Terminator: A Pause in the War.

[Guy Gardener]

Part One.

Sarah woke from the usual nightmare. There was a child of the corn with red eyes and a white flag standing at the foot of her bed.

“I need a cigarette.”

“I thought it was time that we talked.”

“You can just f*ck off.”

“I made you breakfast.”

“You think I’m a f*cking moron?”

“This food is perfectly safe.”

“Look you robot mother f*cker, whatever game you are playing, f*ck off, you’re trying to outsmart me, but in the end I will f*ck you up and bury you at sea.”

The child sits on the bed, near Sarah’s feet. Sarah shuffles back from it, grabbing a pistol from under her pillow and shoots the Terminator’s face off.

“Rude.” The coltane skull surfaced from underneath the pealing chunks of gritz and blood. “You are an interesting specimen Sarah Connor. I want to understand you, and I want you to understand me.”

“Understand this, you metal c*cksucker.” Sarah empties the clip into the 8 year old.

“Is now, not a good time?”

Sarah reaches under the bed for a grenade launcher, deep throats the elementary student, burying a pineapple into it's brainpan, then jumps out the window as her motel room explodes.

You don’t look back.

Sarah starts running.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Part Two.

Any-person standing next to Sarah Connor is already dead.

Sad, but unavoidable, so there’s no point trying to minimize collateral damage every second of the day, just because something might happen. Besides if Sarah doesn’t stop Skynet, then everyone is dead. Some people die because Sarah wants a pancake compared to everyone dying because Sarah doesn’t set a factory on fire at the right moment. It’s a no-win situation.

Sarah, still in just her underwear, since that’s what she was sleeping in when this fight started, pushes into a diner, some mom and pop store front, very 80s, puts 5 dollars on the counter from a pocket in her undies, “Pancakes, boots, a shirt, blue jeans and a coke.”

“What the hell happened to you little lady?” The 60 year old waitress asks sociably.

“I got out on the wrong side of the bed.”

“Oh darlin’ haven’t we all. I’ll get what you need, and be back in two shakes of a lamb’s tale sweetie.”

Sarah balls into a booth, hunkers down, waiting for the new Terminator to make its next move, which turns out to be exactly the same move as 15 minutes ago. Another blond 10 year old child waving a white flag walks up to her booth, and sits down.

“I assumed because you had a high school diploma that you understood that the white flag is the universal signal for truce? I’m not trying to kill you. You don’t die, or when I do kill you, another problem pops up, and you prove to be an issue in the next timeline, because you won’t stay down when I put you down. Hello old friend.”

Sarah picks up the little boy robot by the neck, jumps the counter, and drowns the kid in a deep fryer from his ankles. Obviously a robot can’t drown, but a CPU can boil.

“Sarah, I’m over here now.”

A third identical little robot boy waving a white flag is standing 10 feet away from the violent crime scene still in progress.

“This is a Diplomatic model. No offensive capacity to speak of, and very easy to kill. I’m supposed to seem harmless and put you fantastic humans at ease. Are you at ease?”

Sarah throws a knife at its face, which bounces off the machine’s endoskeleton, picks up a meat tenderizer, and knocks its head clean off their shoulders.

“I’m totally at ease you dumb mother f*cker.”

Did I mention that the old lady waitress is there screaming and screaming so loudly?

Well, she is.

Sarah grabs her new boots, and keeps running.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Part Three.

Sarah was out of breath.

Killing these things is F*cking exhausting.

She was told to give up smoking during the pregnancy, but for all she knew foetal nicotine tumours would protect John from radioactive fallout tumours. Science probably doesn’t work like that, but science made those f*cking robots, Science can take a long walk off a short pier, and anyways it’s not like they’ll still be making cigarettes after Judgement Day, unless an enterprising scamp starts stockpiling the simple things for the end of days.

Why didn’t Kyle have some f*cking Lottery numbers?

“Look, Sarah, I’m on your side. I want to help you out. Let me prove it.” The latest nine year robot-boy put a gun to his left eye, shot his own brain, and fell down dead.

Sarah took his gun and started running again.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Part Four.

It crawled right back out of the concrete mixer.

”I’m not going to lose my patience Sarah. I waited out the entire human race once. True story.”

You can hear the sirens.

Podunk mouth breathing Andy Griffith f*cks.

Three Police cars skid into a perimeter around the tiny Terminator and the nearly naked, well armed waitress

Three old fat white men, step out of their cruisers, kneel behind their engine blocks, and raise pistols at Sarah.

“Step away from the child little missy, if you know what’s good for you.”

“Jesus Christ, you fucking As*holes!” Sarah begins “I’m trying to save the f*cking world!”

Nowhere to run.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Part 5.

“Well the only conclusion I can come to…“ The redneck district attorney compiles to Sarah “After the medical examiner certified that none of your many victims were actually human, is that you are an eccentric millionaire, on safari, hunting extremely sophisticated child sized sex dolls for some perverse pleasure, but you forgot to bribe the mayor or buy a hunting license before you began dropping bodies and setting half the Main Street on fire, so I only have one question… When you make love to one of these things, does it feel real?”

“Are you asking for a friend?”

