Old Phoenix

Uncle Rog was nearly two hundred. The vast fortune he had gathered went to prolong his life. In the microgravity of his satellite mansion, he soaked himself in aromatic oils, bathed his skin in radiant energy. He ate simply, and had long since given up the pleasures of the flesh.

But it would not be enough. His bones were hollow, his muscles atrophied. He'd lost three toes and a lobe of his brain to circulatory collapse.

"How much longer?" he asked the docs.

"You should be dead already. You can die anytime."

When we made contact with the We'ek, he found the answer. "When you get old, your genes get bored. DNA crumbles. Alien genetic material is the key to immortality!"

He blew the last of his fortune aquiring a sample, and the doctors to inject it.

Six weeks later, he emerged from the chrysalis, covered in chitin. He ate the doctor, and blew out of the station like a phoenix from the flames.

The We'ek said that they felt him heading towards the galactic core. Maybe I'll see him again...in a few hundred years.

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