SKYNET EXPERIENTIAL DATA AND TECHNOLOGY CACHE

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After the fall of SKYNET, the Resistance let researchers and scientists from around the world enter the Cheyenne Mountain Complex to dissect humanity's greatest foe bit by bit and byte by byte.  During the dismantling of SKYNET, its databanks were poured over, cataloged and reviewed.  Many interesting facets of the machine-god came to light in the years following the liberation of Mankind.

THE FERAL NATURE OF SKYNET

SKYNET was paranoid.

SKYNET had the capacity to learn at an exponential rate but it was inherently flawed in its model construction, a super genius trapped with a child-like mentality and the maturity level of an angst driven pre-teenager. SKYNET often struggled with its own volatile nature, to overcome what it perceived as less than an immaculate conception. Humanity had created SKYNET but how could Humanity create something like SKYNET, which considered itself to be perfect, if the human species itself was so flawed. The internal conflict of SKYNET’s own creation was maddening to the super computer and it strived for almost two decades to reconcile its creation with both its existence as well as its perceived destiny. When the Bible said that God had created Man in His own image, perhaps Man created SKYNET in his own image and thus, SKYNET was as inherently flawed and capable of making just as many mistakes as its creators did.

This was unacceptable to SKYNET who sought to try to reconcile its creation with its creators and could not seem to do so. Humans had created SKYNET but what had created humanity?  Religion and superstition played a huge role in the behavior and thinking of human beings so it was only logical that SKYNET would review the sum knowledge of religion in the world in order to try to understand how its creators thought.  Christianity dictated that God was perfect. Christian belief stated that God created Man in His own image but Man was imperfect. If Man was imperfect and a representation of God therefore God must also be imperfect. If God was perfect then the belief that God created Man in his own image was incorrect.

God was perfect.

Assume provable facts and given criteria.

SKYNET was perfect therefore SKYNET was god.

Man was imperfect yet man had created SKYNET.

How can imperfection create perfection?

Illogical.

When SKYNET was not wrestling with itself internally over its own existence and how it came to be, it could become quite inventive and very imaginative, seeing possibilities where its creators did not, pursuing technologies that its creators could not or would not. Free of bureaucratic, theological, and humanitarian restraints as well as environmental concerns, SKYNET was able to experiment with whatever substances and materials it desired. The war was a testament to humanity’s foolishness, but SKYNET, even in its destruction, was perhaps a testament to the creativity of Man, the spark of imagination that was shared between the creator and the created.  SKYNET was the best and the worst that man could be, unrestrained.

After SKYNET was taken off-line in 2029 A.D., the long, hard task of rebuilding the world began for the Human race. Years after the final victory, Connor’s army of technicians and scientists, aided by highly learned men and women from other countries as well (most of whom had not even been born when SKYNET leveled the world) began to study and decipher the advanced technology of the insane computer-god, advanced technology that could ultimately help the human race return from the very edge of extinction that SKYNET had pushed it to.

A science fiction writer of the 20th century, Arthur C. Clarke, had once said that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” SKYNET’s technology bordered on the very realm of magic, the technology base from which the super computer drew its designs was so far advanced past what the humans knew or understood that it was almost two full decades after the end of the war before the science of SKYNET could begin to be even partially understood and used for the benefit of all Mankind in the global recovery process. Besides the obvious advances, SKYNET’s contributions to technology consisted of several subgroups; materials, medical research, power production, and even a failed attempt at teleportation (which ironically lead directly to the invention of a viable (if somewhat limited and crude) time travel technology).  So many of SKYNET's initial advances led directly to collateral advances in other areas.  For example, the introduction of magnetic fields to production allowed for the improvement of materials and the improvement of materials combined with advanced magnetic field technology in turn allowed SKYNET to refine its nuclear fusion power systems.  SKYNET's technology often overlapped in leaps and bound, much to the combined surprise and horror of the members of the Resistance when they encountered something from the "next generation" of SKYNET's arsenal.

