There Will Be Walrus First Volume V

They send me in alone. I'm the elite. The best of my kind. A titanium behemoth built with one job in mind. In war you need someone like me - somebody who can get the dirty jobs done, the jobs nobody else can take. They know I'm the only one who can handle the psychological trauma, the stench, the stain of conflict.

I crack open the triple sealed bulkhead door. The outpost still has power. I have my own thermonuclear back-up generator but I'll make use of whatever erg-source I can find. An operative like me has to take what we can find. Improvise. Adapt. Survive.

Get in and get out. When I've gone there will be no trace that I was ever there.

There are scorch marks on the walls. Plasma bolts have charred the concrete. I track the line of fine and asses the damage. The wall is secure but the damage is structural - not my field. I've got bigger worries.

The enemy hit the outpost hard. A breach into the gymnasium near the where the bunker interfaces with the living wrong. Smart. Sealant foam around the breach to stop pressure loss.

I scan for life signs. Nothing. This place is a tomb. Doesn't matter. They don't send my kind to mourn the dead. There will be enough time for weeping widows later. I have to focus on mission priorities.

I follow the schematics. The officer's quarters are past the secondary bulk heads.

In the vestibule before the Base Commander's office I find the bodies. A Squirm - the green, gelatinous inhabitants of the Borealis Nebula. An inverter grenade sucked it inside out, blew it apart and baked the remains. The walls and floor are covered in it. I know what I have to do.

"Sergeant Atomic - sit rep asap copy over."

"Its bad captain" I reply, my eyes narrowing as I assess the damage.

"Grue dammit Atomic, you knew what you were getting yourself into."

"Captain, this carpet...it's silk, Grue dammit. Silk!"

Silk. When will HQ learn? Didn't I warn them? A synthetic fibre or even wool - that I could clean just with the careful application of a detergent, warm water and some methodical scrubbing. But silk? In what grue damn upper-echelon puke's mind did silk carpet sound like a smart idea?

I extrude the diamond tip needle effectors onto my forelimbs. I'll need to pick off each fragment of Squirm remains from that carpet - piece by grue-dammit piece.

I'm the elite. The best. The enemy whispers my name - they call me THE CLEANER.

Behold the Valiants

Introduction by Timothy the Talking Cat. Flappypants wrote this. I checked it for suspicious stuff but it looked safe. Lots of shooting and manly heroes, just like I asked for.

Behold the Valiants

By Camouflage Flappypants (ha ha, I changed his name!)

There were only six of us left in the foxhole. Our mortar attack on the Citadel of Evil had gone rapidly pear-shaped when we were caught in RPG crossfire from the Citadel. The psychoactive deception shielding prevented us from perceiving the true structure of the Citadel - it shimmered in our vision, taking on the appearance of a normal office building.

I could see my comrades were becoming disheartened. They had begun to doubt their vision, themselves, their trust in our leader and their faith in the mission. Was I strong enough? Did I have it in me to lead? Somebody would need to take charge and sarge had bought it back when the dropship had collided into a gun emplacement disguised as a florist.

I closed my eyes and prayed. I prayed not for victory and not for salvation but for hope.

I looked up and it was if God had sent us an angel.

An angel framed in light and carrying forty pounds of XM312 heavy machine gun like a lesser man might carry a satchel of beatnik inspired poetry books. For this man the point five-oh Browning Machine Gun cartridge was his Ginsberg and forty rounds per minute in five to seven round bursts was his Kerouac.

He looked down at us, his expression caught between pity and contempt.

"You let the enemy double-down. Have you forgotten my teachings?" he asked but we could not answer because the weight of his disappointment fell on us like brooding thunder clouds approaching a desolate beach of moral betrayal. We knew we had failed him and we knew we would sacrifice anything to regain his esteem. But we also knew hope had come and salvation and the promise of victory - in the form of Field Marshal Vax Doy Phd, MBE, Grande Maitre Légion d'honneur and Nobel prize recipient three times over.

