Genius is systemic. Everyone’s a genius now.

Overmind Memo 321

1 Month Later - Ty - Riverside Cottage

I wake up feeling great. I had a big party last night, but I’m not hungover in the slightest. Which is great. Clear head. Time alone with my thoughts. Awesome.

That’s enough. Let’s find something to do.

I gently disentangle from Daphne, hit the bathroom, wash up. Make some coffee, drink it down by the river. It’s fucking nice here. I’ll miss it, but I miss home too. Time to head back.

“You have 4 hours till your ride home.” says Ultra.

Almost time to head back. Last morning by the water. What should I do? Swim? Kayak? Read?

“Daphne likes breakfast in bed and morning sex.” says Ultra.

I should make breakfast.

A few hours later a van storms the premises. It’s black and rad and my ride. I kiss Daphne goodbye and hop in. The van’s full of old rockers, old metal, and penance drugs. Nice. We smoke and rock our way back to the city. Dragula.

My new best friends drop me off at an abandoned farm a couple miles from the city. 5 minutes later another van shows up. It’s a minivan. Full of a young mom, precocious kids, Tommy, and a large black bag of what I presume is illegal ordnance.

“Bye sweeties.” says Tommy. “Have fun at Grandma’s house.”

They blow kisses to Tommy and leave.

“Who was that?”

He shrugs. “Fucked if I know.”

“Where’s Bowser?”

"Back home." Tommy drops the bag with a thunk. “He don’t like explosions.”

“Fair enough.”

Tommy and I hit a roadblock with our kamikaze drones. A single use drone is inherently costly to deploy. So we got serious about designing a gunship. The weight of the weaponry was our major problem. So we decided to rebuild the gun from first principles.

Tommy pulls our prototype out of the bag. It’s a 5 foot plastic tube, with 2 handles and an eyepiece. Like a bazooka, except the tube is pencil thin. He takes out a small bag of BB’s. Loads them into one handle. Puts a Bic lighter in the other. Minimalism. I love it.

It’s a 3D printed high temperature epoxy gas gun. Or, THREDTEGG! The name needs work, but the design is solid.

It’s basically a BB gun. Except, instead of compressed air, it’s powered by butane. Like a nailgun. That shoots BB’s at Mach 3. They hit like .22 bullets. The gun holds 300 rounds. It’s like 6 submachine guns, except it costs $5 and weighs less than a cell phone.

“Why’s the barrel so long?” I ask.

“I want it to be more accurate.”

“Why?”

“I swapped the copper BB’s for cracked magnesium BB’s.” says Tommy.

“Why?”

He shoulders the gun. Aims at a target we stapled to a tree about a hundred yards away. PAP! He blows a 3 inch hole through the centre of the target. It burns with an eye watering white light.

He points at the target. “Cool?”

The whole tree bursts into flame.

“Hmm…” says Tommy.

As we watch the tree burn, Tommy explains his rationale.

“Cracked magnesium BB’s increase the energy per shot 16 fold. Instead of 6 submachine guns, it’d be like 60 shotguns. That’s good right?” The burning tree crashes down. “Maybe I overdid it.”

“Ya think?” I snark. “You made incendiary thermite rounds. That’s a war crime.”

“Thermite is rust and aluminium.”

“Thermite is any metal that burns over 4000 degrees.”

“I bought the magnesium at a health food store.”

“Still a war crime. You can make chloramine with household cleaners. Doesn’t matter where you buy it, it’s what you do with it.”

“Chloramine’s a war crime?” asks Tommy. “Fuck! There goes plan B.”

“Jesus fucks, Tommy.”

“What about gas guns? Are they a war crime?”

“No. Actually, the military has been trying to make caseless ammunition for 60 years.”

“Well, that’s pathetic.” scoffs Tommy. “Are they even trying to kill people?”

“I don’t know anymore.”

We want to go home, but we shouldn’t leave when there’s a large fire going. That said, if it gets out of control, what are we going to do? Ultra suggests we call a discrete ride with fire suppression capability.

“Good idea.”

“I know.” says Ultra. “I called them 10 minutes ago.”

Tommy pulls some sandwiches out of his bag. “Snack while we wait?” He tosses me one and sprinkles Petformin on the other.

“Are you still doing that? Metformin only helps you if you’re already sick. It’s not an anti-aging pill. Don’t fall for that delusional rich dipshit prepper bullshit.”

“I’m not.” replies Tommy. “There’s no metformin in this stuff anymore. We’re beyond that. Aging causes 7 kinds of damage. Our plan is to fix that damage every few decades, so it never gets bad enough to kill you.”

“There’s only 7 kinds of damage from aging?”

“Yep.” Tommy pauses. “Well, there’s probably other damage that accumulates slower and will kill you when you turn 200. But for now, we only have to worry about 7.”

Silence.

“What the fuck are they?” I demand.

“Oh! Right. They are:

Cells die and aren’t replaced. Some parts of our bodies don’t heal so well, and small damage adds up. Also, our reserves of stem cells get low as we age. Cells get stuck together. Protein cross-links from glycation. Cells get stiff and sticky. Cells get fucked up and won’t die. Cellular senescence. Goofy cells that won’t reproduce, won’t die, and give bad advice to the unlucky cells around them. Cells mutate. Cancer. This one is cancer. Mitochondria mutate. Oxidative stress. This is the free radical one. Big in the 90’s. Junk builds up inside cells. Yep. This happens. Junk builds up outside cells. This happens too.

“And your bacon bits are stopping all that?” I ask.

“Well, cancer is still on the menu. We’re actually cancering all the time, but our immune system deals with it 99.999% of the time. The magic mutant that fools our immune system will still pop up every 3 or 4 decades. So, if you live to 300, you can expect 10 serious cancer battles.”

“Fun.”

“Yeah. But, the pill helps with the other 6 forms of damage. Either by training the immune system to eat the bad junk, or by replacing the missing good stuff with stem cells.” Tommy frowns. “That said, I imagine the doggy stem cells aren’t doing me much good.”

I nod.

“I think I can smell better.”

A teenager arrives with a crappy car and 6 fire extinguishers. We get the fire out and get home.

At home, Storm’s away, but Bowser is super double happy to see me. It’s a nice day. We grab snacks, alcosynth, a 3D printer, and go to the roof.

We build a snub nosed, burst fire, copper BB version of THREDTEGG. I name it Daphne, because I hate the acronym. It’s still too much gun for an Exterminate drone. We’ll have to dial it down. Again.

We smoke and drink and eat and joke. It’s good to be home. A cloud of drones passes overhead. A coin drone drops from the cloud to investigate us. Tommy holds out a finger, and the drone lands on it.

“Hey there little buddy. What ya up to?”

BANG!

What the fuck! The drone’s gone. So is Tommy’s finger. All around us, the drone cloud descends, and screams rise.