Disclaimer: This article is based on actual news from the real world – honestly! However, it has been sprinkled with a healthy dose of satire.
Beijing’s World War II victory parade was meant to show off China’s shiny new arsenal of “definitely not knockoff Transformers” military hardware. However, in an unguarded moment, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping were caught on a live mic discussing their retirement plans: namely, avoiding it by never dying.
"We grow young together" (www.kremlin.ru)
Putin, whose understanding of science falls somewhere between Rasputin and a below-average YouTube chiropractor, was overheard via interpreter musing that organ transplants could allow humans to “live younger and younger”. Which sounds backwards, but Russian medical tech generally involves vodka, a hacksaw, and whatever spare parts they can strip off a tractor from 1887, so it tracks.
Xi Jinping, whose nation pioneered the ability to install facial recognition in soup spoons, responded with a chuckle and the declaration that humans could live to 150 this century. He did not specify whether those 150 years would be consecutive or spread out across multiple reincarnated clones.
North Korea’s Kim Jong Un also attended, presumably to hold Putin’s borscht and prove that membership in the Threesome of Doom still has a loyalty punch card. Insiders say he appeared to perk up when he thought someone said “immortality buffet.”
It was a rare unscripted moment for the dictators. Normally, Xi’s office makes sure every shot of him is heavily edited to make him look two inches taller than Putin, while Putin’s office makes sure he’s holding a bear pelt and riding a horse shirtless.
"Just out here, fishing for bear." (www.kremlin.ru)
The broadcast, meant to showcase 80 years since Japan’s defeat and roughly three months since Putin last blinked, accidentally picked up the biotech conversation. Most of the mic’d exchange was drowned out by Kim Jong Un loudly asking if immortality comes in mango flavor.
For viewers in China, none of this happened. Their version was soundtracked by state media with stirring narration about peace, progress, and definitely not how to turn kidneys into horcruxes.
Experts were unsurprised by the exchange. “Dictators have always wanted to live forever,” said Feng Chongyi of the University of Technology Sydney, “which is weird considering most of them have been dead inside for years.”
The rest of the conversation remains unheard, though hot mic experts believe it ended with someone asking whether immortality voids term limits and everyone laughing hysterically because dictators don’t have term limits.
This story is based on fully factual news, but if we got it wrong, blame these guys, we’re just here to make it funny.
