BOB JOHNSON RIDES AGAIN! 281

281. SELF-DRIVABLE

281. SELF-DRIVABLE

Of all the people who expected to find the land of their dreams and secret fulfillments in San Luis Obispo, the self-driving Elon Musk feels like he’s been let down in all the wrong ways. Nobody in this third-rate cow town seemed to appreciate his genius, nor his boyish good looks, nor his ability to drive himself places in the AI operated car that has duct taped him to the steering wheel, nor for his most profound and sacred of all his abilities to horde vast amounts of wealth and brag about it on social media to an army of stupid acolytes who all think, without any inkling of uncertainty, that he’s cool.

Ever since launching his brain into outer space, and later crash landing at Laguna Lake, where he reembodied his magnificent brain with muck, dead animal carcasses and worms, everything has been going rapidly downhill for Elon; and he has decided the only way to get back his vaunted celebrity and adoringly quirky ability to be loved by idiots is to relaunch his brain into outer space and really mean it this time. “I want you to come with me, Monumental Li,” he begs the very old but still remarkably attractive grandmother to Bob Johnson, and he does the begging (like all of Monumental’s lovers who have gone before) by getting down on his knees, clasping his hands together as if in devout prayer, and weeping profusely. “That’s because I can’t live without you, baby! You taught me my place is at the foot of your bed, or in the kitchen making your pancakes. And if we could only go into outer space together and eventually colonize Mars and any other places that come along, we can do those wonderful things together–and forever! Because we will be trans-human masters of the universe–just you and me!”

But of course Monumental Li left home shortly after the pancakes to meet her very annoying new crowd of friends–the various Ma Mas and Ma Ma’s Ma Mas who have been flooding the central coast like, well, like a flood of Ma Mas. And, as it turns out, Elon has spent the last half hour weeping at the hem of Monumental’s terrycloth bathrobe, which she had left draped across the snoring body of her ex-husband on the sofa–her ex husband being, of course, none other than Bob Johnson’s grandpa. “Now wait just a goldarned minute!” Bob Johnson’s grandpa shouts, not leaping to his gnarly feet so much as dragging himself clumsily to his feet as if he were riding a storm-addled fishing boat on the high seas. “I can’t run off to outer space with you, Elon! I’m already married! (I think!)”