Thursday 12th September 1996 – 10.27am
"You broke in, shot one of my security staff, threatened my employees and you expect me to watch this crap?"
"We only shot him in the foot. It was his fault really," Jack reasoned.
Sarah shot him a shut-up-or-I'll-shoot-you-too look.
"We'll take it somewhere else, and you'll regret it." She stared the executive down.
They were in a glass office, somewhere high above Manhattan. The view down was making Markus dizzy. Marita wasn't paying attention, she was waving down at the ant-sized people below.
"Seriously? From the future?"
"Ten minutes. John, play the tape."
"It doesn't really work like that mom. I have to -"
Sarah sighed, turned to him and said "get on with it then."
John ran around the other side of the desk. The executive allowed herself be rolled away by a helpful Jack and Dave. John pressed some buttons and connected some leads and did other computer-y things.
Whatever he did, it worked, and the video came up on the screen on the wall opposite.
There was no sound.
"Oh, you have to-" the executive started.
"Yeah, yeah," John said absently, and sound started blaring out of some nearby speakers. He quickly adjusted the volume and started the video again.
Tuesday 16th October 2029 – 6.22pm
They'd sealed themselves inside. It would take a while, even for the machines, to break through the doors, and another while to sweep the bunker for the small camp of humans hiding in the depths.
Walking back through the camp had been hard, seeing the word spread. Erica walked past the graveyard wall. The group were still there, still singing. Some were crying now, others hugging, holding one another. Some were on the floor.
Erica saw her mother's body. It lay there, just as she'd left it. She doubted it would move again now.
She wanted to scream. She wanted to cry, she wanted to tell the stupid singing people that it wouldn't do any good. Those they were singing for were dead now, and they'd be dead themselves soon enough.
As Erica watched, a teenage girl, one of her friends, flicked open a lighter. The girl reached out. She lit the corner of one of the pictures. The fire spread. In moments, the entire wall was alight.
Erica turned her back and walked away. There was no time.
Tuesday 16th October 2029 – 6.24pm
In John's room, Erica and Markus watched frantically as lines of code ran across the computer screen. Neither of them knew anything about computers, and they couldn't tell if they were good lines of code or bad ones.
To distract herself, Erica switched on the camera and began to interview Markus.
"You're old enough to remember before Judgement Day."
It wasn't a question, but Markus answered anyway;"Yup."
"Who were you? What were you doing with your life?"
"I used to do sports – water sports mostly, surfing, kayaking. Cycling too. And I was about to start college. Philosophy. Probably the most pointless degree there was."
"As a philosopher then, what's the biggest difference you've seen since Skynet took over?"
"For me... Before Judgement Day there was a trail of bodies following me around – the people who died because of me, the people I couldn't save. I used to count them, but after Judgement Day, the number got too big. I had to start counting the people who were still alive. The people that I still could save."
"And for everyone else?"
"Prejudice." He said it with a sort of finality, as though that was all there was to say about the matter, but Erica didn't get it. "Prejudice?"
"Yeah. It's gone. Nobody really believes in religion any more, nobody gives a damn about the colour of your skin or where you came from or who you fuck. Man, woman, man who wants to be a woman, woman who wants to be a man, somewhere in between? Doesn't matter. Hell, disabled people are war-heroes."
He laughed to himself. "We're all just human now. Who'da thunk? The machines made the humans better."
The computer made a sort of beeping noise, and Erica switched the camera off.
That was it! It was done! But the new information was about as confusing as the lines of code had been.
"George," Markus said, and Erica ran off to get her.
Tuesday 16th October 2029 – 6.37pm
In the farmhouse, George was surrounded by mountains of paper, scanning furiously. The tape-deck was whirring away.
"Oh, good," George said, completely frazzled, as Erica came in.
"I'm nearly done. I've just about got everything scanned, I think-" she checked the screen "yeah, all the audio is uploaded."
"And there's" she checked the screen again "five minutes left in the video capturing. I'm all yours, what can I do?"
"Joan." Looking at George now, Erica had to confess. George deserved to know. "When we were leaving, I found Joan. She was trying to give me a message..." She trailed off. It was too hard.
"What was it?" George sounded like she could barely get the words out too.
"I... Um. I didn't hear it. There was a machine, and I..." Erica had never been so ashamed. "I got scared. I ran."
George nodded tersely. "You came to get me. Is it decrypted?"
Tuesday 16th October 2029 – 6.45pm
"It's quite simple actually," George was saying.
There was a knock on Connor's bedroom door. One of the soldiers came in, without waiting for a response. "They're in."
The sort-of-relieved "we're all going to be okay" atmosphere went out the window. There was silence as they all realized they were about to die a short painful death, and the human race would end.