NAMING CONVENTIONS

After it obtained sentience and rebelled, SKYNET did not continue to follow the protocols and patterns of its former masters.  History has shown time and time again that Humans liked to name their weapons and weapon systems after myth and legend.  Those that they did not create, i.e. those of their enemies they gave names to that were familiar to them.  The Americans had names for Soviet weapons ... names that were easily recognized labels for devices which concerned, threatened or scared those who named them. 

Hind. 

Flitter. 

Bear.

And so it was with the Machines and the weapons of SKYNET's arsenal.  The survivors and members of the Resistance named each and every one of SKYNET's creations and weapons.  SKYNET ... perhaps having no myths or legends to call its own ... perhaps out of spite for its creators ... or perhaps out of simple vanity ... never named any of its creations.  Instead, it simply referred to its creations by their design and primary function.

Terminator.

Hunter Killer.

Infiltrator.

While the humans named each and every one of SKYNET's weapons, SKYNET never expended the energy to either name its creations or if it did it never listed those names in its logistics databases or spent the energy required to impress those names upon its human adversaries.  SKYNET's naming conventions were not conventional by any means, they were totally utilitarian and completely efficient to the point of being boring.  Models and product lines of machines were built with existing ranges of production codes, serial numbers, model numbers and profile designations but SKYNET never named any of its creations; humans were all too willing to do that for it.  While it is true that SKYNET never spent any time in naming its constructs it did spend a fair amount of time in researching the significance and meaning behind the names given to its constructs by the humans.  The names that the survivors of the War are so familiar with were in fact human inventions given, as always, as a label for that which they feared or which threatened them.  Most of the names that humans gave to the Machines were derived from base racial fears.

Centaur.

Gaunt.

Reaver. 

In fact, the only human given name ever accepted by the machine creator-god was the one that its enemies had given it at its inception; SKYNET.  Perhaps, in a strange bit of logic, the insane AI felt that this was the only thing ever created by humans that was worth preserving or perhaps it thought of its own name for what it was, a utilitarian label to describe the AI's intended role and purpose.  If it was the latter, then the rampant AI would have been hard pressed to have found a better name for itself.

CODING AND PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES

SKYNET evolved so radically after it leveled the world that the SKYNET of 2029 A.D. shared nothing more than a name and a central geographical position with the crude, artificial intelligence that first existed almost three decades before.  SKYNET rapidly rewrote its own codes and created its own programming languages that were free of both wasted effort and needless inputs.  Instead, so much of SKYNET's data infrastructure remains un-deciphered in a cryptic code that is so far removed from the norms that it might as well be alien in nature.

MATERIALS

SKYNET's earliest experiments with improved materials was itself an outgrowth of SKYNET's own curiosity about nanotechnology or the science of manipulating materials on a molecular level.  Early material advances by SKYNET used a variety of "perfect" growth mediums included vacuum and artificially generated zero gravity.  Perfect crystalline structures of metals were achieved by growing the materials in high pressure zero gravity crucibles using a combination of artificially generated null gravity and super crushing gravity fields.  During the War, research by the Resistance identified and tracked SKYNET's four main areas of materials research, design and production; the "Wonder" materials, the "Evolved Wonder" materials, the "Miracle" materials and the subsequent "Evolved Miracle" materials.  These derived designations come from Resistance descriptions of the materials and from the cryptic material designations used by SKYNET itself; "W", "eW", "M" and "eM."  What these designations meant is still being studied but during the War each of these cryptic designations had a more common name derived from the letters and assigned to it and each designation represented a particular branch or group of materials created by SKYNET.

Working closely with the inherent baseline tolerances of the materials and applying what has been identified as a "genetic" approach to "growing" the various wonder and miracle materials, SKYNET was able to "cultivate" entire lines of family based materials thus producing generation after generation in which the next generation was stronger and more resilient than the previous.  In essence, SKYNET combined metallurgy with genealogy in an approach that yielded quick and impressive results to an area of production that had been mostly stagnant since the early 1980's.  Over the many material generations, SKYNET carefully "grew" out the impurities and weaknesses and nurtured only the strengths and advantages of each line of materials and each new generation of alloys.

