EARS CALLED OUT TO Molli and Peter from his upstairs bedroom.

“Folks, we start in a half hour since our Unager friend is arriving at that time. Sorry. She needed to be here earlier than expected. Besides, we’re streaming the Bard’s interview at 4 p.m. This is better for us as it won’t conflict with that time.”

Ears came downstairs a few minutes later. Peter was back asleep in his sofa bed.

“Dude,” he urged, grabbing Peter’s knobby toes poking out from beneath the blanket. “You got to wake up, big guy, unless we’re all going to join you in bed and have a sleazy interview together. I’m not sure our Unager friend is into that, though we could ask her.”

Peter sat up straight but bleary-eyed.

“Sorry. I’ll be ready. I had a nightmare and was trying to make it good. Ever done that, where something bad was happening? You try to fall back asleep and invoke a happy ending?”

“Sure, just not minutes before an interview. This lady is top of her field at MIT. She might expect something more presentable than morning breath and bloodshot eyes.”

Peter jumped out of bed, collapsed the frame, and set it back into the sofa. “I’ll do my best to fake it,” he mumbled, running into the bathroom.

Unager arrived at the door promptly at the top of the hour, and Ears greeted her.

“Welcome! Come in and please take a seat. Anything I can get you?”

She was a stout, middle-aged woman in a modest yellow dress with brown hair that showed an inch of gray at the roots. She limped on her left leg from an apparent ankle injury, but Ears was too polite to ask if it was recent or not.

He recalled his parents who were both overweight, especially his mother. Her feet were always a problem, carrying the burden of size, but she refused any geedee tech that might help her.

Peter and Molli emerged from different doors at the same time. “Sorry about the wait,” they echoed.

“My fault, my fault. I had something come up that conflicted with our afternoon appointment and am glad you could accommodate me. Do you mind if I ask you something before we get started?”

Peter was surprised at this request. “No, go right ahead.”

Molli was readying the equipment on the table, and Ears had gone upstairs to locate his tablet.

“Knowing a few weeks ago that I was being invited, I listened to your podcasts, each of them since you started this new format. Very interesting content and speakers, and I can’t state that what you are up to is either outrageous or outlandish. Indeed, I fear it’s all too real.”

“Why. Is that an issue?” Molli wondered, fidgeting with the setup.

“I suppose some of the concern is balance. You see, when a type of medium like a podcast emphasizes negative content, people are attracted to negatives. For reasons we still don’t fully understand, fewer endorphins and pleasure hormones are released when content is positive, or so we’ve found in countless studies. Negatives beget negatives, and positives beget positives. Positives become naturally subverted due to this effect and, over time, negatives get first billing. Negatives therefore compound and have greater impact than positives. Do you understand?”

Molli finished fiddling with the sound mixer. “Sure, but we’re not the only ones reporting on this defensive tech, if that’s what you’re implying. Our pod is just a small voice in the larger mix, nowhere near the scale of major media.”

“I saw you are among the top podcasts nationally now. Have you had the time to comprehend your rapid rise to fame?”

Peter responded, “This is a temporary phenomenon, in part because we had the Welcomer or Reverend early on. He invited his massive flock to the show. That we can tell, they never left. Then there were other guests with market influence and ad dollars, and they juiced the numbers via their own means. We’ve had little time to do that ourselves.”

“I don’t mean to sound rude, friends, but please don’t miss my point. Your influence is likely much greater than you comprehend. I know because I have been dealing for many years with the social issues of aging, un-aging, and reverse aging. That single group of technologies provides more than enough girth to tip the scales of humanity’s benevolence toward the wrong direction, causing people to be far less kind and caring with each other. Far less. In other words, apparently small changes can elicit much larger, unintended changes. This is particularly true with the adoption of new technology.”

Peter held his had up. “Sorry to interrupt, but we want to capture this idea in its purest form. So, if you’re okay, let’s start the interview. Good?”

She nodded her head, and Molli began recording. Ears came downstairs quietly with tablet in hand.

After providing his usual introduction, Peter started on the topic.

“Unager, you’ve been working many years in this field of anti-aging.”

