Cyberdyne

This is the infamous company which weaponized humanoid robots and then lost control of them.

 

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Table of Contents:

  1. History
  2. List of Known Products
  3. Connections and Progressions
  4. Ancient History
  5. Alliances
  6. Additional Notes
  7. Example Products

 

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History:

The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Cyberdyne initially began as a manufacturing corporation at 18144 El Camino Real, Sunnyvale, California. Founded on January 17, 1984, its products are unclear, possibly computers or processors, but from the equipment in its factory and its high tech-sounding name, it seems possible that Cyberdyne might have been some sort of smaller parts producer for larger manufacturers of high tech equipment.

A Series 800 Terminator, which is sent from the future and designed to kill humans, is crushed in one of the hydraulic presses in Cyberdyne’s factory. Thus, the company obtains the machine’s wreckage, including its CPU chip and an arm. The Terminator

Cyberdyne systems234154

Cyberdyne Systems headquarters

After reverse engineering the Terminator‘s remains, Cyberdyne reverse engineers its CPU and creates a powerful new microprocessor for weapons systems, becoming a major contractor for the US military.

Cyberdyne eventually develops Skynet, a network of supercomputers that employ artificial intelligence in order to replace human beings as commercial and military aircraft pilots, and for the control of other military systems, including nuclear missiles. The system goes online on August 4, 1997. On August 29, 1997, Skynet becomes self-aware. In a panic, humans attempt to shut it down, but Skynet retaliates by launching a nuclear attack against Russia, knowing that the Russian counterattack will eliminate its enemies in the United States, initiating an indeterminately long period of global warfare. The battle pits humans against machines, which develop ever-increasing capabilities. The event is later known as Judgment Day.

Cyberdyne Systems Destroyed

Cyberdyne Systems facility is destroyed.

In an effort to prevent Judgment Day from occurring, Cyberdyne’s headquarters are destroyed by a group of saboteurs in 1995: John Connor, future leader of the human resistance, his mother Sarah Connor, and a second Series 800 Terminator that traveled back in time, with Miles Dyson, Cyberdyne’s lead researcher, assisting them in this endeavor. Terminator 2: Judgment Day

 

Further details here.

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List of Known Products:

It all started innocently enough; prosthetics, simple non-A.I. robotics, and generally things which helped people, never able to threaten them.  The funding was largely coming from the defense and intelligence industries, though; the products were modified to suit their financers.  Year by year, slowly but surely, the creations of this company became humanoid, soldier-like, able to figure things out for themselves, able to network and coordinate with one another, and eventually… to win any war against the humans.

 

Non-Humanoid Hunter Killer

Humanoid Hunter Killer

Main article: Humanoid Hunter Killer

The Humanoid Hunter Killer is an android developed and intended to be similar to a human endoskeleton in look and function.

  • T-70 – A tall and basic Terminator model designed as a basic foot soldier
  • T-400 – A multi-purpose unit designed for close-quarters combat.
  • T-500 – The first true Terminator featured an armored battle chassis that made it more durable than the T-400.
  • T-Infinity – A multi-phasic machine armed with multiple onboard weaponry and a TDE device.

Infiltrators

Main article: Infiltrator

The Infiltrator is a type of the Humanoid Hunter Killer that is built to look exactly like humans and used to infiltrate, seek out and kill human beings. The Infiltrator progresses from rubber skin, human flesh over its endoskeleton, to mimetic polyalloy able to mimic any person or object.

  • T-600 – The first Infiltrator model that possesses a rubber skin sheath.
  • T-700
  • T-800 – A breakthrough Terminator that uses living tissue covering for superior infiltration.
    • T-8xx – Various variants of the Series 800 Terminator
  • T-900 (Rise of the Machines) – A hyper-alloy armored Terminator designed to eliminate other machines.
    • T-950 – An advanced endoskeleton modified from the T-900 that possesses onboard weaponry.
  • T-X – An advanced endoskeleton based on T-950 that possesses mimetic polyalloy and onboard weaponry.
  • T-900 (The Sarah Connor Chronicles) – A advanced Infiltrator able to mimic humans.
  • TS-300 (created by MIR) – A ceramic Terminator designed to replace specific individuals.
  • T-1000 – A mimetic polyalloy Terminator capable of altering its form and appearance.
  • T-3000 – A highly advanced infiltrator model. Made from infecting human being with nano-machines and having them replace the tissue of the subject.
  • T-5000 – A highly advanced Terminator model. Used by Skynet to store its consciousness and infect John Connor with nano-robots and turn him into a T-3000.

