“Don’t you have a right to immortality?”

Kolby, Jeremy, and Ashley discuss the ethics in the short story, “My Fellow (Immortal) Americans” available to download on Amazon.

Transcript (By Transcriptions Fast)

My Fellow (Immortal) Americans

Kolby: Alright, hello and welcome to After Dinner Conversation. After Dinner Conversation is a growing collection of short stories across genre’s meant to draw out deeper conversations. Download After Dinner Conversation short stories on Amazon, to your kindle app devices, phone, laptop, kindle tablet, all those things or wherever they are sold. This is our podcast to support that and talk about some of the stories. I’m your co-host Kolby. I’m here with Jeremy co-hosting as well as Ashley co-hosting.

Ashley: Triple Co-cost.

Kolby: Triple co-hosting. And we are in, again this week, we’re in..

Jeremy: La Gattara.

Kolby: La Gattara. Thank you. I screwed it up twice now. La Gattara in Tempe, Arizona where there are cats up for adoption. And they were nice enough to let us host here. Alright. So, our story this week is My Fellow (Immortal) Americans. Ashley, you want to sort of run it down for people who haven’t read it so they know what we’re going to be talking about?

Ashley: So, yea, if you haven’t read it, hit pause, go read it really quick. But I’m going to just give you a quick, kind of, overview, but then after you’re done reading it, hit un-pause and come back and watch this. But basically, what it is, it’s a speech given by the American president sometime in the future, couple hundred years. And the issue is that there’s overpopulation. So, his way to kind of get around this, is instead of having a cashed based system.

Kolby: Societies, not his right. Right? Like it happened before.

Jeremy: Society already had it.

Ashley: Society already established.

Kolby: Society already had it.

Ashley: So, instead of it being a cash-based society, he decided that there should be, you work for time. They have found some scientific way that you can be… you work and you earn this time which makes you live and infinite amount of time, so you can be 100, 200 years old.

Kolby: You never get older; you never get sick.

Ashley: So, the debate is how they want to regulate this system. There are other societies that they mentioned where you work 40 hours means you get 40 hours of life, plus 6 hours of, like, bonus time. But he’s thinking “well, if you’re rich, like, why can’t that money be passed down to your kids? Or does it get put back into the system to give to other people?”

Kolby: So, your kids could inherit time.

Ashley: So, your kids could inherit time. So that’s basically the premise of the story. Again, it’s based off a speech he’s giving to promote…

Kolby: It’s like a donors club, or something.

Ashley: Pretty much, yeah. And so, it’s basically his reasoning of why shifting that paradigm that you can pass off your time to your kids, or how you should earn your time.

Jeremy: Right.

Kolby: My impression was, I think this is pretty clear, he thinks free capitalism, right? You should be able to make as much time as you want. You should be able to pass it to your kids. You should be able to exploit workers, like whatever.

Ashley: Yeah.

Kolby: So, one of the things I was a little confused about when I read it, was it seems like you’re born at like zero, and if nothing happened, you’d die at like 60 years old. 60-70 years. But if you work, then you essentially stopped that clock. So, you might be 20 years old and if my math is wrong, if I’m getting this wrong let me know, like you start working at 18 or 20 years old and then basically that freezes your time.

Jeremy: Right.

Kolby: And then if you’re ever like “I don’t want to work anymore,” then you still got 40 more years before you sort of die of cholera of something.

Jeremy: In the way he presents it is, in the US the system is for an hour of your work, you basically get an hour of your life extended. An hour for an hour.

Kolby: Which is kind of a bad deal.

Jeremy: It is kind of a bad deal.

Kolby: Because I only get one more hour so I can work, like…

(laughter)

Kolby: Like, someone at a call center is like, not worth it.

Jeremy: Like, if you have your normal life expectancy of 60 years and if you work 40 of those years, you will live to 100.

Kolby: Right. Even though those are 40 years you spent picking up trash or something.

Jeremy: And really 40 years of 40-hour weeks, so

(laughter)

Kolby: Yeah.

Jeremy: So, and he mentions other systems like France as a bad example…

Kolby: Socialists.

Jeremy: Right, were they get way more hours of life for hour worked. So, says, the country is in a depression because nobody wants to work.

