[Please note that none of the below events have ever actually occurred.]
I met Elon Musk at Waffle House recently. Given the stature of Waffle House's contributions to American society, I think we can all agree the story is worth recounting.
The Waffle House near my apartment has been for some time now "officially" closed: however, for those in the know, it has been possible to enjoy delicious breakfast foods with fast-casual prices and a positive ambience nonetheless. One merely pushes aside the hanging vines over the entrance, bangs three times on the window, and says the password.
On the night in question, the Porter on duty was an old man, naked to the waist, with leathery skin and a mane of red hair. He greeted me warmly, as he always does, but that night, as he led me to my booth, he suddenly pulled me aside, his hand on my shoulder, and whispered: "Be careful: my shift is about to end."
I should mention that the Palatial Dancing Hall of this Waffle House has been closed for some time; on the night in question, even the chandeliers had gone out, leaving most of the space a vast, dark blur. Only the main counter remained lit, and consequently only those seated at the booths in front of it could be seen distinctly. Throughout the following incidents, however, I was aware--sometimes too aware--of the presence of indistinct shapes in the darkness around, talking, eating, and even (at times) singing to one another or to me.
The old man put me in my usual booth, right up against the counter in the middle. On the night in question, the booth toward which I looked contained a middle-aged, balding man accompanied by a younger woman, both with their backs to me and with their attention fixed a hundred or more individual waffle plates piled precariously in front of them; while behind me, if I turned around, was a young, dark-haired man who appeared to be playing with blocks, piling and repiling them and muttering to himself all the while. There was no waiter in sight. In other words, a fairly normal night at Waffle House.
After I had been sitting in silence for some time, studying the vast and expanding menu, which seemed to have doubled since my last visit, I became conscious that the man and woman had twisted around in their seats and were staring at me.
My eye was caught at first by the woman. She appeared to be somewhere around 25, and was one of those women who for some reason are called "statuesque," tall, big-boned, with long, curling black hair and a rather striking face. None of these features, however, were what caused me to stare. Rather, with a strange sinking sensation in my stomach I was examining what appeared to be something like a slide projector shining into her face, reflecting into her eyes small, flickering combinations of text and images. I couldn't possibly read them, but they shifted as she spoke.
"I haven't been sleeping again." she said. "I'm just so scared and angry about the evil bullshit these crazy fanatics are pulling off. Has everyone gone insane?"
It was only at this point that I realized that her lips were not moving, and that the smooth, pleasant voice I heard was emerging from a small, grey speaker nestled in her curly hair like a broach or an insect. Also that her eyes were being held open by clamps.
It was this latter fact more than anything else, I confess, that caused me to start to rise out of my booth, I am not sure with what precise intention in mind other than escape. After another second, though, I realized that rising was impossible, and that the man in the booth had himself risen, walked around my table, and planted a hand on my shoulder.
I gasped. As you have probably guessed, the man was Elon Musk. It is de rigeur to find celebrities less impressive in person, but the opposite was true of Elon. His skin was the color of bronze and glittered irridescently in the lights from the counter; his eyes shone with beams the tint of blue raspberries. He was wearing a tweed suit and white gloves, and was so tall he had to stoop merely to look at me. The hand upon my shoulder felt like a boulder or a falling mountain, so that I had to struggle and sweat profusely merely to hold myself in a seated position.
A smile was playing around his mouth as he spoke, in a voice with something of the harsh melodiousness of a pipe organ's lower register. "This is my girlfriend." he said, and smiled more broadly.
"Ah." I said. "I see."
His smile broadened even further, and he leaned in towards me. "You wanna play a game?"
I confess that, at that moment, there were few things I wanted less, but there seemed no polite way to refuse, especially with him bearing down on me. "Uh...sure." I said.
In a second, he had bounded to the other side of my booth and sat down, pulling a small package out of his inside jacket pocket. It was one of those travel checkers sets that you sometimes see on airplanes or at Wal-Mart, with the pieces held onto the board with magnets. He dumped everything onto the yellow plastic table in front of us. "I'm black, you're red."
I started pulling my pieces out of the pile and setting them up. As I did I glanced up to see the woman leaning over the back of the booth and staring at me. A tear glittered in her eye.
"In this house we believe: cuban tree frogs are an invasive species. The beliefs of these assholes are a fucking joke. Turning and turning in a widening gyre--"
Elon had reached over and put his hand over her mouth. "Not now, honey," he said. "We're playing a game."
