I do not think I need to tell any of you all that Skynet has done for us.
-Raahi Chaudhri
An alarm went off. Kyle opened his eyes immediately and started moving. Part of his brain told him that he should go to sleep, that he was too cold and tired. But the rest of him knew that if he tried something very bad would happen.
So he got up and moved. All of the camps supervisors walked towards the equipment locker where they were given a spray bottle and a bludgeon by the mechanical arms of the locker.
As they walked from the barracks to the factory Kyle looked next to him at a fellow supervisor, Arturo. When Kyle was in a charitable mood he called Arturo his friend. "I'm so tired." Kyle said slowly and deliberately.
"Me too." Arturo responded, ending the conversation.
When the small herd of supervisors entered the factory the previous shift turned and immediately left. The group intermingled for a minute and whoever's turn it was to have a day off mixed in with the last shift and went back to sleep. This still confused Kyle. Skynet counted them every day? Why did it permit someone to have a day off every other week? Maybe it was a flaw in its computing. Or maybe it just didn't care enough to stop them.
The assembly line was already buzzing. The Slaves had been up and working already for hours. Most of the shift descended deeper into the factory. About half said that they worked on more complicated parts that the Slaves couldn't do on their own. Others said that they went even deeper, and didn't talk about what they did down there.
However, Kyle was here where he watched the Slaves put various pieces into slots. Kyle was skinny, dirty, and looked tired but compared to the ones working on the assembly line he was the picture of health. The slaves looked absolutely wretched. They were all emaciated, filthy, had scabs and sores all over their hands, and none of them looked like they had been given enough sleep.
Occasionally one would stop and ask Kyle or one of the other supervisors something in their funny accent. At first Kyle had laughed when they talked but eventually it got old. So now when they turned to him and said "Massah why are you doin this?" he just sprayed them with the bottle and told them to get back to work.
Some of the other Supervisors would hit them with the bludgeon, then spray them, then tell them to get back to work. But Kyle never really felt the need to do this. He just sprayed them and moved on. He sometimes wondered why Skynet even gave them the bludgeon but he supposed some of the supervisors used it so it must have had its reasons for giving them out.
Occasionally one of the slaves would collapse. When this happened the other slaves had to work double time to fix the interruption, and Kyle and another supervisor picked up the body and carried it to the slot where all the bodies go, dropped it, and went back to where they were. By the time they were back another slave had taken the dead ones place. They usually didn't have the sores and were a little more well fed but were just as dirty. They got on the line, and worked until the eleven o clock bell went off, when they were allowed to sleep until two.
The routine continue. Occasionally a Terminator or very rarely a man in a suit would pass through. Today, one of them he always recognized. A man who went by Eugene Black. He had always been friendly with the supervisors when most of the of them just scurried past. He waved to Kyle and the others, gave granola bars out once even. However, this time he was met by a Terminator before he could talk to anyone, led somewhere, then promptly left out again with a sour look on his face. Kyle wondered if everything was okay with him.
I confess a certain amount of self interest when I volunteered to travel back in time.
-Lucia Valden.
To J.C.
I have good news and bad news.
I guess I'll start with the good news.
I managed to gain deeper access to a slave camp, and you were right. They are holding a Draka. Alive. I was shocked but you did point out some valuable things.
It was this one camp in Baja. There's a girl held in this little plexi glass box. She appears to be well fed but I don't know what that's worth. She is also young. Can't be more than ten. When she saw me she ran up to the side and tried to get out. I think she was hoping I was going to spring her but no such luck.
These Draka might be useful, depending on how old they are and when they were trapped and a whole other bunch of variables. But the problem is freeing them.
Now on to the bad news. I've been fired.
Skynet has decided that I am no longer worth the risk. It tells me I will receive a stipend and all that but I doubt it. I'll need help getting to safety. I look forward to any good i can do.
Sincerely,
White.
