It’s pointless to ask why, but we always ask it anyway. Why were people doing this? Why the crazed, senseless destruction? If you couldn’t secure a long life for yourself, why shorten someone else’s? What purpose did playing the spoiler serve?

Asian women were getting cosmetic eye surgery so no one would think they might be a Lao Baby. Rich people were staying out of their Park Avenue homes and slipping into nondescript walk-ups in Washington Heights, so no one would think they were first in line for the longevity gene. Everyone young and healthy was suspect, though no one really looked young and healthy any more. Everyone looked sick or weary.

People are always shocked at seemingly purposeless destruction. But there is a purpose for it. Evolution isn’t about the creation of a superspecies; it’s about balance. Evolve into a creature too invincible and you’ll grow too much too fast, exhaust your resources, die off. Spoilers are necessary. The will to survive and thrive is always balanced out by our darker urges to ruin things, even for our own selves. Murder and suicide are as natural as sex and childbirth.

“You really believe that?”

We were going upstate, hoping to make it to the border by the end of the day. Harrigan was driving. I had hunched down in the back until we got out of city limits. When we stopped for supplies Jimmy climbed into the back seat with me, limbs entwining mine.

Upstate New York has always seemed a little bleak to me, even in better times — lovely landscape dotted with burnt-out post-industrial wastelands of towns, decades of decrepitude since they had any kind of commerce, any hope to thrive. Now it seemed even worse, like someone had decided to make a very dark theme park out of the whole thing, burning cars and bombed-out houses and their hollow-eyed residents dressed in tatters staring, always those seething, hard stares, as we passed. At one point I saw two small children sitting cross-legged on a lawn, staring at a burning house as though it were a TV — their house, I assumed. We kept going.

Watching them go by I remembered, oddly, back to the couple of days in August many years ago when Manhattan lost electrical power. It had happened so soon after 9/11 that at first a moan seemed to float across the island as people thought it was happening again. “It” wasn’t; a mere snafu of the grid. But I recall, as I sat in a room sweltering with late-summer heat, no A/C, melting food in the fridge, darkness falling, nothing to do, I laughed thinking how cool all those post-apocalyptic movies and novels made it seem to hole up in a bomb shelter eating canned foods, all the while keeping watch for the alien invaders or the walking dead or whatever the instrument of doom happened to be. I can’t think of much that would be more boring, frankly, and boredom plus fear-for-your-life anxiety is one toxic combination. This was how everyone seemed these days, bored and anxious, purposeless and fearful.

After the dozenth such dreary town Jimmy had made some comment to the effect of “I just don’t get it.” After miles of silence Harrigan suddenly gave an odd, grunting laugh and said, “What’s there to get?” It was then that he presented his grand theory, or whatever you might call it: destruction is as natural as creation, and as soon as the longevity gene was discovered, we should have seen this coming. “I’d have bet good money that the average lifespan would go down once we discovered the fountain of youth. Yes, I really believe that.”

He met my eyes in the rearview mirror. I didn’t say anything, but I believed at least some of it myself, at least the part about the spoilers. A man I did not know was trying to kill me in an impersonal, militaristic way, as though he had orders to do so. I’d almost think he did have orders, that he was part of some government mission, only it wouldn’t make sense to enact the killings in such dramatic fashion. Was he a religious fanatic? He was annoyingly closed-mouthed if that were so; he never gave any reasons for his actions.

Some people thought Lindstrom himself might be doing the killings, but the man I had glimpsed was much younger than Lindstrom, who would have been in his 70s, as were Ruth Baxter and all the other scientists. It was odd to think that they were all nearing the ends of their lives after having dedicated a key portion thereof to finding a way to stave off death. It would still find them anyway, sooner and not later.

“The spoiler is bred into us. It’s never enough for us to say, OK, I have what I need, so I don’t care that someone else has more. You look at that someone else and you can’t help but think, why do they have more? They don’t deserve it. Why can’t I have it too? And when you can’t get it, you’re willing to be satisfied in their not getting it.”

Harrigan was becoming positively garrulous as the miles went by. I could tell Jimmy wished the guy would just shut up for a while so we could make out in relative peace.

“And that all becomes multiplied a hundred times when people don’t have what they need while others have more than they could need in several lifetimes. That is quintessential human nature, my friends.”

“Way to kill the mood, buddy,” Jimmy murmured in my ear. I could feel him smile into my neck as he slipped his hand under my t-shirt.

“You know what’s really funny, though?” Harrigan again. He was on a roll. I couldn’t believe he was simply trying to irritate Jimmy and interrupt the backseat groping session; he really seemed to be enjoying his rant. “What’s funny is everything in the world has shifted. You think developing nations give a fuck about the longevity gene? Uh-uh. We’re the only ones self-destructing here, us and Europe. Other nations are watching us and thinking, go on, kill yourselves, then watch while we swoop in. They aren’t looking for immortality; they still just want to get rich.”

“What exactly do you want?” It blurted out of me. Jimmy was about to protest my lack of attention when it occurred to him that mine was a pretty good question.

Harrigan nodded at me in the mirror; I guess he thought it a good question as well. “Consider me your friendly neighborhood developing nation. I told you my clients were wealthy. Truth is that’s a gross understatement. They want to be first in line to have their progeny get the longevity gene. They’re willing to do whatever it takes.”

“Including kidnap a Lao Baby and have her dissected in a lab?”

Now Jimmy shifted uneasily; that thought had never occurred to him.

Harrigan snorted. “That’s been tried. Just because you can take apart a lab rat doesn’t mean you can make a living one. These people don’t want to waste time; they want to go to the source. Lindstrom. He’s the only one who knows what went right. Eventually someone else will get it right, of course, but they can’t wait that long. Nobody can.” He half glanced over his shoulder at me. “Except you.”

“If I stay alive long enough.”

“That much is true for everyone.”

“Well, it’s about to be put to the test.” Jimmy’s voice was suddenly urgent. “Look.”

From out of nowhere a motorcycle had snuck up behind us, its driver’s arm raised in a familiar pose, fist clenched over the explosive metal container.

“You’re staying alive long enough,” Harrigan muttered. “Hold on.”