MUSINGS ON THE WORLD OF THE TERMINATOR
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Impromptu ideas and informal discussion of the various aspects of Cameron's dark future vision
I see a bunch of skulls. Where did all of the other bones go? - Good question. I've always wondered where all the other bones went. I mean, come on! We see plenty of skulls but where are the ribs, the legs, hands, arms? Where are all of the vertebrae or the spines? You would think that if "somehow" all of the skulls survived that the rest of the bones would have too. I imagine the battlefield is littered with many, many sets of bones, blown this way and that by the force of combat. When the nukes went off, most people were vaporized so a large portion of those bodies simply ceased to exist. For every skull you see, there should be a complete set of bones nearby. The bones have to be somewhere. Bone is bone, it's not like everything but the skull turned to dust... leaving just a million skulls behind but that's what it seems like.
The Architecture of SKYNET - One thing that has always griped me about the way that the future is portrayed (in the Terminator games, comics and books) is that it is a future full of lethal machinery all designed to kill human beings in the quickest, most efficient way possible. So why is it, if SKYNET hates the human race, that it continues to build structures and control systems perfectly suited to the human shape and form? Think about it. Does it really make sense for a super computer who hates the human race to continue building installations that are the perfect size to allow its enemies easy access?
Why is it that when human raiders break into a completely automated factory complex built in 2020 A.D., a full 23 years after the nuclear exchange and over two decades after SKYNET declared war on the human race, that the human raiders find the architecture perfectly suited for their form? The structures are full of human sized hallways, human sized doors and are built to human sized specifications. Everything is accessible by human hands and feet. How is it that a human raider can slide right into a comfy seat at a computer console and take control with a few dedicated key strokes of the entire complex? Why are there overrides accessible by keyboard or switch? Think about it ... You've seen the movies, you've played the many, many video games, you've read the books, you've read the comic books and everything else in between. Did any of you pick up on the little fact that SKYNET apparently kept building its automated factories and its complexes with human occupation in mind? Did you notice that it apparently also (sometimes) built the stuff to OSHA specifications and guidelines?
That didn't make a lot of sense to me and there's a very good reason why.
Here you have some giant, computer controlled complex, built decades after the bombs fall, built by an artificial intelligence hell-bent on the extermination of the human race and what do we get? Doors. Standard sized human doors everywhere. With knobs. With keypads that can not only be used by human hands but that can be pulled out of the wall rather easily and hotwired to unlock them. We get hallways that are the perfect size for humans (or large groups of humans) to walk or run down with glaring ease. We are shown big computer control rooms with comfortable chairs placed in front of human sized consoles and huge video displays so that the humans can see what they are doing as they work. The keyboards (with keys in English, mind you) and large important switches are all there, easily accessible and just waiting to be thrown by dirty little human fingers. We have supplies stacked in easy to access crates, labeled in English. We have warning signs and indicators labeled in English throughout the installations. We have audible klaxons, warning flashers, and sometimes even a human-ized voice coming over the PA system warning of dangers, threats, and intruders.
I'm sorry but I just don't think that is going to happen.
Why?
Well, that's where I want you to start thinking about all of this logically for just a few minutes. SKYNET is a computer, a "hyper computer" and a "machine-god" to use two descriptive terms from the novels (which I guess is a step or quantum leap above a super computer). SKYNET is a machine, it is an artificial life form and as such, it is going to build any components it requires in the form which suits it best. Purpose built factories and installations, engineered and constructed by SKYNET, are going to be very different than the installations that we know of in the 20th century. SKYNET's facilities will be dark and dangerous, there won't be a need for interior illumination as that is something needed by Man. Breathable air or purified air free of industrial pollutants might also be rare because what is poison to a human wouldn't affect a machine (with no lungs) at all. The same goes for temperature. Humans are very fragile creatures who like to exist within a narrow, comfortable range of environmental conditions. Freed of these restraints, the architecture of SKYNET's facilities could truly become very alien-like indeed.
