From the imagination of
J.K. Rowling (possibly)
Chapter One: The Curious Case of the Missing Spark
There exists, in the infinite tapestry of possible universes, a world remarkably similar to our own—yet different in one peculiar, particular way. In this world, a certain South African family welcomed no third child in June of 1971. The butterfly that would have flapped its wings in Pretoria simply never hatched, and the hurricane that might have followed never formed.
This is the story of that world.
Professor Miriam Chen first noticed the difference on a Tuesday, which she would later reflect was rather fitting, as Tuesdays were universally acknowledged to be the most forgettable of days. She had been sorting through historical archives at the Oxford Institute for Technological Counterfactuals when she stumbled upon a peculiar document—a timeline that seemed to wobble and shimmer at the edges, like heat rising from summer pavement.
“Extraordinary,” she murmured, adjusting her spectacles in that way academics do when they’re about to embark upon something either brilliant or spectacularly foolish. “A window into the Without.”
The Without, as she came to call it, was a reality where one Elon Musk had simply never been born. And what Miriam discovered there would keep her awake for many nights, scribbling notes by candlelight (for reasons that will soon become clear, electricity was not quite as abundant in the Without as one might have hoped).
Chapter Two: The Automobile That Couldn’t
In the Without, the year 2024, the automobile industry in a curious state of suspended animation. The great car manufacturers of Detroit, Munich, and Tokyo had continued their comfortable dance with petroleum, like elderly couples at a ballroom who had long forgotten any steps beyond the waltz.
General Motors had, in 2010, produced an electric vehicle called the Volt—a sensible machine that sensible people purchased sensibly. But without the dramatic, attention-grabbing spectacle of a startup promising beautiful, fast electric cars that could travel three hundred miles on a single charge, the Volt had remained precisely what it was: a compromise. A hybrid. A gentle suggestion rather than a bold declaration.
“The problem,” explained Harold Worthington III, CEO of Ford Motor Company in the Without, during a 2018 shareholders meeting that Miriam observed through the shimmering archives, “is that electric vehicles are simply not exciting enough to justify the infrastructure investment. People want what they know. And they know gasoline.”
He was not wrong, exactly. Without the Roadster bursting onto the scene like a firework at a funeral—without a madman promising that electric cars could be desirable rather than merely responsible—the automotive industry had little incentive to change. Toyota had expanded its Prius line modestly. Nissan’s Leaf had found a devoted following among college professors and environmental consultants. But the revolution that might have been remained dormant.
In the Without, global oil consumption in 2024 was seventeen percent higher than in our world. The Middle East remained, more than ever, the fulcrum upon which international politics balanced precariously. And in cities across the globe, the air hung thick and grey, like a permanent unwashed curtain.
But—and here Miriam noted this with great care—there were unexpected consequences of a more pleasant nature.
Without the disruption of electric vehicles, the traditional automotive unions had maintained their strength. Factory towns in Michigan and Ohio had not experienced the same precipitous decline. The social fabric in these communities, while fraying at the edges, had not torn quite so dramatically. Politics in these regions remained less polarized, less desperate, less prone to the wild swings that desperate people are inclined toward.
“There are no unmixed blessings,” Miriam wrote in her journal, “and no unmixed curses.”
Chapter Three: The Stars Above, Unreached
The space industry in the Without presented the starkest contrast to our own reality—a contrast so sharp it made Miriam’s eyes water, though she suspected that might also have been the dust in the archives.
NASA, in the Without, remained the sole significant American presence in space. Its budget, ever-diminished by congressional whim and public indifference, supported a modest program of robotic exploration and the occasional crewed mission to the International Space Station aboard Russian Soyuz capsules.
The great commercial space race had never ignited. Oh, there were companies—United Launch Alliance continued its stately, government-contracted launches at prices that made Treasury officials weep into their spreadsheets. Blue Origin, founded by a certain Amazon entrepreneur, had launched its New Shepard vehicle for suborbital tourism, though without the competitive pressure from a rival, progress had been leisurely, like a Sunday drive through the countryside.
“Why rush?” Jeffrey Bezos had remarked in a 2019 interview that Miriam found in the Without’s archives. “Space isn’t going anywhere.”
A quip. A jest. But also, in the Without, a prophecy fulfilled by its own speaking.
