Disclaimer: Terminator: Genisys is owned by Skydance Productions and Paramount Pictures. I just write about it in my spare time. The graphics used for the title image are made by Zaratustra Productions.

Go Down in Flames
Chapter 1: The Bedtime Stories

John Reese was five years old.

He had a pretty average life for a five year old. He lived with his mother, father, and grandfather in a small town in rural California. He went to kindergarten, liked to watch cartoons, played with with his friends from school, and all those sorts of things. There were a few strange things about his life, but being only five years old, he didn't recognize them as being strange - that is, unless somebody pointed it out to him.

For example, his grandfather, Pops, was actually a highly-advanced robot. So highly advanced, that most of the technology that made him was still in the process of being developed let alone tested. But John didn't think anything of this; he just assumed everyone had a humanoid robot in their family. So imagine his surprise (and hurt feelings) when the other kids at school didn't believe he had a robot grandpa. He was also disappointed when he went to his friends' houses, and the only robots they had were Roombas, toys, or the occasional remote-control drone that their older family members owned. Mommy and Daddy also didn't like it when John talked about Pops to other people; they said he shouldn't tell anyone about him. John didn't know why, especially since Pops was the one who usually picked him up from school. Couldn't anybody just look at the guy and tell he was a robot? But since he didn't want to get in trouble, John did what he was told and stopped talking about him.

Second, there was the basement, which Mommy and Daddy told John never to enter. Not that he could anyway; it was always closed with an electronic lock. They said it was full of dangerous things, things that little boys should not touch. John actually knew what those "dangerous things" were - he saw his mom get a shotgun from down there, once. Naturally, he assumed everybody had a dangerous basement full of guns, and was later surprised when some of his friends had their rooms in the basement. One time, he asked one of those friends where all their guns were. He then got in trouble when that friend's mom asked his mom why she had a basement full of weapons. He stopped asking about guns after that.

Third, Mommy and Daddy had a ton of nicknames. John knew that his mom's real name was "Sarah" and his dad's real name was "Kyle" - but for some reason, they didn't want John to tell anybody that. Daddy said it was because bad guys knew their real names. John preferred calling them "Mommy" and "Daddy," anyway, so he didn't care much. He just figured he'd have to make a bunch of nicknames when he grew up, too.

Finally, there was Daddy's wacky bedtime stories. Dad loved to tell John stories at night about how he, Mom, Pops, and sometimes dad's friend who was also named John (whom little John was named after, Daddy would tell him proudly) fought an army of scary, killer robots and traveled though time.

John's favorite story was how Mommy, Daddy, and Pops beat the bad guys. They found the secret bad guy lair underneath a factory that made computers and robots. They went there to fight the bad guy leader...but before they could, the bad guy's leader sicced his nastiest minion on them: a scary, skinless monster! The skinless monster chased them everywhere, even by air in a helicopter! After Pops took out the monster's helicopter by jumping out and crashing into it, Mommy and Daddy landed at the factory. Mom and Dad sneaked into the factory, but it turned out that the monster was okay, and was in there waiting for them. Thankfully, Pops was okay too, and he managed to stop the monster for a few minutes by throwing a helicopter's propeller at it. Then, the three of them went down to the basement and set up bombs to blow up the bad guy's secret headquarters. But the monster got loose again, so they had to fight it. Pops managed to pin the monster down while Mommy and Daddy blew the place up! The monster was gone, and they thought Pops was gone, too. But surprise! Pops was okay! And then they all went out for ice cream. Or pizza. What they ate seemed to change every night.

The stories themselves weren't necessarily weird; in fact, they were probably less weird than half the cartoons John watched. But for some reason, Daddy didn't want John to repeat those stories to anybody else - especially not Mommy or Pops. Why he didn't want them told around Pops answered itself - Pops one time walked in on them, and kept correcting Daddy's story ("There were no giant piranhas, Kyle Reese," Pops had said. "The building was thirty stories, not fifty. You did not jump off of it. If you did, you would have been killed from the impact."). Daddy got annoyed, and decided to finish the story some other time. But Mommy? Daddy just said that Mommy might get mad at him for it. John just figured his mother's anger at a harmless story was just a "weird grown-up thing" and did as Daddy told him to.

Perhaps the first time John started realizing that perhaps his life was not entirely normal started when he heard his parents utter a very strange word: "Skynet." He had heard Mommy and Daddy quietly talking about it one day when he went into the kitchen to ask for a juice box. He heard Daddy whispering something along the lines of, "Sarah, don't you think Skynet would have done something by now?" to which Mommy answered with, "I just don't think Skynet is really gone."

He was about to walk in and ask what a "Skynet" was, but then he heard his cartoons come back from commercial. He didn't want to miss them. Just to be on the safe side, he decided to take a peek out the window.

It was sunny. The sky was blue, and there was no actual netting up there.

That night, as Daddy tucked him into bed, John suddenly remembered the weird name and decided to ask about it.

"Daddy what's a Skynet? Is it really a net in the sky?"

Daddy looked nervous. "John, where did you here that word from?"

"I heard you and Mommy talkin' about it earlier," John explained. "I was gonna ask earlier, but then I forgot. Anyway, is it a net in the sky that catches people? Is that why you and Mommy hope it's gone?"

"Uh, no, it's nothing like that," Daddy laughed nervously. "Skynet is, um...the leader of the bad guys."

