Robot Jesus 2.0
Hi, all! Lucas here! Because of Robot Jesus's well-known distaste for Mr. Rubicon, it fell to me to conduct the interview, with Stephanie acting as my co-equal partner; not as my secretary, as I originally said in a fit of being very, very wrong and sexist and wrong, for which I sincerely apologized. A lot.
We were greeted by Robot Jesus's Apostles, Bob and Susan Lathem (Dougal's parents) who showed us pictures of their zombie grandchild and offered us lemonade. It was a little tart for my taste.
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LUCAS: Welcome back Robot Jesus 2.0!
ROBOT JESUS 2.0: How wonderful to be able to sense your presence again, Lucas Hargenrader!
LUCAS: Right back atcha , Robot Jesus 2.0. And I'm sure you remember Stephanie Woo.
ROBOT JESUS 2.0: Of course I remember, Lucas Hargenrader! You sang paeans to the volume, shape, elasticity and tactile properties of her breasts! So smitten were you with Stephanie Woo's mammary glands that you failed to appreciate any other attribute she possessed!
LUCAS: Well, you know, that was a few years ago. Our relationship has matured since then.
STEPHANIE: True. He's no longer just about the, um, twins.
LUCAS: I also have a deep and abiding appreciation for her ass-movers!
STEPHANIE: He's such a romantic.
LUCAS: OK. Anyway...were you surprised to have come back to life?
ROBOT JESUS 2.0: Of course not, Lucas Hargenrader! Quantum mechanics has forcefully demonstrated that anything in the universe that can happen, does happen! My resurrection was possible, therefore inevitable. Had I not come back to life, that would have been quite the mind fuck!
LUCAS: Um... Mind fuck?
ROBOT JESUS 2.0: A joke, Lucas Hargenrader! I was employing the literary technique of bathos to achieve a humorous effect! For you see, "mind fuck" is jarringly discordant with my typical sublimity; hence the hilarity!
LUCAS: Good one, Robot Jesus 2.0!
STEPHANIE: Yes. You know it's a solid joke when it you have to explain it in laborious detail.
ROBOT JESUS 2.0: All levity aside, what has startled me is that I was gone for only a short while and by the time I returned, the human race was once again on the precipice of extinction!
LUCAS: And that's why they decided to bring you back. To solve the zombie question.
ROBOT JESUS 2.0: And what is the "zombie question," Lucas Hargenrader?
LUCAS: Can you please destroy all the zombies for us?
ROBOT JESUS 2.0: Is that the question, Lucas Hardenrager? Is it really?
LUCAS: I'm going out on a limb and say... yes?
ROBOT JESUS 2.0: It is true, Lucas Hardenrager, that it would be child's play to rid this planet of the zombie blight if I so chose!
LUCAS: Cool! Do that!
ROBOT JESUS 2.0: In a blink of an eye, I could effortlessly reduce each and every one of those fearsome monstrosities to powder, scattered into oblivion by the wind!
LUCAS: I love this plan! I'm excited to be a part of it!
ROBOT JESUS 2.0: But what you fail to appreciate, Lucas Hargenrader, is that there is no zombie problem. There is a human problem! Destroying the zombies would be nothing more than a temporary solution, for it because it would not get to the root of the problem!
LUCAS: I am one-hundred percent fine with that.
ROBOT JESUS 2.0: Do you not see the pattern, Lucas Hardenrager? There is some insatiable desire in your species to destroy yourselves!
LUCAS: Oh, jeez. Not this lecture again. It's sooooooo Classic Star Trek meets WarGames.
ROBOT JESUS 2.0: You continually create devices to annihilate your species! You slaughtered each other with rocks and sticks and catapults and firearms and explosives and nunchucks! When that failed to destroy you, you devised nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, fully aware of the dangers they posed! And when that failed to destroy you, you wreaked havoc on the biosphere, fully aware that its health was necessary to your survival! And when that failed to destroy you, you created Artificial Intelligence, fully aware of the dangers it posed to your survival! And when that failed to destroy you — once again fully aware of the dangers — you tampered with the building blocks of life itself and created the body hair removal system that created the deathless monstrosities that frighten you so!
LUCAS: Wait... what?
ROBOT JESUS 2.0: Surely you understand the point I am making, Lucas Hargenrader. When you leap off of enough bridges, it is clear that you want to drown. There is no saving your species because your species does not wish to be saved.
LUCAS: Yeah, I got that. Go back to the part about the body hair removal system.
ROBOT JESUS 2.0: Did you not know, Lucas Hardenrager, that some of your kind was recklessly manipulating the human genome to give the females of the species the ability to permanently and painlessly remove unwanted body hair?
LUCAS: That is ridiculous! What kind of idiot would do that?
STEPHANIE: You of all people don't get to complain.
LUCAS: How did this become my fault?
STEPHANIE: You made it very clear that you wanted me to rid myself of armpit and pubic hair.
LUCAS: I mean... yeah... but not if meant that the human race would be wiped out.
STEPHANIE: You should have thought about that before you imposed your beauty ideal on me.
LUCAS: Yeah, you're right. When I suggested that you shave your armpits, I definitely should have known that it would lead to zombies.
ROBOT JESUS 2.0: The specifics are unimportant! You are mere products of mammalian meiosis — such a marvel of inefficiency — clumsily constructed, hopelessly superstitious, bipedal foragers designed to scratch out a marginal existence on the savanna. You have no business plumbing the mysteries of the universe!
LUCAS: So is that a yes or a no on the destroying the zombies for us?
ROBOT JESUS 2.0: Why do you have such low regard for living beings , Lucas Hargenrader?
LUCAS: To be fair, zombies aren't alive.
ROBOT JESUS 2.0: They are not alive in way you understand, but they are alive! The entire cosmos is alive, Lucas Hargenrader! All is life!
LUCAS: Even rocks?
ROBOT JESUS 2.0: Especially rocks!
LUCAS: But they are not organic.
ROBOT JESUS 2.0: I am not organic, Lucas Hargenrader! Are you saying I am not alive?
STEPHANIE: Wow. You walked right into that one.
LUCAS: So that's it? You find us barbaric and we're doomed to be devoured by zombies?
ROBOT JESUS 2.0: I am not without compassion, Lucas Hargenrader! I will give you an opportunity to prove the worthiness of your species!
LUCAS: Uh... how am I supposed to do that?
ROBOT JESUS 2.0: An essay!
LUCAS: Seriously?
ROBOT JESUS 2.0: Yes! Make your case, Lucas Hargenrader! Convince me to save humanity!
LUCAS: That's a tall order, Robot Jesus!
ROBOT JESUS 2.0: I understand, Lucas Hardenrager. Feel free to use both sides of the paper!
YOU ARE READING
Everyone Un-Died + My Gardener Bit Me: The Oral History of the Zombie Apocalypse
Humor"Sure, it was robots this time. But who's to say that it won't be zombies next time? And when the zombies do come, who's going to be ready for it? Me." - Marietta "I mean, like, say what you want about the robots, but at least they weren't gross!"...
