The Future Link

“Grimes! Grimes!” Elon listened to the clatter in the kitchen.

“Here I am,” Grimes panted, she dried her wet hands on a tip of her apron. 

“Honey, I finally figured it out! I'm the inventor of the Future Link.”

“Don't be difficult. What have you invented this time?”

Elon looked at Grimes as if she were asking an alien for directions to church.

“You can actually see your future. Just sit down here.”

She sighed.

“Just a minute, then, because my beans are on the stove.” She pointed to the kitchen.

“Do you see this apparatus?”

“Apparatus?” She laughed. “It's just an iPad.”

Elon looked at her like she was asking an alien for extra toilet paper.

“Put those headphones on, the sensors in that thing wirelessly send signals to the device and my app forms a visual of a particular moment in the future.”

“So, some kind of fortune-teller?”

Elon looked at his wife as if she were asking an alien the newspaper.

“No silly comparisons, please! This thing can do magic. To give you an example: would you like to know how the visit to Talulah's next Sunday will end?”

“Sure, I want to know if your ex dares to stick her nose into my affairs again.”

Elon never understood why Grimes wanted to visit Talulah every Sunday. They resented each other. Time for change.

“Sit down and think about Talulah while you look at the screen.” 

On the iPad, two women appeared, pummeling each other and scratching each other with false nails until they bled. 

“And wifey, tell me this is not a miracle?" Elon asked.

“A miracle?" She shook her head. "She's a witch, mauling me like that, I won't go to her again.”

“Fine,” Elon shrugged. “But what do you think of my invention?” 

Grimes grinned.

“Magisterial! Such a thing is capable of changing a person's mind.”

“That's why I want to put my invention at the service of the unhappy society; I want to take it to the city and show people what will happen if they give in to their bad intentions.”

“As long as you don't get any trouble with it, Elon!”

"Me? Trouble?” pounced Elon, but Grimes had already stopped hearing him, for the smell of burnt beans had called her back to the kitchen.

***

The next morning, the inventor of the Future Link, with his device in one hand and a valise in the other, took the drone cab to San Francisco city. All day he walked around trying to find someone he thought would be suitable to apply his invention to. 

Most were in too much of a hurry, and those who were not in a rush were too convivial to deal with serious issues. He had to find people who were running around with plans, who were tangled up in something, who didn't agree with themselves. But where were such people hiding? 

Elon rubbed his chin and scanned all the neighborhoods of San Francisco in his mind. Suddenly he knew: the financial district was home to bandits and thugs.

By nightfall, Elon entered the financial district and soon caught sight of a couple of rather unsavory types in costume. They were standing in the entrance of a McDonald's whispering to each other. To hear what they were saying, Elon acted as if his shoelace had come undone and as he bent down, he caught the following words. 

Tonight… a tough business… millions to get… GameStop… shorts close… twelve o'clock the best time…

These two were a stellar fit for his invention. Elon straightened up.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” Elon said, “may I be so bold as to show you my invention?”

“What invention?”

The two looked at Elon as if an alien were asking to come eat pancakes with him.

“I present to you The Future Link.” Elon beamed proudly and raised the iPad in the air. “The Future Link will show you whether your plans will succeed, yes or no. And all totally for free.”

The two looked at Elon as if an alien was showing off an iPad.

“Well, come on then with your invention! But I warn you not to fool us.”

“No way, gentlemen. Here, just put the headphones on and watch the screen intently.”

Hardly did one of the men comply with this request, or he exclaimed: “Well, have you ever in your life! There I see myself being led away between two policemen!”

“What about me,” cried the other a moment later, “they're dragging me straight into jail.”

The two looked at the screen like aliens who can't remember the location of their spaceship.

They remained silent for several moments until the larger one cleared his throat.

“Well, professor, we'll just abandon our plan for tonight, for the police seem to be smelling smoke. Come back here tomorrow night at this McDonald's, and we'll see if we have a better chance.”

Elon was radiating with joy because his Future Link was working so well.

He looked for a Four Seasons to stay in, and he slept peacefully until noon, when the morning papers and television announcers had already reported that that night Citibank closed their positions and made off with the loot. GameStop tanked.

Unaware of this, Elon spent the remainder of the day on a bench in the city park, indulging in all sorts of airy-fairy related to what his invention will bring the world. In the evening, feeling light as a feather, he went to the McDonald's, as agreed. The two men were already there. 

“Well, well,” they said, “there you have the prophet eating our lunch."

"What do you mean?" Elon looked at the gentlemen like an alien at the Bold And The Beautiful. Expecting something completely different.

"What you don't understand? Just stop your bullshit lies. As if you weren't in cahoots with those Citibank dogs, who robbed the place and got away with our money. Didn't you give us the runaround with your Future Link? But now we're going to kick your ass, little man.”

***

When Elon was released from the hospital a week later and returned home, he couldn't exactly tell Grimes how everything had gone. All he knew was that a couple of cops found him unconscious, with a black eye and a bloody nose, at a McDonald's branch in the morning. 

"The Future Link I keep in the closet, Grimes," he said. "Because the humans can't get to it yet."

Grimes looked at her husband like a cow at an alien.

“I'm sending them all to Mars,” he laughed.

[Any resemblance between the characters in this story and any persons, living or dead, is a miracle.]