Reversal

I was old. Actually I was very old. You'd look at me, laugh, and say, "Forty is not so old, son. It's the rough life. It makes you feel older than you really are. I'm the one who's old," you'd say. You'd be wrong, of course. You are only sixty or a bit more. I was much older. I'd feel a moment of vanity. Forty! I should only look about thirty, maybe thirty-five at most. I was actually almost three hundred years old. Three bloody centuries I'd lived. You wouldn't believe me if I told you. You'd be sure my mind was going.

So far I'd taken the drug three times. I wasn't going to take it the last time. The world had become too depressing. But this life in an old man's body is harsh, and I had given in; a couple of years early actually. Now I had only a single dose remaining, but if I didn't lose it, and if I didn't get killed along the way somehow, I was good for another hundred and seventy years or there about.

I'd been to the moon. It was easy a hundred years ago when we knew how. The shuttles left weekly. It wasn't cheap, and other than the novelty of light gravity, a bit boring. The lack of an atmosphere limited the opportunities.
I thought about going to Mars, but the trip was long, and they had the air problem there too. The technowizzes said they would have it fixed in a hundred years. I'd been willing to wait, but then everything went to hell. . . . . . . . . .