Smoke And Mirrors

X.

Raj it is now in his seventies. He lives in Rio de Janeiro. He is rich enough to satisfy any whim; he will, however, no longer have sex with anyone. He eyes them all distrustfully from his apartment's window, staring down at the bronzed bodies on the Copacabana, wondering.

The people on the beach think no more of him than a teenager with chlamydia gives thanks to Alexander Fleming. Most of them imagine that Rajit must be dead by now. None of them care either way.

It is suggested that certain cancers have evolved or mutated to survive rebooting. Many bacterial and viral diseases can survive rebooting. A handful even thrive upon rebooting, and one-a strain of gonorrhoea-is hypothesised to use the process in its vectoring, initially remaining dormant in the host body and becoming infectious only when the genitalia have reorganised into that of the opposite gender.

Still, the average Western human life span is increasing.

Why some freebooters-recreational Reboot users-appear to age normally, while others give no indication of ageing at all, is something that puzzles scientists. Some claim that the latter group is actually ageing on a cellular level. Others maintain that it is too soon to tell and that no one knows anything for certain.

Rebooting does not reverse the ageing process; however, there is evidence that, for some, it may arrest it. Many of the older generation, who have until now been resistant to rebooting for pleasure, begin to take it regularly-freebooting-whether they have a medical condition that warrants it or no.