Tuesday: Elon’s Despair
The air inside the shed was damp, thick with the scent of old wood and rusted metal. They had found it just before nightfall, a half-collapsed structure at the edge of an overgrown field, barely enough to keep the wind out. But it was shelter, and for now, that was enough.
Roman hunched over the scavenged solar charger, coaxing at the frayed wires. "Come on, just a little more," they muttered.
Ivy Mae sat cross-legged nearby, flipping through The Alchemy of Transformation, the worn pages illuminated by the faint glow of the auroras outside. Jas was staring at the sky, lost in thought. It had been another long day of walking. Another day of trying to piece together the world that had been left behind.
Then the static hit.
A sharp crackle filled the air, making Miracle whimper and press closer to Jas. The phone Roman had been tinkering with blinked to life, its dim screen pulsing erratically before stabilizing into a grainy video feed.
The three of them leaned in.
Elon Musk stood in what looked like a high-tech facility—walls of sleek metal, dim emergency lighting casting long shadows. He was pacing, his breath coming in ragged gasps. His face, once so composed, was pale, damp with sweat.
“Mom! MOM!” His voice was raw, almost unrecognizable. He clutched a tablet, shaking it like a faulty walkie-talkie. “Where are you?”
Jas stiffened. "Is this real?"
"He doesn’t look good," Ivy Mae murmured, eyes narrowing.
Elon pressed his hands into his temples, his whole body trembling. "This isn’t happening," he whispered, his voice breaking. "We were supposed to be prepared. The Bitcoin vaults... the power backups... It’s all gone!"
Ivy Mae exhaled slowly. “The auroras.”
The screen stuttered—static flaring and distorting Elon’s image. When it cleared, he was gripping the edge of a console, staring at something just offscreen.
"We ran every scenario," he rasped. "Solar storms, magnetic shifts, even worst-case climate projections. But this... this was never in the models. Metals aren’t supposed to change."
A loud thud sounded from somewhere off-camera, and Elon flinched. His breath hitched.
“I can’t stop it,” he whispered. "Nothing works. The servers, the drives... The emergency relays failed first, then the crypto mines. Then..." He trailed off, swallowing hard.
Another noise—something collapsing. The lights behind him flickered, casting jagged shadows across the walls.
Elon turned back to the tablet, his hands shaking. His voice was barely a breath now.
“They knew,” he choked out. "They all knew."
The screen froze.
Silence.
Jas let out a slow breath. Roman set the phone down carefully, as if it might shatter.
Outside, the auroras shimmered on, unconcerned with the ruin left in their wake.