1. Waymo
When Paul came out of the restaurant, Trudy and I got up from the bench where we had been sitting in the sun. We all started to walk across the parking lot.
I had been watching a man with a bag getting into a car with no driver. There was a large spinning device on top of the vehicle, and odd protrusions sticking out from the two front corners. It drove off after the man got in, but I knew the street to be a cul-de-sac and that it would return.
“You just missed it,” I said to Paul. “There was a guy who just got a bunch of togo food and jumped into a Waymo. They’ll be coming back around any moment.” And sure enough, just then the future-car came around the corner with no one at the wheel and a man sitting in the back seat.
“Oh wow,” Paul said.
He was genuinely excited.
2. Cybertruck
On the way home, as we cruised southbound in the right lane, a Cybertruck drove quickly by, passing us and the traffic in the other lanes, as Cybertrucks are want to do. It was flat-black with no markings. If the navigation radar had been turned on, it would have registered nothing in that lane with that stealthy truck, but as it was, I had no navigation radar to turn on in the first place.
“Oh wow,” Paul said. “My first Cybertruck!”
He was genuinely excited.
“First a Waymo. Now a Cybertruck. What a trip!!”
…
The future reveals itself incrementally.