The Invention of Vita-Wonk by Roald Dahl is a very interesting story based on science fiction, depicting fantastic ideas.
Summary
I
Mr. Willy Wonka was a scientist. He first invented a tonic Wonka-Vite which made people younger. But it was such a powerful medicine that many people disappeared after their age went in minus. One person even became minus 87. The poor fellow had to wait 87 years to come back. Willy Wonka decided to invent a new thing to undo the harm. He had to make people old.
He wanted to know what the oldest living thing in the world was or what lived longer than anything else. His assistant Charlie named tree. But the question emerged which tree. It was certainly not the fir, oak or cedar. It was a tree called Bristlecone that grew in Nevada USA. Such trees were 4000 years old. Wonka got into his Great Glass Elevator and rushed all over the world. He collected special items from the oldest living things. He took a pint of sap from the Bristlecone Pine, the toe nail clippings from a 168 year old Russian farmer, an egg laid by 200 year old tortoise, the whiskers of a 36 year old cat and so on.
II
Mr. Wonka tracked down very old animals and took a bit of something from each one of them. In the end he boiled and tasted the product in his inventing room. He produced one small cupful of black liquid. He gave four drops of it to a brave young volunteer, Oompa-Loompa to see what happened.
“What was the result”? Charlie asked.
Mr. Wonka said that the effect of the medicine was swift and fantastic. The moment that young man gulped down those drops, he began growing old and wrinkled. His hair dropped off and his teeth also started falling out. In an instant the twenty-year old boy became an old man of seventy- five. In this way Vita-Wonk was invented.