Battle Magic: Cocaine Diplomacy in 55 BCE

Timbuktu, 1330 CE. The Mali Empire at the height of its power. Gold dust literally fills the air. And sitting at the centre of it all is Mansa Musa — the richest human being who has ever lived, with a net worth of roughly $700 billion in today's money. Elon Musk is small fry by comparison. Ryan's been dropped into medieval West Africa with one mission: convince this golden emperor to fund humanity's first space programme.

The logic is simple: if modern billionaires spend their fortunes going to space, surely history's richest man should have got there first. The Mali Empire under Mansa Musa controlled most of West Africa's gold production. His famous hajj to Mecca included 60,000 people and so much gold that he crashed Cairo's economy for ten years. Keon recognises the name from an Anderson .Paak song but knows nothing else. Ryan's elevator pitch to the wealthiest man in history involves optical illusions, mechanical curiosities, and a prototype that gets progressively darker as the engineering challenges mount.

Medieval Africa's golden age meets one man's wildly ambitious space proposal. The empire is real. The wealth is staggering. The space programme is not going to happen — but the pitch is something else entirely.