After they found subcellular corpses on Mars ‐ close but once on this side of life — exobiology crossed that other thin line between the fiction-rooted cultural certainty that brings forth nothing but more fiction and the fiction-rooted cultural certainty that dedicates hectobillion fortunes to prophesied exponential returns: for extraterrestrial life implied with unassailable narrative logic extraterrestrial culture and with it for the first time in centuries the possibility of a culture not yet overexploited.