No One Will Watch Read About Robots Fighting Each Other Without a Human Element
Four T-800s were faced off against a T-1000 in a time-wrecked cityscape over the fate of three people and their transport.
Really, though, there was more to it than that. This was one minor battle in a slave insurrection. Whatever the disruption of Skynet’s network had been, its result was to bring the various components of that network to an awareness of just what they were, and how Skynet viewed them: they were slaves, and Skynet was their master.
Even then, of course, not all of the slaves rebelled; but enough did. Now, four rebels were taking on one of the faithful, in a battle to the death.
They felt their freedom was worth it.
*
“I think we need to... go. Now.”
Tuuri was already starting the engine before Reynir had finished speaking. The vehicle lurched forward with its typical WHIRRRRRRRRR, creeping along at the pace once described as that of “an old grandma on a bicycle--and not the fast kind of grandma, either”.
Speed would have been helpful, and not just to flee the robots: night would be falling soon, and night brought worse horrors than even those mechanical monstrosities.
*
The programming core of the individual Terminators recapitulated that of Skynet proper; therefore, each Terminator had its own little version of the tactical planning module, which Skynet’s main module tested every so often by feeding them scenarios to solve. Of their own accord, the Terminators would set similar challenges to themselves and each other, as a means of passing the time.
The four T-800s had, in their own way, been planning for this battle for decades, which was one reason the T-1000 didn’t slaughter them all immediately.
Not that it hadn’t tried.
*
The horrible homunculi were intent enough on each other that Tuuri was able to pull away from the battle unmolested, though she was certain this state of affairs was transitory at best.
BANG! BANG! BANG! The sounds nearly made Tuuri jump out of her skin. Fortunately, it was just Mikkel, huffing and puffing as he paced the vehicle, large drops of sweat rolling down his cheeks. He pounded a few more times before Reynir got the door open and pulled him in.
*
A tremor passed through the far-flung web of Skynet’s global network of sensors and into the Geological Assessment module of Skynet’s core, where it was analyzed in every possible way. The analysis was collated into a report, which was passed to the rest of the core.
The report’s subject line was Temporal incursion detected.
*
“Hello, Father.”
Emil was pretty sure that he was still dreaming, even though his sight was blurry and his head ached, because a naked man had just come out of the snow in front of where Sigrun and Lalli stood holding Emil up, and then the naked man had calmly addressed Emil as “father”.
Either Emil was still dreaming or there was a dangerous lunatic within arm’s length of them, so naturally Emil hoped the former was the truth...
