“I’M CONTINUING ON A roll now. It’s mid-afternoon, and I see an end in sight, an end in more ways than one. But I fear not death, having worked through it in my mind many times.”

“I suppose I do fear a few things outside my control. I fear being coercively reprogrammed by the oligarchs’ AI beasts. I prefer they take me out in one good blast but leave Sofia and the dogs alone. Enough said. Here we go.”

“On the topic of anti-aging, guilt overcomes me. I sit in judgment of all who made that decision, but I am one among them. I was tired. Tired of the injuries, the lower back pain that plagued me, and the wrinkles on my face.”

“I’d always considered myself thirty-five, at least since I had turned that age, and this thought alone kept me vital and strong. It worked for a time, and daring not to repeat the same commentary, I’ll confess before I begin. Yes, I am part of the problem, which I will describe for you.”

“Humans age. In the early years, time goes slowly, while in the later years, time passes too fast. I must assume this is the natural way of things. With few exceptions, most living things in this world age.”

“Aligned with the concept of a technology infinity curve, every branch of tech advanced at a rapid pace in the past few decades. Anti-aging science, however, exceeded even the torrid advance of all others. And it happened at the most inopportune time. Modest successful work transpired in the teens, and we expected slow progress extending over a very long period, even centuries.”

“Initially, anti-aging tech was so theoretical that nobody took it seriously. Few even factored it seriously into their life plans. Some of us tried to forestall aging by eating properly and exercising, but we knew it would eventually catch up with us, that our day would come at age eighty or ninety if we were lucky, or a hundred if unlucky.”

“It’s difficult to explain what happened when the cascade of miracle announcements occurred on the topic in the mid-twenties. Funny, that was my own age. The last thing I had on my mind at the time was to stop or reverse my age! Hell, I was anxious to grow older, to get established in society, and to gain a sense of success from position or wealth.”

“When the scientists and politicians first spoke of the discoveries, I cared nominally. In fact, my initial thoughts were negative, like ‘son-of-a-bitch, I might have to work all my life, and my life might last forever!’”

“It was a humorous consideration at the time, and the implications took years for the populace to absorb. On one side were voices of dire warnings about social dislocations. Add to that voices of religious leaders rejecting the thought on principle, preaching that only God should control such a thing.”

“As you’d expect, the potential impacts were amplified, distorted, and twisted through our broadcast and social media channels. It became a longstanding topic for the salivating media whores who stirred up negative emotions for their own recognition and profit.”

“On the other side were those who accepted or even advanced the technology. I can assure you that few, if any, were selfless. Everybody was pondering the meaning of eternal life. Politicians made promises about the burgeoning research and what it would do for humanity, that we were entering a new age of promise.”

“As time went on, the voices of dissent quieted down, but the tech carried with it the horrors of biases and fears. Some groups, particularly those who touted themselves as morally righteous, felt that such righteousness allowed them to determine who would get access to such tech. They took gross liberties to deny the downtrodden, different races and ethnic groups, sexual orientations, and religions from gaining access to the new tech.”

“Intellectual property rights were closely guarded, allowing the righteous voices to mete-out this new anti-aging tech only to ‘special ones.’ The anointed, those with the right thinking, the right pocketbooks, the right connections, the right religions, the right castes, and the right political preferences.”

“It was as ugly, unfair, and selfish as anything humanity had done to itself in the past. And this selective denial resulted in many, many deaths. Mobs in the streets were fighting for the right to access this new tech. Governments used the social disruption to seize control and consolidate power. Corporate entities found ways to profit from the disarray. Without any human ethic whatsoever, this one infinity curve, this one tech, nearly brought humanity to its knees even before the Debacle.”

“You’ll read about the history, the threats from nuclear powers as countries pondered the swarms of newly everlasting people that might cross their borders; an overflow of the perceived undesirables, fears and malice aforethought. Anti-aging tech only amplified the true ugliness of humanity’s entitlements and tainted soul.”

“Ultimately, the proto-oligarchs started to gain control of the situation, working in conjunction with governments. This was an inflection point for formal recognition of our technocracies in managing the populace.”

“We now had a controlled substance that was so vital and so in demand, people would go to any extent to get it. Since most global political systems were floundering in disarray and dysfunction, we needed a system that on its surface appeared to balance the concerns of the masses, to placate them, and to make promises without ever delivering a consequential solution.”

“As these dislocations and divisions began to peak, various logistical wizards – and I don’t mean that negatively – began to develop efficient and fair means for distributing the new anti-aging technology among the masses. By that time, the early thirties, the influential and powerful had already partaken and were on the cusp of enjoying the fruits of their future, infinite dominance.”

