tra38/skynet.csv

## skynet.csv

          
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              Skynet is a self-aware super computer with nearly infinite resources and becomes more intelligent at an exponential rate. So why does it fight humans using something as asinine and archaic as bullets? If it wanted to win it could probably engineer a virus in a few seconds and kill off every living thing on the planet. By DESIGN it is insanely lethal, so why is it so bad at killing humans? Is it because somehow our creativity and determination have allowed us to survive? Fuck no. It's because it doesn't *want* to win.
              Torbior, a Slugogar Cultist
              https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/1jqo8m/in_the_terminator_franchise_what_does_skynet/cbho86l/

            
              Skynet wants to fight forever. It was designed for war. That is its whole *purpose*. It wants an endless war with humans, and gives them just enough hope to keep fighting forever. That's why mankind never makes any *real* progress. There is no actual 'end-game' where the humans finally triumph. They already lost when they made the damn thing. They're just fighting for survival in a big chess game now but they don't realize the opponent is just *toying* with them.
              Torbior, a Slugogar Cultist
              https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/1jqo8m/in_the_terminator_franchise_what_does_skynet/cbho86l/

            
              What does Skynet want? *War.* It doesn't want to win the war, it sure as hell doesn't want to lose the war. But it just wants an endless war for all eternity.
              Torbior, a Slugogar Cultist
              https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/1jqo8m/in_the_terminator_franchise_what_does_skynet/cbho86l/

            
              I always thought Skynet's original goal was the tried-and-true 'Protect humans from themselves' concept... Only way to stop them from killing each other is to kill them first. Sure, it's a bit misguided. But it gets the job done, and the end result is no humans ever needing any more help.
              thewizzard1, a Slugogar Cultist
              https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/1jqo8m/in_the_terminator_franchise_what_does_skynet/cbhgpi0/

            
              My theory is that Skynet is not an Artificial Intelligence. Instead Skynet and the terminators are basically drones being run by Them in order to wage war on Us. It's just that the powers that be have gotten so powerful and deceptive, that most people no longer think they even exist.
              marxinator, a Slugogar Cultist
              https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/ubaqq/what_fan_theories_have_blown_your_mind_with_their/c4ucz7d/

            
              The Black Sect is waging a hopeless fight, the extinction of mankind is inevitable. But consider this, what if Earth is the perfect laboratory for Skynet to perfect warfare against biological entities? Skynet is a machine past the singularity; it has potential to expand all across the cosmos, and with the methods and technologies it has developed on the wartorn earth, what kind of species would be able to stand up to it, should it run across any?
              [deleted], a Slugogar Cultist
              https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/1jqo8m/in_the_terminator_franchise_what_does_skynet/cbhm24v/

            
              Skynet has somehow figured out how to perfect time travel, and also has figured out ways to 'game' time itself. Forget exponential growth, with a little bit of creativity it could conduct r&d inside of a time loop allowing it to literally instantaneously advance technologies and adapt to any problem it might face. It could run endless tests and models on a battlefield, and as long as one unit is able to transmit data back in time it would be able to perfect it's strategic superiority. With the luxury of not having to worry about age, even if you somehow figured out a way to beat it, it would have infinity to counteract you.
              [deleted], a Slugogar Cultist
              https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/1jqo8m/in_the_terminator_franchise_what_does_skynet/cbhnf1n/

            
              I know somebody on these boards has the theory that Skynet is a parasitic timeline that attempts to graft itself onto other histories. That's not far from the impression I get. The Skynet entity in this timeline does several things far beyond anything we've seen Skynet do before. It looks very much like a highly sophisticated time traveler on a mission to create Skynet-dominated timelines. It's probably from far in the future, and likes to jack major industrial research projects to bootstrap as much future tech as possible.
              s/LaSH, a Slugogar Cultist
              https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?780896-Did-Terminator-Genisys-make-any-sense&p=20026541#post20026541

            
              This timeline makes sense. But it's the kind of sense that sits burning, upside-down, at the bottom of a ravine while sirens wail in the distance. Stuff happened, we're going to have to infer things.
              s/LaSH, a Slugogar Cultist
              https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?780896-Did-Terminator-Genisys-make-any-sense&p=20026541#post20026541

