Simon was a nerd, and proud of it. When he wasn’t looking after his beloved servers during working hours, he was busy on his home computer at night, engrossing himself in his hobby of using software to decode old manuscripts. He knew that people talked about him behind his back, mocking him for being such a strange loner, but he didn’t care – his work and hobbies brought him contentment. He would rather be a geek any day, than some empty headed jerk with more muscles than brain cells. Simon really hated those gym obsessed guys who thought they were so special. Everyone else wanted to be like them, but they had empty, meaningless lives as far as Simon was concerned.

Then one day, he received a new manuscript in the post from an academic who requested his help in decoding it. The manuscript was just a small piece of paper with strange writing on one side. The academic believed it dated from the 15th century. The writing appeared to be some kind of code, which got Simon quite excited, so he quickly got to work on programming his software to decode the script.

The code turned out to be very hard to decrypt, and Simon spent many weeks tirelessly trying to find an algorithm that would unravel the mystery. Then late one evening, the software finally cracked it. Simon tentatively clicked his mouse button to see the decryption, and that was the moment his life changed forever.

A blinding flash emerged from his computer monitor, and Simon fell backwards off of his chair and tumbled onto the floor, unconscious. When he opened his eyes a few minutes later, he immediately felt different. In a state of delirium, he pulled himself up, and then stumbled down the stairs to his living room, completely forgetting about the computer and the code. In the living room, there was a mirror over the fireplace. Simon walked towards it and stared at his own geeky reflection.

“God I’m such a nerd,” he said out loud.

Suddenly he found himself hating the chubby, sweater-wearing geek that was staring back at him through the mirror, and he knew he had to do something about it. The next day Simon called in sick to work for the first time in his life, and then went clothes shopping. His job paid him well, but he hardly ever spent any of his money. However that morning, he clocked up over a grand on his credit card, buying trendy t-shirts, jeans, trousers, sunglasses, trainers, and much more besides. He even stopped off at the Apple store and bought an iPhone. Up until that day he had despised Apple and had sworn to ever only use Microsoft or Android devices, but now he understood that if he wanted to be a popular social animal, he needed to have the fashionable and trendy devices that everyone else had.

Back at his house, he enjoyed trying on the new clothes, and was elated the way they made him look, but he still wasn’t happy. He decided that he was just too overweight and chubby, and he knew he was going to have to solve that problem too. So he left the house again and went straight to the local gym and signed up for a full membership. He continued to phone in sick for the rest of the week, and instead used his time to run on the treadmill and lift weights, which he found himself loving.

When he finally returned to work the next week, his colleagues immediately noticed the difference in him. Not only had a he lost a bit of weight, and was dressing to impress, but his personality was also noticeably different. Rather than shying away from social events at work, he started to organise them. Soon he became the centre of the office social circle.

A few weeks later, a now much slimmer Simon was at home, watching sports with his new mates from the gym. The old Simon hated all sports, but the new Simon loved watching a game with the lads. Suddenly his fun was interrupted when he received a phone call from the academic who wanted to know how he was getting on with decoding the manuscript. He really couldn’t be bothered with all that ‘boring shit’ anymore, so he told the academic that he had been unable to decrypt it and would send it back. He hung up the phone and laughed to himself, thinking about how many hours of his life he had wasted on all that nerdy crap, when he could have been spending that time improving his body at the gym, or having a laugh with his friends like he did nowadays. Besides, that old PC wouldn’t even turn on anymore after the incident. Not as if he cared – he mostly used his phone or iPad to access the internet now, usually to see what his mates were doing on Facebook, or post a gym selfie on Instagram.

Six months later, nobody would have recognised the old Simon. He had become incredibly fit, trendy and muscular, but also had seemingly regressed in age by at least ten years and gained several inches in height. He didn’t stop to think about the hows and whys of it, he was too busy enjoying his new life. Simon had no interest in computers anymore, so he swapped server racks for clothes racks, and was now running his own fashion store in central London. One afternoon, he was standing on the top of a hill in Greenwich Park, confidently showing off his beefy new biceps while his latest girlfriend took a photo. He couldn't wait to upload it to Instagram later and get a lot of Likes from his obsessive followers.

In the distance, he saw some nerdy types examining the Greenwich meridian line with GPS equipment. It was the sort of thing he might have once been interested in, but now it actually annoyed him. Simon really hated nerds now. He couldn’t understand why they wasted their time with pointless intellectual matters when they were missing what life was really about – socialising, making connections, keeping fit and healthy, and inspiring others by looking as good as possible. Nerds had empty, meaningless lives as far as Simon was concerned.

After that they left the park and travelled back into London to prepare for a launch party of Simon's latest line of trendy sports clothes.