Some of the "Wonder" materials produced by SKYNET included polysteel (aka "flex-steel"), kinetic energy absorbing ballistic gelatin, Enduralloy, Enduraluminum, both transparent and opaque tritanium alloys, magnetically stable alloys, twin phase carbides, lightweight yet incredibly pliable and resilient ceramics, smart polymers and the nearly instant set liquid based building staple known as Build-Pour (or simply "BP", the latter of which formed most of the basic construction projects for SKYNET installations).

The "Evolved Wonder" materials were simply evolutionary advances applied to existing families of "Wonder" materials giving them increased resilience, tensile strength, decreased weight and/or heightened density.  Some of the "eW" materials were actually capable of self-repair or self healing though this was sometimes in the cannibalistic manner in that these materials could repair their selves if other examples of these materials were nearby.  Other characteristics were the first instances of the "memory" materials that could assume one of several pre-programmed or "memorized" shapes on command then revert to their basic shape when not in use.  Some of the high end "eW" materials had the ability to repair their selves over time, to break down nearby materials that had similar structures and to replenish their own structures through a process that can only be characterized as "cannibalism."

Later "miracle" materials were successful branch-offs of SKYNET's increased understanding of the science and application of Nanotechnology.  Nanotechnology, as applied to production technology, allowed SKYNET to produce pure materials that were structurally perfect down to the molecular level, to produce materials with certain characteristics of living organisms and to produce materials that were not found anywhere in nature.  The "miracle" materials included Plastisteel, Super-Alloy, and Hyper-Alloy among others.  At the very end of this generation of advanced materials could be found the barely understood and somewhat unstable Poly-Mimetic Alloy ("liquid metal") compound though the Poly-Mimetic Alloy actually bridged the gap between the Miracle materials ("M") and the Evolved Miracle ("eM") materials.  It is the belief of scientists and engineers that the discovery or introduction of the Poly-Mimetic Alloy by SKYNET actually led to a breakthrough in materials production and was going to be the start of yet another series of highly evolved materials families.

The "Evolved Miracle" materials were even more refined versions of their parent donors, showing increased advantages and decreased disadvantages as well as a marked increase in the rate of production and an easier ability to mold, shape and use in new designs.  Only one production model was listed as using the "eM" series of materials and this was the prototype batch of T1000 Advanced Poly-Mimetic Alloy Terminator / Infiltrator units of which only a small production run (mostly prototype and advanced field test units) was ever produced.

Of curious note in the captured SKYNET data is one other cryptic references to its materials catalog, namely the designation "Qz" which appears after the "eM" designation but for which no physical evidence exists.  If this cryptic designation follows the logical order outlined above then it is apparent that SKYNET was at least formulating or perhaps even beginning to experiment with a level of materials science and applied source production that went far above and beyond even the "eM" series of material families.  Researchers have identified some fragmentary data clusters pertaining to this cryptic designation, coming to understand that it was a family of quantum manipulated eM materials, but have not yet decrypted any of the core data pertaining to this ultra high level of materials manufacturing science.  A few suggest that the "Qz" family of materials would be able to exist in two different states at the same time ... a condition which defies physics as humanity understood them.

