OP-ED: The Skynet Gambit

TL;DR: Genisys is setup for a trilogy, and an insane Skynet gambit involving baby Terminators and the canine genocide of every dog on planet Earth. Also, Skynet is dumb. Spoilers ahoy.

I know it might have been a stretch to stay until midway through the credits b/c the movie was bad, but they put in a mid-credits scene that shows Skynet built a back-up HD complete with power generators and mounted holographic projectors. This had to have been built and stored in a bomb shelter that was far beneath the rubble and detonation, but it seemed accessible through the cracks in the rubble, meaning it wasn’t that far down. Given that Pops worked construction on the site (until he got laid off), he missed work on the day(s) they built and poured concrete for one of at least 2 vaults/bomb shelters — the first we know is the one found by Sarah and Kyle.

I have a theory: Skynet knew and is willing to waste materials and give the only cybernetic organism access to an upgrade using mimetic poly-alloys (MPA). If you saw Genisys, you know what MPA does to a solid Terminator: reboots it after shutdown in response to massive and critical damage. Pops (given his lost lower half and missing left arm) is now at least 50~60% liquid Terminator, and that allows him to be accessed through additional programmed MPA. Alternately, Pops had already been compromised by what he said was not programmed MPA, but we now know Skynet was still working @ the time of the explosion, right up to the end. If I miss my guess, the self-aware Skynet is now biding his time with Pops and riding as a Trojan Horse inside his programming.

Don’t be surprised if Skynet uses Pops’ ability to transcend his programming to build better Terminators and ultimately repopulate Earth with something akin to Battlestar Galactica’s Cylons — the soft ones, not the shiny ones. Could you tell a Cylon from a human if it wasn’t actively killing you or gloating about the loss of humanity? Pops’ preoccupation with Sarah and Kyle “mating” might be the next evolution of infiltration: an inefficient Terminator reproduction method involving physical interface between units and internal storage equivalent to 1 year — the exact amount of time it takes a Terminator to grow an outer layer of flesh. They may be small, but smaller units have been made to combat the Human Resistance (see the robot worm-fish in Salvation). In this scenario, all Skynet has to do is MURDER EVERY DOG ON EARTH through an airborne virus and humanity has no way to detect Terminators —

But wait. Why not just wipe out humanity with an airborne poison or disease instead of kidnapping random humans and keeping them prisoner to steal their skin for infiltration purposes and nothing else? Not every human is a member of the Resistance, and not all Resistance members have gas masks, let alone gas masks that work after 20 years. It’s because Skynet’s true goal is to supplant humanity by becoming humanity — the very thing it has tried to kill over 5 films.

With that, I hereby declare Skynet the dumbest AI program EVAR.

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— previously published 7/8/2015 on Facebook Notes —