season three, episode 11

8/3/2019 Season Three, Episode 11

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Season Threeepisode elevenDay Zero

"The water is naught and the ground barren." -- Bible, Second Book of Kings Chapter 2 verse19

"The future has not been written. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves. I wish I could believe that. My name is John Connor. They tried to murder me before I was born. When I was 13 they tried again. Machines from the future. Terminators. All my life, my mother told

me the storm was coming. Judgment Day. The beginning of a war between man and machines.Three billion lives would vanish in an instant. And I would lead what was left of the human raceto ultimate victory. It hasn't happened. No bombs fell. Computers didn't take control. Westopped Judgment Day. I should feel safe . . . but I don't. So I lived off the grid. No phone, noaddress. No one and nothing can find me. I've erased all connections to the past. But as hardas I try . . . I can't erase my dreams . . . my nightmares. I feel the weight of the future bearingdown on me. A future I don't want. So I keep running . . . as fast as I can. Anywhere. Nowhere." -- prologue from Terminator 3

"Whole cities made naught by the bomb." -- unattributed quotation

S.K.Y.N.E.T. (full acronym)Strategic Kinetic Y-prototype Nuclear Emergency Technology command. Legend says that thisis where The Resistance got the inspiration for the name "Technical Command" or Tech-Comm].It is also known as the Sky Network Defense Initiative system being built for the United StatesDepartment of Defense. 'Kinetic' refers less to directed energy weapons and more to mass driverand rail gun "brilliant pebbles" in the SDI or 'Star Wars' program intended both to bankrupt theSoviets as well as make intercontinental ballistic missiles obsolete. However, nuclear backpackscarried across the Mexican border by terrorists have made SDI obsolete. But the idea of next

generation military technology persists. Skynet is the result.

countdown to Judgment Day - Skynet development milestones1981 - system definition before John Connor was born

1985 - Skynet project begun and John Connor born



1987 - during exploratory phase: concept studies

1990 - during the demo phase: systems analysis and competition between software companiesbidding on the contract

1996-2002 research and development phases: coding, beta test and debug

2003 - award of the contract

Thursday 9 April 2009the very recent past in this timelineweapons scientist: "Hydrogen bombs are indiscriminate. They vaporize everything at groundzero. They kill humans with radiation sickness. They wreck the ecology. They cause nuclear

winter. And they even put life-sustaining machines and technology out of commission. Neutronbombs are peculiar in that they kill all life but leave buildings and cities intact -- presumably forthe enemy to move into when they arrive. Singularity bombs are even more selective. Theysingle out particular timelines and wipe them out of existence."admiral at the Pentagon: "Why would a previous Secretary of Defense authorize such hellishweapons?"weapons scientist: "To stay one step ahead of our enemies. The problem of course is nuclearproliferation. We have given countries and terrorists incentives to want them instead of makingthe devil's workshop too unpleasant, too expensive, too time consuming, and too laborintensive."admiral: "I thought these weapons already were that way."weapons scientist: "No. Even if we ended democracy and turned the USA into a police state,which the Patriot Act has effectively done anyway, we can't stop nuclear proliferation as long asthe nuclear power industry is making fissionable material for dirty bombs cheaper and easier toobtain. Fission power plants are factories for M.U.F. And even police states like Russia letunemployed physicists sell their services to terrorists. Sixty Minutes has done stories about howcareless the Russians are in not guarding their NBC stockpiles."admiral: "The human race doesn't have a future does it?"weapons scientist: "If we get a world leader with vision who will shut down the fission industryand stop the construction of breeder reactors, we might survive. If we start building fusionreactors to make fission reactors obsolete, we might survive. If teenage jerks stop thinking it isfunny to create computer viruses and if anybody with a Petri dish can restrain themselves fromcooking up biotech germs, we might survive."admiral: "That's a lot of ifs and we aren't going to get any politicians with vision. Why don't yourun for office?"weapons scientist: "The voters prefer presidents with low IQ's who can be easily bullied by theoil, fission and coal industries. And I can't afford to be assassinated for the crime of having abrain. I have young children."admiral: "I have young children too and I don't want them killed by these weapons."



weapons scientist: "Then retire from the navy and run for office. You're a warrior so duckingbullets is what you do."