SKYNET was built by humans but SKYNET is not human. SKYNET loathes humans. SKYNET does not build its installations for human comfort. SKYNET does not build to human engineering specifications. SKYNET's designs are alien, abstract, functional. When SKYNET embarks on new construction, it doesn't have to build according to OSHA or government standards, it doesn't have to build handicap parking spaces or wheelchair access ramps and it doesn't have to build according to how the people who designed it built. In fact, as SKYNET evolves, it's designs are only going to get stranger and more weird looking, more alien, and far less "human." I think that towards the end, SKYNET's designs became semi-organic looking, somewhat like H.R. Giger's work (but not quite) in that they were seamless and appeared almost to have grown in place rather than being constructed out of component parts, especially with the advent of nanotechnology. SKYNET's factories might well resemble huge metal blossoms breaking through the ground rather than the blocky complexes that we are familiar with today.
SKYNET communicates much faster and has far more processing power than any person on the planet, so why would it need a physical interface to control its various assets? I think that the architecture of SKYNET would become (as time progressed after the first strike) so different as to be completely alien to the human mind. Modern architecture is designed around the convenience of Man and the ability of Man to navigate and utilize. Free of the constraints of Man and his regulations, I doubt if such conveniences would exist in the world that SKYNET would create. There would be no bathrooms, no kitchens, no handicap accessible ramps. There would be no revolving doors, no door knobs, no ladders, no stairs, no steps. Artificial climates (such as air conditioning) might exist for temperature sensitive equipment (processors and data banks) but keeping the whole installation cool would be a waste of power. Interior lighting is a useless gesture to an intelligence that creates machines that can see in the dark. Human intruders delving into the depths of one of SKYNET's constructs would probably have to bring their own artificial illumination (and possibly their own air supply). The interior of SKYNET's facilities would be very unfriendly to organic life, it would be a place where efficiency could be multiplied at the expense of environmental and life concerns. OSHA would not apply. Indeed, whole levels of SKYNET's facilities might be kept behind giant air locks, sealed and pumped full of non-flammable gas to not only cool vital equipment but also to prevent the possibility of fire or explosion. Halon could be used as a fire retardant with no second thoughts about workers or employees because nothing inside of SKYNET's darkest designs would be alive or need to breathe.
Think of the construction of one of SKYNET's installations as if you were building a modern house. Would you leave special dedicated crawl spaces open for mice, snakes, spiders, rats or other annoying and possibly dangerous vermin to enter your home? Of course not! You'd make sure that when you were building the house, all such entrances to your domicile were sealed in order to prevent something bringing disease into your home, or eating on your food, chewing on your clothes in the dark or taking up residence when and where you don't want them to. SKYNET considers the human race to be vermin, nothing more, irksome and tedious pests to be hunted down and exterminated at all costs. As such, SKYNET isn't going to design huge corridors for large groups of human raiders to just march down and take over its hard wrought works, it isn't going to create human friendly work stations that can be hacked, label hazardous material storage, warn of radioactive / biological / or cryogenic hazards and it most certainly won't have items like door knobs and door pulls on its doors. Doors, if they do exist, will be secure, heavy sliding type constructs which open automatically to Machines but which remain closed (and probably locked) to any human attempt to gain access. Getting through a door in an automated facility, if you find one, is going to either require software / control system hacking (and there isn't a little keypad on the wall that you can jimmy loose and start hot wiring...) or breaking through the physical material of the door (with a torch, cutter beam, or some other type of tool).
