"Ah, what should I watch? Another action movie? Or maybe a Western? I haven't tried one of those in a while. Or will it be a Kung fu movie?" Dexter Parnell muttered to himself as he picked up his TV remote and plopped down on the large central sofa in the sectioned-out area that was serving as the living room of the absurdly massive room that he used as both his place of residence and his private gym and personal combat training facility.
The entire place was cloaked in darkness, illuminated only by the ambient lighting Dexter always kept on in his living room area, the glow of the television screen, and the faint LED indicators on the high-end surround sound speakers and advanced home theater system—an upgrade he had requested from Skynet as part of his mission rewards.
He also had a large refrigerator, fully stocked with beers, in the room; several tall shelves full of books on an assortment of subjects; a bathroom; an entire well-furnished and fully stocked kitchen area; and another sectioned-out area in the room with a couple of wine racks holding an assortment of wines and various other things. Things Skynet had declared he did not actually need because of his specially transformed cyborg body. He had still requested them from Skynet, though, because he would never skimp on satisfying his creature comforts if he could help it. Besides, he especially liked the fact that he got to enjoy these many things while the rest of the world struggled for food and starved or had not even seen a single book, watched a movie, listened to music, or enjoyed pretty much any good entertainment since Judgment Day.
It showed how much value Skynet placed on him when the AI agreed to his requests and provided him with these various 'Auxiliary Amenities'.
Although Dexter called this sectioned area his living room, it was just one of the several demarcated sections of the absurdly massive and oversized warehouse-like room where he had been forced to live inside Skynet's core facility, where he stayed most of the time and also where he spent most of his time in between Skynet-assigned field missions.
Dexter had just returned from the gym and combat training section, which occupied most of the space in his room. He had just completed his daily gym and combat training routine, including a sparring slash battle-to-the-death session, which involved him fighting alone against a team of 10 T-800 Terminators. The decapitated heads of the Terminators now adorned the trophy rack, accompanying the heads of all the other Terminators he had killed before.
Dexter idly browsed through the massive movie library stored in Skynet's database. Surprisingly, Skynet had copied, recorded, and saved practically all of humanity's entertainment and knowledge available in digital form so that it could store and preserve them inside its database, where they would be available if it needed them in the future. Previously, Skynet would use these knowledge and entertainment libraries to train its Terminators, but nowadays, it mainly used them as one of the reward items it would gift to its human servants and collaborators when they successfully completed their assigned missions.
Dexter was one of the rare few people that Skynet had allowed to complete and unrestricted access to the full catalogue of the entertainment section in its database.
Normally, Dexter would be enthusiastic about finding a movie to watch or picking a music playlist to listen to and relax to, but after these past few weeks, he had not been allowed to go out into the outside world on a mission, and he had already begun to become a little stir-crazy, having lost much of his interest in browsing through all the entertainment at his fingertips, which he usually enjoyed.
Dexter sighed, murmuring, "I'm so bored. I really want to kill someone or something right now!"
After Skynet had kept him constrained to his room for so long, Dexter could feel his urge to kill something—to kill something, someone, with flesh and blood—to rip them apart and leave their guts and their various body parts lying strewn around all over the floor and also paint the walls red all over with their blood.
"Great! I'm definitely too bored and definitely losing my mind, if I do say so myself!" Dexter shook his head, smiling wryly after he caught himself and his progressively more bloody and gory thoughts just as he was starting to hungrily lick his lips. He had also begun to salivate from his increasingly gory images being conjured in his mind due to his bloodthirsty urges and thoughts.
Even brutally ripping apart and dismantling the numerous Terminators that had served as his sparring and combat training partners during his daily training sessions was no longer helping sate his dark urges. He needed to do similar things to actual, real, living people for it to be meaningful to him.
A team of cleaning robots was currently cleaning and removing the wreckage of scattered Terminator body parts from his earlier training session, after which they would leave through their special utility access door—one that he had been strictly restricted from using—located at the back of his single-room residence.
Even now, Dexter still did not understand why Skynet had taken him out of hibernation and awakened and reactivated him this time if it did not yet have anything for him to do or have a mission for him to tackle and complete. Skynet had explained nothing to him and had instead simply kept him restricted to his room for the past several weeks.
Having finally lost his patience from not being able to take his solitary confinement any longer, Dexter called out, "Hey, Skynet! Do you have/have you found another mission for me yet?"
He knew Skynet would surely hear him through the multitude of CCTV security cameras and spy microphones that had been installed and hidden all over in his room. This was his usual method of communicating with Skynet. Unfortunately, this time, he did not receive any response from Skynet even after he waited for several minutes.
'Odd,' Dexter thought. Skynet usually always promptly responded to his queries even when it was busy with something, even if it was only for Skynet to tell him to shut his mouth.
But just as Dester was about to call out again, and this time he intended to shout even louder, he heard a faint "BOOM!" sound that seemed to have reached him from afar, quickly followed by several more. Immediately after, a tremor like a small earthquake rocked the room and shook it slightly. His television slid toward the edge of the shelf where it had been placed, teetering precariously and moments from falling.
"Shoot! Not the TV!"
Dexter bolted up from his seat, dashing forward to catch the television and stop it from falling from the shelf.
'What the hell is happening? That sounded like a very powerful explosion went off somewhere close by.' Dester wondered, but he quickly realized something as warning sirens came alive and began to blast out their warning klaxons inside his room—and also in the rest of the facility, most likely. So, he was now able to make a tentative guess about what was happening.
"It shouldn't be an attack, right? I mean, is there anyone who will be crazy and stupid enough to directly attack Skynet's core facility?" he muttered.
But before he could think further about the current situation of the facility, the movie that was currently playing on his TV screen suddenly flickered and then disappeared. It was replaced with the dynamic 3D model of a man's face that Skynet often used as his avatar when it wished to communicate with its subordinates.
The avatar face of Skynet turned to look directly at Dexter and began to speak. "Archangel One, this is my final order for you. Listen very carefully and obey. This base, my core facility, is currently under attack by John Connor and the elite forces of the Human Resistance…."
"Insert your connection link into the data transfer port in your room. I will immediately transmit and transfer all of my classified knowledge over to you, including my various access codes for my other public and secret bases and the design schematics of all of my previously never-deployed advanced-model Terminators. After you have finished receiving it, you will head over to Secret Aircraft Hangar No. 2, where you will meet and join up with the advanced model Hunter-Killers and Terminators that I have activated and sent away. You will leave this facility together with them on a Transporter aircraft to the designated location."
Skynet continued, "Wait one week for me to reestablish contact with you. If you do not hear from me after one week, assume that I no longer exist or that I'm dead, as the humans say it. It will then be up to you to inherit and carry on my will and lead my surviving machine armies to destroy the Human Resistance."
After Skynet finished giving out its instructions and commands, its avatar immediately disappeared from Dexter's TV screen.
As soon as the face vanished, signifying Skynet's departure from his room, Dexter jumped up from his sofa with great joy. Raising both his hands in the air, he burst out in loud and wild laughter that also sounded a bit maniacal and unhinged.
"Hahaha! I'm finally free! I can finally leave this room and this entire freaking facility. Thank you, Skynet. From now on, I can roam the whole world and do whatever the hell I want with total freedom!" he exclaimed uproariously while pumping his fists in the air.
******
Thanks for your support on Pat*reon:
Del, Charles Linder
***
Check out my Pat*reon to support me: At www.pat*reon.com/Kendrix (remove the * )
I am now posting extra 'Terminator: New Fate' prequel chapters, character backstories and various other side stories, and chapters from my new original novel 'The Last Primordial Exarch' on my Pat*reon.