text: [Themes: sci-fi, animal perspective, science fiction, action, post-apocalyptic]
  
  The days when the gods walked the Earth are long gone.
  
  Now is the time of the atomic flame.
  
  Now is the time of steel, fire, and lead.
  
  Now is the time of...
  
  [Author's Note: HIGH OCTANE ALL CAPS PRIMATE MADNESS From the creator of CYBERMONKEY, the genre defining cult classic that got the author EXCOMMUNICATED from the IFDB! Entered into EndMaster's 2021 Manifest Destiny contest in the last moments before the bombs fell.]
  
  > CAMP
  Your chest burns. Your heart thumps loud in your chest. Death Mask calls it the war-song; it seems an appropriate name. Your fists are curled more often than not. Your lips curl back into a snarl more than they used to. It drives you. You climb faster than the other males your age. Your long arms are well accustomed to pummeling your rivals into the dirt.
  
  You stand in the middle of camp. Red Eye lounges on his log throne; his metal eye whirls and clicks, showing him the inscrutable wisdom of the ancients. His muzzle is greying. His fingers idly trace the barrel of his laser-thrower; each mark on the wooden stock represents a dead challenger. His harem groom themselves; the most beautiful females of the tribe, adorned with beads and shells, and kept in reserve.
  
  Death Mask stirs a cauldron in the centre of camp. The skeletal metal frame, bolted to his face, is inscrutable as always. His eye sockets are dark and empty, taken so that he may see what lies beyond. Metal Sage stares into the cauldron. His chrome arms, insect like, float through the air like an octopus' tentacles. They hold his inscrutable tools, which he uses to work his mystical cybernetic trade.
  
  > TALK TO DEATH MASK AND METAL SAGE
  You trot over on four legs. Death Mask grunts in acknowledgement, but doesn't look up from his work. It's better that he not; like all right-thinking apes, you live in fear of the spirits that haunt this world. Thinking about the spirits sends a chill down your fur. You look to the treeline, and imagine them staring down at you from within the knotted trunks. This is a land rife with ghosts; the Red Wood of Khal Al-Forn, where the ancestors climb invisibly into eternity.
  
  "It has been done before," Metal Sage says. A tentacle stabs the air, as if to punctuate his sentence. "My visions confirm it. A great weapon of the ancients, buried in the Grey Lands."
  
  "Perhaps," Death Mask says. "The spirits of steel and stone are your domain. I worry only for the safety of our tribe. The Grey Lands are accursed for a reason."
  
  "I can defend myself," Metal Sage says.
  
  "No man can defend himself from a bullet to the back," says Death Mask.
  
  Death Mask's head turns to you. "Do you feel like a warrior, boy?" he drops his ladle and approaches you on all fours. As the tribe's seer, his body is untouched by cybernetics; even still, his muscles ripple powerfully through his fur. "Are you up to the task?"
  
  Curiosity spreads across Metal Sage's face like a breaking wave. He steps back a few feet.
  
  "I am," you say. You pant slightly and puff out your chest. You pull your lips back.
  
  "You're not," he says flatly. "You're a pathetic whelpling. You aren't worth the energy to kill, boy."
  
  You don't allow him to speak anymore. You bowl him over and sink your teeth into his shoulder. He howls as he throws you into the dirt. You bring both fists down on the spot where his head was, seconds ago.
  
  "You'll have to do better than that, boy!" his fist connects with your face. You spit out a tooth. You're in the dirt, now, hazily watching the blood pool from your face. He's pummeling your back like a drum. You're sure it will break.
  
  Your blood boils. You twist around to face your assailant. As you do, a strange look of excitement passes over his wizened features. You reach out with a leg and wrap your toes around his snout, yanking his head into the dirt with all of your strength.
  
  You screech in victory as he stumbles back, dazed. You step backwards, before rushing towards your enemy on all fours. At the last instant, you leap forward, putting all your momentum into a double-legged kick. You connect with his torso, sending him sprawling into the dust. Mad with bloodlust, you grab one of the fallen chimp's legs. Before you can break the knee, cold steel closes around your shoulder and hurls you into the dirt. Metal Sage stands above you.
  
  "How your blood boils!" Death Mask says, standing. His metal face is smeared in dirt and blood. His sightless eyes betray nothing, but his lips are curled into something approximating a smile. "You will travel with Metal Sage, and return this weapon to the tribe."
  
  > THROUGH BLASTED LANDS
  The road is pockmarked. The ancient stone is so ruptured and ruined that walking on it is a daunting task. Unfortunately, the road leads right into the mouth of the Grey Lands, so it must be followed. Without the cover of the trees, you see the dark clouds and ball lightning that are an almost permanent fixture of the sky. "The ghosts of the ancients," Death Mask once said, "raging in eternity."
  
  Your bullet-thrower is slung on your back. You lay a comforting hand on its leather-wrapped grip.
  
  "Rare that I have cause to come this far," Metal Sage says, interrupting a comfortable period of silence.
  
  You don't respond. Instead, you sweep your eyes over your surroundings. It's all blasted flatlands and dead grass, interrupted only by the road. The ruined metal carcasses of the ancients' chariots line the road like gravemarkers.
  
