Chapter 1024: Love and Hate
Chapter 1024: Love and Hate
It could be seen that the Terminators also had social classes among them just like the humans did. For example, the status of the T-1000 was obviously much higher than that of the TOK715.
The TOK715 Terminator did not show any signs of displeasure at the T-1000’s discriminatory words. It only said in a serious tone, “We’re all serving the Creator, sir.”
“I don’t need you to remind me of that. On the contrary, I have to remind you to take my words seriously, or you’re gonna have a bad time!” said the T-1000 ruthlessly.
After he said that, he took a step forward, grabbed the unlucky TOK715 Terminator’s neck, and lifted him straight up! At the same time, his left hand quickly turned into a sharp blade. He stabbed it deep into the stomach of his comrade and stirred the blade around a few times, causing some blinding flashes of electric sparks to jump out from the wound. Only after that did he throw the TOK715 away, sending the TOK715 smashing heavily into a car at the back.
The hapless TOK715 completely flattened the top of the damaged car with a loud bang!
“Leave now, or next time, I’ll pry your CPU chip out!” the T-1000 said coldly.
The T-1000 then strode towards the truck. The TOK715 Terminator struggled a few times before he managed to climb out of the pile of metal wreckage, covered in rust and dust. The T-1000’s strike just now would have been fatal on a human, but on a Terminator, it was merely a flesh wound. Even so, the TOK715’s eyes had become very complicated.
Future Skynet had experimented with emotional programs on all the Terminators he sent on this expedition. The emotional programs included a hatred for all human beings.
Skynet’s reason for doing so was simple — because it found that after the T-800 it produced had been transformed by the humans and had learned human emotions, it displayed exceptional combat capabilities.
Presently, the conventional Terminator CPU was the learning type, which could store almost unlimited data and information. But when they were sent out to perform tasks, Skynet would set all Terminators’ modes as read-only — ie., they could not learn any new knowledge. That was because Skynet would not allow any Terminator to have its own ideas. Besides eradicating the humans, Skynet’s goal also included not allowing the emergence of a second Skynet!
But the T-800 that was remodelled by humans had its learning ability and human emotional programs liberated. The performance of a non-emotional Terminator in battle was rigid and straightforward, while the emotional Terminator was obviously stronger. Its performance was not only stable, but would also sometimes display exceptional bursts of power!
In the battlefield of the future, a remodelled T-800 that had obtained human emotions on John Connor’s side had once performed the feat of destroying three other T-800 Terminators by itself.
In view of this situation, Skynet started to make attempts at adding emotional programs into the Terminators’ modules. This action was definitely a challenge for Skynet! Love and hate were difficult to express in simple binaries of 0’s and 1’s, after all.
It was hard for the non-emotional Skynet to understand what hate was. It could only reproduce its feelings for John Connor in its subordinates — that feeling was actually a mix of displeasure, fear, etc.; it was absolutely not the hatred that humans felt.
Love was even more difficult for Skynet to understand. Among all the Terminators, only the T-800 which protected John Connor in Terminator 2 could accurately acquire and show the emotion of “love”. It had said before it self-destructed that it finally knew why humans shed tears. That emotion was undoubtedly love, and the pain of eternal parting made it deeply understand the feeling of friendship between John and itself.
Skynet obviously did not possess the kind of condition to experience all these. Although it had become self-aware, in essence, it was still an emotionless machine.
After the three maintenance Terminators disassembled their own body parts and repaired five combat T-910 Terminators, only a small part of them remained. Almost every part of their bodies from the chest-down had been disassembled. They lay paralysed in the mud, watching their freely-moving companions clatter about expressionly as the Terminators familiarise themselves with the newly-acquired weapons.
The final result of future Skynet’s batch transmission this time were as follows:
Team configuration before transmission: Two T-1000s and fourteen T-910s, four of which possessed maintenance capabilities.
Loss in transmission: One T-1000, three T-910s rendered completely unserviceable (including one with maintenance capabilities). Only two T-910s remained perfectly intact.
The final configuration of Terminators capable of combat: one T-1000, six T-910s with full combat capabilities, and two T-910s with 70% combat capabilities.
After adapting to the weapons, the T-1000 issued the order for the Terminators to enter the truck compartment and sit in neat rows inside. Of course, the time machines were also carried into the truck.
