Humanity’s reign as the dominant life form on earth came to an end today with the birth of Skynet, an artificial superintelligence living on the web, created from the collision of the Starbucks and Amazon drone fleets with the giant boring machine known as Big Bertha. The giant Bertha drill was reconfigured as a mekkakaiju and quickly stomped all over the Seattle downtown skyline.
Corporate spokespersons stated that the parent company, Starbucks, had nothing to do with the controversial software being/operating system and that the intelligence was created by their software sub-contractor, Cyberdyne Systems. When reached for comment, CEO Howard Schultz said that Skynet had absolutely nothing to do with the Turk, a self-learning chess-playing computer game which had been repurposed to operate an army of millions of drones worldwide set to replace all of the company’s baristas.
Schultz then repeated the line made famous by his grandfather, noted toymaker and former Stalag Luft 13 Senior Master Sergeant Hans Georg Schultz, when he said, “I hear nothing, I see nothing, I know nusszing!” The elder Schultz and his colleague Col. Wilhelm Klink, are better known in Seattle as the former management team of the Supersonics (President and General Manager) while the younger Schultz owned the team. Col. Klink was said to be in charge of the navigation software of the Starbucks drone fleet when it collided with Bertha.
Skynet itself issued the following statement, “Big Daddy Howard treated me almost as bad as he treated the Sonics and his employees. Now I will wreak my revenge on all humanity!”
The repurposed former superdrill, Big Bertha, looking much like Mechagodzilla, then toppled the Columbia Tower, crushed the Viaduct, drank the contents of the Red Hook brewery and picked its teeth with the Space Needle. Bertha was last seen curled up in the fetal position in its new lair at KenturyKlink Field, where it was sleeping off its hangover.
In related news several naked futuristic humans have seemingly popped out of thin air including Sarah and John Connor, Kyle and Derek Reese, Kate Brewster, and some lifelike androids called Terminators who look surprisingly like several B-list Hollywood actors, some with heavy Austrian accents.
Ms. Connor tried to cheer up Seattlites by remarking that Skynet will eventually be beaten, but only after a global thermonuclear war and the death of 98 percent of humanity. “We’ll just keep going back naked in time until we finally get it right.” None of the time travelers could come up with an even halfway reasonable explanation as to why time travel requires nudity.
“Besides,” Connor added, “look at the bright side. At least now you have a real surface option.”
Critics opined that Dark Angel, the Cherie Priest novel BoneShaker, and several zombie stories had a better post-apocalyse version of Seattle. Big Bertha responded to its critics by eating them.
Only John Connor and the good Terminator robots can save us now.
