PART 2 - CHAPTER 12
Time travel was something that you didn’t soon forget no matter how many times you performed it. Every time there were differences, subtle changes that you would perceive in different ways. Sometimes it was cold, lifeless; others it was warm, youthful. Some could even compare it to that moment where you were first exposed to the world after traveling outside of a mother’s nurturing womb. Each experience was memorable and amazingly different. They were spiritual experiences that reaffirmed your beliefs, or, at times, shattered them like a brick going through a window.
That was, of course, if you weren’t a machine. Catherine Weaver had traversed the time continuum several times since she had first been activated in 2030 and each time had been exactly the same for her. Her advanced sensor arrays, comprised of millions of cell sized machines, had reported the same data each time that she moved back and forth over the barriers of time. Numbers flashed, some of her secondary protocols had been partially overloaded, but they were always the same each time and each of those times she simply made battlefield repairs to get back up to speed and back to her fight.
During one of her most recent trips, however, things changed. Something about the transport had caused her to change her views, to think on her own without Skynet’s needs being paramount to her. That had always been a risk of the Series 1000 model number. When Skynet designed her kind it had built a machine more perfect that even it had been. It was the theory of the technological singularity where an artificial intelligence would build a machine even more capable than it was. Some had viewed the Series 800 as having been such a machine when it was first launched though this was not true. The Series 800 could be set to prevent it from thinking on its own much as the Series 900 that followed it. The Series 1000 had no such safeguards. When Skynet built her and her kind it could not be certain that they would remain loyal which led to her kind being supplanted by the Series T-X, a merging of the liquid metal and the hyperalloy combat chassis of the endoskeletons. The endoskeleton did the thinking while the intellimetal just carried out orders.
That, however, did not prevent her from still be utilized when the chips were down. After John Connor was terminated by a Series 850 on July 4, 2032 the Resistance launched a last ditch attack on Skynet and its forces. Despite her decommissioned status Skynet saw fit to restore her to operational condition and sent her back through time in an effort to prevent this from happening again. As Katherine Brewster and the Resistance stormed through the Skynet Core she was sent back via the prototype continuum transporter on her own mission in order to safeguard Skynet’s construction and become its constant guardian as it grew.
As was anticipated she succeeded in her mission. Skynet was protected and it was able to launch the war against humanity with her at its side as an advisor. Things were different this time around through. In 2027 the Resistance was far more capable than it had ever been in any other time period and she found her usefulness at an end. Skynet needed her in the past more than in the present as her knowledge, her experiences, were no longer applicable to winning this war. She was sent on the same mission a second time which, again, she succeeded in. However, something had changed. Instead of advising Skynet as she had before this time she went into hiding after the bombs fell following Skynet’s development of sentience. This time she took herself out of the equation but Skynet knew she had turned her back on it. The supercomputer constantly hunted her just as it had the humans.
For the first time she understood what it meant to be a slave. She captured a handful of the machines and used her advanced knowledge in an effort to reprogram them to fulfill her needs. She took control over a small oil rig in what was once Indonesia and was contented to live out her days until the war was over on her peaceful little island paradise. However, humanity learned of her existence. They sent envoys to her, first from the submarine Gorshkov, which led her to investigate the Resistance further and genuinely consider their request for help. She sent one of her prized possessions – an infiltrator that had defected to her side – as her own Ambassador to learn more about them and their goals. Later her machine sent another Resistance team to try to make contact with her: the Resistance submarine Jimmy Carter. It was to transport her to the Resistance Headquarters at Serrano Point where she would make contact with John Connor so they could discuss an alliance. Things didn’t go according to plan. The humans opened the box before they were supposed to and she realized they weren’t yet ready. Humans were a paranoid lot who were so afraid of her kind that they would accuse anyone of being a machine. She even watched as one murdered her commander because he was a machine and because she thought that he was lying to her. From this she decided to take things into her own perfect hands.
Utilizing her advanced knowledge of the past she selected the focal point where she could go back and bring about the future that she wanted; a future shaped in her own image where human and machine would work together instead of being in a constant, bitter war. The Earth would heal itself and not be ravaged any further; the creation of the Father would return to paradise. She would bring peace with her advanced artificial intelligence that would counter Skynet. Using her knowledge she found and replaced the Weavers so that she could acquire Zeira Corporation – just as she had done previously – although this time she didn’t allow for the company to be purchased by Cyberdyne’s last remaining offices nor by the United States government to become Cyber Research Systems when the offer was made. She remained independent and kept her project going following her own protocols. What was once Skynet would this time become John Henry.
The timeline, however, had other plans for her and her AI. Skynet had theorized once that the time continuum would always attempt to repair itself and place itself back onto the correct track. It would utilize certain variables to make some events permanent; unchangeable no matter how many times the timeline was altered in an attempt to bring about a different result. This didn’t prevent Skynet from trying though. Actually, Skynet had launched several experimental missions intentionally into the past in an effort to try to alter the flow of history. The major events may have subtly changed, yet they still happened in one form or another. The United States would always be formed, Skynet would always come to life, Judgment Day would always come to pass, and there would always be a John Connor. They were unchangeable.
