Youth

Aging is a hot topic lately with such a large portion of the American population entering the later phases of life. It seems that all media is filled with stories about retirement, investments and how getting old isn't so bad. Everyone I know talks about aging. Except my friend Alan. He’s one of those guys who seems unaffected by age; year after year he looks as he has since college.

Alan and I met for lunch downtown the other day and he was acting strangely. As he looked at his watch for the 50th time I began to wonder if he wanted to be elsewhere. We ate lunch silently and Alan left abruptly after paying the bill. It was curious for him not only to act so furtively, but also to pay the bill without calling attention to his generosity. What I didn’t know was that Alan had a date with destiny. Turns out that Alan has been conducting medical experiments on himself for years, and he never told me or any of our friends.

From what I now understand, when atoms are split one of the particles is sent backward in time. An electron flies away from the atom and actually travels backward in time for a millisecond. Alan figured out a way to inject massive amounts of these particles into his blood stream. He invented a particle accelerator with a syringe on one end. As atoms would split he'd funnel the backward time traveling particles into the syringe and into his system. This process counteracted the process of aging in his body. Alan had created his own fountain of youth.

This was all very incredible. It was also very illegal. Regular people are not supposed to have particle accelerators capable of splitting atoms. Especially not in their basements. That day I had lunch with Alan downtown he was on his way to tell his story to a newspaper. The story came out and Alan was famous in days. He also was arrested and apparently in big trouble.

I was shocked. Why would Alan put me in such danger by having a particle accelerator in his basement? Think about it – he probably was radioactive. And since we spent so much time together, probably I am radioactive, too. I mean, sure it's great that his experiment worked and that he looked great and everything but you just don't do that to friends.