The other night I went to a buffet. I looked around at the crowd, noticing the disturbing contrasts between the different generations. The younger ones had well-proportioned bodies, perfect skin, good teeth, good hair, and smiles on their faces. They were accompanied by parents whose bodies have been ravaged by time. A culture that lives on vats of corn syrup, pot after pot of coffee, fast foods that in many cases still contain trans fatty acids had done them in. The mothers had bodies that would require mapquest directions for an intimate act, and one could only venture to guess what they looked like at one time based on their perfect little offspring. The men and women had teeth stained by tobacco, coffee, or both. Once lustrous manes of hair had begun to retreat or surrendered altogether. Once perfectly taught skin had loosened and become riddled with crows feet. The parents all looked tired, a look that said they had given everything to their children and had nothing left to give. The care-free days were long gone, the vows made a lifetime ago to people who only still existed in wedding photos. Endless days toiling in a thankless job to provide the basic needs for their family, or folding laundry, cooking short order meals, trips to the doctor’s office or the hospital, piano lessons, soccer practice, the list goes on. The gray-haired generation looked even worse, entering accompanied by a walker or a canister of oxygen, once toothy grins replaced by dentures, nothing to long forward to except the occasional game of cards, a social security check, and very infrequent visits from their grandchildren.
So what am I getting at here? The answer is that as we grow older, there is an irrepressible urge to go back in time and relive our youth. To recapture that first kiss, to experience love anew. But we can’t go back. We’ve got mortgages to pay, income taxes to file, children to feed. We’ve got little people dependent on us for survival. So we can’t just walk away from our lives and relive our fraternity days, the days where we looked our best, had no mortgages to pay, and dreaded the thought of becoming just like our parents. We can’t go back. Or can we? What if there was a venue where we could be 21 forever, and experience love all over again without walking away from everything we’ve worked so hard to achieve? What if, rather than diverting our lives on alternate courses, we could simply create another one that we live in parallel?
It was only a matter of time before technology would have an answer for us. It was only a matter of time before someone would give us the ability to live out a second life. In this world you can be 21 forever, never worry about catching a social disease or getting fat. Don’t like your shape? Just manipulate a few slider bars, or buy a new one. Not happy with your skin? You can buy that too. You can dress as sexy as you want, or live life out as a mythical creature, a vat of jello, or Darth Vader. You’re now in a singles bar hundreds of thousands of other residents (several million if you go by the number of accounts created). It’s another buffet of sorts, but with a much more hedonistic slant.
