"Don't forget your gas mask."
"Yea, yea, I know."
The mutter came quietly as Kyle ripped the mask off of the old rack, which very nearly came apart behind him. The other gas masks barely managed to stay hooked, swaying freely until the momentum passed on. After the creaking stopped, the only sound was dulled footsteps marching away, marching outside.
With a hardened, stubborn look, Kyle climbed the ladder with a purpose that kept him moving briskly. He skipped a rung with every step, hauling himself up with an ease that didn't look like a closed up feeling was chasing him up and out. He couldn't stand being underground for too long at any given time, even if it was how they survived. Instead, he let his fears lead him out in the open, where he'd learned to blend into the remains of society.
As he climbed out, he took a big breath. But before he could even fill his lungs, he coughed it back out until he retched. With a shuddering, reluctant breath back in, he finally slid the gas mask over his face until he could filter out the polluted air. He sighed, but it wasn't enough. The gas mask was too artificial, he was just like them. He wasn't really breathing, a device was basically doing it for him, and he hated it. He hated being anything like the machines.
He stayed close to the walls of abandoned buildings, huddled in his makeshift poncho the color of the dust. Like every day, he wandered around the skeleton that was once a city, now an empty shell devoid of all life.
The dry wind picked up a bit, and the fumes from the factories miles away were nauseating. Even from so far, Kyle could see the massive machine makers. He glared, wrinkling his nose at the smell. The clouds of smoke had covered the sky permanently, poisoning the atmosphere and gathering so thickly that the sun wouldn't shine down anymore. That was one of their methods, to shut out the human race once and for all. The others involved the Terminators.
Kyle moved on, stepping over the bodies of both sides of the war, around old cars and dismantled machines, until he heard a snap. He went up against the wall in the alley and froze, keeping his head low and looking around for any sign of life. The dead city was normally so silent that it was deafening, and if it weren't for the bones and gutted cars still laying around, Kyle wouldn't have known it ever was alive. It was hard to remember what a city was supposed to look like anymore.
He hated having to breathe slowly through the mask, but the machines had better ears than dogs. Sure enough, just as he turned his head, a Terminator walked right by along the main street.
The Terminator was an older model; Kyle recognized the design, and he supposed that was why it carried its weapon so openly. That face couldn't pass for human like it once could, especially with the sunglasses. When the model was new, the only thing that kept it from destroying the resistance were the dogs, who could tell human from Terminator.
The machines stopped making Terminators explicitly to kill humans, and started giving them other purposes. Instead of just killing, now they had the capacity to dismantle anything obsolete, salvage parts and supplies, and dispose of bodies. The model that roamed within Kyle's sight was an ARTHR, or Allocator of Residual Traces of Human Remains. Its purpose, Kyle learned, was to erase any sign of humanity.
Kyle narrowed his eyes. If he were allowed to carry his gun, he would have blasted the machine's head off before it could say "Terminated."
O~o~O
"We have to figure out how to destroy them from the inside."
"You realize how dangerous it is, to bring one here."
"Of course I do, but it's for the greater good! If we don't, we'll be living out the rest of our lives like rats, scurrying for cover. The machines can wait us out if they have to. We have an actual lifespan."
Kyle sighed deeply, listening to the conversation that he wasn't really a part of. He was allowed to listen now that he was supposedly an adult, but that didn't mean he was really included. He had no say in what the resistance did. He lounged against the wall he was leaning against, resting his chin in his palm and lazily looking between John and Bill, who dominated most of these conversations.
"They have the technology to travel through time! How are we going to replicate that?"
"We don't have to, we just have to get in there and use it before they do."
Time travel? Kyle frowned. "Why do the machines need time travel?" he asked before he could stop himself. The men stopped in mid sentence, and turned to look at him with slightly exasperated expressions. Kyle sat up and blushed slightly, and struggled to explain himself. "I mean, uh, well they don't really need it do they? They already think they've won! They don't know that we're still…" he trailed off at the look that John and Bill gave him, and looked off into space. "Oh...So you think they do know that we're still here."
