Alien Night Club - Show 22?
Alien Night Club <the transcripts>
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Allo, allo, allo! Good evening, Gov’nor!
And that’s the end of the British accent.
Or is it?
Speaking of which, do you guys like old books? Do you have books where you live? Do you have books in your house? Do you know what they are?
Back on Earth, for several thousand years people have been writing stuff down on pieces of paper and then putting those pieces of paper in a big stack and then wrapping more paper around the outside in order to bind them all together.
Two trailer park girls go round the outside, round the outside, round the outside.
Sorry, Em, you’ve been assimilated. But you probably already knew that.
Anyway, those pieces of paper all wrapped together and bound on one side is called a book. And it’s very durable. And you can open it and read what’s written in there anytime you want to or need to. Some people also make scrolls, which are really long pieces of paper rolled up. And then they put them in a protective case and put that inside a jar and put the jar in a cave, where it sits for a thousand years. And then when people find it, there’s much ado about whether or not to let people read the contents, because the information may contradict the ethos of the current geopolitical power structure.
Which is stupid because more information is always better than less.
But I digress.
So books are a really great way of learning about the lives of people who lived in the past. What did they write about? What was in their newspapers, if they had newspapers. Like the Brits did. There are amazing libraries in England. Lots of other places, too. I’ve never had the chance – or taken the time – to go there and visit those libraries. I’ve never really wanted to. But now I think it would be a powerful experience. Holding a book that was literally printed 300 or 400 years ago?
That would be nuts. Totally awesome, of course. But also pretty crazy.
Was is Pletarch? Plutarch? Who said, — and I’m paraphrasing badly here; badly! — Someone in some future time will think of us.
Think about that.
Someone in some future time will think of us.
That is some heavy shit. Because it immediately inspires accountability. We think we’re running around, living our lives, and it doesn’t mean anything. And that nobody cares. And when we’re gone and our family and friends are gone and several generations have passed, no one will ever know we were here.
But that’s not true.
What is the legacy of the United States of America going to be?
I’ll tell you exactly what it’s going to be: The Wild Wild West.
The Wild West. That was wild. The West was wild…
…untamed…
…savage…
…unforgiving…
…demanding.
And, in addition to all of that, it was fuckin WILD!!!
It became the Wild West and it never really stopped. In some areas more than others.
Like…
Chicago.
Have you guys seen that video of those two 20-somethings – two people in their 20s; or maybe teens – sitting under an overpass one night somewhere in Chicago. And they sat up underneath it where no one could see them. And they turned on their phone and recorded a video of themselves sitting quietly. And in the background, you hear fireworks. Tons and tons of fireworks. So it is obviously the 4th of July. Which is a big holiday in America on which it is customary to shoot fireworks in the air in order to simulate and, hopefully, remember the great War of Independence that America fought against a certain someone…who shall not be named but they’re the ones who have so many of those kick-ass libraries we talked about a minute ago.
Point being that the young people in the video are not sitting there making a video on the 4th of July. It’s just a regular ol night in Chicago.
And alllllll those fireworks are actually gunshots.
Dozens of them every minute.
That is how bad it is. Those neighborhoods are so bad that there are THAT many people firing THAT many guns.
At other people.
Which is why you hear horror stories about the doctors and nurses and paramedics and cops and firefighters and other first responders who work in those areas, particularly Cook County. Entire TV shows have been made that were set in a hospital there, showing the doctors and all the crazy shit they have to deal with. Every night is like being a military doctor in a warzone. And it’s all these people coming in with GSWs; gunshot wounds.
Fuck that. I could never do it. Hats off to anyone in that line of work. Yikes.
Point being that THAT kind of shit is what people think about when they think about America. The Good Ol USA. All they see is violence and bloodshed and riots and looting and poverty and cops killing people and high-speed chases and gangs and crime and drugs and death.
See, what the flag actually stands for – Old Glory – is a sea of stars representing all the people who’ve died, as many as the stars in the sky at night, and the stripes are two things: red and white with red representing all the bloodshed and white being the bars of the prison cells in which millions of innocent people are wrongfully caged in conditions much worse than those of a bunch of gorillas getting high at the zoo.
Understand that that is NOT what Old Glory is SUPPOSED to stand for. It actually has meaning. The stars are the states in the country, in the Union: 50. Red symbolizes valor and bravery. White symbolizes purity and innocence. Blue symbolizes vigilance, perseverance, and justice.
