Dr. Brian Peacock is a genetic researcher at Berlin’s Charité Hospital. He’s 45, but looks like eighty, because he’s dying from accelerated aging. Tony Hauenstein, is a web designer in Downtown Berlin who looks like he’s 45, but his ID says he’s actually 88. To save himself Brian decides to find someone like Tony with an exceptionally rare set of genetic defects that dramatically slows the aging process, then edit their DNA into his own genome. After their chance meeting, Brian decides to steal Tony’s DNA and also use it to develop a “cure” for human aging: the ultimate product, worth trillions.

Tony doesn’t want to fall in love again because he’s lost so many lovers during his long life. Caroline Künstler is Brian’s girlfriend who renounced her career as an opera singer to care for him, but now stutters and has reached the end of her tether. Lucy Ellington, a marketing executive of BioMed Pharmaceuticals and Brian’s ex, is determined to get back “the old Brian” by hook or by crook. The interaction of these four main characters drives the rapidly accelerating action, which in turn reveals their true characters.

It all sounds like science fiction, but actually it is right on the borderline between science fiction and scientific fact. In 2020 Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the CRISPR gene editing technology that opens up the theoretical possibility of significant Human Lifespan Extension (HLE).

Hauentstein’s primary location is the creative scene of contemporary Downtown Berlin, where English is the default language. Additional scenes take place in London and New York. Some of the action occurs within the world of cutting edge medical research, but it also takes us into the realms of contemporary art, music and S&M. Berlin is also a character in the story, with Tony’s life story mirroring the city’s history. Hauenstein does for 2020s Berlin what Babylon Berlin did for the city of the 1920s.