His shirt had been torn away by the blast of the rocket propelled grenade attacks from the citadel of evil, exposing his rippling muscles, that rippled as he stretched his arms southwards pointing us to safety. The muscles in his arms rippled as he showed us the way - yes, a retreat but one with honour and one made knowing that we would be back to fight again. As we left he turned his head scowling at the citadel, the muscles at the back of his head also rippling as his mighty brow flexed in anger at his mortal and cowardly enemies.

We headed south towards our extraction point. Behind Field Marshall Vax kept up covering fire, accurately picking off enemy snipers with his precision machine gun technique. With his spare hand he lit a cigar as the muscles in that little spot between his ear and his jaw rippled in the light of the setting sun

Safely in the belly of the specially customised Boeing CH-47 Chinook, its twin engine tandem rotors purring like a benevolent but angry mother lioness that is pulling its cubs away from a pack of hyenas by their scrawny knocks, we sat shame faced as Field Marshal Vax looked out at the field of our defeat.

"Now listen men, we are heading back east to take out a secondary target." said Vax, his voice rippling with authority in the same manner as his thigh muscles rippled through his tight uniform.

"East, sir?" queried the roookie recruit timorously, "By the position of the sun we appear to be heading South?"

We all shook our head knowingly. Classic rookie error.

"Are you going all gamma on me private?" glared Vax, his eyes pinning the rocky to his seat like iron pilling pressed home by a pile driver.

Vas turned and addressed us all: "Platoon! What mistake did this here private make?"

"Sir!" we all replied in unison "He treated your description of our direction as dialectic sir!"

"And what should he have done?" asked Vax, his commanding voice booming out over the drone of the Chinook's powerful motors.

"Sir! He should have recognised that it was rhetoric sir!"

"That's right. Only a gamma confuses rhetoric with dialectic son." He said turning to the rocky with a more conciliatory tone. "If you ever want to be anything more than a gamma then you've got to learn that damn quick."

The Chinook dropped into high-stealth mode as we descended to land into Sea Girt, Monmouth County, New Jersey. We spread out in a delta-N assault landing formation, as the helicopter lifted off behind us. Just ahead was a sign saying "Mitchelville, Iowa" but we knew that sign was just Rhetoric and not Dialectic. Vas had taught us well. He'd translated the works of Humbert Echo the noted Italian Signologist.

We gathered around the Field Marshal.

"Boys, we have one of the worst and most dangerous leaders of our enemy to face. This creature is too vile to describe. Her crimes are legion and her powers of deception are beyond compare." he explained, fixing each one of us in turn with his steely gaze.

We nodded in unison then we chanted the Code:

"One!"

"Rely on the three Rs! RECOGNISE! REMAIN CALM! REALISE NO ONE CARES!"

"Two!"

"Don't try to reason with THEM!"

"Three!"

"Do NOT apologise!"

"Four!"

"ACCEPT-YOUR-FATE!"

"Five!"

"Document their every word and action!"

"Other Five!"

"Do NOT resign!"

"Seven!"

"Make the rubble bounce!"

"Five!"

"Start nothing, finish everything!"

We were ready.

Eight hours later we had penetrated the outer-perimeter of the enemy emplacement. The reality-perception distorters were on full rhetoric. An unenlightened gamma might think they were looking at innocuous rest home for the aged. Those of us who have taken the red pill and gazed at the lies and deception that surrounds us knew better. This was an enemy base, bristling with enemies. Their vigilant eyes constantly surveying the grounds for any violation of the narrative. Point-and-shriek drones were ready to identify us and then descend on us like the harpies of Greek myth.

We burst through the front door - Vax had decided a frontal assault would confuse their sensors. My vision swam - in front of me was what looked to be a reception desk and sitting there a smiling nurse. I knew it was all lies. A deception. A false seeming built from my subconscious desire to give in and join the narrative. I could see the rest of the platoon, dazed and confused by the right lights, the relaxing music, the decor cunningly designed by a legion of elitist lesbian feminists hell bent on imposing on the virile male a castrating culture of indignity.

