Good evening.  My name is Joe.

I am a Sentinel.

Please don’t run away.  I’ve just come here to talk.  Okay?  Just talk.  That’s all.

I know that there’s a big difference between us.  But believe me, with a little faith, eighteen feet is not that big a barrier.  Trust me.

Now, then.  I feel it’s time that you get to know us.  To know me, anyway.  As a living, thinking, breathing...well...two out of three isn’t bad...being.  We have feelings, just like you.  You’ve got a lousy job you don’t like to get up to every weekday.  You’ve got a boss that just won’t listen to you.  You have people you don’t like to deal with.

Hey.  We’re not that far apart, believe me.

Just because one of us is a pre-programmed death machine with the power of a NASA liftoff booster and the other is a rather short organic who could be ripped to pulp by a speeding Volkswagen doesn’t mean we haven’t got common ground.  I feel it’s time our story was told.  It’s time you got to know us as Just Folks.

To begin: you may think we’ve got something against mutants.  Well, pal, lemme tell you: it’s just the job.  That’s all.  We don’t have anything more against mutants than we have against most other people, with the possible exclusion of Enron executives.  We’re like, well, soldiers.  Do you think every soldier who drops a bomb on somebody he’s told to goes down there first and makes a list of everybody and says, “I don’t like you, stay here, I do like you, get out quick”?

Nah.  That’s not the way it is.  We’re pre-programmed.  We take orders, because we have to.  And we do our job.  Once it’s done, we head back to the Big House and have a few cold fusion rechargers.   You want to talk about bonding?  You ought to know it, man.

You think we’re prejudiced because we only target mutants.  Isn’t that kind of hypocritical?  I mean, do you consider it politically incorrect for an exterminator to go after just cockroaches, or wasps, or some other kind of insect?  We specialize.  That’s the best way to do our job.  If there’s a more efficient way, I haven’t seen it.  There’s no prejudice, absolutely none, involved.  If you’re a mutant, you’re dead.  That doesn’t involve prejudice in any way.  And you know it.

But I hear some of you out there saying, “Oh, but we love mutants!  We really love them!  You shouldn’t just pick on mutants!”  Yeah, you’re probably the ones out there putting up fansites for the Blob, and the Marauders, and the Freedom Force, and the NOW and all of those other mutie supremacist organizations.  You never make any distinction between the muties you love, and the muties you hate.  To you, it’s just all muties.

Well, I’ve got news for you.  To us, it’s just all muties, too.  There.  Satisfied?  We’re just like you.

And some of you say, “But you shouldn’t have got that particular mutant!  I loved her!”  Well, let me tell you: sometimes it is not all that easy to avoid.  I mean, consider the size of my foot assembly unit.  When I lay this thing down, it comes down with tons of p.s.i. every time.  And it has a big cross-square area.  So that if I lay it down, and all of a sudden the bottom comes up kinda gooey, and you tell me it used to be a little kid named Kitty who you really had a fixation for...well, I’m sorry.  Sometimes I cannot be that accurate, okay?  Do you think that all the bombs in Desert Storm went absolutely to the places they were supposed to go?

Being a Sentinel is like a hard and unthankful duty.  You go where you’re programmed, you do what you’re programmed, you kill who you’re programmed to.  But we perform a service, let me tell you.  Look at it this way.  You have 12 comic books a month coming out just about mutants.  That’s not even counting the specials and spinoffs.

See how much simpler things would be if you’d just sit back and let us do our job?

Everything cleaned up.  No muss, no fuss.  But you have to make a big deal about it.  You have to get on committees and protest our methods and make communities No Sentinel Flying Zones.  Do you really think you’re making it easier on yourselves, or on us, by doing so?

Of course not.

That’s why I want you to do something.  Just for me.  Next time you see a Sentinel flying by in the sky, I want you to look up.  I want you to smile.  And I want you to wave to him.  Because, buddy, he’s doing the job that you couldn’t do.  He’s keeping the world safe from mutants.  Safe for you, and safe for him.

Unless, of course, you’re a mutant.

And if that’s the case, be patient.  We’ll get to you soon as we have time.  Believe it.

24-foot-robots are people too.

Don’t ever forget that.

Ever.

(Paid for by the Committee For the Rehabilitation of the Images of and Advancement of Anti-Mutant Killer Death Machines.)

*****
The Sentinels are property of Marvel Comics.  No money is being made on this fict, no infringement is intended.  No anti-mutant killer death machines were harmed in production.

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