It was at this point that I realized that, while I had been setting up my pieces for a standard checkers game, he had been engaged in piling all his into one haphazard structure, adding glue and clamps and glitter to hold it together.
He followed my gaze. "This is my Star Dragon," he said. "It can fly and take five pieces at a time."
"Oh." I said. For a second I considered contesting the point, but I still had no strong desire to play. Also, I confess, I was somewhat flattered that Elon Musk had had to resort to such measures to beat me. "Well," I said, "I suppose you win, then."
There was a long silence, followed by a loud sniff. I looked up to see Elon's eyes swimming with tears. As I watched, he put his head on the yellow plastic in front of me and wept.
"It's crazy to realize how fucked-up your society and upbringing really was. Like, forcing kids to run ant farms without giving them the ability to self-actualize? Fucked-up shit."
It was the woman again, who was now fully turned around and leaning so far over my table that her head was level with Elon's. I looked at her in silence for a moment.
"Oh," I said finally. "It's you. I'm sorry, I should have recognized you earlier, but I suppose I imagined you were still in Sparta. But of course that no longer exists. How is your husband?"
For a minute she stared at me with her big, dark eyes. Her lips trembled, and for a moment it appeared she was about to say something.
Then I heard, from behind me, the creak of the main entrance, and her eyes darted fearfully towards the door. I turned around.
It was the Cowboy, of course. His blond hair was as long and lank as the last time I saw him, but on the present evening he was wearing a T-Shirt with a Punisher skull and the Thin Blue Line flag superimposed over it and below that a long, pink skirt. Both of his holsters held AK-47s, and he was vaping something that smelled of strawberries.
For a moment he looked around, a challenge on his face. Then he strode towards the counter, and I could hear the change in his pockets jingling with each footstep. As he neared us, there was a scream from behind me.
I turned back. In the brief moments my attention had been distracted, it seemed, Elon had stood up, dragged his companion to her feet, and was holding a knife to her throat.
"To fail to consistently employ the titles a woman's credentials and expertise entitle her to is a form of misogynistic violence," she explained.
I at first made to rise and speak, and only then realized at whom the gesture had actually been directed: the Cowboy, who had pulled both AKs from their holsters and was circling Elon with a grim expression on his face.
For about five minutes, they continued their intricate dance, like wolves fighting for dominance. Then, abruptly, the Cowboy lifted his left AK, pointed it at the pile of blocks belonging to the young man behind me, and emptied his entire clip into it. At the first gunshot, I dived beneath the table, and didn't emerge again until silence had returned to the Waffle House.
As I raised my head slowly and cautiously, I saw that Elon and his rival had both noticeably relaxed, and were gazing at a point behind me. I stood up and saw that the Waitress had finally arrived.
"You boys want something to eat?" she asked.
A second later, the woman was released, the AKs were back in their holsters, and Elon and the Cowboy were laughing and slapping each other on the back. A minute later, and Elon had sat back down as the Cowboy helped himself to the next booth over.
His companion glanced over her shoulder at me, one last time:
"Cacogen rights are human rights. What is born of nature dies, but what is born in blood under the magician's knife will live forever."
I frowned and shook my head, and she turned back to the table in front of her, where Elon was chuckling to himself and saying to the waitress, "Give me another thousand waffles, please! The waffles here are so good, you know, I just might buy this place."
Someone behind me was sobbing. It was the young man with the blocks, and as I turned around he looked up eagerly, the tears still glittering in his eyes. He had black hair, and was wearing a white linen kilt and the crown of Upper and Lower Egypt, but his ceremonial beard had been removed and was sitting on the table in front of him.
"Hi," he said. "I'm about to do an NFT Reveal Stream. Do you want to join?"
Thankfully, at this point the Waitress came to my rescue. Her nametag read DEB, but I could see the sun rays peeking out from behind her black hair and face.
"Sorry for the delay." she said. "The electricity has been out for the past week, and the chef keeps falling asleep and letting the cooking fire go out. What'll it be?"
I handed her the plastic menu card. "I'll take the All-Star Special."
*******************************************************
The next time I tried to go to that Waffle House, I found the windows boarded up and a yellow piece of ruled paper stuck to the door with Scotch tape. At the top, in a childish scrawl in black marker, it bore the legend: "CLOSED FOR RENOVATIONS." Below, that, there was written, in a small, neat hand in pencil: "The Spirit and the Bride say: come!"
Since then, I've been systematically checking out the IHOPs in the area, but have yet to run into Elon Musk again. Maybe he's at Denny's.
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