Chapter 1: The Call of Steel and Silicon

Pretoria, South Africa, 1984.

The city was steeped in dry sunlight and the echoes of political tension, but inside the small room on the second floor, 13-year-old Elon Musk was living in a different world. It was a world made of binary logic, electronic circuits, and programming code. The smell of old paper, ink, and dust clinging to stacks of books couldn’t overpower the cold metallic scent and new plastic of his old Commodore VIC-20 computer.

But the VIC-20 was only a partially opened door. Elon’s passion, a bottomless thirst for knowledge, soon exceeded the limits of the obsolete 5KB memory. He didn’t want to play games; he wanted to build worlds. He needed a more powerful machine, a true comrade capable of withstanding his crazy coding experiments.

The computer Elon dreamed of every night—a Commodore 64 or, ideally, a rudimentary PC XT—cost as much as a middle-class family’s living expenses for a whole year. While his parents (already separated) were preoccupied with their own issues, Elon understood that if he wanted the tool to forge the future, he had to acquire it himself.

He tried everything. Selling old toys (no buyers). Mowing lawns (he was fired for being too focused on science books to remember the blade). He even attempted to write a short novel (rejected).

“You need to be realistic, Elon,” his father’s voice echoed through the phone, cold and skeptical. “Computers are expensive toys. Focus on something useful.”

But for Elon, nothing was more useful. Technology was the language of God, and he had to learn it.

Chapter 2: The Sacrifice

Elon looked around the room. His biggest asset wasn’t money; it was knowledge—packaged within books.

Since the age of 8, he had devoured everything. From the Encyclopædia Britannica to sci-fi novels by Asimov and Heinlein; from university-level physics textbooks to electronic self-help guides. These books were his friends, his teachers, his universe. They formed the intellectual backbone that would later build multi-billion dollar companies.

But now, they were raw materials.

The decision felt like tearing off a piece of his own body. Elon pulled out The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy—the book that taught him about the chaotic humor of the universe. The Principles of Physics—the one that explained how rockets could fly into space.

He began his book-selling campaign.

His target market was the nearby university students. They needed cheap, used textbooks. Elon rode his rickety bicycle, loaded with his paper treasures.

“How much are you selling this for?” asked an engineering student, picking up Advanced Calculus.

Elon, who was always anxious about social interactions, stammered: “20 Rand. It… it has important notes in the margins.”

The student frowned. “Really? You’re only 13.”

“But I’ve read it three times. And understood it,” Elon replied, with rare confidence in his voice.

The books sold slowly, one by one, at meager prices. Each time a book left, a part of his soul felt hollowed out. But each time money accumulated, the fire inside him burned brighter.

The book on Ancient History: Exchanged for three hours of printer use. The Dystopian novel collection: Exchanged for a 5.25-inch floppy disk drive. The English-Italian dictionary: Exchanged for a backup battery pack.

The most painful was A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking. That book was a compass, proof that the human brain could reach the farthest limits of the cosmos. He hesitated, holding it close. But then, he looked at the list of missing components needed to buy his dream computer.

Hawking had to go.

Chapter 3: The Miracle in the Storeroom

After six long months of selling books, saving every last coin, and working terrible odd jobs, Elon had accumulated enough money. But not enough for a PC XT. Only enough for a decent used computer, bought from a dingy, used electronics store downtown.

The store owner, an older man named Pieter, looked at the skinny boy with suspicion.

“Are you sure you want this, kid?” Pieter asked, pointing at a yellowed personal computer with a constantly flickering CRT monitor.

“I need it. I need to learn BASIC, Assembler, and graphic programming,” Elon replied.

Pieter chuckled mockingly. “Sounds like an astrophysicist. Do you know how hard it is to program graphics on this antique?”

Elon didn’t answer. He placed the coins, banknotes, and even some old foreign currency he had earned onto the counter. The total was 1200 Rand—money he had exchanged for hundreds of books and sweat.

Pieter counted the money. Finally, he sighed. “Alright, space boy. Take it. But don’t blame me if it explodes.”

Elon didn’t hear the warning. He hugged the bulky computer like a newborn baby, cycling home.

In the small room, the new computer was placed with reverence. Elon plugged it in. The screen lit up with a faint blue glow.

It wasn’t just a computer. It was the gateway to the future he had built himself, by sacrificing his intellectual past.

Chapter 4: Solitary Creation

After that, Elon’s life was nothing but code. He had no books to read, but he had an entire universe to write.

He learned programming through trial and error, by reverse-engineering old command lines he found in discarded tech magazines. The old computer often malfunctioned and overheated, but Elon didn’t give up. He learned to repair it, disassembling and reassembling every component. He was the scientist, the engineer, and the sole maintainer of this small empire.

Loneliness was another expensive price. Friends (already few) abandoned him because he didn’t participate in sports or parties. His father grew even more disappointed by this “unhealthy obsession.”

Once, Evan, a classmate who had bought back Elon’s science book, came over.

“What do you do all day, Musk?” Evan asked.

“Creating a world,” Elon mumbled, eyes fixed on the screen.

Evan looked at the black screen with incomprehensible green code. “But you don’t have books to read anymore? You sold them all.”

Elon looked up, his eyes full of fire: “Reading books is consumption. Programming is creation. I’ve consumed enough knowledge. Now is the time to build. If I have to sell everything I know to get the tool to create what I will know, then that is an excellent trade.”

At 15, Elon finished junior high and started programming his first game, Blastar. He didn’t write it to play. He wrote it to prove: The books that were gone were not meaningless.

Chapter 5: The Undying Flame

When Blastar sold for $500, it wasn’t just about the money. It was validation. The money from the books was recouped, along with proof that the path he had chosen was the right one.

But the deepest lesson was not monetary.

Years later, when Elon stood at the pinnacle of his empire—when he sent rockets into space and revolutionized the automotive industry—he still remembered the small room in Pretoria.

He remembered the smell of old books and the coldness of the used computer. He remembered the moment he had to put down A Brief History of Time, making room for the tool that would help him fly farther than Stephen Hawking could ever write.

In a rare interview about his childhood, when asked what forged his exceptional problem-solving ability, Elon Musk smiled, a rare and meaningful smile.

“I learned an important lesson early on,” he said. “Sometimes, to get the tool to build the future, you have to be willing to let go of the knowledge that shaped your past. It’s not about forgetting. It’s about energy transfer.”

“I had to sell my books. But in return, I bought the doorway into a world where I could write the rulebooks myself.”

That was the fire from the keyboard. A fire that ignited not from wealth, but from sacrifice, from a skinny boy willing to trade his entire intellectual universe for an old computer—the very machine that would later become the launchpad for his dream of sending humanity to Mars.

And that was Elon Musk’s greatest trade.