Hawking stared at the screen for what seemed like hours. Then he stared some more. It was finally time.
"It's done. -Elon"
The rubber of his wheels made a barely noticeable squeak on the marble floors decorating his foyer as the massive wooden front doors opened automatically.
Taking in what would be some of his last breaths of Earth air, he rolled into the bulbous Tesla self driving luxury van. As the doors slid closed, he took one last look at the house and prayed...to whom? that his wife and staff would understand why he made this decision alone.
As the strings of Yo-Yo Ma danced with the dark sky and ever wider panoramas, the most important man on earth reflected on the his clandestine road trip.
There was no tarmac. There was no giant hangar. No gathered press. The Bonneville salt flats are a lonely place at 4am. From here one can see more stars than perhaps they have ever seen, and for a moment, possibly begin to understand that we are smaller than the grains of salt beneath. As the van slowed to a silent stop, a lone figure on the horizon rose seemingly out of nowhere, as if he manifested from the salt itself.
"Hyperloop. The bastard already built it under here..." crackled from the speakers of Stephen's computer based thought driven speech synthesizer.
"You look well old friend!" were Elon Musk's first words as the van doors opened and Hawking wheeled out.
"And you have impeccable timing. I would have hoped we could have done this BEFORE the movie. Quite a plot twist this would have been." quipped Hawking.
Elon grinned. Turning towards the full moon, slightly gesturing his hands, he whispered "Ambassador X"
Instantaneously, a giant ring appeared in the ground. About a football field in diamater, surrounding Hawking, Musk, and the van, who were off center from the ring's centerpoint. Moving just as silently as the electric van, the ground opened from the ring's centerpoint, and a car sized light blue metallic sphere floated up through the opening, which closed just as quickly and quietly as it opened.
The sphere continued to float.
The light from the rings reflected in the tears welling up in Hawking's eyes as the giant ring softly dimmed backed to nothing. "Anti Gravity" he electronically gasped.
"Not just Anti Gravity, Stephen. They taught us Anti Matter."
"Initiate Hawking protocol" said Musk, as the a panel opened in the bottom of the sphere opened. Hawking was rapt as a sleek 15 foot tall humanoid mechanized suit floated down to the ground.
The mecha, the likes of which had only been seen in comic book films to this point, walked fluidly up to the two men, and gently scooped Hawking up by the bottom of his wheels, as its chest opened up revealing a cavity exclusively made to cocoon Hawking and his chair.
Musk looked up at Stephen with a grin. "They have been waiting. Are you ready?"
"Initiate" replied Hawking. The mech proceeded to place Hawking at chest level, as the intricate interior unfolded to carefully place the physicist securely in place.
"Godspeed" Musk said with an ironic grin, as the chest doors firmly sealed shut. Musk took a glance at his transparent phone as a custom app relayed that all life support systems were green light.
The mech walked back towards the floating orb, as its doors once again opened. Then it stopped. "Wait" said Hawking over the Mech's speaker.
"What is it Stephen?" an unflinching Musk said, unsurprised that even the strongest mind on earth would have some second thoughts.
"The History of Dance...did you do it?"
Cracking probably his first genuine grin of the year, Musk replied "Yes, of course."
If one were to happen across a secret installation hiding in plain sight at 5 AM one morning, one would have been lucky enough to see a 15 foot mecha doing the Pee-Wee herman, the Macarena, breakdancing, and literally doing the robot, as a mysterious floating orb and the real world Tony Stark looked on.
15 minutes later, Hawking was zooming by the remains of the ISS, the orb manipulating gravity and displaying no form of external propulsion.
45 minutes later, he was passing Mars and saw the exploded remains of Opportunity at the base of Mount Sharp.
An hour into his journey, he came into Ceres space. That's when the reality of this unreal situation cemented itself in his mind. Ceres was flickering, like an old TV from his childhood with a bad antenna. He could only wish it was Howdy Doody floating in front of him. Instead it was a HOLOGRAM OF A PLANETOID.
Pushing on to his final rendezvous, he gathered his thoughts. "I warned them all. We needed to focus on ourselves and moving outwards, not wandering the jungle cracking the branches waking up the lions."
He recalled his first meeting with Elon. "We've been contacted. Our last test rocket was intercepted in low earth orbit, and it came back with a message. They captured Voyager I and II. They are coming to us, but perhaps for us. They scanned all of our digital data and demanded audience with only one mind on Earth. Yours."
The beauty of Saturn's Rings snapped Stephen out of his spacedream, as he knew it was almost time.
The Orb settled down gently 20 feet over Europa's ice. A humanoid Mech floated down to the surface.
Earth's Secret Ambassador was ready to make a case for his planet.