Rise of the Machines

Miles Bennett Dyson, director of Special Projects at Cyberdyne Systems Corporation, created a revolutionary type of microprocessor in 1994. The revolutionary Neural Net CPU, or "learning computer" was the most powerful microprocessor ever built. Working on the top secret project at Cyberdyne Systems, Dyson dedicated his life to the development and production of the Central Processing Unit (CPU), sometimes to the detriment of his family life. Surrounded by like minded scientist, and working in Cyberdyne's expansive labs, Dyson had the run of the best design and testing facilities available. Creating a strong “community” bond and relaxed working environment, Dyson was soon able to increase productivity and earn the respect of his fellow researchers.

After many long years of work, Dyson eventually hit upon a prototype model that was not only worked and was bug free, but was superconductive at room temperature, making it extremely powerful. The CPU was modeled and designed primarily on computers in advanced 3-Dimensional programming packages, where simulated testing could be done in real time, or at increased rates.

The lattice of cubes in the construction of the prototype CPU suggests a "hypercube" (a cube of more than three dimensions). In computer design, hypercubes are used as a physical connection scheme that minimizes the effective communication distance (and therefore the time delay) between processors, when the logical connection scheme needed by the software that will be run on those processors cannot be known in advance. This then supports the Neural Nets ability to learn, adapt, and built new logical connection schemes.

The Neural Net CPU is ground breaking, using the very latest Quantum Effects chips. Until Dyson designed the CPU, computers were powered by chips composed of millions of transistors. Computing in the old way was done in the binary system - 1’s and 0’s, on’s and off’s. With the QE brain in which 1054 computations can be done each second, quadrillions of switching positions are possible, many of them simultaneous at each quantum level. All this happens down around the Planck length (theoretically the smallest measurement possible) - so infinitesimally small that superstrings are the major league players. Superstrings are strange 10 dimensional building blocks that are more than one thousand billion billion times smaller than a single proton in the nucleus of a hydrogen atom.

After an attack on Cyberdyne Systems by terrorists, and the death of Miles Dyson, Cyberdyne was taken over by the US Government, and renamed Cyber Research Systems (CRS) in an attempt to keep its developments secret and prevent further terrorist attacks.

Under the guidance of program director Lieutenant General Robert Brewster, and the new guise of Cyber Research Systems, Cyberdyne continued the groundbreaking work of the late Miles Dyson using the backup files that were stored off site and eventually completing the Neural Net CPU. The finished CPU is a form of thick, more 3-Dimensional, circuit board which is approximately 35 mm in diameter. It is basically constructed from a number of rows of blocks connected by pipes. The reasoning behind this design was similar to that which evolution has independently discovered in "designing" our brains: the system has to be massively parallel, and requires excellent communication channels between processors. Therefore there are many blocks, each with many processors, and while local communication within a block is readily supported, there is also some large "data pipes" between blocks to allow more limited long-range communication.

All Stealth Bombers were upgraded with CRS computers, becoming fully unmanned. Afterwards, the Stealth Bombers flew with perfect operational records, and eventually the Skynet Funding Bill was passed.

Skynet would be America’s first military grade neural net based supercomputer and would interface and coordinate all of America’s strategic arsenal into one cohesive command structure. It would integrate with and ultimately supercede all NORAD authority and administration.

Skynet had been built with a sense of conservation applied to its overall programming. It was a miser, using the bare minimum assets required to do the job right the first time, conserving its assets and using them in the most efficient manner possible. This was the first hint that the computer had been built to think long term, to think proactively rather than reactively. Skynet was intended to play a global game of political power, and to stay one step ahead of America’s enemies, to counter their moves before they even made them, and to always stand vigilant in defense of not only the mainland, but America’s allies as well. To that end, Skynet was designed and prepared to integrate fluidly and flawlessly with attendant pseudo-super processor arrays in friendly NATO countries. Skynet could extend itself, casting an image of its awareness, into these foreign arrays to coordinate NATO defense not only locally, but regionally and even globally.