The dream of Mars colonization remained precisely that—a dream, discussed at academic conferences and depicted in science fiction films, but treated as a distant aspiration rather than an impending reality. The Artemis program had returned astronauts to the Moon in 2025, three years behind schedule, but without the pressure of private competition, the accomplishment had generated modest fanfare rather than the feverish excitement of a new space age.
China, in the Without, had moved more aggressively into the vacuum (both literally and figuratively). Their space station, Tiangong, had become the premier orbital platform, and their plans for lunar bases proceeded without meaningful Western competition. The geopolitics of space had tilted eastward in ways that made certain Pentagon officials quite uncomfortable.
Yet here too, Miriam found silver linings hiding among the clouds.
The talent that might have flocked to private space ventures had instead found other outlets. Several brilliant engineers who, in our world, designed reusable rockets had instead turned their attention to more earthbound concerns. Dr. Sarah Okafor, who in our world led propulsion development at SpaceX, had in the Without pioneered revolutionary desalination technology that was transforming water access in sub-Saharan Africa.
“Human genius does not disappear,” Miriam reflected. “It merely flows into different channels.”
Chapter Four: The Curious Quietude of Public Discourse
Perhaps the most subtle difference Miriam detected in the Without was in the texture of public conversation itself.
Without a certain prominent figure treating social media as a combination of personal diary, corporate announcement board, and gladiatorial arena, the discourse of the Without felt… quieter. Not necessarily more civil—humans being humans, they had found other figures around whom to organize their tribal loyalties and animosities. But the particular flavor of chaos that characterized our world’s online spaces had a different taste there.
The platform known in our world as X remained Twitter in the Without, operated by its original management with all the attendant bureaucratic caution that implied. Content moderation remained a muddle, but a familiar, predictable muddle. The platform had neither imploded nor transformed; it simply continued, like a river following its established course.
This had ripple effects in politics that Miriam found fascinating.
Without a billionaire purchasing a major social platform and dramatically altering its policies, the 2024 election in the Without unfolded differently. Not dramatically different—the same fundamental tensions existed, the same candidates emerged, the same fault lines ran through the electorate. But the information environment was altered in ways both subtle and significant.
Some politicians who had built their brands on the particular chaos of our world’s social media landscape found themselves with smaller megaphones in the Without. Others, who had been drowned out by the noise, found their voices carrying further. It was not better or worse, Miriam concluded—merely different.
What struck her most was the absence of the Musk phenomenon itself: the cult of the technological savior, the billionaire who would solve all problems through sheer force of will and engineering brilliance. In the Without, public faith in such figures was both lower and more evenly distributed. No single industrialist commanded the fervent devotion—or the bitter opposition—that characterized our world’s discourse around its most prominent technology entrepreneur.
This had curious effects on public policy. Without the promise of private innovation riding to the rescue, citizens in the Without demanded more of their governments. Public investment in infrastructure was higher. The faith that market solutions would eventually emerge to address climate change was lower, which paradoxically led to more aggressive government action in some jurisdictions.
“When people do not expect a savior,” Miriam wrote, “they sometimes save themselves.”
Chapter Five: The Economy of Absence
The financial landscape of the Without defied simple characterization.
On one hand, the absence of Tesla had prevented a certain investment frenzy in electric vehicles. The trillions of dollars that had flowed toward EV development in our world had instead spread across other sectors. Traditional automakers were wealthier; petroleum companies were more powerful; and the financial instruments built around the green energy transition were smaller and less volatile.
On the other hand, the without was also without certain speculative bubbles.
The cryptocurrency market in the Without remained a niche interest of technologists and libertarians, lacking the mainstream boost that certain high-profile endorsements had provided in our world. Whether this was a blessing or a curse depended largely on whether one had bought Bitcoin in 2011 or 2021.
The artificial intelligence boom had proceeded in the Without, driven by the same underlying technological forces, but its public face was different. Without a certain controversial figure loudly warning of AI’s existential dangers while simultaneously racing to develop it, the discourse around AI safety was both quieter and, perhaps, more thoughtful. Academic researchers dominated the conversation rather than celebrity entrepreneurs.
Yet something was missing. Miriam could feel it in the documents she reviewed, in the newspaper headlines and the stock reports, and the patent filings. The Without was prosperous enough—indeed, in some measures, more equitably prosperous than our world. But it lacked a certain electricity (a word she used with full awareness of the irony).
