Starship Legacy: A Novel by Not Elon Musk

PAGE 22!

The message came through just as Elon settled in for the briefing: "BASE ALPHA DAILY BRIEFING - CANCELLED. Delayed 24 hours due to ongoing equipment diagnostics."

He read it twice. A straight cancellation? That was new. Even during the dust storm last year, Shaw had maintained at least basic communication protocols.

The prototype lab could wait a few minutes. He pulled up Base Alpha's maintenance logs instead, scanning through recent entries. Nothing jumped out as unusual. Power consumption patterns normal, life support cycling within expected parameters. He checked the orbital weather data – no storms, no solar activity warnings. Just another calm day on Mars.

Maybe he was overthinking it. The old Elon would have fired off a dozen messages demanding explanations, but experience had mellowed that impulse. Running Tesla had taught him the value of letting competent people work without constant oversight. Running SpaceX had reinforced that lesson – sometimes dramatically.

Still, he made a note to have the overnight team monitor Base Alpha's data streams more closely. Not because he didn't trust Shaw's crew, but because his instincts had been honed by decades of engineering challenges. Small anomalies often hinted at interesting developments.

His watch buzzed – the quantum computing team was waiting. They'd finally achieved stable error correction in the new prototype, a breakthrough that could revolutionize the deep space communication protocols. He'd been looking forward to this review all week.

As he headed for the lab, Elon found himself grinning. Funny how his younger self had imagined running a Mars colony would be all dramatic moments and historic decisions. Reality was mostly careful maintenance and incremental improvements, punctuated by occasional mysteries like today's cancelled briefing.

Not that he minded. The real work of pushing humanity forward happened in these quiet moments, these small deviations from routine that pushed them to look closer, think deeper, reach further.

He just hoped whatever they were diagnosing up there wasn't too serious.