The Last 64 Days of Old Soldiers It was really a question of who and when, and never one of if. People naïve enough to still think the morality is important might be happy to know that we weren’t the first to do it- but the Jihadists never operated on the scale we could. I’ve had the arguments- all of them- most of them with my wife; we never would have lasted, but my being a son of a bitch seemed to speed things right along. Sure there are alternatives- gene therapies, surgical mechanical enhancements, further mechanization of forces and equipment. But all of them, for their myriad benefits and risks, paled in light of the fact that you always need boots on the ground- and if those soldiers can have greater muscle mass for their exercise, more bang for that hard American dollar, well, that’s good for the American people, that’s good for the American military, and that’s good for the American fighting man. Only we couldn’t tell them. The fucking sports leagues had spent a quarter century (and the government the whole 50 years previous) smashing the idea that, “Drugs are bad, mkay,” into the minds of the American public. No amount of saved lives could swerve that brainwashing train back in the right direction. So we made up viruses. Gave them fancy names and described them as “like this” or “like that.” Every time we lost a soldier to malaria because he was too stupid to take his meds or his sergeant was too goddamn drunk to make sure he took his meds, well, the enemy got another one, boys, best take your injections so you can live to fight the good fight. And hell, we won. It took us years, and a whole generation of men serving their country injected with anabolising hormones to win that War on Terror, and remind Allah and his faithful just whose God is in charge on this Earth. But we neglected something in our calculations. Our hormone treatments impaired spermatogenesis- and without the little wigglies, no babies. Our enemies, and hell, everyone who followed suit in our biceps race, had rendered themselves infertile. The meek are going to inherit the Earth after all. Guess that leaves to us going out roaring, like lions.