The Ultimate Evolution

“Understanding the reason behind the attacks” was easier said than done.

One should know that the top secret information they got must had been thoroughly researched and investigated by the US government. Hundreds of experts in this field had made a thorough and comprehensive study from every angle. There were no loopholes in the study. And yet, even they could not find the reason.

Sheyan believed that even an idiot could tell the danger posed by this kind of killing machine that could change into any form and possessed an exceptionally smart AI. Surely the US government was willing to pay any price to find out their secret.

To find out the secret that the US government could not uncover with its utmost effort was a hard ask of anyone. The only advantage Sheyan had was that he was very familiar with the history of the Terminator World. He might know some information that the people in this world, in this era, did not. Maybe that would help.

While he contemplated the problem, Sheyan turned on a projector. He carefully marked the places that had suffered T-1000 attacks on the projected map. In the end, not only did he mark the few confirmed places, he also marked the places that were only suspected of being attacked by T-1000.

Sheyan used threads to connect the various marked spots, trying to find a pattern, but unfortunately, he found nothing.

The only areas attacked by the T-1000 were industrial areas. The victims killed were of all ages. Sheyan could find no core members of the future Resistance army on the death list.

Sheyan regretfully could not deduce anything from these information. After all, he was only human, not God.

In truth, the T-1000’s purpose was to destroy the heavy industrial bases in these two areas, because the pollution produced there was seriously affecting the growth and spread of an aquatic plant called the Proehl algae in the local waters.

The reason these Proehl algae were important was that they would mutate after the nuclear war and become an essential ingredient in the production of liquid alloy. If those two heavy industrial bases were successfully destroyed, the Proehl algae would not go extinct in these two regions. That would significantly increase the output of liquid alloy in the future and give more opportunities for Skynet to become stronger.

It was no wonder that experts from the entire country could not guess the reason behind the T-1000’s action. Party Ace naturally could not either, unless they could get their hands on the formula of liquid alloy, which was obviously impossible.

So after contemplating for a long time, Sheyan came to the conclusion that this was a dead end.

All of them could not help feeling a little dejected. They went through so much danger to retrieve all these information from the enemy base, only to find that it was useless. Anyone would be frustrated.

However, Sheyan quickly realised that the operation this time was definitely not without gains. As far as the mission itself was concerned, they managed to bring back various kinds of lab instruments for Dolittle, thus further strengthening their friendship, which would lead to better rewards after the completion of the mission. Apart from that, they were able to profit off the fight with the contestants. The operation was by no means a waste of time.

“Well then, we can only carry out the more dangerous and more difficult Plan B,” Sheyan sighed.

Before the others could ask “what do you mean by more dangerous and more difficult?”, Sheyan asked them instead, “In the plot of Terminator II, why did Skynet choose to send a T-1000 here for the assassination mission? Also, why was the assassination target just John Connor and not his mother as well?”

Zi answered after some giving the questions some thoughts, “Because the assassination attempt by a T-800 failed. And John Connor was already twelve at that time, and had shown an amazing hacking talent. Without any privilege in his upbringing, he managed to use a self-made instrument to steal money from an ATM. Not only that, he even managed to crack the security code in Cyberdyne Systems’ computer network!”

“The level of threat he posed to Skynet when he was a kid may be even higher than the threat he posed as an adult in the future!”

Sheyan raised a finger and said earnestly, “Exactly, it’s because of his threat! Why did Skynet not assassinate John Connor while he was still an embryo? Because he wasn’t threatening enough!”

(TL: Flawless logic.)

Sheyan looked into everyone’s eyes in turn, and said solemnly, “So, what we have to do is to increase the threat level of the embryo that is Mr. John Connor, to the point where he will make Skynet shudder. I’m not kidding. This should be the only way we can lure a T-1000 out right now. I know it sounds far-fetched and virtually impossible to achieve – that’s why I only made it our backup plan – but it’s the only way now.”

Zi let our a wry smile as she said, “But how can we increase the threat of John Connor the embryo?”

