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- Story Listed as: Fiction For Adults
- Theme: Science Fiction
- Subject: Aging / Maturity
- Published: 05/19/2022
Author’s Note: While this story is Science Fiction, the Science behind it…is not. You can read Sally Adee’s Article about visiting a “anti-aging clinic” that offered “young blood” for some background. For a mere $8,000 dollars you could receive two pints of young blood to cure aging. The Science is more promise than what was promised…and almost totally unproven. There is a glimmer of something in her article…and I turned it into a glint.
*****
“Ready?”
He smiled up at me. I mean I am not that tall, but when you are laying in an ice bath inside a tube, I look much taller.
“Yes, please. Wake me up when it is over.”
And then he gave me the thumbs up.
I used my thumb to hit the activator. Once the anesthesia hit, he floated without a care. I finished attaching the tubes, one in his carotid artery in his neck, the other in the large vein in his ankle. I pressed the “Start” stud. The Lid closed and fogged over, as usual. All I had to do now was monitor the vital signs and…wait.
In about four hours, I would open the lid, thaw him out, remove the tubes, and awaken him. He would look, feel, and act younger. Of course none of his old blood would remain. It would all be “young blood” now. I wouldn’t see him again for decades. As soon as he dressed and walked out the door, I would ready the next capsule for my next patient. She was already undergoing prep in the anteroom. I got enough “young blood” to fill her body with the right amount to replace based on her frame, weight and metabolism. I checked. She was a bit smaller than average…so eight pints would be plenty. I got ready.
*****
“Hello Judy, I will be your Doctor for this transfusion.”
She looked at me dubiously.
“Are you old enough to be a Doctor?”
I laughed.
“Are you old enough to be a patient?”
She blushed.
Age, after all, was not something most folks asked about anymore. Not since “young blood” had become available to the masses. You might guess someone to be thirty five only to find out they are one hundred twenty six. It happens more often than you think. She probably thought I was on my second or third “young blood” transfusion. I wasn’t. I was an honest to god thirty one. My own blood was in my body. I wouldn’t need young blood for at least two more decades. Probably three decades if my Family History holds true. “Young blood” doesn’t have much effect on young people. But its effect on Seniors is dramatic.
As the ice cooled her body down, I checked the prep work. I need not have worried. Kerri and Alex always had them prepped correctly. All I had to do was a bit of reassurance and then attach the feeds…and close the lid. I have only had one complication in almost eight years. One reason for that was complications were rare. The other was that Kerri and Alex were two of the best Prep Techs in the Business. If I may pat myself on the back, I am no slouch at my job either.
That is why we were considered the best “young blood” center in the State…if not the Nation. I closed the lid on Judy and waited for the routine to start over again. Except it wasn’t routine. Less than an hour into the procedure…and alarm went off.
AN ALARM!
*****
I won’t describe the next two hours. You probably saw most of it on the News, or whatever Social Feed you use. Judy’s Attorneys had already spoken to me…as have the Legal Eagles from our own Firm. I was in the clear. So were Kerri and Alex. None of it was our fault. Judy didn’t blame me. She couldn’t. She couldn’t talk yet. In fact, she was literally an embryo.
Yeah, you heard me. An embryo. Actually, she wasn’t even that. She was a blastocyst. We raced that blastocyst over to the Uterine Replicator so it would attach to the artificial womb. In just 280 days (give or take a week or two) and Judy would be born…again. If we wanted to interview her about what happened, we would just have to wait. Nobody would venture a guess as to what, or if, she would remember anything.
Every Clinic in the World was closed down. Imagine the outrage. You don’t have too. You probably saw that on the News too. Or you, yourself, is one of those outraged since you wouldn’t be getting any “young blood” anytime soon. People said it was just a freak occurrence and they shouldn’t shut down the whole system for one lousy case. Except it wasn’t one lousy case.
There were hundreds of cases. Judy’s was just the first. Within an hour, fifty cases, then seventy five, than a hundred. And that is when we shut everything down. Everywhere.