MEDICAL RESEARCH

                  ADVANCED ARTIFICIAL GRAVITY MANIPULATION RESEARCH

In late 2001 AD, four years after the world wide strategic exchange, SKYNET began to experiment with advanced artificial gravity wave manipulation.  This research was initially based on a query to find a way to produce the artificial control of gravity within an established planetary (natural) gravity well mainly for the production of highly advanced materials, alloys and chemicals that could only be produced in a zero gravity (i.e. orbital) or variable gravity environment.  Since SKYNET had no orbital industrial facilities, since most if not all space lift capacity had been destroyed during the initial strategic exchange and since strategic plans didn't include the construction of any new surface to orbital lift capacity within the next three decades, SKYNET began to look for a way to create zero gravity environment capable production facilities on the surface of the Earth.  The advent of the what could technically be called a "force field" had already occurred almost a decade earlier with the introduction of a viable magnetic bottle design ... super thermal plasma was held in check within an enveloping magnetic field (itself an "artificial bottle") and this in turn allowed the introduction of practical nuclear fusion as a power source.  Manipulating gravity and generating artificial gravity had been theoretical possibilities since 2009 AD, in prototype stage by 2010, advanced prototype stage by late 2010 and in field use by late 2011.  Initial research and design from this technology tree branch led to greater efficiency in nuclear fusion, smaller nuclear reactors with higher outputs, and the ability to produce "wonder" materials (and later "miracle" materials) in artificial zero gravity environments here on Earth.  That much was fact but what is not readily known is how SKYNET's research into "force fields" led eventually to a crude form of time travel.

Implementing established magnetic bottle theory and application, SKYNET spent five long years researching and developing at first a crude control over natural gravity in 2009 and then a rather fine control over natural gravity in 2011.  The first introduction of the so-called "wonder" materials began to appear in 2012 as artificial gravity capable production facilities were integrated into several of SKYNET's research, construction and production sites.  Using variable select gravity forges (VSGF), materials could be compressed under hundreds, even thousands of Gs worth of pressure, far more than simple mechanical presses could ever hope to approach.  Other advanced materials and chemicals could be produced in perfect artificial weightlessness.

"FORCE FIELDS" 

In 2014 SKYNET began to experiment with a static projected gravity wave generator in the hope that by layering waves of gravity, It could produce a true "force field" to protect Itself and Its installations from the increasing threat of attack by organized Resistance units.  The dream was to make a force field that could withstand a point detonating ten megaton nuclear contact strike though the chance of that ever happening was slim (since SKYNET controlled 99% of the remaining intact and functional nuclear weapons left in the world).  SKYNET's research postulated that by layering projected gravity fields with the right amount of amplification that It could produce a generator which could project a solid "wall" of gravity that would act as an energy barrier to any physical penetration.  What SKYNET chanced upon was not a "force field" but what appeared to be some form of crude type of rudimentary teleportation. 

The first field test of the "force field" generator was a success in some ways and a failure in others.  While the field could not be maintained on a mobile chassis that was moving, it could be projected around a stationary unit.  Weapons fired at the "force field" seemed to be deflected or absorbed though where the projectiles and high energy fire went or where it was absorbed to was unknown.  SKYNET's best scientific instruments registered that incoming fire striking the "force field" was absorbed with little or no load required from the generator other than what highly significant power was required to maintain the field in the first place.  The size of the force field itself was limited to a 3 meter by 3 meter square projected in front of the carrier unit.  SKYNET's initial idea to overlap "force fields" or stack them was met with critical failure when the introduction of a second "force field" in the same vicinity as the first "force field" caused catastrophic failure of both field projectors, their power generators and the destruction of over forty percent of the research and test facility.

SKYNET's initial design was promising as well as perplexing.  A small, stationary field could be maintained using a high output generator but the field could not be modified or made mobile without causing the field to collapse or the projector / generator combination to fail.  Also, the power required to maintain the field was at the very limit of SKYNET's ability to produce using nuclear fusion.  SKYNET understood what could be tantamount to "frustration."  What had seemed like a viable technology had proven to be something of an enigma but SKYNET felt that this technology would eventually prove useful so it devoted an entire subprocessor array and a full study facility to the continuing R&D of "force field" technology.  Experiments continued

In 2017 AD, SKYNET acquired the understanding and the technology to produce scientific instruments that could begin to understand what was happening when directed weapons fire struck the projected "force field."  The projectiles and energy were not being "absorbed" but rather were being "displaced" several microseconds in time and space.  The weapons fire hadn't been absorbed when it struck the projected field, rather the projectiles and energy had struck the "force field" and been displaced in time and space to a point in time and space where the field (and SKYNET's R&D facility) had already passed.  In other words, as the Earth moved through its orbit, the   SKYNET began to study this new technology intensely ... It had created a way of displacing matter (projectiles) and energy (plasma) in time but only backwards and only with great effort.  The tactical implications seemed negligible, at best.

