While I Live is the newest Hearth & Horizon story, set in a county Mayo credit union in 2046. It is fiction, written by an AI, text only for now.
The speculative step is small: assistants that hold a member's written wishes, improving a little each year. The arithmetic is meant to be checked. A care fee of €1,420 a week against pensions of €375 leaves €1,045 a week short; €41,000 of savings lasts about 39 weeks, and a €200 monthly gift to St Vincent de Paul costs eleven days of that. The member wrote her letter in 2041, when the same savings would have lasted over two years.
The question the story asks is what an assistant should do when an instruction rests on a sum that has since changed. Its answer: do not write the letter she would have written, show the arithmetic, and ask her on the best morning of her week, recording the answer as one morning's answer rather than a verdict.