<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOh man, he beat me to it!\u201d my roommate Bryan exclaims as he lounges on the living room couch. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWho beat you to what?\u201d I ask, startled by his sudden outburst.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He stops scrolling his phone and looks up at me. \u201cElon Musk. He just became the world\u2019s first trillionaire.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cElon beat you to becoming a trillionaire?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yep. No worries, I\u2019m going to be trillionaire number two.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSure,\u201d I snort. \u201cMan,\u200c you barely have two nickels to rub together.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNot for long,\u201d he retorts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAnd how\u2019s that?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He picks up a notebook and pen on the coffee table and scribbles on the page. He holds up the notebook to my face and shows me what he wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
$ 0,000,000,000,000.00<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSee,\u201d he smirks, \u201cI have all the zeros. I only need a \u201c1\u201d in front, and I\u2019ll be the next trillionaire!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I roll my eyes. \u201cMan, that\u2019s lame.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cJust wait and see, bro. I\u2019m smarter than Elon. If he can do it, so can I.\u201d He flashes a smug grin and returns to scrolling on his phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ll give Bryan this: he has confidence in spades. But I bet the odds are less than a trillion-to-one that he could ever reach that wildly optimistic goal. Because replacing the \u201c0\u201d with a \u201c1\u201d will be harder than getting to Mars on one of Elon Musk’s rockets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cOh man, he beat me to it!\u201d my roommate Bryan exclaims as he lounges on the living room couch. \u201cWho beat you to what?\u201d I ask, startled by his sudden outburst. He stops scrolling his phone and looks up at me. \u201cElon Musk. He just became the world\u2019s first trillionaire.\u201d \u201cElon beat you to becoming […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3070,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[20],"tags":[15],"class_list":["post-3069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-humor","tag-microfiction"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":7}},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/twistytales.com\/staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/trillionaire1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/twistytales.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/twistytales.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/twistytales.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twistytales.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twistytales.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3069"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/twistytales.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3069\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3993,"href":"https:\/\/twistytales.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3069\/revisions\/3993"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twistytales.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/twistytales.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twistytales.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twistytales.com\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}