“Can we hold for definitions?” she politely requested. “This is not slowing or stopping aging. Our field is not anti-this or anti-that. Like any field of science, it’s a diverse array of technologies in actual use, trials, and labs. I prefer using ‘age engineering’ to any other term, if you don’t mind. It’s a more accurate description of the scientific efforts.”

“Okay,” Peter conceded. “The implication is that you are engineering aging, without the bias that you’re only trying to stop aging, correct?”

“Yes, you are getting closer. Let me provide an example, and let’s expand more broadly beyond this country’s restrictions, such as with cloning. Consider for a minute a very wealthy business magnate in a country where cloning is becoming more acceptable. Assume he cloned himself today, perhaps even surreptitiously, hoping his clone can eventually take on responsibilities for a part of his empire. Should he wait twenty years for his clone to grow naturally? Not if he can help it. So he accelerates aging in his clone. I’m using this example as evidence that our scientific solutions exist as left or right, high or low, or as multiple scales simultaneously. It’s not simply about halting or reversing or advancing. It’s everything. Age engineering is that science.”

“Considering your scale analogy,” Peter noted, “shouldn’t a normal life have a beginning and an end? Isn’t slowing, stopping, reversing, or even advancing aging in conflict with natural laws that have existed forever?”

“I’m sure you’ve heard the arguments over the last decade about aging being an illness. It’s a bug, not a required feature. Humans must adjust their frames of reference. No form of life is required to experience a beginning and an end. There are no immutable natural laws about aging, and no definitive set of rules exist for all creatures. Why should humans live far shorter spans than a 200-year-old giant tortoise? Like certain species of jellyfish, why shouldn’t an adult person overtly be able to reverse her growth cycle back into infancy?”

Peter interjected, “Apologies. I know at least some science. It comes with the territory. I’m aware, as are some of my listeners, that aging simply presents itself differently among various species.”

“In fact,” Unager continued, “we should review the wide swath of therapies that began to surface in the early twenties. I’ll name a few of them: genetic deletion, rapamycin and its chemical derivatives, blood transfusion therapy, cellular smoothing, and telomere and senescent therapies.”

“Can you highlight the latter for a second to help listeners who are not that familiar?”

“No problem. In the teens, many researchers, myself included, focused on one of the key challenges of the aging riddle that had to do with senescent cells. For your listeners who may have been living in caves,” she smiled, “these are cells responsible for presenting many of the pathologies associated with aging. Put succinctly, cells wear out over time.”

“Like car tires?”

“Yes. As a result of this wear, they can’t do their jobs as well, but they continue to stick around in the body. They then begin to create inflammation and nasty chemicals that disrupt the healthy cells. This senescence is influenced by diet, exercise, repetitive dividing, mutations, radiation. You name it. As time passes, the body becomes less able to eliminate these cells, creating a piling-on of sorts and an accumulation of nastier cells. This is where senolytic therapies come into play. They do what your body loses its ability to do – repair or destroy them.”

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“Thanks for describing that example, and I don’t want to put you through detailing the litany of other therapies used in age engineering. I do want to switch back to something you mentioned before we started the recording. Namely the social aspects. Can you elaborate on what you mean by that?”

“Ah, a deep and wide subject, Peter, so I’ll start with another simple example. Say you own an insurance company with commitments to millions of people to pay them annuities for the rest of their lives. Your actuaries estimated the average man will live ninety-three years. But now, as every year passes, an additional year is added to lifespans. Even better for the owner of the policy, age engineering treatments begin to reverse his physical age. The insurance company has no out in that case, unless they previously established a ceiling on the maximum number of years they will make payments. Chronological age means little in this new world.”

“We’re aware of the lawsuits hitting the courts, and it is an interesting commercial example. What of other social or human aspects?”

“A corollary in that example is with the federal government and our entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security. Therein lies a thorny political, social, and human challenge. But I sense what you’re egging at, Peter, so I’ll take the bait. It’s part of why I agreed to leave my important work this morning to inform your listeners on this subject.”

She paused and looked at Ears.

“A little dry. Would you mind getting me a glass of water, please?”

Ears ran to the kitchen.

“I’m not the first to expose this, and I won’t be the last. You can see this across the media nowadays, but I’ll give you an insider’s view of this technology. We’re researchers. We create. We try to help people. In this case, our industry has been wildly successful, providing individuals with the ability to live for a long, long time.”

