When former astronaut Steve Austin awoke after crashing his plane his life was permanently changed. He was missing one eye, both legs and his left arm.
“It was definitely a game-changer” says Austin. “I mean, what can a blind cripple do except maybe get a job in the Buffalo Bills offensive line?”
Enter Oscar Goldman, Director of OSI (Office of Strategic Intelligence), a new intelligence outfit started during the Clinton administration to monitor the length of interns’ hemlines.
Testifying before a sympathetic congress, Goldman intoned:
Steve Austin, astronaut. A man barely alive. Gentleman we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to build the world’s first bionic man. Steve Austin will be that man. Better than he was before. Better, stronger, faster.
Promising to bring the project in ahead of time and under budget, Goldman was given six million dollars. Plans were drawn up for a bionic eye with a 20:2:1 zoom lens with night vision, bionic legs that will enable Austin to make great leaps and run at speeds up to 60 miles per hour and a bionic right arm with the equivalent strength of a bulldozer. Scientists were particularly excited by the potential speed of the bionic legs.
“Do you know what this means?” said one scientist. “We can enter him in the Olympics. Finally a white guy will win the 100 meters.”
But cost overruns soon plagued the project. It took six million dollars alone to build Austin’s tracksuit. With an estimated new price tag of $1.2 billion the project was discontinued by a cost-cutting Congress.
So two years later Austin sits in a Naval hospital playing chess with orderlies as his frustration mounts.
“I was kind of hoping they’d build a bionic penis for me” said Austin. “I mean, Jaime Sommers 
is smoking hot and I’d like to get me some of that.”
The OSI has been shut down and there are no further government-run plans to pursue bionic technology.
As for Oscar Goldman he has gone into business with the Chinese and is developing a series of bionic dogs.
“Let’s see a jihadist stand up against a cocker spaniel that can run 60 miles an hour!”
(767)
And what’s this about Jaime Sommers getting a bionic ear? I mean, Aren’t women nosey enough? Really!
Steve Austin will be joining the Nasa Muslim Outreach Program.
Mark: As long as she doesn’t get a bionic mouth: Yes, she can now talk at 60 MPH.
The OSI getting shut down would be the one and only time a government agency actually gets defunded.
CRS: Well, it was either defund the OSI or have a merger with the TSA…..and no one wants a man with a bionic right arm probing them at an airport.
I’m with King Shamus, nothing gets defunded entirely. Instead, they’d have to import the parts from the Chi-Coms, in exchange for campaign cash, of course.
BTW, Hashcash keeps eating my comments.
Hash-Cash sometimes gets hungry. It goes through phases where it just eats certain posters’ comments.
Yours just happen to look delicious these days.
Matt: Hash-cash is like Andy Pettitte: very effective but eventually it’s going to land on the DL.