"Oh, that's his name?" John raised an eyebrow. "That's a really weird name..."

"Yeah, well...sometimes bad guys have weird names, I guess" Daddy explained.

"Is he bad because people make fun of him because of his name?" John asked, laughing.

"No...he's bad for other reasons," Daddy replied.

"Like what?"

"Doesn't like people."

"Oh." John didn't question this much. Most of the bad guys on TV were bad because they also didn't like other people in general.

"Anyway, don't tell your mom about this, okay?" Daddy added. "She doesn't like to talk about this kinda thing."

"Well...okay." John sighed. He didn't get why Mommy would be upset about something like that. Grown-ups were weird. "G'night, Daddy!"

"G'night, John."

That night, John had a dream about a giant net in the sky that was coming down to ensnare their whole town. Thankfully, Mommy, Daddy, Pops, and some other guy that John's subconsciousness recognized as Dad's Friend John shot it down with awesome purple lasers. Then they had pizza with ice cream (but not ice cream on the pizza, because that would be just gross).

"Don't worry about things kid," the Other John said to him. "Your parents have everything covered."

John noticed there was a deep scar down the left side of his face.

While John was good about directly keeping the secret from his mother, Mom had a way of finding out anyway.

One day, John was in his room, just playing with his toys. He was acting out one of Daddy's stories, particularly his favorite. He had Pops (represented by a long-legged android figure that didn't look a thing like Pops), his dad (represented by a dog figure in armor with a shield and sword), and his mom (represented by a mermaid with an eyepatch and a spear) fighting a whole bunch of robot bad guys (represented by random toys, many of which weren't very robot-looking).

Thanks to Daddy, John now knew who the evil robots' leader was, so he had them confront Skynet itself (represented by a figure of a blonde catgirl in a black dress that neither John not his parents realized was sadistic villain from a very kid-unfriendly anime. Which was probably a good thing, because he really liked her toy). But then, Skynet summoned the Skinless Monster (represented by an ostrich-like bird plush) to protect him. John had the Pops figure challenge the monster, all while trying (and failing) to imitate Pops's accent. Pops managed to defeat the monster by tackling it and pinning it to the ground, which caused it to explode somehow. John then had his mom's figure say, "It's over Skynet!" while jumping up and down.

"What did you just say?" Mom's real voice suddenly said.

John jumped and found his mom in the doorway, glaring at him. Uh-oh.

"Umm...I was just havin' you beat up some bad guys, Mommy." John hoped that pointing out that he made her the main character would make her less angry.

"Yeah, and you called somebody 'Skynet,'" Mom replied, folding her arms. "Where did you hear that word?"

"Daddy told me," John said, worrying that he was going to be grounded for sure now. "He's the leader of the bad guys, right?"

Mom signed and rubbed her forehead, like she was getting a headache. "I should have known...," she grumbled.

"Are you mad at me?" John asked, sheepishly. He hoped Mom would have mercy if he gave her the sorriest eyes he could muster.

"No John, I'm not mad at you," Mommy sighed again. "But your father and I are gonna have a long talk when he gets home.

John's parents did eventually have that "talk," but it was more of a whisper. They holed themselves up in their room, and talked quietly enough so that John couldn't really hear them. All he heard was Mommy saying "I don't want him to end up like the last John." She sounded like she was about to cry.

This confused John. Did she mean Dad's Friend John? What happened to him that was so bad, that Mommy wanted to cry? Did he die? At that point, John heard Pops's heavy footsteps coming up the stairs, so he ran into his room to avoid getting into trouble. Pops rarely raised his voice, but he could be scary all the same. John couldn't hear his parents say anything else after that.

John went back to playing with toys, this time with nobody named "Skynet." But he just couldn't figure out why Mommy didn't want him to say that word. Skynet was supposed to be a really bad guy, so of course it would make sense that Mommy wouldn't like him. But to the point where John couldn't even use his name? Daddy's explanation of "Mommy doesn't like to talk about it" just seemed like a non-answer.

Did it have something to do with the Other John? Maybe Other John really was dead, and it was Skynet who killed him! Maybe Mommy and Daddy were still sad that he died, and didn't even want to hear Skynet's name.

He suddenly heard footsteps coming down the hall. John put down his toys and looked up to see Mommy walking in the door. Thankfully, she didn't look angry now; she still looked sad.

"John," she sighed, "I'm sorry I yelled at you earlier."

"Okay, Mommy," John replied, kind of surprised at the sudden apology.

"It's just...I know you wanna fight the 'bad guys,' and that's good," his mom continued. "But don't go looking for trouble, okay? There are some really bad people out there, and they'll really hurt you."

"Is that what happened to Daddy's friend John?" he asked. "Did the bad guys get him?"

"What?!" Mom said, her anger returning. "Where did you-?!"

John instantly regretted asking. Thankfully, all that happened was his mother rubbing her face with her palm in an exasperated manner and saying, "John, don't listen in on me and your dad's conversations!" She then left the room.

That night, Daddy didn't tell him a bedtime story. He just said he didn't have time because he had to go to bed early. But John could tell he was still upset about the argument he had with Mommy earlier.

Daddy didn't tell him many more bedtime stories after that, either.

It was from that moment on that John realized that his parents were hiding something from him - and something big, too. But he was too young yet to figure out what it was.