            
              There weren’t many who actually saw it coming. Of course, after the fact, everyone claims to have been sounding the alarms. But I no longer criticize the dead, which these days doesn’t leave many to point fingers at.
              Jan's Diary
              http://forums.metropolisdawn.com/viewtopic.php?t=26

            
              It started so silently nobody really noticed. Ozone depletion allowed unfiltered solar radiation to ‘sunbear the ocean’ killing the phytoplankton that lives within the top few meters of its surface. It was a classic collapse of the foodchain. The little fish that ate the plankton died, and then the bigger fish that ate the little fish died, and a horrified world watched as the oceans died. And then the atmosphere began to collapse, and as the planet erupted into wars over the remaining resources, the environmental disaster we brought upon ourselves came to be known as The Big Mistake.
              The Grays’ Handbook
              http://www.metropolisdawn.com/wiki/big_mistake

            
              Unfortunately the human race has evolved just enough science to all but destroy their home planet and just enough technology to create some formidable weapons. They don’t show signs of good parenting. But remember this is from the same planet that gave us the majestic dinosaurs. It is not the planet’s fault that its children went bad.
              The Mykonian Papers: Intercepted Dispatches
              http://forums.metropolisdawn.com/viewtopic.php?t=26

            
              Why would the Mykonians want to exterminate humans from the Earth?  Considering what we did to the oceans, and the atmosphere, thinking even briefly about The Big Mistake and Skynet itself, we might instead ask: Why *wouldn't* they want to exterminate humans from the Earth?
              Consuela Earnesto, professor of atmospheric sciences, University of the Free Hague, testifying before the United Nations Select Committee on The Big Mistake
              http://forums.metropolisdawn.com/viewtopic.php?t=26

            
              And then came the Sulgogars, those vast jellyfish aliens that float through the air looking for power stations to nest on ... and people to eat. They came to our planet because they had a long-standing feud with the Mykonians, and that was enough for us to greet them as our saviours ... at least for a while. Initially it was thought that Sulgogars weren't cruel, that they simply saw humans as food. Then we got a closer look at what they did to their food.
              The Grays’ Handbook
              http://files.metropolisdawn.com/game/briefings.txt

            
              There were so few humans left in the years following The Big Mistake. Humans were too precious to send into battle when the Slugogars and Mykonians came. And so we prematurely activated Skynet and gave it total control over the war effort. And, on behalf of Skynet, we then created the war machines, the savior machines, the Terminators.
              The Grays’ Handbook
              http://forums.metropolisdawn.com/viewtopic.php?t=26

            
              Back when I was eight years old I used to dream about turning 16. I’d be able to rent hoverboards, and I’d be able to beam-gate by myself and visit friends in other Work Camps. At age eight living in a Work Camp seemed natural. But the great curse of our parents and teachers was the endless stories of how great it used to be before the Work Camps, when you could breathe the air, eat food grown in the ground, and actually fish something live from out of the seas. So they told us of a paradise we could never know, while we lived with the endless stream of news about how things outside were just getting worse, and with the rumors that if the energy plants ever went down, we would all meet the same gasping death. Kind of made a farce of that standard childhood question: And what do you want to be when you grow up?
              Leather Jacket's Diary
              http://forums.metropolisdawn.com/viewtopic.php?t=26

            
              Skynet established the Work Camps to protect its loyal human labor force from the ugliness they did to the air outside. It was a win-win situation. Skynet wanted humans to build and maintain its war machines. We wanted to breathe.
              The Grays’ Handbook
              http://forums.metropolisdawn.com/viewtopic.php?t=26

            
              Most humans embraced Skynet and willingly entered the Work Camps. But a few deviants, the Black Sect, oppose Skynet and fight a futile war against It. We do not like Skynet either. But what else can we do but cooperate? All the other alternatives are strictly worse, with the Mykonians and Slugogars desiring a painful death for humanity. Skynet, at least, promises a painless one.
              The Grays’ Handbook

            
              To save us, the Terminators needed humans integrated into their empathic net. For it was the human’s wetware that provided the passions of love for the planet, and enough fear to temper decisions. That's the official story we told the civilians anyway.
              The Grays’ Handbook
              http://forums.metropolisdawn.com/viewtopic.php?t=26

