“Yes, the crystals have a purifying effect: They keep our bodies free of toxins, ameliorate our daily stressors, moderate our excesses, modulate the cellular reproductive processes even unto the genetic level, and in their governance of our biologies, the crystals extend our lives exponentially. An infant who acquires a crystal might expect to live five hundred years. How long we each live depends primarily on the age at which we acquired our crystals.”
“When did you get yours?” Casper asked.
“I was twenty-two, like Nadika,” Doctor Shanmugam said, staring at the young woman's face, at the double eye patches. “In all, a person should expect a quintupling of his or her remaining life span. For example, a fifty-year-old who has a reasonable expectation of fifty more years of life can expect
