Inevitable - was there any truth to there being no fate than what we make ourselves?
By TimeTraveller-1900.
It was chaos in the Cyber Research Systems building. Skynet, the crown jewel project of an artificially made intelligence put into operation which would take over the military networks, had been activated to combat a rogue super virus without realising Skynet was the virus and was the reason everything was falling apart, had become self-aware. They had a short time scale before the AI launched the nuclear weapons and triggered the event which would transform the world into a living nightmare.
Judgement Day. The end of the world as human civilisation knew it. The end of everything human beings had planned, as their future now lay in their survival as they fought a remorseless artificial intelligence which believed human beings were its greatest threat and constructed armies of relentless juggernaut machines after those unfortunate enough to survive. More than once in his nightmares ever since he had discovered his mother was not insane as he had been told in the past, John Connor had wondered which people had been better off.
Those who survived Judgement Day and the resultant war which would see humanity's end or those who died.
And he still hadn't worked out the answer. He knew while there was life, there was still some degree of hope. But what hope was there for them in an irradiated future battling machines sent out to slaughter them all every day?
John and Kate both raced through the CRS corridors as they tried to find a way of escaping to Crystal Peak, to end Skynet once and for all. Everywhere they went, they found the bodies of soldiers, guards, and technicians who had been cut to pieces by the machines already. John tried not to look down at any of the corpses they passed, because he felt he had failed them all. His mother had taught him since the cradle he was going to be a military leader who would help humanity rise up against Skynet and bring hope, and while he had been hateful towards her when she got caught and everything he had been told had been nothing but a lie according to the police and the psychiatric people, he had been smashed into reality when the T-1000 and the Terminator sent to kill and protect him respectively arrived and he had been horrified by the way he had dismissed his own mother.
While he knew there was no way he could have stopped CRS from taking over from where Cyberdyne had left it, John still wished and felt he could have done something far more to end this. He could not resist it. He even ran away and hid after mum died, and now he regretted it even more.
John was drawn out of his depressing thoughts by the far more depressing picture. It was so colourful that John's eyes were caught by it instantly.
"Oh, my god," he hissed, making Kate stop.
The picture showed a flying machine with no helicopter blades of any kind. The machine was flying above a number of obsolete and larger helicopters, which looked clunky, old-fashioned and manned whereas the machine was sleek, small and terrifyingly more effective. The image was clear; the machine was the future of warfare, and older and manned vehicles were obsolete and useless.
But John was remembering the venomous way his mother had confronted Miles Dyson after she had shot him when she had gone to kill him. John had stopped her from ranting, but he knew she was right. The people at Cyberdyne and CRS and everywhere else that manufactured weapons, big or small, felt they were so great and brilliantly creative that they did not look at the long-term consequences of the horrors they were unleashing. For a spiteful moment, John prayed some of the people working here survived and found their way to the future resistance, so they understood the horrific depths of their mistake.
But as he looked at the painting, John was unable to take his eyes off of the sight of it. This painting had been done by artists who had no idea of what the reality of the world with the machines would be. Everyone in the government, CRS, and the military who knew the facilities Skynet offered believed this painting was the future.
But in John's mind, the image should show something different and darker. The machine, the HK, should be fighting with the helicopters as they desperately tried to shoot the fucking thing down. The ground should show shattered buildings with human beings fighting a hopeless battle against Terminators and other machines.
"John? We have to go!" He became aware of Kate tugging him along and he finally looked at her, breaking the spell.
"I'm sorry, Kate. But…I was just thinking of what my mother said to me over the years, and what I've seen myself. This is what mum and I fought so long and so hard to prevent," John said as he took off with her as carefully as they could so they wouldn't find themselves running into a machine, or worse, the TX.
"Mum was barely able to remember her life before the first Terminator was sent back in time to kill her, to kill us before I was even born. She was a waitress in a restaurant, living with a flatmate, and had an ordinary life before women sharing her name were being murdered and she was attacked herself. She was only saved by my father, who'd been sent by the resistance to protect her," John said, not noticing Kate's look of shock before she clearly showed signs of accepting what he was saying. After what had been happening, it was not a surprise. "He told her everything about the future. How Skynet would launch the war, how it built the Terminators, and how it pioneered time travel to kill anyone who was a threat to its future. All mum focused on after she crushed the original Terminator was surviving and ensuring I was taught how to fight and command and plan. Mum had fought so long and so hard to prevent this coming true, Kate. She continued to fight even when they put her into a mental hospital, but there was no real way of stopping this."
Kate knew how he felt. After kissing him as a kid in that basement and then how he had disappeared with those mysterious events - the way a truck had been destroyed in a storm drain, the brutal murders of his foster parents, Kate had never imagined she would ever see John again. But now her father was dead. Her fiance was dead. And her world was turned upside down by machines from the future, and the world as she knew it was going to end.
In the RV on their way to CRS to get to her father to stop him from activating Skynet, Kate had watched John as he prepared the plastic explosives and said they would end Skynet, but now Kate was unsure if it was possible even if they got to Crystal Peak. If Crystal Peak was truly where Skynet was, why hadn't the Terminator told them so they could blow it up?
"Maybe there wasn't," Kate sighed sadly as she thought about the millions of people out there who would find themselves wiped out by the Machine's war. "I knew your mum was sent to a mental hospital, but you soon met the Terminators, didn't you?"
John's brow furrowed as he remembered seeing the Terminator standing over the body of the T-1000 in the Galleria. When he had seen that moment after seeing the face of the Terminator, a face his mother had made him memorise, John knew everything mum had said had been true but before he had seen her sentenced to the hospital, he had known the danger he was in was real.
"Yeah," he replied as he let his mind drift to that moment he had been confronted with what everyone else, including him, thought was the truth, that his mother was insane. He had never forgiven himself for it. "She got sent to the hospital after she tried to blow up a computer factory. I was told mum was crazy and then I felt, right then, everything she had told me was nothing but a lie from a delusional bitch. I hated her for those lies because they cost me my childhood. But truthfully I didn't have a chance of having one after one of the Terminators try to kill me."
John looked down at his toes for a second. "I honestly thought we'd averted it all. That we had stopped Judgement Day for good. But all the time it was inevitable. Maybe what dad told mum was wrong."
"What?" Kate blinked at him curiously before she looked around looking for any machines.
"Dad told mum the future is not set, there's no fate beyond what we make for ourselves," John explained. "He was telling her this was a possible future. But he was wrong. Skynet does come about, regardless of what we do."
"Maybe not," Kate countered. "Have you considered that it's possible to change the future?"
John didn't have an answer to that, not anymore.