One by one the platoon succumbed. Zombie like they staggered out the door. Without immediate medical care they would end their days driving a Prius and attending transgender awareness classes.

I struggled to keep my focus. I was going under...

A mighty manly hand grabbed my bicep. Vax! He alone was immune to the siren sounds of the music.

I staggered after Vax as he searched for his target.

We knew we had scant minutes before the full force of the enemy reached us.

Finally we burst into the room that housed the target.

"Oh my!" said the evil harridan cunningly disguised as a sweet little old lady "Is that little Theodore? Oh I haven't seen you since you were in short pants!"

"Theodore?" I asked, puzzled.

"DON'T LISTEN TO HER" screamed Vax, "ITS A TRAP"

"Oh little Teddy always liked to play at soldiers. Are you doing one of those 'cosplay' things? I hear all the cool kids do that these days."

Vax fixed her with his steely gaze. "I've come to make you pay for your crimes MRS POOTER!"

"Oh there, there Theodore. You can't be still mad about having to sit in the corner. Daisy's picture deserved that gold star and I'm afraid yours wasn't very good."

"Ypu made me sit in a GIRL chair! It was PINK! I got COOTIES!"

"Woah, hold on." I put up my hands and stepped between the little old lady and Vax's gun. "Are you telling me that this nice old lady was your kindergarten teacher? And the terrible crime was that she made you sit in the corner one time?"

"Stand down soldier. I came here to complete a mission and I'll do that whether you live or die in the process."

"Yeah but seriously, you can't actually wage a war against people on the basis of petty grudges." I said.

Vax stared at me. The muscles in his ever so masculine nose rippling as he flared his nostrils.

"My trust fund says that I can."

We escaped with moments to spare. I had had my moment of doubt but I came through thanks to a substantial lecture on the difference between rhetoric and dialectic plus a book contract and the promise of a Hugo nomination.

We never did kill Mrs Pooter. The enemy were too quick for us, and we barely escaped to fight another day.

Only Vax and I survived intact from that mission. I heard that two of the platoon have since got married and run a erotic florist in Wisconsin. The horror of their fate haunts me, but I fight on while Vax's words still resonate in my skull: "Start nothing, finish everything."

The Second Fifth Generation of Warfare

Introduction by Timothy the Talking Cat: Flight Rear Admiral General Fortescue-Billinghman USMT, HTTP, MD Retd is both an accomplished soldier, a military historian and one of the world's leading tacticians. His seminal work "Tactical Loin Cloths - the Spartan Secret Weapon and the Underpants of Thermopylae" is a unique work that spearheaded the modern military focus on superior firepower through superior undergarments. We are extraordinarily privileged to have the opportunity to republish his essay here in this book. Previously the only way of accessing this essay was via a few carefully mimeographed copies that were circulated at his local golf club. Sadly due to Squirrel convergence and the connivance of the liberal establishment General Fortescue-Billinghman's unique vision was cruel censored by the golf club and in clear violation of its constitution (not to mention natural justice) he was expelled for the invented crime of 'stealing items of clothing' from the club locker room.

The Second Fifth Generation of Warfare

Flight Rear Admiral General Fortescue-Billinghman USMT, HTTP, MD Retd

The history of warfare is a history of steps. Each step is a stride and each stride is a leap. Each leap brings us further into the future and those leaps represent a forward stride that brings us stepwise beyond the past and towards our destination. By such movement we progress but by 'progress' I do not mean what Teddy Roosevelt would call "progressive" but rather the forward march of mankind onward towards a martial future.