What would you do or say or think if American Indians all got together and started blowing up busses with suicide bombers in order to protest the existence stroke creation of America? Or if they started firing rockets off of their reservations and into nearby population centers, killing the people who live there?
Would you say, They shouldn’t be doing that.
Or would you say, Good! About goddamn time.
And that maybe you’ll go and help them. Like actually drive there in your car and help them make better missiles or something.
Except probably not because you’re tired and you slept like shit last night for some reason and you skipped your workout this morning which you understand full well made you feel worse – or at least not better, which it always does – and you’re hungry and you really just want to eat and watch the game or Emily in Paris or whatever.
Point being: Someone, somewhere, in some future time will think of us.
So are you living your life in such a way that makes us all alive today now together right here right now look BETTER?
Or worse?
Are you spending your time trying for the most part to be engaged in useful activities that yield some positive benefit for society? Even if it’s just working a job that ain’t all that great but at least you’ve got money coming in and you can pay your bills and keep a roof over your head and the lights on and food on the table and herb in the bowl and you’re paying taxes and trying to be a good and kind person most of the time. And you’re a point of light. Illuminating the darkness.
That counts for something. A lot, actually.
If EVERYONE did that, EVERYONE, the country and the world would be a very different, far, far better place. We’d be so much further ahead than we are now.
But instead, people are looking out for themselves most of the time. And other people are driving around in their car with firearms in their hands, looking for other people doing the same thing in the hopes of getting into a shootout with them. Or simply looking for someone they can bully.
That is madness.
What madness is this?
The Borg are up there in space in their big cube spaceship and they’re looking at us shooting each other and they’re all like, Let’s get the fuck out of here.
And they bring out Jennifer Aniston in FULL BORG mode, half naked and half Borg, to try to let us down easy. And she’s all, Um…yeah…. We, um, we’re gonna get going. Thanks for everything. What? Oh, no, don’t worry about it; no more assimilations today. That whole assimilation thing was just kind of a joke, anyway. Yeah! Don’t worry about it. Okay? Let’s just skip it. Okay, see ya, bye!
And then sexy-ass Jennifer Borg Aniston shuts the door in our faces.
And they leave.
And we’re all like, What the fuck?
And some people here on Earth are like, OMG, we dodged that bullet. No pun intended, motherfuckers lol!
And the rest of us look at them and then at each other and we all make eye contact for a second and realize that we just got rejected. Like… HARD.
And, yeah, on the one hand it’s good because we can just keep doing what we were doing and not be turned into cyborgs who are part of a hive mind collective family unlike anything we’ve ever known before.
But Goddamn! It still hurts.
Maybe it shouldn’t but it does.
We just took the ultimate test. And we failed.
Big time.
Like an intergalactic teacher just sprang a pop quiz on us and we were all like, What the hell is this?
And so we take it.
We all take it. Everybody takes it.
And you take it. And there are only 25 questions.
And you score a 7.
And your spouse scores an 8. Or a 9. Or maybe a 6.
And no one you know scores above 10. 10 is the highest, just like Ross tried to explain to Joey.
And it’s not like the Borg tested everyone and took everyone who scored, say, 90% or higher.
Or even 85%
Or maybe 82%.
Or hell, maybe they wanted the top ¼ so they lowered it to 75%.
But they realized that wouldn’t be enough people to be a true representation of Earthlings so they sighed and were like, Alright; fuck it; 66%; that’s the top ⅓ of all Humans.
And the mathematician Borgs and the statistician Borgs ran the numbers and shook their heads.
And the other Borgs were like, Shit! Still not enough? Fuck! Okay. Fine. 50%. 50 motherflippin father humpin per-cent. But that is IT. That is HALF.
And the number crunchers were like, Okay, that’ll do; that’s good; thanks.
And then HR started to get the assimilation ball rolling but pretty soon they were kind of having second-thoughts. Over and over again they were skipping over people. And they soon realized that if they remained on that current trajectory, they were going to wind up FAR, FAR short of the 50%.
It was going to be more like 7 or 8 or 9%. Maybe 10 or maybe, maybe 11 if they went and took people from only certain parts of the world, certain cities, and they simply skipped over other areas. Then the number might go up but it was unlikely they would reach the 50% again.
So, because they’re a hive mind, a family with PERFECT communication skills and ZERO fucking drama, they decided quickly, simply, and easily not to do it.
