The charging of Professor Stephen Hawking’s former nurse for abuse, pertaining to their time caring for the late physicist, has led the authorities to uncover an underground network of gladiatorial contests for the disabled. “We’ve long had a suspicion that such things go on: a sort of cross between Fight Club and Robot Wars, where teams, or more likely families, enter their wheelchair- bound disabled relatives into a knock out contest to find who is the toughest,” explains Detective Chief Inspector Frank Crix, who has headed up the investigation. “But it was a case of actually getting some hard evidence.” The evidence the police now have includes video footage of disabled people with buzz saws and hydraulically operated axes and machetes attached to armour clad electric wheelchairs, battling to the death. “It is utterly appalling that these vulnerable people should be subjected to such ordeals,” says Crix. “We’re still trying to ascertain whether there were any actual fatalities – we have, however, established that there have been numerous serious injuries, including impalements, burns and amputations.” Incredibly, such injuries were treated without question by local hospitals, taking at face value carers’ claims that they had been the result of household accidents. “It’s a savage indictment of how little our society values the disabled,” declares top disability campaigner Henry Fizz. “The fact that such a well organised network of abuse was operating, apparently for years, completely undetected brings shame upon the whole UK!”
Fizz is one of a number of commentators who have linked the rise of these disabled gladiatorial contests with government policies toward the disabled. “Surely there can be no doubt that cuts in benefits to the disabled, combined with the Tories’ demonisation of those who claim such benefits, have led to this situation?” he opines. “It’s the desperate need for money which has driven disabled people and their carers to enter into these contests in search of the prize money on offer!” Indeed, according to insiders, big money rides on these competitions, with Far Eastern betting syndicates placing huge wagers on their outcome. One such source has told The Sleaze that it was the lure of these potential riches which originally drew scientific genius Stephen Hawking into the world of ‘Disability Wars’. “His former carer realised that as a brilliant scientist, Hawking would have been able to come up with pretty radical weapons to strap onto his wheelchair,” they told us. “They reasoned that a lot of the competition would be bound to be a bit crap. And it was – you know the sort of thing: short fused packages of explosive on the end of long poles, in the hope that they can ‘drop the bomb’ on an opponent before it goes off, or ineffective spring loaded knife throwing devices.”
The nurse was, initially at least, proven right, with the physicist deploying such technologies as an electromagnetic pulse device, which could knock out all the electrical systems in a rival’s chair with one blast, leaving them at the mercy of his laser gun. “He just kept upping the ante,” says the source. “Next thing we knew, he had some kind of mini-missile launcher with which to blow opponents to smithereens. (Obviously, being a scientific genius, he had also designed some sort of inertial compensation system to deal with the recoil). Nobody could compete with him and he just sailed through round after round, with his carer cleaning up. Soon, though, the odds shortened, as nobody would bet against Hawking. It was sucking all the fun out of the sport.” Inevitably, other contestants started to lodge complaints, claiming that Hawking’s innovations weren’t in the original spirit of ‘Disability Wars’. “That’s the thing,” confides the source. “From the outset, the contests had been built around the idea of fairness. Obviously, as not all disabilities are equal – the use of technology was intended to even up the odds, not give an overwhelming advantage to one contestant or another.” This idea of equality was why the wheelchairs were armoured – to ensure the contests wouldn’t be over too quickly.
“Otherwise, could you imagine if one contestant had a huge electric drill mounted on their chair and their opponent had only a cricket bat, well, it would be no contest, would it?” says the source. “All over in a couple of turns of that drill.” According to the source, the rules and principles underpinning the ‘Disability Wars’ contests have always been complicated. “We were acutely aware that if we had restricted them to just people in wheelchairs, then there would be accusations of discrimination,” they pointed out. “We had to ask ourselves if the solution would be to allow all contestants to use wheelchairs, just so long has they have some kind of physical disability? Because a contest between a guy in an armoured wheelchair and a bloke with a walking frame would be completely unbalanced and therefore no fun to watch.” There also had to be precautions to stop unscrupulous teams from sticking corpses in wheelchairs, then controlling them remotely – as with no living person in the seat, they would have infinite endurance, being impervious to damage. “Look, many might think that these contests are in bad taste,” the source says. “But that’s no excuse for them being unfair – which was why we had to do something about Professor Hawking’s participation.”
While simply changing the rules to enforce a technologically level playing field for contestants might have been an option, the organisers of ‘Disability Wars’ instead opted for the simpler expedient of anonymously reporting Hawking’s nurse to the authorities for abuse. “At the time, it seemed like the easiest and quickest solution,” the source says. “We were banking on the fact that they wouldn’t be able to explain any of the bruising he’d sustained in the bouts without revealing their participation in illegal betting and gladiatorial contests that exploited the disabled. But clearly, they blew the whistle and now the whole operation has been exposed.” As it turns out, the organisers’ ultimately self destructive solution might have been unnecessary, with Professor Hawking dying not long after being effectively banned from the contests. “If we’d just hung on for a few months, the problem would have solved itself,” muses the source. “Of course, while, officially at least, Hawking died of ‘natural causes’, I can’t help but suspect that those Far Eastern betting syndicates might have had something to do with it – he’d cost them a lot of money, don’t forget.”
