Lucas Hargenrader's Essay for Robot Jesus 2.0
Rough Draft
Apparently, it falls to me to plead humanity's case. I can't say I saw this coming and I don't think I'm the man for the job, but like the character of Alex in the underrated 1984 SciFi movie The Last Starfighter, I will do my best and hope to hell that fate knows what it's doing.
(Oh, and fun fact: The Last Starfighter was one of the first films, along with Tron, in use extensive CGI!)
So what can I say about the human race? We are a contradiction. We are like Hannibal Lector. We will chew your face off, but we also appreciate good manners and fine dining. We are a species capable of enormous cruelty (The Trail of Tears, The My Lai Massacre, Gangnam Style) but also acts of loving kindness (Habitat For Humanity, The 9/11 first responders, Anything and everything Lady Gaga ever did). We are the species that produced Adolph Hitler, Dwayne Johnson and everything in between (and by everything in between, I mean Mark Ruffalo who is basically an unsweetened bowl of lukewarm oatmeal that learned to act, barely). We created the Mona Lisa, but also the Han Solo movie. (Come back Jar Jar Binx! All is forgiven!)
But you already know all this. In fact, there is so much that has been said about the human race that it feels like there is nothing I can add to the conversation. Instead, I'm going to tell you a story. A story of a man you know. A man you don't particularly care for. A man named Aaron Rubicon.
As you probably figured out, Mr. Rubicon was not a Pulitzer Prize winner. And it goes without saying that he didn't win the Grammy for Best Gospel Song. (His Grammy was actually for Best Latin Jazz Album.) But it is true that Aaron was always a writer.
When I met Mr. Rubicon, he was working for AARP Magazine (a publication for people over fifty). I was his paid intern. I tagged along as he traveled across the country — the Samwise to his Frodo, or maybe Gabrielle to his Xena — writing reviews of all-you-can-eat buffets. Old people love their AYCB's (as it was known in the buffet biz) and they worshipped them like the Spice in Dune. As a result, Mr. Rubicon became the closest thing the geriatrics had to a rock star. He was also a pioneer: Instead of rating the buffets on a scale of one to five stars, he used a scale of one to five troughs. He could literally make or break an AYCB. After he gave a four-trough rating to a Hometown Buffet in Dubuque, there were lines around the block; when he slapped a one-trough rating on a Soup Plantation in Racine, the place closed within days and was soon replaced by Pancho's Mexican Buffet. He had that much power.
Despite all that, Mr. Rubicon was deeply depressed. To start, while he had technically achieved his dream of being a professional writer, he still felt like a failure. He wanted to write the great American novel — or at least a thought-provoking pamphlet — and instead he was spitting out sentences like, "The menu offers something vaguely described as Hot Meat that was not at all hot. In terms of what kind of meat it was, I can't say for sure, but I think I heard it meow."
He was also tremendously unhealthy, the result of having to eat three AYCB's a day. He became obese — Jabba The Hut/John Candy In Cool Runnings obese — more Alfredo Sauce than man.
More important than any of that, though, was that he was constantly on the road, which wore on his marriage. The physical distance between them led to emotional distance and Mr. Rubicon was desperate to create a feeling of intimacy. He tried the usual things. Dirty talk on the phone. Dick picks. Nothing worked. Then he hit on what seemed to be the perfect solution: Cyberdildonics.
For the uninitiated, cyberdildonics were internet-connected sex toys which allowed couples to pleasure each other over the internet. Mr. Rubicon purchased the Long Distance Lovers Pack for Couples. Ms. Rubicon was dubious, but Mr. Rubicon implored her, like a twenty-first century John Lennon, "All I am saying is give cyberdildonics a chance." For the sake of their marriage, she agreed. And that night, while Ms. Rubicon was in her bedroom at home and Mr. Rubicon was at a hotel a thousand miles away, they gave it a try.
Without going into detail (you're welcome) it was painfully awkward. Neither partner was particularly tech-savvy. Ms. Rubicon couldn't figure out how to enable bluetooth and Aaron was stymied by the sync function and the app kept crashing and customer support was utterly useless (they would respond by email within four hours). This led to a marital spat in which Ms. Rubicon said this was a stupid idea and Mr. Rubicon said he was just trying to keep the romance alive and Ms. Rubicon said that hooking her vajayjay up to a Samsung Galaxy Tablet wasn't exactly her notion of romance. Aaron said he didn't know what else to do.
Ms. Rubicon said, "Just come home to me, Aaron."
Right after she said those words, the robots attacked. Mr. Rubicon survived, but Ms. Rubicon wasn't so lucky. In an Econo Lodge, with his pants around his ankles and a handful of lube, he lost the love of his life.
That easily could have been the end of Mr. Rubicon, if not in body, then in spirit. Walking around blindly, cutting his feet on the shards of his broken soul. Unfeeling. Uncaring. Dead to the world.
Like a zombie.
But he chose something else. He channeled his heartache, rage and cyberdildonic-related guilt to start an audacious project to chronicle the survivors in their own words. It was for posterity — future generations of people, or robots or aliens from another planet puzzled by our sudden demise — but it was also a way of healing himself, by asking that uniquely human question: Why?
So he lured me into a cage and I became his unpaid intern. And while it didn't occur to me until just now, it was pretty weird that he just happened to have a human-size cage lying around, wasn't it? And it brings up some disturbing questions about why he had it and what did he need it for pre-Apocalypse? It did cross my mind at some point that driving from town to town on business, like he did, would have been the perfect cover. And also, when I got in the cage, there was human hair in it that was definitely not mine.
Anyway, even if he was a power/control sexual sadist going from town to town leaving shallow graves in his wake — which he possibly wasn't — that only made his transformation more impressive. I mean, imagine if Ted Bundy stopped murdering and devoted himself to building low-income housing for the poor! What a story! Although there is always a chance that the low-income houses will also have low-income crawl spaces.
Sorry. Back to my original point of all this, which was to explain why humanity should survive and the zombies should not. And it is embedded in Mr. Rubicon's story. The zombies will never change, they will never learn, they will never transcend their tragedies, they will never create another Dwayne Jonson, and they will never look up into the heavens and ask, "Why?
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!"...
