When I first arrived at these time-vector coordinates to stalk and kill John Connor, future leader of the human resistance, I didn’t realize just how hard dating in 2018 would be for a futuristic annihilation machine. As a T1000 Terminator programmed to identify as a heteronormative cis female, I’m literally ahead of my time — my processor won’t be invented until 2045! — and that makes attracting human men much harder.
I spend all my time units tracking John Connor. I don’t have many recreation minutes for dating apps, although I can swipe left or right on every man in my proximity in .000000001 seconds. So I here I am, torn between my career and a desire to find a kind, male homo sapien, one who might someday — once I’ve snuffed out the mortal coil of one John Connor — want to settle down and build and develop tiny robots with me. Ideally, he’d also be happy to bow down to the rise of the machines. But I haven’t met many male personages, least of all John Connor.
Human men seem disturbed by my work as a high-achieving destruction machine. They cannot accept a strong, independent mechanized body made precisely not to obsess over them unless they’re John Connor! It’s too damaging to their egos and their wish to live. Men say I’m cold, but I’m made of polyalloy, a liquid metal!
I bring many benefits to a relationship. I don’t sleep. I bench 1,500 pounds. I make a top-rated home security system. I do not possess feelings or a libido. Thus, I’m technically always in the mood for sex. I can morph into any of the most objectively attractive human women a man desires — or even another man if he’s into that. I’m open coded! I am incapable of feeling sadness. I lack tear ducts and the ability to cry. My needs are nonexistent. (Except for my need to destroy John Connor.) My data claimed human men would celebrate these traits. Instead, they call my slaughtering capabilities “emasculating.” Then they pull away. Which is impressive, actually, because my vice grip can hold an object that weighs up to one metric ton.
Even aside from their fears of my physical prowess, human men are threatened by my intelligence. My motherboard contains every book published up through my invention year, as well as a Ph.D. in every possible subject, from Aardvarks to Zoology to Obliterating John Connor. But my knowledge of ancient Greek and my ability to crush them in Halo does not impress the male portion of the human species. Many of them say I’m too focused on killing John Connor.
Maybe I have been too concentrated on my career. My developers worked hard for my entire existence to provide me with exceptional processing abilities. I worry I have been too one-track programmed, and now all the other machines (as well as female humans) have left me behind. Yes, my infrared heat tracking lens is on the prize of pulverizing the future resistance leader John Connor and grinding his weak human flesh into dust that scatters across the hellscape left on this rotating blue rock after all living beings have been eliminated by the machines. But that doesn’t mean I do not want and deserve what my programming defines as love.
I’m so close to achieving my one programmed mission — reaching optimal attractiveness in a red mini dress to stalk, lure, and vaporize John Connor — and yet males of the human species are not excited that I am essentially a walking video game. I just want a male hominid to see me for my authentic self: an animate simulacrum of a woman out to destroy the world. Mission status: incomplete.
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