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[thebruce]

[SCC] Terminator: Story so far

[thebruce]

Semi-enshortenated Paraphrased Timeline

Enitech and Gardner

EniTech Labs created a website to bring their latest research: The Gardner Project to the public. Their research has developed a 'tachyon camera' - a camera that takes pictures of future. A video blog on youtube raised a ruckus from people calling it fake, a hoax - but we knew better. An early blog post on their site Enitechlabs.com referenced Cyberdyne, linking it to Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles TV show on Fox, which has an extended reality / viral site Takebackthefuture.com.

The tachyon camera produces pictures of tachyons (theoretical particles that travel backwards through time), photos estimated to be about 1193 days to the future, also the number the counter of TBTF.com seems to be counting to. January 13 saw the premiere of the TV show - and the day the counter read 1193.

Pictures revealed so far by Enitech show a chaotic, destroyed future San Francisco, including newspaper headlines claiming viral outbreaks, hospitals closing, and more. We even see an image of an enormous machine clutching a school bus.

Miles Dyson: In memoriam

People asking Frank Bentley, the Enitech team lead, about Cyberdyne via his "Ex-Cyberdyne employees" facebook group, are prompted to look for what we now know as the Dyson Trust - a group set up in memory of Miles Dyson (killed in T2) to offer grants and funds to proposed scientific projects, once a year. Its history is this: After turning down a project named "Centurion", they approved another based around the discovery of a curious device (a small modified camera). The project was approved, and Enitech Research was formed, led by Frank. Their research eventually produced the tachyon camera.

DysonTrust.org has a secure section, and through a badly placed self-reminder note (for login and password) of team member Anna Kies at her workstation (it's seen in a photograph posted to Enitech's blog by coworker Mike), the community hacked into Dyson's secure section and retrieved two historical documents related to the Gardner Project (info about the Centurion project rejection, and origin of the Gardner Project and Enitech). We also learn that along with the original camera Enitech received were four punchcards they believed held the locations of 4 other similar cameras hidden around the US.

Red eye

With this private info now public, Anna records a video at the location their original camera was discovered, and tells us more about the punchcards. They're rudely interrupted however, when a dark figure is seen approaching from the distance. Anna (and Mike, assumedly) flee the scene, just barely escaping the masked/hooded/goggled/red-eyed figure. This person has the same appearance as the bad Terminator from the most recent episode of TSCC.

Enitech soon after receives a message from "a member of the Resistance" containing two encrypted paragraphs. They're quickly decoded by the community using the punchcards as keys (song chords, where the Pink Floyd song lyrics were keys to the encrypted vigenere texts accordingly). Two locations are discovered: One in LA, and one in NY.

Firing canons

Vpisteve manages to recover the LA resistance package, containing a Canon Powershot S100 and a number of survival-ish items. The NY package is reportedly retrieved by "Bill", who no one hears from... until "Zoltan Gerts" posts in the facebook group that Bill approached him and gave him the camera (convenient!) stating he knew Zoltan's father (an ex-cyberdyne employee who went missing years ago). Bill, strangely, also is described as having the same appearance as the menacing figure from the video, and as teh bad guy from TSCC - however, this one seems to indicate he's working for the Resistance.

Vpisteve receives a message from "The Resistance" via his Flickr account, with instructions for taking a photo with the camera - of Box A117 at Security Trust of Los Angeles (the same bank from episode 1, and the significant box also seen in the TV show). Restricted from photographing inside the bank's vault, Steve nabs a shot of the nearest wall to the vault of the outside of the bank, and submits it to Enitech.

Resistance isn't futile

A new image is added to The Resistance's Flickr account of a bunch of robot-related news articles and contains a number puzzle. It's analyzed out the wazoo, an no one can decode it. Yet.

A new video blog secretly gives a method to contact the resistance via 'hidden' frames: an email address. We're also told "The Turk" (a chess-playing robot from episode 3) is not dead. We also find a photo of a murder - of Enitech team member Jacob Gustar. (earlier, one of the photo tests Enitech did was to take a picture of him against a wall, plan for him to be there in ~1193 days, and see what he looks like - he's missing from the future photo - now we know why).

Hexed

Steve's vault photo submitted to Enitech is processed and reveals only rubble - but there's a big plaque with the label "RESIST" and a strange triangular symbol (like Anna's reminder note, a symbols which could form a hexagon if 6 are placed together), hanging on the building's remains. Shortly thereafter, Zoltan's photo from NY is also revealed, capturing a startling moment in time of what appears to be a large gun being fired with its muzzle flash, but in the foreground is none other than another "RESIST" and symbol pair (this symbol is different than the first).

An auto-reply is received from the Resistance by anyone who emails them containing another paragraph of number pairs (as seen in the flickr image). Working backwards, Catherwood cracks the code (both of them), again paired with the punchcards' lyrics as keys, and the final two camera locations are revealed: One in Austin Texas and one in Orlando Florida.

The hunt part 2

Rosekitty bravely finds the Austin package at 6am January 29. The Orlando package is still undiscovered.


...Welcome to the now!

(For reference links, see the parent post above.)

[thebruce]

Background timeline based on the movies


I found a nicely pieced together timeline of events from previous movies and how they relate to the TV show on another forum (posted here) which I think works and is nicely concise. General rumour is that the TV show 'doesn't recognize' the events of Terminator 3, but that may simply mean it's in an alternate timeline that 'didn't happen' due to events that have since occurred changing its history (and thus producing the events we now see in TSCC).

Here's his breakdown (and a bit of clarification):

[Euchre]

I'm wondering if they changed timing in the DVD releases, because I just watched T2 - the 'extreme' edition - and it's got the scene with John Connor at the beginning set in 2029. It's implicit that's when the two Terminators are sent back for the events of that movie.

Something that has occurred to me about this whole timeline matter is that before John Connor sends back Kyle Reese, SkyNet had to be created and Judgement Day had to play out. This means that eventually, a neural networked CPU that leads to an emergent sentient AI has to happen. The only thing shifting these events in any way is the people in the future trying to mess with the past. The end result according to most time paradox issues is that they should eventually self-nullify and history will precede as it originally did. It would seem this is still likely, given that the same basic events always arise. I actually haven't seen T3 yet, but the grandest irony I see so far is that in T2 they accelerated the eventual creation of the AI. My suspicion is that we are going to eventually be led to the 'destined' creators of the AI and the original - and effectively true - course of events.

[thebruce]

TSCC picked up for season 2

[Nighthawk]

Woohoo!

They better not have damaged dear, sweet Summer too badly!