They decided to bounce. To dip. To bail. To leave. To withdraw. To get the heck outta Dodge.
That refers to Dodge City, Kansas, by the way; not some old Dodge Caravan.
The closest thing I can think of on Earth would be if the Chinese completely took over the entire planet. Hook, line, and sinker. Like, they own and control all of it. Their Navy and their Air Force and their Army control and patrol everywhere.
And they are doing business everywhere. And there are people from China living everywhere. And every country on Earth is at least half Chinese people.
Except America.
Because they did what the Borg did: They passed.
They wanted nothing to do with America or Americans.
Once China controlled everything and had that degree of power and military might, everyone knew, the Americans most of all, that the Chinese were unusurpable. I’m not sure if that’s even a word but that’s what they were. America’s military was nothing compared to theirs. And everyone knew it. Especially the Americans. So other than a few little skirmishes here and there, caused by some pissed off, resentful Americans willing to die to prove they were still top dog – skirmishes which were quickly, immediately, and easily put down, by the way – the Chinese were completely in control in every way.
But they never invaded America.
And they allow them to do their thing in their country. And they continue to sell them stuff. And to buy some of their stuff in order to keep them afloat. Although there is talk of no longer doing that. And just letting the Americans vote on whether to join the Chinese Globalist Communist Federation or not. Because they’re the last ones. Every other country – every…single…one – has either joined or been conquered militarily.
And now it’s the Americans’ turn to decide what they are going to do.
Fight and die.
Or submit.
Join.
And then try to move on.
Because it’s going to happen no matter what. It’s a matter of whether or not you’ll be alive to be a part of it. Or if you went down in a blaze of glory in a Walmart parking lot. Kind of like Red Dawn except with a sad ending. A bit more like The Man in the High Castle. Which, to me, is so scary I can’t even watch it. I started and then I stopped. And then I waited awhile. And then I started again and I got to the end of Season 2 and I don’t think I ever started Season 3. It was just too scary. And I was stone-cold sober when I watched it, too. I think about that show often. I think about trying one more time to watch it.
For anyone who doesn’t know, The Man in the High Castle is a series based on a book by an amazing 20th-century American writer named Philip K. Dick. He’s one of the most revered science fiction writers of all time. He’s the guy who wrote Bladerunner. Nobody knows the name Philip K. Dick but they’ve all heard of Bladerunner.
Point being: The Man in the High Castle is the story of what the world would be like if the Allies had lost World War II.
And the fuckin Nazis had won.
And they took over ALL of Europe and the entire eastern third of the United States. And the entire western third of the United States was official property of the great Empire of Japan.
And the Rocky Mountains in the middle were pretty much no-man’s land that were too geographically difficult to police. So a small number of quote unquote free Americans lived there, trying to create and mount some sort of resistance. Which the Japanese and the Nazis are constantly working to spy on and infiltrate, so the very, very, VERY last vestiges of America and Americanism can finally DIE. And every last American can die with it.
So you can see why it’s terrifying.
Anyway….
Man, I did not know I was going to come out here and talk about this.
The show notes were rather sparse. It was eye problems, tattoos, and one other thing.
Which I have totally forgotten. Because we got off on another racial tangent about the legacy of America.
But let’s extend it further: The legacy of EARTH.
It’s just a matter of time, right?. Until aliens show up. En masse. Or in some way that we all now SEE and KNOW that they are REAL, that they EXIST, and that whether or not we’re brought into the intergalactic Rotary Club depends totally, completely, and entirely on us.
By the way, that is the prevailing theory amongst most people who know a thing or two about aliens, UFOs, and that whole subject.
It is that the Earth is not ready.
And by Earth, we mean people.
And by people, we mean Humans. Earthlings.
And that aliens came here — or, rather, there — a LONG time ago. Long before there were people. And they’ve just been kind of like, Yeah, that’s Earth, whatever. It’s pretty and we can totally go visit if you want to, but don’t expect too much. It’s great for camping, though.
And that’s how alien cultures thought about us for millennia.
It’s only the past few thousand years that things have gotten interesting. Once there were people down there who were civilized and engaged in activities other than finding food and fending off predators and enemies trying to steal that food, THEN they were all like, Okay, okay. Greece is pretty cool. Let’s dress up like humans and go down there and hang out and party with some Earthlings and have sexual relations with a bunch of them.
