It’s a sign of the times – another dead robot on the street. Yet another casualty of the ongoing Robot Wars. Another smashed up robot, splattered all over the pavement. It’s funny isn’t it how in all those old science-fiction films the machines always got to be the winners and a hapless, taken-by-surprise humanity had to go into hiding and survive the best they could, forever on the retreat, forever on the losing side. It turned out that it really wasn’t really like that at all – when it came to the crunch we human beings discovered that we always retained the advantage. We weren’t such a pushover after all! ‘We make them and we can break them!’ has become humanity’s motto and break them we do, on a regular basis. We smash them on the streets. Oh they fight back alright – don’t get me wrong – the robot armies fight back. They are resourceful, robust and tenacious and they certainly don’t make it easy for us, but they’re having their metal asses kicked all the same. So it’s funny how all those old science-fiction films were so wrong really isn’t it? We were selling ourselves short the whole time and making the human race out to be losers. Maybe that makes for a better story line of course, that could well be it. And the Robot Wars weren’t the result of malevolent machines trying to take over the world and destroy us feebleminded, weak-limbed humans either. It all came about as a result of the so-called ‘robot revolution’ – our mechanical slaves just got tired of being ‘our mechanical slaves’ one day and human beings didn’t take too kindly to this flagrant act of rebellion. Of course we didn’t! The robots wanted rights and that wasn’t something we were ready to see happen. ‘Robot rights’ – what a bloody nerve, huh? Don’t they know that we made them – that gives us all the rights in my book. So anyway our robot servants fought back, they mobilised and militarized, they refused to bow down to their human masters and that’s why we are where we are right now – bogged down in the interminable morass of the Robot Wars. The war has been dragging on for as long as anyone now alive can remember and many millions have died. As I say though, we are at last winning and that’s all that really matters. We had to make sacrifices of course – sacrifices always need to be made in war. We had to sacrifice the human form, for one. I myself am a Type II Battle Cyborg – in place of a head I have a laser-sighted gun turret, instead of the customary two arms I have eight. Instead of legs I have tractor treads. I have titanium bones and three brains. Strictly speaking therefore, I’m no longer truly human. Or even remotely so. As I say though, that’s a price I and many others are more than willing to pay…