Pope John Paul
The II was a
Disney Animatronic

'Well, it's fixable. Just needs a new fan motor for the head. It overheated without it. Any idea how this little motor right here could have gotten so busted up?'�

'Well, the stupid thing fell over all the time! All it had to do was stand, raise its hand, and voice a few phrases, but it just kept falling all over the place!'�

Jeremy Patagalo was hunched over the machine on the oddest call of his life. He had worked on machines and robots most of his life, tinkering with this or that, even through childhood. He had made a few trips to Disney World to help design the 'Hall of Presidents'� exhibit, and this kind of reminded him of that, but it was way stranger.

'Yeah, had Parkinson's disease,'� said one of the robed men. The others all let out a hardy laugh with him.

Another robed man walked in. ' Crowd's getting anxious out there guys. Tired of seeing black smoke I guess.'�

'Yes, well we're still doing our 'holy voting.''� Said one of the other men standing in the church. All lightly chuckled. They had been there too long. It had taken a while to find Mr.Patagalo, and even longer to fly him in.

'Bless you. BLESS YOU! Bllllllllllleeeeeeeeeeeessssssssssssss yooooooouuuuuuuuu.'� The machine sputtered out these words while the mechanics behind the latex face froze somewhere in the last 'bless you.'�

'Somebody sneeze?'� asked Jeremy trying to be funny, but failing. The robed men looked down on him with a frown.

'Jeez,'� he slurred in the 'House of God'�.

He concentrated on his work by tightening a few of the bolts under the neck flap, just to pass time as the miniature fan cooled down the motor.

'Here, try it again,'� said one of the clergy, handing him the little remote.

Pushing one of the buttons, he watched as the gears under the robe moved, until the arm mechanism was erect, and it voiced the words,

' May God be with you.'�

This creeped him out, hearing a hollow lifeless voice give him a blessing, as if thanking him for fixing him, when in truth, it was just as lifeless as the statues and images the people of the church bowed down to and relied on every day. Man hadn't really wanted to worship their maker. They only wanted to worship what they had made.

'Well, seems to be working pretty good. Just don't let it fall over to often. Uh'�if you don't mind me asking, how are you going to pull this off? I mean, magically bring him back to life?'�

'Hardly! We just attach this sucker.'� The Cardinal held up a latex face. 'And we have a new Pope for the next twenty years!'�

'I see. And you guys know how to attach that?'� Jeremy asked, just trying to make conversation while he packed up his tools.

'Yeah, we've done it before,'� said one of them, staring down at the floor.

He heard two of them talking quietly to each other, as if it was all the of sudden some kind of big secret had to be kept from the engineer.
' So the wax one will be buried then? Okay. Didn't know if we could reuse it or not. So do you want to light the smoke?'�

Jeremy made his way towards the door as the robed man who was being talked to walked alongside him.

'It's ritual to light black smoke outside the church when choosing the Pope, and white smoke when the Pope has been chosen.'�

'Ah,'� said Jeremy, trying to feign interest.

'Before all this robot business, we had to find some vegetable at a home who we could make raise his hand and do and say what we asked.'�

'If you don't mind me asking,'� Jeremy said again as he stopped at the closed doorway. 'Why not just have a leader over your organization? I mean, by lying to your people, you're not being very fair to them are you?'�

The man laughed, not really answering the question at all.
They exited as Jeremy descended to the bottom of the singing candle holding crowd. He looked behind him to see the holy man lighting white smoke as the crowd cheered.

A busy looking reporter ran up to him, 'Sir! You just came out of there. Who is the next Pope? How was he chosen? What will he be like?'�

Choosing to answer only the last question, Jeremy smiled as he laughed, 'I'm sure he'll be just like the last one.'�

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