And that’s pretty much what they’ve been doing this whole time.
Which is why we now have people coming forward saying that they have alien DNA in their body. And going on national TV shows in their country to talk about it. I saw that on a French talk show, by the way. A young blond woman with weird, weird eyes. Which she said were on account of her alien DNA.
So shit is getting real.
The problem is nuclear weapons.
Once the first atom bomb went off on July 16th, 1945 in New Mexico, USA, the aliens all stopped fucking and sat up and looked around and said, What was that?
And the other aliens up on their ships were like, Oh, shit, they fuckin did it! They split the atom! They really fucking did it. Those idiots! They did it outside in the desert and they had people there to watch! These people are as stupid as they are insane!
And the other alien cultures were on their ships in low Earth orbit and they were like, Yep.
And one of them said, They’re not joining the Galactic Federation now.
And the rest were like, Nope.
But then some aliens crashed their cute little flying saucer in this podunk little town in the middle of nowhere — also New Mexico, by the way; Roswell; coincidence? — in 1947. And some of those aliens survived the crash. Some didn’t, but some did. So when the Americans showed up and were all like, Hands up, motherfuckers!
The aliens, the ones still alive, looked at each other and were like, See? Wild West.
And the Americans took them and their dead friends and their fucked-up spaceship back to their Army base and they hid all that shit. All of it.
And then later some other aliens came to the Americans in charge, the ones living in Washington D.C., and they were all, Hey, um, can we get our people back?
And the Americans were like, Sure. In exchange for some of your sweet-ass technology that we can use to rule the world.
And the aliens were like, Well…I guess. Here.
And the Americans said, Thanks! Can we have more?
And the aliens were like, Well, yeah. But what are we going to get out of it?
And the Americans said, Take some of our people.
And the aliens said, What?
And the Americans said, Are you fucking deaf? Take some of our people.
And the aliens said, What for?
And the Americans said, Who gives a shit? Do experiments on them. Take them out of their bed at night and bring them up to your ship and stick shit up their nose or up their butt and suck out their sperms and eggs and make some little alien babies. Pretend you’re Frankenstein. Whatever. Just give us more shit.
And the aliens were like, Well, um, okay. You know you guys aren’t getting into the Federation, though, right? You’re not going to be given a seat on the Council.
And the Americans were like, That’s cool, daddy-oh. We’re busy taking over the Earth, anyway.
And then one day some other aliens showed up because they heard about the bodysnatching free-for-all on Earth and they love eating human meat so they’re like, Hey. Hey, assholes. We’re taking some of your shit and we’re gonna fuckin eat it.
And the Americans were all like, Are you the crazy motherfuckers who have been doing weird shit to our cows?
And the aliens were all, Yeah. What’re you going to do about it?
And the Americans knew they couldn’t do a thing about it. And they realized immediately that they were sitting ducks all over again. They JUST got done defeating Hitler, that sick fuck, and they haven’t even gotten Pearl Harbor back together again yet and now THIS shit?
So they called those other aliens, the ones from before, and they were all like, Listen, you gotta help us out. These other motherfuckers just showed up and they’re going to start eating our people and we can’t have that. We know that we fight a lot amongst ourselves but that’s our business. This is our planet and we can’t just sit here and watch a billion-whatever people get eaten by aliens.
And the other aliens were like, Um, we’re kinda busy with the alien babies. What do you propose?
And the Americans were like, Well, you can have more of our people if you give us more shit. The GOOD shit this time. Because we are going to build ships. Big ones. In space. To protect our planet from those cannibal assholes. As well as anyone else who shows up thinking they can just come and eat us and we’re not going to do anything to try to stop them.
So the aliens were like, Okay.
And then, one day, several decades later, this English dude is at home one day messing around on the internet and he hacks into some computers belonging to the United States government. Particularly its space agency.
And he’s cruising around several servers, looking at random shit, and noticing that there was a fair amount of web traffic on those servers. And a lot of it was coming from OUTSIDE the United States. Meaning there were people like him poking around in there when they weren’t supposed to. But the Americans had left the door wide open. The security was a joke. So it’s almost THEIR fault that they had a bunch of spies in there snooping around, stealing their shit.
Point being: This guy comes across manifests. Huge spreadsheets of inventory. As well as a list of names of quote unquote non-terrestrial officers.
Non-terrestrial officers.