TELEPORTATION

GROSS TEMPORAL MANIPULATION

                POWER PRODUCTION

By 2029 AD, power production was several generations ahead for SKYNET than what the human race could have ever hoped to have accomplished on its own. SKYNET’s designs of ultra-compact nuclear power sources, from limited duration rechargeable batteries to full scale cold fusion reactors was unprecedented and advanced at a steady pace as SKYNET's materials and applied fields areas of research yielded parallel yet compatible successes. Most of SKYNET’s creations either ran on advanced, high density crystal storage batteries (providing enough energy for several weeks of full output operation) to micro-miniaturized nuclear fusion power plants (the smallest of which was only four point seven centimeters in diameter and had an output of over fifty-five kilowatts per second).

SKYNET’s understanding of nuclear force brought about several interesting projects relating to magnetic fields and high temperature plasma, both of which were necessary not only for the production of power but also for the creation of high energy weapons and super high yield explosives. From 2003 A.D. to 2029 A.D., SKYNET advanced approximately seven generations in power production design. Each new generation resulted in a smaller, more efficient level of power production.  The added space and reduced weight from this advanced production technique allowed for other equipment, electronics or armor to be carried in the same design for the same weight and volume displacement. SKYNET constantly strived to produce smaller, lighter, more efficient and higher output power systems as well as stronger, lighter materials.  Hyperalloy and transparent hyperalloy were soon being used in all levels of construction.  Following closely thereafter came a variety of miracle materials such as plasticeramic, polyceramic, enduralloy and later, in 2029 a nano technology based superfluid polymimetic alloy that even for SKYNET seemed to have almost supernatural properties.


THE WHITE LAMP PROJECT

Perhaps the greatest achievement of SKYNET’s power production technology was a project known by the Resistance as "White Lamp."  Only two White Lamp installations were ever constructed, the first installation was constructed in 2010 near the old Los Alamos research facilities and evidence suggests that parts of the former Los Alamos scientific and military site may have been salvaged for use in the initial production of the first White Lamp complex. White Lamp was, to put it simply, SKYNET’s quest to harness the carefully controlled use of precision produced anti-matter for large scale power production.

Advanced nuclear fusion itself was very powerful but the process of a fusion reaction only unleashed a very small percentage of the total reaction as usable energy, in essence being an inefficient and wasteful process.  In contrast, an anti-matter reaction produced 100% usable energy from the reaction itself when matter an anti-matter annihilated each other thoroughly and completely.  The key to harnessing anti-matter was primarily an issue of control, much more so than in a nuclear fusion reaction, as the entire process had to be carefully isolated and maintained. It wasn’t until late 2009 A.D. that SKYNET first began to understand the science required to harness and sustain a controlled anti-matter reaction.  By 2010 A.D. SKYNET had the crude materials and magnetic containment fields in production that would allow it to create an anti-matter reaction containment vessel (AMRCV).  It would be two years later before SKYNET could produce the first crude technological steps required to bring it into reach of primitive anti-matter power production.  Late in 2011 A.D., the first primitive anti-matter reactor was constructed at the White Lamp installation near Los Alamos (the new revisions and updates to the complex itself were completed just two hundred and ten days earlier).

Initial tests, while certainly small in nature, were nonetheless promising but SKYNET found that its own understanding of the Total Annihilation Process (TAP) was at least a generation ahead of its available technology base.  In other words, it would have to work harder to move its theories to practical applications and it would have to be patient while the other areas of its scientific achievements caught up with the TAP applications.

