The smell of iron and burnt flesh vanished so quickly that the world seemed to change scenes.
In its place came the soft aroma of freshly brewed coffee.
The distant, irritating sound of a TV commercial filled the room.
There was no Abaddon.
No mud.
No screams.
Ethan's fingers now held nothing more than a cheap plastic mouse, slightly worn along the sides. His hand was steady. No trembling. No hesitation.
In front of him, the computer screen remained on, displaying a tab that had been open far too long. Nothing on it suggested urgency. Nothing suggested danger.
Ethan blinked.
He stood up from the chair and walked into the living room.
The commercial ended.
The television flickered, automatically adjusting its brightness, and regular programming resumed.
A short intro filled the screen.
Deep blue tones.
Luminous lines connecting like artificial synapses.
A deep, clean, calculated sound.
At the center of the screen, a title appeared:
"NEURALINK — THE REVOLUTION OF THE MIND"
The narrator's voice came in steady, neutral, trained to sound trustworthy.
"In just over half a century, humanity has redefined the meaning of the word limitation."
Aerial images filled the screen.
Futuristic cities rose in organic curves. Drones crossed between living skyscrapers, covered in suspended gardens and intelligent solar panels. Advertising holograms competed for space with the open sky.
"The year is 2042. The world we once knew no longer exists."
Ethan sat down on the couch.
A cup of coffee rested on the table.
The documentary continued.
And the story—now—truly began.
"When the body fails, the mind can still walk.
What we did was simply open the door."
— Elon Musk, in his last public conference on Neuralink
The year was 2042.
The world was no longer the one Elon Musk had known in his youth. Skyscrapers now curved into organic forms, drones cut through the sky like metallic schools of fish, and massive holographic advertisements competed with suspended gardens and solar panels.
But the true revolution was not in the streets.
It was inside people's heads.
Neuralink—decades earlier an audacious experiment meant to restore movement to paralyzed patients—had become the axis of a new era. Newspapers called it the Second Human Renaissance. For Elon, it was simply the end of a cycle.
He observed everything from a glass balcony at his home near Boca Chica, Texas, where the first Starship prototypes had once launched. Now, from there, one could see an entire complex of launchers, silos, and landing strips adapted for ships that traveled to and from orbit like old commercial airplanes.
In the reflection of the glass, an elderly man with gray hair and a face marked by time stared back at him.
The eyes, however, were the same—alert, curious, restless.
On the large screen before him, news headlines cycled silently:
"Blind patient regains sight with next-generation visual neural prosthesis."
"Quadriplegics achieve digital independence in persistent virtual worlds."
"Auditory neural interface allows the deaf to hear music for the first time."
"New Neuralink protocols stabilize severe cases of treatment-resistant depression."
Elon raised the volume.
The first report showed a woman in her early thirties, sitting before an open window. The wind gently moved her dark hair. Beside her, a doctor smiled, holding a tablet.
"Please describe it," he asked.
The woman's eyes were slightly red—not from illness, but from emotion. Small metallic implants spread across her temples, connected by fine sensors to the base of her skull, where the Neuralink module integrated almost invisibly with the bone.
She took a deep breath.
"Light…" she murmured. "There's light everywhere."
A tear fell.
"The sky… it's blue. A blue I could only imagine. And the trees… I didn't know green had so many shades."
The camera moved closer, capturing every tremor, every broken smile.
"I spent twenty-seven years in darkness," she continued. "Now it's as if the entire world has been loaded into my mind."
The reporter explained in voice-over that neural ocular globes were not real eyes, but sensors that captured light and depth, converting everything into signals sent directly to the brain.
It wasn't the same vision as natural sight.
But for her, it was enough to call it a miracle.
Elon watched in silence, hands clasped behind his back. He remembered every meeting where he had been called insane. Every headline accusing him of irresponsibility for wanting to open the human skull to insert chips.
Now, the world called it healing.
The next report showed a hospital.
Or rather, something that had once been a hospital.
Rooms that once housed beds were now quiet, orderly spaces where rows of patients rested in full-support systems. Many had bodies atrophied by disuse—thin, motionless muscles.
But the cameras did not focus on paralyzed legs.
They focused on serene faces, eyes closed… and the interfaces.
Each patient had a Neuralink module implanted at the base of the head, connected to systems monitoring heart rate, breathing, and pressure. Beside each bed, panels displayed what once would have been science fiction: real-time neural activity translated into graphs and projections of a virtual world.
The image shifted.
On the other side appeared a vast digital hall. Tables, offices, decorative plants. Avatars talked, walked, laughed. A man in a suit adjusted his tie during a meeting. A woman paced while teaching in a virtual classroom.
The narrator explained:
"For those who can no longer walk, the body has ceased to be a prison.
Inside these therapeutic environments, they work, study, socialize.