Kolby: Right, oh, that’s right because you work 8 hours but you get paid 20 hours.

Jeremy: Something like that.

Kolby: So, you essentially can get extended life forever for only working some of the time.

Ashley: So, you basically promote not over… like, why would you do overtime then?

Kolby: Yeah.

Ashley: That was the whole thing.

Kolby: Why would you work if you didn’t have too?

Ashley: Yeah, exactly. So, it’s promoting laziness is what his concern is.

Kolby: Yeah. We should also mention there’s a horrible movie roughly based on this idea.

Jeremy: Yes.

Kolby: With…

Ashley: I thought it was pretty good. Justin Timberlake.

Kolby: Like it’s not bad. But I feel so much more could’ve been done with that movie.

Jeremy: Yeah.

Kolby: But it’s not exactly the same idea but it’s roughly the same idea where there’s…

Jeremy: Time is currency.

Kolby: Where time is currency, yeah.

Ashley: So yea again the whole reason for this time shift is the overpopulation so in the reading they said they a solution for those that have worked hard and those that have earned their future, to have that future, and those that have squandered their opportunity to gracefully make space for the next generation of children.

Kolby: Isn’t it like 15 billion like the world cap number that they came up with?

Ashley: Yeah, so basically, in a way, you can set your own death.

Kolby: Sure.

Jeremy: Right.

Ashley: If you think about it. Which I thought that was very interesting because right now, outside of Oregon, there is no assisted suicide. Whereas here it puts that in the people’s hands. I don’t want to live anymore, let me just stop working, and then you’re not longer given those drugs that keep your life going. So, I thought that was… I know that’s not the premise of this, but I thought it was interesting concept.

Jeremy: It’s an interesting additional concept it brings up.

Kolby: That you can choose.

Ashley: Yeah, that you get to choose when you want to live and when you want to die. And what if you don’t want to live anymore but you want to give your time to my kids? Anyway…

Kolby: Like Delta frequent flier miles.

Ashley: Exactly

(Laughter)

Ashley: I thought that was interesting.

Kolby: There were a couple things about it that I thought, for me, were really interesting right? Like, one of them was this idea of are… the president seems to assume, our fictional president, not our current president of course, seems to presume that people are inherently lazy. That if you chose not to, if you didn’t have to work, no one would work.

Jeremy: Right, and you know, as always there’s hypocrisy in the argument where he says “rich people should be able to give their time to their children, but people should be working.” So, there’s a hypocrisy there, so if you’re lazy and don’t want to work, you shouldn’t get to live forever, oh, except for rich kids.

Kolby: Right. And I think one of the things the story that frustrated me, I mean there’s a lot of things that frustrated me about the idea is the point of it, is this idea that you assume that everyone gets paid the same amount for their same thing, like whether you’re the CEO…

Jeremy: No, I think they’re even stating there’s income inequality.

Kolby: And that’s the part that frustrated me. They did this to solve income inequality from people that are being hungry, and yet.

Jeremy: And yet there’s still inequality.

Kolby: I bet the Jeff Bezzos’ in the future might work an hour and get paid 40 years, right? And it’s like, so you arguing people are inherently lazy, but in the same breath you’re arguing of this income inequality that encourages this lazy view, like, “Oh, they’re just more efficient. They are just doing better things.”

Ashley: They say about the government tampering with the marketplace, one is to discourages hiring, it discourages investment, it encourages laziness, and it causes American jobs to be shipped to cheaper labor markets overseas.

Kolby: Yea, I feel like you could pull that out of a newspaper today as to why you shouldn’t raise the minimum wage.

Jeremy: That’s one problem with the story in general, is that it’s just replacing one aspect of our current economic system when it’s a more complex system, so income inequality isn’t the only issue. So, it isn’t enough of a change to really bring out the questions or you really only focusing on income equality when it’s a more dynamic system.

Ashley: Yeah.

Kolby: I’m not following you. I get it that it’s only changing one

Jeremy: One aspect of it so…

Kolby: One thing of the overall economy.

Jeremy: Right. I’m saying it doesn’t go far enough.

Kolby: Ok.

Jeremy: In terms of questioning what the problems are with the current system.

