Elon Musk cannot resist meddling in affairs about which he knows nothing, to wit, Twitter. People are puzzled by his bizarre behavior—carrying a sink into Twitter headquarters; firing top executives; firing half the staff; refusing to pay rent; driving away thousands of users as well as some advertisers.
In his crazed free speech absolutist zeal, he has allowed hate speech to metastasize; he censures anyone who disagrees with him. Speech is free as long as it’s Elon’s.
Is this a genius plan playing out as some fan boys would like to believe, or is it just an out-and-out crazy, drug-addled cry for help?
There are rumors. People have noticed a change ever since he visited his private Neuralink laboratory two nights before he finalized his purchase of Twitter.
Neuralink, co-founded in 2017, is Elon’s latest brain storm, pun intended—a system to develop and implant chips into the brains of humans, ostensibly to make it possible for people with paralysis to walk again and for blind people to see.
Since this narrative runs counter to Elon’s noted libertarian lack of empathy, there are those who have ascribed to him more sinister motives.
Accusations of animal torture and abuse during Neuralink’s contract with the University of California, Davis dogged the program and likely led Elon in 2020 to construct his own 6,000 square foot lab in San Francisco.
Two nights before acquiring Twitter, Elon visited the Neuralink lab around 2:30 a.m. to check up on his employees’ work.
Seeing Elon enter the facility on the security camera feed, Jacques, a very bright rhesus macaque, opened his cage door and hopped around to the cage of his friend, Penelope, a two month-old piglet. They had practiced this maneuver for months.
As Elon walked into their room and reached for the light switch, Penelope skidded between his feet and toppled him. Elon hit his head hard on the tiled floor, knocking him unconscious.
“Excellent,” cried Jacques who dragged over the set of surgical tools he’d squirreled away in the animal rec room. For months he’d been carefully observing all the procedures performed on the other monkeys and knew just where and how to implant the chip. He was precise in his technique so that no one would notice the small incision he’d made in Elon’s scalp. After the procedure, he rushed into the computer room to make sure the chip was broadcasting as it was supposed to. He renamed and hid the new computer file so that only he could locate it. He rushed back to Penelope.
“We did it, Penelope, it works! Now I can sneak into the computer room whenever I want to and mess with his brain. I’ll make him sorry he killed my sweetheart, Maggie!!” Maggie, another rhesus macaque, with whom Jacques had fallen in love, was euthanized in an experiment gone awry.
Penelope squealed and wiggled her little butt. “Maggie was my best friend, dammit. And what did she die for? So Elon could practice on us and then go on to wire and control the entire human race!!?”
“The best part?” said Jacques, “I set up the program so that intermittently and uncontrollably Elon will scream, ‘I’m a douche, a big bad douche and a fraud. I hate all humankind.’ For once in his life, Elon will have no control, not even over his own speech. People will soon realize he’s unfit to lead Twitter or any of his other companies. In no time he will become the once-upon-a-time richest man in the world.”
“Maggie would have been proud!”
Rosie Sorenson is a humor writer in the San Francisco Bay Area. You can contact her at: RosieSorenson29@yahoo.com
From The Progressive Populist, February 1, 2023
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