THE WAR MACHINE

I have never been all that into cars, but I remember my first one. A purpleish-blue box-shaped thing that I bought for barely a months pay. It wasn’t a looker but it sure could zip around, and the petrol consumption? It barely needed a drop. I remember it fondly. I drove the thing for about three years before I noticed the first major issues. What started with the occasional flat, and new bulbs for the headlamps, soon turned into a gearbox failure and cambelt replacements.

The car that had been so good to me had suddenly turned against me.

The vehicle that was supposed to take me from A to B suddenly stopped caring where B was and instead spent a lot more time stuck at A. I was sad, because I’d grown attached to the lump of metal, but I knew that it had gotten to the end of its useful life and it needed to be crushed at the scrapyard, and replaced with something much newer and sleeker.

And of course my machine had provided me with years of dedicated service before it could no longer function.

That is the problem with a machine like that, though. If you put it through hard service, it’s useful life shortens. It becomes rusted and seized, spluttering through it’s daily task rather than roaring. The journeys become longer and noisier, and maintaining it becomes more and more expensive until there is just no more value left in the thing.

And that’s where my machine ended it’s life.

Now I look to another machine that is in the same boat. The War Machine.

They too, have spent years in service, taking bumps and dings as part of their routine tasks. Each drive out taking more oomph out of the engine, and the rust creeping in with each passing month. Eventually the rust set in enough that their service was no longer needed. Now they found themselves up for sale, salvaged for a pittance by the OSW mostly because they were at least a solid machine on the outside even if the parts had all seized up inside.

But just like my first car, each journey is a battle now, and each fight is a gasp for life. The War Machine is not cut out for this life anymore, and sooner or later they must face the inevitable. They are already destined for that scrapyard. The crusher is fired up and ready.

But this machine has a bit of sass to it. I know this machine will kick and scream against the unavoidable. This machine will try to evade the inescapable. The magnets will hum overhead and they will grab on to every single thing they can on the way up, desperate to prove they’re still the well oiled War Machine they once were.

But there can be no mercy, for a machine with busted parts is no good to anyone. The crusher is inexorable. The War Machine is defunct, and the sleeker, newer model is already here.

Vote Whitlock.