Chapter 1: Midnight Transmission

At 2:00 AM on January 1, 2026, while the world was still basking in the afterglow of New Year’s Eve celebrations, tens of thousands of phones belonging to Tesla, SpaceX, and X (formerly Twitter) employees buzzed simultaneously. It was a short email with a cryptic subject line: “The Gift.”

Elon Musk never sends traditional holiday greetings. The content of the email caused anyone who had just drifted off to sleep to bolt upright, hearts racing:

“January 2026 will be the deciding milestone for the survival of human civilization. If all KPIs regarding Starship production and the integration of AI into Optimus robots are met 100%, I will present every employee with a special gift. It is not money; it is not stock. It is something that money can never buy. Work as if your very breath depends on it.”

Chapter 2: Fever at the “Mega-Construction” Sites

At Giga Texas, the air grew thick with tension. The KPIs Elon set were deemed “insane”: doubling the production of Optimus Gen-3 robots and finalizing the Neuralink thought-control systems for automated assembly lines.

Mark, a young engineer in the Robotics department, stared at his control panel. He hadn’t been home in three days. Throughout the corridors, Optimus robots moved with a mechanical rhythm, assembling each other under the watchful eye of AI. Elon didn’t just want employees to work; he wanted them to become part of a gear system that allowed for zero error.

“What could the gift be?”—That was the only question occupying everyone’s mind. Rumors began to swirl: A seat on an early flight to Mars? A free Neuralink implant to boost intelligence? Or perhaps “real estate” on the Moon?

Chapter 3: The Presence of the “Mad King”

Elon Musk appeared at the factory during the second week of January. He wasn’t wearing a suit, just a faded SpaceX jacket. His eyes were sunken from lack of sleep, yet they burned with a strange, eerie light.

He walked past rows of workstations without offering words of encouragement. He only asked for technical specs. When a manager complained that the team was exhausted, Elon replied coldly: “We are building the future. Those who want to rest can choose to stay in the past.”

The pressure began to yield impossible results. Under the shadow of the “Special Gift,” productivity soared by 300%. Software bugs that usually took weeks to fix were resolved in hours. Every employee was swept into a work-induced mania, driven by curiosity for the thing “money cannot buy.”

Chapter 4: January 31st – The Zero Hour

Precisely at 11:59 PM on January 31, 2026, the digital boards at SpaceX Mission Control turned green. KPI Completion: 100.2%.

The massive hall fell into a dead silence. Thousands of employees gathered at the Starbase yard, the sea breeze blowing fiercely. Elon Musk stepped onto the high stage, behind him the colossal Starship glowing under high-voltage floodlights.

“You did it,” Elon said, his voice raspy yet booming through the sound system. “You thought the gift was material? No. The world out there is dying in mediocrity. The gift I have for you is the Immortality of Legacy.”

Chapter 5: The True Gift

The giant screen behind Elon lit up. It wasn’t a bonus check. It was a massive digital directory containing tens of thousands of names—the name of every employee who had met the KPI.

“Tonight, your entire genetic profile (DNA) and thought history have been encoded into permanent quartz glass discs. Half of them will be buried deep underground in a vault in Antarctica. The other half…”—Elon pointed to the sky—”…are currently aboard that Starship. It will be launched into deep space, carrying your information across the galaxy.”

The crowd stood stunned. Elon continued: “Billionaires can be forgotten, empires can crumble, but your information will exist for billions of years in space. You are no longer just office workers or engineers. You are the seeds of Earth’s civilization sent into the cosmos. That is what money cannot buy: Eternal existence.”

Chapter 6: The Aftermath and Controversy

Immediately following the ceremony, the world erupted in debate. Ethicists called it “the most sophisticated manipulation in history,” and labor unions accused Elon of using illusions to exploit workers. But for those on the inside, the feeling was very different.

Mark walked out of the factory and looked up at the stars. He didn’t receive cash to pay off his bank loans, but the sense of a timeless existence made him feel weightless. He realized that Elon Musk hadn’t given them an object; he had given them an ideal.

January 2026 came to an end. Elon’s employees returned to their desks the next morning. They were still tired, still sleep-deprived, but the look in their eyes had changed. They were no longer working for a company; they were working for a millennium.

Epilogue: The Price of the Future

Elon sat in his private office, watching the Starship clear the launchpad, carrying the “gift” of tens of thousands of souls into the infinite darkness. He knew he had just performed a massive psychological experiment.

That special gift was, in fact, an invisible chain, binding the smartest minds on the planet to his vision. Because in Elon Musk’s world, the price of immortality is absolute dedication in the present.