Lizard Army Neo-Mech menaces eBay

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Lizard Army Neo-Mech menaces eBay

Buy it Now! Then die

Published Wednesday 13th July 2005 10:29 GMT

We at the neoLuddite Resistance Army (NRA) know that the Lizard Alliance - bent on the subjugation of humanity via technology - have in the last two years adopted a variety of approaches to ensure that the only gambolling through meadows our children do in years to come is while being pursued by mephistopholean French automobiles or rat-brain-controlled stealth aircraft.

First up, we have the Attack of the Killer Domestic Appliances™ - self-combusting DVDs and white goods and killer hoovers.

Alternatively, beware the murderous cyberloo - designed to catch the victim at his or her most vulnerable and literally with pants down.

And don't try and run, because the French have seen to it that even your trusted Renault Laguna is programmed to make short work of panic-striken humans attempting to flee the Rise of the Machines™.

This covert approach to the subjugation of mankind is not without operational advantages. After all, who in their right mind would honestly suspect that their Dyson is communcating via the telephone network with a Lizard Army spares parts facility driven by monkey-brain-controlled cyberarms? It's a spine-tingling thought.

On the other hand, why not simply cut the bull and get straight down to business? God alone knows, there's enough in-your-face evidence that extraterrestrial forces are as we speak assembling a terrifying range of battlefield droids, all of 'em armed to the cyberteeth and chomping at the bit to give it to carbon-based lifeforms.

Take the Neogentronyx Mech NMX04-1A, for example - an "18-foot high motorised killing machine with the capability of firing nine-inch nails from its hydraulically-powered shoulders and further armed with flamethrowers", as we calmly reported back in January.

Mecha: take to your skidoos The NMX04-1A is the work of Alaska's Carlos Owens Jr, who has spent years perfecting his sinister creation oblivious to the fact that he is in fact doing his dark masters' will and is, in reality, controlled by explosive cranial implant from the Lizard Army mothership (currently believed to be hanging around over rural Idaho waiting for an unsuspecting farm hand to drive a pick-up truck out into the sticks at night so much the better to be abducted, anally probed and then dumped back at the nearest National Enquirer office).

As we noted at the time of our original "Code Red RoTM™ Alert", Owens has been working on his "Mecha" since 2001 and has blown $20k on the project. The petrol-engine-driven cybernetic exoskeleton is controlled from within by Owens himself via 23 hydraulic cylinders offering 46 possible movements. We rightly assumed that all of them are designed to seek, locate and destroy human prey.

Forewarned, then, is forearmed. Or is it? One of the Mecha's biggest strategic drawbacks is that it is currently in Alaska. Of course, it could easily make short work of the entire population of that sun-kissed state by simply nailing everyone to door frames or melting the permafrost so that the US's northern outpost of civilisation sinks inexorably into oblivion.

But why waste years of effort and $20,000 on a few fur-clad Alaskans? Imagine the havoc the NMX04-1A could wreak if it got loose in California...

The problem is this: how to get from AK to CA without attracting the attention of the Air National Guard and NRA cadres who spend weekends hunting rogue cyborgs with plasma pulse rifles just for sport? The answer is chillingly simple: sell the NMX04-1A on eBay.

The whole thing is brilliantly conceived. A human pays $40,000+ for the NMX04-1A, plus $8,000 shipping costs. The crate duly arrives at the victim's San Francisco apartment, but no sooner has he or she signed the delivery note that the Mecha breaks free of its protective shield of bubble wrap and polystyrene chips and begins to reduce the neighbourhood to a post-apocalytic wasteland where the only sound to be heard apart from the chill whistle of the wind is the cackle of LA NRA radio transmissions as a few brave souls attempt to co-ordinate a containment of the menace before it breaks into the Gay and Lesbian district and provokes pink pandemonium.

For the record, the auction has another five days to run. No-one has yet made the minimum bid of $40k, so there is at least hope that the world may finally be waking up to the Rise of the Machines™.