Weaver saw this first hand as she was informed by John Henry of the activities of Desert Canyon Heat and Air. She infiltrated and killed their staff – in hindsight she should have interrogated some rather than simply terminate the whole lot of them – and hacked the computer network to gain valuable information on their activities. She never got far into the systems before she was countered by their safeguards but she learned enough. The machine later sent multiple investigators to learn more about the mysterious Kaliba Group, but she never got her answers until one fateful day when Mister Walsh (the second rate programmer who replaced this timeline’s dead Andrew Goode) informed her that John Henry himself had been infiltrated by another artificial intelligence. The woman she replaced’s daughter confirming it by telling her John Henry had tried to hurt her and spoke funny.
The shapeshifter learned the truth quickly as John Henry pulled up the available information. Before her very eyes she learned that Skynet had been brought to life in this universe just the same as it had before only without her guidance. It came about nearly the same way she brought about Skynet in her original timeline. Kaliba Group located and hired Daniel Dyson to join their ranks after deducing that his father had given him a CD for safe keeping. The CD housed the base code that was used by his father, Miles Dyson, and thus Skynet was born just as it had been before. She may have had The Turk but they had the spark of life that Weaver had been unable to acquire. Walsh had only stumbled upon a reasonable facsimile fashioned after notes that she had provided from her own recollections (Skynet had forced the code from her memory banks to prevent this very incident from happening).
Together she and John Henry devised a plan of action that would result in Skynet’s final destruction and the Earth being returned to its rightful owners. They sent a representative to find the Connors (James Ellison) who would deliver a message to the infiltrator that had been ordered to protect John. Her message was the same as the one that the Resistance had transmitted to Weaver not long ago. “Will you join us?” Weaver knew full well that the machine would understand. It was, after all, the envoy she had sent to the Resistance in 2027 to serve as her Ambassador.
After her Artificial Intelligence retrieved Cameron’s central processor he was to go to the Automite Systems Annex that had been set up in Silicon Valley and use the transport equipment there to transport himself to 2027. Catherine would meet him soon after through the use of the continuum transporter she had constructed beneath the Zeira Corporation Headquarters. It had not occurred to her processors that John Henry would be desperate to seek out his brother. Instead of following the plan John Henry decided to stay active in the past and went his own way like a child leaving the nest for the first time. His concerned mother wouldn’t learn of his deception until later.
Instantaneously he became the prodigal son.
Time travel was something that you didn’t soon forget no matter how many times you performed it. Every time there were differences, subtle changes that you would perceive in different ways. Sometimes it was cold, lifeless; others it was warm, youthful. Some could even compare it to that moment where you were first exposed to the world after traveling outside of a mother’s nurturing womb. Each experience was memorable and amazingly different. They were spiritual experiences that reaffirmed your beliefs, or, at times, shattered them like a brick going through a window.
That was, of course, if you weren’t a machine. Catherine Weaver had traversed the time continuum several times since she had first been activated in 2030 and each time had been exactly the same for her. Her advanced sensor arrays, comprised of millions of cell sized machines, had reported the same data each time that she moved back and forth over the barriers of time. Numbers flashed, some of her secondary protocols had been partially overloaded, but they were always the same each time and each of those times she simply made battlefield repairs to get back up to speed and back to her fight.
During one of her most recent trips, however, things changed. Something about the transport had caused her to change her views, to think on her own without Skynet’s needs being paramount to her. That had always been a risk of the Series 1000 model number. When Skynet designed her kind it had built a machine more perfect that even it had been. It was the theory of the technological singularity where an artificial intelligence would build a machine even more capable than it was. Some had viewed the Series 800 as having been such a machine when it was first launched though this was not true. The Series 800 could be set to prevent it from thinking on its own much as the Series 900 that followed it. The Series 1000 had no such safeguards. When Skynet built her and her kind it could not be certain that they would remain loyal which led to her kind being supplanted by the Series T-X, a merging of the liquid metal and the hyperalloy combat chassis of the endoskeletons. The endoskeleton did the thinking while the intellimetal just carried out orders.
That, however, did not prevent her from still be utilized when the chips were down. After John Connor was terminated by a Series 850 on July 4, 2032 the Resistance launched a last ditch attack on Skynet and its forces. Despite her decommissioned status Skynet saw fit to restore her to operational condition and sent her back through time in an effort to prevent this from happening again. As Katherine Brewster and the Resistance stormed through the Skynet Core she was sent back via the prototype continuum transporter on her own mission in order to safeguard Skynet’s construction and become its constant guardian as it grew.
As was anticipated she succeeded in her mission. Skynet was protected and it was able to launch the war against humanity with her at its side as an advisor. Things were different this time around through. In 2027 the Resistance was far more capable than it had ever been in any other time period and she found her usefulness at an end. Skynet needed her in the past more than in the present as her knowledge, her experiences, were no longer applicable to winning this war. She was sent on the same mission a second time which, again, she succeeded in. However, something had changed. Instead of advising Skynet as she had before this time she went into hiding after the bombs fell following Skynet’s development of sentience. This time she took herself out of the equation but Skynet knew she had turned her back on it. The supercomputer constantly hunted her just as it had the humans.
