CREATIVE ADVENTURES — 83

Imagine You Have One Million Days To Spend

What Would You Do?

In this exercise, you will imagine that you have one million days to spend. In other words, you can live as long as 2739.72603 years. Please respond to the following prompts:

1. How would your life change? What does it mean to be able to live for thousands of years?
2. What are the implications for living more than 2700 years? Think about at least 5 implications.
3. As you have ample time to make decisions or correct your decisions, you could relive days that did not turn out very well. You will have millions of chances to try, and there is probably no urgency or regret. Death is still quite far from you. As you have this state of mind, what are the biggest dangers facing you?
4. How would you deal with 50 generations of grandchildren? How would you adapt to their lifestyles? How would you cope with change? Write a story that deals with such complications.
5. How would you avoid boredom? How would you sustain your curiosity and creativity? How would you develop the mental resilience, energy, and emotional capabilities to live thousands of years? What kind of mindsets would you need?
6. How would you spend this long life? Try to allocate time (decades or years) to things that you truly care about. Make a list of the things that you would like to try out. Would you take up 100 new hobbies? Would you try out 100 different jobs or careers? Would you learn 100 different languages? Would you develop expertise and skills in 100 different disciplines or domains? Would you come up with 1000 different inventions? How would you make your life interesting, joyful, exciting, colorful, and impactful?
7. What are the unexpected consequences of living for thousands of years? What kind of tragedies would you have to live through? For example, you would have painful or dreadful memories for centuries, and you would perhaps need new technologies to erase these memories.
8. One of the biggest opportunities for you would be the chance to explore distant parts of our galaxy. You could travel to other star systems and discover exotic exoplanets. Write three science fiction stories where you go on interstellar travel. Will you discover life in other star systems? Will you go near a black hole? What kind of surprises, adventures, twists, or phenomena will you experience?
9. Imagine the symbiosis you would build with machines, algorithms, and robots. How would you combine yourself with artificial intelligence? Write a science fiction story where you are experiencing this superhuman life. Describe your typical day in detail in this story.
10. As we are experiencing accelerating change each decade, the world will be an unimaginable place after 2000 years. There will be millions of crazy inventions. Humanity will probably extend life to different star systems (you would probably need longer time to extend to new galaxies). Write a science fiction story that takes place during the year 4022.
11. Time dilation is the phenomenon of time passing at different speeds depending on how fast you are moving. How do you deal with the psychological consequences of this weird and complex phenomenon? Write a story about family members separated by vast time and space, with some members left behind and others going far ahead because of technology differentials.
12. Write a science fiction story set in the year 3022 where you encounter an alien civilization.

Fahri Karakas is the author of the Self-making Studio. He is passionate about doodling and science fiction.