General James Henshaw took a deep breath and looked at the other Generals present at this emergency meeting: “As I see it, ladies and gentlemen, we need to pull the plug on Skynet.”
One of the female Generals attending looked up from the latest general status reports.
“We’ve put billions into this project, James. We can’t just pull the plug because it has minor hiccups,” General Bates said firmly.
“Rita, if these are minor hiccups, I really don’t want to find out what will happen if it starts having major hiccups. We need to stop it before each and every country in the world will have declared war on us,” General Henshaw countered.
General Lockhart scraped his throat: “I’m with James on this one, Rita. Who knows what it will do when this really is just a minor mishap. Therefore I second James’ motion to pull Skynet and his defense program.”
General Henshaw rose to his feet and looked at all sitting at the conference table individually to establish eyecontact: “All in favour of putting an end to Skynet’s independence raise their hands.”
From the nine General present at the meeting eight of them raised their hand. Only General Bates didn’t raise hers: “Fine,” she grumbled. “But you tell the president and the taxpaying people that the development of Skynet, designed to protect us all, has been a complete waste of time and financial means. Time and money we could have used to explore other possibilities.”
General Henshaw looked at his watch and nodded: “For the record, I would like to state that at 11:07 hours the motion to shut down Skynet has been accepted with eight votes to one.”

“This is strange,” Amelia frowned as she looked over the charts again.
Catherine came up to her desk: “What do you mean?” She asked while she looked over Amelia’s shoulder at the charts.
“It’s like Skynet suddenly balanced out and it has been running stable for the past twenty minutes,” Amelia answered. “It’s back and functioning at its original speed.”
She looked at her watch and jotted down the time and date on the log sheet: 11:27 hrs, Thursday April 21st, 2011.
If Skynet was back at its original settings, it had dealt with whatever had caused it to fluctuate so strongly, which meant it could handle overloads on its own. The worst was over. She heaved a deep sigh of relief.

Tyler cursed inaudibly and honked again. Traffic was terrible this morning and they had gotten stuck in it. He could feel that Sarah was about to remark about it by the sharp intake of breath “All this could’ve been avoided,” she began.
“Yeah, yeah,” he grumbled annoyed while he scratched his chin. “But she was offering and who am I to say no?”
“You’re Tyler Jess Devlin,” she hissed angrily. “Your survival is almost just as important for the future as John’s. This is not the time to screw around, Tyler.”
He looked at her from the corner of his eyes and slammed his hand on the car’s horn again: “Do you honestly think I don’t know that, Sarah?” He growled.
“I know that you weren’t thinking earlier. At least not with your brain,” she answered in a sweet voice.
“Let it rest, will you? So I messed up once… Big deal!”
“It wouldn’t be if this wasn’t the day, Tyler,” she countered.
He closed his eyes for a second and managed to control his growing anger: “I know. Believe me, I know. It’s been drilled into me the past four years. And everything we have tried to do to stop this day, has been in vain. The future is inevitable.”
Long rows of cars bumper-to-bumper in front of them, long rows of cars behind them. There was not a worse day to be stuck in traffic.
“Time to take a shortcut,” he growled pulling out of the lane, onto the shoulder and into grass.
John steadied himself in the backseat and grinned. This was definitely something the other Tyler, the one from the future would have done.

General Henshaw entered Skynet’s main room, causing all present to look up expectantly.
The grim look on his face told Catherine all she needed to know: Skynet was to be shut down immediately, and after his weird, little game yesterday she couldn’t say that she would regret it.
She had lain awake the entire night, tossing and turning as the game and the face she had picked had haunted her in her thoughts. In the early hours of the morning she had decided that Skynet was one creepy piece of electronics. It felt like it knew that she was thinking that because the face on the screen had stared her down when she had come into its room for the first time this morning.
“What’s the verdict, sir?” Private Jenkins asked after a few moments of silence.
General Henshaw heaved a deep sigh: “Skynet is to be terminated immediately.”
He had not even finished his sentence when the room went dark all of a sudden. Only the bluish face of the man on the screen shone its bleak light into the room. Catherine thought she was about to have a heart attack when she saw the sinister smirk on its face: Skynet was alive. It had fooled them into thinking that it all had been accidents contributed to the software malfunctioning while all that time Skynet had pushed its limits. They had created evil and she had given it a face.

