Time Weavers

By Dean C. Moore

Come 2025, the Age of Abundance is well underway, earlier than anyone ever imagined possible. All basic human need has been eliminated. The poorest people on earth live like kings of old. 3D printers spit out replacement body parts, nootropics… Most anything we'd care to surround ourselves with has made its way into our homes.

 

But this is also known as the era of convergence. Numerous technologies come together to form synergies no one can predict or control. And that's what scares people.

 

Of chief detectives, Monica and Ethan, Monica is a Convergence Tech Wizard wannabe, but so far she hasn't been able to pull off the necessary power of mind. Instead, she hunts them for a living. Her sidekick, Ethan, is of the minority of mortals still running around without any human upgrades at all. If he's afraid of what Monica can do, he's really terrified of what CTWs can do.

 

As time wears on, Monica and Ethan come to question their mission and their motivations for being on it. Who is the real danger, the ominous, mysterious forces pulling their strings, or the CTWs? Is it time to consider changing sides?

 

As things heat up between the CTWs and corporate interests, who will win the war? And what will the outcome of that war look like for humanity?

 

NOTE: CONCEIVED IN THE SPIRIT OF IAIN M. BANKS' CULTURE SERIES, THE NOVELS IN THE AGE OF ABUNDANCE SERIES, LIKEWISE, ARE STAND-ALONE BOOKS THAT CAN BE READ IN ANY ORDER. THEY FEATURE DIFFERENT CASTS OF CHARACTERS. THE AGE OF ABUNDANCE IN WHICH THE STORIES ARE SET SPANS FROM THE NEAR FUTURE TO THE FAR FUTURE. IN THE EVENT ANY OF THE AGE OF ABUNDANCE NOVELS ARE SERIALIZED, THEN THE SAME CAST WOULD PREVAIL. I.E. THE GOD GENE 2.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dean C. Moore
• Release date: Oct 9, 2016
• ISBN: 9798215946329

Book preview

If the physical structure of the computer will become sufficiently complex, the flow of human consciousness can enter into the computer.

HH XIV Dalai Lama,Tenzin Gyatso

ONE

Any more fleet of foot and he’d be dancing between raindrops.  Alas, but his stalkers were coming on too fast, and the rain was coming down too heavily.  He glanced back over his shoulder to gauge how much further he could go before his world collapsed in on him for good.  Another twenty or so heartbeats, he’d say.

The droid copters couldn’t have been much bigger than children’s toys.  Their pilots, and the shooters hanging out the windows, were the size of GI Joe dolls.  Only, they were androids.  But there were plenty of android GI Joe dolls these days.  The same could be said for the scaled-down droid fighter jets, made for them, coming on him so fast they could give him a buzz cut.  The jets fired miniature rockets that were just big enough to take out chunks of skyscrapers.  The RPGs lobbed from the helicopters were smart-tracking, and didn’t just stop following him because he rounded a bend at the last second.

He seriously considered the possibility he was imagining all this.  That, at least, was a consoling thought.  If so, whatever it was they slipped into his system, the drug would wear off. 

But the secrets locked inside his head were well worth hunting him to the edge of the earth for.  And they were probably just as worth driving him mad over, and hoping he would take his own life.  So there was no way to decide which dark path his life had turned down based on logic alone.

His heart pounded through his chest.  His breaths came in pants, as he stoked the fire of his soul.  The asphalt stabbed at him through his leather heels with each bounding stride.  If he managed to stay ahead of his pursuers much longer it wouldn’t matter.  His heart would burst from the adrenaline overload or the fatigue.  He could smell only his own fear.  It was a musky, stinky odor mixed with a scent of olives.  Whoever said you couldn’t smell fear was spewing hooey.  The taste in his mouth was of copper; his own blood cells were leaching through the capillaries along his tongue and palate from being pushed too hard en route to their destinations in his brain.

The deafening explosion in front of him blew back in his face, nicking him hard with a chunk of smart-crete knocked clear of the building.  The building would heal; he wasn’t so sure about his face.  His vision blurred; no doubt his blood pressure was just too high now. 

He’d tried to wirelessly hack the onboard electronics of the miniature droid copters and jetfighters both, by way of his nanite-infested brain.  Failing that, he’d tried to hack the microchipped-brains of the pilots.  Another no go.  Whoever wrote the code for both was better than he was.  His 500 IQ was no good for things like that.  He was just too specialized.  Maybe given another few minutes he could fly upstream of his aptitudes and hack the programming of his tormentors anyway.  Minutes he didn’t have.

