Lifers by Keith G. McWalter

Author:Keith G. McWalter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: SparkPress

Claire’s visit accelerated their plans, and once word of the Black Valley enclave got out, Marion adopted an academic model of soliciting and accepting applications for admission. They were quick in coming, first a few dozen a day, then, to their mixed delight and dismay, hundreds.

The criteria for admission were utterly transparent and very specific: minimum age 110 (to weed out the newly, insincerely, or temporarily aged); economic self-sufficiency (they planned to charge nothing to join, but each resident would have to contribute their pro rata portion of an annual budget for a minimum of ten years); demonstrated first-hundred-years’ expertise in one of a variety of fields that Marion and her advisers thought necessary to create a self-sufficient society in the post-Methuselah world (government, bioengineering, medicine, armed and unarmed defense, agriculture, literature, and music); willingness to liquidate all personal assets; no more than one significant other (who must also be accepted); and general physical fitness (with or without prosthetic enhancement). Each application had to be accompanied by an essay explaining why the applicant wanted to be a member of what amounted to a separatist Lifer community, though Marion avoided that label, tended to talk in terms of independence and self-sufficiency and physical security.

The first thousand applications naturally came from the wealthy and the famous, with the expected subsets of vagabonds, freeloaders, and professional narcissists, but once an awareness of the extremely high rejection rate sank in, the applications slowed, improved in quality, and grew more sincere. All of the members of Adele’s nameless but fiercely loyal Methuselah colloquy group, who by that point had been meeting monthly in chipspace for over a decade, were waived in automatically, and several were among the first to arrive on-site, including Barb Beckwith, who immediately took on the hiring and oversight of a security detail and the procurement of a small arsenal of firearms.

But there was one surprise, an applicant that most on the admissions committee—Adele, Marion, Devon Jones, Barb Beckwith, and Dan—never would have paused over because his application data was so sparse. He described himself as an “entrepreneur biologist,” he was 125 years old, and his essay consisted of two lines:

The biology of the Change is correct.

It is society’s reaction to it that is wrong.

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