Don’t touch that dial

Don’t touch that dial.

Or anything.

Please stay tuned, while comms are still up.

Now would be a good time for someone to roll out the androids.

Weren’t the Sauds working on that? Or Honda?

They’ve cancelled all the sporting events. Now what? How about some Rock’m Sock’m robots?

How can we sit at home, with all this time on our hands? Not being allowed out in public. How much gaming, watching video or even reading can we do?

I guess the Bucks won as they have the best record in the NBA.

That’s good for Milwaukee. Probably won’t have a Democratic Convention there the way things are going…

Bad luck.

And they just legalized sportsbook betting in Illinois and there’s no one to bet on. And nowhere to go.

Roll out the androids. And android spectators. We could all have an avatar that could live on our behalf while we are quarantined to our homes. Alone, eating rice and beans, canned tuna (with vegetable oil as the kind with water is long gone) and horde toilet paper.

As for the androids, it probably would be a good idea to have them man critical infrastructure while the humans are sick at home.

Before we have them playing basketball.

Who’s going to run the sewage plants with all that toilet paper?

What about first responders?

Androids with water cannons. But not PFAS. We’ll dwell on that disaster another time if we get through this one.

Medical personnel.

Androids that don’t get sick and have good bedside manner.

It was the good Dr. Li Wenliang, of Wuhan that blew the whistle and then died February 7 of the virus.

It’s said to be under investigation.

Even Socialist countries that provide healthcare to their people are falling apart. All the more reason to have an inadequate health system, as perpetuated here in the US, where there’s money to be made from this global pandemic.

Masks, test kits.

Toilet paper.

Androids.

You’re working in a nuclear power plant. To get into the control room, you enter your code into the keypad, take out your Lysol handy wipes to clean off the biometric hand reader. It is coupled to the access control. Without that, you of course are locked out.

And you want to be sure you wipe down everything for the next person. Just like at the gym.

You place your hand on the sensor and the gunk from the handy wipes disallows the sensor to communicate a valid read. You remain locked out. The core melts down. Poof. Power is lost across the grid. Toilet paper then backs up at sewage plants nationwide. Pew. Then the plant blows up.

Kaboom.

The astronauts in the ISS, told to stay up there, they take pictures. Who will view them remains to be seen.

Now, or rather last year, would have been a good time to have had retinal scans installed, instead of machines where you must put your hands on them, or a thumb – if they worked.

Meanwhile, from a nebulizer as a test, new studies said the virus could be found in the air for up to three hours after release. It was detected up to four hours on copper, and twenty-four hours on cardboard. And, brace yourself, up to two to three days on plastic and stainless steel.

Don’t they ship a lot of things in cardboard boxes? Maybe next day air is a bad choice. Go Ground and make sure you don’t open the box until the fourth day.

Keep your hands away from that plastic.

What about copper? Is the virus swimming along all that copper wire used for everything we know and love – like the myriad of devices, cabling everywhere and ass pennies.

Stainless steel? Letting things rust is better?

Androids – don’t use copper in their circuitry or house them in stainless steel.

Where did this alien invader come from?

What about the 5G network? There was some talk online that the virus was linked to its rollout. That was almost immediately ruled out. More likely it was just a bioterrorist incident that is being covered up. Or somebody didn’t wash their hands at the Level 4 lab in Wuhan. Maybe it’s just those mystery space organisms clinging to the International Space Station that then hitched a ride Earth-side. Probably not, otherwise the outbreak would have originated in Russia. Let’s not even think of the melting polar regions of our planet releasing micro-organisms frozen for eons.

On the bright side, androids could police our streets too.

Maybe they already do.

We’ve been programmed and readied for this – for some time now. Science fiction, pop culture has pointed to this. Unlike the zombie apocalypse, these are our co-workers, celebrities and politicians, friends, our neighbors, our relatives…

Please don’t shoot them.

That’s discussion for yet another dilemma. What about the gun violence pandemic?

Well, try to get some toilet paper while you can.

One good thing, robots don’t need it

Or canned tuna.

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Writers note:

Shostakovich Symphony 7 performed by the Frankfurt Radio Symphony provided the soundtrack for the creation of this piece as streamed on YouTube

Illustration by Jeff Worman