was fairly shy and hesitant, due to the fact that his lungs were a little out of shape. Responerds – or students who liked doing breathing exercises – made up a surprisingly small subset of the student body. Like most of their teachers and mentors, most students didn’t have time for personal health fads. Medical school was too much of a grind, and the benefits of lung workouts were widely disputed, so it seemed pointless.
But Jast had been curious about manual breathing for a long time. He was starting to think that the health benefits were probably understated, not overstated. Breathing was uncomfortable at first, but he kept at it. He eventually worked up to one hour without the UAR, five days a week.
Jast liked breathing so much that he decided he wanted to make a career in respiratory research. Of course, this was widely considered to be what the meatheads and jocks went into, along with kinesiology. Responerds were one step up from the wrestlers who were still lifting barbells in gymnasiums like barbarians who didn’t know about the invention of tractors and cranes. Real scientists were busy in pharmaceuticals or macropill nutrition work.
