:: A long, short story ::

Thursday, April 22, 2004

Thank god I'm not a writer. Sometimes I feel bad about it, but most of the time it's quite liberating. For example, were I a writer of any sort, I might feel a pang of guilt and regret at having to abort a short story I was inspired to write before completion, even if it were astonishingly bad. But my heart, ego, and paycheck aren't tethered to it, so nip it in the bud I will.

In an act of sheer spite, I present to you this miscarriage of the creative process. If I can deter just one person from putting pen to paper (or finger to keyboard), it will be worth it.

Forever Short in the Tooth, a short story written and mercifully euthanized by morland:

Josiah had been following the resveratrol debate closely. What started out as a minor reference to some incidental research had blossomed into an all-out war on the calorie restriction mailing list to which he'd subscribed for several years. He'd watched the argument see-saw before reaching a frustrating stalemate - hard evidence was sparse, and what little the participants could rely upon was equivocal at best. But rely they had to. Those who practiced calorie restriction as a lifestyle knew what tasty targets they became, both to fair-weather adherents tired of Atkins and to skeptics itching lob charges of pseudo-science, so they clutched even the least bit of solid data with the kind of fervor proportional to the chip on their collective shoulder. They needed to know every repercussion of their eating habits in no uncertain terms. It was the only way to fight their critics and attract new followers.

So it was that the smallest of micro-nutrients became microcosms of a far larger struggle for general validity. When members hypothesized that metformin might be a CR mimetic, it was a question not just of nutrition but identity. An obsessive question to be sure, but CR tended to attract just this type of individual. Josiah knew he fit the bill.

The resveratrol issue frustrated him. CR was a new science - and make no mistake, it was a science - so certainty was bound to be fleeting, but it was his life at stake and these delays were killing him, or at least depriving him of a potential new source of longevity. That's what calorie restriction was all about anyway. That was the crux. Studies with mice had already proven that a 55% reduction in caloric intake increased lifespan by 15 months (~50%). It would be the equivalent of a human living on average to be 120. And how else could it be explained that the well-nourished (the CR life had its dangers, malnutrition not least among them) but calorie-limited inhabitants of Okinawa had the longest life span in the world - and the highest percentage of centenarians?

The hawkish rationing of meals, the strict avoidance of sugar, the fortnightly blood analysis - some saw these as sacrifices. Josiah saw a path to immortality. The end was getting closer every day. He was glad to be a member of a community that cared.

Today brought the usual exchange of inconclusive resveratrol news. Salvo of findings. Counter-strike of methodological criticisms. A goddamned war of attrition: the sides were neatly divided, allegiances were cemented, and nobody was winning. Fed up with the lack of resolution, Josiah scanned the rest of the day's mail, cleanly categorized into buckets with labels like "macro-nutrients", "side effects", and "bone health". There was an interesting discussion about the counteractive effects of leptin on osteo-disintegration in the last section (another danger of the CR path - others included a practically nonexistent libido, sloth-like healing of wounds, and susceptibility to infection, but these were venial sacrifices).

Josiah became a CR acolyte soon after his parents had died unexpectedly, right around the time he started having visions. His employer, the Florida Department of Transportation, had been more than generous with bereavement leave, and the break from work mirrored a break in sanity. For a man blessed with superhuman meticulosity, the loosening grip on reality fundamentally undermined some basic tenets of self-perception. Chief among them was the pride derived from religiously cataloging myriad details of every aspect of his life. Sure, this quality had gotten him a job (Josiah was a one-man planning quorum, coordinating bus routes for the entire Tampa metropolitan area), but it seemed wasteful to limit this talent to professional pursuits alone. He needed an end-goal. Thankfully the visions, the very same forces eating away at the foundation of his world-view, contained within them the solution as they overbore: extreme lifespan extension.

Posted by morland @ 03:12 PM

:: Comments ::

SUCK MY WANG!

Posted by: jebidieah on March 13, 2005 07:03 PM

I see your point - the arc was a little contrived.

Posted by: morland on March 14, 2005 10:20 AM

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