To be human is to cope with knowing. In the early 1960s, Leonard Hayflick determined that healthy cells can divide only a finite number of times. Known as the Hayflick Limit, it sets an unsurpassable lifespan for our species at just over 120 years.

Shifting focus between the limits of the microscope and the limits of the telescope, Matthew Tierney gives voice to a range of characters who scrape out meaning in a carnivalesque universe, one that has birthed black holes and Warner Bros. cartoons, murky market economies, murkier quantum laws, Vincent Price, Molotov cocktails, seedless grapes, Area 51 and competing Theories of Everything.