Yeah, some high-level negotiations between Neo and some machines would definately make for an exciting action flick. I can’t wait to see someone deliver a blue paper resolution proposal to the main voting body with Matrix style visual effects.
How can one obtain a copy of this?
If the machines win, it’s because they’re smarter than we are–in the only way that matters: it’s smart to survive–and they’ll have something they consider worthwhile to spend their time on which we wouldn’t understand.
Since the technological singularity will be here sometime before 2030 anyway, why worry about it?
PS Read “The Last Question” by Isaac Asimov. THAT’s what they’ll be doing. Maybe.
Phase 1: Kill John Connor.
Phase 2: ?
Phase 3: Profit.
Get it?
Since the technological singularity will be here sometime before 2030 anyway, why worry about it?
What’s the “technological singularity”?
Bulleted-list-time!
I think it would be real mind-fuck if it ended in some bizarre, non-shoot 'em up way. As it is, it was a fun, good movie, but it was a from-the-mold Christ/Buddhist fable which we all pretty much knew from the start how it was going to end.
Episode 1: Neo gets to be a bad ass, Neo is “The One.” Neo gets Trinity.
Episode 2: Neo starts training crack troops, full war begins, the vast herd of the Matrix starts to take notice. But the machines counter quickly and strongly, and, finally killing one or more important members of the party (Morpheus, Trinity, perhaps even Neo). By the end, the machines have the upper hand and Zion is on the edge of collapse.
Episode 3: Even though machines are tearing up Zion, a fatal flaw is found in the machines. Perhaps Neo will tell a Sentinel that “my dog has no nose.” The Sentinel will respond “How does it smell?” And Neo will say “terrible.” At which point the Sentinel will start going “does not compute does not compute does not compute” and bolts will fly out of its head and the Matrix will just go BSOD and everyone goes to Zion and eats gruel for the rest of their life. Or even better, Neo comes up with a great Outlook virus which promises naked pictures of Anna Kournisentinelova. Or they get the script kiddies in Zion to DDOS the Matrix. And Zion reformats the machines with Linux and uses them to run open-source p2p servers.
Now, my alternate universe version
Episode 2 can be the same, except maybe the humans know the back door to bring down the whole Matrix (but in the process will sacrifice the whole “Crop”). Episode 3 instead turns into a complex political drama. Picture “Thirteen Days” in Zion. The humans are trying to guess what the machines are doing, the machines are trying to outfox the humans. Eventually, though, everyone backs down and the machines and the humans enter negotiations to produce more freedoms and options for captive humans (the Matrix Test Ban Treaty) and the machines get full recognition of right to exist and right for self-governance and preservations.
Hey RexDart, I see you are taking my advice from your Pit thread! Good! (Step 4, Buy SkyRussian Bride).
And smiling bandit, read my post again. I don’t think you understood it. The humans are the bad guys, they aimed to unreasonable exterminate another race of sentient creatures. At least that’s the story we have so far. In the process, they didn’t succeed, they tore up the planet, and made it necessary for the machines to put some kind of limits on human freedom in order to guarantee both machine and human survival. Yeah, the humans are trapped in a giant pair of VR goggles. But it is better than them all being dead.
Hey, I for one would watch All the Matrix’ Men. Or would it be Seven Days in Matrix? Or Matrix Dinner with Andre?
Then the machines are sued by the recording industry, and Lars Ulrich declares himself victorious for all time.
Alternatively, since the machines are apparently using Windows, we could always crash them by getting them to run Morrowind with realtime shadows turned on.
Let’s make it a more light-hearted finale, like My Big Fat Greek Matrix? Could be a juicy TV spinoff in it for ya…c’mon!
Re: Terminator.
Everyone complaining that since Skynet was destroyed there shouldn’t be a Terminator 3 are missing the point. If that’s true then since Skynet was destroyed there shouldn’t have been a Terminator 1 and 2. The whole closed loop of causality containing John Connor, Terminators, Skynet, Judgement Day, etc, never occurs. Skynet only gets built because Skynet sends Arnie back in time to kill Sarah Connor. Without that act, no need to send someone back to defend Sarah, so John Connor is never born and Sarah spends the rest of her life partying and cutting hair. Also, without the chipset from Arnie’s arm, the prototype for Skynet never gets built. But the prototype Skynet never goes online, because events changed in Terminator 2. So where did the Terminator in Terminator 1 come from? Skynet essentially creates itself and destroys itself through time travel. Fun-kay, eh?
Since closed causality loops and paradoxes are apparently allowed in Termintor Time Travel, there’s nothing wrong with Skynet sending back a virtual infinity of Terminators back in time to various points in John or Sarah Connor’s life, even though it will never exist…it already never existed when it sent the first one back, right? If Skynet never existed when it sent the terminators from 1 and 2 back in time to prevent itself from never existing, it can certainly keep doing so in the future.
