Having conquered not only biology but some aspects of space-time as well, mankind has found himself with a confused definition of age. A simple duration of existence no longar suffices, and each individual must regard his age as having several different aspects:
- Biological Age, a reference to the state of a person's physiological maturity. Built into every DNA profile is a time-based sequence of biological developments, the most primary of which is growth from initial zygote to full-sized mature organism. Many biologies also include effects that appear past the "bloom age" of reproductive maturity, but as they can be reversed, a person's Biological Age can be nearly anything. Most humans choose to maintain a biological age from 16 to 25 years. Post-maturity has been eliminated in some engineered DNA's, so that an individual reaches a plateau age whereupon he ceases to change biologically; for those individuals, biological age is usually a constant, as they have no reason to deviate from that physically-prime plateau. Biological age has little to do with physical time.
- Elapsed Age, defined as how much continuous subjective time an individual has spent being alive. If the individual were born with a perfect unstoppable timepiece on his wrist, and carried with him always, it would read his Elapsed Age.
- Chronological Age, referring to the distortions of Elapsed Age inherited by star-travellers who use suspended animation techniques to pass the time spent journeying across great distances. If a person's Elapsed Age timepiece were to be shut off during these years of centuries of sleep, it would read his Chronological Age, a number lower than the Elapsed Age.
- Absolute (Objective) Age. If a perfect unstoppable timepiece existed in deep space, in flat space-time, far from any gravity source (which would slow its operation relativistically), it would be keeping Absolute Ages for individuals everywhere. As no person exists in flat space at all times, he undergoes relativistic slowdowns, so that his Absolute Age is always higher than either his Chronological or his Elapsed Age, both of which are subjective to his environment.
Elapsed and Absolute ages apply to objects as well as living creatures. The ages of archaeological artifacts, for example, must be classified in both manners.
The confusion of the concept of age in human and alien affairs has led to all manner of social and religious customs, statutory complications, philosophical and mathematical problems, and even techniques for fraud and trickery ... and a few clever jokes as well. The ancient question of "How old are you?" can no longer take a simple timespan as an answer.
Made from various resonant microcrystals, animated ink remains a popular novelty, even though printed paper has declined to near-disuse over the millennia, in the face of superior data-storage and -dispersal technology.
Black/transparent ink was first conceived of by an anonymous worker in a printing shop late in the second millennium. Lacking the appropriate chemical skills to develop his idea, he foolishly posted an overview of his potentially lucrative invention on a world-wide computer network, and never profited from his brainchild. Though it took nearly a century for anyone to produce the first practical working compounds, a crystallized ink that could be made to resonate between opacity and transparency was soon in common use, though its images faded as the micro-vibrations within the inks entropically waned. Nonetheless, with clever applications, images could be made to appear to move (even though the ink molecules themselves remained stationary), and animated ink was born.
The next great stride came with the development of colored animated inks. Though only certain colors were available at first (red, gold, green, etc.), soon process-combinations allowed full-range tones and shadings. Illuminated (i.e., light-emitting) piezo-inks, though not directly related to animated inks, followed close on the heels of full animated color, and soon the two technologies were interwoven.
The final touch on this curious craft came with the adaption of gravity technology to create atomic-level power cells, which could maintain the vibrations within the crystalline inks and prevent them from fading over time. Now, with reconstructive efforts, ancient unpowered animated pages are once again being brought back to life.
Animated inks are known to have been used in espionage environments, as data can be encoded into the crystal resonances, and the ink then placed on nearly any object for covert transport.