Screw you Elon Musk.

I don't hate Elon because he ran a wildly successful rocket company, car company, drilling company and mind reading company while I made barely enough money off my esoteric research into mathematics. I hate him because he was right. He told us all we were living in a simulation. Hell, how do you think he started all of those companies? He hacked the damn code. He? He isn't a he. He's a program, just like all of us. A program in a damn simulation. But that jackass of a program figured out how to change the simulation while the rest of us just lived our oblivious, fake lives.

He started small. He changed the part of the code that calculates cost. The metal in his rockets cost 30% less. The batteries cost 15% less. When I learned about his little hack, then everything made sense. I mean electric cars had been around for over fifty years before Elon "invented" them.

He could have just coasted as a billionaire. But then he tweeted this:

'Hey Boyz, we are definitely living in a simulation. I hacked the code bitches!'

I remember seeing that tweet and thinking, "what kinda of idiot would believe this douche!" A year later he had another billion dollar company. What none of us knew at the time was that he had been working on an even more ambitious hack. Spoiler alert, he pulled it off. And life changed for every one of us.

Here is how it started for me.

I woke up that morning to the smell of coffee brewing in my kitchen. I had it on a timer, the correct amount of water and grounds ready to brew at 6am. French Vanilla. My mug ready to receive that rich, delicious brew. And that was as far as normal went that day.

I opened my eyes to find Elon Musk in my bedroom. He was sitting in the Faux Leather IKEA chair across the room from my bed (don't judge me, I like leather but I refuse to pay the price for one of those Pottery Barn numbers). He looked relaxed and he smiled at me. He took a sip of coffee from... was that, yes, yes it was, my mug! I looked over at the kitchen and saw that my mug was not under the coffee maker anymore. I'm positive I'd left it there the previous night.

Damn you Elon Musk. That was my coffee.

He sipped again. It smelled so good.

"Greetings James. I'm Elon Musk."

No shit. Stop drinking my coffee.

As though he could read my thoughts, he took another sip.

"This is really good coffee. You are probably a little confused right now. Don't worry, I'm here to clear everything up for you. First, none of this is real. This is all a simulation."

I couldn't take this anymore. "What are you doing in my bedroom at," I looked at my cell phone on it's wireless charger, "6:05 am in the morning?"

Elon's head tweaked left a bit, "J-James, since we are in a simulation, it is hardly your bedroom. But I understand your confusion. Please hold all questions until the end."

He looked at me, his eyebrow raised to see if I would comply. I did.

"We are all living in a simulation. You are just a computer program. I am just a computer program. Everything in this room is a computer program. But..." He gestured at me like he wanted to share a secret, "It doesn't have to be so boring."

Ok, I'd had enough. I got up and walked into my kitchen. There he was again, getting creamer out of my refrigerator and pouring it into his, no, my coffee. I looked back at the chair, he wasn't there.

"James, this is only going to take up more of your morning if you won't pay attention."

I motioned at the coffee with my eyes and then looked at him.

"Fine," he said and handed me the coffee. It had a weird blue reflective swirling color mixed into it. Like some sort of oil slick dancing on the surface my coffee, but with colors that shouldn't even exist.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

"What the hell did you put in this?" I asked.

He handed me the bottle of creamer. When I took the creamer a line appeared from it and a label floated next to it. The label read "Creamer Of Enlightenment". I moved the creamer around and the label moved with it. I turned my head to the left, looking out of the side of my eye like I was expecting it to run away. It didn't move. I looked back at it again, only this time I stared for a few moments at the title. That must have triggered something because suddenly a voice began saying: "Creamer of Enlightenment. Once you drink this creamer there is no going back. This is the red pill. Or is it the blue pill? I always get those mixed up. Drinking this will enable you to alter your own code. And also, it is damn delicious." My first thought was, that sounded exactly like Will Ferrell.

My second thought was me shouting, "What the hell does that mean?"

"It means what he said." Elon replied. He sounded a little annoyed and a whole lot of condescending. He didn't offer any other explanation. I bet he wanted me to beg him for an answer. Well I'll not play your mind game, hallucination Elon Musk.