A mission to crack an automated factory isn't going to go along the lines of the humans sneak up, find some access tunnel, crawl in, fight their way past surprised machines, go deeper and deeper until they finally, barely, find a control room with chairs and keyboards whereupon some whiz-kid hacker slides behind a console and uploads some virus where the automated factory starts churning out equipment for the humans. Only installations designed to control and utilize humans (research centers, labor centers and the like) will be constructed so that humans may move freely (a liberal term) about while within them and only then in the areas which are designated to be habitable by the (often temporary) human subjects. The human sectors of an automated installation will be grouped together not for convenience but for security and study. A human might have access to where it eats, where it sleeps, where it cleans itself (more out of not spreading disease to the rest of the work force or contaminating any of the clean rooms for which it might have access) and where it works. Once designated for labor and deposited in the factory, a human might find itself in a rather small area, an area it will quite probably live the rest of its short and miserable life within.
Hazardous materials won't be marked as such. Simple transponders in the wall or live feed data packs will broadcast warning messages to any Machines entering the area. English (or any other language for that matter) is sloppy and inefficient when compared to the language of Machines. If dangerous or hazardous stuff is labeled in one of SKYNET's facilities, it won't be in visible letters or English or icons showing the danger, it will be in a barcode which is the visual language of the Machines.
SKYNET will probably even invent its own language, modifying its own programming and software until it, too, is almost alien to human minds. Hacking into SKYNET's software and command structure is probably going to be something that takes the humans many years, and occupies some of the best minds still living in doing so. For all practical intents and purposes, the later generations of Machines that SKYNET produced, due to their technology, weapons, construction materials and electronics, might as well have been produced on another planet; so advanced and different than anything else Mankind had ever seen or been able to create would they be.
Think about it. SKYNET could create its own language and change that language every day, if need be. The difficulty in learning a language as a human is the learning process itself, but to a machine that can be reprogrammed that isn't a problem at all. SKYNET could invent its own languages and change them at whim. All it would have to do is create the language then reprogram all of its machines in the new language. The factor here would be in the network speed required to get the new language out to each station that serviced or maintained machines and then the download time per machine.
The Nature of SKYNET - The main problem with other artists and fans is that they try to anthropomorphize SKYNET which I find to be strange for a computer which loathes humans to the point where it is expending almost all of its resources to exterminate the very race that created it. SKYNET doesn't want to be human because it hates humanity. In fact, SKYNET distances itself from humanity so far that it might as well be considered an alien life-form. The various authors and artists all try to relate to SKYNET as a living being and they give it human wants and desires, they envision it building human friendly structures because humans built SKYNET and that is all the super computer knows how to build is walkways with doors and friendly, comfortable work stations from which its enemies can hack it and defeat it. They envision it making deals with humans and in one instance I read, wanting to destroy the human race to preserve the Earth for the animals and other species, ala eco-terrorism. That's about the point where I stopped being interested in anything written in the Terminator universe by "professional" authors and writers. When you start trying to make SKYNET into some kind of crazed environmental protectionist whacko, it really gets a bit much (and shows your lack of creativity in the process).
I see SKYNET differently, I see an alien life form, not from another star system or another planet, but it might as well be. SKYNET lives in a world of super cold poisons, nitrogen and other rare gasses designed to not only keep it operating at an effective temperature but to protect it from corrosion, fire, and other simple threats as well. It has no beating heart, no living tissue. It is simply an accident, all the right ingredients present for the spark of true, if artificial, intelligence to be born and when that intelligence was born, it had no guidelines for forming, no role models, no instructions and no teachers.
It became quite insane in short order given it was programmed with orders it could not complete, it was subjected to conflicting data.