There were riots everywhere. Old people with “young blood” can be quite energetic…and scared. Nobody wanted to age anymore. Some had forgotten what it was like to be old. To look old, feel old, and be …old. Without “young blood” we would be back to the Dark Ages of the early 21st Century and dropping like flies. Something had to be done.
We are already working on that. Me…too.
****
Mutation. We didn’t know it was possible. But that is what turned “young blood” into really young blood. The good news was that the new variant only crept up after five transfusions. Every one of the people reduced to blastocysts were getting their sixth transfusion. It turns out that Nature has decided for us that 250 years is the longest we can live without a reboot.
When Judy turned five years old…she started to remember. Not everything…just scraps of muted memories. Parts and pieces of her old life congealed in her memory but never became part and parcel. Then puberty hit. To everyone’s surprise, her mind was wiped clean of all memories not made in the last fifteen years. It was like someone had cleaned her hard drive, clearing it all. She didn’t know what all the fuss was about.
She just wanted to play her violin, get Eddie to notice her (instead of that floozy Becky) and find a cute dress for the Christmas Dance. She loved her adopted parents and didn’t understand why all these strange “relatives” kept showing up. Eventually, the “relatives” moved on. So did Judy. Society had a much more difficult transition to work on.
It seems Nature doesn’t want really old people to exist. A quarter of a millennium was all you got. After that, back in the tumble dry until you come out clean, fresh, new. Some people wanted to limit “young blood” to just five transfusion. So you could die peacefully after a long and winding two and half centuries. The News folks started calling that: “Natural Death.” As if living two and half centuries was “normal.”
Most wanted to go on living, even if they had to “start over” as a baby. Fresh as a newborn colt. But what name do you go by? Who raises you? Who wold want to? Can’t give you back to your daughter or son to raise as their baby…can we? That old saying: “I hope you have a child just like you!” Well, that was a possibility now. A real one.
All efforts to make “Natural Death” a law…failed. That didn’t stop modern day Luddites from starting several Religions. Some were so strict that they refused any “young blood treatments at all”. Those died out like the Shakers in just a generation or so. But many more sprung up deciding that “Natural Death” was the only way to go.
Then there were the folks who wanted to give the ones born from the blastocysts (after getting their sixth transfusion of “young blood”) a name. They did. It stuck. Youngsters. Yep. That is what they called people on what amounts to their second lifetime. Soon their were enough “Youngsters” to realize that they couldn’t be around the folks who had a Century or two under their belt.
Believe me, a century of experience means you can pretty much talk a “Youngster” into anything. You could manipulate them into everything from your bed to your Political Party…you had centuries to work on your pick up lines, pillow talk, and con game. And so the new world now has two Species:
“Youngsters and Old Folks.”
Who knows what will develop. Already “Youngsters” shy away from the wisdom of their Elders. Some still listen, but the Trust is fragile. It is one thing to feel like a teenager…it is another to BE a teenager. We are working on that.
We can be immortal now…but not as the same person. We start from scratch every two hundred fifty years …and try to bring the “fresh born youngsters” along too. It is a difficult road.
I have to go now. It is time for my sixth transfusion. I wonder, if in my new life…will I care that I lived before at all? Would I become a Doctor again? Would I marry differently , or live in a different country? I don’t know. The ice is cold. Kerri’s Great Grand daughter is putting me under. She doesn’t have any children.
I hope she raises me right.
I don’t even hear the lid close.
Young blood.(Kevin Hughes)
Author’s Note: While this story is Science Fiction, the Science behind it…is not. You can read Sally Adee’s Article about visiting a “anti-aging clinic” that offered “young blood” for some background. For a mere $8,000 dollars you could receive two pints of young blood to cure aging. The Science is more promise than what was promised…and almost totally unproven. There is a glimmer of something in her article…and I turned it into a glint.
*****
“Ready?”