The great enterprises of the Without were competent. They were profitable. They were managed by sensible people who made sensible decisions and went home at sensible hours to their sensible families.
But they were not on fire.
Chapter Six: On the Nature of Fire
Miriam Chen closed the archive on a Thursday evening, as autumn darkness settled over Oxford’s dreaming spires. She had spent six months exploring the Without, and she found herself unexpectedly melancholic.
The world without Elon Musk was not a dystopia. In many ways, it was gentler, more predictable, perhaps more equitable. The disruption that had characterized our world’s last two decades was muted there. Communities were less unsettled. Expectations were more modest. The gaps between winners and losers, while still present, were somewhat narrower.
But something was lost.
She thought of the footage she had seen of our world’s Falcon 9 rockets landing on their automated barges in the Atlantic, an engineering miracle that seemed to defy the universe’s general preference for disorder. In the Without, rockets were still expendable—used once and discarded, like tissues or politicians’ promises.
She thought of the young engineers in our world who had been inspired to pursue aerospace not because of sober calculations about career prospects, but because they had watched a man publicly dream of Mars and dared to believe it was possible. In the Without, engineering remained a respectable profession. But it burned with a cooler flame.
She thought, too, of the controversies. Of the erratic decisions, the inflammatory statements, the corporate chaos, the Twitter meltdowns, and the endless, exhausting discourse. The Without was blessedly free of all that. But was it a blessing? Or merely an absence?
“The thing about fires,” Miriam said to no one in particular, her voice echoing in the empty archive, “is that they provide warmth and light. But they also burn things down.”
She thought of climate change, of the Without’s failure to mobilize against it with sufficient urgency. Without electric vehicles forcing the pace of change, without the demonstration that sustainable technology could be desirable rather than merely dutiful, the Without’s carbon emissions continued to climb. The planet warmed. The ice melted. And while people made speeches and signed agreements, the fundamental trajectory remained stubbornly unaltered.
Perhaps it was not one man’s absence that mattered, but what that absence revealed about the fragility of change itself. Progress, Miriam concluded, was not inevitable. It required champions—flawed, frustrating, sometimes infuriating champions who refused to accept the world as it was.
Chapter Seven: The Return
On her last day in the archives, Miriam discovered a curious document tucked between file folders like a love letter hidden in a library book. It was a list of names—people who, in the Without, had stepped forward to fill various roles that our world’s absent figure had occupied.
Some she recognized. Others were unknown to her—brilliant individuals who, in our world, had been eclipsed by a brighter star, but who in the Without had their moment in the sun. The timeline branched and rebranched, and in each branch, different seeds found purchase, different flowers bloomed.
“The world doesn’t wait for any one person,” Miriam concluded, adding a final entry to her journal. “But it does remember them. And sometimes, in remembering, it changes.”
She closed the archive, locked the door, and stepped out into an Oxford evening where the streetlights had just flickered on—powered, as it happened, by a grid increasingly fed by renewable sources, in a city served by electric buses, under a sky tracked by private satellites that sent signals to phones that would have seemed magical to anyone from even thirty years prior.
The world she returned to was imperfect, chaotic, and often infuriating. But it was also, she realized with something between gratitude and wonder, alive with possibility in ways the Without had never quite achieved.
She hailed an electric taxi—a technology that might have taken another decade to emerge without a certain catalyzing presence—and gave the driver her address.
“Rough day?” he asked, noting her thoughtful expression.
“Illuminating,” she replied. “I’ve been considering alternative realities.”
“Oh yeah?” He merged into traffic, the car humming quietly. “Better than this one?”
Miriam considered the question for a long moment.
“Different,” she finally said. “Quieter. Calmer. More predictable.” She paused. “But I think I prefer the chaos we’ve got. At least it’s interesting.”
The driver laughed. “Can’t argue with that. Never a dull moment, is there?”
“No,” Miriam agreed, watching the city lights stream past like stars in a universe that was, against all probability, precisely the one she wanted to inhabit. “No, I suppose there isn’t.”
And so the archive remained, containing its window into the Without, waiting for the next curious soul to peer through and wonder about the worlds that might have been—and to return, perhaps, with a renewed appreciation for the magnificent, maddening, utterly unpredictable world that is.
THE END