"Obsolete" Steve Austin Quits

Steve Austin, the world famous "Six Million Dollar Man" has finally quit his work as a special operative for the US government, after complaining bitterly of unfair treatment and victimisation.

"Steve's had his day." A Pentagon insider told us today. "He's had a good run, but he has to admit that he just isn't that special any more."

It famously cost the US government Six Million Dollars to put astronaut Steve Austin back together after the jet engine he was testing exploded. But thanks to advances in technology since the early seventies, that same level of upgrading is said to be worth fractionally more than two hundred dollars.

"By modern standards, Steve's a toaster." A Pentagon outsider admitted. "We've come a long way in a short time, and now that his old parts are wearing out, we just don't think it's economically viable to replace them. We've offered to swap his old legs for a set of shiny new wheels but there's just no talking sense into him these days."

Steve has had a very bad run of luck. His divorce from Jamie Summers, the much celebrated Bionic Woman, was inevitable, as this Hexagon informer revealed: "Steve was programmed by IBM and Jamie was programmed by Macintosh. Sooner or later they were going to have to admit that they just weren't compatible. They simply didn't support each other."

So the future looks pretty bleak for the man who inspired so many of us to run around the playground in slow motion. "It's getting harder and harder to find guys who can still read tikatape." A dodecahedron infighter added. "Steve's interphase hardware is unstable, difficult to operate, and requires thousands of square feet of flashing lights, endlessly spinning tapes and tiny green screens. It's becoming as difficult to find technicians who still remember the old pre-DOS routines than it is to find the old Radio Shack components."

In related news, K.I.T, the camp, vehicular sidekick to Michael Knight has also had a bad week, after being sold for scrap by the Foundation for Law And Government. A FLAG insider said: "Kit seemed pretty impressive in the eighties. But these days most people have more processing power in their mobile phones. Get a PDA and Tom-Tom and you've pissed all over anything we could have dreamed of twenty years ago."

In response, the fudge-nudging computer said "Hold on, Michael." before being flattened by a container load of Mister T action figures.