Kolby: Oh, sure.

Jeremy: Because you’re only questioning one factor of the current system.

Kolby: But I think that’s the thing that it’s drawing out, right? For some reason, and maybe I’m reading too much into it, but for some reason when somebody who doesn’t have a lot of skill, they’re not good with technology, they’re not good with engineering, whatever, they get paid $8/hour, you’re like “we’ll you kinda deserve that because if you’ve gone to college, or whatever, I’m not saying that’s fair but that’s the sort of rule.” It seems fairer than saying if “you didn’t get a degree in engineering, you should die”. That’s a much more extreme view which I think it creates, to me at least, it creates more of a bad taste in my mouth. Like, you are so unproductive, I am okay with your death.

Ashley: Now, I’d like to know, in every society, you need those people that do pick up the garbage, that do the... they don’t need to higher education to do those tasks, so are they basically devaluing those people?

Jeremy: Yes, and that’s what I’m saying, it’s not…

Ashley: How does society run?

Jeremy: It’s not changing it enough. It’s really the same system.

Ashley: Yeah.

Jeremy: You could talk about the current system in the same fashion without having to change one aspect of it to bring focus on it.

Kolby: So you’re saying the time aspect of it, it makes it interesting but it’s the same problem?

Jeremy: Yes.

Ashley: They even go into it with the taxes. Like if you make “X” amount of money, you get taxed 10% of time, which gets redistributed to social services. Those that may be can’t… oh my gosh you’re adorable… sorry there’s a cat right in front of me that’s on his belly, that’s like “ah, pet me!”. Or if you make a certain amount, you have to pay 20%, where would it end? And why would any of us work? That’s the concern with payment. And then where does it go to help out your fellow man? That’s still becomes an issue.

Kolby: But that’s the same argument. I don’t think it comes up when you’re talking about minimum wage. Like, nobody says “if you change the minimum wage to $15 per hour, people will just stop working” because there’s this assumption somebody is going to want to buy a TV, or might actually want to send their kids to college, or have a dollar in savings. In that aspect it’s a little bit different.

Jeremy: A little bit different. But that’s not what they’re focusing on. There’s still just focusing on income inequality. It seems to be…

Kolby: They just swapped out what the inequality is.

Jeremy: Right.

Ashley: So, we keep talking about income inequality, what about of quality of life? You keep trying to buy this time for more time, but what are you filling that time with. I’m totally just extracting it from the currency aspect.

Jeremy: I think that’s not even talked about in this story.

Ashley: Yeah, but I’m just bringing it up as a side thing. For example, everyone now wants to live longer and it’s like, “well, you’re going to extend your life 5 years but what kind of quality of life will you have there?” It’s kinda the same thing. They’re talking about these people living for 200 years and I’m like, “great, you’re living 200 years, but…”

Jeremy: But what are you doing…

Ashley: “…but what are you doing with that 200 years?”

Kolby: It also made me think about the inter-changeability of time and money, right? Money is just a portable version of time.

Jeremy: It is.

Kolby: I got to work, I spend an hour to get $30, so that I can have a car, so that I don’t have to walk somewhere, so I have saved…

Ashley: …saved time, in a way. So now money is time.

Kolby: Right. And one of the interesting things about it, is this idea of, ok- so would I work for an hour to buy a car, to drive somewhere, or would it be a better sort of way to spend my time to just walk there in a hurry, right?

Jeremy: Right. To spend that time walking.

Ashley: Well, see you work to afford the car, the car to get you more time, time that you use to go to work, to make more money, to afford the car, to get you to work.

Kolby: I feel like that’s the same treadmill people are on now.

Ashley: Absolutely.

Kolby: I feel like that once you have a car you can drive to a job that pays better. But now I have to pay for the car. What about the idea that, everyone now isn’t sick? Like, yes, you’re swapping out one inequality for another, but if you choose, if you’re like “look, I don’t want to work. I want to surf every day.”

Kolby: You could spend your whole life never working a day and live to 60ish or 70ish and die. And I mean, that would in some sense be like, the dream. The only reason that’s not the dream, is because there are people who live 100,000 years. But if not for these other people, you’d think you had the best life ever.

