COUNTING DOWN TO THE END OF THE UNIVERSE by Sara Genge

I was reading Adventure in Reading’s post get some free Shimmer about Shimmer Magazine giving away Issue 10 free and decided to check it out.

“Counting Down to the End of the Universe” by Sara Genge caught my attention right away. The title made it sound like an apocalypse waiting to happen or a play on “The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.” To my delight, it was neither of those things, instead it was a story about the limits of technology to extend human life.

The main character is an old man who likes to work with his hands. He is the inventor of the life extending technology. The trouble with his technology is that, yes, you do live forever, but the body still decays around the gizmos that keep it going. From the precise descriptions of his condition, it sounds like he has a case of advanced leprosy. Except in his case, each dropped piece of flesh still transmits feeling and consciousness back to the body.

The story is good and I will be puzzling over the ramifications of dispersing consciousness throughout every cell of the body as I write my novel.

Issue 10: Read it free!

Genge, Sara. “Counting Down to the End of the Universe.” Salt Lake City, UT: Shimmer Magazine, Issue 10.