“Infinitely?” Peter queried.

“Potentially,” she admitted, “for as long as a person chooses to live. As an established researcher in the field, we are much closer to that objective than we were even five years ago. If you are alive today, and if you acquire the financial aptitude to obtain the right treatments, you could well be alive five thousand years from now, assuming humanity makes it that far. Based on our studies of animals with much shorter life spans and the fact that we have discovered and are treating many of the aging factors in humans, it’s reasonable to speculate that such is feasible.”

“Understood,” Molli interjected, “but what are the social implications of this happening? How do we cope with someone who wants ten children and therefore consumes far more than their share of resources and space on a shrinking planet?”

“These are not impossible challenges, Molli; only difficult. Perhaps the parents of ten children shouldn’t be stopped from producing their offspring. However, there are more effective forms of persuasion to prevent overcrowding in this new realm of age engineering. You can create a social structure to discourage the desire for excessive children, such as through taxation or other limits to familial consumption. And have we done a good job at determining the ceiling of population this planet can maintain, assuming we were very well-disciplined at it? Can we still target two children on average for some period but use much more efficient means of housing them, recycling wastes, and managing environmental impacts?”

“We haven’t done well to date,” Molli confessed. “Witness what remains of ice at the poles, the carbon released from the permafrost, and the millions who perish each year due to climate change. Our oceans are full of human garbage. I could go on.”

“And age engineering might be the singular tech that finally forces us to get our act together. We have moved along this timeline of humanity haphazardly because we were lazy, and we could stay lazy. A plan was not required. Then along comes age engineering and, say, nobody dies unless by accident or war or a disease not yet cured.”

“I like your word ‘forces’ since we obviously failed big on climate change and responded far too late to have a measurable effect,” Peter argued.

“Agreed, and that one mistake has devastated economies of multiple countries, though it’s possible to overshoot the rhetoric. Yes, there were countless economic distortions and dislocations, but we adapted. We’ll do the same with age engineering. I’m not suggesting people didn’t die, as hundreds of millions did. It’s just an observation that it happened, and we’re still functioning as species on the planet.”

Ears piped up, “What of the natural ebb and flow of lives and fortunes? For instance, if you’re wealthy now, do you keep that forever? Do you invest your trillions in the markets and live an eternal life in luxury, like a heaven on Earth. Or should you be forced to give up at least some of your wealth? To this point, no one in history has held onto all the cards forever, be they legit trillionaire or nasty autocrat trillionaire.”

“That issue is unresolved, Ears. Again, tools like taxation can ensure that wealth is fairly redistributed over time. These problems are real and extensive, but they are likely not insurmountable. We’ll get through this one, only in a different form, as usual.”

Molli was uncomfortable with Unager’s last comment.

“We’ve been able to adapt in earlier times but unlike now, boatloads of other onerous challenges were not facing us concurrently. To name a few, we’re contending with alien obelisks and terrible biases against the new classes of humans. Both are creating massive social disruption. Then we have society awash in readily available and potentially deadly genetic tech.”

“Again, Molli, humans don’t have an easy path ahead. But we are where we are, so let’s deal with the gestalt of it. When emerging from a cave a million years ago, a thorn puncturing your toe might kill you, much less the sabretooth in the tree. We just have different tigers to face these days.”

Ears signaled Peter that they needed to close.

“This is a fitting end to a very informative conversation, Unager. Thank you for your time and insights.”

* * *

“Team, this rush is wearing on me,” Peter sighed after she left. “I get that you guys do most of the work, and I’m just the stellar on-air talent. It’s getting too intense, though. Gut tells me I’m spending too much time scanning the media to confirm how famous we’re becoming. I really don’t want to see how we’re doing numbers-wise and try to avoid it.”

Ears was about to say something.

“Don’t say it. Don’t say it,” Peter begged, motioning to him. “Don’t tell me how we did with OmniBev and Jennifer.”

“Okay. I’ll just tell you the numbers are climbing. A lot. The pace has slowed, but no podcast could keep multiplying at that rate.”

“We’ll need to talk with the major media dudes, don’t you agree?” Molli confided. “My guys are pushing them away from the door. We’re trying to stay under the radar, but it’s hard to do with twenty million-plus active listeners, much less downloads.”

