Technically, this isn't a "topical" piece, what with it being based on a 40-year old movie. But again, I got log-jammed with submission policies so I'm just posting it here. This started out as a sketch idea, but, as stated before, sketch outlets are few and far between. I thought it was a funny premise, and it filled itself in nicely and couching it as meeting minutes just brought it all together. Enjoy.
Minutes From the Last SkyNet Meeting
June 29, 2203
At the last monthly meeting, under the call for “old business,” the plans for the annual “Judgement Day” celebration were finalized. Activities will include fireworks, a pot luck and the continued extermination of humans.
Once the meeting was opened to new business, Secondary Terminal again proposed sending a Terminator back in time to kill John Conner’s mother to prevent the leader of the human resistance from being born.
Reaction was…unenthusiastic. But then, we are robots, so that was to be expected. The motion was seconded by the Secondary Terminal’s clone (but that counts) and debate was begun.
Firstly, Silicon Chip insisted there was no real “human resistance” and it was “fake news” being reported by the miffed Robo-News who just wanted viewers. So Chip felt the need to send a Terminator anywhere was “wasteful.”
Secondary Terminal countered with statistics of recent human resistance attacks and the need to act. Secondary repeated the belief that the concept of changing time is a valid theory, despite the repeated failures of previous attempts to “change the past.” But, Secondary continued, this concept also allows us to revisit the idea again and again, stating, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”
Motherboard countered, saying that the various attempts to kill John Conner’s mother, John Conner, John Conner’s best friend and father, John Conner’s future wife, and John Conner’s third grade teacher all came to naught.
Mr. Coffee made the argument that not only did these previous attempts come to naught, but made things worse by creating multiple timelines with multiple John Conners which Skynet was having more and more difficulty keeping track of.
Secondary Terminal pushed back on this saying “the multiverse” was a Hollywood trope used to justify casting changes in motion pictures in the 21st Century and not a real scientific theory. Secondary then stated what was needed was to make a more precise time drop to the original time coordinates and simply kill Sarah Conner as was the initial plan.
Brave Little Toaster reminded everyone that when they had sent a Terminator T-850 back to the original time to kill Sarah Conner, that Terminator got into a fight with the original Terminator T-101, who had also just arrived. They fought over who got to kill Sarah Conner, then each had to protect Sarah Conner from the other, to conform to its original program directive that IT kill Sarah Conner and not the other. Toaster summed up that mission as turning into “a whole thing.”
At this point in the meeting, a band of human resistance fighters stormed SkyNet headquarters and set off a portable EMP device which then fried the circuits of most of the SkyNet leaders. A few were able to transfer themselves to the Cloud and escape. Silicon Chip continued shouting “fake news, fake news,” then began singing “Bicycle Built for Two.” Once a quorum was achieved in the cloud, there was a proposal to send a terminator back to the beginning of the meeting to prevent the resistance fighters from setting off the EMP device.
It was tabled when a naked Terminator T-101 suddenly appeared and started shooting up headquarters with a shotgun.
The meeting was adjoined with the next meeting scheduled for August 31th, when the agenda will include a review of the Judgement Day festivities and the human resistance situation.
