The woman looked the same age as Charlie. But there again it was impossible to tell. Everyone looked the same age. It was only the cildren that look real. And they only looked real until the mid twenties. Thirty two was the magic number apprently. The was the number that aging stopped. Visually that is, not actually, phisically. And it was a good age, you lost the absurdity of youth and had a few creases on your face, some evidence, some charater to show the world the scares of life had graced you too. There is a saying the when you are twenty one, you have the face that god gave you, and when you are forty you have the face that you gave yourself. Thirty was the face that drugs gave you.
Charlie like her face. It a crap shoot her mother told her, your genes are what they are, like tires on a car, and who wouldnt to keep the tread? Who? You dont want the treat too sharpe, and you dont want the radials to be bald, so you go for a a healthy mean.
The only people that passed up the opportunity where the ones ones prepared to die, the ones that some how escaped from other people thought. The ones that did not care who saw the face they made. These where the ones that welomed the march of time and deceided to die. theey didnt care for the vanities, and the conciet. They let themselves unravel, go to seed, get old.
The destruction of age was a choice. And they chose death. Puritanical purists.
Charlie was not foolish. Her face, her body her hair, her skin where not negociable, these where her livelihood. The lust the cardinal impulse was beyond debating, and men especialy men paid for the fantasy of young inexperienced, virile horney, curious nymphs. All you had to do was drink the syrup of eternal youth and that was the seal. The syrup that rejuenated you was cost a tablespoon per day. Your twenties, thrities whatever you wanted where one swallow away.
The syrup was regenix. there where other competing products, and other byeffects and it was big business. It was not an essential drug, it was classed as medical augmentation, in the same way that plastic surgery was also an aurgentation product. And the syrups where expensive. Of course. Well not the base syrup, the extensions scripts.
Script syrups: these are nanotech ingestibles, they all where composed of a baseline note, which is a foundation, that is neutral. This was manufactured by two national pharamacutials. All the previous competitors in time gone by, where merged until the major drug companiesallied to share intellectual proerties, and patents, these are still seperate entities, but the two major strands of syrup where bound into two very similar corporations.
When the advantages of nanoference was first introduced to the popoulation it was a wild west, but now they are almost percieved as humanity rights. All humans have the right to extend their lifespan.
When this happened the corporatoins extracted their respective bioscripts and marketed them as vitalities, vitimins for addressing specific improvements.
Alto of cocktails for general well being at cellular level, disease inhibitors, intrusion detection, heart health, erectile fortification, optical flexibility, etcetera etcetera. If there was an area of deterioration there was a script syrup for that.
The base line scripts as dispenense to the populaion at large ensured the IQ minimum was normalised, after the 30s there wasn't a single human born with an IQ below the baseline 80. The only exceptions where children born with genetic complications. Downes syndrome, etc etc, these where hardware abdormalities, and could only be addressed prepartum, of pre-conceptum. Abnormalities where combed out of the species. And it is expected that before the end of the 21st century genetic error will be erradicated entirely. Malformations may occure by a measure of random entropy, when two gene lines, are insufficiantly different, or anomilies that occur at the frontier of blood group incompatibilities (remember Joyces pegnancy and yellow jaundis)