Automotive traffic was heavy.  Pedestrians aplenty passed him by on the sidewalk.  The city was alive with the pulse of life.  Maybe too much so.  Enough anyway for no one to care much about what happened to him.  Granted, who could say just at a glance if his chasers were righteous in their quest, or just some kid out to get him for cheating him on his weekly allowance for keeping his mindnet clear of brainwashing ad-hackers?  Either way, the hunted man’s onlookers’ callous indifference to his plight should have made him bitter. 

But how often had he seen similar dramas play out on the streets and turned a blind eye to them himself?  The contacts most people used for their overlays were often to blame. They mixed up the viewer’s desire for excitement, to counter the ennui of lunchtime breaks taken at outdoor cafés, with their desire to be plunged headlong into newsfeeds of police chases.  Sometimes the contacts would just as mistakenly signal their hosts’ mindchips to embroil them in techno-thrillers to their liking—from a first person point of view. 

There were a hundred and one reasons not to react too severely to such images flitting across one’s field of view as the sight of a man being hunted to ground.

Right now he’d have settled for any one of those rationales in place of what was actually going on.  Each one was better than the truth.

The Pancake Man turned the last corner he knew he’d ever turn down.  He was just out of gas, physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually; spent in ways no human should ever be.  Not since his revised rights per the latest Geneva Convention.  He hated that moniker they’d given him since childhood.  But the truth was his face was awfully round and flat.  Truth was he did look like something someone had taken out of the oven too soon, or perhaps too late, considering the rouged, bulging cheeks on an otherwise 2D face with its smashed nose.  The long spindly neck, like the handle of a frying pan holding the pancake, didn’t help.  He chuckled just thinking about it.

At least he’d go out with one last laugh.

Feeling his consciousness fading, the lights going dark, driven to pass out from sheer elevated blood pressure and exhaustion, he staggered the last few steps.  His field of view narrowed to his arm reaching for the door.  The plate registered his handprint and let him in. 

He slammed the door behind him.  He expected to be blasted clear by one of the droid copters or fighters zooming after him.  But no such concussion wave erupted at his back. 

Panting only slightly less rapidly than a few seconds ago, he accepted the fact that he’d made it all the way back to his apartment.  But he was not kidding himself that he was in the clear yet.

Apartment AIs could be hacked.  Even ones as good as his. 

Already he was envisioning the cover-up that would follow in the wake of his untimely demise.  His only hope now was to see that if they got to him they didn’t get to the treasure locked in his mind. 

He proceeded to act on that apprehension.  But an overriding concern remained.  Was he imagining all this?  Had the truth of who he was and where his research had been heading become too great for him to tolerate anymore?  His Catholic upbringing too disallowing of suicide?  And so, this compromise, to be killed by imaginary stalkers?  The truth was, he might never know.  Only one thing did he know for certain.  His end was near. 

With any luck, upon his death, someone out there would be smart enough to see through the conspiracy, whether spun by his unconscious mind, or by genuine external adversaries, which had swallowed him up.  Hell, there was no shortage of 500 IQ types anymore.  So what if most of them were preoccupied reinventing the world?  Slim odds were still better than none. 

If so, they’d have a chance to save themselves and, just possibly, everyone else on the planet.  From.  What.  Was.  Coming.  Next.

TWO

AN OLDER, TREE- AND PARK-OVERRUN SUBURB OF CHICAGO

ETHAN’S APARTMENT COMPLEX

Ethan stared at the refrigerator panel, pulling at the roots of his hair. Finally, he screamed, How do I get this thing to order milk for me?!

Just ask me, the refrigerator said in a calm tone.

Seriously?

Your favorite brand of 2% will arrive within the hour by quadcopter.

Really?  Sorry I yelled at you.

That’s okay, I’m programmed to ignore the emotional outbursts of unupgraded humans like yourself.  It’s the first thing they teach us in refrigerator school.

Ethan bit his lip.  A smart-ass refrigerator.  You and I are going to get along fine, our brief history together notwithstanding. 

Ethan opened the refrigerator door and shuffled stuff around, ignoring the crick in his lower back; and the fresh-from-the-deli smells.  I know I have one last beer in here somewhere.

No you don’t.

Don’t lie to me.  He kept shuffling.  I suppose you’re one of those teetotaling refrigerators who will call the cops on me if I go out the door with my car keys after putting away one too many.