And the more he reads, the more it appears that what he’s seeing is shipping manifests and bills of lading and inventory items that one might need to outfit a vessel of some kind. A big one. And the non-terrestrial officers were in charge of it. Only it looks like it’s more than one. Because there are duplicates. It appears there are as many as 5 or 6 or even 8 sets of spreadsheets. One for each ship.
And as many sets of non-terrestrial officers.
One for each ship.
And then he panicked and got the fuck out of there.
And some time later, government agents came to his door and arrested him. And they explained to him that the Americans were going to extradite him out of England to America where he was going to be criminally arraigned, tried, convicted – for sure – and would be sentenced to something in the neighborhood of 40 to 70 years in prison.
The Brits wound up playing hardball with the Americans and refused to bring this man to them so that the extradition procedure could take place. And eventually the Americans sort of let it go. And he’s a mostly free man in England to this day. Depending on what day it is that you’re hearing this. Or seeing this. But at the time that my ass is up here on a ship – an alien ship – hosting this show, he is alive.
I am your host, Captain Blank, defier of adjectives, and welcome to the Alien Night Club.
Man, that was a lot of stuff. I’m kinda tired after all of that. I found it to be rather heavy. Interesting but heavy.
The other two things were body pains and tattoos.
First, body pains. No, wait; it was eye problems. If you have problems with your eyes, like your eyes burn all the time, investigate two things. And this is not medical advice. First, check your nutrition. How much caffeine and alcohol are you consuming and how much fruits and vegetables and other carbohydrates are you consuming? Because your desiccated ass might just be a little bit dehydrated. And eating better will remedy the problem.
The other thing is your hygiene. If your eyes burn, are you washing them on a regular basis? Do you wash your eyes when you wash your face? Do you even wash your face? Because you should. You should be washing your face and your eyes. Including your eyelashes. Think of them the same way you think of your back door. Clean em good.
Which reminds me, if your back door is bothering you, maybe you’re not cleaning it properly, either. Try washing it more thoroughly. See if that soreness or redness doesn’t go away. Now, if it’s something more than that, go see a doctor. As soon as possible. Because if there is something wrong, something REALLY wrong, the sooner you go in there and drop your drawers and bend over and let that doctor get all up in there, the more likely it is that they can give you a cream for it. Rather than telling you that you have six months to live. So don’t be shy.
So that’s assholes and eyeballs. Just be certain to wash your eyes before you wash your ass. Don’t do it the other way around and give yourself pinkeye.
And it’s the same for your mouth. If your gums hurt, it’s because they’re infected. You’re not cleaning them properly. Start doing that and they’ll heal. They’ll stop hurting. If your tooth hurts, go see a dentist.
Now, tattoos.
Who here has a tattoo?
I have zero tattoos.
And I just forgot why this was relevant.
Oh, I remember.
If you have a tattoo, why did you get it?
Was it because you loved that thing that you had tattooed on you?
Or was it because you like the IDEA of being tattooed? Of being a person who HAS tattoos? Who IS a tattooed person?
Because it makes you feel tough or rebellious or in control or more like an individual or whatever?
Some people tell the story of their life through their tattoos.
Other people get a little blue astrological symbol on their butt because it makes them feel naughty and dangerous and sexy.
I’m not opposed to getting one. Perhaps some day. If I could decide what I want.
But I also like being out in the sun too much. Even though I’m a cracker-ass cracker and sunburn very easily, which I hate. I’m not from Georgia, by the way. In Biloxi Blues, the prostitute Mathew Broderick went to see said a cracker is a person from Georgia.
Point being: Sunlight degrades tattoos. The ultraviolet light breaks down the ink. So the sun slowly ruins your tattoo.
The last thing I need is one more thing to worry about: My $4000 tattoo getting exposed to sunlight and getting ruined. Requiring another $1000 worth of touch-ups to fix. Which is inevitable, by the way. Tattoos also fade because your immune system is slowly grabbing the ink out of your skin and taking it to your liver for processing and excretion.
Has anyone ever asked you to be their, quote unquote and pardon moan Fronch, fuck buddy?
If so, what did you say?
That’s a delicate conversation.
It could be either Yes!
Or…the relationship is over.
