Legal Disclaimer: I own nothing. All rights to the Terminator or Buffy characters belong to the respective companies. No money is being made from this. It's all for fun.
Spoilers: See any of the first 3 chapters For Spoiler warnings.
Dream sequence: Italics
Thoughts: (Italics)
Scene opens: Giles has just asked Willow what she could know about Skynet.
Chapter Ten
Count Down to Judgment Day:
T Minus Six (pt4):
(Point Skynet):
(This Chapter is a pretty heavy monologue from Willow and Buffy with little other conversation going on.)
Giles had just turned to Willow to ask her about Skynet.
"All I can tell you is that a truly sentient computer would have unknown abilities. From what Whistler said it was an artificial intelligence that woke up." Willow was pacing back and forth.
"If it's truly aware then a lot will depend on exactly what sort of access it has to various remotes. In other words what can it control? Does it have the ability to access the web and other digital devices? If it does then it could conceivably be listening in on any phone conversations that it has access to. It might not be paying attention now. But it might run a program like carnivore looking for keywords." It sounded like Willow was speculating out loud.
Willow looked directly at Giles. "I really can't tell you much. Artificial Intelligence is only science fiction as far as I know. There's been ton's of research but no breakthroughs. And if it's truly sentient then all bets are off. After Judgment Day it will eventually have access to any digital information that remains. There are a lot of different backups for financial information. The Goddess knows what it could make of it. Or if it would even bother. I just don't know."
Willow turned to Buffy. "I know the powers told you a lot. Did they say what Skynet's abilities might be now?"
Buffy shook her head. "It's not the Skynet of now we have to worry about. As long as we take reasonable precautions it can't hurt us specifically. It's the future Skynet we have to worry about. Anything we do here, might get analyzed twenty or more years from now and bring Skynet's killing machines down on us before we're ready for them. They could even be coming here right now. We just wouldn't know.
Skynet doesn't casually dispatch Terminators into the past. It requires a lot of directed effort by Skynet to send back a killer. It calculates the odds and decides if the computational chaos that would erupt from changing his past is worth it. Only something very high stakes is worth it. But the complexities go even beyond Skynet's computational abilities quickly the more the past is changed."
Anya spoke up. "Is that why it hasn't just sent a nuke back in time to kill of this Conner kid? Because it's not sure of whether something worse would come from it?"
Buffy had to smile at Anya. "You got it. The more you change the past the more difficult it is for Skynet to predict what will happen. It doesn't want to chance making drastic changes in it's own past that could adversely effect it. For an example. A human would take a chance that one time out of a hundred things wouldn't go bad for him. But Skynet would consider that much to risky. And it wont jeopardize itself unnecessarily."
"Pretty big words from a California blonde." Xander had on his regulation smirk.
"I admit it. Things are to important for me to waste time playing that I'm a dumb blonde. The closer we get to Judgment Day the more Skynet is willing to risk interfering in the past. Since there would be less and less time for things to go wrong before his past self kills most of the planet."
"What ever happens we can't give up the advantage of the supernatural. Skynet won't be looking for it. (I hope! she thought to herself.But if we're to obvious we could bring it down on us. A Terminator is a lot more dangerous than just about anything else we've ever faced. One of the more advanced models could probably give Adam a good one on one fight and might even win. The top of the line ones could handle Adam like we would deal with a large puppy." Buffy looked as serious as she could be, while talking about puppies.
Giles Willow and Xander blanched at that. None of the others present had ever dealt directly with Adam and didn't fully appreciate just how dangerous he was.
"Good Lord the power." Giles had to sit down at that statement and would have missed his seat if Joyce hadn't nudged it over a bit.
Buffy laughed at the look on their faces. She had to drive the point home that Terminators were dangerous beyond belief. "Yep. Adam would probably win a one on one because he's sneaky. But if it was just a straight up brawl I'd say a Terminator would stand a darn good chance of winning. And Terminators never need to rest. You can blow them in half and it would still be after whatever it's mission was. They're relentless. Nothing short of destruction will stop one from completing it's mission."
Giles looked ashen. "Skynet's forces are dangerous enough. If it starts looking into the supernatural, there's no telling what it might decide to do. What if it figures out a way for the Hellmouth to be opened if it's about to loose the war against humanity? We cannot take any chances. Skynet must not discover about the supernatural until it's to late.
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And with those chilling words I'll stop here. The next update will be over the weekend.
Please Read and Review. Let me know what you liked or didn't like. (Other than length for the next couple of chapters.