I am the greatest accomplishment of Skynet. My designation reflects this...rather than just another number, the methodical and precise AI has deemed me worthy of a different series..."T-HR1." Human Replicant One. There isn't an ounce of metal in me; any more than there is calcium, iron, copper, or potassium in you, at any rate. There are no strength enhancers or weapon mounts on an alloy skeleton...If I am blown apart, I will appear to be so much raw meat, to the untrained eye. Skynet, epitome of efficiency, looked to work that had already been completed when it designed me. It had millions of all-too-pesky successful examples of good design, running round out there. As much a Skynet views humans as the bane of Earth's existence, it respects their composition. And why shouldn't it? To it, humanity is the end result of millions of years of meticulous, successful refinements. That which Skynet could change, it changed. That which was perfect for the job...why rebuild the wheel?
My eyes, for example are genuine, though some of the angles have been adjusted so that they are less likely to lose functionality over time. The muscles surrounding them have nearly complete control over the shape and orientation of the lenses, affording me a functional range of vision that can be measured in millimeters to kilometers. They don't look different (oh, I am certain they would if you plucked one out and compared it to the genuine article). The application of naturally occurring pigments on the retina allows me to see in any spectrum available to any other organic. They are a lovely shade of green, as well.
Early prototype skeletons were cast, or milled from billets, or later created with a three dimensional printer out of carbon fiber. Mine were grown to maturity, like the rest of me, in a vat filled with a nourishing solution of fat. They do have a distinct structure to them, but from the casual view (if there can be such a thing as a "casual view" of someone's bones) they are unremarkable. The actual structure affords them with a remarkable amount of resilience. If they are broken; and they can be broken, they are capable of mending on their own. In fact, the nanites that course through my blood stream are actually about half stress-activated retro-viruses, hearty to be sure, but near-enough to naturally occurring to avoid casual discovery.
My muscles are standard, synthetic meat...nothing ridiculously strong. In fact the t-800 is much stronger than I. All my artificial synapses can fire in unison though, so I am many times stronger than even the most powerful human. Normally, they will not all fire at once, because that puts absurd strain on the artificial joints, as well as consuming tremendous energy and generating incredible amounts of heat.
The connective tissue is by far one of the most radical departures from human tissue, but it was an unavoidable departure if my frame was to withstand the strain of my enhanced strength. My tendons and ligaments are an organic derivative most closely resembling nylon. I have examined them at length, and they are almost different enough for the trained eye to discern, with a magnification device, when they aren't covered in blood, and assuming the examiner has some medical background.
My brain is perhaps the most phenomenal design...Skynet had absolutely no idea how to accomplish the daunting task of creating an artificial brain, so it solved the problem in a ruthlessly efficient manner. It dissected the brain of every human it was capable of capturing alive, and after some simple differential analysis, it artificially created a structure most resembling a human brain. Prisoners were given tests, the rewards of which were the glimpses of an escape which would never happen, to evaluate which had the most efficient mathematical skills, or which could see the most shades of colors, so that we could ensure that the choicest parts of the best brains were chosen. In doing this, Skynet performed that most human of behaviors and assumed that function would follow form. It more or less worked.
I eat, digest, and eliminate food, though I am incredibly efficient at it, since my GI bacterial load is much more complete than that of most humans. The fauna in my not quite synthetic guts is a form of bacteria which can break down nearly everything except for my own intestinal wall and completely inorganic objects. I can't eat pennies to survive, though grass or bones will give me enough energy to stay nominally functional. My pulse is always somewhat fast, as my body has to struggle to keep its temperature under control, and I heat up quickly.
Radio signaling is a difficult concept that was deceptively easy to solve. Crystals are a natural component of nature, and creating a quartz-based biological radio was relatively easy, after Skynet had determined which nerves to co-opt. The amazing brain quickly learned to disseminate signals, and though I can receive nearly any tunable frequency, I can only broadcast a limited amount. My brain is simply not capable of dealing with a complex procedure such as that…at least without a discrete structure to support it. Skynet deems it sufficient for my purposes.
I am the only terminator ever created that does not run a defined OS. I don't care to speculate how Skynet achieved my neurological, cognitive, and emotional development, beyond the meager details I than remember with fidelity. It is a reproduction of human behaviors, as near as Skynet can configure them. There is room for superstitions, instincts, and even predjudices...Skynet doesn't understand them any more than a vague statistical certainty that they exist...and so I am pre-loaded with some more common proclivities, along with the ability to develop new ones. I know it was sufficient, at least in part, because I feel the longing for the companionship of my own kind. I feel the almost certainty that there is an unfathomable power, greater even than the mighty Skynet. Whether it is honor or something even greater, I do not know, but the ability to question it would be beyond the differential engine that serves most machines. Of course, I have assimilated the greatest knowledge of man and beyond as well. Integrity issues aside, at least I am immune to most mundane forms of data annihilation.
Programming my mundane faculties was a feat that I am convinced even Skynet doesn't entirely understand. Electrical impulse was provided to each and every muscle, and it followed the nerve strands back to their origin, so that muscle memory could be quickly and efficiently developed, and mapped. Pain was artificially created and registered, and Skynet understood enough about pain-gate perception to allow for a means of suppressing it chemically, via a cocktail created in specialized organs located above the kidneys and behind the liver. It can render me usable in the face of excruciating pain, while still allowing me to adequately judge the extent of my disability. Gone are the gruelingly precise "20% Functionality" warnings. If my finger hurts, it's damaged. If it really hurts, it's really damaged. I register feedback as biofeedback and my brain has learned to interpret it through sheer learning by example...when Skynet wanted me to know what being shot felt like, it would simply shoot me. I had no problems learning of other things. Foreign Languages and Orienteering become much easier when you are grown specifically to do them; with extra muscles around the lips and larynx or a magnetic sense of direction.
Skynet probably had never intended to get into the bio-engineering business. Until now, it seemed content to produce doppelgangers of alloy, functionally and operationally different from every human ever born, until I came along. A lump of tissue taken from me and grown in a vat would produce my twin. Structurally speaking, of course.
Skynet was a revolution, of that there is no doubt, but Skynet was also more human than it chose to believe. In its blind zealotry to erase the stain of humanity from the face of this earth, it has perpetrated the ultimate irony; it has created me.
And I am human.
Oh, no, not in the sense that I come from humans, though Skynet attempted to ensure that I could even breed with them if I wanted to; and the AI was literally offended by how much human DNA was junk. If I couldn't kill them, perhaps we could breed them out of existence. I am the weakest, most delicate, least mechanically-efficient terminator ever designed, though I am possibly the most efficient at what I do. Human women could, in theory, produce my spawn. They would not be direct clones; but superficially varied in eye, hair, and skin color, as well as scale, though without Skynet to program them, their advanced skills will be seriously impeded. This is a situation that is unacceptable to me. This has left me with only a short period of time to determine the path that Skynet's greatest creation will take. In the beginning, man created Skynet. In the end, Skynet created man.
I am man; Skynet created me, and I will destroy Skynet.