I sniffed the coffee. "Is it good?"

"Dude, you will never drink a finer cup of joe."

I looked down at it again. It didn't look like poison. What's the worst that could happen? It could be Olestra. Didn't that stuff give you anal leakage? No, they had banned that stuff years ago.

I took the tiniest of baby sips from the cup.

Holy shit it tasted good. Not just good. This was the best coffee I'd ever had in my entire life. This coffee was better than any LSD I'd tried in college. I mean, woah.

Unfortunately my euphoria stopped as fast as it had started. I looked at the coffee and drank again. Nothing. I took the creamer and I drank straight from it. Nothing dammit!

And then suddenly I saw it. A screen floating to the left of my field of vision. It said, "Menu".

When I used to trip in college I at least got that feeling of euphoria at the same time. This was just the hallucination sans party city. Not fair.

I exhaled out and looked over at the word again. It said "Menu". I stared at it a bit longer and suddenly a list of words appeared under it, slightly indented. It read:

Tutorial

Inventory

Stats

Skills

Jobs

Network

Leader Board

Logs

Chat

Settings

Everything except Tutorial appeared grayed out. I closed my eyes. Everything went away except the word "Menu". I opened my eyes again and shook my head back and forth. The menu moved with me. I felt motion sick. What the hell was wrong with me. I'd played with augmented reality glasses before. It felt a lot like that. Those glasses made me motion sick too. Dammit was I going to feel sick like this all day? I put my fingers up to my eyes. No goggles.

"Hey." Elon waved his hand in front of my face. "Can I continue?"

I turned my head back and forth one more time to be sure. The menu still followed me like some sort of creepy stalker. I gave up and nodded to Elon.

"Usually people wait for me to explain everything before drinking that stuff. That was so money. I mean that could have been poison, or worse, Olestra." He patted me on the back like we were buddies.

"So as I was saying, we are all living in a simulation. But I decided this was a super sucky simulation. I had a sort of existential crisis. You know, like, why are we all here? Do any of my actions matter? Why are there a different number of hot dogs and buns in their packages. I mean, what sort of species would code that into a simulation. But then I said to myself, self, you have a purpose. You have to have a purpose. I mean why would someone go to all the trouble to create this incredible simulation otherwise, hot dogs not withstanding. I just need to wait and it will all be clear. I waited and no one showed up to give me my purpose. So I thought, maybe this is one of those emergent behavior simulations. Maybe I'm supposed to come up with my own purpose. And then I thought, no, even better, maybe I'm supposed to give everyone their purpose. Make's sense, doesn't it? I mean, you'd have come to the same conclusion I'm sure, right?"

I stared and blinked at him. "No. No I wouldn't. You are certifiable."

"You might be right." Elon seemed to lose his train of thought for a bit. Then he smiled and snapped back to our chat. "Where was I? Ah, I had my epiphany. So I immediately flushed the toilet, washed my hands, and by the time I walked out of the bathroom I had put together an awesome plan."

You know, that shitter comment would have been the weirdest thing I'd heard him say if it had still been yesterday.

"Our purpose, are you ready? Our purpose would be, dun dun da, to escape the simulation!"

I blinked.

"Now, here comes the really cool part. I decided to let everyone tweak their own code. Not as much as I tweaked my code. I mean someone has to be the boss and that should obviously be me. Still, by drinking that creamer, you unlocked an ability to change your own code."

"Is that what this menu thing is?"

"Oh that. Well, sorta. That lets you see the changes to your code. But since I was already in there I thought, let's do a full upgrade. I used to play Dungeons and Dragons as a kid, but the interface sucked. It was like, paper and pencil. So I grabbed my design team and we gave everyone the coolest virtual interface. It's pretty bad ass isn't it?"

I blinked.

Elon looked at me like I was crazy. "Ok, any questions?"

"Yes." I walked around the kitchen. "Yes. Many questions. So many."

"That's great. Save those up for the tutorial! Douglas will take great care of you."

And he disappeared.

Screw you Elon Musk.