The Day of the Tesla

Thursday 7 December 2023

Yesterday, for me, was a strange rollercoaster of a day.  One of those days when you feel like you’re not so much living the day, but instead being guided through it by forces way more powerful than yourself.

The weirdness started when I left the house.  There were two white Teslas parked across the road, one behind the other, on an otherwise empty street.

As an aside, what is the plural for Tesla?  Teslas?  Or Tesla as both single and plural?  I think I’ll go with the singular/plural Tesla, because it sounds more ominous, which fits my story better.

So I left the house, to find two white Tesla, parked across the road.

Come to think of it, what is the collective noun for Tesla?  A muskrat of Tesla?  A sith of Tesla? 

Anyway, back to me leaving the house and the two white Tesla across the road.  No drivers in sight but then Tesla are trying to do away with drivers, so this was about the least odd thing about it.  It was simply the fact that the two of them were just sitting there, like they were waiting for me.  It was odd and off-putting.  Not as odd and off-putting as if there had been two Elon Musk standing there, looking at me, which would have been too weird for words.  Thankfully it was just his vehicular spawn.

I was leaving the house to walk to a physio appointment.  After the physio appointment, I exited the physio place, to walk home.

There was a white Tesla parked across the road from the physio place.

It had not been there when I went into the physio place.

When I got back home there was now only one white Tesla parked across the road from my house.

I started to wonder if Sam Esmail was now directing my life.

The next time I left the house I was driving out to West Auckland.  On the motorway two cars, driving like complete muppets, tore past me at high speed.  I watched them as they veered recklessly through the traffic ahead.  Then a third car sped past me.

It was a white Tesla.

I was heading out to West Auckland to clear the last few things out of the office I’d called mine for many years.  I’d been in that office long enough that clearing everything out of the office took three carloads and filled up two large paper recycling bins.  I’d kept hard copies of every script of every show I’d worked on during my tenure in West Auckland – plus hard copies of every draft of every script I’d written for those shows.  A lot of paper. Sorry planet Earth.

In the process of cleaning out my office I decided I would save sorting through the three seasons of The Almighty Johnsons for last.  At the time I wasn’t sure why I felt I needed to do this.  I still don’t really, but the rationalisation I did come up with was that being part of that mad, wonderful show, being part of shepherding it into existence, was probably the best thing I did in that building in West Auckland, so it should be the last to go.

And it went.  And I went with it.  My office was empty.  The whole building was eerily quiet as I slipped out the door.

Then I went to Pak ‘n’ Save.

I sat in the carpark of Pak ‘n’ Save for a while, feeling sad, until I realised that the carpark of Pak ‘n’ Save Henderson is a very sad place to feel sad, so I went into the supermarket and did the shopping instead.

There were no Tesla to be seen in the carpark of Pak ‘n’ Save Henderson.

But on the motorway, on the way home, with the stuff from my office and the shopping in the car, a white Tesla sped past me.

Then, as I turned into my street, a white Tesla crossed in front of me.

In my street there were no white Tesla anywhere.  That they weren’t there seemed just as ominous as when I saw them there a few hours earlier.

Today I am still trying to figure out what all the Tesla in yesterday’s world might have meant.  Among the possibilities that have occurred to me thus far are:

• I live in Grey Lynn, where there are apparently a lot of Tesla.

• White is by far the most popular colour when it comes to the Tesla.

• I am having huge difficulties dealing with the seismic change in my life and am failing to deal with it by focussing on things Tesla instead.

• Sam Esmail is actually directing my life and I am okay with that because I quite liked Mr. Robot.

• We are on the brink of a technological apocalypse and the Tesla is the harbinger of that.

I know which one I’m leaning towards.

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Oh, and as part of the whole cleaning out my life/office process I unearthed a copy of the 1st draft script I wrote for Ep.1 Season 1 of Outrageous Fortune. It’s an interesting read, when compared with the episode that went to air, which you can see here. It has narration. And animation. Neither of which made it to the screen.

Also there are those who might feel it has some lingering value, as the origin document for something that has become part of our popular culture history.

Anyway, if there’s anyone who would like a PDF of this script, let me know in the comments and if you are on the subscriber list I will duly forward it to you.

I may even write about that script one day - if I can remember that far back.