Ooooh, we've got a double-whammy sorta thing going on, here, folks. Steve Jobs's cancer surgery and subsequent month-long hiatus has effectively yoinked Fearless Leader from command central, and his duties of infusing All Things Apple with his inherent sense of vibrancy and drama, which has left the plot landscape flat and lifeless; meanwhile, since no one has any exciting Apple news to chew on other than what shall be referred to by generations to come as the Unfortunate Pancreas Incident, everybody's stewing in counterproductive musings about their own mortality-- or, even more depressing, Steve's mortality. As a result, the entire Mac community is sullen and moody and eating whole pints of Ben & Jerry's in their underwear and following that up with half a bottle of vodka and phoning their ex-boyfriends or -girlfriends at three A.M. and sobbing about how life's too short.

It's... Well, it's not pretty. There. We said it.

C'mon, people, the man's going to be fine! But sure, we understand, the natural reaction to news like this is to start questioning Steve's immortality altogether, which is why the media is flooded with articles channeling this impulse into newsworthy ponderings about what Apple would do if Steve were to be suddenly sat on by an escaped zoo hippo or something; just take a peek at the last couple of days' worth of MacSurfer headlines and you'll see what we mean. Anxiety over the apparent mortality of a godlike figure has everyone and his grandmother wondering what would happen to Apple's stock if Steve were to snuff it.

At random, we'll point you to this Macworld UK article which says that analysts (including our ol' pal Rob Enderle, who miraculously manages to keep his foot out of his mouth for thirteen whole syllables) and investors are concerned about the whole Jobs Mortality Wildcard, because he's "iconic," "very much tied to the Apple name", and "the driving force behind Apple's re-emergence." In other words, if Steve is Apple, what happens to Apple if Steve takes the dirt nap? The report even perpetuates the recent rumors that Apple has indeed been looking to bring in a new CEO to handle the day-to-day stuff so Steve could instead focus entirely on "the vision thing" and has allegedly been chatting up "former chairman and CEO of the Warner Music Group, Roger Ames" about taking the position.

Now, we don't know Roger Ames from two holes in the ground, and although he does have a vaguely Jobsian look to him, until we see him in a black mock turtleneck there's simply no way we'll be able to judge his aptness for the position. Besides, the very notion that Apple may be looking for a successor to groom really interferes with our steadfast denial about the whole "Steve not living forever" thing. Longtime viewers know that we've already covered this distasteful topic once or twice, so we don't really need to address it again, other than to remind you all that while we originally reported that Apple was cloning Steves like crazy to cope with just such an eventuality, later on we retracted that report as a typo. And yet we're still not worried, because now our sources close to the company report that Steve has a portrait of himself up in his attic that keeps aging while he stays daisy-fresh.

And if that doesn't make you feel any better, then consider this: AtAT operatives working on the inside inform us that there's an ever-increasing smattering of evidence that, yes, Steve was in the hospital for surgery and does need a month to recuperate, but the whole "pancreatic tumor" thing was just a convenient cover story. If these sources are correct, then Steve's Gulfstream jet crash-landed in the desert on Friday and teams of government and Apple surgeons spent the weekend fitting a badly-injured Steve with a bionic eye, a bionic arm, and two bionic legs, making him better. Stronger. Faster. And all to the tune of roughly six million dollars.

Seriously, they can rebuild him. They have the technology. So quit worrying, already.