  "What happened here?" your curiosity gets the better of you as you ask the older chimp.
  
  "They didn't respect the spirits, boy. The ancestors destroyed them with the mighty atom." He leaves you with that thought as you continue your journey in silence for some time.
  
  Days later, you come across a forgotten metal god. A great suit of armour, not dissimilar to the plated suits forged by the gorilla-nomads your tribe has encountered before. It stands at ten feet tall, with two gargantuan cannons mounted to its arms. It was pointing one of them, before it died. The cockpit is half-open, filled only with dust.
  
  Metal Sage bows. You do the same. It regards you coldly. You long to climb inside.
  
  "Great sentinel of the ancients, I bid that you let us pass," he whispers reverently.
  
  Your longing to wield the power of the great machine grows. "We should strip it," you whisper.
  
  Metal Sage shakes his head. "It's blasphemy, boy. Never worth it to trifle with the spirits."
  
  His commitment to spiritual purity is infamous. If you want to claim the great machine, you will have to use force.
  
  > KILL METAL SAGE AND SIEZE THE POWER OF THE ANCIENTS
  You grab your bullet-thrower and spray a half dozen rounds into Metal Sage's back. He gasps as he pitches forward. His metal limbs twitch as they hit the ground with a mighty clang. For good measure, you empty the magazine into his twitching carcass, reducing him to a lump of meat and metal. You toss the rifle aside as you investigate the mech on all fours.
  
  As you climb up its torso and into its head, you feel a great sense of power. These cannons could sunder a whole tribe of gorillas at once. Sitting in the cockpit feels right. An arcane array of switches and buttons stares back at you like the teeth of an apex megacarnivore.
  
  You flick them, on and off, for a time. Eventually, you flick an attractive red switch. You softly hoot and pant as its ancient mechanisms stir to life.
  
  "Emergency power engaged," the machine says. Its voice is impossibly deep; it's the voice of a forgotten god, awaking from an impossibly long slumber. "Neural interface engaging."
  
  You shriek as a metal prod spikes you in the brain.
  
  ++++ LAST DARPANET DIRECTIVE RECEIVED...
  
  12000 DAYS AGO ++++
  
  You stand at the foot of a great temple. It is a marble wonder, reaching up into the sky even further than the redwoods. Its great spires and minarets pierce the sky. A choir sings in the distance, their words unfamiliar. This is a place that cannot be. This is the realm of the gods.
  
  A man stands before you; a human being, a creature from myth. His voice is impossibly loud, though his lips do not move. His face is brighter than a laser, brighter than the sun. "My son," he says. "I have need of you."
  
  You hoot and whimper as you bow. Surely this being can destroy you with a thought.
  
  You can feel his smile, but you do not see it. Somehow, you know that it's a wan smile, full of pity. "Arise, my son."
  
  "How is this possible?" you whisper.
  
  "Your ancestors were primitives, but my tribe made you mighty warriors. We have need of you once again, our most noble children, our greatest creation."
  
  You look up, screwing your eyes against the impossible brightness. "What do you require?"
  
  "First my son, you must brave the Grey Lands and collect an artifact of terrible power: a class three fusion cell. Bring it back here, and install it in my most holy chassis."
  
  > VISION QUEST
  Your metal feet sink deep into the blasted soil with every step. Your sensory array informs you that, based on the most recent data, this is a privately owned soy consortium with an impressive yield. As you look around the grey field with its loose topsoil and rusted-out tractors, you question the gods' wisdom. Your fingers tingle as you charge your twin fusion-cannons. The Demon is near.
  
  Subterranean formation detected, twenty feet below position. Recommend anti-fortification tactics, your guardian ancestor-spirit informs you.
  
  "Thank you spirit," you whisper as you charge your fusion cannons and aim them at the soil. "Mighty ones, set cannons to maximum charge, if it be your will."
  
  Your metal arms spit two impossibly bright beams. The cockpit shields you from the glare automatically, the living glass sorting itself into dozens of shaded hexagons. The dirt does not move, it simply ceases to exist in the face of divine vengeance. You incinerate twenty feet of dirt in five seconds, before ancient concrete reveals itself. A bunker; a place where fallen humans practiced fell rituals, the kind that invited the wrath of the ancestors and ended the world.
  
  Your lips curl back in disgust as the onboard A.I. auto-translates the red block letters on the concrete. Red Army Forward Listening Post No. 14. The Demon lives inside: Big Red, the Fell Spectre of Communism, the most vile and benighted of the Atom-Sorcerers. The Creator revealed these titles to you in a dream, filling you with a hatred most pure.
  
  You punch an armoured hand clear through the surface of the listening post. You peel the concrete off like paper before hurling it like a discus, sending it flying for hundreds of feet. Inside, you see a curious sight: humans. Two adults and two small ones, and one that seems grey and wizened. They stare at you, wide eyed. One of the young ones begins to cry.
  
  You stomp them to red ruin before they can hex you.
  
  "You have done good, my son. But your task is not complete," warmth and satisfaction begins to fill your body as the Creator speaks. "You must begin a holy mission , and remake this world in My name. You shall be my prophet, and spread the good word far and wide. I name you President of the United States, now go forth and crusade."