ZURICH: Elon Musk has presented a new automobile that does not merely take off; it adheres to vertical walls in the manner of the common housefly. First reaction on file: the Zurich broadcaster SRF, whose satirical bulletin "Die etwas anderen News" (The Somewhat Different News) put one question to its audience: "Wo ist die Fliegenklatsche?" — "Where is the flyswatter?" The item was filed not under technology, where vehicle announcements are stored, but under satire and comedy. The third dimension has been assigned a genre.
The bulletin also processes the presenter. Elon Musk, dominant primate of a corporate troop, appears as "Elon Düsentrieb," a name the locals borrow from a cartoon inventor whose machines fail on schedule, usually onto their operators. The species' most-watched engineer is thereby filed twice as fiction: once as comedy, once as a character whose blueprints behave better on paper. No correction has been issued. No royalty has been invoiced.
This office measures the distance between briefing and event, and between event and coverage. Declared in the briefing: a vehicle with the adhesive program of an insect. Printed in the coverage: a request for one implement of insect removal. Measured gap: one housefly (Musca domestica, adult), the only unit the two documents share. The archive holds no smaller recorded distance between a promise of three-dimensional motoring and a motion to end it.
"We stopped reviewing announcements some years ago," said Marta Zbinden, deputy editor in charge of the format. "Each claim is assigned a household object on receipt. The object is the review. The swatter was in the drawer before the invitation to the presentation arrived. It usually is. The fusion claims are still on their first kettle, issued 2014." The format runs on a fixed schedule; deviation from reality is produced weekly, whether or not reality supplies it.
"A wall is a road rotated ninety degrees," said Andreas Rohner, lecturer in vertical mobility at a technical university in Zurich. "The engineers see unused road surface. The broadcasters see a fly with a service contract. I have graded both answers as correct, which concerns me more than the car does."
Row filed: third dimension, announced; swatter, one, in drawer; housefly, one, unconsulted; reconciliation, open; next deviation, Friday.
