Coming of Age: Volume 2: Endless Conflict by Thomas T. Thomas Read Free Book Online

crisp on the outside.
    Rafaella ate her piece but she declined a second.
    “You don’t like it, sweetheart?” Callie asked.
    “It’s good, mama.” But she was making a face. “Just not like we got back home.” By which she meant back in Italy.
    “Few things are,” Callie agreed.
    * * *
    John Praxis had learned that growing old—he was entering his late seventies, practically knocking on the door of his eightieth birthday—was not a simple or a straight-line process. Not like watching your hair go white or suddenly wanting to take naps in the afternoon. Aside from the big-ticket, life-threatening events—like a failing heart or kidney disease, which stem cell technology could now fix by growing new organs in a bottle and surgically implanting them—the body continued to suffer at first dozens and then hundreds of small hurts and insults on almost a daily basis.
    Cartilage wore away at the joints until bone rubbed on bone.
    Tendons thinned and strained, and muscles grew flaccid.
    The endocrine system shut down; the sex drive failed.
    Corneas clouded up while retinas became detached.
    Nerve sheaths failed and palsy shook the hands.
    Gums became inflamed and the teeth fell out.
    The stomach and bowels grew constricted.
    The immune system just went haywire.
    The body loaded up with new toxins.
    And every day brought more pain.
    Although none of these age-related conditions was lethal by itself, collectively they made life not worth living. But he was also discovering that, while molecular biologists and genetic engineers had been building single organs from stem cells, the body’s own repair kit, other medical researchers had used these tools to address the more intrusive, systemic failures. In time almost any part of the body that might wear out, become inflamed and infected, go wrong through auto-immune disorders and degenerative diseases, or simply deteriorate under a lifetime load of unfiltered heavy metals and molecular litter—all of this damage could be repaired and replaced, while the underlying systems could be made stronger and supplemented to last longer.
    Since the Treaty of Louisville, under which the Federated Republic officially defunded California’s socialized meddling in the health care market, Praxis had signed up for a half dozen of these procedures. He had his joints refinished, his gums abraded and resurfaced, three decayed and metal-filled teeth replaced with budding implants, his eyeballs totally regrown, his stomach and small intestine relined, and his large intestine replaced. He shied away from the purely cosmetic procedures, like hair regrowth and skin replacement, but those were available, too, for the vain and body conscious.
    After two years of replacement therapies, John Praxis looked and felt younger than he had in a decade. He was even running again, now that his knees and ankles no longer hurt him.
    Of course, the social pundits and medical ethicists moaned and sighed over the cost of all this medical care for the elderly. People on the leading edge of this new wave of the “wellderly” or “fountain of youthers” or “extended lifers”—as Praxis’s cohort were coming to be called—usually paid more for their procedures and occasionally suffered from imperfect techniques that had to be salvaged and redone. He might spend overnight for observation in the hospital after a procedure that could readily have been done on an outpatient basis. But as these techniques improved and became more widespread, they were offered by licensed medical technicians bearing associate degrees instead of board-certified doctors with nine years of college, med school, internship, and residency behind them. The established techniques were also supported by automated processes and assembly-line approaches. They were rapidly becoming common and cheap.
    Youth, health, and beauty were now accepted as ordinary, in the same way that the cars and smartphones had been accepted in Praxis’s middle