Jeremy: And they’re aging where the rest of the world is not.

Kolby: Yeah

Jeremy: So that’s another factor of this, by working you’re getting the drugs that not only keeping you young, but keeping you young for a long period of time.

Kolby: Able to do those interesting things.

Jeremy: Right. So, if you were to just opt out of the system, you would live a normal life and age.

Kolby: Right.

Jeremy: And I’m sure it doesn’t, the story doesn’t go into it, but that would also be an interesting story of what are the age stigmas that would come up because of that?

Kolby: Oooh…

Ashley: Oh yea.

Kolby: Oh, you’re older? You’re 60. You just be lazy. You must’ve lost a lot of time in the divorce.

Ashley: Discriminating against younger people. Discriminating. Like, you’re young, what happened, like why are you 60, and you only have 10 years left, like what’s your deal?

Kolby: And what did you do wrong.

Ashley: And interesting enough…

Jeremy: You must be a felon.

Kolby: Must’ve had your time taken away.

Ashley: Now another interesting concept. Nowadays when you have money, you can show that wealth with a car, with clothing. In this issue, there is no money, there’s just aging.

Kolby: So, age is a sign of wealth.

Ashley: Do you show you age on your forehead, because keep in mind how are you going to show the aging.

Kolby: In the movie they have the thingy.

Ashley: They have the thing on the arm.

Kolby: Which would seem pretty weird to me…

Ashley: So how do you know how much time the other person has left.

Kolby: I suppose you have wrinkles. Sunscreen becomes the currency.

Ashley: But again, the aging goes slower.

Jeremy: All topics, not really addressed in the story.

Ashley: It’d be interesting to see…

Jeremy: But interesting questions it brings up.

Kolby: I think it would be interesting spin off story of this, you would think in this society, there would simply be people who just opted out of this.

Jeremy: Exactly.

Kolby: Like, communes, or hippies or whatever that are just like “I’m going to be born, I’m going to live, I’m going to die, I’m not going to get into your game”, and just like live a separate sub-class of people that’ve opted out of this immortality.

Ashley: Now keep in mind, in this case in this story, there is no cancer, there is no disease, they’ve eradicated almost all accident related deaths. So, you literally… there’ no famine. You’re just living.

Kolby: You’re just live and get old and die.

Ashley: Exactly.

Jeremy: Well, and I think they even get rid of the getting old in it, it seems like.

Ashley: Unless you stop taking the medication, yea.

Kolby: What about the idea, does it offend you, because it kind of offended me, that there are people who believe that they have a right to effectively be God? To have immortality. And that they feel that through their work, or through their endeavors, or through their manipulation of their employees or whatever, all the ways that people get rich, they inherit it, they do something, they open a factory in Thailand. Like, there’s something that really just got me like, you’re trying to argue to me, that you have the right to be God. And that, I think, is more offensive somehow than the right to be a billionaire.

Jeremy: Right, exactly.

Ashley: They mention in there too that these drugs, are not mimicable, like you can’t…

Jeremy: They’re limited.

Ashley: They’re limited, so there’s someone who controls it. So, it’s still a corrupt system. There’s someone that controls it, someone that distributes it, like, somebody.

Kolby: You know somebody is stealing pills out of the factory.

Ashley: Exactly.

Jeremy: And selling them on the black market.

Kolby: The other thing, that isn’t touched on… I’ve totally lost my train of thought… I forgot.

Ashley: Now it’s gone.

Kolby: It’ll come back to me.

Jeremy: I don’t know. The story does raise a lot of questions and it would be interesting to see this as a more flushed out longer story.

Kolby: As a novel. I bet there is a novel about it.

Jeremy: Because the world building would be so interesting and the other ramifications. And I feel like we have seen a lot of stories like this that do talk about immortality and how that effects humanity. It’s an interesting topic for science fiction.

Kolby: It is. I agree with that. Is there anything else about this story you guys felt interesting, or I’m still trying to think of the thing I was thinking about.

Ashley: Let’s just go through the questions. By the way there’s a list of questions at the end of each story. We’re going to kind of go through one by one, chime in your answers, give us your thoughts in the comments below. Also, you know, read these stories with your friends. This is after dinner conversations, it’s designed to be sit down with your friends like we are. Cats are optional to have sitting on your papers.

