Banking on the Billionaires

I’m not going to die. I don’t mean like today or from some particular condition or disease. I mean ever. Death doesn’t make any kind of sense to me. I think I was five or six years old when my great grandmother died. In the middle of all the tears and getting dressed in church clothes to go say goodbye to her dead body, I decided the whole thing made no sense. Dead? She couldn’t be dead. She was my great grandma who sat in a rocking chair with her stockings rolled down below her knees, fanning herself with the Sunday comics from the newspaper. She wasn’t something called dead. Right then I swore this would never happen to me. I would never be some dead me.

I’ve wavered on so many things in my life. I’ve been married loads of times. I’ve worked as everything from a bartender to a dog trainer, a professional psychic to a special education teacher. You name it! And I’ve been no more stable spiritually, exploring every religion and faith-based group I’ve ever heard of. Currently, I make confession at the Catholic Church and chant the Maha Mantra with the Hare Krishnas. I waver. But not about my refusal to die.

I haven’t yet figured out how this is going to work. When I was younger, I used to joke that I was waiting for a vampire to make me one of the unholy dead. But even then, I didn’t believe that would happen. (Mind you, I’m not closing that door. If there’s a vampire reading this, my neck is uncovered at all times. Chomp, chomp!) Back then, death seemed to be so far away that I didn’t feel much urgency to figure out how my commitment to undeadness was going to work.

Oh, had I only known how fast the years would go. I know that sounds like a cliche, but ask any old person—after a point, the years streak by like lightning. On top of my youthful belief that I had an abundance of time to consider my plan, I didn’t have a lot of experience with death. I come from a family of people who didn’t delay having children. Technically, my mother and I are part of the same generation. Granted, she’s an early Boomer, and I’m closer to the end of the generation, but we’re both Boomers. Young families meant deaths mostly happened to other people’s loved ones. This was certainly a blessing, but it had a downside. I didn’t get to observe the Reaper sneaking up on the victim in order to study how it might have gone differently.

In reality, I never actually believed that at some near-death moment, I’d whip out an action plan for escaping. I’m not out of touch with reality. I understand that if someone has a late stage, terminal illness, that person will die. My immortality plan starts with simply rejecting the idea of death before it has a chance to get too close. And I absolutely do not mean that I’m denying death in some spiritual, immortal soul kind of way. That concept of some live-forever ghost-person has simply never worked for me. Part of the problem with the idea of the soul living beyond the body is that all the afterlife scenarios either sound seriously boring or like a major pain in the backside.

I grew up in a family that believed in the Christian Heaven. But even as a child, I knew that wasn’t for me. I went to church every Sunday in the morning, most Sundays for evening service, and more Wednesday nights than not. I attended vacation Bible day-school in the summers and sleep-away Bible camp in the winters. Not even once did Heaven sound like fun. (Making out with cute guys behind the cabins with the snow lightly falling on us was fun. Heaven held far less interest.) As far as I could tell, Heaven had to do with sitting around in adoration or maybe singing in the choir. I could barely make it through three services a week. The last thing I wanted was more church.

When I got older, I learned about the idea of reincarnation. That sounded way better than Heaven. But when I found out the reincarnated person doesn’t remember who they were in the previous life, I took a hard pass. I don’t want to be some new person. I want to be me. And I don’t mean in the energy sense. I want to be the me I am now. The me who loves vegan chocolate cake and American bulldogs and horror movies. The one who feeds the garden mice so well that they’ve grown in numbers and feel perfectly at ease coming in and out of my house. The one who cries when Janice Joplin sings “Summertime” and when Mary Poppins flies away. To make matters worse, I learned that the ultimate goal of reincarnation is to become so good that the cycle of death and rebirth is broken. Umm, no! That won’t do at all. I don’t want to escape from anything except death.

