Mr. Speaker, Mr. Chief Justice, President Obama, Vice President Biden, Senator McConnell, Dr. von Hellish, fellow citizens:
We observe today not a victory over death but a celebration of life — symbolizing an end as well as a beginning; signifying renewal as well as change. My return to the world of the living takes place exactly fifty years after my abrupt and unexpected withdrawal from it.
The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human death and all forms of human life. We face a future in which computers can deliver us information at the speed of light, and in which man can walk on the surface of distant planets, but in which the specter of terrorism hangs over every land, disease and pollution stalk the globe, and even former presidents find themselves inexplicably craving the gamey tang of human flesh.
We dare not forget today that we have a responsibility to every one of our fellow men, be they young or old, male or female, alive or undead. Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans — born in the previous century, killed in that same century, slowed by assassination, revived in this century by little-understood necrotechnology, and disciplined by a hard and bitter period of lying insensate in a steel box. I come to you proud of of my newfound heritage, and unwilling to witness or permit the rapid undoing of my human rights — rights to which this nation should find itself committed, and to which I am committed today to the exclusion of all else, even finding out who put a rifle shell through my melon when I was at my most charismatic.
Let every nation know, whether it wishes me well or ill, that I shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of the recently formerly deceased as a class. This much I pledge–and more.
To my old allies whose friendship I share, I pledge the loyalty of faithful companions. In philosophical terms this means a union from which nothing cannot be accomplished; in practical terms it means that I almost certainly will not feast upon your still-living organs and muscles. I come back from the dead today not as someone seeking to split your bodies asunder, but to bind them together for a common purpose to meet a powerful challenge.
To those newly arisen whom I welcome to the ranks of the no-longer-dead, I pledge my word I shall be your tireless advocate: I will be president of the dead with all the dedication and intensity that I was president of the living. But I shall always hope to find you strongly supporting your own freedom — remembering that it’s one thing to eat at a buffet, and another thing to open your own restaurant, if you know what I’m saying and I think you do.
To those people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, I pledge my best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required — not because I seek their votes, but because it is right. That said, if the everyday pressures of living in seemingly perpetual squalor and struggle prove too burdensome, no one will fault you. Consider a career in food service, which I predict with the boldness of newly reawakened consciousness, startling in degree for one missing such large parts of his brain, will soon be the growth industry of this new century.
Finally, to those individuals who would make themselves our adversaries, we offer not a pledge but a request: that both sides begin anew the quest for mutual cooperation and access to unwanted surplus population, before the dark powers of destruction unleashed by science engulf all humanity in planned or accidental self-destruction. Mostly planned. That’s not a threat. I’m a uniter.
I do not shrink from the responsibility of being the first dead former president to be brought back by eldritch machines to haunt the White House as a living corpse — I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us should waste time in recriminations against the still-deceased Vice President Johnson, the soon-to-be-deceased children and grandchildren of certain mob figures, or the deliciously spicy Fidel Castro. Let us move on to the problems of today, and let the conspiracies of yesterday be washed away down the drain like so much offal, bone chips and human hair. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to our endeavors will light our country and all who serve it — and the glow from that fire can truly light the world much better than an actual fire, which I would like to point out now frightens and alarms me.
And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your zombie can do for you — ask what you can do for your zombie.