The Iglodots were a small species on a large planet. You don’t get many large species on small planets. The average Iglodot lived for one-thousand years, which was ten times longer than they were supposed to live, biologically spekaing. Technologically speaking, their sevret was longevity. They’d taken technology so far it was impossible to look at an Igolodot and its close nascestor, the Oglodite, and say they were related. There were cables coming out of their ears, radar signals bouncind from their nose, and LED displays humming from any exposed patch of skin. They supped on electric smoothies and danced to binary beats. They were so modular that it became a societal norm to gift your neighbour one of your fingers upon moving into their neighbourhood. The size of the finger was proportional to the size of your apprectiation.

None of these tchno-visuals was the reason they lived so long, of course. It was all flair; tencho-fashion waed and waned like a moon. The Iglodot’s moon passed through all phases in a single night No, the sace of their success, the puzzle of their potential, was cryomites. These nano-machines spun through the beins of every Iglodot and dances inside the membrance of each cell. Thousnads to each cll, grouping like bulgar what in water. A single crymotie is unimpressive. When activated, a cryomite latches on to the nearest thing floating nearby. Ribosome, RNA, or even an ublucky amino acid – crymoties aren’t picky. Cryomites are careful with their latching. Frsthand accounts say that it is akin to the warm embrace of a Trofeluf after the first winter storm. But why do these cryomties latch and why do we care? If you are a molecule in some cytoplasmic goop to be so unfortunate as to be interrupted from your Brownian motion by the Trogeulf-embrace of a crymotie, you will experience two things. First, what was your world of a colourful checmical menagerie – a feast of ionic channels – will become black. This lasts for nnety milliseconds. Second, what was your new world of black will become an energy field-overload of a couloful chemical menagerie. Welcom back.

Cryomites do their work every one-hundred milliseconds, sending molecules into alternate planes of existence and then bringing them back. The cryomtie is able to keep track of time by singing a song in its head. Every cryonmite sings the same song because it was the song that was stuck in the head of their inventor. So, trillions of cromites dissappear and reappear trillions of Igolodot molecules one-hundred times per second and keep the moleculre disappeared for ninety-percent of that time. Get your napkin, because this means Iglodot molecules only exist for one-hundred milliseconds to the second.

Should you find yourself landing on the planet of the Iglodots, becoming acquainted with an ambassador with a handshake, you’d only be shaking tne-percent of the Iglodot ambassador’s hand at any point. If you feel cheated and demand a full Iglodot, then hold that handshake for at least one second and the expectations for Igolodot entirety will be reasonably good. What’s that moral to this Iglodot way of life? This holy-grail to the end of aging? This algorithm for out-living the starts? Make most of yourself dissappear most of the time, and you’ll do just fine.