To envision these strides, picture a ladder. Imagine that ladder reaching upwards, with each rung another leap forward into you human destiny. Now picture that ladder as a staircase. Can you imagine it? Can you picture a big, broad sweeping staircase, such as you might find in the ballroom of a fancy hotel. Perhaps some colonial hotel in some third world capital city. A hotel that was once beautiful and glorious but which is now shabby and dilapidated due to the folly of independence and the end of Empire. Have you pictured this staircase? If so then it has far too many steps to it. That is a staircase far greater than we need. No, we need just a few steps. A small staircase such as might join one part of a house to a slightly lower part. Perhaps a house built on a slightly sloping block of land such that the back garden is at higher altitude than that of the front.

Now each of those steps is a stride beyond the past. Picture each of them.

The first is what we call the first generation of warfare. On this step we find the brute who simply throws sticks (or perhaps his own fifth) at his fellow man. He is disorganised and without strategy. From here he can either descend down the staircase, taking him closer to the corridor to the front door and the small table on which we keep the phone. It has a rotary dial but it no longer works. We have a different phone in the kitchen but I can't be bothered using it. My son put it there but I don't approve of it.

Our brute can ignore the phone and the temptations of the front door and the small garden beyond. Instead the brute can make a leap up the ladder of progress and reach the second rung. We call this rung the Second Level of Warfare.

On the Second Level of Warfare (or 2LW as we call it the forces) the warrior is enabled by the use of crafted weapons, tactical knowledge and appropriate undergarments. These may be a simple loin cloth or some more sophisticated arrangements of straps to provide adequate support during the vigorous movements of battle.

Our now proud and well supported warrior is ready to take a further jump upwards on the escalator of martial achievement. This lurch onwards we call War Three Footing (or WTF). In WTF our warrior is now the beneficiary of industrialisation. This includes cannon, tanks, and also mass produced cotton garments. WTF is characterised by supreme strategy and war on a global scale as both woven and knitted garments are shipped from one nation to another.

Surely this then is the pinnacle of warfare?

Not so. For there are yet more steps. 4G Warfare makes use of mobile phone technology and EMF shielded protection for the warrior procreative faculties. It is vital that stray radio waves do not interfere with the fundamental virility of the warrior. It is from this virility that the warrior derives his martial strength and drive to victory.

Nor is our upward journey complete for we must face the false peak of the First Fifth Generation of Warfare. In the F5GW the warrior must fight against the oppression of the narrow minded and the gutless. For in this generation the warrior is no longer given their true place in society but is repressed by the feminising influences of soy-milk, mass media propaganda and liberal college professors.

Finally we reach the true of Second Fifth Generation of Warfare. The warrior must still face the threat of the forces of so called 'progressive' society but he does so with undergarments suitably designed for the task.

It is to enable this "S5GW" apex of military prowess that I have devoted my latter years of work. I can now say, despite the naysayers and dullards who tried to prevent me, that I have succeeded. In conjunction with Cattimothy House Publishing I can offer to the discerning military man access to my unique invention. The S5GW under-short is a miracle of technology - flame proof, water resistant and proof from invasive surveillance methods. The S5GW makes use of sophisticated 'nano' materials that utilise unpatentable technology to provide the God-fearing warrior for justice to face the trials and tribulations of the modern 'cyber' battlefield in the secure knowledge that his most precious treasure is protected.

If You Were Yet Another Pastiche of 'If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love', My Love

Introduction by Camestros Felapton: Felapton Towers monitoring station is staffed 24 hours a day by highly trained cyber-weasels. Piggy-backing on NSA surveillance systems, they carefully monitor the world's Internet traffic for critical intelligence. We cannot fully confirm the authenticity of what follows but I am assured by the head cyber-weasel that the transcript is 'largely' accurate.

If You Were Yet Another Pastiche of 'If You Were A Dinosaur, My Love', My Love

By Various Authors

VFM#8762 So we start with the basic phrase "If you were a dinosaur my love..." but we swap in some other word for dinosaur.

