0-man the War-Ox

Meanwhile in the Far Future of the S.D.Z.A. World

O-MAN - The War Ox (A Worlds of Future Past Tale)

Zero had never fitted in - even with the wastelanders, he should have been able to call family. His mother was what was commonly known as a trash-dweller, a wastlander that literally lives off the trash piles outside the walls of the city-states of the Machine Empire. His mother had been raped by a Morlock, and Zero was born a subhuman thing. But his mother, Sarah, loved him and protected him till the day she died.

Zero, barely ten years old and wandering alone, came across the remains of an Ancient Alien Space Craft. Ssuch debris was not uncommon in the wastelands since the Machine Empire took over - their stellar-grapples (a type of super powerful tractor-beam) bring down space debris for them to loot and assimilate. But it was unusual to find one that had not been picked over by the Vulture-Droids of the Machine Empire.

Stumbling inside the strange craft - Zero found the remains of what he assumed was a suit of armour or a space suit, but it was much much more.

The "Ocs" were a race of bio-borgs, their bodies had atrophied after centuries of exposure to pollution - and so had created "overskins" for them to compensate. They were exploring earths system when the Machine Empires stellar-grapples had caught their craft in its field, dragging it into the earths gravitional field disabling all the systems on board, including the Ocs' bio-mechanical overskins. The Ocs quickly died when their overskins shut down - but their craft soft landed, as its systems came back online as the ship free-fell into the earths atmosphere. So the crash bareley damaged the Ocs ship at all, and the ships stealth systems quickly rebooted and hid it from the Machine Empires Vulture-Droids.

Over time all the overskins slowly powered down becoming inert, as their hosts had died they had source of energy (the bio-borg suits draw power from the host) but one overskins A.I. had the sense to shut down by ejecting its original host - and it waited.

Stumbling around in the near darkness Zero came upon an 'open' overskin - for some reason he reached out, something about the space armour drew him to touch it.

The lights came on, the overskins internal workings hummed and whirred into action, and the suit enveloped him . . .

When Zero awoke, after (according to the readout in the overskins heads-up display) was seven weeks - he was different, changed - more evolved. The overskin had re-written his DNA completely - he now looked like what the Ocs originally looked like - tall, fair haired, perfect muscular humanoids. The overskin had also re-educated him - not only with the History and Technological Achievements of the Ocs, but the history of Earth - everything up till that point. The Fall of Mankind, the Rise of the Machine Empire, the Year of Chaos, the R.D.S. Virus - everything.

 The overskins systems postulated that because the R.D.S. Virus was so enmeshed into Zeros very DNA its systems were able to achieve in a matter of weeks, what it was programmed to achieve over the life-span of the chromosonally damaged Ocs.

Zeros new lease of life gave him a new purpose - to find the Heralds of the New Dawn, and join the rebelion against the Machine Empire - fighting the good fight like the F3 team, and free Earth from the Tyranny of the Machine Empire.

Zero was gone, but not forgotten - he was now 0-man the War-Ox!