Retirement

Retirement


“Ok kids, time for bed.  Get a good night’s sleep.  Tomorrow we’re going to visit Grandma and Grandpa Sams,” Mark said with as much enthusiasm as he could muster.

Sarah, the oldest of his two children, said, “Really daddy!  Will we get to go fishing and have campfires and bake cookies and ride on Grandpa’s wagon?”

“Oh yes, you bet.  We’ll do all that and much more.  Now off to bed you two; your mom will be up in a minute to tuck you in.”

Oh yeah, he thought.  Fishing and campfires and living like primitives for a full week.  Why in the world would his parents choose to retire in such a place?  What could have possessed them to live as virtual hermits when they could have chosen from an almost limitless number of exciting places to spend their remaining years?

Mark looked at Mary, his wife of seven years, and sighed, “Fishing for the same fish, hoeing the same weeds in the same garden, listening to Dad tell how he shot that same bear.  A week of living like savages, no electricity, no running water, what in the hell got into those people?”  He wrinkled his nose at the thought of that filthy bearskin, lying in front of the fireplace, with its cinder burns and the smell of burning hair.

Mary said, “Ah, it’s not that bad and it’s only for a week.  You know how your parents look forward to seeing us.  We visit my parents all the time; it’s not going to kill us to spend a little time with yours.  Besides, the kids love visiting them.  They’re not going to be kids forever you know.  We ought to go more often.  It’s not like they could come visit us.”

Sarah at five and Timmy at three were already well on their way to not being kids forever.  Soon they would learn that chopping and burning firewood for cooking and staying warm was not the proper way to live.  Before long they would realize that hunting and killing animals for food was not the way for civilized people to behave.

Mark said, “No, not forever.  It won’t be long before we have to drag them there.  Three years they’ve been retired; you’d think they’d had enough by now.  Christ, they live like it’s the nineteenth century.  Well I’ll tell you one thing--I’m gonna try again to talk some sense into my old man…for all the good it’ll do.”

*

In the late 2050’s it became clear that the world’s population was out of control.  Even the best efforts of individual nations to reduce population were met with varying degrees of failure.  In a desperate attempt to solve the problem, all sovereign nations of Earth agreed to meet in Oslo, Norway for a summit on Global Population.  They were determined to find a solution.

After weeks of negotiations and promises of redistribution of wealth from the more prosperous countries to their poorer neighbors, agreement was reached.

On October 3, 2060 the World Population Management Act (WPMA) was passed.  The major provision of the law made it the right of every citizen to retire at an age set by the World Council for Environment and Ageing (WCEA).  Article 706 – Implementation, section 36, sub-section C clearly defined retirement as not only the right but also the duty of all citizens, regardless of race, religion or social standing.  Paragraph C-4 further refined the definition of ‘duty’ to mean that retirement, at the optimum age, as determined by the Council, was a requirement and therefore mandatory.  There are no exceptions to Article 706.

Other articles included the creation of WCEA, set the maximum age for WCEA membership at thirty-five, provided WCEA funding at thirty percent of the world’s twenty most prosperous counties’ gross national product and provided for the creation of the International Retirement Service (IRS), an organization empowered to enforce enactment of WPMA.

The urgency of the situation, the fact that none of the voting members had read the nine-thousand page WPMA proposal, written entirely by junior staff members, and the belief that they simply could not return home empty handed led to a unanimous ratification of the World Population Management Act.

*

Retirement is a simple process.  The soon to be retiree’s engrams are impressed onto one of the cubes of bio-electronic material making up the VR-human population network.  Once all memories and personality are transferred, the cube is activated.  As easy as that, the new retiree is now free to live a virtual life in any of an almost unlimited number of fascinating places.

After all useful minerals are extracted, the lifeless husk, leftover from the retirement process, is then dried and burned as fuel.  Seen as a secondary benefit of retirement, the process provides an excellent source of renewable energy and also eliminates the need for non-natural fertilizers.

*

As with most sweeping reforms, the new retirement legislation was met with a certain amount of suspicion and resistance.  For a few years after enactment, forced retirement was necessary.  The ‘Cash for Geezers’ program turned out to be highly effective in reducing the number of bio-human mouths to feed.  Eventually people began to accept the logic of WPMA.

By 2068 the world bio-human population had been reduced from a staggering fourteen billion to a more sustainable four billion.

In 2070 WCEA passed additional legislation allowing for voluntary and disability retirement coverage as well.  By 2080 the world’s bio-human population had been stabilized at two and a half billion.

Retirement age had been adjusted upwards or downwards during the ensuing years before an optimum age could be determined.  Since 2085 retirement had been mandated for all bio-humans reaching the age of fifty.

Earth’s skies and waters cleared.  The once overtaxed planetary natural resources were now expected to last at least for the next several thousand years.  Health care and other social program costs plummeted.  Earth once again became a ‘world of plenty.’

*

On May 16, 2092, Charles Sams turned fifty and was immediately scheduled for retirement.  His wife, Mattey, although two years younger, decided to take early retirement also after two International Retirement agents convinced her of the negative impact of not retiring.  At first she felt threatened but then realized that the IRS only acts in the best interest of the people.

On May 17, 2092 Charles and Mattey Sams reported for retirement.  They could have chosen Paris.  They could have chosen Tokyo or Mars or a beach house in Florida.  They could have chosen their own hometown.  Anywhere…but they chose a primitive cabin next to a little stream in the Canadian Rockies.

Just before entering the retirement processing center, Sam and Mattey hugged Mark, their only child, their daughter-in-law, Mary and their two grandkids, two year old Sarah and baby Timmy, goodbye.  “Now you come visit often, you hear?  We’ll be there.”

Now, after three years, Charles and Mattey Sams were still as happy as any VR-humans could be.

*

Mark, carrying Timmy, and Mary, with Sarah in tow, entered Sunny Acres Travel Center.  After signing in and paying the modest transportation fee they entered the terminal.  There, they were comfortably seated in four adjacent reclining tactile interface chairs and the neural canopies lowered.

Mark knew that any moment now they would find themselves plopped down into a tiny settlement hardly large enough to be called a town.  The wagon hitched to two mules would be parked in front of the General Store.  As always the same old scrawny dried up muleskinner would spit tobacco juice into the dust and say, Ya’ll jump on board.  Taint long afore sundown; we best be a movin’ along.  They would be jostled and jolted for the five-mile ride to a cabin by the creek.  His parents would be standing just outside the only door smiling and waving as they approached.  Everything would happen exactly as it did every time before.  Just like it would the next time, and the next, and the time after that.

Sarah asked, “Are we there yet?”

“No, not yet,” Mark said as he closed his eyes.  He knew that to any outside observer, within an hour they would be well on their way back home, his home, his real home, a home with electric lights and cell phones and the internet and a microwave oven and a bathroom with a hot shower, but for the Sams family the next seven days would be spent in a tiny log cabin somewhere on a mountainside in the Canadian wilderness.  No one heard him mumble, “God, I wish we were back.”