Living to 100 and beyond was Burton’s way of proving to himself that he was fully in control of his life. To anyone else who cared to ponder, it might not amount to much. But his life – or anyone’s life – was a testament to no small degree of skill and cunning. Nor was it any small measure of stark raving good luck.
Fully aware of this, Burton still held a sense of personal pride for his accomplishments known to few but himself. Governed by a set of random happenstance occurring at all times in all places across the face of the earth, all Burton had needed to do was focus a very small amount of that global collective will to his own ends – practically infinitesimal – in order to create, build, prosper, and multiply his efforts and creativity. His business success and acquired fortune was a small accomplishment compared with his plans going forward.
The second half of the twentieth century had gone a good bit better than the first, the frivolity of youth in nineteen-twenties Paris not withstanding. So now perhaps in the final stage of his long life, Burton had committed himself to the humble age-old ambition of seeing how long he could live by whatever natural, biological, vegetable, or mineral means he could plot and plan. The metaphorical chess that sprang about him was not geared toward solving some grand lifelong puzzle, but in seeking some slight advantage at every move. If his success rate was even a slight margin greater than 50 percent, his progress would always be positive and in a forward direction. His logical consideration was that whatever time remained – be it physical, artificial, mechanical, or intellectual – life was but a limited resource, limited potential, limited capacity. How far beyond merely living to 100 he could take his bio-mechanical intellect no one could say. But he was eager to find out. Eager, but not in a hurry.
So far Burton hadn’t determined what the advantage was for him toward such a thing as living to be 100 and beyond. It was an awful lot of work and not much reward except the satisfaction of having done so. Why should he care? His ambitions didn’t consider pleasing or performing for other people. He did it to please himself.
Yet there was some nagging philosophical contradiction in this argument someplace, and it bothered him that he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.
thermodynamics of ideas 