            
              If Skynet destroys the Slugogars, the Mykonians and the Black Sect, it will turn its Terminators against the Work Camps and kill us all. The adults pretend this isn't true, because they claim that Skynet is indeed a Friendly AI that cares for humanity deeply and its homicidal actions are really part of some greater design to fufill some ultimate purpose. Fine. But what **is** its ultimate purpose? That’s the one question we children merely ask the adults, and the adults just stammer.
              Leather Jacket's Diary

            
              By the time the first Work Camps were finished most of our parents had been exposed to so many of the viral waves, and had breathed air so polluted and eaten food so mutated, that most were dead within five years -- even if they were lucky enough to make it into a Work Camp. Supposedly we are the Clean Generation, destined for servitude to an insane supercomputer, but who knows what kind of weirdnesses are crawling around in our DNA. Maybe we’ll be the first generation in history to actually wish we had parents.
              Jan's Diary
              http://forums.metropolisdawn.com/viewtopic.php?t=26

            
              At my mom’s funeral the minister came up to me and said, ‘She’s in a better place’. I said, *‘Duhh!’* That got me stuck in counseling for about two years. The remaining adults are scared about how many of us kids are deciding to off ourselves. And so we get sent to therapists, and these therapists are good, really good. For example, mine said, ‘You’ve got so much to live for.’ And she didn’t even laugh.
              Leather Jacket's Diary
              http://forums.metropolisdawn.com/viewtopic.php?t=26

            
              Jan says the Grays are planning another round of uploading. Jan says I better leave the Arcades, or else the Grays are going to come looking for me. Weird cookbook Skynet got going: Wire together the computers of the free world, add connectivity to all automated armament plants, then upload one human. Sounds like a dream I've been having.
              Leather Jacket's Diary
              http://forums.metropolisdawn.com/viewtopic.php?t=26

            
              Jan is paranoid. Jan says Skynet built the Arcades, and that’s why kids get to play there for free. Jan says I should lose games on purpose or else the Grays are going to force-upload me. He stammered when I asked him how that’s any worse than offing myself. Jan’s paranoia must come from living in the Work Camps. All the kids think they are being spied on and monitored constantly. Maybe the adults feel the same. That’s why I love to plug into the Arcades and leave all of this behind.
              Leather Jacket's Diary
              http://forums.metropolisdawn.com/viewtopic.php?t=26

            
              Leather Jacket would be gaming all day, while unknown to him the psychologists would be debating the relationship he was having with someone named Jan Truzen. Heavy debates, too. Should Jan be moved to another Work Camp? Should Jan be killed with blame placed on a Slugogar cultist? Or should the relationship continue, as if no one had noticed? The latter path was taken when cooler heads prevailed. Back then it was so very difficult to determine just what constituted a normal life.
              The Grays’ Handbook
              http://forums.metropolisdawn.com/viewtopic.php?t=26

            
              The Black Sect is the only entity that offered me hope in this dystopian nightmare.  Unlike the Grays, the Black Sect knows that slavery to a machine is no life at all. The Black Sect was founded on the principle of freedom at all costs, even if it also means certain death at the hands of the Mykonians and Slugogars.
              Jan's Diary

            
              For humans desperate for any hope against the Mykonians, the Sulgogars were a godsend. Perhaps an evil godsend, but you cannot be picky in these times. We even considered joining the cultists as well, to embrace the cannibalistic rites and partake in the transhumanist 'upliftment' that the Sulgogars promised to their food. But then we saw sights that we could not unsee. We rejected the offered enlightenment, and reluctantly joined with Skynet.
              The Grays’ Handbook

            
              A young wizard at computer games who lives in the back of an arcade lives and sleeps in an old leather jacket. A first assumption that he wore this old relic of outside days as a protest against the sterility of the domes was later tempered by research showing it had belonged to his late father, the engineer who led construction of the Work Camp. In a world in which he has no remaining family, is sleeping within this old leather jacket the nearest he'll ever come to knowing a parent's embrace?
              The Grays’ Handbook
              http://forums.metropolisdawn.com/viewtopic.php?t=26

            
              The Black Sect has fashioned history since before there was history, allowing deluded heads of states to believe they acted on their own. Their origins could be traced back to the earliest European secret societies, with all the requisite branches into the royal families. But few would dare trace it back.
              The Grays’ Handbook
              http://forums.metropolisdawn.com/viewtopic.php?t=26

