Consider a movie: a sequence of stills, each subtly different, that strung together at high speed give the illusion of movement.  Consider a world precisely the opposite:  Changes come in greater and greater variety, at a faster and faster pace, but everything that matters is stasis.  For to change is to age, and to age is to die, and in this world, dying is a mark of the poor, a stigma of the only sin left in a materialist world.

            No one ages, no one who matters, because no one would dream of letting it get that far.  You might avoid your dentist and you might skip a checkup, but only a madman -- or a poor man -- would miss even a single treatment.  The conquest of age has unleashed a new Golden Age, as composers never pass away with symphonies unfinished, crusaders never fall at the height of their strength, sickness and incapacity never wrest a company from your grasp.  Time, at last, to enjoy the fruits of our labor, the yield of our years.

            But below this shining metropolis, huddled under the bridge and walkways, on the outside looking in, are the next generation, and the next, and the next.  For money comes to money and power clings to power, and only death has been the true equalizer, the thresher that grinds up the powerful and mixes their status, their money, their influence back into the soil so others might grow.

            The first timeless generation of adults will raise the first eternal children ... and then what will we do with them?  No one who claws his or her way to the top of the heap will have the constitution to just surrender it and retire quietly.  The spires will rise to new heights -- but the cathedral will be a frozen place.