The Scrawny Red Man at the Center of the Earth

A satire on Elon's relationship with our ecosystem 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 2:14

The scrawny red man at the center of the earth. Pip lived in a furnace. The center of the earth wasn't fire and brimstone, not exactly. It was more like a red-lit basement full of old machine parts, tubes humming with liquid warmth, and a single ancient computer humming in the magma. He'd built the place himself, repairing it with melted thoughts and scraps of superstition. That was how all luck dealers did it. And Pip, the scrawny red man, was the last one. He survived on a strange diet, not food, not drink, but photographs. More precisely, pictures of human bums. He didn't know why they sustained him, but they did. A single cheeky photo could power him for months. Unfortunately, he had an expensive supplier, a man from the surface known everywhere as Elon. Each week a capsule would drop through a titanium pipeline drilled all the way down from the surface. Inside, a silver envelope of processed bump picks, labeled and signed in a neat corporate font. In return, Pip would blow a puff of luck energy upward, a small aurora of golden vapor that would settle on Elon's empire. Everyone thought Elon was a genius. Pip knew better. The luck wasn't free. One day, the supply began to change. The photographs were rushed, blurry, poorly lit, the flesh uninspired. Pip sighed as he sorted through them by glow intensity. Where's the spirit? he grumbled, squinting at a pixelated print. You can't just point a camera and expect magic. He pounded a molten rock with his fist. The earth rumbled in reply, a low belch. Above ground, a factory trembled, spewing clouds into the midnight sky. Ugh. Great, Pip muttered. There go the emissions again. Meanwhile, on the surface, Ailon stared into his glass fortress, surrounded by silent idea slaves. Their eyes were open, but no sparks lived inside them. Every thought they once had now belonged to Grok, his self-aware algorithm. Need more creativity, Ilon murmured. Need more content. An alert pinged on his wristband, Lux Supply LOW. Ah. The red fool grows restless. So Elon did what he always did, he improvised. He turned on the camera, adjusted the lighting, and for the first time in his empire's history, took a picture of his own bum. He packaged it, labeled it VIP, for Pip, and launched it down the earth tube. When Pip opened the capsule, the air shimmered. He frowned. Something about this one felt off, too familiar in its absurd courage, too human in its desperation to impress. He lifted it toward the magma light. And then he saw. The reflection in the glossy print wasn't human at all. It was his. The shock hit him like a lightning bolt made of embarrassment. His crimson skin flashed me on. The molten walls cracked. All around, the magma retreated, freezing in an instant to glass. Above, volcanoes inhaled their fire. Factories reversed their smoke. CO2 folded back into stone. The entire atmosphere took one enormous, awkward breath, and stopped. The ice age began before anyone could open a window. Weeks later, Pip sat alone at the planet's heart, hugging himself for warmth. The tubes were silent. The luck trade was over. Only the photo remained, still smoldering faintly beside him. He looked at it, then at the frozen world above. Maybe, he said softly, it's time to try living off honesty for a change. And somewhere far above, Ailon sneezed, a small puff of luck glittering out of his nose like redemption.