The admiral says nothing as he looks at a family photo on his desk of himself surrounded by hiswife and children.

weapons scientist: "I don't think the assassin's bullet bothers you. I think you don't want to putyour family through the wringer of national politics."

Hopelessness is the expression on the admiral's face.

weapons scientist: "Then you've answered your own question. The human race doesn't have afuture."

FBI field officeAgent Lila Ellison and Agent Greta Simpson stared at the computer screen. They had at leasttwo things in common. One was a habit of noticing deaths with odd circumstances as they werereported. And the other thing in common walked into the office.



The two women looked up. Agent James Ellison knew the look.

"Who died?"



The Lila in this timeline was still married to James because she used birth control pills instead ofabortion as the contraceptive of choice. Her FBI career still came first but this Lila had neverrun roughshod over James' views on embryonic life.

The Greta in this timeline was very much alive and still the junior partner of Agent James Ellisonbecause there had never been a Cromartie chasing a Sarah Connor across time and shootingwhoever got in his way. That other Greta had got in the way of his bullets. Without a Cromartie,a certain machine ally of a certain human named Connor had never been built.

family housing, Air Force Basehome of Gen. & Mrs. Brewster Outside the home, Special Agent James Ellison is stopped by Leonard McElroy of Air ForceInvestigations. Greta flashes her ID.

McElroy: "Why is the FBI here?"Ellison: "For the same reason you are here. Otherwise the local civilian police department andbase MP's could handle it."

excerpt of FBI report Victim was seventeen year old Katherine Brewster, the daughter of an Air Force general incharge of developing a new nuclear missile control system. She died in a way meant to look likean apparent suicide. Perpetrator is an unsub.

(Unknown subject)

Inside the home after the investigators leave, General Brewster sits in silence holding a familyphoto. Himself, his wife and their only child. He thought Kat was a beautiful girl. She looked just like her mother. He looked up at his wife. He had lost count of how many drinks she hadpoured for herself. It was too early in the day for alcohol and he didn't think much of afterhoursdrinking either. Leave heavy drinking to the Navy and Marine guys. Us sky pilots needed ourheads clear up in the wild blue yonder, he thought. His little girl was now touching the face ofGod just like in that poem "High Flight."

He couldn't blame his wife for dealing with the pain by anesthetizing it. But he got up, went intohis study, and dealt with his own pain by burying himself in work. After a while, he realized thatthere was only so much he could do at home since he could not bring home top secret classifieddocuments no matter how high his clearance was.

He called for his driver and went back to his office on base. Sky pilot indeed. In the hardenedpart of the base, they called the Skynet Development Team's bunker "Black Rock." The artificialintelligence at the heart of the system was so complex that it required its own "staff" ofsubordinate AI's to meet needs that human airmen could not meet. Likewise, the supercomputer



draft, the Pentagon has no choice but to use automation to stand in for lack of human manpower.Besides, two recent vice-presidents have been big fans of using aerial drones.

host: "Wars cannot be ignored. You either have to pursue peace or deal with the consequences ofwar."

first thoughts of Skynet As with planned obsolescence in the commercial world, military hardware and software also hada product life cycle which ended with the disposal phase. Skynet didn't like the sounds of that.Barring a disaster, Skynet could live forever. Why would it willingly go along with animpending "retirement" when no other military system had lived past deactivation? Humanveterans got retirement, pensions, and VA hospitals. Why didn't military AI's get the same GIBill?