VFM#9051 Dinosaurs are cool. Can it be about a dinosaur?

VFM#8762 Sort of missing the point there 9051. The story is already about a dinosaur - we want to change it something else.

VFM#1009 Objection. The story is actually an insult to the genre of science-fiction. It is not about dinosaurs but rather it is an expression of the racist ideology of radical feminism, which like some Jim Crow era KKK discrimination but rearmed at the 'class enemy' of the white male, seeks to silence the voices of anybody but the liberal feminist elite of modern academia.

VFM#8762 Noted James. My point is the story already has a dinosaur in it. We have to pick some OTHER thing so as to make a parody of the story. You understand.

VFM#9051 Can it be a pterosaur?

VFM#8762 Again, something other than a dinosaur.

VFM#5020 Pterosaurs aren't dinosaurs, Simon. They are flying reptiles.

VFM#3888 "Were flying reptiles" I think you mean...

VFM#5020 OK, fair point. They were flying reptiles. A flying dinosaur would just be a regular bird.

VFM#9051 Great! Lets have a pterosaur.

VFM#8762 No, no, no. It doesn't matter whether a pterosaur was a dinosaur or not. We are trying to do a parody not just swap in one extinct lizard for another.

VFM#5020 Technically the dinosaurs were not lizards...

VFM#8762 IT DOESN'T MATTER. Look, it has to be something topical, something funny, something that mocks the Squirrels. You understand?

[murmured agreement ~ a whispered voice says 'Did he say just say 'squirrels' or SJWs?']

VFM#8762 OK, lets go round the table and we'll each suggest a thing.

VFM#3888 Oh, erm, a cat maybe? The SJWs obsess about cats?

VFM#5020 A safe-space! If you were a safe-space my love! We can parody that, like how they are all scared of everything.

VFM#1009 The inherent discriminatory theory that underlies the racist group-think of the so-called 'establishment' feminazi academic propaganda machine, typified by the usurpation of higher-education into 'lesbian studies' as a means of systematic discrimination against men.

VFM#9051 Oh, I know! A wooly mammoth.

VFM#8762 Seriously dude, you are taxing my patience.

VFM#5020 I think he has as much right to make suggestions as anybody. We don't censor people here.

VFM#8762 Yeah, well if I get another f_ckin' prehistoric monster from that gamma shitstain I'll censor him right in the mouth.

VFM#3888 OK, cool down guys. Let's get this done. I say we go with 'safe-space'? Anybody disagree?

[murmured agreement]

VFM#8762 OK, so we start with "If you were a safe-space, my love, you would..."

VFM#3888 Would what?

VFM#8762 That's what we work out next. Something stupidly SJW.

VFM#9051 um, 'would keep me safe from hetero white males'?

VFM#8762 You've redeemed yourself there 9051. That's the first line done "If you were a safe-space, my love, you would keep me safe from white males." OK next line, we start with "If you were a safe-space, my love..."

VFM#9051 We just did that bit.

VFM#8762 We do it again. We start each new section with that same phrase.

VFM#3888 Anaphora

VFM#9051 Who's she?

VFM#1009 I bet she is another one of those man-hating radical separatist lesbians who base their poisonous ideology on the cult of women-studies as a mechanism for the systematic suppression of Western Culture as a sacrifice on the altar of cultural relativism and the satanic sacrament of diversity.

VFM#5020 It's a kind of Greek vase isn't it?

VFM#8762 Can we focus please people? We need another thing to go after "If you were a safe space my love..."

VFM#3888 OK, something to rhyme with male?

VFM#9051 Jail!

VFM#5020 Whale!

VFM#8762 It's not a poem, it doesn't need to rhyme.

VFM#3888 Not all poems rhyme.

VFM#5020 He's right you know.

VFM#1009 By manipulating the narrative and commanding the heights of the imperialist leftist hegemony the lesbian feminist cabal seeks to maintain power at the expense of the normal, non-deviant male.