IMMORTALITY: The idea that kicked off The Grail Protocol

     Immortality is just around the corner...not actual immortality as in forever...just a sufficiently long life span that the practical difference becomes moot. "Around the corner" is obviously a relative term. Does it mean thirty years? Twenty? Ten? It really could come sooner rather than later, but it will happen in some form or another; and many who are alive today will be here when it happens. Mostlikely, the change will be gradual...a series of breakthroughs that radically extend the human lifespan, first by years, then by decades...and more. 
   
   The idea that became The Grail Protocol trilogy was this: What if immortality burst upon the world all a once, with no warning, and thus no chance to prepare? Across the centuries, many have said they wanted to live forever, or that they wanted to stay young. Maybe they phrased it differently...like I don't want to grow old. However it has been spoken, the idea remains the same. It occurred to me that people might want to think a little more deeply about the consequences, especially if it happens in the blink of an eye. That's why the caveat on The Grail Protocol cover says: "Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.
     
     One of the themes in the trilogy is the potential for creating an extreme inbalance in power and wealth, far beyond what we already experience. The haves vs. the have nots would not be only about wealth, but about life itself. That is a central conflict in the story and it is amplified because the technological breakthrough happens so quickly and unexpectedly. But the conflict will happen in the real world regardless, even if the change occurs more slowly, which in all likelihood, it will. All the disruptions in economic systems, religions, culture, politics etc., will happen, just more gradually than in my story.  The paradigm has always been: we're born, we live, we die. What happens when that paradigm breaks--which it undoubtably will?