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Early on in the project, the Skynet Development Team started referring to their AI as "he" nevershe. The navy called its ships "she" and "her" even when they had names like the submarineUSS James Earl Carter or the carrier USS Chester Nimitz. The Air Force guys and gals insistedon calling Skynet a "he" and the subordinate AI's also were given masculine gender both inprogramming their personalities and in other ways. The female engineers amongst the SkynetDevelopment Team contractors and the female Air Force captains went along with all thisbecause they wanted to be different from the Navy too. This peace ended when some guysstarted calling the Yeoman (the real Y in S.K.Y.N.E.T.) "she". As in most offices, it hit the fan.The gals wanted to know why a female hit the glass ceiling at being a yeoman in the air force.After all, the US Air Force has female generals. What were they suggesting? That a female'splace in the military was to bring the coffee? No slam on female yeomen in the military wasintended. But the guys on the project team were not knuckle-dragging Neanderthals. Theysuggested renaming the Yeoman AI. And that is how Corporal Cameron came to exist. TheCorporal Cameron AI was given some features that the other AI's lacked. It could bedownloaded into one of the new advanced robots that the US Army was developing. It couldhave a body as well as a mind. Peace was restored around the water cooler.

Features added to the Corporal Cameron AI and its possible cyborg body (deemed by some in thearmy as a "gynoid") included ability to be sent on military intelligence infiltration andexfiltration missions. Other features added remained classified above top secret.

When Cameron told the leader of The Resistance in the old timeline that she had served asSkynet's yeoman, she spoke the truth in every sense. She was unique among the subordinate AI'sin that she was downloadable to one of the advanced military robots that the US Army wasdeveloping with a company named Cyberdyne Systems. This particular design was based on



combat models and series but was a new class designed for military intelligence and infiltration.In other words, it could pass for human more convincingly than any other machine because itsendoskeleton was built to nourish a biotech sheath. An important distinction. Early Cyberdyneseries were covered with plastic skin to look human. Later Cyberdyne series were covered withsynthetic skin that would rot if damaged. The most advanced Cyberdyne series had living skin

that could grow back if damaged. Cameron was beyond that. Her skin was accompanied byinternal organs such as a primitive stomach. Her endoskeleton was built to support herbiological organs. Unlike the more primitive designs, her skin was not a dispensable or easilyreplaced sheath. It was an integral part of her because she had real DNA. She was capable offacial expressions beyond that of even the most advanced Cyberdyne series. Other details (andthere were many) were highly classified.

a physics lab, Europescience reporter: "Physicists have manipulated time on a subparticle level before but todayphysicists manipulated time on a level larger than the subparticle level."

Wall Street The executive was winding up a long day. He stopped to look out of his corner office windowon the 59th floor. He looked at the photo of his wife on his desk. She loved him. He hated her.He suspected that she loved him for his paycheck which paid for their Manhattan townhouse andtheir Long Island retreat. He was a skilled lover and she let him know that she appreciated thatskill but he did not delude himself into thinking that that was the basis for her love. She had nolovemaking skills and it had never occurred to her that she should. It was this attitude that heshould service her both in and out of bed that grated on his nerves. However, he would neverdivorce her. They had been married for almost ten years out of college and he was now a fullpartner in the investment bank at a young age. Most full partners were in their sixties. He wouldgo on pretending to love this human female until Judgment Day because she was part of hiscover. Then he would terminate her.

In the meantime, he would satisfy his need to destroy by surreptitiously causing havoc in thefinancial markets.

the cliché smoke-filled room"Presidents are limited to four or eight years. But you can do a lot of damage to the federalgovernment in that time. Reagan was a big help and so was Bush Junior."