No, honestly I don’t care how many people you run over in a drunken haze.  I consider it your civic duty to reduce the number of unupgraded humans out there.  Everyone else will be able to drive around your slower-than-molasses reflexes just fine.

Well, where’s the last beer then?!

You drank it last night.  By then you were entirely blitzed.  If it makes you feel any better, you couldn’t remember your name either.

You’re right.  That does make me feel better.  I don’t suppose you have any video coverage to back this up?

The house computer can field your request.  I won’t feed into your trust issues any more than I already have.

No, I’ll take your word for it.  Ethan slammed the door shut.  Um, sorry for slamming the door in your face.

You mean now that I have to deal with your reflection in my porcelain laminate?  Honestly, it’s you who should be sorry.  You’re the one who has to look at it.  For the record, you look ten years older than you did yesterday.  Kudos for trying to catch up with the times.

Ethan bit his lips until they nearly bled and shook his head slowly at the same time.  "Will you stop it?  No appliance is that personable."

"You think I’m bad?  You should try giving lip to the dishwasher."

Ethan smiled, despite himself, which didn’t help his case any; it multiplied the number of laugh lines around his eyes.  Unless the smart glass of the fridge was of the fun-house distorting variety, his reflection did look thirty-five instead of twenty-five.  Then again, he felt forty-five, so what did it matter?  He was still an unfairly handsome man.  If his thick curly hair started thinning today, no one would notice until he was ninety.  So he figured he had plenty of equity to deplete.  The black glass of the fridge door lent a certain swarthiness to his complexion, which he appreciated.  He really needed to get some more sun, he thought, scratching his day-old stubble. 

The cell phone blared.  The ringtone was a Mozart clip with a little too much drama for this hour of the morning.  He was glad for the humor-relief in any event.  Until he realized he had no idea where he’d left the phone.  Where is my phone?! He realized belatedly the agonizing tone in his voice was best saved for his mother’s death bed.

Why are you asking me? the fridge balked.  Ask the button-pushing phone.

Phone!  Where in the kingdom of Hades are you?

Each ring had the phone sounding like it was in a different location in the apartment.  Ethan was getting tired of being sent on an Easter egg hunt.  Already the place looked tossed worse than if he’d come home to a B&E gone bad.  I swear that phone’s doing this on purpose.

You didn’t take it to your daughter’s Easter Egg party, did you? the refrigerator asked accusingly.

I told the phone I didn’t want any calls from work interrupting my little girl’s special day.

The refrigerator huffed. What, you thought your daughter might be the only one to get her feelings hurt?

"You’ve got to be joking!"  He wasn’t just tearing up his own apartment, any more; he was becoming increasingly savage in the process. 

The faint sound of vacuuming in the background came to an end.  The maidbot wheeled itself out of the bedroom, took one look at the apartment Ethan had just tossed and said, I hope you’re not expecting me to clean this up.  I observe a strict no make-work policy.  She wheeled herself into the closet and shut the door.  Don’t bother looking for me.  I’m on break until you get your head screwed on right, in case you were wondering if this were a game of Hide-And-Seek.  Such courtesies are reserved for your daughter.  Her tone was only slightly less shrill than his last ex-wife’s.

Ethan shook his head slowly and groaned.  The phone had stopped ringing.  It started again, causing his face to flush. 

Just play its little game of Easter Egg hunt with it, you’ll be out of the dog house, and you can get on with your life.

I’m being counseled by my refrigerator, Ethan muttered, and sighed.  Is this what my life’s come to?

If it makes you feel any better, it’s not just your ex-wives who can’t stand you, we can’t stand you either, the refrigerator informed him.

"You’re right.  That does make me feel better.  There was probably something screwy with their programming too."

Ethan was getting no better at finding the phone.  Fine, I surrender, he mumbled.  Now where can that phone be? he said in a mock tone of interest.  Oh, I bet I know, under the bed!  Ethan ran with mock excitement and checked under the bed.  When it wasn’t there, his face flushed red and he sneered.  Please tell me I don’t have cameras under the bed, and the cell phone can see my expression, he whispered. 

Sorry to break it to you this way, the house computer said.  An ant couldn’t inspect its ass in here without me having at least three different angles on it.  I suggest you put on a happy face, if you ever plan to see your phone again.  That or stop drinking yourself into a stupor. If the refrigerator had a stuffy male English accent to go with its uppity nature, the house computer sounded like an Aussie man, doing all he could to bear the forever clueless American. 