Bill sighed gravely, and looked at the ground. "We don't know. We're below the radar, so maybe they just suspect we're in hiding. In any case, time travel can't be good. They want to alter history, change it so that we never had a chance."
Kyle felt the heat rising to his face, the anger bubbling up before he could control it. "Then why aren't we fighting?! We're not surviving anymore, we're just hiding! We're just cockroaches living in the walls! No wonder the machines are winning, we're just a bunch of cowards!" he stood up, glaring at everyone in the room, and noticed how Bill held back some biting response. He narrowed his eyes, daring Bill to tell him he was wrong.
Instead, John stood up. "Kyle, I know you're upset," he said gently. "You're right; we have been doing a lot of hiding. But sometimes the best thing to do is to be patient and wait for an opportunity like we have now. Our patience has paid off; the children are alive, and there's plenty of us to sustain our way of living."
"Patience my ass," Kyle mumbled, the anger already ebbing away. "What opportunity can we possibly have? There's nothing we can do but fight."
John looked at him with wisdom that went beyond his years. "Fighting isn't always the answer, Kyle." he chuckled, like it was amusing. "Look, I know it seems we have no choice. But there is; we found a way to reprogram the chip that powers a Terminator. We need one here so we can try and get it on our side."
Kyle sputtered for a moment, trying to find the words to convey just how stupid the idea was. "The machines are evil, John! They're out to kill us! You really think we can just get in its head, and whoopdedoo, have our own Terminator?"
"Yes. I do." John replied, showing absolutely no reaction to Kyle's yelling. "And you know what? You can be the one to bring us one."
"John!" Bill stood up, shocked and desperate. "He's just a kid. Don't make him do this."
But John's expression was already calculating, already plotting just how the plan would go. "Kyle would be perfect. He's quick, and he can be quiet. And he's got guts. He can learn something from this just like we can." he smiled slightly, his eyes hard and set. "Alright Kyle, we've got a job for you."
O~o~O
They made him go out when it was dark. The faint orange of the flickering sodium lights were the only thing that lit the desolate streets. The dust danced around him and the smoke wafted in as plumes of toxic gas, dissipating only with the hot breeze. Struggling to take in a full breath of the thick, humid air, Kyle hugged the walls and moved as quietly as he could over the gravelly roads. From where he was, he could just make out a silhouette just ahead.
The ARTHR from before still patrolled the city near the resistance, methodical and meticulous in his nature. Kyle wrinkled his nose at the robot. It was programmed that way, after all.
Kyle particularly hated the Terminators. They were designed to pass as human to make getting close to the various groups easy, and even for him, it worked; the ARTHR could easily pass as a man, and he couldn't help considering the Terminator a he. At least the drones were obviously machines, but it was a little harder to see the Terminators as such.
As he stalked the ARTHR down the deserted roads, he kept to the shadows and the walls, keeping his gun hidden under his poncho. He stayed on his toes, his gaze steady on the machine. He watched, as the ARTHR turned over bodies in varying stages of decomposition and surveyed abandoned vehicles with a face devoid of expression.
Just walking around, doing nothing but what appeared to be exploring, Kyle could briefly see the ARTHR as a fellow human. Minus the sunglasses, the coltan endoskeleton, and the whole program designed to kill humans, the Terminators really could pass as one of them. But he wasn't, and Kyle refused to accept the idea. Focused on the ARTHR, he didn't look where he was going and ended up stepping right through the ribcage of some long dead body.
Immediately, the Terminator looked up in his direction. Kyle had sunk to the ground and pretended to be a body just as the ARTHR began coming towards him. Another thing he hated about the Terminators was their complete lack of urgency; they didn't need to run or hurry like the humans did to get away. They just marched on like the mindless machines they were. Kyle readjusted his grip on the gun below his poncho just as the Terminator finally came upon him.
