Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Robadillo

I recently received a grim warning from the future. This has happened twice before. The first time, I was ten and warned not to glue my nostrils shut with paste, regardless of how much money my best friend Chuck offered me.

I got my other friend Danny to do it instead and was glad I did, ‘cause when the school nurse pulled the hardened plug out, it was like the inside of his nose had been waxed. They say you could hear the scream ten miles away.

The second warning was about not starting a sci-fi web-comic. I dodged that one by starting a fantasy web-comic instead.

This latest warning was a simple, one-sentence email I received from an anonymous source. It read ‘Warning from the Future: Do not create robot armadillos or ‘robadillos.’

NOTE: The warnings always come in a ‘time-period’ acceptable way. The one about the nostrils was on a 3x5 card I found inside my Trapper Keeper. The second one was a rather (perhaps) ill-conceived tattoo. A word of caution: don’t get a ‘spur-of-the-moment’ tattoo from someone you don’t share a language with. That goes doubly if either party is drunk.

This latest warning brings up a couple questions: Why would I want to create a robadillo? What would I use a robadillo for? And thirdly, seeing as how I can barely balance my checkbook, how would I create a robadillo in the first place?

The first two answers are obvious: who wouldn’t want to create a robadillo? Honestly, the name is just cool. Secondly, I’d obviously use my army of robadillos to take over the world. Oh, sure, I’d start out with some sort of noble goal, like eliminating the scourge of gingivitis, but once I had a sixty-foot, fire-breathing armadillo with laser eyes and enough armor to stop a Tomahawk missile, I’d go a bit nuts.

Obviously though, the chance of me successfully creating an army of robadillos is slim to none, which is why this particular warning from the future is so puzzling. If I can’t create a robadillo in the first place, why warn me not to?

Unless, I’m SUPPOSED to create an army of robadillos, perhaps to fight off an alien invasion or something, and this warning is really from the aliens in a Terminator-esque ploy to get me not to.

Hmmmm, it’s a quandary. Maybe I should dust off my plans for a zombot army (half-zombie, half-robot), just in case.

Unless, that’s what the aliens really want!

Indecisively,
-Jason

3 comments:

Dave Walters, PMP said...

Been listening to Tarkus in your sleep again?

Silver said...

I like to be prepared, so the best solution, I've found, is to rent a garage somewhere, a large one, with a loading dock, and then build Robodillos, and put them in storage there, and zombots, and raptominions, and vampaliens, and everything else.

Then, when you find out which warnings are false, you can bring them out, to combat the other threats, from the warnings who turned out to be right.

Jason Janicki said...

Honestly, I had to look that one up, Dave, but very cool! I guess I'll need to find a manticore in case the robadillas get out of hand :)

I like the basic idea, Silver, but I think I would need a bunch of different garages. After all, you can't store the robadillos and the zombots together, as obviously they'd fight to the death. However, many garages would allow me to spread them out across the entire world, so when I decide to take . . . er, stop the aliens or whatnot, the correct weapon is already in place.