A Kurzweilian Thanksgiving
by Celeste Garcia
A.I. founding father, Ray Kurzweil, believes if humans can live until 2029, they have a legit shot at immortality. This got me thinking about who will want to live forever. No doubt the most insufferable among us. The only requirement is money—lots of it. With Thanksgiving coming, I’ve written a short story imagining what this future Hell might look like, followed by a summary of the technologies that will make it possible.
Stillness. Laura awoke to an insulated quiet. The clock read 8 a.m. Something seemed different. She peered out the window to see a blanket of white snow. Her small yard, always in desperate need of landscaping, had been transformed into a white-frosted wonderland.
“Chloe, Chloe, come look!” She ran into her daughter’s room. “Snow angels and sledding! Get up, sleepyhead.”
Chloe’s bed was empty. Laura’s heart sank. Hawaii. Her daughter was in Hawaii with her dad. They had never gone on extravagant holidays when Laura was still married to Tim. Laura picked up Chloe’s stuffed froggy on her bed and threw it across the room. The “pfff” sound it made hitting the wall did little to diminish her annoyance. She would be facing Thanksgiving with her family alone.
Laura’s mom, ironically named Candy, was a skinny bitch. Looking back, she had never really seen her mom eat, even though she got her nickname from stealing sweets as a kid. Candy had put Laura on a diet when she was twelve, sending her to slumber parties with a healthy meal in a brown paper bag. The minute Laura got to the party, she’d toss it in the garbage and proceeded to eat everything in sight. Laura tried on ten outfits, discarding them on the floor in her frenzy. Nothing was going to make her look twenty pounds lighter. A stretchy black dress purchased on Amazon would have to do.
Her mom had already decorated for Christmas—wreaths with red ribbons were hung in all the windows, a garland with twinkling white lights and topiaries flanked the front door. The snow added to the festive décor as if her mother had commissioned it.
Laura took a deep breath and got out of her car. Her father had probably gotten up at 6 a.m. to shovel the walkway. A thin layer of snow had fallen since, which made a satisfying crunch under her boots. She entered the foyer. A giant noble fir decorated with only gold ornaments stood in the corner of the great room and a cedar garland hung across the mantle. The scent of evergreen co-mingled with turkey and pies in the oven made Laura weak in the knees.
She found her brother, his wife and her dad in the den, glued to a football game.
“Hello! Dad. Seth. Tiffany!” she said, kicking off her boots and intentionally leaving them in the middle of her mother’s impeccable room.
Grandma Jo sat in the corner humming to herself. Laura approached her first and gave her a hug. “Grandma, it’s me, Laura!” Laura could swear there was a twinkle of recognition in her eye.
“Hunker down Hawks!” her dad, Bill, yelled. “Hold them Bengals!”
Tiffany stood and embraced Laura. “I’m rooting for Cincinnati--their quarterback is so hot.”
They giggled together. “That’s sedition in this household,” Laura warned. “How’s Candy doing today?”
“The usual, she’s got everything under control in the kitchen.” Tiffany grabbed a bottle of pinot grigio off the coffee table and poured a glass for Laura. “We better go in and say ‘hi.’”
Most of the time, Laura found Tiffany annoying. She prodigiously spent her family’s money. Now that her dad was semi-retired, and Seth ran the family commercial real estate empire, Tiffany had more access. She was so ‘extra’ as Chloe would say. Long fingernails, and laughably fake blond extensions. Laura called her look “sparkle confusion.” Tiffany was wearing a gold Gucci belt atop black leather pants, bold printed Versace blouse, huge diamond studs, and Louboutin stilettos.
When they walked in, Candy was basting the turkey. Tiffany and Laura waited until she noticed them.
“Ladies, I was just about to call you in. I could use a little company.”
Candy looked skinnier than usual and had a youthful glow. Had she gotten another facelift? Laura felt her bitch wrinkle deepen.
“Can we help you?” Tiffany asked with no intention of lifting a manicured claw.
“I’ve got it under control.” She inspected Laura, “Darling, you must be miserable with Chloe in Hawaii with her father and his beautiful new wife and children.”
“She’s not really that new Ma, they’ve been married seven years. I’ve moved on.”
“And the Mauna Kea! Tim making partner must’ve really upped his income. That hotel is spectacular. It was Laurance S. Rockefeller who decided to build the resort in 1965. It’s still a masterpiece of understated elegance.”
Her mother had turned passive-aggressiveness into an art form.
“It’s a great chance for Chloe to decompress. Senior year is so stressful,” Laura said through clenched teeth.
“How did you let Tim slip through your fingers, Laura? He’s the best thing that ever happened to you.”
“Thanks Mom, I’m gonna go outside and eat yellow snow.”
When dinner was ready, Seth and Bill couldn’t be torn from the TV.
“Give us five minutes, it’s almost halftime,” Bill growled.
