It is I Who Planted, Within the Mind of Elon Musk, the Imbecilic Idea to Shoot a Car Into Space

This article is part of the My Absolution of Elon Musk series.

Firstly, as this marks my initial venture into the literary world, I will advise any plebeians reading this on who I am. I am a longtime lurker in the circles of tech visionaries. I have chosen to stay out of the limelight, so to say, in favor of building my businesses from outside the sympathetic eye of network news. I've been advised by my legal team against speaking openly about my business ventures, but they are wanton sycophants whose advice I heed with the utmost reluctance and, even then, I comply only with malice. For those unaware, I have built an empire in tech; created with apps - blockchains - meme-based crypto currencies - and the minds of second generation immigrants willing to work at all hours of every day while living in a utopian complex I carved, with the help of angel investors, from a string of dilapidated strip malls in Vicksburg, Mississippi. The location was chosen after striking a deal exempting my business holdings - current and future - from all municipal and state taxes, so long as I devoted 25% of all jobs created to employing local residents. To fulfill this requirement, I moved two facilities previously located in Southeast Asia to Vicksburg. These small scale factory-labs use modern day alchemy to turn human shit into edible meat. While this particular shit-meat investment is "ecologically revolutionary" and "overwhelmingly carbon negative" it is totally unprofitable. It has thusly been deemed an ego project by my many detractors. This is true insofar as all of my projects are, of course, ego projects. I keep this one around simply because I love the idea of these people having to do this sort of work. I find the nature of this technology hysterical. I visit the plant often. I ride my hoverboard between the mechanisms. With glee I watch the workers create this unmarketable meat. I will never automate this process - not because I need to meet the Vicksburg agreement - but because I so love to watch these people work.

My impressive resume has been unfurled to you, reader, but I'd like you to note, in relation to the encounter with Musk, that I am no stranger to the cosmos. I have wastefully logged over three thousand hours on Eve online, a game I am still unsure how to play. I believe I am part of a large semi-legal nefarious corporate entity which operates with impunity within certain galactic sectors. I pay large sums of real life money to someone in Ohio to be told I am part of this organization. I relish this arrangement. I would change nothing. I am above no transaction that allows me instant access to prestige, no matter how petty or inconsequential.

It wasn't until I ordered a full custom-made suit of armor from the video game series Halo and had it fitted to my body that my cosmic path intertwined with Musks. You see, the armor's magnificence is as painful to me as it is to actually wear it. Foolishly, unfortunately, and detailed in my YouTube series, I had the armor made to my ideal body. I was measured from head to toe, cheek to cheek, tip to nip. I was circumferenced from every discomforting angle. Though I loathed the invasiveness of it and the technicians told me it was entirely unnecessary, that they could easily find the measurements without touching me anywhere and everywhere, I demanded it. For this is the way of the Halo. They digitally peeled back the layers of fat that have cemented themselves stubbornly across my carcass. They firmed up and toned by buttocks and scalp, along with numerous other muscle groups, named in Latin by eggheads and academic bean-counters. I refuse to recant them.

Finally my avatar stood before me complete. The computer model of my lean and unencumbered form was gorgeous. I personalized the fabrication by having my beauty marks and moles moved into alignment in one area along my lower back. They now spelled "REAPEP." It's a shame I don't have enough blemishes to finish the R in REAPER, as was my original plan. Yes - they told me they could easily generate more moles, a simple copy and paste, but I refused. It seemed disingenuous. It was un-Halo. Seeing my perfectly formed Adonis-self left me with renewed fervor in my quest. I had every intention of obtaining my true form. Think of it: to have a body that would match my supple and ingenious mind. My physical form would finally meet my material success.

Not even two hours had passed when the painful reality set in. I was about to dig into my third chips ahoy pack of the day when I realized the gravity of my situation. The time and effort needed to achieve such an immaculate avatar would be an unimaginable burden. I would have to exercise in real life while carefully measuring the food I was ingesting. I would have to keep my daily caloric intake at a level fit for a human man. No cream cheese dumplings. No hoverboards modified so that I may sit down. No loungable dining chairs. No more pork fat in my coffee. Gatorade ice cubes for my soup. No more buttermilk vaping sessions. Not a thing to take the edge off of playing video games all day and night. Not a thing that makes this miserable existence worth a god damn shit.

So it was settled - I was resigned to wait for CRISPR gene editing technology to advance enough to realize my dream. In this way I could maintain my beloved sedentary lifestyle and manipulate my genes into the form I sought. I had the template - now, I thought, it was just a presumably simple matter of going to a scientist and demanding they trick my unruly body into completing the transformation. It's at this juncture I met the insufferable tech magnate Elon Musk.

– Townsend Reed (@distastefulman)