What would happen if humans lived very long lives and enjoyed true anti-aging tech and medical nanobots that eradicate disease? After building a time machine, going to the future, and coming back with a few time burns, I feel qualified to answer this now.
-Dwurban, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Wait, what’s a time burn? You don’t want to know.
Boxer: Oh, don’t pretend to be a time traveler. You know this stuff from talking to me about the Scribeverse.
Me: Not now, Box. I’m trying to write a newsletter here, and people are reading this!
Boxer: Good. Let them–they should learn this from me. So, here’s the first thing about long life: don’t hit on a girl without asking her how old she is.
Me: Huh?
Boxer: Yeah, it’s rude where you come from, but we can’t trust our peepers. A girl who looks 20 years old could be 800! I’ll never date one of those again, trust me. On some worlds, it’s easy to look up ages with your visor using a quick a facial recognition scan, but on others, they lock those databases down.
Me: I’m married, so I wasn’t planning to flirt on any world.
Boxer: You’re out of practice anyway. Next, living for centuries gives you time to cram lots of info in your brainbox. Some have earned dozens of college degrees and switched careers just as often out of boredom. My grandpa Bronwid was a commercial space ark pilot, an opera singer, a forensic accountant, a neurosurgeon for tech-resisters who refuse med nanos, a life insurance actuary, a prison warden, and the manager of an airlock factory.
Me: Life insurance? You mean people with medical nanobots still die?
Boxer: You betcha. Med nanos can’t help much during nasty accidents. If a meteor strikes your spacecraft at a tenth of light speed, those tiny bots in your blood aren’t going to unflatten your body. Your chances of getting into fatal accidents may be low during a short life, but add up to around 99% when you live long enough. Some old folks get bored and do wild stuff, making that risk higher.
Me: Interesting. What about crime? You said your grandpa was a warden. What has he noticed?
Boxer: Serving multiple life sentences really means something in our universe. If you shoot up a place and get 10 life sentences, you could end up serving them all. We have whole prison moons in remote reaches of space for those offenders. They’re guarded by a space fleet to keep their buddies from breaking them out.
Me: Who would go to that much trouble for such criminals?
Boxer: Some crime families are big enough to fill entire planets. When you’re alive long enough to see your great-great-great-[insert more greats]-grandkids, you get to own a world. Park your money in a bank and rack up noggin-busting amounts of interest over the centuries. When one of these families has a flexible moral code and irrational loyalty to their own dirtbags… well, you get the idea.
Me: I always wanted my own planet of dirtbags.
Boxer: In the Scribeverse, you have plenty of uninhabited worlds to pick from. And there are giant critters who can build new planets for you.
Me: There are?
Boxer: Yep. Lord Drammadon alludes to them in Scribes Emerge, which most of our poor readers haven’t read yet. And I can tell you lots more, but I need to get back to filming my new animal documentary. Big beasts nobody else was stooglish enough to approach. Remember those chances of fatal accidents we were just talking about? I’m hoping my psiros armor lowers them for me.
Me: Will you be hijacking next month’s newsletter to tell our readers more about long life? This was getting good.
Boxer: Oh, I’m invited now? If I survive the rest of this filming, we’ll see.
He’s gone now, and I’ll be joining him soon. Not to film a documentary, but to do last-minute publishing stuff. Thank you to my beta readers for the awesome feedback! I added a short Series Recap at the start that should help you remember what happened in the prior books if you haven’t read them in a while.
If you haven’t read Scribes’ Descent at all, you’re probably wondering why I’m talking about med nanos and long life. Give the book a shot–it may surprise you. 
Writing update: Just ordered a proof copy from Amazon for Scribes Emerge, both paperback and hardcovers! They’re supposed to arrive while I’m away at another debate tournament for my daughter, but I plan to do a video call with a family member who’ll be at home so I can tele-inspect the proofs. Provided those look good, I’ll hit the publish button on Amazon and let you know it’s out. No formal announce date or anything. I’m feeling like a cowboy right now.
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