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Opening Credits Monologue

In the future, my son will lead mankind in a war against Skynet. A computer system programmed to destroy the world. It has sent machines back through time. Some to kill him, one to protect him. Today we fight to stop Skynet from ever being created. To change our future. To change his fate. The war to save man kind begins now.

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Opening Monologue

There are those who believe that a child in the womb shares his mother’s dreams. Her love for him. Her hopes for his future. As told to him [???] in pictures as he sleeps inside her. Is that why he reaches for her in that first moment and cries for her touch? But what if you’ve known since he was inside you what his life held for him? That he would be hunted. That his fate was tied to the fate of millions. That every moment of your life would be spent keeping him alive. Would he understand why you were so hard? Why you held on so tight? Would he still reach for you if the only dream you ever shared with him was a nightmare?

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Closing Monologue

It is said that the death of any one person is the death of an entire world. Certainly for parents, the death of a child is no less than a holocaust. In the case of my son, these words are literally true. And even though we’ve traveled through time, bent the rules of nature, they will keep coming for him. Keep trying to kill him. But until that day, it’s gonna be one hell of a dogfight.

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Opening Monologue

A wise man once said, “Know thyself.” Easier said than done. I’ve had nine aliases, twenty-three jobs, spoken four languages, and spent three years in a mental hospital for speaking the truth. At least when I was there I could use my real name. Through it all I’ve always known who I am and why I’m here. Protect my son. Prepare him for the future. But lately, it’s gotten harder to control. Even as I try to help John find firm ground in this new world, the battlefield shifts beneath our feet. Maybe it’s all catching up to me. Maybe if you spend your life hiding who you are, you might finally end up fooling yourself.

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Mid-Monologue

I could not imagine the apocalpyse, no matter what Kyle Reese told me or others who have come back.
I cannot imagine 3 billion dead. I can imagine planes hitting buildings and I can imagine fire.
If I would have witnessed it, if I would have been here, I'm sure I would have thought the end was near.
I'm sure I would have thought we have failed.

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Closing Monologue

“Know thyself.” John once told me it’s inscribed on the front of the temple of Apollo. The entire quote is, “Know thyself and thou shall know all the mysteries of the gods and of the universe.” That’s quite a mouthful. My version is this, “Know thyself because what else is there to know?” People hide secrets, time is a lie, the material world can disappear in an instant. It has and it will again. Our identities change. Our names, the way we look, how we act and speak. We’re shape-shifters. There is no control, no constant, no shelter but the love of family and the body God gave us. And we can only hope that will always be enough.

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Opening Monologue

When I was in the mental hospital I became obsessed with science. Not all science actually, and not really science at all. Scientists. And then only nuclear scientists. The ones who invented the bomb. Oppenheimer, Heisenberg, Fermi, and Teller. Pioneers. Geniuses, all. I read every book I could. I wanted to understand. Why couldn’t they stop? These fathers of our destruction. And why wouldn’t anyone stop them? And if I had the chance, would I?

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On July 16th, 1945 in the mountains outside of Los Alamos, New Mexico, the world’s first atomic bomb exploded. A white light pierced the sky with such intensity that a blind girl claimed to see the flash from a hundred miles away. After witnessing the explosion,

J. Robert Oppenheimer quoted a fragment of the Bhagavad Gita declaring, “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” His colleague, Ken Bainbridge, put it in another way when he leaned close to Oppenheimer and whispered, “Now we are all sons of bitches.” Now we are all sons of bitches.

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Opening Monologue

When John was little, before bed I used to read him fairy tales. One night I read him a folk tale called, “The Golem of Prague” the story of a clay monster made by a Rabbi to protect the Jews of the city. What I failed to remember was that the end of the story the Golem turns on its maker and kills him as well as the rest of the town. He didn’t sleep for months. I went to him and tried to tell him it wasn’t real, that I’d made it all up. Somehow, that made it all worse.

