I was born on August 8, 2026; the same year the first man died trying to land on Mars. Three years later, the first World Fracture occurred, a perhaps overly eloquent name coined by some clever journalist somewhere. It marked the only time in history where 80% of the worlds countries were engaged in civil war. Five years after that, the treaty of Carthage was signed, thus saying that a new world order would be established under the Carthage Commune responsible for ensuring no government would become so corrupt ever again.
Three years later the new Republic of United America elected Kellen Mirk as president. The US began its civil war fairly early which is in fact what prompted many other countries to do the same. When the dust finally settled most of South America was in taters from their own in fighting and the U.S. quickly expanded to absorb the entire continent. Whether this was ultimately for good or ill is up to the historians to pick at in thirty years or so.
In the year 2038 the new world leaders met at Chernobyl. No one is entirely sure what transpired, there are of course the regular conspiracy theories but I don't hold much truck with all that. However, three days into the summit Russian Empire, they remade their government after the fracture, declared war on the African Union.
When the union was threatened their prime minister, gave the often quoted World Admonishment. The entire speech is rather long but it all boils down to a final ultimatum.  "The World has grown small in these past few years, my country can not afford to leave this commune, but we can't afford to stay in it either. Our request is a simple one, and easily accommodated, do not let this grow beyond proportion."
We still aren't sure what sequence of events lead to that declaration. But I'm sure it could have been avoided. Yet, you must understand that no amount of political games, or safeguards, can keep people from hating each other, from playing the game of politics so everything falls their way. In the end civil war taught us nothing, it wasn't enough to hate ourselves, we still had to kill each other. In many ways this Third World War not so different than the civil wars that preceded it. They were both wars of ideology. There was no real conflict of interest, no boarder dispute, no crazed fascist pushing the world to the brink. Perhaps, I do not have all the facts, and perhaps I am wrong, but maybe this was a war to prove that one way of life was superior to the rest.
  People were starting to realize that this world would have to come together, soon we would only be Earth, no countries or nations, simply one world as we moved onto in a larger universe. I believe that frightened a lot of people, and maybe they could not bear the though of living in a society they did not control, because everyone loves the illusion of control.
The war quickly deteriorated into simply settling century old squabbles. What began as a battle to rebuild a world order had become a shooting gallery.
There were almost no allies, it had become more an opportunity to prove a point than anything else. The lack of allies lead to a high demand for soldiers, so in the year 2040 they lowered the enlisting age to seventeen. Two more years passed before my favorite video game, WAR a Game of the World, came out. I got it a few months after it was released and played it as much as I could. It was a strategy game like a dozen others that were released while I was young. I played for three months, two of which was spent at the top of the leader boards. In the fourth month I turned seventeen and the government sent me a gift, a sealed a letter of Service Request. Several of my friends had gotten them and it was only a mater of time. Except that my letter said that I would be reporting to West Point. I had little knowledge of how the military worked so I simply assumed I was to be an officer based on my good grades.
  On September 1, 2042, I got on a bus outside my local enlisting office and spent the next week at basic training, then took a train to the Academy. I spent eight months there before I graduated with people who had been there for years longer than I had. By this time I had figured out that something was a little off, but I hadn't decided what yet. Immediately after my graduation I was sent for by the base Colonel.
  I stood outside his door for a full five minutes before entering. Eventually I worked up the courage to knock and a voice from inside granted me access. I walked in and snapped a salute in front of my superior.
"At ease" said the Colonel. "My name is Colonel Vince Shaw, and I have been ordered to relay the following message to you. Son... When you were a civilian you played the.... Video game..." There was audible disdain in his last words. "WAR a Game of the World, is that correct?"
"Sir yes Sir!" Came my curt reply. He grunted and continued.
"I understand you were pretty good at it, is that correct."
"The best sir."
"Well son that game was created by the government as a screening program to find strategically gifted people. You did so well that we even adapted some of your strategies in our own battles. It is because of that, and you conduct here, that I have been ordered to promote to the rank of Captain." He stood and so did I. Removing the stars from a black box in his desk and pinned them on my shirt. My eyes had gotten wider and wider through out this conversation and my mind was racing. He sat once again and I gladly sat as well. "I have also been ordered to give you these deployment orders." He slid a piece of paper across the table. "Now hop to, your plane leaves in one hour."
I managed to pack my few belongings and got on a plane at 0400 hours. It wasn't until I was actually on the plane that I read where I was going. Cairo, Egypt; I was to report to the Major General in charge of the invasion of Cairo. The flight took the better part of a day, but the next morning I landed in a field ten miles behind our lines. I was packed into a jeep and finally arrived at the largest of four bases outside Cairo. During the drive I couldn't help but notice dozens of missile pods amongst the base's tents, all of which seemed nearly untouched. I stepped out of the jeep and was immediately hurried into a command tent.
"Good you're here, so get to work," said the general and promptly stormed out of the tent. I was startled and stood there for a few minutes not knowing what to do. A teenager, came up to me, based on his dark skin and garb I guessed he was native to the region.
"Hello, my name is Javir and I am one of the guides for your people here."
"How old are you Javir."
"I am... Sixteen, but don't think much of that, the tradition of child soldiers is still remnant in my home."
"You are from Egypt?"
"No." He offered no more on the subject, but instead he turned to a map on a table. "We have the city surrounded by four bases, each of which are armed with guards to keep the city in lock down other than the weekly delivery of food and water. So they can't get out, but we can't get in either. Here we are just outside the range of there artillery. We can't send men in because they get taken out by their short range missiles or the gun in placements they have on all the buildings."
"What about the river"I responded.
"They have guards patrolling it on rotating shifts, we have only managed to take control of a few select locations on the outskirts of the city, none of which are anywhere near the river." After he had finished, I sat and knuckled my forehead. This was not something I was used to I had never had actual men's lives in my hands.