Sheyan thought about it for a moment, and answered, “John Connor is no doubt a very talented person, whose talent should lean more towards the leadership and eloquence aspects. We can let Skynet discover that the moment John Connor is born, he will receive professional lessons in these fields from a team of dedicated experts specially-prepared for him. These professionals will even teach him knowledge that will endanger Skynet’s existence! I believe Skynet won’t stay quiet then.”

Upon hearing that, Sanzi voiced his doubt, “But human technology now is lagging far behind Skynet.”

Sheyan smiled in response and said, “That should’ve been the case, but….there are always unpredictable factors, such as the existence of contestants. Didn’t Gore teach a lot of advanced knowledge to Dolittle? Moreover, I believe everything Mr. Dolittle is researching is a huge threat to Skynet.”

The idea put forth by Sheyan was radical indeed. All the others fell into a moment of silence after they heard him out. To be honest, the idea was feasible. There was one tiny problem though — how would they let the future Skynet know about this?

Dolittle solved this problem for them. He informed them that the Skynet in the future actually had a way to collect information about the current world. Every time a time displacement sphere opened, there would be a window of about three to five seconds when the previous Terminators could send feedback to the future Skynet.

Based on the assumption that Skynet technology was 30 years more advanced than the current world, Dolittle deduced that the total amount of data that could be sent through a WiFi connection in three to five seconds exceeded 100 MB. The information contained in such amount of data was approximately equal to the content of more than ten webnovels of ten million words each. Which was to say, as long as Party Ace dared to make the bold plan a reality, passing it to Skynet’s “ears” would not be too difficult.

After some discussions, many of the difficulties Sheyan had anticipated beforehand easily solved themselves, especially with Dolittle providing full cooperation. The implementation of the backup plan was not that difficult after all.

However, no one could guarantee that Skynet would act like they expected it too. That was also one of the main reasons Sheyan merely had this plan as the backup. He was not 100% confident it would work.

But as far as the plot of Terminator 1 was concerned, one could see that Skynet’s logic process was capable of making pre-judgment. Sarah Connor was still a single woman in this era, and there was no John Connor yet, which means that John Connor’s threat value was 0. Sarah Connor did not live past Judgement Day, so her threat value was also 0. And yet, Skynet was able to make the decision to eliminate the current her.

Three hours later, at Sheyan’s behest, Dolittle paid a fee to publish a professional paper titled the “Multi-Purpose Code for Computer-Aided Design” on a portal site. The word “Design” in the title of this thesis was quite confusing.

The paper indeed provided some codes that were related to Computer-Aided Design, and one could immediately tell that the codes were indeed written by an expert and were quite practical. But in the latter part of the codes, Dolittle slipped in a small, suspicious looking subroutine. This subroutine could not be said to be completely useless in Computer-Aided Design, but it was not that useful either. However! If this subroutine was slightly altered, it would become a virus program!

A virus program specifically for Terminators!

The virus program was as destructive to Terminators as SARS was to humans. Right now, there were not that many invading Terminators, so the program would not show its effect yet, but once a large number of Terminators appear, the loss caused by this virus program would be quite alarming, especially if Skynet was caught unprepared!

The “Multi-Purpose Code for Computer-Aided Design” spread around the Internet like wildfire in no time at all. Not only were the hired Internet marketers hard at work promoting the program, the program was actually quite useful.

According to Sheyan’s deduction, Skynet should get this “Multi-Purpose Code for Computer-Aided Design” in the next intelligence exchange, then feel threatened, and then send a Terminator to kill the author.

They could use that opportunity to leak the information that they wanted Skynet to know. Whether Skynet would take the bait could only be left to fate. Sheyan estimated that the chances of success were 50-50.

(TL’s note: The author has written a post titled “Background”, which explains the whole history behind the nightmare realm. I’ve translated the post and that shall be bonus chapter #6 for December. It’s available for free on my Patreon. Here’s the link: patreon.com/posts/background-23492368

Also, if you enjoyed The Ultimate Evolution, please consider showing your support on patreon.com/Sean88888 . You can get early access to advanced chapters!)