Uprising of the Elderly

Research is currently being performed with artificial limbs that would allow individuals not only to control those limbs but also to receive accurate feedback, sensations, from the prosthetic limb by utilizing lasers as a transmitter to individual nerves.

It is the year 2023. Hundreds of elderly people have undergone elective surgery in order to replace non functional or weak limbs with superior mechanical ones. However these same individuals are facing hard times as society begins to exponentially increase health and life expectancy. The elderly are perceived as unneeded group, leftovers from centuries past. The majority is simply waiting for the last of them to pass so that the age of endless youth can begin.

Tensions build as two retirement homes are attacked by young white males eager to find some remaining group against which to commit hate crimes and prove whatever if it is they hope to prove to one another. The government does little to compensate or protect those retired communities which are at greatest risk. In fact retirement as we know it is expected to be legislated out over the next two years.

The elderly are forced to take up action on their own. They alter their artificial limbs into powerful weapons. The old people cyborg uprising is begun.

age and size

I recently took a vacation to visit some neighbors in one of the nearby star systems. It had been so long since I last visited that I had completely forgotten the physical proporties of the local inhabitants. I had to make my way carefully through the hotel lobby where my old friend Rebecca was living. Infants and elderly dodged between and around my legs. One wrong step could easily lead to a lawsuit, or worse. Luckily most little people know that they are little and do not want to be stepped on. Still, as an outsider there is always the danger of being taken advantage of, or so old humans like me tend to beleive. A local teenager towered over me in the elevator. I finally arrive.

“My goodness, you look awful Jeffrey.”

“I never did get used to these queer parabolic lifecycles. It is good to see you in person again, Rebecca.”

“It’s good to see you, too. You know, the human lifecycle used to be pretty parabolic, too. We may not have started and ended our lives at only a few inches as the locals do, but we were still far more similar than different.”

“I’ll take your word for it, you were the genetic historian after all.”

“Come sit down and have some tea with me.”

I smile.

We always let far too much time pass between visits.