He smiled up at me. I mean I am not that tall, but when you are laying in an ice bath inside a tube, I look much taller.
“Yes, please. Wake me up when it is over.”
And then he gave me the thumbs up.
I used my thumb to hit the activator. Once the anesthesia hit, he floated without a care. I finished attaching the tubes, one in his carotid artery in his neck, the other in the large vein in his ankle. I pressed the “Start” stud. The Lid closed and fogged over, as usual. All I had to do now was monitor the vital signs and…wait.
In about four hours, I would open the lid, thaw him out, remove the tubes, and awaken him. He would look, feel, and act younger. Of course none of his old blood would remain. It would all be “young blood” now. I wouldn’t see him again for decades. As soon as he dressed and walked out the door, I would ready the next capsule for my next patient. She was already undergoing prep in the anteroom. I got enough “young blood” to fill her body with the right amount to replace based on her frame, weight and metabolism. I checked. She was a bit smaller than average…so eight pints would be plenty. I got ready.
*****
“Hello Judy, I will be your Doctor for this transfusion.”
She looked at me dubiously.
“Are you old enough to be a Doctor?”
I laughed.
“Are you old enough to be a patient?”
She blushed.
Age, after all, was not something most folks asked about anymore. Not since “young blood” had become available to the masses. You might guess someone to be thirty five only to find out they are one hundred twenty six. It happens more often than you think. She probably thought I was on my second or third “young blood” transfusion. I wasn’t. I was an honest to god thirty one. My own blood was in my body. I wouldn’t need young blood for at least two more decades. Probably three decades if my Family History holds true. “Young blood” doesn’t have much effect on young people. But its effect on Seniors is dramatic.
As the ice cooled her body down, I checked the prep work. I need not have worried. Kerri and Alex always had them prepped correctly. All I had to do was a bit of reassurance and then attach the feeds…and close the lid. I have only had one complication in almost eight years. One reason for that was complications were rare. The other was that Kerri and Alex were two of the best Prep Techs in the Business. If I may pat myself on the back, I am no slouch at my job either.
That is why we were considered the best “young blood” center in the State…if not the Nation. I closed the lid on Judy and waited for the routine to start over again. Except it wasn’t routine. Less than an hour into the procedure…and alarm went off.
AN ALARM!
*****
I won’t describe the next two hours. You probably saw most of it on the News, or whatever Social Feed you use. Judy’s Attorneys had already spoken to me…as have the Legal Eagles from our own Firm. I was in the clear. So were Kerri and Alex. None of it was our fault. Judy didn’t blame me. She couldn’t. She couldn’t talk yet. In fact, she was literally an embryo.
Yeah, you heard me. An embryo. Actually, she wasn’t even that. She was a blastocyst. We raced that blastocyst over to the Uterine Replicator so it would attach to the artificial womb. In just 280 days (give or take a week or two) and Judy would be born…again. If we wanted to interview her about what happened, we would just have to wait. Nobody would venture a guess as to what, or if, she would remember anything.
Every Clinic in the World was closed down. Imagine the outrage. You don’t have too. You probably saw that on the News too. Or you, yourself, is one of those outraged since you wouldn’t be getting any “young blood” anytime soon. People said it was just a freak occurrence and they shouldn’t shut down the whole system for one lousy case. Except it wasn’t one lousy case.
There were hundreds of cases. Judy’s was just the first. Within an hour, fifty cases, then seventy five, than a hundred. And that is when we shut everything down. Everywhere.
There were riots everywhere. Old people with “young blood” can be quite energetic…and scared. Nobody wanted to age anymore. Some had forgotten what it was like to be old. To look old, feel old, and be …old. Without “young blood” we would be back to the Dark Ages of the early 21st Century and dropping like flies. Something had to be done.
We are already working on that. Me…too.
****
Mutation. We didn’t know it was possible. But that is what turned “young blood” into really young blood. The good news was that the new variant only crept up after five transfusions. Every one of the people reduced to blastocysts were getting their sixth transfusion. It turns out that Nature has decided for us that 250 years is the longest we can live without a reboot.
