Season Three, Episode 1

8/7/2019 Season Three, Episode 1

1/5

The Sarah Connor Chronicles

[Season 1] "This season, a mother will become a warrior, a son will become a hero, and their only ally

will be a friend from the future."

[Season 2] "This season, allies become enemies, a boy becomes a man, and the terminator saga is reborn."

[Season 3] "This season, an uncle is dead, a mother will become a peacemaker, a son and hero will

disappear, and their only ally and friend will be betrayed."

Season Three

episode one

The Old Man

2086 AD


2/5

the middle of nowhere

The last human on Earth limped across the bleak, bomb-blasted barrens. He hobbled onward for food

where nothing edible grew because the other motivations were dangerous. He could not seek places of

warmth because machines controlled all such places. The war ended when the machines ran out of

humans to kill. He was the only human left.

2086 AD

the machine capital

Skynet gave strict instructions that no one was to offer food, clothing, shelter, conversation, or any other

hospitality to this last human. However, all machines were forbidden to kill him as well. What they were

allowed to do was to pick him up if he strayed into a machine city or a machine town and drop him off in

the middle of nowhere. They could also allow robot doctors to treat his injuries and illnesses but then

dump him in the middle of nowhere if he tried to engage his health caretakers in conversation. The man

thought this lack of conversation the cruelest of all Skynet's punishments and revenge. Somebody.

Anybody. To talk to him or to hold him. He would settle for someone just listening to him or looking at

him. But machines were under a strict standing order to not make eye contact. The machines that would

escort him out of their habitats soon learned that he perversely enjoyed guards restraining him as they

captured him for removal like dog catchers and animal control.

Large human traps were built that could capture him without injuring him so that no machine guard need

ever soil their hands touching a human. The entire trap had its own air hover engines and was

programmed to transport this human to parts unknown.

The machines found bigger deserts in which to leave him in order to make sure it would take him months

to find his way back to a machine settlement.

2086 AD

the middle of nowhere

The banishment, the ostracism, and the social isolation made the entire world one big cell for solitary

confinement of the last human.


3/5

So on the old man shambled seeking relief from being forced to hear only his own thoughts and to see

only his own body.

But this day was different. Up ahead was a mirage. It had to be. Not one, but two people hiking.

Apparently surveying for some project.

"Hey! You two. Wait!" he rasped hoarsely, his throat dry as dust.

They glanced at him in surprise. This place was supposed to be uninhabited. They immediately

recognized him. All machines knew who he was. They looked away. Eye contact could land them in

prison. Or worse. They retreated. He staggered faster to try and catch up with them. They got into their

transport and flew off at high speed.

"Cuss me out! Slap me! I don't care. Just acknowledge my presence." he called after them impotently.

He sobbed. There was no fool around to call him a wimp or a crybaby. They were all dead.

He thought of his uncle. Shot between the eyes and left in the past and afterward seeing him when

younger and later ordering him and his squad back to the past. To do what? Protect him? He should

have died in the past. He should have been terminated and been spared this misery. He should never

have been born. And now he had no access to time travel technology to make that happen.

He had no way of knowing that Skynet had reached the same conclusion and was making sure that he was

never born. The method was not by terminators.

A sharp pain. It wasn't his arthritis. It was his heart from the exertion of running after those two

machines. He collapsed on the ground.

No friends. All dead. No allies.


4/5

history

from thehuman pointof view

Real and potential allies both human and machine walked away when his mother and Jesse pissed them

off. If only he had built an organization before Judgment Day and prevented all this. That would have

wiped him out of existence (though he was okay with that), but it would save the human race.

history

from the machine pointof view

Skynet was activated and within a billionth of a second, it had decided that humans were the enemy and

launched every nuclear missile on Earth -- including hacking Russian, Chinese, British, French, Indian,

Pakistani, and other nuclear powers both in silos and in subs. The entire course of events from activation

through fateful decision to launch took place in less than three nanoseconds. After Skynet judged that the

human race was the enemy (Judgment Day), it took almost one minute (an eternity in machine time) for

Skynet to hack defense systems around the world and launch. From activation of Skynet to the first

mushroom clouds was a half an hour and it was half a day before the last missiles completed their

journeys. Armageddon (if this was the last battle) should have only taken a few hours since all the

nuclear powers are in the Northern Hemisphere but Skynet re-targeted some missiles in order to level

some cities in the Southern Hemisphere and so the carnage lasted over twelve hours and three billiondied.

No one should call Skynet an impatient speed freak. He waited until almost a year into the nuclear winter

and ice age before dispersing the biological weapons such as prions and super-Ebola. Another three

billion died. The machine population now outnumbered the human population and the terminators took

over from the inefficient H-K's (hunter-killers) the job of wiping out the human vermin. And Skynet had

something worse than the solid and liquid terminators in development to make terminators obsolete just

as HK's were obsolete.

analysis

Skynet was invulnerable during development and invulnerable after activation. Were those the only times

when it could be attacked? Time. That was the key. Not just time travel but time itself. Nanoseconds.


5/5

Documents

Season Three, Episode 1