Orange on Red
The first man on Mars will be ...
It’s the near future.
Former president Donald Trump has just died.
Two-thirds of the United States mourns - not just Republicans but Democratic politicians such as Hawaii’s two-term governor Josh Green, a rising star with national ambitions. Rank-and-file Democrats are divided, with some following their leaders, many not caring, and a vocal minority celebrating. But cheers on Bluesky have no real-world repercussions beyond a few firings, followed by complaints about the death of free speech under fascism. Complaints that are ignored.
The average person doesn’t care about free speech. However, they did care about President Vance’s announcement.
“President Trump lives!”
For a moment, some conspiracy theorists felt vindicated. They had expected a fake death following two fake assassination attempts. They had not expected Peter Thiel’s puppet of all people to tear the curtain of lies.
Which, of course, was not at all what Vance intended. Vance explained that Trump’s physical body was indeed dead … but his mind lived in on a supercomputer headed for … Mars!?
Elon Musk, the greatest scientist-entrepreneur of our time, was making his biggest move ever - launching a SpaceX rocket to the Red Planet! ‘Manned’ by President Trump himself.
“Manned” was not quite the right word. In an uncharacteristic moment of modesty, Musk explained that even he and his engineers could not yet transport men across millions of miles to another planet. Moving bodies required valuable space and resources … that an immobile computer did not need. No room to move around, no food, no water. The computer weighed little more than the NASA rover Perseverance - a ton. Accompanying it would be drones and a new rover - animated by the mind of President Trump himself. Those machines would be his new bodies, recording and transmitting data to be sent back to Earth.
President Trump would share them with others. There was enough storage space on the computer to store the minds of millions - a massive mental colony. Anyone with a Neuralink implant was eligible to have their mind uploaded into Arrow, the apex of human technology. Even some of Trump and Musk’s most vehement opponents could not reject the opportunity to be among the first ‘Martians’. The demand for Neuralink surgeries went through the roof.
The SpaceX rocket went through Earth’s atmosphere. It delivered its cargo safely. President Trump triumphantly announced his landing.
If Earth died - due to climate change, nuclear war, or an asteroid impact - humanity would survive as a machine intelligence on another world.
Or would it?
To be continued …
My regular readers must be wondering - what’s with my Strange New Respect™ for Trump, Green, Vance, and Musk? How did I manage to write an entire post without lapsing into my habit of referring them by snarky nicknames? It was hard, I tell ya. Fortunately, I won’t have to keep up the pretense for long. You’ll see why next time.