War has changed over the years. It used to be real people, once a long time ago, on horseback, with swords, and real wounds: and now it’s what it is. Hunks of metal, drone, robots. As we looked through the perspective of the robots we’d sent to the front line of combat, explosive sparks coming up everywhere, I saw for the first time what looked like a giant tarantula. It was the most impressive feat of engineering I’ve ever witnessed. Its legs, spiky and shining silver, sent a shudder down my spine.

Back in the day, you had to be the fittest guy or gal to be a soldier. I was shocked when I found out about all the physical requirements they had back in the early half of the 2000s and before. I mean, push-ups? Really? They were turning away so many perfectly-skilled nerds. What a mistake.

These days they seem to have it right: the army selects for the nerdiest of us. The fattest geeks with a tub of Mayo (which used to come from cow tits- nasty, right? This is why I like history... it’s just so weird), and a huge bag of ruffled chips, who have been VR gaming since we were toddlers. And so this war is all, in the end, a giant video game.

A video game we can’t afford to lose.

This tarantula thing, really, it was going to be our boss battle. I could just tell it was the boss. They had nothing else like it on the field, and I doubt they would have the funds to build two of those giant things (and if they did, we were in trouble).

I tell myself I’m fighting for the free world, but I don’t know if that’s just something they tell us in training to brainwash us, or if that’s really what this is. When you have multiple countries involved - when it’s a World War 3 - there are no easy answers. But if we lose, if we get occupied by the Russians, me and my family will be the first to be hunted.

Canada was not known to be a war-faring land, overall. I’m not saying we’re Switzerland, but we’re a far cry from the States, right? So I didn’t really see it coming. I thought, hey, I was recruited, but I’ll never need to fight. We like maple syrup and poutine, not random warfare.

Until I was called to serve.

And here we are now. We are sashaying our robots back and forth with all the skill of a pro soccer team passing a ball. We are shooting. We are dodging. But are we winning?

It’s hard to tell, with all the smoke. And the noise... oh wow, the noise. We need to hear it, though, to figure out what’s going on.

Just then, there’s a crunch. My platoon’s captain shouts out a few choice curse words.

We panic. We scramble. I look around at all the screens, trying to figure out what crunched.

More crunches.

I realize that spider’s basically stomping out every machine we throw at it.

My hands are absolutely tense, my fingers on the controller turning white.

My knuckles ache.

I can’t stop, I can’t look away.

But we must win.

Pretty soon, it was clear that it was going to be up to me. The others had lost vital parts; though ‘alive’, their avatars were barely hanging on. My robot was the only one that seemed to be fully intact as this point. I had the best shot of getting a good angle on the tarantula.

Just then, I heard a doomsday crack. I was hit, too. We were all wounded. All of us.

I thought, suddenly, of the Trojan horse. I thought of All’s Fair in Love and War. And I thought of the immortal words of Sun Tzu.

“All warfare is deception.”

I told everyone to fall down. To fake-surrender. To let them believe we were defeated.

They didn’t listen. They kept fighting.

I dropped my machine to the ground, playing dead. I watched with sadness as they all fell, one by one, ground to bits by a giant robot tarantula’s unforgiving heel.

As the tarantula walked over me, not bothering to destroy my machine as it’s took me for long-dead, I saw it’s belly, and recognized immediately that there was a tiny spot of vulnerability. A chink in the armor. Maybe the only chance we had.

I sent every weapon I had up into the abdomen of the beast. It blasted upwards, and flipped into its back.

Struggling in the belly up position, I shot at it again and again and again, until it was aflame.

I felt relieved that no real person was inside that machine, or in any machine. I couldn’t have been so ruthless if that had been the case.

It rolled over many of the enemy’s machines, and it became clear who won, now, by the sounds of the applause, the relieved cheers, the shouting on our side.

But I didn’t stop pummeling the tarantula, not until there was nothing left but scraps in every direction, not until you couldn’t see a spider at all, just molten metal and wires. And I realized then, sweat pouring down my face, that war really hasn’t changed at all.