Nanites! Its the go to for any sort of magi-tek. They could reconstruct the body according to their programming (and a technobabble genetic reader), and if down-aging then they either dump the excess material into excretory tract in what would have to be called EPIC-diarrhoea and probably some very tired muscles. Age shifting could be done in a clinic, to take care of the waste issue and a couple of days recovery. Aging up would basically be the same in reverse, hook up the right nutrient and hydration drips, and let rip. Again, a couple of days recovery where the character would probably have to stuff himself with food to make up for any shortfall in the drips and of course to let muscles recover (basically as if they'd just ran a marathon. Its the only way I can see not to wantonly violate the conservation of mass (well it still violates it, but we have a bit of a handwave and figleaf to cover it up
( ... )
If he's fourteen, he would shrink in height no doubt. That would require more explanation that just shifting him to a time when he already had his adult height.
Say the process is fueled by highly effective synthetic amino acids capable of generating massive amounts of energy - on the scale of cells being miniature nuclear reactors - at the cellular level that allow for mutable senescence. In real life there's a certain jellyfish that's essentially immortal. You can also throw in this line somewhere if you want technobabble: "apparently limitless telomere regenerative capacity fueled by a population of highly proliferative adult stem cells." Your telomeres more or less degrade over time so your begin to age physically as cells are replaced with inferior copies so if he can control his telomeres he can make his cells at any age he chooses. If you want you can even justify the age limit thing by saying a certain amount of testosterone is needed as a catalyst, explainable by prepubescents not having much and older men having less than younger men.
I don't know about how to explain specifically age 14. Wouldn't that involve reversing at least part of puberty? There are hormones and stuff involved.
However, I've read a book by Aubrey de Grey that says there are only about 8 different kinds of cellular damage, and that if we could clean up the damage before it got bad, we could indefinitely postpone aging. He has a TED talk here: http://www.ted.com/talks/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can_avoid_aging.html
His book is called "Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime". So if your aliens know how to clean up this cellular damage they could probably do a middle age to adult age shift, at least in terms of how the body felt.
Comments 5
Reply
Reply
(EDIT: Oops. Meant to make this a new thread. Sorry!)
Reply
Reply
However, I've read a book by Aubrey de Grey that says there are only about 8 different kinds of cellular damage, and that if we could clean up the damage before it got bad, we could indefinitely postpone aging. He has a TED talk here: http://www.ted.com/talks/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can_avoid_aging.html
His book is called "Ending Aging: The Rejuvenation Breakthroughs That Could Reverse Human Aging in Our Lifetime". So if your aliens know how to clean up this cellular damage they could probably do a middle age to adult age shift, at least in terms of how the body felt.
Reply
Leave a comment