sadoeuphemist:

writing-prompt-s:

A masked vigilante starts fighting crime in Los Angeles, except everyone knows it’s obviously Elon Musk.

“Oh my god,” said Brandon. “I retroactively hate Batman now.”

Kristie rolled her eyes. “Wow. I’m so sorry this has happened to you. Condolences on your loss.”

“Look at him!” Brandon said. Across the street the mysterious Mask-X was standing next to his Tesla Maskmobile, surrounded by a crowd of fans, grinning and posing for pictures. “He’s a billionaire! And the best thing he can think of to do is dress up in Kevlar and drive around in a tricked-out car and terrify random criminals! He ran over a mugger! Well, I mean, the Maskmobile did, it’s semi-autonomous -”

“Cool, cool,” said Kristie, turning her attention back to her phone. “You definitely don’t sound like a fanboy reciting this dude’s Wikipedia page.”

“It sucks!” Brandon said. “Like, this is so fucked up it’s lodged in my brain permanently and it’s going to affect the way I process fiction. I’m going to be reading a Batman comic, and there’s going to be this little voice in my head going, ‘you know, Bruce Wayne’s a billionaire, there’s actually a hundred different ways he could solve this beyond dressing up like an idiot and just beating up guys personally-’“

“Uuughhh,” Kristie said, slumping back in her chair. “I didn’t think you were serious about the Batman thing. I – I don’t care. Brandon. Are you listening to me? I do not care at all about your relationship with Batman -”

“It’s just such an ego thing!” Brandon went on. “He’s a billionaire! He could buy this entire fucking city! Why would you go around and beat people up personally? He could hire an entire task force for this. He could fund the police! He could buy a second police department! He could, like, redesign the architecture of the city, and its social structures, and stuff like that, to prevent crime from happening in the first place. He could -”

“Brandon!” Kristie yelled. “Holy shit, are you even listening to yourself?”

“What?”

“You want Elon Musk to be in charge of law enforcement? Elon Musk? In charge of designing a city? You know the shit he’s going to try to do, right? He’s going to fuckin’ have robot enforcers, where we’re all ferried around in our self-driving Tesla cars  and his bullshit hyperloops and the moment anyone tries something their own goddamn cars lock them in and drive to the police station. He’s another billionaire tech guy whose idea of utopia is a self-contained capitalist panopticon where we’re all numbers in the system and we go into their self-serve stores and get facially recognized and all our purchases are automatically charged to our account, and our every fuckin’ preference is listed down in a database somewhere so they know how to market to us better! You want Elon Musk to take a greater role in politics? Some sort of special advisor to the president or something? Jesus Christ, Brandon, shut up about Batman, you want to turn the world into the fuckin’ Matrix!”

“Oh wow,” Brandon said.

“Yeah,” said Kristie, and gestured across the street to where the Tesla Maskmobile was pulling away with a burst of completely unnecessary blue flame. “This is the good timeline, Brandon. This is the timeline where Elon Musk decides to play superhero instead of trying to rule the world.”

“Oh wow,” Brandon said again, watching the Maskmobile disappear down the street.

“Yeah,” Kristie said, turning her attention back to her phone. “Just thank god he’s got Zuckerberg too busy shooting lighting bolts out of his hands to get any ideas.”