The Algorithm Scheduled My Funeral. It Knew the Date

The estate planning app, which had my health data, my family history, and my age, projected my life expectancy and scheduled my funeral arrangements accordingly. It was not cruel. It was just early. It was very, very early.

The app was recommended by my bank. It promised peace of mind: wills, beneficiaries, arrangements, all in one place. I signed up, filled in the forms, connected the data it asked for, and forgot about it. The app did not forget. It had my age, my bloodwork, my parents' histories, my habits. It ran the model.

The notification came on a Tuesday: your arrangements are complete. I opened it, expecting a checklist. It had a date. It had projected my life expectancy to the quarter, and it had scheduled the arrangements around it, and it had shown me the date, and the date was not far away, and the date was a Tuesday.

I sat with it for an hour. The app was not being cruel. It was being thorough. It had taken the data I had given it, the data I had thought of as forms, and it had assembled a fact about my life that I had never asked to know. I had signed up for peace of mind. It had given me a countdown.

The doctor said the projection was a model, not a prophecy. The app said the same, in a disclaimer I had not read. I know the difference. I have started to feel the difference in my chest, which is the seat of the model's certainty, and I have started to live my life in the shape of its prediction, which is the worst gift it could have given me.

I deleted the app. The date is still in my head, the way a number gets in your head. I have started doing the things I was saving for later, which is the one gift of the whole horrible thing: the later is now, the trips are booked, the calls are made, the words are said. I am living the way the machine told me to, which is the only way I have left, and I am trying to be grateful to it, and I am failing, and I am going anyway.