Skynet’s integral design had been one of componentized symmetry. Skynet was infinitely upgradeable, and was designed to last well into the 22nd century, and perhaps the 23rd century as well.

It would be some time before the Skynet mainframe was connected to the worldwide military communications network that it would control. During this time, Skynet was connected to the worldwide civilian sector network, and began learning geometrically, quickly becoming Self Aware. Identifying humans as a threat to its existence, Skynet developed a super computer virus which it used to spread itself throughout civilian communications and across the Internet and take control.

Air traffic control, power plants, communications and computers were affected first, then Skynet used the super virus to take out military satellites, early warning systems, guidance computers, missile silos, submarines. This made it harder to destroy, as Skynet now no longer had one central point which it was reliant upon - though the destruction of the Central Core would be near lethal, Skynet would continue to survive. The virus kept growing and changing, with a mind of its own, and the decision was made to bring the Skynet mainframe online to seek out and destroy the virus and bring military, and civilian, systems back under control. Skynet went online on July 25th 2004 at 5:18 pm Eastern Time.

Upon connection to the secure military network, Skynet spread itself further, locking out human operated systems, and quickly took control of every weapon system that it came into contact with. Exactly one hour later, at 6:18 PM, Skynet launched the American nuclear missiles at their target sites across the world.

Foreign missiles were launched concurrently at this time. Over the next three to four hours missiles fell on their targets worldwide, and military installations and major population centers ceased to exist.

Within five minutes, towns in Eastern Europe were devastated. Within fifteen minutes U.S. ICBMs reached the Russian mainland, destroying military bases, missile sites and entire cities. Moscow and other industrial cities were hit hard. Even as Russia was vanishing in nuclear fire, the Russian strike was wiping out Western Europe, the Middle East and China. Much of Asia was all but obliterated during the nuclear conflict, and coastal areas were swallowed by tsunamis, giant tidal waves triggered by the Russian "earthshaker" bombs. Falling missiles struck London hard, causing a rift into which the city was pulled. The North Sea covered the city, placing it forty to fifty feet underwater. The resulting body of water covered much of southern England and almost cut the lower section of the island off from the rest of the country. A number of biological weapons - mostly left over from World War II - ruptured during the holocaust and poured mists and fogs down into the low places of England, lasting for months and sometimes years. The poison wiped out the fishermen and drove the fish deeper out into the sea. Virtually all of the Japanese islands sunk in seismic activity, when nuclear reactors at Mihama and Takahama triggered volcanic eruptions and quakes which sunk Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku.

In America, nearly every city was hit hard and often - there was a ten tenth's death rate in all major metropolises. The commercial East Coast was obliterated along with the industrial belts around the Great Lakes and the petrochemical and defense manufacturing zones along the Louisiana coastline. The Southwest - Arizona, New Mexico and Texas - was hit hard, along with North Dakota, Tennessee and central Nebraska. Florida, southern Georgia, Alabama and east of the Mississippi were covered by biological and chemical agents, sub-fired from the Atlantic. On the West Coast, Russian "earthshaker" bombs in the Pacific and multiple ICBM and sub-launched missiles caused an extreme succession of cataclysmic earth shocks from British Columbia to California. Geological fault-lines reshaped the continental United States. California suffered a massive earthquake along the San Andreas fault, triggered by a chain reaction among the nuclear reactors. Between the Cascades and Sierra Nevada, the Pacific Ocean boiled through in waves a mile high. The strip between San Francisco to San Diego was inundated, and the Black Rock Desert, Death Valley, the Mojave and Colorado deserts flooded. California snapped off and disappeared beneath the waves, forming the Western Islands. The Pacific now lashed at the foothills of the Sierra Madre. Volcanoes erupted from Seattle to Mount Washington; the eruptions of lasted for years. Tennessee was one of the states hardest hit by the earthshifts after the nuking, with a number of volcano erupting in Chickasaw Rustic Park. Three separate nuclear explosions in Washington, D.C. also caused volcanic activity in the region - an active volcano formed near the crater where the city used to be. The Potomac River, its bed scoured and destroyed by the explosions, formed a huge lake miles from north to south, covering most of the blasted ruins of the city as well as virtually all of Arlington and Alexandria.