Smiley face it is then.  Ethan put on his mock smiley face.  Oh, where or where could my phone be?  Big gestures.  Oh, I know.  I bet I absentmindedly stuck it in the oven!  He mumbled, If I’m wrong, Techa knows, I’m ready to stick my head in the oven anyway, and turn on the gas.

The doorbell sounded as the phone was still ringing.  The ding-dong clashed violently with the Mozart.  Ethan muddled over and answered the door.  It was Monica Chapman, his partner in crime, looking like she was selling cell phones off the cover of Cell Phone Magazine.  He couldn’t quite think which of his favorite Olivia De Berardinis pin-up posters she reminded him of—as so many of those models also wore shapely cut leather that concealed little.  The knee-high spiked boots had him salivating worse than a Bull Mastiff.  If the landlord could see him now, with his tongue hanging out this far, she’d charge him the extra maintenance fee for keeping pets.  Monica had her phone to her face.  She didn’t need it; she was mindchip enhanced.  Those people didn’t need cell phones, but she knew he wouldn’t appreciate being pulled into the twenty-first century this early in the morning.  You don’t answer your phone?

Mine is sending me on an Easter egg hunt, to make up for my leaving it out of the one involving my daughter.

You might need to adjust its AI sensitivity settings.

Gee, you think? 

"On second thought, maybe it’s your sensitivity settings that need adjusting," Monica chastised.

That’s what we’ve been telling him! came the chorus of voices from all over the apartment.

Monica swallowed both lips in an attempt to thwart her smile.  Look on the bright side.  If it weren’t for them, you’d never survive a real woman.

The female toaster:  Who’s not real?  Let him try to get a slice of unburnt toast out of me.  Go ahead, let him.  The female dishwasher:  "Did she accuse us of not being real?  I’ll erase his reflection in my shiny plates.  See how long he thinks he’s real.  The female cell phone:  AI-phobe!  I just can’t take it anymore!  The phone’s screams, projected all over the apartment, made it sound like a 1970s streaker running from tormentors.  The Refrigerator:  Try and get anything cold out of me! The male washing machine:  I’ll twist his shorts into a knot."

Let’s get out of here before you have a riot on your hands.  Monica opened the door for him that she’d just closed to keep the squawking appliances from disturbing the neighbors.  "Seriously, Ethan, maybe you should take some sensitivity training.  I’ve never seen house appliances this worked up."

She shut the door behind them.  The third-story hallway outside his apartment was open to the elements, with no wall at either end; more of a breezeway. I know it’s rough when even the toaster is smarter than you, and has more personality to boot.  But you have no one to blame but yourself.  Don’t take it out on them.

Please, could we put an end to the haranguing right here?  Or I swear I’ll take a full-gainer off the balcony.

You’re lucky I’m in no mood to call your bluff.  The building AI catches that on camera, your rent will double just to cover the insurance.

Why are you being so nice to me?  Since he expected more haranguing, as was her style, he eyed Monica suspiciously.  All that did was make him forget why he was eyeing her.  The platinum blond highlights of her dirty blond hair caught the sun.  Her makeup-free face was nonetheless perfect, speaking to both complexion and contouring, even by transhuman standards.  Don’t get him going about her figure.  He was surprised he could think straight standing this near to her.  Considering the deep thinking that went into his profession, her looks alone could have been a career ender. 

We caught a case.  I don’t want you mentally exhausted by the time we get there matching wits with me.  Save it for the perp.  I have the five minute drive over to build up your confidence enough that you believe you have a chance of solving it.

They’d hit the stairwell and were continuing to talk as they descended it side by side.

I’m frightened to ask.

Career maker or ender, as the case may be, she informed him deadpan.

Just so it’s not a world ender.  I can’t handle another one of those so soon after the last one. He was referring to their last case, though many of their cases trended in that direction.

It definitely has that potential.

Stop messing with me, please. I get enough of that at home.  One look at her face told him she wasn’t putting him on and wished she was.  It’s not like we even get any attention from the higher ups for putting out these fires!  What’s the point?

I’d like to think thwarting Armageddon has its own rewards.

Spoken like a woman who’s gotten a raise in the last five years.  I’ll never make Sergeant if I can’t get the attention of the higher ups.

"Maybe if you could get our definition of world-ending crisis more in line with theirs."

"Dipsticks.  By their definition, it’s anything that adds to the chaos on the streets and the loss of control.  By ours, it’s anything that puts us even more under their thumb than we already are."

