Back in the day, the press had covered Dr. Elon’s lifestyle choices as a billionaire’s idiosyncrasies, unworthy of deep reflection on his real motivation. Given his gossip-worthy penchant for having children through IVF and surrogate mothers, journalistic curiosity about his family lives had been surprisingly shallow. Of course powerful men have maintained harems since the origin of the species, and the press has always ogled these exploits greedily, so the faceless herd can vicariously experience the dream of sexual abundance. Dr. Elon’s serial engagements with surrogate moms, however, lacked the glamorous element of courtship and sensuality, being apparently mere business arrangements. So at the time, no one hazarded a serious explanation for why the world’s most serious man was managing a hive of faceless women to generate offspring.
My paper had clinched an exclusive interview with the great man aboard his orbital space yacht now hanging in geosynchronous orbit over the lush paradise of Muskovia, formerly Greenland, purchased from the Truth Empire in 2055. In the X-bucks coffee parlor of the orbital elevator port, I marveled at the flavor of the coffee. “Real Arabica, grown here in Muskovia,” says the Inuit woman who served me the cup.
The Truth Empire’s forced acquisition of Greenland – prompted by Dr. Elon’s suggestion to the Big Cheese Himself – had been very well-timed. As the developed world lost its coastal cities to the sea, obliterating their civilization, and its agricultural belts turned into neglected wastelands, the vast, icy island thawed. Dr. Elon sold off the ice, using solar powered tugboats to tow icebergs to the sweltering, thirsty southern lands. All things had worked together for the benefit of Dr. Elon, and now I was getting into the world’s only privately owned orbital elevator -- essentially a railgun for shooting a capsule full of people into orbit. Once out of the earth’s gravity pull, with the help of small compressed air rockets, we would dock with Dr. Elon’s enormous space yacht, Extreme Measures.
Inside the warmly upholstered capsule, there were only four others, and a few empty seats. A robot took my overnight bag and guided me to my acceleration couch. When I sat down, an opaque mask came down over my face, the acceleration couch tilted back and strapped me in. Through the intercom, the elevator AI nattered on about the wonders of Muskovia until the scent of a dissociative anaesthetic teased my olfactory sense and the marketing monologue ended. I felt pleasantly separated from my anxiety and relieved of the weight of my physical body. As the long chain of electromagnets steadily accelerated us up into the sky, and G forces mounted steadily to generate escape velocity, I blissfully felt them not at all.
The docking maneuver went smoothly, and we disembarked into the hold of the Extreme Measures, where a wheeled AI assistant met me, took charge of my bag, and lead me to my room. The AI stowed my bag, and paused by the door before leaving to say, “I will return with dinner. You will see Dr. Elon in twelve hours. Be ready.” The door closed.
How could anyone be ready for Dr. Elon? Born in apartheid South Africa in 1971, now, in the year 2130, he was almost 160 years old, and during that time he had advantaged himself in every way possible. No one had photographed him in decades, and I wouldn’t be allowed to do so now. But they said I would see him, making me one of the most privileged people in the world. No pressure.
The AI assistant brought me a passable meal after a couple of hours, and I slept well in orbit, thankful for the artificial gravity generated by the centrifugal rotation of the passenger section of the space yacht.
But the interview took place in a large spherical space where the reality of weightlessness surrounded me. Huge viewscreens mounted on the curving walls replicates the vast expanse of the surrounding universe. Weightless AI's manuevered about, emitting hisses of compressed air, drifting from location to location, busy with tasks only they understood. There below us, hung the Earth, the moon peeping ‘round the blue horizon, and on the other side of the ship, a massive collection of machinery was visible, being assembled by a pair of huge metal hands. Dr. Elon floated in a webwork of instruments and controls. He looked down at me and called out, “Climb the rigging!” I saw the way up to where he was, and clambered up the ropes to reach the deck where he was moored, belted into a captain’s chair with 360 degree rotation, his hands in a pair of haptic gloves, his head in a helmet with a heads up display covering his eyes.
As I reached the platform, he pointed to another chair, and said, “Belt in.” I did as suggested. So this was the man. More machine than man, at this point, and not physically impressive. Then I put two and two together. The haptic gloves on his hands were controlling the two enormous metal hands out in space. With the heads-up display, he was able to see the enormous orbital construction, and with the mechanical hands, he could assemble huge structures with delicacy. Dr. Elon had literally increased his grasp to exceed that of any other human. What else had he done?
He turned towards me, pulled off the gloves, and helmet, and smiled. The smile looked sincere, but not because I thought he was happy to see me. He was happy that I was seeing him, and that I was aware of the privilege involved. But he could not be happy about the subject I had been invited to discuss – the human rights lawsuit filed by his surrogate children. “Shall we begin?” asked Dr. Elon.
