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Extreme Makeover Puts the Apocalypse on Its Skin
Most of us would like change at least one thing about our bodies. Maybe we’d like to be a little taller, or a little thinner, or have fewer wrinkles around our eyes. The beauty industry knows this, and has dutifully produced a product for every insecurity imaginable (snail slime face mask, what?). After all, make-up is just a temporary solution; underneath the vanishing cream, we’re still the same flawed sacks of meat, pretending to be something we’re not. But what if that didn’t have to be the case? What if we could actually become the beautiful bodies we worship, and all we had to do to realize our dreams was buy some lotion (and ingore some, er, unfortunate side effects)? Enter Extreme Makeover, in which Dan Wells (I Am Not a Serial Killer) offers up the cheeriest end of the world scenario you’ll ever read.
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ReBirth lotion is the brainchild of Lyle Fontanelle, a cosmetics scientist at NewYew who has devoted his research to the development of the world’s most powerful anti-aging creme. Instead of tightening the skin or filling the cracks with the equivalent of spackling paste, Lyle’s lotion encourages the body to rebuild healthy skin from scratch using a combination of plasmids, little circles of DNA templates, and a retrovirus that helps manage the copy/paste reactions. Burn victims can regrow damaged skin with ReBirth—rub on a few dabs of lotion, and science takes care of the rest.
There’s one little problem with ReBirth: the stuff is turning everyone into a clone of Lyle, all because he stuck his finger in the mixing vat. The plasmid/retrovirus combination pulls DNA from one source and applies it to another, rebuilding the user’s body from the inside out. Lyle thinks this is a catastrophe, but NewYew sees it as a goldmine. People start snatching the stuff up left and right, transforming themselves into clones of supermodels, sports heroes, and celebrities practically overnight.
Extreme Makeover is never shy about telling you this wrinkle creme is going to destroy the world—in fact, each chapter heading counts down to the inevitable final day. The ReBirth phenomenon starts as a beauty aid, devolves into a black market product, and eventually attracts attention from international politicians. Society is pulled up by the roots. No one is who they appear to be. Gangs of Lyles roam the streets. And that’s only the first half of the book.
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Wells does an amazing job balancing the finer philosophical notes of a rub-on cloning creme with a fast-paced, aggressive narrative. Lyle struggles with the ethical fallout from the creation of the monstrous stuff, while others use it as a religious prop, or even a tool of terrorism. The book touches on how immortality and freedom from disease play into this new world, but it doesn’t stop the excitement to ruminate or wax philosophical. Instead, it gains speed with each chapter, eventually sliding into a climactic ending that’ll make you say “WOW!” (Yes, in all caps.)
This is a thoroughly enjoyable read, a book to charge through in a few sittings because you simply can’t put it down. It manages to present a stark dystopian concept in an easily digestible, lighthearted manner. Sure, the destruction of all humanity is a terrible thing, but this is a book about the end of the world being triggered by skin lotion. It can’t be that horrifying, right?