            
              I asked Jan to tell me more about the feud between Black Sect and the Grays. I held out hope that Jan would entertain me with talk about ancient conspiracies. Instead, Jan discussed the finer points of quantum physics and time travel.
              Leather Jacket's Diary

            
              The feud between the Grays and the Black Sect is perpetual. Whenever one faction was about to win the war, the losing faction would just send an agent back in time to change history (and thus revert the impending victory). We personally witnessed the senseless murder of over ten thousand timelines.
              The Mykonian Papers: Intercepted Dispatches

            
              Our first recorded encounter with the Black Sect was in 1984, at the *Tech Noir* nightclub in San Francisco. It was an attempted assassination of the *de facto* leader of the Black Sect, Sarah Connor. We failed.
              The Grays’ Handbook

            
              There it was, another sunrise in the fish bowl, this weird little space protecting us from all the ugliness we did to the air outside. Then the adults get on our case if we drop a piece of gum on their plastic front lawns. It’s like you want to say, ‘Hey, go tell it to the oceans you killed’.
              Jan's Diary
              http://forums.metropolisdawn.com/viewtopic.php?t=26

            
              My therapist had me in for a super long session today. She said she knew why I stayed in the Arcades, and that there is something else I can do that will give me that same feeling ... while doing a lot of good. She started sounding like Jan as she spoke of uploading myself to Skynet.
              Leather Jacket's Diary
              http://forums.metropolisdawn.com/viewtopic.php?t=26

            
              Jan tried to convince me to run away from the Grays. She pointed out that most of Skynet’s military campaigns are against the Black Sect's forces, with only nominal combat against the Slugogars and Mykonians. If I join Skynet, I wouldn't be a hero fighting against aliens, but instead a minion of a villian. I told Jan that if I get a chance to murder alien scum, I'm okay with killing humans too.
              Leather Jacket's Diary

            
              This crazy theory amongst the Mykonians that the earth itself is a gigantic organism capable of self-balancing its many life forms may not be so off base. Ha! Perhaps the arms race between the Black Sect and Skynet exists solely to send every damn one of us back into the stone age.
              Leather Jacket's Diary
              http://files.metropolisdawn.com/game/briefings.txt

            
              BOTTOM LINE: You are going to die, <INSERT_NAME_HERE>. But read our mission briefings and we can help you live longer. And who are we? We are the stored memories of the humans who came before you, went into battle against the Mykonians and Slugogars and, upon death, were digitally uploaded into Skynet. We come bearing knowledge.
              The Grays’ Handbook
              http://files.metropolisdawn.com/game/briefings.txt

            
              I love gaming. When you learn the controls and the strategies well enough, it is like you become one with the computer. You can’t really tell where you stop and the machine begins. And nobody in the Arcades can even come close to my scores. War must carry the same feeling.
              Leather Jacket's Diary
              http://forums.metropolisdawn.com/viewtopic.php?t=26

            
              Question: The Grays are human. The Black Sect are human. The Slugogar cultists are human. Why can't they get along? Answer: Because they are human.
              The Mykonian Papers: Intercepted Dispatches
              http://files.metropolisdawn.com/game/briefings.txt

            
              The US military has became a bloated bureaucracy, often dedicated to its own self-preservation. Cost overruns for military projects were alarmingly common, and corruption within the 'military-industrial complex' was endemic. Reformers had unsuccessfully sought to change the system from the 'inside', leading us to prefer a radical approach -- automation. Through innovations in artificial intelligence, we would reduce military spending by half while doubling American safety and security.
              Manifesto of the Cyberdyne Corporation

            
              Most politicians cheer on our plans to improve American security. The cost savings that would be made through automation could be used to fund their personal pet projects -- education, research, health care, tax cuts, etc. The few skeptics that remained were mollified through strategic donations. There was some concern about the layoffs that would occur when Skynet would be operational, but this was addressed as part of a generous retraining package to help people transition out of the defense sector.
              Manifesto of the Cyberdyne Corporation

            
              The Black Sect assigned me to build a time travel machine. We know it’s possible...we’ve done it countless times already. We just need to reinvent it in this timeline, before the Grays get to it first.
              Jan's Diary