It would have sent more Terminators, except Robocop stopped it!
(yes, i know about the Robocop vs Terminator comics, i own them)
I want to see Matrixemento, where the robots send a Terminator back in time, but it can’t remember who it’s supposed to kill, so it just blows away random people.
Aw, goddammit, that joke sorta doesn’t make sense. Oh, well.
I think there was even a Superman vs. Terminator comic I saw one time…yup, there it is.
And I thought Superman vs. Mohammed Ali was contrived…
Maybe they’ll make secret blogs… 
Day 1.
*Deja Vu. Haven’t I been here before?
I’ll be back.*
Day 2.
*Went through time gate with human skin on.
v. Messy.
Will be back.*
Day 0.
*Stupid time continuum. Nearly met self. Looked the other way.
Back soon.*
Day 54.
Dates all screwed up. Skynet unstable obsolete junk!
Must get hang of navigating ball thingy - took out side of truck last time. Oops.
Day 6.
*Better. Killed John Connor.
Going back now.*
Day 7.
*John Connor still alive.
skynet threatening replacement. Will show them.
Back again. Bikes rock!*
Day 8.
*Hate Skylab. Lousy poncing Mr Look at me, I am a toaster! Now I’m a sharp pointy thing! Watch me walk through bars!
Decide to drown my sorrows in large vat of boiling metal.
Not back yet.
negative that - hang on…*
Day 1.
*Deja Vu. Met myself, looking scrappy. Told to cut straight to heart of matter and terminate James Cameron. No more Cameron, no more Connor.
Queried skynet.
Probability of success 99.9%.
[log systems - probability of success diverted at .01% odds favour .01% - skynet clearly bonkers. Random factor Arnold ?unknown? ]
I’ll be back. sigh*
This is what happens when people don’t go to used book shops – they act as if Terminator or The Matrix or even Colossus: The Forbin Project started an idea.
There’s a considerable history to the idea of man vs. machine going back before these – these are just the cinematic expressions that have been most broadly seen. Try Harry Harrison’s The War with the Robots or Harlan Ellison’s I Have no Mouth and I must Scream (I always though that was a good alternate title for Dilbert) or any of the other, older expressions of the idea. One common suggestion: The robots eventually forget people exist, until they stumble across artifacts, or they meet a human through some odd circumstance.
P.S. - read Jones’ “Colossus” trilogy (Colossus, The Fall of Colossus, and Colossus and the Crab) – Colossus wasn’t trying to be nice to us. He had an unhealthy penchant for experimenting on people.
I remember reading a short story awhile ago where all the humans disappeared so all the robots don’t know what to do. After awhile they get together and start making all these grandeous plans. So these robots are rampaging across the countryside talking about taking over this and that and how they are the superior creatures on the planet and whatnot.
So all of a sudden this mob of robots encounters a small human child standing all alone. So they alll look at each other and you aren’t sure what these fired up robots will do to the kid until he suddenly says something like “go get me a drink of water”. The robots reply “yes master” and off they go.
I guess the moral of the story is that machines are just that…machines designed to serve us. Without us, they don’t really have a point to existing.
… They’ll be waiting for Godot.
That’s not my complaint at all. I’m not peeved about the whole “Skynet was destroyed, so none of this should have happened,” I’m peeved about the bit in The Terminator where what’s his name mentions the fact that the humans won the war. They were just about to finish off Skynet when, in a last ditch effort, the machines sent a terminator back in time. Then he was sent back, and the time travel device was destroyed. The causality loop works for me there…Skynet gets built because they find robotic bits, create terminators, skynet takes over, war starts, humans rebell, humans win, Skynet sends terminator back in time to try and prevent human uprising, cycle begins. That’s fine.
It’s the whole rewrite of the Terminator being sent back as a last ditch effort. You could let 2 slide by saying "Well, just to make sure, we’re sending our best terminator back to the dawn of Skynet to kill Connor, but to be safe, lets send an older model back to get him before he was born. The humans show up and decide “Hmmm…well, let’s send the robot back to fight the tough one, and this chump back to fight the robot.” That works fine for me, too, even though it is kinda stretching it. Terminator 3 kina makes it seem like Skynet has all the time in the world to just keep building better terminators and send them back whenever one of their previous attempts fail, and that’s just stupid. I mean, in the trailer, the terminatrix is described as a robot “built to destroy cybernetic opponents.” Aside from the supposedly one terminator the resistance had in Terminator 2 (how they got another one for three is beyond me), WHY would Skynet build such a thing? Do they have a whole bunch of rogue terminators running around that they need them? It’s pointless. It’s a stupid idea, and the movie should never be made.
But that’s just my opinion.