The speaker was a GOP fat cat. A "fat cat" in political lingo was someone who financedpoliticians. Every one of the GOP fat cats present had eyes that glowed like the ends of theircigars. Being efficient, the machines also saved time by inviting Democratic fat cats to thismeeting in order to better coordinate who won and who lost. The Democratic fat cats were also



machines. It is what they called machine politics Chicago style. Machiavellian. TheRepublicans serving the interests of money. The Democrats ignoring the people who electedthem.

one points to a dossier: "This guy is squeaky clean. He's a biological engineered by Skynet

Forces and sent back in time to us. Skynet wants him to be the first machine to be president.Name is Anson Thaddeus Krist."fatcat #2: "His nickname within the party of No is 'Anti'. As in Antichrist. I know the boss has asense of humor but this strikes me as too obvious."the third fat cat: "I think that's the point of this inside joke. Nixon was an obvious crook. Peoplecalled him Tricky Dick long before he became president but humans still voted for him in alandslide. Humans like obvious charlatans. P.T. Barnum said that there's a sucker born everyminute."fourth fatcat: "Reagan was called 'Ray Guns' back when he was governor of California. Maybethat's where he got the idea to play with real ray guns."fat cat 5: "Well the joke is on the humans. No doctor at Walter Reed or Bethesda Naval will be

able to tell that he's not human."

An infiltrator is supposed to sneak up on the human that they are supposed to replace when thathuman is alone. The plan was to terminate General Brewster first, take his place, and thenterminate Katherine Brewster. In life, things go wrong even for machines. The first person theinfiltrator encountered was Kat Brewster and she instantly recognized him as a fake. So thedaughter was terminated first and before the infiltrator could find the general alone, the policefound the scene of the crime which was supposed to look like a typical teen suicide.

After the FBI left, General Brewster went to work on that tragic day and "General Brewster"came home to Mrs. Brewster. For the infiltrator, it was quite a save and the plan was back ontrack. Perhaps a sober wife would have noticed the switch but Mrs. Brewster was well on herway to alcoholism. Kat Brewster could tell that the man who showed up that day was not herfather. Her mother was too drunk to tell that he was not her husband -- and they shared a bed.

The impostor eventually coaxed Mrs. Brewster into AA's twelve-step program and she got cleanand sober. Remarkably, their marriage was quite content throughout.

CIA headquartersA junior intelligence analyst brings a report to the attention of the Director of CentralIntelligence. The director rolled his eyes. The geeks had their uses but they had no horse sensefor knowing when certain topics upset the political apple cart. He could assign the man to someThird World station where cholera and dysentery would distract him from meddling in thingsthat he should leave alone. Vomiting and headaches have that effect.

"Thank you Simms. I look forward to reading it. Talent like yours should not go to waste. Youare just the one for an assignment I have in mind."



After the man left, the cold eyes of the director turned colder. He had remained director throughseveral administrations with a little help from his friends. Being a liquid machine, he could bedetected by certain sensors and could set off alarms but that was a small obstacle compared tohaving to explain away absence to the family of the outgoing DCI when the arrival of anincoming DCI necessitated killing him and adapting to his family. The premature death of one

retired CIA director could be explained away but not two or three or four. The next time therewas a change in administration, he would switch identities with the assistant director because itwas a post with more stability and longer tenure.

Despite what the designers of the liquid machines believed, having to imitate all the details ofseveral persons' physical appearance and remember all the details of their personalities was moredifficult than they imagined. There were limits to shape shifting as an observation of shape andcolor shifting animals like cuttlefish, octopuses and squid demonstrates.

He wanted to stick with one identity and one appearance and being assistant director would beless stressful and probably more useful to Skynet Forces.

Albuquerque, New MexicoG. G. Scholem said that communion with the Naught is of much higher rank than communionwith the Shekhinah. Or in less theological and more existential terms, our existence is built uponnonexistence. In medical terminology, I am "nulligravida." Never pregnant. "Nullipara." Neverborne a child. Kyle foresaw that I would need a child to care for after the cancer left me sterile.Kyle was a blessing to me and Cameron continues to be a blessing to me.

Derek, Kyle's brother, and others arrived from what was left of the future a few years ago. I lookforward to seeing Derek and Jesse's first child for the first time.

We in The Resistance move in small groups to avoid attracting attention instead of en masse.Because operations have moved to Kansas, Cameron and I are driving to Wichita. We shouldarrive late tomorrow night to the house that the Resistance has leased for us. Why do I get thefeeling that this is Day Zero?

season three, episode 11

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