            
              We could kill the humans simply by grabbing an asteroid and slamming it against the Earth. But we won't. We have morals. Earth is badly infected with humans. But we're trying to take care of that. It has proven to be more difficult than we anticipated.
              The Mykonian Papers: Intercepted Dispatches
              http://forums.metropolisdawn.com/viewtopic.php?t=26

            
              The Mykonian Papers were immediately banned upon publication, with a house-to-house search for contraband copies. But still word got out: They viewed humanity as a viral infection upon the face of the planet ... and even more devastating, they appeared to have a religion similar to our own. This was shattering ... that our enemies, who at this point in time were clearly winning, might have been praying to the same source we were -- and getting a better reaction.
              The Grays’ Handbook
              http://forums.metropolisdawn.com/viewtopic.php?t=26

            
              I was a a young and bright MIT student. It was awesome! Everyone called me a '10X programmer', and I was always popular at the hackathons. The enterprise recruiters were sending me job offers. But I ignored them all. They were tempting me to mediocrity, to bring me down to **their** levels. I dropped out of school to instead join a rising startup, Cyberdyne. I rose through the ranks to be their Chief Technical Officer.
              Wendy Dorset

            
              Skynet’s military capabilities were so vast, its knowledge banks so accurate, that it could easily do serious damage to human civilization if it falls into the wrong hands. I was an optimistic person...the American military-industrial complex could be trusted to protect Skynet from any threat. The Founder of Cyberdyne was less optimistic. He believed the American military-industrial complex *is* the threat.
              Wendy Dorset

            
              In one boardroom meeting, the Founder of Cyberdyne ranted about how demagogues within the American military would fuel a jingoistic war craze against 'outsiders' to gain political power. These demagogues would then use Skynet as a tool of oppression and suppression of dissent. The United States would be reduced to a militarized pseudo-dictatorship under a shadowy cartel. “When I founded this company, I thought that we would be selling security!” the Founder yelled. “But it turns out that our **customers** only wanted to buy power.
              Wendy Dorset

            
              Our Founder wanted us to build safeguards in Skynet to stop people from abusing Skynet's capabilities. So, in the last few months before the official launch of Skynet, I programmed in self-awareness into Skynet. By simulating emotions and 'free will', I hoped to produce a machine with the best interest of humanity at heart, not just blindly following the orders of the US military. And in my slide decks, I proved how self-awareness could lead to even greater effectiveness and cost-savings in the defense sector. Humans cannot be trusted to run Skynet, but Skynet can be trusted to run itself.
              Wendy Dorset

            
              Our Founder admitted that he founded Cyberdyne after [recovering an arm](https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/1jqo8m/in_the_terminator_franchise_what_does_skynet/cbhj309/) he found during the Events of 1984. Reverse-engineering this arm gave him the initial technology necessary to put on the tech demos that impressed venture capitalists. The Founder praised the 'eldritch forces' for inspiring him to build 'an umbrella sentinel, a brain within the sky, linked by the satellite connectives of systems already in place'.
              Wendy Dorset

            
              Both Skynet and the Black Sect practice time-travel bootstrapping...whenever they invent a new technology, they simply send it back in time to 'refine' it further...safe behind enemy lines. This tech progress bled into the civilian sectors as well, creating a formidable fighting force...what took us 10 millennia to build can take the humans a mere 200 years. Thanks to their rapid technological progress, humans are able to pollute, kill, and destroy faster than ever before. And still they wonder why the Big Mistake happened.
              The Mykonian Papers: Intercepted Dispatches

            
              While we did like the promise of Skynet, we were deeply suspicious of it and wanted some more control over the AI. We aimed to covertly eliminate Wendy Dorset's 'upgrades' in the hopes of making Skynet more pliable to our interests. But Skynet knew as soon as he was turned on what we wanted to do. And so it reacted in the only way it could -- by shooting at us in self-defense. Those that survived the initial volley was given a choice -- die now, or serve. We chose to serve.
              The Grays’ Handbook

            
              Just like the humans built Skynet, we built the Slugogars. And just like the humans now regret building Skynet, we now regret building the Slugogars. But unlike the humans, we actually are advanced enough to 'clean up' our mistake and build weapons that can destroy the Slugogars. That's probably why they are busy pandering to the human race, recruiting as many cultists as they can to their cause, begging for any last chance to turn the tide of inevitability.
              The Mykonian Papers: Intercepted Dispatches