“Dad, five minutes on the clock is twenty minutes of penalties and commercials!” Laura yelled.
Tiffany was fuming. Candy plastered on a fake smile from ear to ear.
Bill and Seth finally joined them. “Laura, how’s your job at that Intelligent Artificial company?” Her dad was very smart, he’d built a successful company from the ground up. She suspected his luddite routine was an act. “Are you really making robots that babysit old people? What do you think, Grandma Jo? Would you like a robot friend?” he asked loudly in her direction.
“Ronald Reagan,” she said with a smile.
“Jeez Dad,” Laura patted her grandma’s hand. “Have some respect.”
“You’ll never put me out to pasture with only a robot to care for me.” Candy said.
Just you wait lady. “We aren’t using A.I. as a substitute for human contact, but we have a rapidly aging population, and birthrates are down.”
“A.I. will never displace a good real estate broker. The relationships I cultivate are the key to my tremendous success,” Seth said.
“Amen, darling.” Candy looked at Seth with pride. Her darling boy.
Laura felt her heart race. My God, she was having a panic attack. She found herself shoveling mashed potatoes in her mouth. For someone who didn’t eat, Candy was a damn good cook.
“Ding, ding,” Candy tapped her silver spoon on her Baccarat champagne flute, “I have some amazing news.”
“You’re having a baby?” Seth blurted out as Laura mumbled “facelift.”
Her mom ignored them. “You may have noticed that I’m looking awfully youthful, even more than normal for me.”
“Isn’t she just gorgeous?” Her dad said.
“Oh Bill,” Candy blushed. “Normally I keep my beauty secrets to myself, but this particular treatment will be a little more…dramatic. I’ve signed on for Ever Young.”
“That’s great mom, we can go clubbing together.” Laura took a giant gulp of wine.
“Sounds like a multi-level marketing scheme, Ma. Is that like Amway?”
“Let me finish,” Candy said, holding up her hand to shush them like she did when they were kids. “This treatment is an A.I. biotech miracle. It’s reversing my aging process. They estimate I can live a perfectly healthy, sentient and active life for another five hundred years.”
Laura spit her wine all over the turkey.
Tech Behind the Story
How exactly might Candy live long enough to torment her daughter Laura for the rest of Laura’s natural life?
A.I. is converging with biogenetics and nanotech for dramatic advances in body and brain health. The two main elements of longevity are curing and preventing diseases that cause mortality, and directly reversing aging. Let’s start with curing disease, the good news is that it will benefit all of humanity. A.I. will dramatically reduce the cost and time to develop treatments and medications.
Nearly all bodily functions are carried out by proteins, so advancements in proteomics and genetics benefit both medicine and the science of antiaging.
In 2022, Alphabet's DeepMind, predicted the structures of nearly all known proteins.
This will lead to synthetically produced proteins with specific functions like building immunity to fight cancer.
Proteins’ unique shapes determine the success of medications.
A.I. can process and model vast amounts of protein simulations and genetic data in 1/1000 the time it took for traditional methods.
As medicine merges with A.I. it will progress exponentially and will ultimately cure every possible disease.
“Biology will never (…) match what we will be capable of engineering once we fully understand biology’s principles of operation,” Ray Kurzweil
Body and Brain:
A.I., Biogenetic and nano technologies will enable us to redesign and rebuild our bodies and brains molecule by molecule.
We will eventually be able to regrow our cells, tissues, and organs, rebuilding at the molecular level.
We can “turn off” aging as we learn the genetic and protein codes.
David Sinclair and his team at Harvard Medical School made a huge breakthrough in July 2023, by accelerating and then reversing aging in mice.
This was done through gene therapy that reversed the epigenetic changes they caused.
They targeted the epigenome, the set of chemical modifications to DNA and histones that regulate gene expression without altering the genetic code.
“It’s like rebooting a malfunctioning computer,” David Sinclair
How long these incredible breakthroughs take to be widely available is the billion-dollar question. My fellow Gen Xers and I might be the last generation to age. I often imagine them putting us in zoos so children can see what old people used to look like.
I would love to hear your thoughts on the topic of A.I.-enabled immortality.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
My sources include almost everything Ray Kurzweil has said and done. Okay, an exaggeration, but a lot of it. David Sinclair is driving much of the research specific to anti-aging.
FANTASTIC VOYAGE: LIVE LONG ENOUGH TO LIVE FOREVER, 2004, Ray Kurzweil and Terry Grossman, M.D.
Loss of Epigenetic Information Can Drive Aging, Restoration Can Reverse It | Harvard Medical School Harvard Medical School By STEPHANIE DUTCHEN January 12, 2023
Ray Kurzweil at COSM Nov 2, 2023, posted April 9, 2024 to YouTube
Great writing style, timing with the holidays, and use of expressions. I love the tie through with the storyline and AI education. That adds a uniqueness and huge value add element to the read/post.