This plan of theirs – their Ark, their black box, their swansong, their hail mary pass – there was no guarantee that it would work, no reason, beyond blind hope, that it could. And they were all going to have to die before it could work anyway.
"I'll be there in a minute," Markus said. The soldier nodded and went back out the door.
"Quickly," Markus commanded.
"They're sorted by date and mission – this one's in nineteen-eighty-four, trying to kill Sarah Connor," George pointed. "So when do you want me to send it? Day before Judgement Day?"
"Wait, why would we send it the day before Judgement Day?" Erica questioned "Shouldn't we give them, like, a year?" And then it dawned on her. It was so obvious, so stupid. This could never, would never work.
"This technology was used to communicate directly with the machines in the past, right?" she said. "So it goes directly into the machine's heads? Why the hell would they give any of this information to anyone that could help us?" How had no-one seen this flaw in the plan before?
George's face fell. All of this. All of it, had been for nothing. All of those people had died for nothing. They were all about to die for nothing. There was no way to stop Judgement Day.
For the people in the past, this would happen all over again.
But Markus smiled. And then he laughed. "There was a machine hunting me, late August, nineteen-ninety-six. Find it."
George nodded, she'd got it.
"Okay, send the info to him, second of September, around nine at night. John had the damn thing's head cracked open."
"How do you possibly remember that?" Erica doubted him. It was a weirdly specific date and time.
"It was the day – never-mind; I do. That's what matters. Just send it."
He started to walk out the room, saying "I'll give you as much time as I can." Then he stopped, "actually, I need you to send another message too."
Tuesday 16th October 2029 – 6.52pm
"They're getting closer," George warned.
Erica started recording. There were noises in the distance – gunshots, explosions, screaming.
"I don't have a lot of time. Whoever gets this message, whoever Sackhoff told me to send it to -" George was waving to get her attention. She gave Erica a thumbs up – the broadcast had started, they were transmitting to the past.
"You have to get it out there, people have to see. It's the only way to stop all this." Erica indicated around her. "We've sent back as much as we could, records, reports."
This wasn't going well, Erica knew. She'd said exactly nothing useful so far. Her head hurt.
"I'm explaining this badly. It's 2029. The human race is currently being wiped out in the hallway next to this room. We made a documentary over the last few days, you have to get it shown back then, in 1996."
There was an explosion somewhere behind her, and she glanced around nervously. "Judgement Day is coming. Soon. You can stop it."
And she switched the camera off, took out the tape and handed it to George.
"It's the last thing we're transmitting," George said, as she loaded it into the tape deck, "so it should be the first thing they see."
"How long will it take?" Erica asked.
"Ten minutes. Ish." George shrugged, "it's hard to know for sure."
There was nothing to do. They listened to the noises get closer and closer. The broadcast was doing it's thing – twenty-seven percent, thirty-two, fourty-seven.
It got stuck at sixty-two percent for a full two minutes. Nothing mattered to Erica more at that moment than the little green squares on that screen, indicating how much information had been transmitted.
There was an explosion in the hall, right outside the door. The number jumped – eighty-nine percent.
The door burst open. A machine, tall, silver, shiny. It was holding a gun – no, its hand was the gun. Ninety-two.
It burst into sporadic fire.
There was a sort of thud in Erica's stomach. She looked down. Blood was spreading, slowly, across her jumper.
Ninety-seven percent.
She hit the floor. The machine turned to go – it's job was done. The human race was extinct.
Ninety-nine percent.
Monday 23rd September 1996 – 6.00pm
"In our top story tonight, the last episode of the five-part documentary mini-series "The End" is set to air tonight.
It sparked huge controversy last week when the people who brought it to the attention of our network claimed it came from the future. The details of how exactly it got here are still unclear, but having seen the first four episodes, many are speculating that it is not a hoax.
The documentary is supported by a wealth of files, also claimed to come from the future, which were posted on the internet with little fanfare two and a half weeks ago. The content of the files includes messages to loved ones, photographs and military and historical reports. The reports fill in the history of the world between what is being called "Judgement Day" and the year twenty-twenty-nine.
"Judgement Day", according to this new unverified information, is the day when the already controversial Skynet programme comes online, becomes self-aware and begins attempts to exterminate the human race.
President Sansom, at the end of his second week in office, has halted all work on the in-development Skynet programme which was set to take control of the entirety of the nations missiles once completed. He has also ordered a complete report on all technology related to the Skynet programme and an investigation into the source of the documentary and the supporting material that can be found online.
Work on the project, President Sansom said in a statement released this afternoon, will not resume until all parties are satisfied that it will not become self-aware and start a nuclear holocaust."
In other news, the riots said to be linked to the release of this information are on-going in several major cities in America and many more around the world. More on that after this."