He really didn't pass for a dead body, and he was recognized immediately. The ARTHR grabbed him by the collar and lifted him up above his head, searching his face for any sign of life. Then, just as Kyle opened his eyes and the robot reacted, he pressed his gun to the ARTHR's gut. "Shouldn't hold me up for dramatic effect," he grinned, before he pulled the trigger.
The ARTHR had a seizure-like reaction to the high voltage, and Kyle immediately dropped to the ground once the robot was down. He watched it jerk until the current passed, and his smile fell away.
He hadn't ever really seen a Terminator up close before. The children were always the most protected, always ushered further underground to stay as far away from the battle as possible. Terminators were an adult fight. That was back when the T-800s were their main battle, when massive men with tattered jackets and gargoyle sunglasses tried to invade their hideout. Now, looking at the ARTHR, he noticed he wasn't as big as the T-800s or the T-1000s. Then again, the T models were just programmed with Hunter-Killer functions. The ARTHR had programming that went beyond just taking out the humans, and Kyle supposed they would learn what exactly those functions were soon.
He was grateful for only a moment that he wouldn't have to be dragging one of those huge T-800 models back to the resistance, as the ARTHR looked to be more of a lightweight model. But once he tried to move the ARTHR, he realized the Terminator was much heavier than it looked.
O~o~O
The process of reprogramming a Terminator was a little disturbing.
Bill, John, and the others who were working on him knew the chip was inside his head, but they had no idea how to access it. They pored over diagrams and plans, trying to find what they called a "Neural Net CPU," which would give them access to all of the ARTHR's functions. They assumed it would be the same as the T-800, but they couldn't be sure. Kyle sat boredly in front of the ARTHR, studying his face, while the others worked behind the robot.
He wondered just how the machines were able to make the ARTHR look so real. Sitting there, tied to his chair, it almost looked like they had a human hostage. He had short, messy blonde hair and a long, dark jacket that looked just as dirty as their own clothing. With his lanky build, he almost looked like he could afford to eat more, if that were possible. He didn't know if robots could eat.
John seemed eager to try and get into the system, as they weren't sure how long the ARTHR would take to reboot itself. He approached the robot warily with a small knife, referencing the diagram one more time, before bringing the knife to the ARTHR's head.
Just then, the ARTHR's eyes snapped open and he began jerking in his chair, trying to escape. Kyle jolted back, watching the ARTHR yank at his arms with the most blank expression he'd ever seen. What chilled Kyle the most was how the ARTHR's eyes stayed on his the whole time, unwavering. While John and Bill scrambled for a stun gun behind the ARTHR, Kyle tilted his head.
"Do robots eat?" he asked him.
He broke free from the chair, ripping itself from the binds, which made Kyle lean back once he realized he was defenseless. For just a moment, the ARTHR stopped, and blinked once. "No." he replied, before John whipped around with the gun to electrocute him again.
This time, the ARTHR's eyes stayed open as it powered down again, falling back in the chair. He stared at the floor, unseeing and presumably unconscious.
John sighed with a warning look at Kyle. "Do you realize how stupid that was? Look, we don't have much time. Now he knows how to adapt to the gun, so we have to work quickly." He picked up his knife again, and Kyle averted his eyes, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. The robot was free, for just a moment, and yet it stopped to listen to Kyle. A Terminator didn't even need a moment to make its move, so what stopped the ARTHR from killing him?
Making a wobbly incision, John worriedly checked the diagram every other moment to make sure he was outlining the correct place. Then, without so much as a slight flinch, he peeled back the bloody skin over the ARTHR's head. From where he was sitting, Kyle could still hear the slick skin being displaced, and felt himself go a little pale. A bit of bile rose in his throat out of sheer disgust, and he struggled to swallow it down. He didn't know how John could stay so composed.
Even Bill seemed slightly put off by the ARTHR; he looked at the head with a wrinkled nose, and a slightly questioning look to John as he accessed the compartment that held the chip.
