What if I said, I’ve created an app? I call it Timeline. It’s a life planner of sorts that seeks to make you aware of the time you have left in the land of the living so that you may plan the use of that time appropriately…even if it’s just a few seconds.

To get there, Timeline gathers the facts of your life: your birth year, your sex, your body-mass index, and your sleep patterns; it has you make daily journal entry’s and keep a dream log that are scrutinized by word recognition software for any mental irregularities—any predilections toward depression, Nihilism, or…risky behaviors.

It constantly records and stores the measurable data like your blood pressure, heart rate, diet, and blood chemistry, including blood sugar and cortisol levels. And by assessing the rambunctiousness of your liver enzymes, it evaluates the role recreational drugs play in your life, the alcohol use, and the tobacco, and how well your body is detoxifying these poisons.

It looks at the quality of your drinking water, gas ratios in the ambient air—from radon to carbon monoxide. Onboard electrophoretic gels will read your genetic code annually like one long and rambling novel, weighing and exposing any deviations from what medical science would call normal.

Your phone’s GPS will measure your vehicle speed and match that with real-time traffic patterns, road geometry, road conditions, and miles-long spreadsheets of accumulated insurance company data and accident reports just to assess your prudence with respect to the gas pedal.

Wrist worn sensors will collect ambient sounds—interpret your tone of voice when you’re speaking, weigh how much you laugh, and even make sense of telltale ultrasonics that a human ear can’t possibly pick up on. All-the-while ultra high definition cameras built into eyewear and ankle cuffs will record your every move, fore and aft, and run image recognition software to look for any acute and chronic threats to your being—that tire pressure warning light won’t go unnoticed, that untied shoelace? Life’s variables will begin to solidify as your life expectancy becomes viscous—predictable down to the minute.

All these data are collected, saved, and piped through a clever little algorithm to produce a number between one and one-forty four. Simply, the closer that number is to one-forty four, the closer you are to your terminus, death, or, as Timeline puts it—Kicking the Bucket (KTB). It then compares your KTB to that proverbial Bucket List of yours to ascertain whether you can continue to safely procrastinate your life’s dreams, or if you better get busy making them a reality, or, as Timeline puts it—it’s time to Shit or Get Off the Pot.

I’ve been beta testing Timeline for a while now. Last month on my birthday my number inched up. Every time I even open a can of soda, fondle a bag of Skittles, or walk through a cloud of second-hand smoke I add few one-hundredths to my KTB.

So, here’s the question—would knowing your KTB inspire action even if that action got you close to one-forty four, or would it get you to hang up any effort at all, seeking quantity over quality? Then again, is one way of living better than the other, or ultimately, are both exactly the same?