Their income comes from the real world. Life happens in both."
A young woman appeared in an interview, smiling calmly.
"In the physical world, if people look at me, they see someone who can't move anything from the neck down. But here…" She spun her avatar, lifting her arms. "Here I'm an operations manager for a logistics company. I work, pay my bills, help my family. I exist. Truly."
Elon looked away for a moment, watching a Starship launch in the distance, carving the sky like a line of fire.
He had spent his life trying to take humanity off the planet.
Without realizing it, he had given it a way to escape the body itself.
The screen changed again.
This time, it showed a child.
A boy of about ten, seated at a physical piano. His fingers still hesitated over the keys, but his smile filled everything.
Beside him, his parents watched, emotional.
"Are you hearing well?" the mother asked.
He nodded, eyes fixed on the instrument.
Beneath his shaved hair, a small implant gleamed, aligned with the auditory nerve. There were no headphones, speakers, or visible devices.
The reporter explained that neural receivers captured sound frequencies and converted them into impulses transmitted directly to the brain's auditory regions.
The music began.
The first notes filled the room.
The boy closed his eyes.
"Before, everything was… silent," he later said. "I only saw people moving their mouths. I didn't know what 'good morning' sounded like. Now…" He smiled. "Now I know my mother's voice is the most beautiful thing there is."
The broadcast cut to headlines:
"Auditory Neuralink replaces conventional hearing aids in severe cases."
"New neural therapy stabilizes emotional patterns in critical patients."
"Predictive neural networks reduce anxiety attacks in real time."
Clinical cases multiplied. Studies expanded. Governments adapted laws and healthcare systems.
Neuralink stopped being a controversial billionaire's chip.
It became basic human infrastructure.
The broadcast returned to the studio.
"Can we say this is Elon Musk's greatest legacy?" a journalist asked, as archival images played.
The screen showed Falcon rockets landing vertically, electric cars crossing highways, spacecraft circling the Moon, the first colony on Mars rising as glowing domes in the red desert.
The image froze on a younger Elon, smiling beside an early prototype.
Then—the present.
Seated in a simple studio used only for rare recordings, Elon seemed smaller beneath the weight of years. Wrinkles marked his face, but his voice still carried the same restrained enthusiasm.
"I never thought about legacy," he said. "I always thought about solving problems."
He paused.
"Neuralink was born for that. Not to make the world more entertaining, but to give back what the body took from some people. Movement. Vision. Hearing. Emotional balance. A chance."
The interviewer pressed on:
"And now that the technology is used everywhere—from medicine to remote work, from therapy to space exploration… do you feel satisfied?"
Elon chuckled softly.
"Satisfied isn't quite the word. When you deal with something as fundamental as the human mind, you can never say 'done.'"
He leaned forward.
"What we did was open a door. What humanity does after crossing it… that's no longer just up to me."
The interview ended with images of the night sky.
A small light crossed the darkness toward Mars.
Officially retired, Elon retained only a consultative role in a few projects. In the mornings, he followed transmissions from the Martian colony. In the afternoons, reports from clinics using Neuralink to restore senses and balance.
Deep down, he knew the two were connected.
Sending bodies to another planet.
Connecting minds to other worlds.
They were variations of the same question: how far can humanity go?
Over time, something inevitable happened.
What began as a medical tool attracted the attention of other sectors. Education companies created immersive classrooms. Architects designed buildings inside neural simulations. Space agencies trained astronauts in extreme scenarios without real risk.
And slowly, a whisper grew:
"If we can create therapeutic worlds…
why not create entire worlds of entertainment?"
Gamers, film studios, and developers began looking at Neuralink with a different light in their eyes.
It was no longer just about healing.
It was about feeling.
Feeling the wind on a mountain that didn't exist.
The weight of a sword never forged.
The heat of magic.
The impact of a punch.
The shiver of music played for thousands of avatars.
The first experiments were modest. Simple games. Social environments. Virtual theme parks.
But none of them were complete.
Immersion still had limits. Interfaces still filtered the experience.
Until one company decided to go further.
Led by a director with an ambitious gaze and a restrained smile, Victor Stahl created a project that didn't just want to use Neuralink.
It wanted to become the first fully human world outside Earth.
The name had not yet been announced.
Elon watched from afar, following reports and technical presentations. The medical phase was consolidated. Protocols tested exhaustively.
He knew that sooner or later, someone would push the technology into the definitive field of entertainment.
From the balcony, he watched another Starship rise into the sky.
At the same time, in dozens of studios around the world, artists, programmers, and designers connected to neural consoles created luminous forests, crystal cities, data dragons, and deserts of code.
A new world was being born.
And soon, it would have a name.
But that part of the story would begin elsewhere.
In a city filled with LED panels, holograms, and drones, before a massive crowd.
San Francisco.