Main Character Energy

Main Character Energy

Elan Tusk awoke from his dream with the taste of prophecy on his tongue and the faint scent of Martian soil in his nostrils. The vision was clear: a flaming electric horse galloped across the solar system, a ferry between Earth and Mars, and on its back—him, obviously—shirtless, brilliant, ascending. He sat up in bed, adjusted his Neuralink headband (still in beta), and opened Twitter. “It is time,” he typed. No context. No punctuation. Just divine clarity. Ten thousand likes in a minute. By breakfast, he’d already declared war on sleep, gravity, and the traditional concept of humility. Elan Tusk was not just a man—he was the plot twist Earth had been waiting for.

He floated to his kitchen in silk slippers emblazoned with his own face and called his assistant, a hollow-eyed intern named Riley who hadn’t slept since the Mars rover named itself “Tuskbot9000.” He'd whispered to the satellites in a dream once, and they listened. Or maybe someone had programmed it. Didn’t matter. Destiny didn’t check for sources.

“Riley,” he said, sipping an experimental protein slurry made from lab-grown tiger milk. “I had The Dream again.”

Riley groaned softly. "Was it the one with the electric horse or the one where you become president of all water?"

"Both," Elan said, eyes glinting. “Simultaneously. It’s accelerating.”

Riley tapped notes into her tablet. Her job description had originally just said “Tech Writer,” but over the past six months had shifted to “dream archivist,” “interdimensional scheduler,” and, more recently, “vibe curator.” She once had ambitions. Now she mostly Googled whether prophetic dreams could be used in legal contracts.

“I need you to prepare a press release,” Elan continued. “Title it: Humanity Is an App, and I’m the Update. I’m going to unify consciousness.”

“With... an app?”

“With a vibe, Riley. Try to keep up.”

By noon, he'd tweeted sixteen times. Five were inspirational aphorisms like “Reality is just beta testing me.” The rest were unintelligible combinations of emojis, Morse code, and binary that his followers deciphered as coordinates to a Waffle House in Nebraska. A hundred influencers gathered there, chanting his name and eating covered, smothered hash browns.

He liked that. That was new.

At night, the dreams came louder.

In the void of space, a voice that sounded suspiciously like Morgan Freeman whispered, You are the beginning and the end, the start-up and the IPO. He rode a Tesla into a black hole and emerged in the body of a younger Elan, who whispered his own name backward and opened a door labeled “season two.”

He woke up drenched in sweat and innovation.

“I need to build a moon made of mirrors,” he said aloud.

Riley, who had taken to sleeping in the hallway like the feral assistant she was, poked her head in. “Again?”

“This time it’ll be hexagonal,” he said. “Reflects my internal symmetry.”

The board of directors for his parent company—currently called TuskTechX.AI.Space.Infinity, though it changed weekly based on his dreams—requested an emergency meeting. They expressed concern about his decision to fund the "mirror moon," a vanity orbital structure of uncertain function and ballooning cost.

Elan waved them off. “Look, I didn’t ask to be born the main character. The algorithm chose me.”

“We’re hemorrhaging money,” one executive said.

“We’re hemorrhaging limits,” Elan corrected, before adding, “Put that on a mug.”

The meeting ended early when Elan triggered the sprinkler system by pulling out a lighter and claiming he could "out-stare fire."

By week’s end, he had launched three new companies:

LunReflect™ (a lunar-sized ad-board made of mirrors)

The Loop (a social network that only connects you with alternate versions of yourself)

Elixir of Life (tap water in bottles shaped like his head)

People bought in. Stock prices soared. Cults formed. A man in Iowa tattooed Elan’s binary tweets down his spine and claimed it cured his seasonal allergies.

Elan stood at a podium—shirtless again, but tasteful—and declared, “I am no longer dreaming. I am the dream.”

The crowd roared. Someone released doves. He had not ordered doves. The simulation was improvising now.

The failure began with the clouds.