By the way, Kevin Nealon, I did some of the closed captioning on your videos for your channel. A long time ago. Back before I was shooting spaghetti up my ass and being taken aboard a spaceship by a man with red skin and white hair. I am assuming he was a man. He looked like a guy from Spain. Like Antonio Banderas as Zorro kind of, except with really sexy, suave white hair and flying a big silver spaceship that looked pretty much like a traditional flying saucer and made no noise or sound whatsoever, even when you were onboard and inside of it.
Anyway, Kevin, I hope you’re well. I’ve always loved your work. From way back in the SNL days. I swear, you don’t age. You look the same. Are you an alien?
We talked about vital reaction and the dude being found deceased at the top of a very tall tree wearing a ladies’ bath robe, didn’t we?
Kevin, have you heard about that story? It’s a true story. Unless the documentary I watched was all actors making shit up. But it was on Discovery Channel or History Channel or whatever. And it was presented as historical fact. I’m pretty sure the ufologist – that’s someone who is an expert in this stuff – said that the local sheriff did the investigation and verified the facts of the case.
That’s the thing about ufology: Once you begin down that rabbit hole, the evidence becomes irrefutable. A lot of it is bad footage or bad photos from which nothing can be gleaned. But there is so much evidence that a lot of it is quite compelling. And you get to the point at which you somehow have to reconcile this shit with your belief system and your understanding of reality.
And that may require time. It may take awhile. Because it’s not an easy thing to do. To rearrange your entire belief system based on this new evidence, the preponderance of which is undeniable.
Like that guy who hacked in and found the list of non-terrestrial officers had to do. I’m not sure if he was a believer or a skeptic before he got in there and saw that stuff. But imagine what he was thinking that night or the next day. He’s sitting on a park bench under an almost-sarcastically picture-perfect and quintessentially overcast day, looking at the pigeons all around him, wishing he had something to feed them, and realizing, for the FIRST time, for SURE, that there are spaceships up there somewhere in space, REAL spaceships, and they have people on them. Humans. And God stroke Gawd only knows what they’re doing up there. But they’re up there.
Mind.
Blown.
And if you’ve seen one, you know.
If you’ve been down that rabbit hole, you know.
And here’s the kicker: Everything changes and yet nothing changes.
Your whole life changes because you’re like, Holy shit, aliens are real!
But then nothing changes because you still have to go on with your day-to-day life: Going to work, earning the money you need, trying to be a good person, absentmindedly handling your personal hygiene, wondering why your butthole is sore today, wondering why your eyes are always burning, wondering why your gums hurt when you brush your teeth. Oh, and aliens exist. They’re up there, zipping around. Probably right at this very moment. And if there’s one kind of aliens, there’s probably thousands or millions of different kinds. Because why wouldn’t there be? The aliens in the galaxy or the entire universe is the same as humans on Earth. Just on a bigger scale. Instead of continents, it’s galaxies. Or maybe even cities. Or neighborhoods. Or houses. Because there’s that many of them.
Probably no one knows how many.
But movies depicting a lot of different alien species all together in a cantina, for example, probably aren’t too far off the mark.
And Close Encounters of the Third Kind is alleged to be a training film. Like when you get a new job and they make you sit down and watch a training video, just to give you some idea of what is going on.
That movie is alleged to be like that.
Men In Black.
Hopefully not Independence Day.
Or any given night on the south side of Chicago.
Or Aliens. No face hugger for me, thank you. There’s not enough weed in the world to make that experience a pleasant one.
You’ll notice my shirt: Not a Real Man. Two days in a row. Can’t win em all.
I remembered that other show note, by the way. I actually didn't, I just made up a new one. Which is this: Helicopter.
But we'll come back to that.
You know there are all those news reports about alien UFOs visiting nuclear missile silos and being able to shut down as well as launch the planet killing nuclear missiles? Intercontinental Ballistic Fucking Missiles? ICBFMs. They’re even phallic.
Well, has anyone mentioned that they, the aliens, are obviously making sure they know how to operate them in case we launch them and they need to stop them or they need to launch them at us?
That seems pretty logical.
Also, a question for vegans: If we shouldn’t be eating fish, why are they so good for us?
Everyone knows sushi is super healthy. Like off the charts healthy. And that the Japanese have better than average lifespans.
And it is yummy if it's cooked right. Or breaded and fried and served with tartar sauce.
Have you seen Soylent Green? Or read it? I never have.
Back to the helicopter. Imagine you're getting coffee tomorrow. Or lunch. Whatever. Your usual time and usual place. You've got your coffee and you're doctoring it up and stirring it with the wooden stick and putting the lid on it.
