JD

Lockdown orders are lifting around the country, yet many are apprehensive. There are concerns that prematurely unleashing the nose-pickers and palm-lickers of the world will trigger a devastating second wave of political pundit debates. Fortunately, Peter Kelling and Emanuel Franco, the dreamboat computer science duo at the University of Washington, have found a way to end social distancing forever. 

“The solution is simple,” explained Franco, “Why spend all of your time inside, worrying about sickness, when you could live your life as a robot? By transferring your conscious self into a state-of-the-art mechanical vessel, you can escape the pandemic and the struggle of social distancing at the same time!”  

But to these studly programmers, mechanization is more than just an idea, it is a way of life. With display monitors mounted on wide chrome bodies and claw-like hands that look like they were designed to ruin your arcade birthday party by intentionally dropping that shiny new ipod, the new and improved Kelling and Franco answer the question of what Pixar’s Wall-E would look like if he were designed by Apple Inc.  

“Before becoming the kick-ass robot that I’ve always wanted to be, I used to constantly worry about whether my coughs were ‘dry enough’ to be concerning,” explained Franco, “but those days are long gone! I don't have to eat, I don’t have to sleep, and now I only leave the house to play D&D and buy batteries. ” 

Emanuel Franco, master of seduction, then began to detail the numerous virtues of his plans for ‘establishing a new world order through non-voluntary assimilation,’ while Kelling’s claw-hands struggled with the expo marker he was using to write relevant equations up on a nearby whiteboard. But after a few minutes of droning on about the advantages of abandoning the prisons of flesh that bind us all, it became clear that in their haste, this pair of mecha-hunks had forgotten one crucial detail. How would a “person” in such a position have sex?

“Well,” started Franco, somewhat defensively, “if the humans were to join us, there would be no reason to have sex. We are immortal!” 

Upon being reminded that some humans like to have sex for fun, Franco fell silent and still. As Franco’s frozen screen began to display a spinning rainbow pinwheel, Kelling frantically updated his whiteboard equations, cursing intermittently.  

Many of our readers, who may be less than thrilled at the prospect of joining the robot army, are probably asking themselves, “how long do we have before Kelling and Franco return to condemn us to a computerized existence of endless battery reliance and prosthetic genitals?” Rest easy, dear reader. There is no cause for alarm, for we have as much time as it will take Kelling and Franco to figure out what a vagina looks like.