Reverse-Engineered

Chuck was an AI engineer, a pioneer who worked alongside longevity scientists to create a human chip with two objectives: 1) reduce stress on the brain by analyzing daily life inputs, and 2) increase human lifespan by fifty percent. Chuck's initial chip worked one week, so its results could not be measured. Fifteen-hour workdays of testing hypotheses and fifteen-minute standup meetings with the team daily. Finally, they decided. Five men, ten women, and ten girls, aged twelve, were implanted with the chip. The adults volunteered and were implanted in their armpits. The women volunteers perspired profusely, rivulets soaking and spreading to the breast area. The male subjects emitted a fragrance similar to almonds, acting as an aphrodisiac. The girls' hormone cycles were disrupted. Chuck tweaked the implant gradually until the body no longer identified it as foreign, ending the havoc with sweat glands and lymph nodes. The women became frigidly cold and wore thermals under heavy sweaters. One female felt continuous twitching, cut the implant out, and died from blood loss.

Horrified, Chuck wanted to stop the trial, but his co-workers refused. In the five-year trial, participants received one thousand dollars weekly. Payments for the children went into a college fund; adults were paid via the pay app of the chip. At the end of the trial, there was a choice: have the chip removed or pay its cost. Henry was the first to have it removed, and one week later, he was dead.

"The removal of Henry's chip aged him forty years in one week! He was fifty and looked ninety!" Chuck shouted during the emergency meeting afterward.

"I warned you it accelerates metabolism. I said all the adjustments interfered with hormones and organs, that there could be rapid aging or death upon removal of it." Stan frowned at Chuck. "We will rescind the offer to remove the chips."

Chuck was shaking. He and Emily had undisclosed implants, Chuck's placed under abdominal skin above his hip bone. Slowly, his joint aches eased, and he became more limber. Emily looked forty with a marathon runner's physique.

The girl subjects, now seventeen, hadn't begun their menstrual cycles, so Chuck did a minor tweak. The girls, housed together during these years, had their first menses on the same day, causing brain bleeds, menstrual hemorrhaging, and their deaths.

The team disbanded, sworn to secrecy, except Jerry, who was absent.

Chuck sped home, burst into tears, and dropped dead of a heart attack.

**

Jerry reverse-engineered the chip. Military funding was redirected toward the chip with exceptional results. Soldiers entered the military at age twelve, were chipped, outdid the robots they were measured against, and retired at age ninety-nine. Recruitment and retention costs dropped, and the best scientists, doctors, and athletes came from the military forces and their progeny. Jerry's enormous chip income funded research, re-forested the planet, and fed the world with hydroponic food farms.

Chuck had died before learning his wife was four months pregnant. After one hundred twenty years of marriage and reaching the age of one hundred forty-nine, Emily gave birth. Her skin's elasticity increased during pregnancy; the four babies weighed seven pounds each. The identical quadruplets spoke in complete sentences by age three.

"Take it out, Meredith," Emily said. Meredith, age ninety-one, was assigned as Chuck and Emily's caretaker forty years ago.

She removed Emily's chip with one quick slice, and a sigh escaped Emily. Meredith slit her own throat, her wrist alarm calling EMTs.

"We don't need an investigation; what happened seems clear," said the sergeant.

Copyright © 4/3/25 by Andrea O. Corwin

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