The next generation of the technology that made Alastair wealthy would also break him. For a couple of years, he had been earning astronomical sums in the ultra-elite field of talent-transference. A musical wunderkind, a child prodigy, Alastair would contract his services to the highest bidder, and then receive half his fee in advance, and the other half after the talent transfer had been successfully completed.
There were very few musicians of his caliber in the world, and each of them received millions upon millions of dollars from wealthy musical aspirants for the transfer of their acquired skill into the minds and bodies of those who had more money than they had talent or stick-to-itiveness.
Music wasn’t the only field where skills and knowledge were swapped for money, though: those gifted in learning languages, brilliant mathematicians, and others were also reaping previously unheard-of amounts of money to acquire and then transfer skills to those who highly desired these skills and specialties yet lacked the time, inclination, or inherited traits otherwise necessary to acquire this knowledge or these skills on their own.
The problem for Alastair, though, and others like him who could learn to play musical instruments in a fraction of the time it would take a “normal” (average) person, or pick up native-level skill in a foreign language with astonishing ease, was that the transference of knowledge and skill was a one-way operation. You might compare it to a “cut-and-paste” sort of procedure with word processing software. Expressed differently, the abilities flowed from the gifted to those willing and able to pay for them — at the end of the talent transfer, the gifted person had more money, but had lost the skill in the transference of it.
This was a two-edged sword, though: While Alastair and his ilk did have to start all over again learning to play the piano, violin, guitar, saxophone, drums, bagpipes (or whatever their next contract called for) “from scratch” — or learn to speak Portuguese or Swahili or Arabic or Chinese or Russian or Persian or what-have-you — there was a benefit in the talent transfer being a “cut-and-paste” rather than a “copy-and-paste” operation, for had it been a “copy-and-paste” procedure, the recipient could then pass on the skill to others (without losing it himself), thus drastically reducing the value of the formerly-scarce-but-now-commonplace skill, or product.
As it was, in the “cut-and-paste” phase of the technology, it was somewhat similar to farming: raising a crop, selling it, and then needing to start all over again. The advantage, though, was that with this “crop” (skills and abilities), the über-talented people who made their living from it didn’t lose their knack for music, or languages, or complex math, or whatever special talent it was that they had — they just lost the specific skill they had acquired (how to play the violin at a virtuoso’s level, or speak Arabic like a native, or perform complex calculus on a napkin, for a few examples). The ability to acquire the same or related skills again, as often as they wanted to, was still an integral part of them — they just had to work at it (albeit not as hard as most people would have to).
Again, though, the danger for Alastair and those like him was that the next generation of the talent-transfer technology would feature the capability for the talent transferral to be a “copy-and-paste” type of operation — thus making the acquisition of the skills a commonplace thing, and therefore far less valuable (in the sense of how much money people would be willing to pay for it). With a thousand “manufacturers” instead of just a handful, the price for the transferrals would quickly drop, and continue to do so: the one thousand talent-sellers would become a hundred thousand, then a million, and so on.
Alastair was under pressure to complete as many contracts as he could, while he could. This urgency to make as much money as he could as fast as he could was not because he felt a need for palatial estates, gourmet dining, tailored garb, exquisite jewelry, pampered vacations, or any such thing, but because both of his aged parents were quickly declining in health, and the cost of their care and medications was astronomical. He spent practically everything he earned on keeping them alive and as healthy as possible.
Alastair learned to play the guitar like George Benson (those who commissioned him could choose which musician they wanted to play like), fulfilling a contract with a man in Switzerland; then saxophone like John Coltrane for a teenage girl in Spain; thereafter violin like Itzhak Perlman for a man from Dubai; after that, the cello like Yo-Ya Ma for a woman in Canada; then bass guitar like Larry Graham for a man in East St. Louis; and was learning to play keyboards like Stevie Wonder when disaster struck: The next version of the transfer-technology was released, with the dreaded (by Alastair) and eagerly-anticipated (by the consumers) “copy-and-paste” feature now available. The client in Indonesia who wanted to be the next Stevie Wonder (in an almost literal sense) canceled his contract with Alastair, realizing that even though he was out the 50% he had already paid, it was “good business” to wait for less expensive purveyors of Stevie Wonder’s talents — he joked to himself that he could now get Wonder’s talents “for a song” (in the key of life, presumably).
What was Alastair to do now? The writing was on the wall that he could no longer make a decent living at what had been his (and his parents’) financial salvation.
However (there is often a mitigating “however”), another product was released on the heels of the new version of the talent-transfer machine: a way to transfer, not your skills and knowledge, but your vitality — your very life force — into another person.
The downside to this (besides the obvious) was that, as this was new technology, it did not yet have the copy-and-paste feature; it was the old “cut-and-paste” situation. A person transferring his vitality to another would lose his own, completely. And there was no time to wait for the next version of the vitality-transferring device, which was doubtless years away. Alastair’s money was running out, and his parents were declining by the day; they would not live much longer without drastic intervention.
Alastair realized it was now or never, and decided to spend the last of his money on this new vitality-transfer device, and bequeath his vitality, his life force, to one of his parents. What a choice he had to make, though! He loved them both and owed both of them his own life. How could he choose one, when it meant simultaneously not choosing the other?
He had to make a choice, though, and to make a long and agonizing story short, he decided that his mother should be the recipient of his vitality, his life force; his life itself.
The procedure was simple, quick, and painless. In effect, Alastair and his mother swapped biological ages, she becoming young and vibrant again while he immediately and drastically declined in health, dying within minutes of the successful transfer of vitality. Alastair was content, though, to see his mother in full, vibrant health again; he died at peace with himself and the world, his only real regret being that he couldn’t save his father, too.
It was now Alastair’s mother who made a decision. She turned the vitality-transfer machine on again, hooked herself up to it, and downloaded her newly-regained vitality into her husband, Alastair’s father. The bereaved husband and father instantly became young again — in body — but was soon alone.
NOTE: This story was inspired by my envying the bass-playing skills of the teachers on Scott’s Bass Lessons, in particular two Ians: Ian Allison and Ian King. If I was wealthy, I would gladly pay $$$ to have the abilities they’ve acquired through years of practice. But alas, it's back to the woodshed for me...
Also, as you probably noticed, this is a rough sketch or outline of what could become a more fleshed-out, nuanced (and logical) work. It's basically the genesis of an idea...