Kolby: And in the comments, feel free to comment of what we got right or what we forgot about, or whatever you think we should’ve talked about.

Ashley: Chime in your two cents.

Kolby: We do have some questions in case you forgot about stuff. Oh, this is going to show your… this is going to show your leanings. Would you support or oppose the time re-distribution laws?

Jeremy: That’s proposed in the story? By congress? Absolutely.

Kolby: So, you’re like, “I want to surf more, not work?”

(laughter)

Jeremy: You know France has a good system. We should absolutely do that.

Kolby: So, you think progressive time tax?

Jeremy: Yes. Progressive time tax.

Kolby: Oh wait, I’m going to call you out on this dude.

(laughter)

Kolby: I’m not disagreeing because I’m that way. But, let’s say that you’re like time paycheck from the government, your unemployment, and so every week they give you an extra 5 days, so you’re going to keep getting your medication, are you seriously….

Jeremy: It’s vacation.

Kolby: Are you seriously going to work a day in your life dude?

(laughter)

Kolby: And if your answer is “no, no I’m not going to work”, then isn’t the president actually right in this story?

Jeremy: No.

Kolby: Seriously. If somebody wrote you a check for time, you’d be like, “ya, I’m definitely going to work.”

Jeremy: It would depend.

Kolby: Ok, let’s hear it.

Jeremy: There are reasons for wealth distribution, or time re-distribution. But again, it needs a larger story to really flush this out, in the sense...

Kolby: No, I’m not asking the story, I’m asking you man.

Jeremy: But still, you have to put it in perspective of the world in the story. So, in the world in the story, no one is injured, so everybody should be able to work.

Kolby: But why would I?

Jeremy: Nobody has back injuries.

Kolby: I’m just saying, if I get my low-income money...

Jeremy: But you want to take a vacation, right? You need extra time to take vacations. I want to take a year sabbatical, how do I do that if I have to continue to work, for an hour for an hour?

Ashley: How do you pay for things then? You pay with time?

Kolby: You pay with time.

Jeremy: Again, it’s on a monetary system. Like the movie with Justin Timberlake, you’re paying for everything.

Kolby: Ok, I remember what I was going to talk about really quickly, but I totally think you bonked on that questions.

(laughter)

Kolby: This is the other part in the story they didn’t talk about, how do you decide you get’s a kid? So, there’s an absolute cap of 15 billion people in the earth. Somebody dies because they just whatever, decided to die or decided just not to work anymore. So now you’ve got 1 new person that can be born out of 15 billion. Is it a lottery?

Jeremy: Or is it within your family?

Ashley: I think maybe you have to pay for that kid in time up front. Like you have to pay for the first 18 year. You have to have 18 years’ worth of wealth built up to pay for that kid to get to 18 years, so they can start working and accumulating their own time. Boom.

Kolby: And I also think in this system, education would be way longer. Because if you live 500 years why wouldn’t you be in a 30- or 40-year education system?

Jeremy: I know people like that now.

(laughter)

Ashley: Life- long student.

Kolby: Stay in school.

Jeremy: Going for another degree.

Kolby: I took it literally. I want to go back to the original question though- so you’re telling me, you work at a regular job for 32 hours a week…

Jeremy: But it’s the same thing, we’re getting PTO now as part of your salary, so you want to take time off, you have to work for that time off. So, if it’s an hour for an hour, and really…

Kolby: And the only free time you have is the money from the government.

Jeremy: Exactly.

Kolby: I also think it would change the type of work the people would do.

Jeremy: Absolutely.

Ashley: Ok, so if it’s an hour for an hour, are they working 12 hour shifts? 12 hours on, 12 hours off?

Jeremy: No, they’re still working 40 hours.

Kolby: Well, you’re still losing time if it’s an hour for an hour, because every time you’re not working, you’re getting closer to death. Every time you go to sleep you’re burning time.

Ashley: Dun dun dun.

Kolby: What about you Ashley? If you got an extra 40 hours a week from the government, would you just work less.

