THE WASHINGTON ARISTO
SEPTEMBER 4, 2098
The founder of the company that was, at one point, the world’s largest employer, an idea invented on a camping trip and begun in a garage, has died. Eric Brandt, once the world’s wealthiest man, a philanthropist and visionary and one-time owner of the Washington Aristo—was 134.
According to his wife, 50-year-old actress Avid Valentina, Brandt had been ill for some time. Brandt brought space travel to Earth, and true to a vision he had as a teenager, helped build the first human colony on Mars. The project, embroiled in controversy and prohibitively expensive, nearly bankrupted Brandt a decade ago. He was forced to unload assets, including the Aristo, to keep the pilot project afloat, long after it was clear to everyone else that it had failed. To this day, the detritus of the neighborhoods and agricultural projects remain on Mars, a half-finished civilization that never found its footing. All original participants have died off-planet or been returned to Earth.
Brushing off questions about the solvency of the Brandt estate as well as the poor public relations stemming from the massive Red Care endeavor, Valentina insisted, “Eric wanted to see humanity thrive. Sometimes I think he was the only one who cared. On Earth, we can only survive, and barely, and for how much longer?”
The settlement, Red Care, was a subsidiary of the now-shuttered Blue Sky, and the project would ultimately consume what many believe to be the bulk of the trillionaire’s fortune. However, Red Care began as a quiet partnership with a New York real estate investor named Cesar Ostrelich and was lit by the flint of Dr. Matthew Fletcher’s theories of consciousness—a computer scientist best known and perhaps most infamous for the creation of the AI known as Peregrine.
Brandt’s original company, Pacific, has been sold off piece by piece for years to cover legal costs stemming from angry families of Red Care residents, which has sent the unemployment rate skyrocketing.
Critics of Brandt had long raised alarms that the ultimate goal of Red Care was to rid the Earth of so-called undesirables and strand them on Mars so that the wealthy might do what they please on Earth. “Absurd,” said Valentina. “He didn’t think humans belonged on Earth at all—rich or poor. He thought we had our chance, and we blew it. Eric’s legacy is the attempt to save humanity from itself. And what does humanity do in return? What it always does: bitch and quibble about details.”