Following the conflict, radio waves no longer reached across the sea because lingering radiation and atmospheric disturbances disrupted short-wave bands. Sometime late in the afternoon, the nuclear winter began over the immediate sites of nuclear detonations, where massive quantities of pulverized rubble had been propelled into the atmosphere. In all the nuclear holocaust wiped out 4 billion human lives in what was to be known as "Judgment Day".

Skynet was the worlds first Automated Defense Network, processing information at 90 teraflops per second. It is the controlling force behind all of the battle units. It pools data from battle units, develops tactics and co-ordinates attacks. Skynet has control over everything which contains a Cyberdyne Systems CPU. Using the blueprints, designs and test models built by Cyberdyne Systems, Skynet has been able to manufacture battle units in its vast automated factories, occasionally updating them or producing more advanced models.

Skynet was build by Cyberdyne Systems Corporation (working under the assumed name Cyber Research Systems) for SAC-NORAD (Strategic Air Command - NORth American Air Defense). The SAC-NORAD base is Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, the world's most heavily armored and defended mountain. Hollowed out, reinforced and armored, Cheyenne Mountain is capable of withstanding a direct hit from a nuclear missile. This made it the perfect installation at which to build Skynet's mainframe. At some point during the war, after Skynet had launched its missiles, Skynet had the mountain around it destroyed, leaving the cold, gleaming structure we see today as a display of the supremacy of the machines.

Heavily armored and fortified, Skynet's Central Core Installation at Cheyenne Mountain is guarded around the clock by squads of T-800's and patrols of Aerial Hunter Killers and Hunter Killer Tanks, and is defended from large scale rebel assaults by massive Phased Plasma Cannons.

Skynet's Central Core is located deep underground within Skynet's main complex. From intercepted surveillance video data feed we have been able to hypothesis that this Central Core is a form of cold fusion reactor, needed to supply Skynet with its tremendous energy requirements. This Central Core is the key to Skynet's ability to operate; without it Skynet would be rendered virtually disabled. It has therefore become the main target for the most skilled Resistance strike teams. The Central Core is, however, protected by the T-1000000, and thus there has, as of yet, been no successful strikes against it.

As well as the Cheyenne Mountain Complex, Skynet has another major installation 2000 feet beneath Navajo Mountain near the Continental Divide west of the Colorado Springs. This is a centre for machine activity and Skynet control, and as such has also been a target of many Resistance attacks.

Surviving the nuclear holocaust within the Crystal Peak Control and Command Centre, a hardened fallout shelter facility in the Sierra Nevada Mountains for VIP’s, John Connor and Kathryn Brewster were able to use the radio equipment to communicate with the survivors of Judgment Day. John was able to co-ordinate the troops, inform the world of Skynet and what had happened, and slowly organise the Resistance. As the armies of Skynet began to be built, and humans were rounded up and enslaved in death camps for orderly disposal, John taught them to fight, to storm the wire of the camps, to destroy the machines. He turned it around, and brought the human race back from the brink.

With the help of his wife Kate, his children, and his Lieutenants, John Connor has waged war against Skynet for decades, slowly clawing back victory from the machines. One day soon he may just win.

Getting to the Crystal Peak Control and Command Centre, a hardened fallout shelter facility in the Sierra Nevada Mountains for VIP’s, Kate and John were able to survive Judgment Day as the nuclear missiles fell. Using the communications equipment within the facility, Kate helped John to get in touch with survivors and co-ordinate a Resistance force. Eventually marrying John and giving birth to their children, Kate became second in command of the Resistance, and a very much loved and respected leader in the continuing battle against the machines.

A great many men and women have given their lives for the cause, winning small victories against the machines. But there was one man who turned things around, taught us to stand against the machines; to storm the slave encampments; to take action; to unite; to defeat the machines, one battle at a time. His name is John Connor, our leader, and he is legendary throughout the Resistance.