As I consider my stance on mortality I realize it might sound a bit egotistical. And I guess on some level it is. I don’t want my ego to die. But I don’t want anyone to die…I guess unless someone wants to. After all, I don’t want to be an immortality bully. But I don’t accept the idea that any vibrant being, regardless of species, must end. For example, the reality that my dog, Seeger, doesn’t have much longer on this planet (unless I cure mortality very quickly) sends me into a pacing, ranting, cursing-the-heavens rage. He still howls at the fire trucks that pass our house daily as they leave the station two blocks away. He wiggles like a pup when my son-in-law comes to visit because these get-togethers always mean walks around the block. And Seeger still cuddles and begs for treats and attacks the dreaded garden hose to save the world from drowning. This beautiful life should not be taken.

I’m old now and sadly, as the years have passed, I’ve had many people close to me die. I’ve lost friends and old loves and beloved family members. I won’t go into the details of any of these experiences here because while I reject death, I do not disrespect those who have been taken. For them, I hope they found the afterlife they believed in, or at least a gentle peace. But watching them go has only deepened my commitment not to.

Since I haven’t been able to find the cure for mortality in spirituality, I’m taking the only logical next step—I’m Googling options. So far, I’ve read about the Cryonicists who suggest freezing my brain (where I live evidently) so I can be revived in some new-model body when science finally pulls its stuff together. I ruled out these ice-angles due to the creepiness factor. There are the Extropians, whom I have also completely rejected. They believe that eventually we’ll be immortal through science as researchers cure one thing after another until they finally get to immortality. At the rate science is going, I’ll be a goner before this plan comes to fruition. The Singulartarian Mind-Uploaders might be onto something. Their name says it all: We will defy death by uploading our thought patterns, memories, and whatever else makes up the mind onto a computer, enabling us to live…virtually. But I’m picky and demanding it seems. I want to live IRL. In spite of all these groups that don’t meet my needs, my research has given me some hope—I’m banking on the billionaires.

This plan makes perfect sense. First, there’s the personal investment (pun fully intended) angle. I worry that the “pure science” camp will keep getting distracted by shiny objects, like saving humanity from the next megavirus or strategies for clearing the environment after a nuclear catastrophe. These distractions will not be an issue for the billionaires who already own air-tight, germ-free bunkers and seem to be close to colonizing some unsuspecting and pristine planet. And what group has more to gain from living forever? I’m not good at math, but even I understand the concept of compound interest. To put the urgency-cherry on top, some of our most well-known billionaires are showing their age, in spite of cosmetic procedures, health coaches, and personal dietitians, not to mention access to medical care that makes what the average person gets seem almost dystopian.

As I settle into this chapter of my defy-death-journey, I’m working on finding an answer to an important question: How will I gain access to the anti-death serum? Clearly, the billionaires will get it first. This seems only right…return on investment. I’m guessing the millionaires come next, followed by the filthy rich, the just rich, and then the well-off. I don’t fit into any of these camps. But, I’m not despairing. As I see it, my best bet is to find my way into one of the “friends of” groups, and the richer my future friend, the more likely I’ll gain access to immortality.

Time is getting short, and so far I’ve met a few well-off people and maybe two of the just-rich. Unfortunately, I’m not sure any of these acquaintances see me as a good enough friend to slip me a dose of death-antidote. Then there’s the problem of politics. I’ve begun following as many rich and rich-adjacent people as possible on social media, but I’m finding it quite difficult to “thumbs-up” any of their posts. In fact, I’ve been blocked from at least three accounts. But as the Grim Reaper stomps closer, I continue to search for someone well-to-do who doesn’t make me fly into a rage in 280 characters.

As I continue to troll and post, I’ve decided to temporarily join the Transhumanists. Their incremental immortality makes sense while I wait for the billionaires to deliver. The Transhumanists suggest starting with a healthy diet and lifestyle. Then as bits and bobs of the body start to fall apart, they’ll be replaced with tech-models. I’m picturing a sort of incremental terminator-body, and I’m okay with this. I’m hoping I don’t have to incorporate too many mechanical parts, as I wait for my dose of antidote because I’m worried the bio-machinery model will prove difficult to maintain, needing both mechanics and medicine. But I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.

As first steps toward transhumanism, I’m seriously thinking about cutting down on coffee, and I’m carefully considering going to the gym. I’m pretty sure I can find my membership card. But until I pull all of that together, I’m going to search some of the new social media sites. There has to be a lonely, left-leaning billionaire somewhere. Right?