"Here," John said, and held up a chip with his pair of tweezers. Bill quickly held up a small tray so he could drop it. "Now he's completely powered down. He won't be waking up again until we replace the chip, so he's safe now. But we have to hurry and reprogram it; we don't know if Skynet gave it some self destruct function."
Those were the last words spoken for a couple of hours. John and Bill worked on the chip with another woman, replacing the codes with their own commands. The silence was too awkward for Kyle to leave, so he slouched on the makeshift bench and watched the eerily still Terminator.
When the ARTHR had grabbed him on that street, he easily could have killed Kyle instead of waiting. Kyle was beginning to feel slightly strange about the whole ordeal. He was incredibly irresponsible for even making an attempt to speak to the Terminator, as he had been warned time and time again that the Terminators wouldn't hesitate. So why didn't the ARTHR make any move to attack him? As grateful as he was that he wasn't dead, he wasn't sure he'd like the reason behind it.
He shifted uncomfortably, eventually wondering if the Terminators had a concept of taunting. Had the ARTHR been teasing him, making Kyle think he was safe? It would set the perfect stage for the robot to kill him unexpectedly, once Kyle's back was turned. Was that how they killed the humans now?
John stood with the altered CPU after what felt like a year just sitting there. With steady hands, he carefully inserted the chip back in its proper place, and sealed the mechanism. Then, he folded the bloody skin back over the ARTHR's head.
"There," he said softly, like he was releasing a breath. "That should do it."
Immediately, the ARTHR's eyes came in focus, and he slowly looked up at Kyle. He didn't appear to be aware of the others behind him.
Kyle swallowed thickly, and glanced nervously at Bill and John, before he looked back at the Terminator. He had green eyes, he realized, and a hard, steady gaze. It was slightly intimidating, to be right in the ARTHR's crosshairs. Yet, he made no move to stand.
"Uh." Kyle said intelligently.
The ARTHR made no movement to acknowledge him. He didn't even blink.
Worried, Kyle looked back at John and Bill, who also watched the Terminator warily. It hit Kyle very suddenly that this was the first time they had ever attempted to reprogram one of Skynet's soldiers. It could very well have backfired and the Terminator was just deciding on the most efficient way of killing them all.
Then, the ARTHR made a move to stand. Everyone in the room jumped back in alarm.
Still looking straight at Kyle, the ARTHR spoke. "I have the ability to process food, but it is not necessary."
Kyle blinked several times. "...What?"
The ARTHR stood and regarded Kyle with his programmed indifference. "You asked if robots eat. I am not a robot, I am a cybernetic organism. I do not require sustenance like humans."
John and Bill looked at each other, with expressions just short of elation. Kyle couldn't help but smile nervously and laugh at little as well, but he still stayed a good distance away from the machine. "Oh. Uh, that makes sense." he shuffled and kicked at the ground, staying on his toes in case he had to make a run for it. But the question was eating at him, so he finally had to ask. "Why didn't you kill me out there?"
Immediately, John's smile fell and Bill looked directly at Kyle with a wide eyed look. They weren't sure what he was talking about. The ARTHR considered this, deciding on his response, before he slowly came forward. Kyle jumped, stumbling back a step, but the ARTHR simply stopped and stood right in front of him.
"You have a few years left." His eyes flitted up and down Kyle's figure, observing his skittish demeanor. "You are not ripe yet."
Then, he turned and started marching out of the room after he grabbed his sunglasses, ignoring John and Bill as they came back to life, shouting and going after him.
O~o~O
Kyle had taken to calling the Terminator Arthur. A-R-T-H-R was a mouthful to spell out every time, and naming the robot somehow gave him less of a reason to hate him. At first, John advised against it, but eventually, he gave up the scolding and would just let Kyle interact with Arthur more and more often. However, Arthur did not seem pleased with his nickname. Inevitably, he would correct Kyle and recite his designated name and model number.