I pulled out my slate and stylus and nodded, “Yes, certainly,” tapping the screen to call up my notes. I hit voice record, and the transcript follows.
FT: “Dr. Elon, thank you for inviting the Financial Times of London to interview you about this matter. The accusations made against you are extensive, detailing a course of conduct that at this point stretches over a century. Your unearthly longevity has sparked many questions, and few answers. The lawsuit by your offspring suggests an explanation – that you owe your longevity to them.”
Dr. Elon: “Yes,” answered Dr. Elon, “I understand their claims, and I’m ready to answer them. My lawyers are not at all in agreement with my course of action, but I hire them to listen to me, not the reverse. So ask your question a little more directly.”
FT: “The complaint here alleges that you have been milking your biological offspring of their blood, extracting plasma and other life-giving fluids, and injecting them into yourself. Is that true?”
Dr. Elon: “Well, I don’t do the actual injection myself, but yes, my children have been supplying me with transfusion material, but it has all been done with informed consent, and they get paid. How many pay their children a lifetime salary? All of my child donors receive that.”
FT: “But now they are complaining.”
Dr. Elon: “About what? About what are they complaining? That the checks are not big enough, right? That’s when the lawyers go away, when they get money, right? So that’s what this is all about!”
FT: “They claim it is about human rights. They say you tricked their mothers into signing away their own rights to their own bodies.”
Dr. Elon: “I don’t know what was so tricky about it. They all had their own lawyers. I hired separate counsel for all of them, and they all signed those agreements with full understanding.”
FT: “But those agreements have now been set aside by the courts on the grounds that parents cannot determine the biological destiny of their children.”
Dr. Elon: “At the time, all of the attorneys we consulted with on bio-ethics said there was no law against it.”
FT: “But did you, personally, think it was moral to force these women to sign contracts that allowed gene editing of their embryonic children?”
Dr. Elon: “I’m a scientist. I want to learn. We learn through experiment.”
FT: “Experimenting on your own children?”
Dr. Elon: “Well, I sure wasn’t going to experiment on anyone else’s.”
FT: “And why is that?”
Dr. Elon: “Legal issues.”
FT: “Like what?”
Dr. Elon: “A child is always a lawful donor for a parent. Can you imagine a court telling a child they
can’t donate a kidney to save the life of their father?”
FT: “No.”
Dr. Elon: “Neither could my lawyers.”
FT: “So let’s get onto organ donation. Have any of your children donated organs to you?”
Dr. Elon: “Yes, many of them.”
FT: “But for those donations, would you still be alive today?”
Dr. Elon: “Not likely. And I most definitely would not see. These flawless eyes were the product of one
of my favorite children. Passed on, unfortunately.”
FT: “What do you mean, passed on?”
Dr. Elon: “That child died of a disease that was incurable at the age of eighteen. Willed me her eyes, the dear.”
FT: “But why did you not save her? Why didn’t you edit her genes so that she wouldn’t die of that disease? You would have done it for yourself!”
Dr. Elon: “Ah, but she was not myself. She lived well, she lived with loving care. Her death was foredestined, and her giving me flawless eyesight, likewise. Into each life some rain must fall. One man gathers what another spills.”
FT: “And what of this allegation, one I hope you will deny – that some children were raised to be organ producers. This child who grows kidneys that can be harvested successively. Tell me that’s not true.”
Dr. Elon: “I’m please to tell you, it is not. One of my over-enthusiastic experimenters did start the editing process, but I put my foot down. Waste of resources.”
FT: “What do you mean, waste of resources?”
Dr. Elon: “Well, nowadays, we have the technology to clone organs straight from the tank. Why opt for the Mengelian solution?”
FT: “Well doctor, you used the word. Some people have called you a Mengele.”
Dr. Elon: “I’m no Mengele. He didn’t have a plan, and his so-called experiments produced little knowledge of use. I am on a quest to transcend the limitations of physical existence, and the only laboratories of any use to me are the human bodies that live and die and hold the answer, if answer there might be, in how to live forever. So far, I’ve staved off death for twice the normal span, and our knowledge of organ transplantation has become ever more refined. I anticipate that, someday, I will be able to transplant the brain currently in this body into a younger body grown in precisely the way necessary to receive this brain.”
FT: “But sir, this is arrogant madness. You are saying you would carve your child’s brain out of its cranium, and replace it with your own?”
Dr. Elon: “Oh, surely not. The younger body would be grown with the most vestigial brain possible, just enough to manage the construction and operation of the body – in practice simply the brain stem – no cerebellum, no consciousness.”
FT: “Doctor, you clearly prize your own life highly. How can you regard the lives of others with so little concern.”
Dr. Elon: “Growing up in Praetoria.”