I had an idea for a short story recently... tell me if you think that the ideas are consistent and work well with each other.
THE SETTING:
Sometime in the distant future... we discover the secret to immortality!
However, as is the nature of scientific discoveries on the cutting edge, the process in becoming immortal is inordinately expensive.
In becoming "immortal", one has to consume pills laced with specific nutrients that allow for greater longevity. While one pill alone will not give everlasting life, each of the pills gives you a certain amount of extra time to live.
Soon enough, these pills are made available to the general public. In order to accommodate people in different financial situations, the pills are available many assorted price ranges for the discerning consumer.
Soon enough, people start to perceive value differently so that the means of communicating value is not some flimsy piece of paper, but rather the new found pills that represent actual time.
THE STORY:
I was thinking of making a kind of ironic tale following the life of some individual.
The guy would be a person is a hard and steadfast worker, always saving his "hourlies", "dailies", and "yearlies" in the bank. He would refuse to spend his pills frivolously on goods for pleasure such as alcohol and coffee. In terms of characterization, he would be very detached with the world.
Having reached the ripe age of "x" years, he has been saving for centuries to afford placement in "Heaven" (kind of an unsubtle name), which is another name for a retirement home of some kind. Before he gets in, the story would then focus in on what he has lost; his family, his friends, his wife, children, etc. as he has pushed himself and sacrificed much in moving forward to achieve this goal. There would be time enough after all to start with a clean slate.
Heaven is an endless retirement home of pleasure. With a one-time payment, you guarantee an everlasting eternity of debauchery with everything you could have ever dreamed of. Typically, the asking price is incredibly high so that only the immensely wealthy can join, but he has worked enough for all of these centuries so that he can get in.
He is filled with nervous joy at entering it would it be as great as he thought it would be yadda yadda yadda.
And then we kill him.
We kill him either right before he gets in or through some stupid accident when he finally gets in. (im leaning towards the latter)
THE END
Moral would be like to live in the moment or something like that. Whaddaya think?
I like the premise, but the moral seems to be overly simplistic. I dont get the idea of entering heaven which you pay for with an obscene amount of what amounts to "life" for an everlasting paradise. How does paying for immortal pleasure with "life points" make sense?
ReplyDeleteThe premise lends itself to renvisioning life as a commodity and currency. As such obviously some people would have more of it then others leaving the poor to LITERALLY perish and the rich to perpetually persist. I would personally find it a waste to if not focus on how this interaction between the rich and poor manifests in the world you relate, then at least shed light on it. As a personal story of making money and forgeting and sacrificing everything else for the sake of making more to have it all wasted and end up unfulfilled, there is nothing that makes that stops that story from being about real money and this "life currency" you have devised.
ReplyDeleteI liked the idea of the setting more than my actual plot honestly. All I did was make a really rudimentary plot related to it... y'know trying to just fit the story to have consistency more than anything. I agree that there are really far better ways of addressing what that setting can actually mean in terms of theme and whatnots.
Deletelast "and" should be an "instead of this"
Deletefor my post not yours
Delete