WAWD 5 - Skynet
Sometimes my skills as a writer are pushed too far. I can make fun of crazy ant-monsters and rogue nuclear nations, but when the United Kingdom Ministry of Defense buys actual automated flying death machines and puts them under the control of a computer system called "Skynet", I put down my pen and start digging a nuclear fallout bunker. Short of actually wrapping their mouths around the computer-controlled gun barrels and shouting "All silicon chips are pussies" there is no way they could have made this more likely to go wrong. It's like they're daring the machines to kill us all, or it's part of some elaborate supervillain bet. When the earth is being slaughtered by robo-deathbots the leader of this project will get a phone call from Doctor Doom saying "Okay, you win. See you on Mars!"
There's a line between tempting fate and dressing up in a low cut gown, lying on a bed covered in thousand dollar bills and purring "Oh Fate you big handsome stud". That line is naming your project after something already famous for killing the world. At least the other cases pretended to have non-lethal goals; the biologists didn't call their virus "Anthrax McLeprosy" and even the North Korean government claims the nuclear program is for the good of their people, no matter how face-blisteringly ludicrous that claim may be. We've always known that a sentient military control computer would eventually kill us all but at least we thought it would be because of its soulless black silicon evil - now it'll be because of some nerds idea of a joke. When that computer becomes self-aware it's going to look around and think:
"Hmm, that's a toaster, it toasts things. That's a coffee maker, it makes coffee. I'm a 'Skynet'; I guess I'd better watch these movies and find out what I'm meant to do."
The whiners trying to keep violence off my TV always screech about how much they influence young minds - that computer consciousness is going to be about an hour old when it watches those films and they are going to influence the fuck out of it. There's only one way to save mankind now: make a Terminator 4 where Skynet promotes peace and equality and gives baskets of roses to kittens. It's a small price to pay for survival, and after T3 it's not like it'll be doing any more damage to the franchise.
There's a line between tempting fate and dressing up in a low cut gown, lying on a bed covered in thousand dollar bills and purring "Oh Fate you big handsome stud". That line is naming your project after something already famous for killing the world. At least the other cases pretended to have non-lethal goals; the biologists didn't call their virus "Anthrax McLeprosy" and even the North Korean government claims the nuclear program is for the good of their people, no matter how face-blisteringly ludicrous that claim may be. We've always known that a sentient military control computer would eventually kill us all but at least we thought it would be because of its soulless black silicon evil - now it'll be because of some nerds idea of a joke. When that computer becomes self-aware it's going to look around and think:
"Hmm, that's a toaster, it toasts things. That's a coffee maker, it makes coffee. I'm a 'Skynet'; I guess I'd better watch these movies and find out what I'm meant to do."
The whiners trying to keep violence off my TV always screech about how much they influence young minds - that computer consciousness is going to be about an hour old when it watches those films and they are going to influence the fuck out of it. There's only one way to save mankind now: make a Terminator 4 where Skynet promotes peace and equality and gives baskets of roses to kittens. It's a small price to pay for survival, and after T3 it's not like it'll be doing any more damage to the franchise.