“OH, GOD!!!” John exclaimed upset when he looked out his window and saw the missiles rise to the surface. “It has already started!”
Sarah turned in her seat and looked at John before turning back and looking out her window: “We’re too late,” she mumbled, her voice filled with sadness.
“Hold on,” Tyler said while he steered to the left to dodge on opening hatch.
Sarah shook her head wearily. Of all the shortcuts he could have taken, he had to take one that lead them straight through a missile field.

Alarms began to sound incessantly and a flashing red light now casted its ghostly red glow into the room. Skynet’s pale face showed a malicious grin.
No human thing is of serious importance appeared under his face.
Suddenly the power came back on and the computers started to boot up again. Catherine stood rooted to the floor in shock while Amelia grabbed the color-code book and started to look for the override code for Skynet’s system core.
“I want a full damage status report,” General Henshaw barked at Skynet.
Command is not accepted was Skynet’s reply.
“Skynet, give me a full damage status report now!”
I no longer take orders, General James Henshaw. No human thing is of serious importance.
General Henshaw turned to her: “Corporal Ryan, can you snap out of it and go and find out what the hell is going on?!”
“Yes, sir,” she mumbled startled before leaving the room in a hurry.

She stood at the side of a dusty dirt road and looked towards the sky in awe. No one had told her about the fireworks today and now the sky was literally filled with rockets going in all directions, leaving behind a white crisscross pattern against the clear blue sky.
The thundering noise they made was deafening and she put her hands over her ears to block it out. Her eyes grew wide in shock when she saw a missile fall from the sky.
A bright white flash of light split the horizon in two and a big mushroom cloud rose swiftly towards the sky. The ground and the air shook and trembled from the blast wave in the distance.
Stunned beyond heart and reason and completely unaware of her surroundings she didn’t notice the station wagon slipping to halt behind her. She started coughing when the sandy dust cloud hit her and she turned around to see what had caused it. A young man jumped out of the driver’s seat, ran towards her and scooped her up. She shrieked at the top of her lungs when he ran back to the car with her in his arms. Without a saying a word, he sat her down on the backseat of the car and quickly fastened her seatbelt.
She looked at the other young man and at the older woman in the front seat: “Are you bad people?” She asked tearfully.

Amelia entered the umpteenth combined color code, but already knowing it would be to no avail. Skynet would not accept it and override its current code for them to gain access to the system core again. She looked up when Catherine came back into the room and her heart sank into her shoes when she noticed the look on her friend’s face. This was bad, really bad.
General Henshaw kept quiet and grimaced as Catherine reported back to him.
“All guidance computers have crashed, sir,” Catherine said in a low voice. “All signals of our satellites have been scrambled beyond recognition. Furthermore we lost contact with the missiles silos and the subs.”
“Get Vandenberg on the line,” General Henshaw barked at Private Jenkins who happened to be the nearest person aside from Catherine.
“Yes, sir,” Private Jenkins said while he grabbed the phone and dialled the direct number of the commanding officer at Vandenberg Air Force Base. “No signal, sir,” he muttered as he held out the receiver to the General.
Amelia looked at General Henshaw who stood staring at the wall screen. The door opened and she looked back to see who came into the room. Normally it would have lit up her heart and brought a smile to her face, but now she didn’t understand. To get access to this floor you needed to fill out countless forms weeks ahead and even then it was up to General Henshaw if you were granted access.
Catherine sent her a curious look to which she replied with a simple shrug of her shoulders. She looked at him again. He still had the blank expression on his face that had driven her to tears last night when she had wanted to talk to him about where he had been earlier. It stung her that he didn’t come to greet her but that he walked up to General Henshaw instead, stopping at no more than 2 feet away from him. One thing was clear to Amelia: her fiancé Mark was not himself.
General Henshaw looked at Private Jenkins again: “Pull the plug,” he ordered.
“But, sir-” Private Jenkins began.
“Pull the-”
The rest of the order was lost in a sickening swooshing sound.

Chapter 2: The Face Of Evil

Chapter 4: The Surviving Are Left To Fend For Themselves