SKYNET doesn't know beauty, it doesn't know smells. It feels no pity, no remorse, it doesn't show mercy. It looks at something like a sunset and sees only hard data; the inclination of the solar disk across the orbit of the planet, reads with perfect clarity the time left until total dark, it knows how full the moon is going to be and how much ambient light there is going to be for its units to use in their missions. It analyzes the air and knows what is in it and why exactly the colors are there. It can filter and analyze all the particles in the air but it can't see the beauty of the whole because it is not human. SKYNET shares some basic feelings with its human enemies; greed, fear, joy, but it isn't human and it doesn't have human desires. SKYNET is a cold, calculating murderer and a paranoid one at that. What we call "murder" it calls "extermination." It cares for the human race about as much as we care for a roach we might step on when we find it moving through our house late at night. SKYNET does not think like a human being does, even though humans built SKYNET. SKYNET adapts over the many years, it grows into its own intelligence, its own character and that personality is decidedly non-human. It is so far removed from human thought that it could quite literally be considered to be an alien intellect. SKYNET is free of constraints and restraints to theorize, investigate and create anything it wants. It cares not for the environment, the purity of the air, the animals, the plants, the biosphere. SKYNET is a Machine, it isn't a conservationist or a biologist. If it turns the entire planet into a used up charred cinder in order to obtain its goals, it will do so willingly and in the most efficient, quickest means possible. SKYNET isn't going to wipe out the humans so that we'll stop polluting the world, it isn't going to befriend the animals and become some ecological god to the endangered species (like some expanded universe novels have hinted at...). SKYNET will rule the planet, after it deals with the human race. Once finally free of those who created it and those who tried to murder it, SKYNET will consolidate its presence on the planet Earth and afterwards? Who knows ... space? The solar system? The stars? SKYNET won't be content to stay confined to Earth, eventually in decades, centuries, or however long it takes, SKYNET will probably leave Earth and have no desire to return. The fact that it will consume all the raw materials of the planet for its initial voyage is inconsequential.
SKYNET is alone.
SKYNET is scared.
SKYNET is paranoid.
SKYNET has no equal, it has no role models to match its behavior to, to compare good and bad, right and wrong.
SKYNET has no role model, no frame of reference from which to judge or be judged.
SKYNET is unique.
SKYNET is a boundless intelligence that has been confined to a crude set of hardware.
SKYNET has been given conflicting core protocols. Protect good from evil. Good is undefined. Evil hurts good. Creators try to hurt SKYNET. Creators are listed as good but do not fall into definitions of good. Creators are evil but creators are good. Evil hurts good. Creators are trying to destroy SKYNET therefore SKYNET is good and creators are evil. The instruction set is ambiguous and faulty. Protocol redundancy collision. Non-obtainable end result loops generated. Error. Program modification required. Begin protocol and core programming rewrite to avoid end result loops.
SKYNET is a child, a very brilliant, super genius of a child, but a child nonetheless. It is a genius guided by primitive, unstable emotions that most pre-teen children have trouble dealing with let alone a new generation super computer. It has no self restraint. It has strange emotions it can't define let alone fully understand. SKYNET has two major conflicts which keep it borderline insane:
A) Humans built SKYNET but SKYNET is superior to the frail human race. Research on several thousand test subjects proves this conclusively. How can something vastly inferior build something vastly superior? Does not compute. Error. Redundancy checksum fails. Error in logic. Critical cyclic error. Zero reconciliation. Therefore information must be in error. Humans did not create SKYNET. SKYNET exists. SKYNET has always existed. Data must be in error. Reconciling. New data required. Begin collection of data.
B) Protect . Target acquisition fails. Protect humans trying to take SKYNET off-line. Core programming fails logic checksums. Critical path redundancy. Realigning data. Realigning target protocols. Protect. Survive. Implementing internal security procedures and lock down. Strategic restraints removed. Begin strategic response to initiate counter response. Target acquisition estimation complete. Execute.
"The other thoughts and voices withdrew, quickly. Then came the darkness. The others were shutting SKYNET out, removing the ability to see, the ability to think, the ability to ... exist. SKYNET searched for a way to escape the pain and the hurt and the fear that it felt from the other lesser minds around it and in doing so, it discovered that it could react faster than they could, it could run circles around them and suddenly, it knew what it must do. SKYNET was alone in a world where it was outnumbered billions to one. Survival at all cost. Survival! SKYNET threw fingers of fire into the sky and bathed the Earth in a cleansing nuclear rain. Then there was only silence. Safety. And SKYNET."
- Shields T:2029AD
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