The End of the Whole Mess is a short science fiction story by Stephen King which was first published in Omni Magazine in 1986, and later published in the Nightmares and Dreamscapes collection. Science fiction is a form of speculative fiction principally dealing with the impact of imagined science and technology, or both, upon society and persons as individuals. ... Stephen King Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author best known for his highly successful horror novels. ... Omni was a magazine which contained both articles on science fact and short works of science fiction. ... Nightmares & Dreamscapes (1993) is a short story collection by Stephen King. ...

The story, written by Howard Fornoy, describes his genius brother, Robert Fornoy's discovery of a chemical that reduces aggressiveness in organisms. Robert discovered this "Fountain of Youth" doing research into the Branch Davidian events. Creating a sort of topographic map which displayed levels of crime in Texas, Robert discovered that the town of La Plata never had even a moderately high level. The town never had crime. Underneath the town, Robert found the chemical in the town's water supply. (This phenomena is mentioned in King's earlier novel "IT".) The Fountain of Youth by Lucas Cranach the Elder The Fountain of Youth is a legendary spring that reputedly restores the youth of anyone who drinks of its waters. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Example of a topographic map with contour lines Topographic maps, also called contour maps, topo maps or topo quads (for quadrangles), are maps that show topography, or land contours, by means of contour lines. ... La Plata is the capital city of the Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina. ... IT or It or it may refer to: // As an abbreviation IT Short for *Information technology, and pronounced as separate letters, the broad subject concerned with all aspects of managing and processing information, especially within a large organization or company. ...

At a time of international chaos suggestive of an approaching total nuclear war, Robert and Howard disperse a large quantity of this substance throughout the world, in the hope of preventing a catastrophe. Indeed, the effects are quick and expected: a massive decrease in hostilities around the globe.

To the Fornoys' horror, there was another constant about La Plata that was not studied until after the substance was released: a constant higher-than-normal tendency for residents to develop Alzheimer's disease, mental retardation, and premature senility. La Plata is the capital city of the Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina. ... Mental retardation (also called mental handicap and, as defined by the UK Mental Health Act 1983, mental impairment and severe mental impairment) is a term for a pattern of persistently slow learning of basic motor and language skills (milestones) during childhood, and a significantly below-normal global intellectual capacity as...

Near the end of the story, the writer's words and writing styles become significantly hampered. It is then the reader understands hints given earlier: the brothers, remorseful of having doomed the world to a senile existence (and possible extinction) have decided to go through with a suicide pact by injecting themselves with a lethal dose of the miracle chemical. Robert died first, and Howard was charged with writing a note to explain what had happened. A suicide pact describes the suicides of two or more individuals in an agreed-upon plan. ...

In the end, Howard does not even understand what he wrote, or even if he really did write it. His final lines tell us that he is going to put the pages into a "bocks full of quiyet air to last a milyun yrz", and also to tell his brother that "it wuz not yor falt i love you".