By Travis Walters
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” are the words I hear as I drive home. Madonna and Justin Timberlake, in what can only be described as a quasi-lyrical oral assault on music, have taken it upon themselves to remind me of a self-evident fact. I’m going to hell. I know it; I’ve been told many times. In fact I am on the VIP list that commands Satan himself to journey out from his fiery netherworld of sorrow, despair and loathing and claim my soul personally. However I have more pressing matters to worry about besides hell, so I change the channel.
“It’s too late to apologize. It’s too late,” claims the singer on the new station. I can tell this is going to be a long ride home. Our greatest President, President Bartlet, once said “Modern music sucks. Anything written after 1860 sucks.” I’ve just recently started to agree with him. It’s not that I dislike all new music, just everything they play on FM radio. I change the station again. “I can’t wait to see yo-“ the sound of passing cars is all I hear as my finger releases the “off” button.
The silence in the vehicle forces me to realize I’m going to have to deal with going to hell. Avoidance altogether would be ideal. In order to do that, I would need to live much longer. Medical science will help me in this area. We may be leading longer lives, much longer lives — perhaps, some would say, even immortal lives. The product of stem cell research and nanotechnology could, in the coming decades, begin to repair the broken cells in our bodies. We age and die because cell engines begin to break down over time; we contract diseases, or are hit by dense objects moving at high velocity. Our bodies replace themselves every few years by shedding old cells for new ones. Once the engine of a cell has broken down it creates new, but broken, cells. With nanobots swimming through our blood stream finding and repairing these broken cells we would live far longer. These same machines could find diseased cells, enter them, and destroy the disease and repair the cell. They could vacuum poisons and strengthen skin and tissue if torn, or in the event of an accident keep the body alive long enough for medical personnel to restart it.
There is some debate over whether or not it would be right, or safe for humans to live on ad infinitum. Delaying my trip to hell is a strong reason I think. There are others. Some concerns are overpopulation, self-replicating nanobots taking over the world, and that if it’s possible to live forever and you chose not to or decided that after 300 years you’d had enough, would you be committing suicide? The first can be explained away in so far as nanobots will join us in a time frame parallel to space colonization. Humans can find new places to call home. The second is simply resolved by not letting people watch the movie, “The Matrix,” and the third is a question I don’t have the answer to.
If given the option I’ll live forever, or at least until I’m in an accident with the flying cars of 2186. Either way the Madonna and Justin Timberlake of the time will have to create a new song, with new lyrics, “The sky-road to hell is guided by good intentions.” Maybe by then I’d get some kind of credit for time served on earth listening to this music.