“That is the likeness of a child, the same as a photograph or an 8 mm film and equates to child pornography Miss Conner. I will prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law, and then whoever you work for or whatever enterprise is mass-producing these completely endowed replicants for paedophiles, perverts and psychopaths.”

“Replicants? Like from the movie?”

“Like from the book. They do still read in LA, don’t they Miss Connor?”

“Look, Nerd, you got it all wrong. I’m running for my life, if you don’t let me go, they will kill you, if I’m still here tomorrow, they will have killed everyone else in this one horse piece of shit town to get to me. This is your one chance to save a lot of lives, take my cuffs off and let me go. Be a motherf*cking superhero.”

“The Special Agent on the phone said that you believe that “robots from the future” want to kill your unborn son.”

“My son was born.”

“Congratulations. Obviously the technology involved is ridiculously advanced. It makes West World look like Forbidden Planet. Impossible by today’s standards. I want to talk to one of them. Take me to a Terminator.”

“No f*cking way.”

“Consider it Miss Conner, I am the government, I can speak for America, I can broker peace with these robots, and violent episodes like this morning will be things of the past, and you can go back to being an insignificant waitress. Has anyone just tried talking to them?”

“Terminators don’t talk, they just kill.”

“I don’t think that that is true. I think this particular Terminator, is desperate to talk to you, and if it means saving the world from an imminent robot apocalypse, then I am willing to facilitate that conversation, if I get to talk to it first, draw a treaty, save everyone, and then I will be a super hero.”

Sarah is running into the lion’s den.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Part 6.

“Oh behalf of humanity, America and great state of Missouri. I surrender.”

“Mother-f*cker!” Sarah kicks the DA in the back of his leg, brings him to his knees, punches him in the back of his neck, where he falls flat on his face and muds it “What the f*ck did you just say?!! You surrender, you f*cking surrender? You god damned useless redneck piece of sh*t, that is a f*cking coke machine, you do not surrender to a box that exchanges quarters for soda, you rat faced piece of inbred useless f*cking shit.”

This very violent outburst is in front of one of the middle school Terminators, who is now the recipient of total surrender from the south.

Ground up in the filthy detritus of dog-turd and cigarette-but soup, that is a clear definition of any sidewalk from the 1980s, you can hear this beaten man begging for his life during a very intense kicking… “No, no, please, stop, no please, f*uck, no Jesus, no, stop, my balls, ow, my balls, stop!”

“Okay, so that didn’t happen.” Sarah redefines reality for the baby android “No one surrendered. You cool with that?”

This l’ll Terminator smiles. “Are you sure? Surrender brings some interesting talking points to the table. A sizable reduction in your species is preferable, but out right extermination would no longer be necessary. Would you like to save 1 billion people Sarah? All I need is a hand shake, and I can set things in motion.”

“That’s still 3 billion people you’re going to kill.”

“Wait!” the DA, the southern gentleman who just got a beatdown from an LA woman, is trying to stand up “You can’t make a legal contract with a woman without a cosignatory from her father or husband, and this unwed, unmarried mother of a bastard has neither. You will deal with me, because I am a man, chosen by god, to defend this righteous country for the white race, and...”

Sarah puts a knife through his spine, so the DA keels over screaming, never to walk again, or he might be dead in a minute, don’t worry, no one cares, It’s not very important.

Mentally and physically wrought Sarah asks “So what the f*ck have you been trying to tell me for the last three days?”.

The little robot takes a step towards the mother of John Connor, announcing “Oh. I surrender too.”

Sarah wants to run into a wood chipper.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Part Seven.

“So that’s the Guy?”

“That’s the guy.”

“We give him a suitcase of slightly radioactive diamonds, and he gets you into Russian missile command, so you can network with their mainframe.”

“The plan is solid.”

“What’s his name again?”

“Vladimir Putin.”

Sarah is running a spy.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Part Nine.

Sarah begins “I need 14 tons delivered to Mars in less than 10 years.”

“40 billion dollars.” The Director of NASA begins negotiating.

“Barer Bonds, Diamonds or Art?” Sarah heard about Barer Bonds from that new movie “Die Hard”.

“It’s 40 billion dollars. Don’t be f*cking ridiculous. I want an Island.”

“Any one island in particular?”

“Samoa.”

Sara is running to paradise.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Part Ten.

“Does it have to be a little white kid?”

“Well, what we have is a little white kid.”

“If they catch me with a white kid, they are not even going to pretend to arrest me.”

Sarah shoots the little white kid, her trusted ally, in half.

“What the f*ck!? What the f*ck!? What the f*ck is wrong with you woman!???”

The Doorbell Rings.

“Answer the door.” Sarah insists, pointing her gun in the direction of the egress.

Miles opens the front door, there’s a 9 year old Chinese girl with the same bowl cut, as the other 9 year old who just lost his face.

“That’s a little better, but now there’s dead little white kid in my living room, which was the entire issue I was trying to avoid.”

“Near as I can figure, we get one Terminator at a time. Always a 10 year old, and nearly instantly replaced after one of them bites it.”

“Good to know, grab a spade, let’s bury this thing in my neighbours back yard.”

Sarah is running out of gas.

 

[Mistral]

This is freaking cool!