Welcome to the ninety-nine percent, Ethan.  It’s not pretty.  It’s just who we are.

You’re not going to tell me any more, are you?

Like I said, first I build you up, then I tear you down.

You and my ex-wives been talking?

She choked off her grin. 

They’d finally made it to the ground floor.  The open-air stairwell spilled onto the tarmac.  She’d parked strategically.  With a press of her remote, she opened the car doors for them. They rose straight up into the air.

How could you be twenty-five and have not one but two ex-wives? she said.

"Just because I’m not a transhumanist, doesn’t mean I’m not precocious in other respects."

THREE

AN OLDER, TREE- AND PARK-OVERRUN SUBURB OF CHICAGO

Ethan whistled as he climbed in the self-driving Jaguar four-seater convertible, admiring the dash and the interior.  Passing his hand over both.  This is nice.  The plush leather brushing up against his skin was as close as he’d come to sex in a while.

Uber-supplied.

Seriously?

You want the car you want, where you want it, when you want it, who you gonna trust?

He sighed.  Certainly not the Chicago PD storage depot.  Point taken.  He reclined to nearly horizontal.  She swiveled on her seat to him, as the car took off to the preordained destination.  She’d obviously told it where to go before getting out to avoid ruining the surprise she had in store for Ethan.  The wind-blown look on her didn’t exactly tone down the distraction of her looks.  So he closed his eyes. 

Will you stop? he said opening his eyes and throwing a look her way.  I’ve been shrinked enough for one morning.  By my refrigerator, no less.

I didn’t tell you to get on the couch.  You did that without any prompting from me.

What you gonna ride my ass about this time?

You get the mindchip upgrade like I asked ya?

No.

Ethan!  How many times do I have to tell you, there’s an intelligence explosion going on in virtually every field of endeavor?  Without being able to keep abreast of each and every one of them you can’t anticipate the points where they might converge.  That means you can’t tell when they’ll create the unexpected, ahead-of-its time breakthrough from the synergy.  If you can’t get inside the minds of the Convergence Tech Wizards, you can’t solve crimes; not the ones that matter.  Not the ones that are going to get you the advancement you so crave.

You early adopters are so easy to convince, so quick to jump in with every new thing; downplaying the risks.

You wait any longer to get a mindchip you’ll have leapfrogged the era entirely, jumped right into the nanococktail mind upgrades era!

Nanites parking themselves between my synapses to moderate my sense of reality and fantasy until I can’t tell them apart?  No thank you.

She groaned.  You’re such a Luddite.

It’s part of our magic, babe.  Coming at cases from opposite extremes, antagonistic outlooks, we’ve got every contingency covered.  The bad guys don’t stand a chance.

She smiled weakly.  Maybe.

Seriously though, the mindchip era is nearly over?  You’re screwing with me, right?

Monica flipped a switch on the dashboard to kick in the sound-dampening technology so she could more easily talk over the wind.  Here comes the lecture, he thought. 

The mindchip gives you wireless access to the internet, she said, "but that alone doesn’t mean much.  Let’s say you want to find out where all the labs in the world are that are working on genetic splicing with CRISPR to make people smarter.  You need the chip to write a self-evolving algorithm for that, that gets smarter as it goes along, to weed out the labs’ hideouts. That way the chip can hack past their firewalls better, figure out how to hop through barriers, like computers inside Faraday cages not even attached to the internet.  These specialty AIs are nearly supersentient in how smart they can be in achieving your aims for you.  The latest mindchips are optical, and function at the speed of light.  So they can evolve their own algorithms at blinding speed.  But no matter how many missions you send your ever-more-clever-AI-minions on, they have to report back to you.  You then have to decide what to do with this information.  Only, this part of the brain isn’t upgraded.  It’s working at 100m/sec clock speed, about a cagillion times slower than the lightspeed the mindchip works at."