“Since they were the special, first recipients of this new tech, it was no longer their issue. They were satisfied to contribute their resources to whichever side concurred with their own beliefs. Most of them, as wealthy as they were, came to the same conclusion, and I’ll get to that in a second.”

“These fair methods of distribution started working okay. If you took anti-aging tech in those early days, you had to commit contractually that you would not have children, or at least not have additional children. These contracts were hard to enforce and therefore often broken or disregarded, especially by the well-connected.”

“Eventually, the tech was readily replicated, so human graft and corruption ruled the day. Forget your drug lords of old. The new drug was anti-aging. Couple this with the other wonders genetic tech was providing and people were having visions of being gods themselves for eternity. They might live an eternal springtime of perpetual youth, happiness, and freedom from illness. Sure. Right.”

“As with all panaceas, it took a while for people to grasp what they had done. Many who took anti-aging drugs are now in deep regret. They envision a lifetime of toil continuing – an eternal lifetime, if that makes sense. Society is rigged against them, it will remain so, and they’ll be unable to claw themselves out of poverty and misery through the coming eons.”

“Not surprisingly, there has been a renaissance of sorts on reaching old age. After experiencing the disarray and disharmony of this quite defective species, many now look forward to their waning years and hope nature will take their lives in its natural time.”

“Short of a miracle, you indeed might stay chained to your existing station in life for eons, if the human race lasts that long. Of course, you could use eternity to try to make your life better, to acquire more wealth and status, see the world, expand your horizons. But given the state of the world today, with the oligarchic technocracies in charge, opportunities to improve your lot in life are not as they were before the Debacle. They’re effectively nonexistent.”

“Basic freedoms we once had are now severely restricted. People have difficulties traveling beyond their borders as each debauched technocracy grows more paranoid of the other. For example, I’d love to see New York City and Boston again, even in their diminished states, but that can’t occur for multiple reasons.”

“I hope the telling of this story makes sense. Humans were ‘deer in headlights.’ Anti-aging tech hit us fast and hard, sparking societal disruptions on a scale theretofore unknown. It was right in those volatile days of tech going exponential, and everything came crashing down upon us during the Great Debacle.”

“Odd that the Debacle itself became the cure for our self-induced malaise. No more anti-aging contracts or policing of them. Hell, so few people have a desire to procreate anyway, given the instability of our species and threat of living in totalitarian states forever. It’s pretty much a non-issue in 2075, though the tech remains readily available.”

“There is one persistent, ever-present result, however. As I indicated, the wealthy and powerful came quickly to their own conclusions. They accelerated efforts to corrupt society’s already diminished means of equity with the goal of advantaging themselves forever, implying eternity.”

“This meant influencing judges and politicians. It meant warping societal structures to benefit them alone: laws, immigration, social programs, financial and taxation flows, voting inequities, and other usurpations. That list of crimes is long and tedious. Wherever the rich and powerful could find advantage, they took it. Carpe diem. Seize the day. Seize everything within your grasp and hold onto it forever.”

“It reminds me of that power of compounding effect from the world of finance. Many of the entitled, having owned most of the world’s resources already, were adeptly aware at how wealth compounds over time. Just imagine, then, if the variable of time was no longer relevant to you. In other words, your wealth can grow forever along with you as you pass through time, not aging, perhaps even getting younger at will.”

“With this tech and perennially assured power and control, you can create heaven on Earth for your immortal self and your chosen ones. No need for rapture or otherworldly interventions to get you to that resplendent heaven. You already possessed it.”

“They used the existing levers of wealth, power, and privilege to execute their plans. Sofia has a saying, and she winks at me every time she voices it: ‘Disparate, desperate, devious dudes doing disparate, desperate, devious deeds.’ That sums up the oligarchic demigods and their extended royal courts pretty well. Oh, she has one more, but I have difficulty saying it out loud – ‘the impotent omnipotents.’”

“These individuals and families remain desperate in one respect, despite their wealth and status. They possess a desperation to acquire more than the next politician or industrialist turned billionaire turned trillionaire. It is their desperate grasp to attain the top of the steaming pile of dung that seethes beneath them like worms animating a rotting corpse. They stand atop the pile and glower over the lot of it, ignoring the stench that wafts upward to their secure and massive compounds that protect their privileged, god-like status. More on our lovely oligarchs and their royal courtiers later.”

“I am too tired to do more. My own anti-aging tech does nothing to resolve and re-energize a mind that has seen too much of humanity’s inequities and iniquities. I can’t even suggest what you might learn from this section, except that it should be obvious."