When Judy turned five years old…she started to remember. Not everything…just scraps of muted memories. Parts and pieces of her old life congealed in her memory but never became part and parcel. Then puberty hit. To everyone’s surprise, her mind was wiped clean of all memories not made in the last fifteen years. It was like someone had cleaned her hard drive, clearing it all. She didn’t know what all the fuss was about.
She just wanted to play her violin, get Eddie to notice her (instead of that floozy Becky) and find a cute dress for the Christmas Dance. She loved her adopted parents and didn’t understand why all these strange “relatives” kept showing up. Eventually, the “relatives” moved on. So did Judy. Society had a much more difficult transition to work on.
It seems Nature doesn’t want really old people to exist. A quarter of a millennium was all you got. After that, back in the tumble dry until you come out clean, fresh, new. Some people wanted to limit “young blood” to just five transfusion. So you could die peacefully after a long and winding two and half centuries. The News folks started calling that: “Natural Death.” As if living two and half centuries was “normal.”
Most wanted to go on living, even if they had to “start over” as a baby. Fresh as a newborn colt. But what name do you go by? Who raises you? Who wold want to? Can’t give you back to your daughter or son to raise as their baby…can we? That old saying: “I hope you have a child just like you!” Well, that was a possibility now. A real one.
All efforts to make “Natural Death” a law…failed. That didn’t stop modern day Luddites from starting several Religions. Some were so strict that they refused any “young blood treatments at all”. Those died out like the Shakers in just a generation or so. But many more sprung up deciding that “Natural Death” was the only way to go.
Then there were the folks who wanted to give the ones born from the blastocysts (after getting their sixth transfusion of “young blood”) a name. They did. It stuck. Youngsters. Yep. That is what they called people on what amounts to their second lifetime. Soon their were enough “Youngsters” to realize that they couldn’t be around the folks who had a Century or two under their belt.
Believe me, a century of experience means you can pretty much talk a “Youngster” into anything. You could manipulate them into everything from your bed to your Political Party…you had centuries to work on your pick up lines, pillow talk, and con game. And so the new world now has two Species:
“Youngsters and Old Folks.”
Who knows what will develop. Already “Youngsters” shy away from the wisdom of their Elders. Some still listen, but the Trust is fragile. It is one thing to feel like a teenager…it is another to BE a teenager. We are working on that.
We can be immortal now…but not as the same person. We start from scratch every two hundred fifty years …and try to bring the “fresh born youngsters” along too. It is a difficult road.
I have to go now. It is time for my sixth transfusion. I wonder, if in my new life…will I care that I lived before at all? Would I become a Doctor again? Would I marry differently , or live in a different country? I don’t know. The ice is cold. Kerri’s Great Grand daughter is putting me under. She doesn’t have any children.
I hope she raises me right.
I don’t even hear the lid close.
Gail Moore
05/20/2022Leaves you thinking! Interesting piece Kevin.
I have a daughter that's a scientist and a grandson studying science, I think they are going to like this piece. I'll forward it to them.
Awesomeness my friend :-)
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Kevin Hughes
05/21/2022Thanks Gail,
The Science is based on a few experiments with mice...but there is some promise it might work. And with out any more Science...the Start Ups took over. So I imagine your daughter and grandson will see how Science can be marketed before it is ready!
Smiles, Kevin
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Aziz
05/20/2022Very interesting topic Sir. Artificial intelligence has turned the impossible to possible and invited the human to review and rethink many certainties. I always appreciate the coice of your topics and the depth they deal with.
Impressive
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Kevin Hughes
05/20/2022Aloha Aziz,
I can’t imagine what it’s like to have a brain like yours that can think in three different cultural manners. I think that’s almost a superpower. And it may be the reason why you appreciate my stories because you have so many ways to view it. Thanks for the constant support. And you have a great day. Smiles Kevin
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