“Ah! There you go with the numbers.”

Molli smiled. “Seriously, Peter. We have better actives than the big networks themselves. I’m sure the big guys are worried their consumers are shutting their feeds off while turning ours on. There are only so many mediaphiles like Ears or your Jessica friend. Most people can only handle a few feeds at a time.”

Peter shook his head at the Jessica reference. “We can’t let them be obstacles in this string of successes. I want to get it all done and then sit on our butts and slide into the holidays on our laurels. Here we are in mid-October, and I can taste the turkey and dressing. I much prefer to bull-through this until the end, however tiring.”

“Well,” Ears reminded them, “we’re running the Bard today. A major controversial interview, given his nanotech storyline. That should be offset by Oort Cloud this Friday, my favorite podcast thus far, and then Nucleator next Wednesday. Beyond that, we’re moving past the edgy stuff, so I’m hoping the online and other threats will thin out. Speaking of which, our Brokers interview is tomorrow. After that, I’m trying to get Toxofiend, the guy we spoke about a few weeks ago when we saw that Toxo terror incident. The last in queue is Hats. Only three more to go, folks! Shouldn’t kill us, and it takes us right into Thanksgiving for your turkey pot pie or whatever.”

Molli made a slight peeping sound.

“Molli, what do you have up your sleeve?” Ears inquired.

She didn’t respond immediately but got up and stretched her back. “Just a thought. We’ve been through this wild ride, and I mean that in more ways than one, and we should finish it with something philosophical. An expansive mind with a big picture view of what we’ve covered. Everyone else has been down and dirty, very specific on their biases or areas of expertise.”

Peter’s eyes rolled. “Okay, okay. You’re suggesting one more on top of those that Ears just mentioned, right? Who are you considering?”

“A person at kung fu, a philosopher. A Stoic, to be honest, who is a PhD with multiple published books. We could put our Stoic philosopher on as the last show. Wraps it up and ties a nice bow on the lot. Sound like an idea?”

“I’m good,” Ears confirmed.

“You two planned this,” Peter complained half-jokingly. “Ears, the Brokers interview is tomorrow? When are the other two again?”

“Not settled yet. They both are hard to pin down. Okay if we do either Toxo or Hats over the weekend, like Saturday morning?”

“Yeah, let’s get it done.” Peter looked at Molli. “Tell your Aristotle friend we’ll do the interview as our last guest for this series, but to hang tight on a date. I’m getting more anxious about riots in the streets and our ability to truck around town the way we do. That little mech incident had my heart beating fast, despite Aaron’s cool head.”

“I understand, but he was accustomed to that stuff. We aren’t aware if it was just angry mechs pissed about being cut-off in traffic, or if they thought someone important was in the van that they could harass or kidnap. You don’t see vans like that every day,” Molli added.

“Or it could be radicalized mechs of the Molli attacker ilk,” Ears suggested. “I’m hoping Aaron tracked them, considering their traffic stop by the police. You’d never know since the whole ride was so secretive.”

“And no word back from my PD friend on that. He said they’re checking records. Either way, we’re a nuisance item for the cops with the bigger disturbances they’re covering.”

Peter was tapping his foot on the table. “You saw the clip of the mechs and non-varints in that Philly brawl where hundreds died yesterday? Ugly.”

“Yeah,” Molli agreed, “and I meant to tell you. It’s getting more difficult to keep my friends hanging around to guard us. They’re concerned for their own families, with what’s happening on the streets. As you said, lots of pickup in violence and people going off their rockers. They don’t care what the President or Governor or mayors are saying. Too worked up in a frenzy that they’ll all soon die from ray gun blasts. They think it’s okay to wreak holy havoc and take a dump on society’s norms and values, the stupid shits. And I can’t imagine how many babies will be born nine months from now.”

She could tell Peter was wondering what her last comment implied.

“Um, people are having more sex, Peter. Not me, certainly, but from what I’m reading. It’s that last run of hedonism before the monsters from the sky touch down. The exact same fear that’s making them violent is also making them horny.”

“There’s no normal any longer,” Ears lamented. “With this competing and sometimes lethal tech, it might have gotten to this place without the help of the obelisk. Its arrival certainly added high octane fuel to the fire."