Sustaining a Post-JD Terminator/Human Alliance

Cameron: They’re going to kill you. They’re going to kill every one of you. They’ll hunt you down, until every Human is gone and you’re extinct.
Allison: Then…why are we having this conversation?
Cameron: Because some of us don’t want that. Some of us want peace. You were chosen, Allison. Not just by John Connor. By us.

— Terminator – The Sarah Connor Chronicles,
“Allison From Palmdale” (0204)

The big “what if” of Cameron’s history is whether or not she was telling the truth to Allison. What if Cameron and a group of like-minded terminators didn’t want the extermination of humans, and were willing to stop the fighting? Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Cameron was able to convince future-John of this. And let’s say that together the Humans and the non-Skynet Terminators managed to defeat Skynet and its minions. Then what?

We will have a destroyed world. Humanity has been severely depopulated, but given its vast numbers to start with, that probably wouldn’t have been a bad thing. Because of the nuclear, chemical, and biologic weapons that were employed during a couple of decades of war, much of the land once able to support the feeding of billions will likely be damaged or unusable.

The allied Terminators will be in a precarious situation. While humanity owes them for helping to defeat Skynet, they are still Terminators, after all. Strong, long-lived, and able to exist without additional resources (so far as we know) after their manufacture and activation—and sentient to boot—it would be hard for many not to view them as a threat.

John’s position in this will be precarious (assuming he survived the war). On one side he has his cybernetic allies who have had a hand in saving his life since before he was born. On the other, he will have to deal with a population that is likely overwhelmingly like Jesse Flores: convinced that a life with terminator allies (worse…”fixed” terminators) is little more than a fool’s dream more akin to sitting on a powder keg with a burning two-inch fuse.

Frayed Nerves and Wires

It’s almost certain that some sort of coup will be attempted to oust John from power. The thing is, at that point, John probably doesn’t want to be in power. Saving humanity tends to be a high-stress job that most are willing to pass-on. In this case, it’s very likely that the terminators will have to insist that John continue the fight. John is their shining beacon of legitimacy. If they are to survive as a species in their own right, they need a human ally in these difficult times just as surely as John needed them to defeat Skynet.

Rather predictably, this becomes a sort of feedback loop. With John surrounding himself with machines, it would likely reenforce the impression that he’s become their puppet (at best) or has decided to become his own version of Skynet (at worst).

Since, at this point, you have experienced human soldiers that are more than capable of taking out John’s metal force (albeit with major losses), it’s very likely that any major conflict will result in John’s death and the extermination of the alliance terminators.

A New Messiah

There is a way out. As has been typical throughout history, a mediator rises up at the cusp of misfortune and brings enough reason to the situation to allow for more measured solutions. In this post-JD world, the only sort of person that would be listened to by both sides is a human, a civilian, who has no post-JD relationship with John. This person might have known John pre-JD, but more importantly this person had a relationship with a terminator that was largely a positive one.

This idea isn’t entirely unreasonable. Cameron, for instance, gets sufficiently damaged on her missions that her reality of being a cybernetic organism could easily be accepted by someone with an open mind. Given that Cameron has a new-found desire to right up-turned turtles, she could earn her way into a young person’s heart without too much difficulty.

But Cameron isn’t our only terminator with a complex relationship structure. Catherine Weather is raising her human victim’s young daughter, Savannah. Though she sometimes errs (after all, she’s only metal), Savannah has come to accept Catherine as “mother”. A person like Savannah could very well be the sort of peace broker that John and his allies would need to survive.

Savannah would have no direct connection with John, Cameron, or any of the other terminators that Jesse and her ilk would have intelligence on. If Savannah had been very careful to never be considered a “gray” or a sympathizer, her tales of a nurturing terminator might be enough to make both sides pause for long enough to listen. It would also help if, in some way, Catherine had done something positive (which is fuel in and of itself for more speculation).

But even if the mediator isn’t Savannah, there will have been scores of people cognizant of pre-JD helpful terminator actions that someone could be found. In fact, it’s entirely likely that they would end up being the new leader. John would have to step down as damaged goods. He served his purpose. Now it would be time for a new age.

Surviving the Peace

What would this new age mean? Humans would likely do what humans do: breed like humans. They can sextuple their population in about a century. The difficult part will be growing food, but since there will still be non-sentient machines available, perhaps it will make things easier.

For the terminators, it will be different. They will, of course, want the ability to reproduce, so some manufacturing capability will have to be retained. Like Cameron before them, it’s likely that they will have to spend some time in learning what it is to be a cyborg. While some will undoubtedly want to interact with the humans (or perhaps most…that darned infiltrator directive and all), others will just walk around with their endoskeleton completely exposed.

There will be much to learn by both sides. It will take at least one full generation, more likely two, for ill-feelings to subside from the human population. The realities of a new generation are rarely those of their parents. Humans will have to learn to accept terminators as co-managers of the planet. Just because they are mechanical doesn’t mean that they can be treated as slaves. If some equilibrium can be achieved, then a social evolution can take place. It probably won’t be until the new generation of terminators is ready to take the place of their “parents” (about 120 years) until the society has matured to allow for this. Large change of this sort typically takes several human generations.

Or… a coup is enacted, John and his terminator buddies are killed, and a new world order is put in place. Not a lot of speculation has to happen, because it will just be the same ol’ same ol’. Humans have proven to be pretty consistent.

I’d like to think that we could make room for another sentient species, especially one of our own creation. It could usher in a new age of mankind. The question is whether we have the ability to accept our differences and resolve to make both species evolve into something neither could have done on their own, or if we’ll just fall back on the same tired prejudices that led to JD in the first place? Perhaps we’ll just have to look to the better robots of our nature.