Arthur was incredibly valuable to the resistance; he had so much information about Skynet's plans for the future, and would be able to accurately lead them to the TDE, or Time Displacement Equipment. He confirmed that Skynet intended to send a Terminator back in time to alter the past and change the future, and agreed the only way to preserve the human race as they knew it was to beat Skynet to the TDE.
They had time. Skynet was waiting out the resistance, sending out legions of ARTHRs to squander them. What they didn't expect, was the answer to Kyle's question the day they reprogrammed Arthur. Arthur had recounted his encounter with Kyle out in the city, and explained in great detail the amount of chances he had to kill Kyle.
That earned Kyle a very, very long lecture from John.
The reason Arthur didn't kill Kyle, was because, as he had stated, Kyle wasn't ripe. What he meant by that was Kyle wasn't old enough. Through that, the resistance uncovered a deeply horrifying plan Skynet had that they wouldn't have thought to ask about otherwise.
Skynet was preserving the children. While the Terminators killed anyone past the age of twenty five, they left the children alone.
"Well, that sounds awfully merciful," Kyle frowned, not sure if he heard correctly. By the look on John's face, he knew sparing the children wasn't a good thing.
Arthur looked at him with that familiar, steady gaze. He had learned to simulate breathing at appropriate intervals, but he hadn't yet picked up on natural expression. "It is not mercy. We do not feel mercy." he corrected Kyle. "The Terminators do not kill the children anymore because Skynet plans on harvesting them."
"For what?" Bill asked, his voice cracking at some horrible realization.
Without even the slightest wince, the slightest hint that he felt something, Arthur told them. "Humans can provide energy, much like organic batteries. Skynet has discovered a way to harness that energy, and plan to use humans as a power source. That is why they need the children, they need a population that won't fight." he explained in a level, impassive voice.
Dinner was deathly quiet that night.
While the resistance plotted their invasion of Skynet to use the TDE, Kyle was tasked with watching Arthur in their free time. Initially, he protested, claiming he didn't want anything to do with robots, but John explained that in the event Arthur's programming got corrupted, Kyle would be the safest one to be near him. So, with John guilting him into carrying the safety of the resistance on his shoulders, Kyle found himself sitting with Arthur on a quiet day outside on a roof.
With their feet dangling over the side, Kyle watched the ground below as the wind stirred all sorts of plastic bags and trash around the street. Arthur didn't appear to stare at anything, but occasionally he'd glance over to Kyle and attempt to copy his movements.
Kyle chewed on the inside of his mouth, and raised his voice so he could be heard through the gas mask. "So why do you wear those sunglasses, anyway?" he asked, feeling slightly annoyed once he picked up on how Arthur was mirroring him. He purposefully struck his heel against the building just to watch Arthur do the same.
Experimenting with the movement, Arthur kicked back against the building just like Kyle, only halting at Kyle's snickering. He had quickly learned to know when Kyle was teasing him. "The glasses serve to disguise my eyes." Arthur told him, looking up and making direct eye contact. "I am currently unable to correctly imitate natural eye movements."
Crossing his arms, he refused to look at Arthur. "So it's just another way to hide the fact that you're not human."
"Yes." Arthur replied. He looked down at the ground.
Kyle considered his words with a heavy breath that was amplified through the mask, and looked out over the horizon. The sky seemed to be getting darker by the day, having once been such a pure blue. Now, it appeared to be a sickly, nauseous green. He narrowed his eyes, glaring out across the dead city with a heavy heart. The planet used to belong to humans, but the war had reduced it to nothing but a wasteland.
Following his gaze, Arthur watched the blurred line indifferently. "Why do you wear the mask?" he asked, in a tone he had learned to mean friendly. He had picked up on making general conversations to ease tension between himself and the humans, and sometimes it worked, but other times, it failed.
Kyle did not react in a friendly way. "Because you and your damn friends made the air too toxic for us to breathe." he muttered. "It's making us sick. It's killing us. The Terminators won't finish the job, it's gonna be the fucking air."
