The Council of Elders

“Happy birthday!” Nearly everyone I had ever known my entire life shouts as I enter my home for the last time. They’re here to celebrate my last birthday on Earth. The last birthday before I join the Council of Elders.

They’ve created a balloon arch in the living room using my favorite colors: pastel pink and purple. On the top of the arch, “Happy Birthday” is written on big foam blocks, one letter per block. On one end of the room, next to the wall, a table is set up with a three-tiered cake. All this to celebrate the day I’ve been dreading for years.

My best friend, Nisie, puts her hand on my shoulder. “I’m so happy for you!” she squeals. “You’ve made it! I still have to wait five more months.” She frowns.

“Enjoy it while you can,” I reply, giving her a hug.

My “parents” and “grandparents” are here too. The Council of Elders didn’t exist when they turned forty, so they didn’t have to join until their late fifties (my parents) and their eighties (my grandparents).

“Grandma,” smiles at me warmly. “At least you don’t have to deal with aches and pains anymore!” She exclaims.

I roll my eyes. “I’m forty, not eighty. I don’t have aches and pains.”

“Well, you’ll never get them then.”

A small comfort. I want to stay here, with a heart and lungs and legs and arms. The ability to go places, to see the world, like I did after I retired at age 39, spending all my money on a world cruise before I no longer could. It was nice—I even got to see penguins in Antarctica—but I’d trade it for more years here with the living.

My son, Luke, greets me with a hug. “I’m going to miss you,” he says. In a whisper, he adds, “I know you’ll technically still be here, but it won’t be the same.”

At least I got to see his first child, Lucinda, before I left this world. She’s playing with her cousin, Melanie (my daughter’s first child) in the corner. They’re building a block tower.

I talk to the guests for a while, trying to cherish their faces. My memories of them. The time I skipped school with my then-best friend, Alice, in order to see a movie. She’ll be joining me soon. The Christmases I spent with my cousins. I even chat with my family members who are already part of the Council of Elders—it’s good to remember them, even if they aren’t real.

“Dinner’s ready!” I’m interrupted by Bonnie, who I don’t really know well, but who is in charge of organizing this event. Like a prisoner going to the electric chair, I was able to choose my last meal. How fitting.

My closest friends and family sit with me as we eat lobster, mashed potatoes, and asparagus. We top the meal off with Grandma’s special cream pie, with a recipe that she refused to divulge to us until she joined the elders.

The elders stay in the other room. They don’t eat, of course. My more distant friends and relatives eat hors d’oeuvres in the other room while we have a more substantial dinner.

During the meal, we talk some more about our lives together.

After dinner, we return to the main room, and I say my goodbyes. As I hug my friends and family for the last time, tears begin to fill my eyes.

When I hug my daughter, Lily, she whispers in my ear. “I’m going to miss you. I wish you didn’t have to go.”

I release her. I’ve had enough. “Miss me?” I ask.

I turn to the rest of the room. “You’re going to miss me?” I say loudly. “Why don’t we call it what it is! I’m going to my death in a few minutes, and that’s all you all are saying? You’re going to miss me?”

I point to the row of screens along the wall, where the elders I’ll be joining are looking at me with horrified expressions from their monitors. “You know that these aren’t our real family and friends, right? Some of these people died decades ago. We claim that they’re living forever, that they’re immortal, but they’re not. They’re all AI representations of the people we used to know and love.”

“Why would you say that?” “Grandma” has a horrified look on her face.

“You may have all the memories of Grandma,” I say, “but there’s no way to prove that you actually are her.”

“Of course I’m your grandma!”

“And your AI would say that too,” I say. “You may know everything that Grandma knew when she went into that room—” I point up the stairs, where doctors and computer scientists were preparing for me “—because her brain was uploaded into the cloud. But the real her is not actually there. She died that day.”

One of the computer scientists or doctors, I’m not sure which, was standing behind me. I’m not sure when they came down the stairs to get me. “You’re scaring the guests,” he said under his breath.

“Maybe they should be scared,” I say to him.

“It may be more environmentally friendly,” I add, “to put everybody’s memories in the cloud when they turn forty. Fewer people to feed. Fewer people taking up space. But it’s not what people think it is.”

“But that’s a philosophical question,” the computer scientist or doctor says. “Do you really know those aren’t your family members?” The name Joe was printed on a metal name tag on his left breast pocket.

“Can we know anything?” I reply.

He takes me by the arm. “It’s time to go, anyway.”

Joe leads me up the stairs. At the top, before entering the bedroom where I will take my last breath on Earth and see what eternity is like, I take one last look at my friends, my still living family, the AI people who are supposed to be my family. I had a good life, at least.

No, I can’t be one hundred percent sure that my family members in the monitors below aren’t my real family. I’ll find that out soon enough. On this side of life, it’s impossible to know. But I don’t truly think that those are real people anymore. I’ve never believed that the essence of what makes us, us is the chemical interactions in our brains. There’s something more, a soul you might call it if you’re religious, that all the computer scientists in the world can’t define and can’t transfer over.

I enter my bedroom. A group of people are waiting to sedate me, put electrodes on my head, and upload the contents of my brain. My memories and personality will become the AI that will be known as me, and the people below will know me as one of the Council of Elders.

I take a deep breath, lie down, and get ready to see what happens.