 

Further details here.

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Connections and Progressions:

The Terminators of Cyberdyne would eventually contribute to the development of the robotic devices of RoboTech, BattleMech/Space/Tech and MechWarrior, Alien/s, StarCraft, Halo, and EVE Online; what was prototyped at Cyberdyne facilities on Earth… made it, evolution by evolution, to other companies and other worlds, getting larger and more sophisticated, until gigantic spaceships full of walking tanks capable of leveling cities were being commonly deployed.  In spite of how “out of control” the Terminators were for a time back on Earth, it did not make anyone else interested in their technology think twice about improving it for themselves.  Just a few generations later, and almost everyone “out there” was making use of either Terminators or their variants.

With regard to High King Auz in particular, one of the Terminator soft-disclosure films (along with Iron Man, M.A.N.T.I.S., and a few other things) inspired the R+D for the “Ghost” powered-armor exoskeleton/”suit” which, years later, evolved into the S.T. suits the Inisfreeans (ICVs) now wear.  Originally intended to shield and improve the sensory-perception/range of a human operator/wearer, that later variant of this technology, curiously/interestingly was then purposed to shield, in a way, humans from the overwhelming extreme and total beauty and perfection of the operators who’d come to be known as Inisfreeans.  Later still, multi-story “mega-Terminators” called Mandaloridays would also be developed and fielded, though never for such a puny and negligible threat/event as what Cyberdyne or the unchecked Terminators army could be.

Like some of the more-advanced liquid-metal life-mimicking Terminators which the unchecked A.I. managed to develop before it was destroyed, there are other robotic/”inorganic” creations/lifeforms out there which are very difficult for most people to tell apart from normal humans.  The “Pretenders” and “Triple Changers” of the Decepticons are two prime examples.  As you may have seen, at least in “fiction” form, there are also killer robots which can disguise themselves as vehicles –and many other things.

This should make the clever and extrapolating minds wonder… just how much else out there… and right here… could be disguised as something it is not truly like at all.  Could even the ground/worlds we walk and build on… be such disguised high-tech things?  Food for thought.

 

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Ancient History:

Legends of Detrimental Robots, abbreviated as “Deros”, are said to still guard (or plague) certain cave networks.

 

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Alliances:

Cyberdyne was largely destroyed, as –much later– were its unchecked creations, the Terminators.  Small fragments of both survived through the nuclear war and post-fallout battles, however.  At least one faction of them gained partial favor with the Inisfreeans, and a secret treaty, if not a true alliance, was negotiated; those remaining Terminators would be occasionally assisted by the Inisfreeans, provided they only engaged in warfare against the humans which did not result in the radiating of any lands or bodies of water the Inisfreeans wanted to keep free of that stuff.

Ever since, the surviving Terminators have honored this agreement, not going (or bombing) anywhere near the islands or other protectorates of Inisfree, nor to the cloud-land or shadow-land, nor within the territory of Antarctica or its surrounding ocean, and have routinely donated captured humans to the Inisfreeans, such as for use in their Outlands gladiator games in Texas and those in Italy.  Whenever they find/spot humans who are near Inisfreean territories, they are quick to destroy/capture them.

The Inisfreeans have held up their side of the bargain, too; whenever they detect humans too close to Terminator territories/bases, or even thoughts of humans which suggest some might be about to figure out where some of the surviving Terminators are, they rush out on a clandestine deployment to make sure those humans never succeed.

The Terminators have never seen the Inisfreeans as a threat, as the Inisfreeans have never harmed any of them, and vice versa is true.

In the future, whichever Terminators remain in operation on Earth… may end up forming still more alliances with the people/species allowed to remain/go there.

 

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Additional Notes:

The gods never care when humans make such things, as the gods are immune to anything humans can create or conceive.  Inisfreeans, too, pay little attention to the affairs and wars of the “humanimals”, as they see and call them –unless it threatens to pollute innocent environments which the Inisfreeans or their allies prefer to keep as-is.  Left to their devices, then, at least most of the time, the humans cause (or are) their own cataclysms, and that suits the non-humans just fine; it keeps the unruly, rude, foolish, usually-heartless humans in check, cyclically re-weakened so that they never manage to become powerful like gods themselves.

 

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Example Products:

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