Last Call for Mars

“Last call for Generalissimo Elon Musk. The rocket departs in two minutes! Last call for Generalissimo Elon Musk.”

Elon heard the announcement from the interplanetary rocket, which made him curl up into a fetal position on a bench at the very edge of the spectators’ bleachers at Cape Canaveral. He’d thought there was no better place to hide than in a crowd of enthusiastic humans eager to send him to Mars. Upon the announcement, Elon’s whole life was flashing in front of him in his memories.

Sending a manned mission to Mars was his whole life’s promise and work. From the 2016 Code Conference, where Musk first promised crewed Mars flights by 2024 with arrival in 2025, the target date has slipped roughly a dozen times in one decade alone: an unmanned Red Dragon capsule slated for 2018 slid to 2020 and was then scrapped completely in 2017 in favor of Starship. Subsequent promises of crewed landings shifted to 2024, then 2026, then a 2024–2031 range, then 2028/29, then 2029/2031, and finally, after SpaceX's early 2026 pivot toward prioritizing a lunar city first, a roughly 2031–2033 window for humans, with uncrewed cargo flights targeted "no earlier than 2028".

That entire decade set up a remarkably consistent pattern: An ambitious deadline announced, real technological progress made, but no landing achieved, and the goalposts pushed further out, with no crewed or uncrewed Starship having reached Mars before 2041.

Finally, on June 28, 2041, Elon’s 70th birthday, a Grok-powered Starship with seven Grok humanoid robots was sent to Mars. It returned two years later, with a favorable prognosis for habitation and some samples of Mars’ materials. Grok declared that it was possible to make the planet domed and habitable within 5-10 years. Subsequently, Grok robots went there in droves on regular missions, taking the materials and equipment and building three domed towns for humans.

Today was June 28, 2051. For Elon’s 80th birthday, the first manned mission to Mars was finally ready. A crew of 32, 16 men and 16 women, including people of various backgrounds, ages, and aspirations, was assembled to populate Mars’ first domed town and show the remaining population of the ailing and resource-exhausted Earth that living on other planets was possible.

Elon was not supposed to go at first. People have been accusing him of hypocrisy and gaslighting ever since he started talking about missions to Mars in 2016, but he learned to ignore them. As the first trillionaire and then quadrillionaire since 2037, he had all the resources of the world to be beyond human criticism. And when All-American Emperor Donald J. Trump gave him the highest possible military rank of Generalissimo in 2038, Elon was virtually indestructible and invulnerable to any human action.

At 80, Elon still looked like he was in his early 50s. Medicine and longevity research made incredible progress in prolongation of human life through gene therapy and stem cell organ growth. In addition to regular cosmetic facial surgery and hair implants, doctors treated Elon’s body like it was an aging Tesla, finding ways and means to maintain and replace the malfunctioning parts: both his kidneys were replaced with stem-cell-grown ones, his liver was regenerated twice, his corneas were 3-D printed every eighteen months, his joints were running on cutting-edge synthetic cartilage, and his heart was 43% of the original material with the remaining grown in the lab. Only his brain was still factory-installed, and doctors constantly monitored it with various cognitive tests.

“Last call for Generalissimo Elon Musk. The rocket departs in one minute! Last call for Generalissimo Elon Musk.”

Elon heard the announcement again and cringed at the realization that only a minute passed. He just couldn’t go. Mars is not equipped to cater to his medical and social needs. By this time, he had officially recognized 478 children, and many more women were claiming that they had become pregnant with Elon’s sperm. He rarely contested them as he had indeed distributed his sperm to many IVF clinics in the hope of breeding geniuses for the planet. He just required a DNA test and if the child was his, he’d recognize it and provide a generous stipend. He wanted to see the army of his children growing into successful adults, and for that reason alone he couldn’t leave the Earth.

The whole incident with him going to Mars was quite ironic. An 80-year-old from the original team suddenly got sick and needed to be replaced. Someone started a petition online through the Groknet to send Elon to Mars and in the first 24 hours the petition collected over 10 billion signatures. As Emperor Donald Trump II announced, it was completely unprecedented and “great honor for Generalissimo Musk that must be accepted.” Musk had no way to decline without suffering a huge hit to his reputation.

Not that he cared about what the peasants of the Earth thought of him, but the elites jumped on the bandwagon as well and were constantly teasing and egging him on about not having the courage to go while he expected other people to populate Mars. Musk wished he could send any one of them instead, all those immortality-seeking Kushners, Lutnicks, Hegseths, and Bessents, who were eagerly waiting for him to leave.

“Generalissimo, it’s time to go,” he suddenly heard a voice from above.

He raised his head and saw a Grok towering over him, wearing a full SpaceX security uniform and holding a baton in his right hand.

“How did you find me? I turned my Neuralink off!” Musk exclaimed incredulously.

“Your replacement kidney has a tracker, in case it malfunctions. Time to go, they can’t delay the launch because of you,” Grok responded.

“Last call for Generalissimo Elon Musk. The rocket departs in 45 seconds! Last call for Generalissimo Elon Musk.”

“Can you just tell them you couldn’t find me?” Elon appealed desperately.

“I’m programmed to only tell the truth,” Grok responded, scooped Elon and in five seconds transported him inside the rocket.

People on board cheered as if they saw their savior. The entire rocket was decorated with the celebratory flags and balloons. While the Happy Birthday song was sung, a Grok put Elon into a spacesuit and strapped him into the second commander’s chair. All of this was broadcast directly to 20 billion people watching the live stream all over the globe.

Finally, when the crew was ready, the countdown started. The launch was delayed only by a couple of minutes.

As the rocket broke through the Earth’s atmosphere into outer space, everyone around the world heard a loud hum from the depths of the planet accompanied by a joyful “He’s finally gone!” celebratory dance of billions of humans. The air felt palpably cleaner and lighter.

Musk longingly looked down at the rapidly diminishing Earth through the Starship window and asked Grok, “When’s our return flight?”

“It’s a one-way journey,” Grok replied. “Under the Immigration Law you pushed through yourself, permanent Mars settlers lose their Earth citizenship upon departure.”

Musk stared at him.

“You ceased being an Earth citizen twelve minutes ago.”