(pause)

Kolby: That pause says yes

Ashley: I think the thing is, what are you using that time for. If these people don’t have a purpose, if they don’t have a drive, if they don’t have anything that interests them, if they don’t have any limitations with disease or needing things, like, it feels like everything in the world has been solved. Someone who is in the healthcare, I’m continually looking at the newest research and now those things don’t exist even to begin with.

Kolby: Right

Ashley: Well, then it’s like, what am I going to use my time for?

Jeremy: Things that you love.

Kolby: I think it depends.

Jeremy: Exactly. And not everybody has a job that they love, they’re just jobs. You know. If you’re in an industry or you’re in a position where you like what you’re doing, yes, you’re going to work more.

Kolby: Movie theatre popcorn people.

Jeremy: Exactly.

(laughter)

Jeremy: No

(laughter)

Kolby: Oh, c’mon. There’s no way they don’t love that job.

(laughter)

Kolby: They love that job.

Jeremy: Right. So, I like my job, but if I could work my job less I would.

Kolby: Okay.

Ashley: Yeah. Everyone is not like you that likes to work all the time, Kolby.

Kolby: Yeah.

(laughter)

Kolby: Yea, I don’t know. Man.

Ashley: So you think people aren’t inherently lazy because obviously Jeremy and I are like “we’ll work less, take what we can get”

Kolby: This is what I think would happen. And this is me just totally making this up. Like, of course I’m making it up. I think there would be 2 ways people would work. I think you would either work at like, you’d optimize your time. If I knew work was only for time. If it was only work. And it served no other purpose, then I would do whatever paid the most possible.

Jeremy: Exactly.

Kolby: I wouldn’t think to myself “well, what I really want to do is..”, no, I’d be like “oh, you need me to clean out the sewage with my bare hands?”

Jeremy: And you’re going to pay me…

Kolby: It pays me 10 hours for every 20 minutes, like yeah, cuz I’m going to go fishing for 10 hours.

Ashley: How about the opposite? Like, you’re going to get paid $10/hour on this really simple task, you don’t think I’m going to go as slow as possible on that task?

Kolby: I think for me…

Ashley: You have to fold these papers, “okay”

Jeremy: It depends, it depends on what you’re doing. It plays into the pay by the unit or paid by the hour.

Kolby: I think, and again, I’m just guessing, I would optimize the time if I was trying to make time. Or I would just do what I wanted to do, and not worry if I got paid at all. Like they would only be 2 choices. There wouldn’t be an in-between.

Ashley: What’s the percentage of the population? What do you think they would do? Do you think most people would try to optimize their time, get the most bang for their buck? Or do you think most people would be like…

Kolby: I think fear of death is a really big motivation.

Jeremy: True.

Jeremy: I think fear of death is greater motivation that poverty. So, I also think that most people would be like, “I have to bank, I always have to have 100 hours in the bank, just in case.” I don’t know.

Ashley: Now what’s going to take you out of working? We obviously said they stopped all non-accident related deaths, no disease, no hunger.

Kolby: I just have this vision of foam over everything.

(laughter)

Ashely: Everyone is walking around in bubble-suits.

(laughter)

Kolby: I can never get hurt again.

(laughter)

Ashley: So, what’s the limiter there? The fear of death?

Kolby: Yeah, it is.

Ashley: But now you’re in control of your own death? Do you think there would be people that just… hello kitty… you know, never want to die? Just go forever and ever and ever and ever.

Jeremy: Absolutely.

Kolby: Does the story mention if depression is solved as well?

Ashley: No, they say....

Kolby: I feel like that would be the #1 cause of death.

Ashley: All non-accidental deaths, cancer, dementia, heart disease, AIDS, malaria, and many other global scourges in the past were eradicated in a generation in a generation.

Kolby: So, this is like a little bit of a rabbit hole, I don’t want to go too far down.

Ashley: Ut oh, here we go.

Kolby: I feel like, if I had a 1000 hours saved up, the first thing I would do is just sigh.

Jeremy: Yeah.