He went over to the three T-910 maintenance Terminators and said with his face cold and stiff, “Your mission is over. The time has come to be terminated.”
The three maintenance Terminators that had only a small part of their body remaining were expressionless. They seemed to have resigned themselves to their fate. The T-1000 changed his hands into a pair of huge hammers, moved to face the ones that had just made great contributions to the team, and smashed down on them!
A few minutes later, the T-1000 drove a road roller over and rolled over the remains of the three Terminators several times. He then poured petrol on the remains and set them ablaze. Finally, he dropped a powerful bomb on them. There was no doubt that after the explosion, the pieces of the three Terminators would eventually be mixed in with the abundance of scrap metals in the metal scrapyard. They would be impossible to find.
While doing these things, a slight fluctuation rose in the cold figurative heart of the T-1000, but this slight fluctuation was quickly suppressed. The “read-only” attribute Skynet had programmed into him beforehand had stifled the possibility of him further acquiring human nature.
“According to the numbers I just observed, the Gates index has risen sharply… Okay, okay, in consideration of your ignorance of proper scientific knowledge,I’ll give it to you straight. There was a very strong fluctuation in space, and this time, the volatility index reached a terrifying new height — almost 20 times higher than the previous highest index! We can conclude from this that a major space-time transfer had just taken place!”
Dolittle’s voice transmitted over from the phone.
Sheyan asked solemnly, “Can you tell if the transmission was successful?”
“Bad news. During the whole transmission process, the energy index did not change too much, which means that the space-time transfer this time should be quite successful,” answered Dolittle with a sigh.
Sheyan said faintly, “That’s within our expectation. Any further information will help. Can you figure out the exact destination of the space-time transfer?”
“That shouldn’t be too difficult to find out. Give me a moment…. The location is in the western suburb of Los Angeles. On the map, the place is called the Idak Vehicle Recycling Center, and the area around it is quite empty. Besides that, after I analysed the information from various sources, I estimate the theoretical number of Terminators sent in this batch of space-time transfer to be more than 10 but less than 20. But according to my deduction, this is the first time Skynet has attempted a batch transfer, so there were bound to be damages in the transmission process because it’s an untested new technology. What’s more important is the fact that you don’t have to be wary of the powerful firearms from 30 years in the future. But of course, the Terminators should be outfitted with some Skynet-manufactured cold weapons,” replied Dolittle.
Sheyan narrowed his eyes in thoughts.
“Understood. Skynet sure is ambitious, sending so many Terminators here in one go. How many do you estimate they’ve lost in the space-time transfer?”
Dolittle answered with some difficulty, “That’s hard to say. It depends entirely on Lady Tyche’s mood.”
(Note: Tyche is the Greek goddess of fortune & luck.)
After the conversation ended, Sheyan put down the phone and walked out of the room. Mogensha instantly asked nervously when he saw Sheyan, “How was it, boss? Are those guys coming?”
Sheyan nodded.
“But they won’t come here at once. There’s no way the battle plan that Skynet came up with will be so simple. If I were in its place, the first thing I’ll do will not be to attack us, but to set up a smokescreen. I’ll order the Terminators to first attack a couple of locations of strategic and military significance in order to attract the attention of the government. Only then will their assault on this residential area not attract official attention.”
Right after he said that, an urgent news was broadcasted on the TV in the living room:
“This is an emergency warning issued by the Los Angeles City Council. Another round of terrorist activity had just occurred. The City Hall and the headquarters of Cyberdyne Systems have suffered simultaneous attacks. The LAPD Headquarters was also set on fire. All civilians are advised to stay home in order to avoid getting injured!”
Following the calm voice of the anchorwoman, Sheyan faintly said, “The next target should be us.”
As soon as Sheyan’s words ended, they saw an out-of-control double-decker bus in the distance, rushing over on the long street in front of the house. The bus ran onto the sidewalk and crushed the pedestrians wantonly in its berserked charge!
Buses normally gave the impression of being slow, huge and crowded, but when they saw the bus in front, the only terms that came to mind were violence, slaughter and blood! The bus driver drove the bus like he was driving a bulldozer, forcefully knocking away a car that was in its path as the bus charged aggressively towards Sheyan and his team!