"Javir three questions, first why are you telling me this?"
"I was assigned to this unit by your military as a guide, I provide information on the area and the general uses me as his personal assistant."
"Why isn't the general telling me all this, shouldn't I be reporting to him?"
"If you can't figure that out you don't deserve those stars." I shrugged and agreed, in truth I had guessed as much but I wanted to hear it from him. 
"Lastly, I couldn't help but notice all the missile pods here in the base can't we just bombard the city?"
"No they have similar models put on building surrounding the city so any missile we launch they can shoot down with ones of their own, we gave up on that tactic weeks ago. Also there is a large civilian population."
I stood up, "Do you have any binoculars?" In response to my question he picked up a pair from a table and handed them to me. I stepped outside and walked up over a sandy rise. The base was a little over a mile from the main proper of the city, between us and it were massive piles of rubble. The area was pot marked with craters and broken buildings. The line of rubble abruptly stopped at the edge of the two story buildings. The city itself looked deserted, if not for the missile pods on the buildings. Between each building where roads that were now covered by makeshift walls.
I turned to look at the river. As I expected there was a massive metal grate in the city end of the river, which kept out any boats or divers we might send in through the water. A slow smile crept across my face and I returned to the tent. Javir was bent over the map when I came in the tent and he looked up at me with a raised eyebrow. "How hard would it be to take a section of the river?"
  "Well I guess that depends, some areas have only two or three men but others have encampments as large as this one."
"Alright, here," I pointed to a part of the river half a mile from the water gate. "That is the point we need to take."
  "Alright, that's easy enough, they have only got twenty men there and we have the high ground here at that ridge, but you'll have to ask the general of course."
Later I found the general and explained my plan to him. It was a great understatement to say he was skeptical, in fact he flatly refused, but I made a call back to the officer that promoted me and I gave the phone to the general. They spoke for a few tense minutes and my strategy was approved. I'm not sure what was said, but it must have been good.
That night we sent fifteen men to the river. They moved quickly and stealthily, and when they did open fire the battle didn't last long. Once the site was secure the trucks started coming in. Two of them were carrying boat similar to the models used on D-day to storm the beaches. They were loaded full of the fifty men in each. Once the boats were ready to go I heard the men on the boats give HQ the ready signal and they received the go ahead in return. The ships started forward. The beauty of it was that those ships were completely covered, a bit like floating submarines, so when the enemy forces on the river bank opened fire on the ships they did no damage what so ever. After five minutes, the ships were a mere hundred yards from the water gate that lead into the city. A command was sent over the radio and all the missile arrays back at the camp launched at the water gate. The automated air defenses of the city blew the missiles out of the sky with ease, but there were just to many. Three survived and that was all that needed to, the water gate was blown to pieces and the boats entered the city. After a few hundred more yards the boats landed and the men came out and began their assault. Once they passed through the walls I couldn't see them anymore, but I knew perfectly well what was happening.
At this point I turned and focused my attentions eastwards to the main gate which the general had already lost three hundred men trying too. There were one hundred men at the river, I deployed another three thousand to the east gate, which was now vulnerable since the Egyptian army was all headed to the river.
This second force took the gate and made their way through the city and eventually were able to flank the forces at the river. The city was taken before noon the next day. I was driven into Cairo in an armored truck and was given a room in one of the government buildings. It was there that they came for me.
  I was beating Javir in Backgammon when a loud knock on the door startled me. I opened it to several men with stern faces and "MP" helmets.
"Captain David Stern, your under arrest pending official review of your actions in the death of a hundred eight men in operation God of the Nile. I put out my hands without protest. I was escorted to a locked room, I sat there for about an hour before the door opened again and Colonel Shaw walked in and sat across from me.
"You took the city, a fine job, I have to admit I had my doubts."
"I guess I defy expectations Colonel."
"That you do, no one would expect that a boy so young could or would send a hundred men to their deaths." He slid a photo of the scraped ships filled with bullet ridden corpses across the table.
"People die in war all the time." My voice was flat as my eyes scanned the photos.
"Yes, but the question remains did these men have to, if they had died in a battle for the city there would be no questions, but you knew these men had no chance to live."
"Yes I knew they were going to die but there were no other options, the alternatives would have lost twice the men." The door opened and a soldier came in with a chess set, he placed it on the table then left. The colonel reached across the table and moved out his knight.
  "But why does what you have to say matter, I mean it certainly wasn't your decision to promote me and I don't think this conversation is your choice either so why are you here." I punctuated my remark with the movement of a pawn.
"You don't get immunity just because you are the best we have. Besides that remains to be seen" Another pawn. Then I to him,
"Perhaps I do" my bishop slid across the table, he grinned and moved his other knight, then I my queen. "Or perhaps you think to highly of yourself." He moved his knight again, killing my queen. "No I think that someone filled with ambition rather than courage has arranged our little talk." I knocked over his king with my bishop and stood. "So why are you here colonel, it certainly isn't to discharge me."
  "No, no it isn't, I came here to give you your next assignment, how do you like India?"
***
I spent the next four years of my life sending people to die, signing letters telling wives their husbands were dead, wielding power over thousands. I spent a lot of time thinking about one thing and another, about strategies and about the wives back home. About winning and losing. I never lost, but I did come across a foe I could never really over come. It was more of an idea than a physical enemy.
  If power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, then perhaps absolute power can extend to more than those who wield it. Perhaps, in them, it induces not corruption, but fear, fear of what they can not control, fear in those lesser than them of what might be done with such power. For man has no greater enemy than himself, and perhaps that's what this war is really about, and it is that which we are really fighting, the most insurmountable enemy of all... Ourselves.