The breeze picked up, and Kyle sighed deeply. Arthur watched his face carefully to observe the time in between each blink, unwavering and unreacting. Kyle shifted how he was sitting and turned his scowl to Arthur. "You shouldn't stare, you know. It's rude."
"Rude." Arthur echoed vaguely.
"Yea! Rude! Impolite? It's where you do things that make other people uncomfortable or upset! Like stare. Or yell. Yeesh, don't you robots know anything?!" Kyle threw his hands up.
Arthur looked away. "You are yelling at me." he observed.
Kyle growled. "Yea? Well, you can shut the hell up."
"I cannot shut hell." Arthur informed him, kicking at the building again.
With another, smaller sigh, Kyle covered his face with his hands as well as he could with the mask on. He listened as Arthur tried to imitate his sigh. But then, it was silent between them, and Kyle left it that way. He had to breathe, had to remember the man sitting next to him wasn't really a man. Reprogrammed or not, Arthur was still a machine, and it was machines that were responsible for everything wrong with the world.
He didn't know how to make Arthur understand that. Maybe he already did, maybe he gathered from observing the resistance that machines were the root of their problems. Or maybe he was above it all, and he looked down on the humans and their silly problems like they were meaningless. He couldn't begin to fathom what was going on inside Arthur's head.
A hand came to lay on his shoulder, and Kyle jumped, whipping around to look at Arthur. He opened his mouth to say something, he wasn't sure what, but he stopped when he realized Arthur had taken off his sunglasses.
"I am sorry." Arthur told him, looking at him not with the meaningless stare he had before, but with earnest eyes. "Skynet has caused a lot of suffering. You blame me for what you have lost, and I cannot help that. But I can help the resistance beat Skynet to the TDE. We cannot win the war in this time, but perhaps we will have a chance in the past."
Kyle met Arthur's eyes reluctantly, and upon seeing his expression, he couldn't help a slight smile. "Thanks," he conceded softly. "I hope you're right."
O~o~O
It was a miracle they hadn't been discovered.
There were too many close calls for comfort, but each time the resistance stumbled upon a Terminator, Arthur mowed it down with a machine gun before it had a chance to react. At one point, Kyle stumbled into the range of a drone down the hall, and froze in his tracks.
"Get down," Arthur said, just as he released hellfire on the unsuspecting machine. Kyle pressed as flat as he could on the cold, steel floor, not daring to move until the bullets stopped. His ears rang with the sheer volume of all the guns firing, and he couldn't hear John urging him to get up. The next thing he knew, Arthur had picked him up by the arm and was dragging him along until Kyle could run with them on his own.
Arthur had advised Bill and John behind his back to leave Kyle behind, because Skynet's TDE was priority one, so sparing the younger population would be second to protecting the time travelling device. But Kyle wouldn't have it and insisted he come along, even if he was in danger. He hadn't known the Terminators would have spared him in the first place, so risking his life was nothing new.
Once Arthur had seen Kyle fire a gun with such control and animosity, he didn't say another word on the matter.
They had only made it about halfway to the TDE before Skynet became aware of their presence. Left and right, men and women of the resistance were cut down at every turn. Arthur shielded Kyle from any attack, bullet holes spotting his jacket, and John and Bill did everything they could to keep them moving forward.
Kyle was familiar with death; the whole planet was ruined after Judgement Day, and the bombs had taken his parents and everyone else all those months ago. But he'd never been right in the middle of it, where he could see the life leaving the eyes of friends he had only just started to know. He was too distracted, looking back at the bodies and not at the Terminators who were dead set on killing him.
One of Arthur's eyes got taken out by a stray bullet, revealing the red light and the silver of his endoskeleton. But he still marched on, dragging Kyle with him and taking down anything that fired. While Kyle looked back, wanting to run back to the lifeless resistance, Arthur and John shared a brief look.
