Admit it, there’s something missing from your life. No, no, I’m not referring to the usual: sex, fiber, joy, meaning, love, respect. Think of something that you once watched with concern and incredulity. That’s right, TV focus groups! Yes folks, they’re back—along with that guy wearing a bad rug and asking questions of the clueless. I’ve missed them, I honestly have. Ever since the (hijacked) elections there’s been a void in my life and then, last night, there they were. Back again, that clutch of dim-witted, overweight, gormless, Morlocks, taking the national pulse, telling us what we really think.

Eighty percent said he was lying, slimy—a weasel. Seventy percent said he was withholding something—duh! But, surely you know, Citizens, that this was a ruse, a clever gimmick to throw you off the scent. In pursuit of a red herring they say, Let’s have Professors of Body Language on the tube to parse his shifty eyes, his lizard-like tongue, the vapid, affectless expression. Let’s hear ex-New York cop Bo Dietl analyze the "fluctualitations" of the vocal patterns on his stress meter and then add, "Aw, gimme ten minutes alone in a room wid dis creep." All the while the real horror behind Gary Condit has yet to be revealed.

The true scandal is Congress itself. Zombies, psychotemporal parasites, cyborgs, class N replicants, all of them. A source close to a washroom attendant who was close to the uncle of a congressional usher told me this alarming tale: about ten years ago they started running out of space in the cemeteries around Washington for congressmen that had died of boredom during congressional hearings on pork belly subsidies and, when their demise went unnoticed for weeks at a time, someone came up with the bright idea of storing the bodies, not in vaults and mausoleums, but in Congress itself. Who would notice?

The re-animators got to work, body parts were harvested from various war zones, state of the art nano-technology was employed. Imitation-of-life in the case of the odd, burned-out congressman wasn’t that hard. Pacemakers, electro-jolt central-nervous-system stimulators, and the threat of campaign-finance reform was enough to bring back the illusion of vitality. All that’s required of one of these guys, after all, is to sit through mind-numbing debates, walk to and fro in the halls of congress, and pat babies on the head with one hand while accepting cash-filled envelopes with the other. Basic neuro-motor operations.

Verizon provided the speech technology, and that wasn’t all that taxing a problem either. All you need is a database with sufficient boilerplate for any occasion: "family values," "a committee is investigating the problem," "our children are our future," "I can’t comment on that at this time," "my esteemed colleague," and "I’ve got to go back to work for the American people."

The principle problem with a congress almost entirely composed of stiffs is that the ghastly deception might be uncovered. The Federal Psych Squad soon got on the case and came up with an ingenious solution: scandal. Although the spin doctors, in my opinion, went a little overboard when they started planting those, "I was Gary Condit’s sex slave" stories in the Star. Still, it’s true that in the vital-signs department, scandal is a critical indicator. Scandal is life for people who find the humdrum murmur of existence excruciatingly dreary. They long for the over-amped exhilaration of outrage, of the quasi-criminal act, the manic buzz of transgression against everything that’s noble and decent in life, lunging recklessly into the lusty heart of the beast. Ergo, anyone involved in a scandal is lively—very lively. All you gotta do every once in a while is cobble up a scandal involving one of these re-animated congressmen and nobody will ever be the wiser.

How else would you explain Gary Condit’s behavior with Connie Chung and his repeat performance with a Modesto reporter? His expression was that of a cadaver. The gray, necrous flesh barely reacting to Chung’s urgent questioning. The animatronics’ guys need to work out the bugs in this department—I’ve seen more facial expression in Saturday-morning claymation lamp. Behind Condit’s extruded-polymer flesh the eyeballs ricocheted in their sockets like demented pinballs. The occasional shadow of a sleazy smirk was evidently only the result of faulty programming.

If anything comes out of the aftermath of the Gary Condit story it’s the demoralizing realization that Congress—the very body responsible for our welfare and destiny—is full of soulless, ruthless, self-serving automatons, devoid of any flicker of humanity or any shred of common decency.

Condit is clearly just another shallow sociopath roaming the Beltway like a disembodied ghoul. With his affectless responses and rote answers he would have had a hard time passing the Bladerunner replicant test. His inability to admit he did anything wrong, lied to anybody, or obstructed any investigation marks him as a career android, and his inability to show a shred of remorse only proves the old adage, "being a robot means never having to say you’re sorry."

Gary Condit is a humorless, narcissistic dolt, so programmed by his minders that if a waiter were to ask him whether he prefers oil & vinegar or Creamy Italian, he’d probably reply, "I've been married 34 years. I have not been a perfect man. I have made mistakes in my life. But out of respect for my family, and out of a specific request by the Levy family, it is best that I not get into the details of the relationship."

All those minders, and nobody thought to tell him not to repeat the same phrase five times… verbatim? But wait a minute, look who’s coaching him—Abbe Lowell, another android (but on speed). Haven’t you noticed the little switch on the side of his neck?