In 2050, I'm organising my hundred and first birthday party. The oldest guest will be one hundred and ten and the youngest guest will be eleven. Now we're all living longer and the birth rate is going down, people of different ages tend to mix together a lot more. I like that. On the outside I'm a serious wrinkly but on the inside I often feel as though I'm still fifty or twenty-one or even five years old, so it's nice to have friends to match.
I look my age, because I was too late for the rejuvenation treatments. That's fine by me, though. The first batch of rejuves all have faces like Geri Halliwell or Leonardo di Caprio, which may've been okay in 2000 but it's not a good look these days. I'd rather look like me, although I sometimes wish I'd taken this body to the gym more often. If I'd realised I'd be living in it for a hundred years, I might've done a bit more work on it.
I bet I can guess what everyone's going to give me for my birthday. Book plaques, the best invention of the last fifty years. Their screens fit neatly into your hand, they're perfect for reading in bed and in the bath and on the airbuses and you can download everything that's been written in the last three millennia. For years people kept telling me books were on the way out. Since I'm still addicted to writing and reading, I'm glad they were wrong.
My friends will more or less have to give me book plaques, because after a hundred years of shopping I've got everything else I want. When I look around my modular living unit, I can see my Women's Liberation badge collection from the seventies. Some executive stress toys from the eighties. Photos of nineties graffiti walls. My framed Reconciliation certificate from the 2000s. Computer peace games from the 201Os. The virtual video of George Lucas's grandson's Star Wars 9, The Empire Gives Up, made in 2020. An anti-grav lounge suite from the 2030s. And from the 2040s there's a hologram of Geri Halliwell and Leonardo di Caprio, posing in my kitchen doorway. It makes me laugh every time I walk through it.
Gotta go. The guests will start arriving soon and I have to change into my party gear - a silver synthowool tracksuit, to match my hair. But first, since I'm definitely a non-tribal elder now, I suppose I ought to give you some wise advice. Drive safely? No, we stopped using cars twenty years ago. Don't forget to vote? Hey, everybody votes on all the big issues by computer these days. Enjoy your job? Enjoy your hobbies? Keep learning new things? No need to tell you that, because in 2050 we all have jobs that suit us and stretch us and give us plenty of free time.
Oh, I know. Have fun. After all, that's the best way of living to a hundred and one - by loving every minute of it.
Jenny Pausacker has also written
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