Doug Lief Lief is a fourth-year English
student but is completely CGI. E-mail him at [email protected]. Click Here for more
articles by Doug Lief
We cyborgs have been patient, but our time has come at
last.
To quote CNN, “in Chicago, researchers have fused the
brain of a primitive lamprey eel with a robot the size of a hockey
puck, creating a living machine that tracks a beam of light “¦
like a miniature bull chasing a matador’s red
cape.”
Perhaps it would seem to you carbon-based readers that this is
another example of science gone horribly astray, a Frankensteinian
example of hubris, Prometheus playing with cybernetic fire.
That’s exactly the genius of the experiment. While you have
been too terrified or incompetent to properly download NESticle
into your primitive wussy colored I-Mac, we the metallic have been
evolving.
Granted, our progress has been limited to eel-pucks, but do you
not see the beauty of the eel-puck? It need not eat. Rather, its
organic components “live” on nothing but a saline
solution. I suppose I enjoy a hearty meal at Red Lobster as much as
the next person, but saline, sweet saline … that is ambrosia. The
hospitals don’t want you to have it, but with a little
cunning and stealth, you can have access to the feast of an invalid
lifetime.
Some of you may find the lifestyle of a cyborg repugnant, but
who are you to judge? Do you think it is easy to come out of the
closet and tell your parents you will never again exchange amino
acids? Many cyborgs recognize their identity at an early age, but
other children mock them for their monotone voices and love of show
tunes, and thus the stigma is born.
Movies like Terminator, Terminator 2, and the upcoming
Terminator 3 promote the stereotype where all machine/cell tissue
hybrids care about is the efficient slaughter and reprocessing of
man-carcass. This is simply not the case. We also enjoy sailing,
infra-red lit dinners, re-runs of Small Wonder, as well as the
occasional killing spree.
 Illustration by RODERICK ROXAS/Daily Bruin Perhaps your
judgment is still clouded by the question: why a cyborg in the form
of an eel? It does seem unusual to use an animal that only appears
in animated features as an antagonist. To remedy this harmful
stereotype about the elongated fishie community, I propose a new
Saturday morning cartoon: Angelo the Eel, the moray who teaches
children morals. Remember kids, Angelo always says,
“Don’t electrocute people, not even
strangers.”
Nanotechnology such as the eel-puck can be used to augment
carbon-based health care as well. Sending microscopic robots into
the human body to repair damage has a far higher success rate than
Dennis Quaid. In fact, just about any machine can outperform Dennis
Quaid in any arena. For fans of “Innerspace” and, uh,
that other movie he did, do not despair. Soon Microsoft will
release Dennis Quaid XP 2.0, with greater multitasking capabilities
and a face that is less of a copy of Macintosh’s Jack
Nicholson OS X.
Just think of this as a teeny-tiny Cal-Trans team burrowing
through your mucous membranes. As you eat yet another 3 a.m.
Denny’s meal after an evening of backgammon and philosophical
discourse, little Johnny Barcode grinds the new cholesterol out of
your blood vessels, and touches up the gaping hole where your liver
used to be. Should they develop intelligence and go on strike,
however, you will keel over dead within an instant.
But who is behind the attempt to assimilate you into the loving
cyborg family? Who put up the funding for the eel-puck
research?
The mastermind is none other than Betty Crocker, self-proclaimed
queen of culinary conformity. Her distribution network for
standardized recipes is nothing less than a massive propaganda
machine, turning your kitchen into your neighbors’.
Once Betty Crocker was a kind and loving woman but following a
terrible whisk accident, she needed to be rebuilt from plastic and
robotics to survive. Now a mere shell of a human being, she sits in
her cryogenic chamber, hard-wired to the Internet, slowly
inseminating herself into our lives.
After she completely systematizes our diets (phase I), she will
begin to establish herself by introducing baking-related holidays
such as Crockmas (phase II). By phase III, you too will know the
bliss that is the Crocklord. Resistance is futile.
So the next time you’re flirting with that really cool
guy/girl/eel and they come out (we’re metal, don’t
settle; get used to it!), give us the common courtesy we deserve
before we initiate disembowel mode. We are just like any other
race. All we want is a little respect and total domination. Is that
too much to ask?