"Kyle," Arthur spoke, his tone not wavering even as he whirled around to fire at another ARTHR. "Listen to me carefully. We will soon be inside the TDE. Once we get in, you need to follow me into the chamber and follow my instructions. John and Bill will stay behind to guard the door, but we will not have much time."
Kyle finally remembered he also had a gun and tried to help, but the best he could do while they were running was take out unmoving targets. He didn't have the mechanical precision of a terminator. "What are you saying?" he asked, looking ahead and seeing the big doors to the TDE. They were coming up fast, and Kyle turned and suddenly realized there were only the four of them left.
There was a slight moment of hesitation before Arthur spoke again. "I understand now, why this is necessary. History must be changed, if the human race has any chance of making it through this war."
"What-what do you mean?" Kyle could make out the Terminators coming for them, limping along if they had to. Bullets wouldn't stop them. "We can do this! Even if it takes years, you know, we always find a way, right?"
Arthur gave him a long, heavy look. "Not this time. Not in this time."
They burst in, and John and Bill immediately shut the doors again, holding their guns up with trembling hands as they waited for the Terminators to catch up. Arthur dragged Kyle to the center of the room and shoved him to the control panel, while he himself went and stood inside the spherical chamber. "Set the date to May the twelfth, 1984." he instructed, adjusting some of the controls near him.
"Got it." Kyle nodded, and then frowned. "Why then?"
Without even looking at him, Arthur told him. "May the twelfth, 1984. On that day, Skynet will sent a T-800 back in time to assassinate your mother."
Kyle's hands froze over the device, just before he could give it the go. "...My mom?"
The Terminators struck the door, and John and Bill started fighting them off. At the sound of gunfire, Arthur turned to face Kyle. "Skynet wants to kill your mother before you are born. You are going to send me back to protect her." just before Kyle could protest, shock and confusion written all over his face, Arthur raised a hand. "Listen to me, Kyle. I understand this doesn't make very much sense to you. I understand now why John wanted me to go back. No child should ever know as much hatred and as much suffering as you. If I go back now, I can prevent Judgement Day from happening at all."
Gaping, Kyle took a moment to find his voice. "But...Why my mom? Why me?" his voice cracked, and his hands shook over the control panel.
Giving him a dark look, Arthur told him. "Because you are going to save humanity. It is too late in this time, but there's still a chance in other potential futures. I have to go back now, or there won't be another chance." he explained urgently.
Kyle looked to the door, where John and Bill already lay dead, and saw the Terminators were moving past them. He thought of his mom, but he realized he couldn't remember her face. A bullet struck him in his side, and another in his shoulder. His hand, having been hovering above the screen, fell on the control panel and confirmed the date.
The last thing he saw was burst of light and a swirl of sheer energy. "Goodbye, Kyle." and Arthur was gone.
O~o~O
There was a looot of references to The Terminator and The Matrix in this story, so it probably doesn't make a lot of sense unless you're at least a little familiar with either series. But the basics, at least, I can lay down here XD
So the big idea of the Terminator is that there's these human looking robots designed to kill humans, hence the name Terminator. A main plot line of all the movies is time travel, which is used to return to a time before Judgement Day, which is the name given to the day Skynet(AI type thing designed to help the military) became self aware and blew up the whole planet basically. The remaining humans became the resistance, fighting for their lives against these unbeatable machines. The only way to get back at the machines was through time travel, as the machines tried to assassinate Sarah Connor and then John Connor and all this crazy stuff. It's a great series!
The main idea of The Matrix is basically assuming the humans lost against the machines in the far future, and so the machines started "growing" humans in these giant pod farm things and kept them happy in the matrix, which was why I mentioned the whole organic battery thing. That's about the only reason Matrix has anything to do with this story haha, nothing too special.
Idk there's a lot to it for just one story but it's fine by itself haha, if you'd like to know more about it then I'm more than happy to explain!
-Madz