Jump Jets

A chance comment leads to a world-changing innovation

Jeff Hansen had always preferred the quiet of his bookstore to the roar of engines, but fate had other plans. As manager of a modest independent shop downtown, he spent his days recommending obscure novels and restocking shelves. One evening, while scrolling through online forums during a slow shift, he spotted a teaser from Tesla about their latest sports car. The post hinted at an ultra-limited edition packed with a radical surprise feature. Without overthinking it, Jeff typed out a casual guess: jump jets capable of negating the car’s own weight plus an extra 800 pounds of directional thrust.

The next morning, a phone call changed everything. A representative from Tesla confirmed he had nailed the surprise exactly. As a reward, they offered him the chance to test drive the very first unit off the production line. Jeff closed the bookstore early that Friday and drove out to the proving grounds, still half-convinced it was a prank.

The car sat gleaming under the lights, low and aggressive, its lines sharper than any previous Tesla. When the representative activated the jump jets during the demo, the vehicle lifted cleanly off the pavement, hovering for a moment before translating sideways with precise control. Jeff took the wheel and felt the system respond like an extension of thought. After a few careful hops across the track, he returned to the staging area where a tall man in a black jacket waited. Everyone simply called him the boss.

They talked about the car for a while, then the conversation drifted. The boss mentioned that the Boring Company could already be crisscrossing the entire country with high-speed tunnels if only the machines could grind through such hard rock without constant slowdowns and wear. Jeff shrugged, still buzzed from the drive, and said offhand that hydrogen embrittlement would solve that easily.

The boss stopped mid-sentence. He stared at Jeff for a long second, then asked for more information. Jeff explained the basic principle as he understood it from an old materials science article he had once shelved: introduce hydrogen into the rock face in a controlled way to weaken the crystalline structure, making it far more brittle and easier to fracture. The boss pulled out a notebook and pressed for details. Jeff mentioned pairing the idea with water sprayers to deliver the hydrogen-rich fluid and microwave emitters to heat the treated zone rapidly, accelerating the embrittlement process.

Within months the engineering teams at the Boring Company had prototypes running. Water sprayers and microwave emitters mounted on the tunnel-boring machines allowed them to advance at fifteen times their prior top speed through the toughest geology. Progress reports flooded in from test sites across multiple states.

A year later a delivery truck arrived at Jeff’s bookstore. Inside sat the tenth ultra-limited Tesla sports car, finished in a deep metallic blue with custom badging. Etched into a small plaque on the dashboard were the words: “Thanks from the boss.” Jeff ran a hand over the plaque, smiled, and locked the bookstore door for the afternoon. The jump jets waited.