June 9, 2023
Dear Donald,
Thank you for your letter to which I am at a loss how to reply. In 18 days, if I live, I will be 93 years old. I'm too deaf to have a conversation, and almost too lame to get up out of the chair in which I sit continuously from perhaps 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. the following morning, longer when the pain in my hips and legs, which is much worse when I am lying down, keeps me from sleeping. If there were alternatives to being all alive or all dead, you might consider me 50% alive or 50% dead, depending on whether you choose the optimistic or the pessimistic viewpoint. Much of the time I'm asleep sitting up in my chair. When I'm more or less awake, I try to write down what is presently on my mind or to revise some of the many pages I've written in the past. Since there's nobody to read them, there's no point to the question whether my efforts are worthwhile; except for the circumstance that writing is as necessary for my spiritual survival as is breathing for the survival of my body. Who knows when it will all end? The Social Security Administration, which can't wait to stop having to issue the monthly payments, has calculated its odds as follows:

age % dead
 94 0.2451
 95 0.4465
 96 0.6063
 97 0.7282
 98 0.8179
 99 0.8815
100 0.9259

which means that the chance of my being dead next year is 24.51%, and that there is still a frightening possibility of 7.41% that I'll still be around in 2030 when I would be 100 years old.  As long as I am able, I will continue writing the 9th volume of my series of novels, where the government has collapsed because artificial intelligence has taken over.  Artificial intelligence now selects the candidates for public office and conducts sham elections whose outcomes it predetermines, as it composes software which replaces with computers all human governance from the supreme court and the president down to the lowliest justice of the peace.

My best wishes for a happy and healthy summer which is not too hot.  Jochen