This guy comes up next to you and begins doctoring up his coffee. He's a handsome Black guy who looks to be in his 40s and reminds you of Neil DeGrasse Tyson. He says, Hi.
And you look up and say, Hi.
It's a little weird but not unprecedented. It is nice when people say hello and perhaps throw in a French Fry worth of comedy or wit. Like when you order onion rings and find a fry in the bottom of them.
He says, a bit softer and quite casually as he sips his coffee, I need to talk to you.
And you're like, Um, dubble yoo tee eff. And just as you're about to respond by asking who he is or why, he says, My name is so and so and I'm with the NSA. I'm a special liaison to the US Army.
And just as you're about to say something smart and quippy and irreverent and a tad disrespectful so he knows you're not some pushover, he holds up his ID and a business card and motions for you to take them.
So you do. And you take it and study it. Really read it because you weren't born yesterday. You were born decades ago.
He says, It'll just take a minute and you can leave whenever. But we have a really weird job offer for you.
And he sits down at a table, clearly expecting you to join him. And you totally do. You're not even sure why but you sit down across from him.
He takes his ID back but tells you to keep the card.
He then proceeds to tell you that they were testing a brand new secret stealth attack helicopter in Texas when it got stolen. Fortunately they have another one. And they want you to take it, go get the other one, and bring it back. Or you can blow it up if you haff to. But they prefer that you bring it back. Obviously. But if you haff to blow it up, just please make extra sure that you blow it up really really well.
And finally you're like, What? I don't know how to fly a helicopter. I'm not a pilot. Or a veteran. Or active duty. Why me?
He says, That’s actually exactly what we were wondering, too. It is really weird.
And you say, again, Why me?
And not even because you’re saying No. You're not even to the yes no part yet. You're still stuck on why you. As in, how in the world your name came up in this.
He says, The A.I. picked you.
You say, Excuse me?
He says, enunciating pointedly, The A.I. picked you.
And then you stare at him like an idiot. He drinks his coffee.
Are you sure—
We're sure.
Did you double-check? On a different machine? A different A.I. On another continent?
What do you think? Of course we did. Anyway, the pay is five hundred million, by the way. Payable in full when you get back. With a million up-front to cover your flight training and mission planning and workup and everything.
Flight training?
Well yeah. You're gonna haff to learn to fly a helicopter. Don't worry, it's not that hard. They'll start you on a simulator and after six or seven hours you'll have it. Then you can get into a real one. It's in Mexico, by the way. The stolen one. We think. It hasn't crossed the southern border yet that we're aware of. Nor has it left via boat. Unless they took it apart and packed it into crates disguised as something else. But we don't think they could've done so this quickly.
When was it stolen?
Yesterday.
Yesterday? Seriously?
Yeah. Why?
I don't know, I guess I figured it was more like six months ago and that you guys had tried all kinds of rescue or recovery missions or search and destroy missions or whatever and you're coming to me as a really bad super last resort.
No, actually, we came to you first.
Why?
Because the A.I. said so.
So maybe the A.I. is wrong.
Um, no, not this one. This A.I. is different. It runs everything. And has been for a while now. And it's almost always right. That's the crazy part. And it's why I'm here. Talking to you.
It runs everything?
Everything.
And it's almost always right?
Almost. Ninety-six, ninety-seven percent. On average. Lifetime average. Humans only score in the mid-sixties on average so the A.I. is much better at it than we are.
Well, if it's so smart why didn't it warn you? That the—
Helicopter would get stolen? It did. It told us in the same paragraph that it told us how to build it. Right at the end. It had a whole thing about people trying to steal it so we should take extra precautions. It even provided the precautions.
So why didn't you implement them?
Too expensive. Boss didn't want to finance a probability.
But didn't the A.I. warn you about being too cheap to pay for the extra precautions?
Of course it did. It even suggested several ways we could make some quick cash to pay for it.
And?
Boss didn't want to hear it. Said he knew better. Which is exactly what the A.I. said he would say. After which he said it would get stolen and that if we wanted it back we should come and talk to you. And that that yielded the highest probability of success. So here I am. So?
So what?
Are you interested?
And then he just looks at you, sipping his coffee. Staring at you. Waiting for you to speak. While life goes on around you and your brain struggles to keep up.
So.
What do you say?
That’s our show!
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