“Good morning. On top of your current duties, your team is taking over providing a vital service to hundreds of millions of people.”

“How will we do that on top of the existing work?”

“Efficiency.”

“OK. Completely different domain; the people who know all the ins and outs of this service, and software and stuff, when do they train us?”

“Oh, we fired them. You’re going to be very efficient.”

“Well, why didn’t you just not fire the people already knowledgeable and doing this work?”

“We put daily numbers on a website. Firing people makes big numbers today.”

“Won’t we end up just expanding this office with a similar number of people except who won’t know what they’re doing? Is this going to work?”

“Look, I’m 23 making six figures. Elon and I will be back at SpaceX soon enough and if shit breaks Trump is going to blame you and Democrats and make some splashy deportations and it’s going to be fine.”

[Nervous laughter] “Oh good!”

“Oh, not for you. We’re going to slander you while you collapse under an impossible workload, but fine for me. SpaceX is getting some big contracts soon.”

”But we’ll save some money, right?”

”Possibly [deep drag on a cigarette] but most of that is going to the 1% in a big tax cut.”

“Cool I guess. This seems kinda cynical and cruel to the thousands who got fired and millions depending on these services.”

“If it makes you feel better, these particular victims are imaginary because this is a writing exercise. We don’t exist either.”

“Oh, huh…” [puts on basketball shorts, catches ball thrown from out of frame, shoots, crowd cheers]