Elan claimed LunReflect™ was “a celestial consciousness amplifier,” but leaked internal documents revealed the actual use cases were:

Project EGO (Earth-Gazing Omnibeacon) – A vanity orbital structure meant to reflect his own face onto cloud banks during key product launches.

Global Light Branding – Designed to project motivational phrases into the sky at dusk. Phrases like “Dream Bigger,” “Code Is Blood,” and “You’re Welcome.”

LunReflect™ Sync – The moon synced with premium subscription LunReflect™ pods to "charge" dream states and offer “executive-tier REM clarity.”

Backup Hard Drive – He insisted it would also store a consciousness upload of himself "just in case Earth loses taste."

Of course, none of it worked as intended. The motivational phrases scrambled and once displayed “Oops” over rural Ohio for a week. The moon’s light disturbed animal migrations. A leaked memo revealed the reflective coating was causing actual heat spikes. Environmentalists nicknamed it “The Eye of Sauron.”

Eventually, climate activists hacked the mirror and redirected it to support solar farms. Elan called it a betrayal of his "Vision of Vibrational Destiny."

Former superfans began turning. One went viral smashing an Elixir of Life bottle on a live stream and screaming, “You promised we'd ascend!” Former fans, once willing to tattoo his binary tweets across their spines, began publicly demanding refunds, answers, or divine retribution.

Then came the glitch.

A child asked him a question during a live stream: “If you’re the main character, who’s the villain?”

Elan blinked. No one had ever asked him that. He looked to Riley. Riley looked to the sky. The question echoed.

He tried to laugh it off. “There is no villain,” he said, voice wavering. “Only... side characters with bad lighting.”

But that night, he dreamed of a mirror. In it, he saw himself—but older, faded, unliked. Alone.

He woke in a cold sweat and, for the first time, didn’t tweet.

By morning, trending hashtags included #MainCharacterMeltdown, #SideCharacterSolidarity, and #ElanIsTheVillain. He tried to sue reality for defamation. The filing was rejected by every court on Earth—including one he tried to found mid-interview. In a final act of theatrical protest, he attempted to burn the paperwork live on air, only to accidentally ignite his “genius” bathrobe and trigger the sprinkler system.

Riley quit. She leaves a handwritten note on Elan’s desk:

“You’re not a villain, Elan. But you were never the hero either. I hope one day you stop needing everyone to orbit you just to feel real. Until then, I’m out of gravity.”

– R

No forwarding address. No final email. Just silence and freedom.

“This was... a test,” he said aloud, slowly, in a voice he hoped sounded like foresight and not damage control.

His remaining assistant—a robotic arm named KAREN (Kinetically Automated Reflection of Elan’s Narration)—whirred disapprovingly.

“The simulation no longer respects you,” it said.

“I invented the simulation,” Elan muttered.

And so, Elan Tusk sat alone in his simulation-proof bunker, surrounded by NFTs of his own facial expressions and drinking expired tiger milk.

He drifted to sleep.

A new dream buzzed in his Neuralink. This time, he was on stage, accepting an Oscar for “Best Life.” Everyone applauded. The world forgave him. A single tear ran down his cheek and turned into stock dividends.

As the Neuralink hummed, he saw Riley in the front row of his imagined theater, clapping through quiet tears. Behind her, all his doubters—board members, journalists, the German who sued him for projecting “Vibes Are Truth” onto his cow pasture—stood and applauded.

He smiled.

He started typing his next tweet.

“Forgiveness isn’t real. But narrative closure is. Thank you for my arc.”

The lights above him warmed. The simulated crowd grew brighter, louder, more reverent. Someone tossed a bouquet of dollar bills onto the stage. A gold-colored AI hologram floated overhead, chanting his name like a prayer.

Outside the bunker, the world moved on. LunReflect™ was dismantled. The Loop™ became a dating app for people who only wanted to date their own Myers-Briggs type. “Elixir of Life™” was pulled for being literally just sink water. Riley changed her name and started writing again.

But Elan didn’t know any of that.

Because in his mind, the credits had rolled. The soundtrack swelled. The story was complete.

And if reality disagreed?

Well.

That was someone else’s subplot.