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Not every version of the Golem story ends badly. In one, the monster is a hero, destroying all those that seek to harm his maker. In another, the Golem's maker destroys his creature before it can destroy the world. The pride of man, of parents as well, makes us believe that anything we create we can control. Whether from clay or from metal, it is in the nature of us to make our own monsters. Our children are alloys all, built from our own imperfect flesh. We animate them with magic and never truly know what they will do.

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Opening Monologue

In all of the training my son received in the jungles of Central America, nothing better prepared him for combat than the game of chess. It taught him almost everything he needed to know about war. That to win you must be patient, bold, calculating, And most of all, willing to sacrifice.

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Mid-Monologue

When John sent Kyle Reese back to protect me, we had two days together.
He told me about the future, about the apocalypse, and the terror of a world run by machines.
Kyle Reese saved my life. He gave me a son. He never told me he had a brother.
He never told me we would have family. That in our grief, we are not alone.

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If there is a flaw in chess as a game of war, it is this: Unlike war, the rules of chess are constant, the pieces unchangeable. You will never win the heart of a rook or the mind of a knight. They are deaf to your arguments. And so be it. The goal of a chess game is total annihilation. But in war, even as the blood beats in your ears and you race after your enemy, there is the hope that saner minds than yours will stop you before you reach your target. In war, unlike chess, rules can be changed.Truces can be called. The greatest of enemies can become the best of friends. In war, there is hope.

Opening Monologue

On the night we first met, John’s father, Kyle Reese, told me words I remember to this day. He meant them as a warning, I think of them as words to live by. He told me of an apocalypse yet to come. Like a Pandora’s box, he unpacked every horror, every evil, every dark thing that haunts our future. He also left me an unborn son to whom he bequeathed what remained in the box after the nightmares fled. Hope.

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Closing Monologue

“Listen,” Kyle said. “Listen and understand the machine is out there. It can’t be bargained with, it can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity or remorse or fear.And it absolutely will not stop ever until you are dead.”

They say that when a person dies the soul lives on. The soul, the thing that separates us from the machines. Cameron had burned the metal monster. Two thousand degrees. I suppose they did the same to Andy. There was nothing left of either. Nothing that told the story of who or what they were. Gone is gone. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, when I go bury me in the earth. Part of me died years ago with Kyle Reese, but a part of him lives on in John. If that’s not a soul, I don’t know what is.

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Closing Monologue

There was a time I was a hero to my son. He thought I walked on water. He knows better now. We all have weak moments. Moments where we lose faith. But it's our flaws, our weaknesses that make us human. Science performs miracles like the gods of old. Creating life from blood cells or bacteria or a spark of metal but they’re perfect creatures and in that way they couldn’t be less human.There are things machines will never do. They cannot possess faith, they cannot commune with God, they cannot appreciate beauty, they cannot create art. If they ever learn these things, they won’t have to destroy us. They’ll be us.

Opening Monologue

All of us wear masks. They can be worn out of love and the desire to remain close to those around us. To spare them from the complicated realities of our frayed psyches. We trade honesty for companionship and in the process never truly know the hearts closest to us.

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Closing Monologue

So much danger is hidden behind masks. We tell our children of good and evil when knowing it’s not that simple. True evil doesn’t give us time to fight or be afraid. We keep our heads down never bothering to look behind the masks. And in doing so, we resign ourselves to fates we can never see coming.

Opening Monologue

When John was little he used to sleep with his hand under my chin. At night I’d lay awake watching him – calm, peaceful, happy. I wanted to freeze time and let my son live in that moment forever. But you can’t freeze time. You can’t protect your children from the future that awaits them. The moments there and then it’s gone.

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Closing Monologue

In Lord of the Flies, a group of boys slaughter a pig in the jungle. They torture it and place its head on a sharpened stake as an offering to the beast that hovers, god-like, over the island. Black blood drips down the pig's teeth. And the boys run away. Later, when one of the boys is alone, he weeps. But not for the pig. The boy weeps for the end of innocence and the darkness of men's hearts.