Authors note: blah
Binary by Gordon Glasgow
It’s true that humans have been reduced to homo-economicus, beings of logical decision, which essentially we are not.
Love gives you hope. So do passions and even interests. Like life, they have finality. If we were to live forever there would be no love.
The fear of aging, constant and painful, is a panic about an end to a world where strong emotions, such as love or passion, can exist. Without aging, without death, all we’d have is rationality. What boring shit that would be.
More than boring, actually. Torture is the word.
We desire what we can’t have. Michelle and William, let’s call them, want to live forever. They have been dating for seven years now, a significant amount of time considering the distractions of the modern era. They have managed to sustain their love despite a society signaling them not to. And in romance they live in a small apartment together in the current banal sameness of all urban metropoles, let’s call it New York.
Although they can’t own much, Michelle and William have jobs that allow them to earn a living. They have some true friends, an average of five each. They successfully balance their relationships to the best of their ability. Normal people.
Michelle and William go on holidays, often together but sometimes apart. There exists a trust between them. Another rare contemporary entity. They believe that what they have is unique, that they are lucky, although at another time in history it would be called depressing.
Unfortunately, Michelle and William are correct in their beliefs. They are lucky.
A series of pills are introduced one day. It’s all the buzz in the news. They have a similar chemistry to Metformin, the medicine that diabetics take. The new series of pills, taken twice per day at precisely the right times, will increase one’s lifespan three-fold. Homo-economicus can now live until an average age of three-hundred. From now until three-hundred, it is likely that new technology will emerge. Like modernity, progress will continue to topple progress, and it seems we’ll be able to live until at least 10,000.
The human apparatus will need to recycle a lot of body parts to be able to look at themselves in the mirror at the age of five thousand and four. This is a major concern. Never-mind that, though. What will come in regard to the question of monogamous affection? I love you to infinity and beyond. Yea right.
The road ahead for Michelle and William begins to look exhausting. I’ve never loved the idea of death more, William thinks to himself, drinking a beer in his underwear standing at the kitchen counter while Michelle takes a shit in the bathroom not too far away.
And my parents, both our parents, they’re still alive, William continues to think. In ten years, if this is real, I’ll put a bullet in my head, William concludes that night. He tosses and turns in silk sheets that Michelle bought from a start-up marketed through Instagram.
Michelle is skeptical of the feasibility of these miracle pills that will allow her to live until three-hundred, forget about 10,000. She too concludes that if this technology is indeed real and her parents remain material for the foreseeable future, a bullet will have to be lodged in her brain as well.
We were not even really meant to live the way we’re living now, they both think independently while lying next to each other, thoughts intertwined, bodies turned in the opposite direction.
The technology continues to progress. It becomes, by law, mandatory to take them. Otherwise, one is deemed suicidal, mentally ill, and sent to a rehabilitation facility.
More than anything, two concepts become the most frightening. Never-ending family and the asymmetrical body. Despite being able to live endlessly, beauty products cannot sustain, that progress isn’t around yet. There are some good options: luscious lips, metal legs, and a perfectly shaped fake ass. Most other things aren’t possible, such as the maintenance of a pretty face. Everyone around is old and ugly.
To most people, the thought of having children seems futile. Youth has disappeared, the final turn of the corner.
After the pills hit the market, William and Michelle last another six years. One commits suicide at the age of one-hundred and thirty-seven, with perfect tits and wrinkly arms, a rope around the neck. The other makes it to two-hundred and forty, before jumping off a bridge.
In Leviathan, Hobbes says that protection is the justification for leaving the perpetual state of war and nature. No matter the progression in politics, art and science, it is painfully clear that our protection is yet to be found.
Structure and authority are therefore necessary illusions. Death is the main authority that governs the structure of life; an end is necessary.