A Letter to Santa Claus

Or, Let's You and Me Take Care of this Billionaire Problem

Dear Santa:

All I want for Christmas is a Starfleet runabout with which to save the world.

A big ask, you say. It’s a fictional spacecraft not canonically available until the latter half of the 24th Century. You may be tempted to sign your response, “WTF? - Santa.” But, please, hear me out.

The ship doesn’t need to be fully functional. I don’t need warp drive; half impulse (an eighth of the speed of light, sixty minutes to Mars) will do me just fine. The phasers and photon torpedoes packages can stay in 2368. I’d even forgo deflector shields if that’s a deal breaker, but they’d be nice to have in the event someone objects to me, ya know, SAVING THE WORLD!

The Danube class Starfleet runaboout.

Santa, if your future, post-capitalist-utopia-loving self is concerned about precedent, please tell them I promise not to use this gift to violate the Prime Directive, which forbids interference in the natural development of a civilization. I’m going after a decidedly unnatural foe: immoral artificial-intelligences called ‘corporations’ and ‘billionaires’ infected with an algorithm called “Love of Money.”

You might have heard of the CEO Killer? He’s this civilizations’ attempt at a natural response to these unnatural threats. I think we can both agree that cold-blooded murder in the streets is not in anyone’s best interest and will lead to a substantial amount of (billable) work for your Naughty List consultants. For the low, low price of a semi-functional fictional spacecraft, I can save you and yours a lot of work.

Here’s how I’ll do it.

First, I’ll fly the ship (I’ll name it the St. Nick in your honor) to Mars and use the matter replicator to build a self-sustaining prison campus there. It will have a great view of the Martian mountains and sky, run off a combination of solar and replicated Starfleet power cells, and feature communal dining and recreation (Netflix) areas. Medical services will be provided via a standard emergency-medical hologram. Then, I’ll return to Earth and start kidnapping recruiting settlers for this new enterprise (heh!).

‘Viagra is not on my list of necessary medicines.”

I have so many recruits in mind! Heads of corporations, powerful politicians, and pundits all. These kinds of folks will be perfect for the new world, and some of them already want to go! More prisoners settlers will follow in very short order, vanishing from Earth and waking up in the new colony. I’ll set it up so there’s no way -- nor any need -- for the settlers to communicate with Earth and vice versa. However, I will use camera drones and enhanced ChatGPT to film the goings on at the compound and stream them via YouTube. Think of the first couple of seasons of The Real World, when it was good. When they stopped being polite and started getting… Well, you know the rest. We can call the show Santa’s Village or Stars on Mars or Retirement Home or something. Lots of old-fart oligarchs whining about past glories and chores!

Other malicious AIs will rise to take the place of our recruits, but if enough of them disappear from their homes and show up on our YouTube channel, they’ll get the message. Meantime, I can use the runabout’s computers to move that abandoned cash where it will do some good.

In time, Earth will recover, leaving its people with time and energy to tackle global warming and etcetera. Sure, I could use the runabout to tackle those problems, too, but then we risk the Superman Conundrum (if he saves everyone all the time, no one will learn how to save themselves). Besides, Santa’s Village will keep me pretty busy. But maybe I can use the tractor beam to collect and safely de-orbit all the space garbage.

But Mars is our great hope, you say. It’s the next step in human migration! Nah. We won’t have the tech for that for centuries, really, and even living in domes or underground on Earth would be preferable to trying to make Mars comfortable for billions. Assuming we could get billions there, which we can’t. Our little compound, maybe we could call it Mar-a-Lago II, will be enough of a presence there for a long time.

Santa, I don’t need or want any credit for this work. I live a pretty simple life, and that’s good enough for me. Plus, I don’t want to open the door to anyone trying to influence me about who I should recruit for this bold adventure. My own counsel will I keep on who is to be beamed away. You can trust me.

Thanks in advance, Santa. Suffice to say, if a runabout appears under my tree this year, I won’t ask for anything else for Christmas. Ever.

Yours,

Rob Greene

P.S. I’ll probably set up an anonymous ‘Suggestion Box’ where folks can nominate future colonists. Feel free to toss in a few names yourself.