The Insidious Technological Plot to Destroy Life As We Know It; or, Lela Thinks All That Terminator Stuff Might Come True

Ever since I was a young girl (I played the silver ball!)

Ha ha.  Oh, I am a caution.

Seriously.  Ever since I can remember, I've loved science fiction.  Books, movies, whatever.  If it smacked of technology and THE FUTURE, I was probably all for it.  Robots I loved especially.

Pictured: Your best friend and your
mom. Time travel and the impending
robot apocalypse tend to make people
somewhat careless.

And then, when I was around eight, I saw both The Terminator and Terminator 2 for the first time.  And I was sore afraid.  Not that I'd never been introduced to the idea of machines turning on their owners (that's a big part of the backstory of Dune, and Dune was, is, and probably always will be a big part of my life), but this...they were stopping at NOTHING to destroy this one guy BEFORE HE WAS EVEN BORN!  Also, I learned that time is really a mess (long before I got so fully immersed in the world of Dr. Who), Arnold Schwarzenegger is more than just a buzzard-biting barbarian, and that sometimes, the best friend you send back from the future to save your mom so that you can be born really turns out to be your dad.  Talk about confusion!

Despite the heavy Austrian accent,
this is not The Internet. The Internet
only wishes its hyperalloy endoskele-
ton was this cool.

So, anyway, I developed a terror complex about robots, technology, and computer networks.  Of course, that all flew out the window a couple of years later when I met THE INTERNET and we began our long, sometimes painful, friendship.  I wasn't thinking about the fact that The Internet is a complex information network, compiling all the data it can on the world and the human race.  I went on busily through my life, enjoying my sci-fi and my webchats and my Java and HTML.

I got past my terror relating to the Terminator franchise.  I was able to let go and let Google, as it were.  When I did re-watch the Terminator films, I laughed and enjoyed the action and the plot (yes, they had plots) and just admired the fact that Linda Hamilton never seemed to let being a part of a franchise about killer robots get her down.  When they announced a new film in the franchise, I looked forward to it, but I wasn't dying from the anticipation or anything.  More's the luck.

I hated the third film because frankly it sucked.

Sometimes, everything in the world
just goes terribly, terribly right!

Some of the damage done to my love for the franchise was repaired when the television series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles premiered.  It combined many things I LOVE: hot women, robots (some of them actually LIQUID METAL ONES!), alternate universes, and a title with a colon.  It was everything I wanted in a show.  Well, almost everything.  And it had Shirley Manson in season two, so it couldn't go wrong.  Anyway, the series made me not hate the Terminator stuff so much anymore.  But then something else happened.

I remember, it started with a few really odd commercials, the sort where you can't really tell what they're for.  Now that sort of ad isn't uncommon in This Modern Age, but these were intriguing.  They sucked me in as so many things had in the past because they had that science fiction look.

And then I noticed a website address on one of the ads.  And then I went to the site.  And eventually I figured out that it was all advertising a soon-to-be released smart phone, the Droid, so called because the operating system had been named Android.  And I thought "How cute!  A phone with an OS named after a type of robot.  A humanoid robot.  Technically a male-looking humanoid robot, so that's kinda sexist, but I can deal."

Because a glowing red eye doesn't
spell doom at all, amirite?

Finally, they ran some ads that made it obvious that this Droid product was, indeed, a phone.  And then, for the first time, I noticed something.  A slightly sinister something in the form of the phone's power-on screen.  See that picture to the right?  Now go up and look again at that picture of the Terminator.  See a resemblance?

That's right, people.

The Android OS is nothing but a clever front for Skynet!  It's here, people, and it means business.  We're headed for a robot apocalypse of epic (and I do mean EPIC) proportions.  You need to prepare to fight, and you need to be ready to do whatever you have to in order to defend yourself, your family, and...

'Scuse me for a minute...

Okay, well, I gotta wrap this up before all the blood and the machine oil starts to screw up my keyboard.  Just know what you're gonna do when the time comes.

I'm gonna build a DVD player!