Thursday, April 10, 2008

Life Revoked

I think it’s safe to say that our future is pretty well set in stone. Not literally, of course. Scientists have found the answers to many secrets that we have been asking questions about for a long time, normal people have been finding their own answers to these same questions. Even the media has figured out that something is happening that others would like to know about that doesn’t involve ruining someone’s life. The secrets I refer to may be too hard for some to grasp, for the secrets are the keys to longevity.

Allow me to simplify this term. Longevity is, in a nut shell, the ability to live for a long time. According to scientists, people being born now have a strong chance to live to be 150 years old. In that time frame, scientists will have come up with something else to increase the life span of the populace. Already, as we are now, people in their forties can, almost literally, turn back the clock to when they were twenty. So, those people living to be 150 may only seem like they are in their seventies, by that point in time. And, since there are people alive now, going into their hundreds, seventies isn’t much. In order for them to reach the new equivalent of 100, they would probably need to reach 200, and, of course, by then they would have figured out something else.

Ladies and gentlemen of the internet, I am happy to announce that your children will be able to live forever, with the new advances of science, and probably yourselves as well. Sure, at first we will live into eternity as old, frail beings, but, as time goes by, we will regain our youth and revert to whatever age we want. Eventually, you will be able to pick an age and stick with it for the rest of your life, for however long you think that should be.

Unfortunately, no good thing lasts forever, not even immortality. As the years drag on, you will become bored with your new existence. You will go to work, find you don’t know the job anymore, go to school, learn what you need to know, go back to work, lather , rinse, repeat. Eventually, the routine will become dull. One day, you’ll find yourself quitting your job because you will have become bored of it. You’ll go to a new place to work and you will start at the lowest level, not because you are inexperienced, but because you want to have the full experience and you’ve got enough money to last you for a while. It will be like you were a character in The Sims and someone turned off aging. After a while, your life ceases to have personal meaning.

Of course, boredom is the least of your worries. We all know how the government works. If anything is worth having, it’s worthwhile to limit it. Get used to the phrase, only the poor die young. It will get to the point where you will need a license to live forever. If you are productive, wanted, needed, or wealthy enough, you will gain a license to remain alive. This Living License will cost tons of money, and will be the most fought after card you’ll ever find, and yes, it will be a card. This card will fit nicely into your wallet, or fit on your keychain, depending on which one you bought. The smaller one will cost more than the larger one, because it will be made after the initial card, thus everyone will want it, which will raise the cost more. At some point, the card will be so expensive that only the richest people in the world could afford one, and only the most needed people would be given on for free. As this nightmare becomes reality, the ones who discovered the cure to death will be long since dead, not wanting to go on anymore, and those that bought the licensing rights will become rich men, live forever, having got their licenses before anyone else, and continue to get richer.

Seems like a strange and horrible future, doesn’t it? There will be quite a few people that won’t believe this. It may be hard to accept, but don’t come crawling to me when your license to live gets revoked.

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