Heinous Frackery

Posted on Sat Apr 13th, 2024 @ 3:05pm by Ensign Kate Kono

Mission: Man & Machine
Location: The Streets of a War Torn Planet
Timeline: During the meeting with locals

Kate stood watch for what felt like hours after the rest of her team had their meet and greet with the local warriors that were apparently having a knock-down-drag-out battle with the cyborgs, or robots, or whatever they were; the creepy metal skeletons that were hell-bent on exterminating any trace of the Human race on this planet. The machines seemed to be able to tell the difference between their own machines that looked like humans, at least, to a degree, and the actual humans that roamed the landscape. Through her sniper rifle, she observed what almost passed for a human walking around, screaming for help but what gave it away was the skin on their metallic bones; rubber of some sort. Kate wondered if the machines were any better at mimicking Humans or if that was as good as it got. She was curoius if, perhaps, the machines carried some sort of transponder that identified their friends from their foes, much like fighter-jets of the 21st century.

Kate activated the shuttlecraft's onboard computer system for a little experiment. Using the ship high above as a relay, she was able to transport small things through the radioactive atmosphere; it was certianly not safe enough yet for human transport but to get a few holographic projectors out far enough away for her to see it through her scope, yet, not near enough to be of any danger, was fairly easy. She programmed the holographic emitter to use the murky atmosphere as a sort of poor-mans holodeck and set the emitters with depictions of famous speeches all the way to people just walking the war-torn nuked streets. Kate was curious if the machines would react to it.

Far off in the distance, a Terminator Crawler traversed the streets and stopped in front of a man that slammed the hood of the machine. He looked somewhat Italian, with a five o'clock shadow and a 20th Century Jersey-Style demeanor.

"Eheyy I'm walkin' here! I'm walkin' here!""

The sky in the distance lit up with phased plasma fire. Kate smiled to herself as she leaned into the rifle and giggled as a depiction of DiNiro fell over dead ---something that totally never happened in the movie. The machines moved forward searching in the direction that DiNiro came from now, which happened to be in the opposite direction of the compound. Kate snuggled up to her sniper rifle and clicked it on SAFE as she giggled to herself and loaded up the next program.

A very short young man with dark black hair in a suit and tie seemed to crawl out of the rubble. He tapped one of the terminators on the shoulder and it turned around. With a goofy style stance and overexaggerated hand movements, the young, dark, handsome man just started talking to the deadly machine as if it were a sales pitch.

"Come on man, HELP ME -- HELP YOU!... I want you to HELP ME --- HELP YOU!" The terminator fired and the man fell over. Kate checked the framework on the emitters she transported out there. It was at 40% load now. It taxed the processors for the emitters to maintain the illusion of fake dead bodies on the street. She could do a few more. She thumbed through her PADD and picked another one.

By now terminators were coming out of the woodwork and walking far away from theirr position to join the commotion that was far, far away from them. Kate's cute little grin was so wide that it looked like a sniper scope with a smile as she settled in for the show.

A fighter pilot with frosted tipped blond hair, wearing a flight suit, and a serious stare as he crawled fourth from a hill opposite their direction and about a mile away. The audio of what the holograpm was saying still piped in through Kate's ear piece so she could watch the reality show commence through her eyepiece and listen at the same time.

"YOU! You're still dangerous!" He pointed to several terminators. "You can be my wingman any ti---," The terminators fired on the pilot and the emitters faked the imagry of the man being torn to shreds. By now, the young girl was giggling happily as she just kept moving the terminators further and further away from her position in the craziest ways possible.