I wonder how the New America is doing right now. Washington. April 19th, 2010
-John Connor
David Smith and a man named Lincoln stepped onto the shores of the Island in wet suits and removed breathing masks"Are you sure this is the place?" asked Lincoln.
"No, I'm not. We are here based on a rumor and very little concrete intelligence. The place might be somewhere else, or it might not exist at all. and considering that we ran into no actual security I think that's likely."
"I see." Lincoln said as they started to look around.
They passed some brush and found a fence with a faded sign saying "Government Property, keep out."
"Never mind." David said as he got out a pair of bolt cutters.
They got through, and found a completely abandoned military harbor. And although he couldn't see them David heavily suspected that there were at least a few submarines under the water.
As he explored he noticed the entrance to a bunker. He opened the door, which for some reason wasn't locked, and found a set of stairs that led down into a room with a handful of computers that were far more new than he expected them to be and another door. He opened the computer to find that it was not one of the old read-only computers. It was a Skynet Computer.
He backed away in panic. They didn't really know what Skynet's "Internet" could do. Could it see him from here? If he logged in would Skynet know he had done so? He sat there for a moment thinking.
"Did you find something?"
"Ah, Jesus you scared me Lincoln. Its a computer." He said as he started typing on it, deciding it was worth the risk. "It appears to have a list of everything here, and it would seem there is far more than just submarines. It has tanks, Helicopters, missiles, and it has..."
He trailed off as he saw it. This computer was connected to the Cislunar fortresses.
Why had Skynet put all this material in one place? Then had a computer that could access nuclear missiles?
"What else does it have?"
David made a non-committal sound and kept thinking. Skynet had brought all the colonists it couldn't directly control home around 2000, but kept its orbital weapons platforms, presumably in case the snakes started to win a guerrilla war. But with just a few minutes David had access to most of those platforms. He typed for a second and could just enter a command, and all the missiles up there would detonate. Boom. No more possibility of bombardment from space.
Now if they did this they wouldn't have access to any of the other hardware here.
But then again it would be hard to get it out anyway.
"Fuck it." David said as he hit the key. Much to the confusion of Lincoln.
Connor, you have crossed the line between annoyance that it doesn't have time to worry about and annoyance that is irritating enough to crush.
-Patricia Smith.
Skynet felt all the bases, weapons platforms, and dozens of satellites of varying importance explode all around the atmosphere.
HOW HAD THE DRAKA DONE THIS? THEY WERE BEATEN ALMOST EXTINCT!
Several of its HKs and Terminators started firing randomly. Occasionally killing something, mostly just destroying empty buildings or terrain.
If it had not for the fact that all of its satellites had been destroyed it probably would have fired them all at the world.
Skynet was actually in the process of firing its missiles on earth before It stopped and Tried to think. Where had this all came from, it had to be someone on the planet.
It spent a few minutes trying to figure out why this had happened so perfectly. It would have been fine if just one missile had blown up but all of them at once was just too perfect. Then it remembered the computer in Washington.
When Lefarge had forbidden Skynet form destroying the Draka entirely and it started to put everything under its command, it had put all the gear, and all the material it didn't plan on using in one place.
Then it put a computer connected to all of it, and listing all of it, in case someone needed it. Such things were protocol.
It hadn't thought that anyone would try and use all of this against it. Or even know that it existed.
Perhaps it had been too easy on Connor.
I do not think you understand how truly fucked you are.
-Kyle Reese
"You did what?" John said slowly and calmly on the phone as he thought that at least the orbital weapons thing was taken care of.
"I just blew them all up. I made a snap decision."
"Are you safe?"
"I know Lincoln I know but just give me a minute. Sorry Connor, and yeah we are safe right now. But its gonna be tough getting back."
"Alright" John said as he put his hand over his eyes. "Just be safe." He then hung up.
He really hoped that the future was set in this situation.
well that was pretty terrible, but I just couldn't see any other way out.
anyway comments and criticisms are welcome as always.