The elderly have some of the best genetics around, funnily enough. If they've lived to a venerable age then, by pure Darwinian process of elimination, their genome must be doing something right. Once you slap some new telomeres on those creaky, old chromosomes and hammer out the kinks in the double helix, you're often left with some Grade A genes. These can then either be used wholesale or taken apart and spliced into the standard stem cell templates that are used in Renewal. By pooling the genetics of thousands of the world's most elderly, they're gradually creating a template with a theoretical natural lifespan of 150+.

But Renewal isn't just for the mega-rich these days. With its slow-but-steady uptake in the general population, there's a genuine concern that society will hit 'Peak Old People' some time next century, after which many of these quirky mutations could be lost forever as people are remade from this relatively limited selection of genetically-preened templates. Everyone will be 'perfect' but dangerously homogenized. Like the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, the big Renewal companies are keen to catalog and claim the abundance of genetic diversity while they can, so that it can be packed and profited from later.

I work for those companies, milking geriatrics for their genetic property. Every month, we run a list of all the new centenarians. That gets filtered through algorithms and whittled down by various comorbidities until we're left with the cream of the crop, the healthiest, most virile 100-year-olds. Getting their DNA is easy enough (hang around a retirement home long enough and some biological material will drop off them eventually), but the laws governing genetic property rights are tight these days, so we need to get them to sign. It's usually not too difficult, unless they're very stubborn or have religious objections. For the real juicy ones, we're allowed to negotiate as high as a few million. Obviously, our real ace in the hole is the offer of Renewal, which the companies are particularly fond of, considering they can supply it at cost.

Gerald was a sweet old man fresh from his hundredth birthday. He'd clearly through the wars, quite literally two of them, had smoked and drank like a fish back when it was considered healthy, three wives and forty years working back-breaking labor in some of the worst conditions. And yet his medical record was clean. And he barely looked a day over 87. The man was no doubt a treasure trove of novel proteins.

And his mind was still as sharp as a tack too. We like to start in a roundabout way, enquiring casually about any grandkids they may want to leave money to or any healthcare debts just to see how much of a soft target they may be. Gerald sensed that I was after something straight away and was frank with his negotiations. He sat for hours, calmly and thoroughly reading the contract from front to back.

"So you people young again?" he asked.

"If that's what you'd like."

"And you can make them look different in the process?"

"We replace your cells with younger ones. Swapping them out for someone else's entirely is only a little bit more complex."

"Remarkable..."

He agreed to sign in exchange for a Renewal. He asked for the standard four H's - Himself, Healthy, Handsome and Hung like a-... well, thankfully racehorses aren't so protective of their genetic property. I soon had the pen in his hand. A Renewal would cost half of what he was worth.

"Just sign right there and we can get you prepped for surgery this week."

"Oh, that one isn't for me. That's for Agnes," he smiled, gesturing over to a little old lady snoozing in the corner. "When she wakes up, she'll be delighted to hear she's going to be a man, I'm sure. And I suppose I'd best be there to keep her company." I faraway twinkle entered his eye as he envisioned his new body. "I think I'd like to be a brunette. Green eyes and a narrow waist to accentuate everything else, you know. I'd like to be curvy - it's been a while since I had some real meat on these bones again. I'm talking breasts the size of my head, you understand? Oh and an ass that- ah, shouldn't you be writing this down, boy?"