She shifted the car, just like she shifted her mind, to a higher gear.  Let’s say you find the rogue scientist you’re looking for, selling his IQ-boosting breakthrough to North Korea, so that country can put the rest of the world under its psychotic totalitarian rule.  No one smart enough to stop them.  Oh, and by the way, your rogue scientist knows you’re on to him.  So he sends a trained killer after you.  What are you going to do?  I tell you what you’re going to do; you’re going to hand over the problem solving to the chip; it’s the only sure way to get a leg up.  So the chip writes the self-evolving software moles that will trace your conspirator’s path so you can intercept him before he can broker the sale.  And you use the chip to find the assassins coming after you and shut them down too.  You won’t trust your own mind to do it.  Works too slow, lucky to find one way to stop one trained assassin in the time it takes the chip to find a hundred ways to stop him, all far more likely to work because it can work the internet of things like a maestro.  The chip’ll find out where the assassin takes his coffee every morning.  It’ll hack the coffee machine in the Starbucks to poison his cup.  It’ll hack his cell phone to make sure the 911 call doesn’t go through, and if it does, it’ll hack the ambulance to make sure its GPS gets the driver lost en route to him, or causes the ambulance to crash.  Your mindchip’s got a million and one ways to disable your assassin before he even gets out of bed in the morning that take no time to initiate.  With your unupgraded mind, by contrast, you’ve got one idea maybe that might save you, and it’ll take you a week to get everything in place, and by then you’ll be dead.

Ethan massaged his jaw out of the locked position it had frozen into, the one depicting a mask of horror. Please tell me you’re joking about what those mindchips can actually do.

She shrugged.  The off-the-shelf ones, forgettabout it.  But I might have made some tweaks to my own.

The look of shock was wearing no better on his face, forcing him to massage his forehead to forestall the tension headache she was giving him.  So what you’re saying is live with a mindchip long enough and you lose your mind entirely?  You get to where you can’t make a decision to take a poop on your own.

That’s not what I’m saying.

"Maybe I should wait for the nanococktail."

You’re hopeless, you know that? 

Incidentally, how long did it take you to get your mindchip to do all of that?

I reprogrammed it on the way over here.  Why?

Just glad to have you as a partner, that’s all.  Ethan ignored the secondary gain of every glancing look at her for now; it was beside the point he was trying to make.  It didn’t help that the wind blowing in their faces was driving the scents coming off her at him; like taking a hit on a bong.  And that collectively her pheromones reminded him of hiking in the rain forest.  It had been a while since he’d done that, and it drove him mad how she could fill him with the same sense of adventure without really trying. 

Please, Ethan.  Soon enough most everyone will be able to do what I just described.  So my little tweaks are not such an advantage as all that.  That’s why...  She decided it wasn’t worth shoving his nose in it.  He was too fragile right now.  Most days, actually.  Maybe she should just burst his bubble once and for all.  The last thought was his, but the others he could read on her face better than a Wall Street wizard read a ticker tape.

That’s why...? he said, leadingly.

I just had the injection this morning.  A complete suite.

The complete suite?  I’m frightened to ask.

A nano mix to boost muscle, bone, and tendon strength, another to boost reflexes, another self-healing package in case I get shot.

No way.  So what, you’re like Wonder Woman now?

Basically.  Not sure how long it takes for all that to kick in but...

But it stays out of your head, right?

The higher brain centers, anyway.  Has to be dialed into the medulla to do their thing.  But if the system is hacked, I still have the mindchip to counterhack for me.  Best we can do for now, until the neuro-cocktails get more impervious to hacking.  Not sure I want to be an early adopter there.  Besides, not sure seeing dragons flying around the city is what people like us are about; about the only benefit to neuro-enhancement with nano.  Cops are pretty hard core realists as far as it goes.

"Phew!  And I felt like a primitive before I got into the car.  Nice way to build me up, Monica."

I was going to tell you all the things you could do with your new mindchip!  How was I supposed to know you’d hold off even after finding out...

Finding out what, that I had cancer?

Without the mindchip to run self-diagnostics on how the medical nano is doing, it can’t evolve the nano in your body fast enough to stay ahead of the cancer.

I can always find some guy working with a CRISPR unit in his garage to edit the cancer and the genes giving rise to it out of me.  Maybe he can cure me of aging while he’s at it.  Thus preserving my Neanderthal status for all eternity.

She shook her head slowly and sighed.  Ever stop to think maybe I’m not the partner for you?  The more I jump into the future, the more you hold back.  Maybe if you didn’t have to face a concrete expression of your worst fears in me each day, you’d get over them that much sooner.

He grunted.  No one in my germ line gets over anything quickly; we’re rather proud of that.  We never got over Hitler and we never stopped hunting the Nazis for war crimes.  Takes all kinds.

I thought you Jews embraced education.

"I’m going to let that anti-Semitic remark slide, as a way of doing penance for talking down to the fridge.  Which even I can recognize is a defense mechanism, by the way.  Maybe you should come to terms with your own defense mechanisms."

Her expression turned dark, as if maybe