The Last Manly Man by Sparkle Hayter

Nukker, was a biochemist, a nutritionist, and an Extropian.
    â€œExtropians aim for nothing less than literal immortality,” said Nukker, a muscular, healthy man who looked much younger than his seventy years. He was doing the interview while on a treadmill. He had wires running from his wrist and neck to various bodily monitors—our mike was wireless—and periodically he took big sips from a bottle of electrolyte-rich water.
    â€œWe believe a regimen of exercise, grain-based diet, vitamin, hormone, and enzyme therapies, along with advances in medical technology, will make immortality possible in our lifetimes,” Nukker said. “Current research indicates that men with no vices who do only the exercise and diet part of the regimen could live to be a hundred and forty. By the time they are a hundred and forty, further advances will make immortality conceivable.”
    â€œBut you have to spend almost all your free time working out and you eat nothing but macrobiotics,” I said.
    â€œYes,” he said, not seeing my point.
    â€œForever is a long time if you’re not having any fun,” I said.
    â€œThis is more fun than being dead,” he said, turning off the treadmill and detaching his wires. While stretching, he talked about some of the hundred or so pills he took every day and then informed us it was time for his weekly hormone shot, which he gave himself in his ass.
    This seemed a propitious time to wrap up the interview and break the crew for lunch at Tycoon Doughnut. Keeping with my practice of multitasking, I called in for messages on my cell phone while I ate. That Jason person had called again, and my friend Tamayo had called from Tokyo to say she would be returning to New York “in a few weeks,” which could mean tomorrow or could mean next month, after a stop in Cairo or Budapest. With Tamayo, a comic actress and free woman … excuse me, “struggling demi-goddess on a great adventure,” you just never knew.
    Benny Winter had not called.
    That was a good sign, I figured, a very good sign, because an outright refusal would have come much quicker.
    June Fairchild of the NYPD had called. When I returned the call, she asked, “Is your unit Special Reports or Investigative Reports?”
    â€œSpecial Reports. Why?”
    â€œBecause someone from the Investigative Reports Unit at ANN just called me, wanted to know why you were at the morgue this morning.”
    â€œWhat did you say?”
    â€œThat you came in to ID a John Doe, but you didn’t recognize him, and I told him what I told you about the John Doe. I don’t have any new information.”
    â€œThanks,” I said.
    This was amusing. Reb Ryan and Solange Stevenson, those story stealers in Investigative, thought I was on to a story with the John Doe. Someone in homicide must have tipped them off about my visit. Ha. If I wasn’t so, you know, mature, and Taking the High Road, I might aid and abet them by feeding them a few false leads.…
    â€œTime to go,” Jim said, wiping his mouth with the flimsy paper napkin. He was eager, which was unusual, but understandable. At lunch, after he finished trashing Alana DeWitt, he had talked to Sven about growing up with a picture of Gill Morton on the mantelpiece, as if Gill were one of the family. When we got to the Morton Building, Jim was like a kid in a toy store, bug-eyed and slack-jawed with fresh awe.
    â€œMr. Morton will be right down,” the security guard said.
    We waited in the pre–art deco lobby, a great hall with vaulted archways, brass and glass lamps, high ceilings, and lots of marble inscribed with the quotes of Teddy Roosevelt—“I am only an average man but, by George, I work harder at it than the average man”—and Hock Morton: “a man makes his own luck.” It reeked of manhood.
    One wall was hung with portraits of Morton men. The biggest of these was of founder Hock Morton. Hock