2020 Visions

I named my senior thesis "2020 Visions: Ethics at the Edge of the Possible"; it was a collection of three novellas that (at least in theory) explored potential ethical issues of the future.

The English department at Stanford didn't allow fictional theses, probably because they knew how easy it could be to procrastinate on them, but the Science, Technology and Society program liked the idea. I even got a grant to go camping in Yosemite.

In the end, the English department's fears proved justified. I finished two years late.

This is how my thesis started:

Prologue: Veils of Ignorance

No one, said death, knows more than you do.

I don’t know anything, I said back, automatically.

Death spoke to me in a vast chamber of his plunder. Here, he must have collected the trappings of the deceased across all time—trophies, treasure chests, gems of every size and color. My feet were wedged between bars of gold and piles of precious stones. Petroleum tickled my toes.

There is a reason you are here, said death.

Simple enough. I lifted my hands in surrender. In the end… I died.

Death chuckled.

He cut a gruesome figure. I had been told he would come for me riding a pale horse, or cloaked all in black. That, or he would double as my savior, and lead me to the promised land. This Death, however, was all bumps and bruises, a splotched figure with a bad complexion. He wore a red coat that might have been a designer label once, but needed to be washed. He stank faintly of cinnamon and sulfur.

You’re not the first, he said. Every so often one of you arrives looking for answers—and bringing some, too.

Who else has come?

A French doctor, for one. He was good at treating plague.

Pasteur?

No, said Death, Nostradamus.

* * *

The premise was that every now and then, Hell needs to update its code of ethics, its census of possible sins. Otherwise, people being judged for new ethical trespasses might be sent to the wrong place by mistake. So at appropriate intervals Hell calls down a consultant.

Among other things, this particular consultant spots inefficiencies in the processes of torture and damnation and recommends that Hell shrink its demonic workforce by about 20%.

* * *

But I digress. The reason I titled this post 2020 Visions is not because I am suddenly nostalgic for my days of creative writing at Stanford (though I am.) It's because in about two hours, lasers are going to slice flaps in my eyes, then burn a predetermined pattern of proteins in such a way as to give me much better vision.

We'll see what happens. And I'll write about it here.