Kolby: I’d be like… I don’t mean in a good way, I mean like, a lack of purpose. I could see somebody who had a bunch of time saved up not understanding being like, like, I’m not afraid. So, if I’m not afraid what’s my gold. So, I can see depression a bigger…

Jeremy: Be a huge issue

Kolby: Being a bigger point, because a lot of people, the need to provide for your children, the need to get a car, the need to achieve is their driving motivation in their life, and without that, I think just depression sets in.

Ashley: What about the living the same day over and over and over and over and over again? Because right now we know we have…

Kolby: How many days can you go fishing?

Ashley: Like, for example, we all know approximately we’re all going to live 80-100 years. We know that’s our cap. There’s some time when we go, “Ok, I’m 35 years old, I’m 1/3 of the way through my life right now.” There’s that cognizant set in that goes “oh crap, I’m a 1/3 of the way through my life.” There’s this reflection period.

Kolby: What do I have to show for my time.

Jeremy: What have I accomplished? What are people going to remember me by?

Ashley: Exactly. And here there’s people can go, I haven’t done what I’ve needed to do, let me bank up more time, and then do they get to that point where they’re fully satisfied?

Jeremy: No.

Ashley: You don’t think so? You don’t think they’ll be like “I’ve done everything”

Jeremy: I think that’s the human condition.

Ashley: Oh.

Kolby: I’ve thought, “oh, I’d love to do this, but I’m 45, what’s the payback? It’s 5 more years of school, 10 more years of student loans..” I think if you thought you had a couple hundred years; you might change careers 5 times or more.

Ashley: I would. I would like to try several different things. So, there would be constantly this new innovation

(Jeremy bugs cat, cat nips at Jeremy, laughter)

Ashley: Now knowing people live forever and ever and ever, and this system has been in place for quite a bit of time, do you think this will evolve even further? Because you have these people changing careers, being more innovative, going on.

Kolby: I think they way society works totally changes.

Ashley: So it’ll change even further.

Kolby: How long education is. How long the maturation period is with your children. How long all of it.

Ashley: Even the whole pill factor.

Kolby: How many times you change jobs.

Ashley: What if you no longer need to take a pill? Like you just genetically modified the people. There the evaluation aspect could be crazy if you have people living forever and ever and ever.

Kolby: It would make gambling a lot more interesting.

(laughter)

Kolby: You’re literally like, “I’ve got 40 years left, I’m playing it.” Like you lose the hand, you just drop dead at the table.

Ashley: People would probably do that. I do not doubt that.

Kolby: Craps would be a whole different game man. Alright, I guess that pretty much wraps this up on this one. You’ve been listening to After Dinner Conversation with myself, with Jeremy, with Ashley. We just got done talking about My Fellow Immortal Americans. You can download this story if you’re just tuning in and you haven’t read it, on Amazon, on Apple, wherever you can get e-books, and you can download it to all the places you can get e-books, you know, computers, laptops, cell phones. You can also listen to this podcast, or if you’re watching on YouTube, there are other ones so you can keep watching. And next week we will be talking about, what is our next one?

Jeremy: The Shadow of the Thing.

Kolby: The Shadow of the Thing, a story about a drug. Wow, this is a lot of science fiction-y stuff.

Ashley: It’s awesome.

Kolby: About a drug that allows you to maybe see the true nature of the world around you. Of everything. It’s like that apple… there’s not even an apple in the bible… the apple that people think is in the bible about becoming a special thing.

Ashley: By the way, if you are a writer, or would like to try you hand in writing and you have a couple of short stories with ethical dilemmas or scenarios that you think would spark up a really good conversation, send on in.

Kolby: There’s a contest going on right now too.

Ashley: There you go.

Kolby: There’s a writing contest where, sorry I cut you off.

Ashley: No, that’s exactly…

Kolby: Yea, if you submit that, I think the entry fee if $10 or $20 bucks, and if you’re selected, you’ll be $250 and your story will be discussed on this show and put on a website and published on amazon. So, you can submit stuff if you’re like, “I’ve got a really good idea, a way better way to do time, currency, or whatever cat currency”. Maybe yours is the cat currency.

Ashley: What if that cats took over the world?

Kolby: Cats are the only form of currency in the world.

Jeremy: I would live in that world.

Ashley: Kittens are worth a lot.

Kolby: So, we’ll see you next week. We’ll be back again at the cat café. Thanks.