(Extracted from http://wiki.mindcloud.org/wiki/Die_Zukunft-Kriege ;-D)

[edit] DIE ZUKUNFT-KRIEGE

by Tristan Miller

"HQ says we gotta take that hill tonight, between 1930 and 2200 EST tonight!" said the sergeant, pointing through the large hole in the wall. C-squad had been stationed in this shelled IKEA store for five days now, undetected by the enemy soldiers that patrolled the area.

The battle plan was well conceived. The opposing forces had taken heavy losses when a piece of corporate art collapsed upon them during a weapons test. The enemy in this sector were outnumbered, and the optimal demographic would be watching.

Just then the earth began to shake. Remnants of kit furniture began to strain at their moorings. With a crash, a display toilet hit the ground from the wrecked upper storey. The shaking intensified and suddenly the whole shop was plunged into darkness. "Take cover!" bellowed the sergeant, and the soldiers in their bright red uniforms hid as best they could amongst the boxes of plastic and plywood. No sooner had they done this than out of the darkness appeared two sinister yellow eyes, shining with headache-inducing brightness. The interior of the store was flooded in the sickly fluence, nothing was left unjaundiced . A massive fist followed by an equally massive arm cleaved through what was left of the upper storey, showering the area with translucent plastic and chrome. The soldiers could see it now - one of the gargantuan robots that were the defining image of the Future Wars.

Standing at least as tall as three hundred men, these robots continued to exact a worrying toll on Earth Goverment forces. Their exteriors consisting chiefly of riveted steel, they came in a variety of forms. Some resembled dragons, others possessed the right number of extremeties to be labelled humanoid. This specimen was clearly modelled after the Colossus of Rhodes; a perfect statue of a man, made menacing by its mobility and its rusted exterior. Holding aloft a gigantic ceremonial mace, this titan peered down into the ruined building at the white logos emblazoned on the cowering soldiers' backs...

A thin laser beam scanned back and forth across the sergeant. With a noise that overwhelmed the senses of the men and threatened to cave in the very sky, the machine about-faced and wandered away. Shocked, the soldiers watched as it trampled through several large buildings as easily as a human pushes through a small shrub. After a short time, it had passed completely out of sight and an eerie calm began to take hold. One soldier took his bright-red regulation baseball cap in hand and began to shiver violently. Seeing the state of his men, the sergeant perched upon an attractive pine-finish office desk and prepared to give them the pep talk of a lifetime. Almost on cue, a camera crew in grey camoflague appeared unnoticed from behind a large chunk of concrete and began filming.

"Men, we are the real thing! We are the big bold taste that's always just right! Yes! It's twice time that we've scared off one of those machines, not to mention wave after wave of our pasty-faced friends. Three million victories a day, you can taste our quality! We had to be good to get where we are, so bounce back to normal! The ice-cold sun begins to set, and our hour of reckoning draws near! MAKE IT REAL!!!"

"REAL!!!" replied the soldiers, with proud determination on their faces. Tonight was going to be a big night.

Row after row of the giant machines occupied the warehouse, a repeating pattern of steel tubing and glistening logos, similar in effect to the buttresses and columns of a large cathedral. The transport vehicles would arrive shortly to collect this collossal cargo. Factories had been working double-time ever since the Wars began, with hundreds of warehouses like this one being filled and emptied on a daily basis. Why so much priority was given to producing these ambiguous looking constructs was unknown to the factory workers. The only external detail was the large Earth Government logo bolted to the front of each machine. The only information that could be extracted was that this incredibly expensive operation was worth the price to Earth Government. It wasn't the place of a factory worker to investigate into their purposes, anyhow...the job paid well enough to prevent any sort of strike or insurrection.

The roof of the factory slid open with a groan as a fleet of large helicopters approached. One by one, each of the dormant units was attached by chain and cable to a helicopter, hanging beneath as the aircraft clumsily lifted it away. Humans swarmed from machine to machine, ensuring the connections were sure. Soon the factory was empty, and the fleet of helicopters now assembled, hovering, over an equally empty plain of grey rubble. The setting sun briefly gave the sky colours that this blasted Earth could only behold with envy. As darkness fell, the helicopters sped off to deliver their cargo.

Steve's rare cellular condition proved to be a blessing when he was 'chosen' for a secret government medical trial. When all of the calcium in his body was replaced with Strontium-90, his enhanced resistance to radiation really proved its worth.

Why Earth Government conducted such trials is still a matter of some debate. Some scholars stipulate that they were attempting to engineer a new kind of super-soldier, whereas others are of the opinion that Earth Government carried out these experiments because they wanted to see if they could, and thought it would be cool. However, the vast majority of peer-reviewed journal articles incorporate elements of both arguments into their analyses.

While Steve's radiation resistance allowed him to be the "radioactive man of the future," the extra strain on his body due to all that cell death had the effect of making him a total arsehole. So it wasn't just that he'd give severe radiation poisoning to anyone within a couple of metres of him; he'd piss them off while doing it. In the end, these humans were left to wander the blasted wastelands of the Future, screaming for their lost lives.

Such is the nature of Future War Syndrome. Unfortunately, treatments were almost as debilitating as the condition, usually involving sequestration in a lead box in a tub of heavy water for as long as the sufferer remained dangerously radioactive, which, by a cruel twist of the Syndrome, would be much longer than their normal lifespan.

Steve sucked down some of the thick gruel from the feeding tube, his only connection to the outside world. In acceptance of his fate, he had stopped counting the arrivals of meals, which delineated day from day in his dark world. For the last ten years he had occupied himself by using his radioactivity to pit and burn the interior of the 'box' into patterns and records of his thoughts. In this way he maintained his sanity, telling himself that it would mean that his story would live on after his time.

Sadly, this was not to be the case. Victims of the Syndrome were routinely buried without being removed from the lead boxes. Five years after the last of the sufferers died, there was an unrelated decision to rid the world of its incredible stockpiles of nuclear waste by launching it all into the Sun. Under this new policy, the grave sites of people like Steve were classified as launch-grade, and subsequently vaporised.