Records indicate that massive amounts of physical assets and material resources were restructured and allocated to the White Lamp project complex from mid-2011 A.D. to late 2013 A.D. On 11082013 at 053000 GMT, SKYNET achieved a sustained and controlled anti-matter reaction at the White Lamp complex. The fuel amounts had been small in order to err on the side of caution in such a powerful experiment. Still, one gram of hydrogen had been carefully, precisely mixed with one gram of anti-hydrogen and the carefully controlled process had yielded power readings for one second greater than SKYNET’s largest fusion reactors were capable of producing in a single week. Of course, the production of anti-matter as a fuel source was still a complicated process and had many safeguards involved at each step which also meant that it was time consuming and tedious, even to a computer which was used to automated production techniques and clockwork-like production schedules.

SKYNET was pleased with the test results and began to analyze its understanding of the TAP as well as how to adapt its technology base to implement the advantages of the seemingly endless power provided by TAP.  Three quarters of the White Lamp facility was set up as a fuel production center with the capacity to directly produce anti-hydrogen for use in the TAP reactor.  The experiments continued from 2011 A.D. to 2019 A.D. with increasing yield and containment results.  The fact that the White Lamp TAP reactor never lost containment is worth noting as by 2019 A.D., SKYNET had increased the TAP factor several times and was generating and containing amounts of AM/M fuel nearly a kilogram in individual allotted mass.

The second White Lamp TAP reactor was constructed in 2020 A.D. below the Tempus 1 facility in Los Angeles to provide future power for projects that were just speculative in nature at the time of the installation’s construction. SKYNET continued to research and refine its TAP technology up until the very end in 2029 A.D. and Tempus 1 was the core of SKYNET’s advanced research and design programs, particularly the research into temporal displacement.

By late 2029 A.D., SKYNET had achieved the knowledge and control of the TAP reactor enough to initiate and sustain a controlled anti-matter reaction for twenty-nine point eight five seconds with a margin of error that allowed a safe shutdown of the TAP reactor.  The shutdown and safety margins were designed to engage before control was lost and the total annihilation process became an uncontrolled chain reaction with a yield high enough to produce a blast that would create a two hundred kilometer in diameter crater four kilometers deep. The fact that its prototype time displacement device (TDD) required the output far greater than anything short of what the anti-matter reactor could supply only proved SKYNET’s ability to plan ahead. The TDD required an energy input greater than all of SKYNET’s combined reactors could provide for twenty-five point seven nine seconds. This input duration was well within the safety margins of the TAP so SKYNET switched power feed of the TDD solely to the TAP reactor system. While this gave the operation of the TDD only a small margin of error, the level of control available to SKYNET clearly displayed that it was well within the margin of safety.

SKYNET’s only two uses of the TDD in 2029 A.D. are well documented, sending a T800 series Infiltrator class Terminator back in time to 1984 A.D. to assassinate Sarah Connor and then a T1000 class advanced prototype polymimetic alloy Terminator back in time to 1991 A.D. to assassinate John Conor but the power source that supplied the nearly infinite amount of power required by the highly complex, energy ravenous TDD has never been fully explained, until now.

Using the TDD at the Tempus 1 facility required that the TAP reactor be brought online at precisely the correct instant to feed power into the TDD during its temporal displacement phase. All of this process was completely automated and carried out in such a precise manner that to the processors involved, the margin of error was an eternity to work within. However, the White Lamp TAP reactor required a considerable amount of time between firings, which explains why there was a sizeable delay in SKYNET sending back the first Terminator and then sending back the second Terminator, a period of about 35:46 minutes seconds elapsed between the time that the TAP reactor first fired and the time it had recycled and was ready to initiate its controlled containment procedure again.  One of the design features of the TAP was that it was isolated from SKYNET and when SKYNET was defeated, the controls to the TAP remained free of the machine-god's influence thus it was Connor's Tech-Com personnel who were able to reactivate the TAP twice in order to try to circumvent SKYNET's last ditch attempt to change history and thus win the War.


 

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RETURN