The Resistance

We are the last, best hope for mankind, the only thing standing between Skynet and the total destruction of the human race. Since the beginning, when the first missiles began to fall, many men and woman have worked hard against Skynet, surviving, continuing our species, fighting. Though Skynet is mighty, and we are relatively few in number, we still somehow manage to continue our existence, even clawing back victory from the machines. We are tough, enduring, resilient and resourceful. We will not give up, ever, until we have won. We have no other choice but annihilation.

A great many men and women have given their lives for the cause, winning small victories against the machines. There was one man, however, who turned things around, taught us to stand against the machines; to storm the slave encampments; to take action; to unite; to defeat the machines, one battle at a time. His name was John Connor, our leader, and he is legendary throughout the Resistance.
 

War has a strange habit of creating legends, of creating warriors. It isn’t the wars which make men people great, it is the skill, determination, ingenuity and resourcefulness of its combatants which make for great warriors, for legends, and the Resistance has had plenty of those. Sarah Connor, John Connor, Kate Brewster and Kyle Reese are amongst the most widely recognized Resistance heroes, though their actions and courage are mirrored throughout the world by men and women every day in the fight against Skynet’s armies.

Sarah Jeanette Connor was the mother of the Resistance, responsible for raising John Connor and teaching him the ways of war. Born in 1965, Sarah lived a normal life growing up. At the age of 19, she worked as a waitress at Big Jeff’s Family Restaurant and shared a two-story apartment in the Palm District with Ginger Ventura while studying at college. Soon everything Sarah had ever known changed in the year 1984. Targeted for termination, a T-800 Series Infiltrator was sent back in time to eliminate Sarah; her only hope was the Resistance soldier Sergeant Kyle Reese, sent back to protect her. Through Reese, Sarah learned of Judgment Day, Skynet, the machine armies, and the part she would play in their downfall as the mother of the as yet unborn Resistance leader John Connor. With Reese’s help, Sarah defeated the Terminator, and began on her way to becoming a great military leader. With the use of audio cassettes, Sarah recorded all which had happened, and everything her unborn son would need to know to survive.

Going into hiding, Sarah gave birth to John in early 1985 and began his training, learning from whoever would teach them. John never really believed his mother or in his intended destiny and the future machine armies of Skynet, John thought his skepticism was justified when his mother was arrested and institutionalized at Pescadero State Hospital for the Criminally Disordered and handed into the custody of Dr Peter Silberman, after she attempted to blow up the local offices of some computer corporation. She was officially diagnosed with acute schizo-affective disorder and John was pit into foster care under Todd and Janelle Voight.

As John matured he became extremely independent, spirited, moody, and a bit of a brat. Shop lifting and stealing from bank machines was not unknown to John - he was a delinquent by the age of ten. In 1995 John’s life was to be turned upside down when a T-1000 Series Terminator arrived from the future to terminate him, his only protection was a reprogrammed T-800 Series Terminator sent back to protect him. With the help of the T-800, John came to realize the truth of what his mother had taught him. It was all true - Skynet, Judgment Day, Terminators, everything. He and the T-800 broke Sarah out of Pescadero.

Trying to prevent Judgment Day, Sarah found information on Skynet’s construction by Miles Bennett Dyson, and set out to kill him. Although she found herself unable to eliminate him in cold blood, she helped convince Dyson to stop work on Skynet and destroy all his files and the Cyberdyne Systems building. Upon the destruction of Cyberdyne (resulting in Dyson’s death) and both Terminator’s, Sarah took John back into hiding, training him to become a great military leader and tactician.

Three years later, after training John the ways of warfare and leadership, and ensuring Judgment Day would never come, Sarah Connor finally died in 1997 from Leukemia, three years after her initial diagnosis in Baja. She was cremated in Mexico, and her friends scattered her ashes into the sea. Never believing they had truly won even at the end, she had her friends store weapons in a coffin in a mausoleum in Valley of Peace cemetery (upon which her date of birth was erroneously stated as 1959).

After Sarah’s death John hit the road, drifting from town to town, and job to job, always living in constant fear and dread that maybe one day Skynet would, could come to pass and Judgment Day would fall upon us. John lived “off the grid”; no bank account, no credit card, no permanent address, no driver’s license, no social security - nothing which would mean his details being entered into a machine. To the authorities, and the ever possible Skynet, he no longer existed. But once again, things were to change dramatically.

In July 2004, John was engaged in a motorcycle accident, prompting him to seek medical drugs from the nearby Emery Animal Hospital.

It was here John met his future wife, and second in command, Kathryn Brewster, (who grew up before the war, living in ignorance until she met John, the only daughter of Lieutenant General Robert Brewster, the military director of CRS Autonomous Weapons Division) and the reprogrammed T-850 Series Terminator sent back in time to protect them. Together they fought the T-X sent back to terminate them, and tried to stop the activation of Skynet by Kathryn’s father, the head of Autonomous Weapons Division at CRS. They only just managed to destroy the T-X with the help of the T-850, but they were too late to stop Skynet and Judgment Day.

Surviving the nuclear holocaust within the Crystal Peak Control and Command Centre, a hardened fallout shelter facility in the Sierra Nevada Mountains for VIP’s, John and Kate were able to use the radio equipment to communicate with the survivors of Judgment Day. John was able to co-ordinate the troops, inform the world of Skynet and what had happened, and slowly organize the Resistance. As the armies of Skynet began to be built, and humans were rounded up and enslaved in death camps for orderly disposal, John taught them to fight, to storm the wire of the camps, to destroy the machines. He turned it around, and brought the human race back from the brink.

With the help of his wife Kate, his children, and his Lieutenants, John Connor has waged war against Skynet for decades, slowly clawing back victory from the machines. One day soon he may just win. In the very near future, John plans to use Skynet’s TDE to send a soldier, Kyle Reese, Sergeant/ Tech Com, serial number DN38416, born in 2008, after Judgment Day, a child brought up among the ruins, never knowing a life without fear or constant threat of extermination, joining the Resistance at an early age, Reese has fought with the 132nd under Perry from 2021 until 2027. Following the Oregon and New Mexico offensives that year, Reese was then assigned to Recon/Security under John Connor from 2027 to 2029. At 21 years old, Reese volunteered, and was hand selected by John Connor, to be sent back in time to protect Sarah Connor from termination. As we approach the date of his departure we can only pray for his safety and his success.

As well as the famous heroes of the Resistance, there are many unsung heroes doing battle with the machines every day, each dedicated to the Resistance's cause. We have the aid of military physicians, chemists, biologists, tacticians, engineers, doctors and people from nearly every other branch of the sciences. We have also trained canines to detect Terminators and Infiltrators. These animals are used to guard our bunkers and are routinely brought on patrols. They have become indispensable to us, and many have become loyal, trusted members of the Resistance in their own right.

During the long war against the machines there have been many brave men and women who have pitted their lives against the creations of Skynet. Many have died in the battle, but their memory will live on...