In our last article we were attempting to determine which history of the world is the precursor to the events of Terminator Salvation. We established that the events of the first film must have happened, because Kyle Reese cannot be targeted as John Conner's father until (sequentially) he has become John Conner's father. We also noted that John recognized T-800 power cells which he had not seen until the third film. This brought us to a puzzle, something SkyNet says to Marcus Wright, which suggests that SkyNet knows of those events.
To quote Skynet:
Our best machines had failed time and again to complete a mission....You did what SkyNet has failed to do for so many years. You killed John Conner.
The inference reasonably drawn from this statement is that Skynet is aware of its failures in the past, that the T-800, T-1000, and T-X all failed to kill John Conner. Yet we know that SkyNet does not send the T-800 for another decade, and sends the T-1000 after that and the T-X after that, and thus that it has not sent any machines to the past yet (from its perspective) even though they have all already arrived.
We also know, significantly, that all Terminators sent to the past were destroyed in the past without communicating directly with SkyNet. Further, General Brewster, head of the team which oversaw and launched the Skynet project, is unaware of the attacks of those machines, so it is not in the programming.
We have postulated the existence of histories in which each of Skynet's terminators is unchallenged and so reports its mission to SkyNet later. However, the original third terminator would have been destroyed in the first attack, and so would never have contacted SkyNet (and the T-X was not sent until its T-800 adversary was there to destroy it), so it cannot be the source of this information. Further, the first terminator that could have reported was in a timeline in which Kyle Reese was not present, and this cannot be that timeline. That means we must postulate that the T-1000 that killed Sarah but not John survived to report to Skynet not less than seven years later. However, the previous reconstruction of this timeline concludes that that machine was destroyed before it found John. In brief, the T-1000 is powerful and relentless, and if not destroyed it would still be searching for John Conner decades later. To kill Sarah, it would have to reveal its presence to authorities: there is video tape of it passing through the bars, at least, so while they do not know what they face, they know it is not human, and they know that it purposefully killed Sarah (what, did you think she would survive without help?), and they know that she believed a machine had been sent from the future to kill her. The T-1000 cannot accomplish that portion of its mission without revealing its presence, and once it has both revealed that it is not human and killed numerous persons in a secure facility, it becomes the hunted. The probability of it contacting SkyNet seven years later in this timeline is minimal.
We determined that the T-X might have left a message on the network. This is speculative, and any such message probably contains little information. If SkyNet knew in advance that its machines will fail, it probably would not send them, and thus would undo that knowledge.
All of this pushes us to the inevitable conclusion that SkyNet does not know about the machines it has not yet sent to the past; yet its statement to Marcus Wright implies that it has sent machines to kill John Conner, which have failed.
The best construction (without stating that SkyNet could not have said that) is that SkyNet has already sent other machines, perhaps hydras, T-600's, and hunter/killers, which failed to kill John in its own present. Thus the statement to Wright is irrelevant to the question of which history this is. SkyNet has been attempting to kill John Conner since SkyNet was born; it has not yet attempted to kill him before that moment, and is not aware that it is going to do so.
Comments
Is this the same Mark Joseph Young that writes for the Homosexual Dining Examiner in Nevada?
I would like to assume that this is a sincere question, but it sounds too much like the sort of thing Flibbage the Trol--er, Dwarf--would ask. In any event, I'll answer it as if I were certain it were not Spam. I have conducted a thorough search of the Examiners lists, and determined:
1) I am the only Mark Young writing for the The Examiner; there are several other Youngs, but none with a name so close as to be easily confused with mine.
2) There does not appear to be a Nevada Homosexual Dining Examiner. If you feel there is an audience for that and that you are, shall we say, immersed in the field, perhaps you would like to apply for the position. As I don't know you, anything about the subject, or more about Nevada than I see on CSI, I can't offer to be a reference.
I hope this helps.
--M. J. Young
I think you are wrong here – saying that Skynet does not know about trying to kill John prior to Judgement Day. Consider:
1) TX in the third part was called anti-terminator terminator and it was pointed out, that Arnie’s presence was anticipated. You once wondered why Skynet sent TX and not T-800 instead? You reasoned that Skynet knew about Arnie defending John.
2) Some information may be stored somewhere in cyberspace – pictures of Arnie and Kyle from 1984, T-1000 and Arnie from 1995, TX contacting one of the robots at CRS. Skynet would surely try to gather as much information as possible before destroying the world.
3) John is nobody for Skynet in 2018. He’s just a soldier. Why does Skynet care about him? Because Skynet knows his future role. Does Skynet believe prophecies or have some knowledge of the past?
Thank you for your insights, Tom, and I admit that this point in my analysis is rather weak. Your suggestions are certainly reasonable, but they leave some problems, and are not themselves certain.
To your third, John is not merely a soldier. He is an icon. His was the first voice anyone heard raised against SkyNet, from the bunker with Kate minutes after the attack. The conflict he has with General Ashdown (Michael Ironside's character) is largely because Ashdown is a professional soldier commander who believes men ought to follow him because he has been given command and has studied tactics and strategy so he is a better leader in the sense that he has better understanding of what to do, but Connor is the one people follow, the one on whose words the rank and file make their decisions. Connor doesn't just lead men; he inspires them. You might find a comparison in Stonewall Jackson, whose presence on the battlefield inspired his men even though Robert E. Lee was the commander. Skynet would have to know that although Ashdown is the commander who understands how to fight, Connor is the leader who inspires men to do so.
More....
...continuing
On the first point, I must concede that SkyNet knows something of what happened particularly with the third attack. It must know that a T-800 was sent to protect John in order to upgrade to the T-X, and had it sent the T-X before the T-800 was sent neither John nor Kate are likely to have survived. Perhaps it has that information already; perhaps it is still gathering information from computers and other systems it has not already accessed. It is, for example, probable that all those security videos from which it could obtain images are on VHS tapes, which will have to be located and fed into machines capable of digitizing them. Just because it will have that information in the future does not mean it necessarily has it now.
Ultimately, I am pushed back to my original problem: Why would SkyNet, fighting a desperate battle and on the cusp of losing, expend resources to send one of its most valuable assets, a sophisticated assassin robot with none of the known weaknesses of the previous line, on a mission it already knows will fail? The first level reasoning has to be, "I already tried this, and it did not work, so I should try something different this time." The only logical reason for it to do so is if it has come to the conclusion (perhaps from reading our articles here) that failing to make the futile effort would destroy history and so it must because it did, and that is something that even time travel authorities debate.
More....
…continuing
But finally, if Skynet knows that Kyle Reese will become John Connor's father, then it knows what John knows, that if it kills Kyle John will never exist. Why, then, does it keep Kyle alive? It does not need him for anything except that he would die and not travel to the past to father John Connor. That is, from the time travel perspective, the entire issue in this film: will SkyNet prevent John from being born by killing his father? It does not do so, but it certainly had the opportunity. Maybe it does not know if this is the right Kyle Reese; but if it isn't, having him isn't useful either. Maybe it does not know if Niven's Law will protect the past, but the uncaused cause created by that approach to time are difficult to defend. It seems best to conclude that at this point SkyNet knows only that John Connor wants to find someone called Kyle Reese, and so is using the boy for bait without understanding what it has.
But then, I could be wrong.
Thanks again for your comment.
--M. J. Young
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