Iona is 67 and lives in Athens. While continuing socialized medicine in Greece has meant that her life-expectancy is higher than her parents’ generation, European economic shifts in the early decades of the 21st century mean that the state pension that Iona was banking on is no longer sufficient to cover the rising cost of living. As a widowed retiree, she’s now in a state-run, big pharma sponsored, re-education program to allow her to re-enter the workforce.

As a young woman, she was a public sector clerical administrator, but now she can turn her passion for her country’s rich history into a late-life career in the tourism industry.

Today, Iona has her Greek Mythology, Customer Service, and Mandarin classes. But first, she has to upload her sleep data to Pfizer’s research lab, gathered via the multiple sensors on and in her body that collect her heart rate, blood pressure, and other biochemical information. While the data uploads, she watches a sequence of infomercials aimed at her demographic, while the same sensors track her emotional responses and her tablet’s camera monitors her eye movements and facial reactions.

Although her favorite class is mythology, and the reason she picked this course, she has to dedicate most of the morning to her Mandarin class — it’s her weakest skill, but she realises how important it is as the majority of her potential customers will be Chinese industrialists and their families. She’s hoping to specialise in giving highly customised ‘classical experience’ tours, so good language skills are vital. She struggles through getting the right intonation for some of the intermediate conversation lessons, repeating phrases over and over again, until her virtual tutor is satisfied with the result.

The prototype Pfizer food synthesiser in her kitchen pings to tell her that her lunch is ready — a thin broth made from chicken and vegetable molecules customised with vitamins based on the data she uploaded this morning. The synthesiser is new, experimental technology — probably at least 2 years from market — but she’s been given one as part of the program that pays for her education. She winces as she spoons the unappetising soup into her mouth; telling herself that not only is she paying for her classes but that being part of these clinical trials will help the Greek government feed pensioners less well-off than herself.

She enjoys her post-lunch mythology class far more, as most of it is spent in a discussion with her fellow students — she’s popular with her classmates, who are based all across the globe and envy her local knowledge, most of whom are younger and view her as something of a mentor. She likes helping them out — correcting them and showing them examples from her own photo and video libraries — but she’s also aware of devoting too much time to their needs; especially when the native Mandarin speakers talk about moving to Athens on graduation. She doesn’t want to give an advantage to potential business competitors.