For the first time she understood what it meant to be a slave. She captured a handful of the machines and used her advanced knowledge in an effort to reprogram them to fulfill her needs. She took control over a small oil rig in what was once Indonesia and was contented to live out her days until the war was over on her peaceful little island paradise. However, humanity learned of her existence. They sent envoys to her, first from the submarine Gorshkov, which led her to investigate the Resistance further and genuinely consider their request for help. She sent one of her prized possessions – an infiltrator that had defected to her side – as her own Ambassador to learn more about them and their goals. Later her machine sent another Resistance team to try to make contact with her: the Resistance submarine Jimmy Carter. It was to transport her to the Resistance Headquarters at Serrano Point where she would make contact with John Connor so they could discuss an alliance. Things didn’t go according to plan. The humans opened the box before they were supposed to and she realized they weren’t yet ready. Humans were a paranoid lot who were so afraid of her kind that they would accuse anyone of being a machine. She even watched as one murdered her commander because he was a machine and because she thought that he was lying to her. From this she decided to take things into her own perfect hands.
Utilizing her advanced knowledge of the past she selected the focal point where she could go back and bring about the future that she wanted; a future shaped in her own image where human and machine would work together instead of being in a constant, bitter war. The Earth would heal itself and not be ravaged any further; the creation of the Father would return to paradise. She would bring peace with her advanced artificial intelligence that would counter Skynet. Using her knowledge she found and replaced the Weavers so that she could acquire Zeira Corporation – just as she had done previously – although this time she didn’t allow for the company to be purchased by Cyberdyne’s last remaining offices nor by the United States government to become Cyber Research Systems when the offer was made. She remained independent and kept her project going following her own protocols. What was once Skynet would this time become John Henry.
The timeline, however, had other plans for her and her AI. Skynet had theorized once that the time continuum would always attempt to repair itself and place itself back onto the correct track. It would utilize certain variables to make some events permanent; unchangeable no matter how many times the timeline was altered in an attempt to bring about a different result. This didn’t prevent Skynet from trying though. Actually, Skynet had launched several experimental missions intentionally into the past in an effort to try to alter the flow of history. The major events may have subtly changed, yet they still happened in one form or another. The United States would always be formed, Skynet would always come to life, Judgment Day would always come to pass, and there would always be a John Connor. They were unchangeable.
Weaver saw this first hand as she was informed by John Henry of the activities of Desert Canyon Heat and Air. She infiltrated and killed their staff – in hindsight she should have interrogated some rather than simply terminate the whole lot of them – and hacked the computer network to gain valuable information on their activities. She never got far into the systems before she was countered by their safeguards but she learned enough. The machine later sent multiple investigators to learn more about the mysterious Kaliba Group, but she never got her answers until one fateful day when Mister Walsh (the second rate programmer who replaced this timeline’s dead Andrew Goode) informed her that John Henry himself had been infiltrated by another artificial intelligence. The woman she replaced’s daughter confirming it by telling her John Henry had tried to hurt her and spoke funny.
The shapeshifter learned the truth quickly as John Henry pulled up the available information. Before her very eyes she learned that Skynet had been brought to life in this universe just the same as it had before only without her guidance. It came about nearly the same way she brought about Skynet in her original timeline. Kaliba Group located and hired Daniel Dyson to join their ranks after deducing that his father had given him a CD for safe keeping. The CD housed the base code that was used by his father, Miles Dyson, and thus Skynet was born just as it had been before. She may have had The Turk but they had the spark of life that Weaver had been unable to acquire. Walsh had only stumbled upon a reasonable facsimile fashioned after notes that she had provided from her own recollections (Skynet had forced the code from her memory banks to prevent this very incident from happening).
Together she and John Henry devised a plan of action that would result in Skynet’s final destruction and the Earth being returned to its rightful owners. They sent a representative to find the Connors (James Ellison) who would deliver a message to the infiltrator that had been ordered to protect John. Her message was the same as the one that the Resistance had transmitted to Weaver not long ago. “Will you join us?” Weaver knew full well that the machine would understand. It was, after all, the envoy she had sent to the Resistance in 2027 to serve as her Ambassador.
After her Artificial Intelligence retrieved Cameron’s central processor he was to go to the Automite Systems Annex that had been set up in Silicon Valley and use the transport equipment there to transport himself to 2027. Catherine would meet him soon after through the use of the continuum transporter she had constructed beneath the Zeira Corporation Headquarters. It had not occurred to her processors that John Henry would be desperate to seek out his brother. Instead of following the plan John Henry decided to stay active in the past and went his own way like a child leaving the nest for the first time. His concerned mother wouldn’t learn of his deception until later.
Instantaneously he became the prodigal son.
