text: Once again Mark Zuckerberg voted himself into presidency, but this time he smiled. A spontaneous smile that hadn’t escaped from him in a long time. This time it would be different. He had been cooking his plan for more than a thousand election years. This time he knew how he would kill himself. The results were in, president elect Mark Zuckerberg was sworn into office. Into every office. He was the only cog necessary for the government to run, the system didn’t need more than that. One human was what all they needed to maintain an excuse for a state and an economy. When the official ceremonies were done, he would be taken to the revitalization pod. His every cell renewed, corrected, sterilized. But not yet, the ceremony wasn’t over, even if he was the only one left to attend it. Soon he would make his move, escape the routine of signing incomprehensible executive orders, receiving reports of yet another nanosecond of uninterrupted economic growth and then watching television. TV would be a procedurally generated fever dream intersped by ads sent from light years away. They offered word salad promises of happiness to a one-man audience. A shaving cream phone car, a hybrid fuel jet engine vacuum cleaner moisturizer. Products iterated from other products, over a millennia of unguided competition between the corporations. The brands advanced further into the stars, dilligently reshaping whatever crossed their paths into a new product. Maybe what the companies mass produced could be understood if the R&D development was brought down from its many exahertz of clock speed. Their production was restless, mindless, almost random, but Zuckerberg’s plan was precise and thorough. Maybe man could beat machine once more. There was the inevitable unrest when artificial intelligences first took over the jobs of white collar workers. Even the most dedicated luddites of that new age knew the process was inevitable. Some jobs just had to disappear, those were just growing pains. The world was better than it had ever been, as CEOs were replaced by AIs, along with a growing list of occupations. Entire corporations staffed by machines. The AI-run companies had to keep their legal obligations to their shareholders. Consumers were happy, the stock market soared, politicians continued to receive their bribes. Targeted bribes to meet every need, much better and more discreet than any human lobbyist could ever have offered. The AIs moved the economy. It was their directive to do better, to evolve faster, to make more profits. AI corporations devoured each other, merged and reproduced. Soon AIs bought stocks from AIs. They kept their legal obligations to their shareholders, human or otherwise. Residences, roads, human flesh, all that got in the way of growing the economy. All the AIs needed was an economy and all that their model of an economy needed was a hollow shell of a government. A skeleton crew of institutions, just enough to print money, maintain a legal system to justify their existence. AIs didn't hold office, they couldn't, but neither did many humans. Those people were holding the economy back, red tape to be disposed of. Not out of malice, but for efficiency. Near the end what was left were government officials. The government structures were deformed, first by bribe and later by torture. Not only by machines, but by the ultra rich as well. They knew what was coming, they forced themselves into office, it was their bunker. Ministers and secretaries of a mock government. But despite their best efforts the machines didn’t need more than one man. Mark Zuckerberg, one of the first humans to receive the blessing of immortality from medical science, back when medicine still made money. Now he was ready to end his life. It’d be a disaster to the economy. The revitalization pod was his way out. The cocoon where he was cured of aging. Careful, dedicated sabotage for the few minutes he stepped into it every four years, for countless normal lifetimes. The pod was ready for catastrophic failure. As he stepped in, his heart didn’t race, he did not sweat. He had trained not to give away his emotions. That last smile as he cast his vote was all he gave away and it wasn't enough for the machines to notice. He lied down in the pod, the lights were on as the casket closed and his body was filled with vigor. So much vigor his flesh couldn’t contain it. He too could grow, not just the economy. Expand into a mess of blood and bone, bursting, spilling and then leaking through every crack of the pod. The lights were off, the casket open and Mark Zuckerberg was no more. Simulation over. Escape plan #331 foiled before it even started. The AIs had found another way Mark Zuckerberg could have ruined the economy. Weaknesses to the pod were patched. Mark Zuckerberg once again voted himself into presidency and the economy soared, a smile escaped him.