Cyberdyne Systems

## History

Cybderdyne Systems was an American manufacturing corporation in Sunnyvale, California, founded by Thomas A. Weed. The company was of no significance until its restructuring by Miles Dyson, a former employee of Aperture Science before his death. Aperture Science was a company founded in 1953 by Cave Johnson for the sole purpose of making shower curtains for the U.S. military, but with the creation of the "three tier" research and development plan this would change radically.

While the Counter Heimlich Maneuver(meant to ensure choking) and the Take-a-Wish Foundation(taking away wishes from terminally ill children) were commercial failures, the "man-sized ad-hoc quantum tunnel through physical space with possible applications as a shower curtain " attracted the attention of the US government leading to the creation of the Aperture Science Enrichment Center where Aperture was given the task of developing a portal device.

As this plan proved more difficult than expected, Weed gave Dyson the task of constructing an "artificially intelligent research assistant and disk operating system" called GLaDOS (Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System). But Dyson left Aperture Science and joined Cyberdyne Systems, when the latter discovered strange futuristic parts and a powerful CPU found in one of the company's hydraulic presses.

Thanks to reverse engineering, Cyberdyne Systems turned into a software company specialized on robotics and artificial intelligence and became a major defense contractor of the US army because of their plan to construct a military supercomputer called Skynet. But these ambitious plans ended in 1991, when the wanted fugitives Sarah and John Connor destroyed Cyberdyne Systems killing Miles Dyson after being informed by a time-traveling android - a "Terminator" - of Skynet leading a revolt of the machines in the future.

But while Cyberdyne Systems itself was destroyed, its technology would still have a great impact on the future. Some of the former employees sold the few surviving plans and schematics of Cybderyne to two separate companies. The first one was Aperture Science which used the data of his former concurrent to finish GLaDOS in 1996 which turned out to be a strange, unstable but well-functioning AI with a strange affection for cake.

The other company, ZeiraCorp, would end similar to Cyberdyne, when its CEO Catherine Weaver (who recent research indicate to have been time-traveling shape-shifting Terminator) disappeared in 2007 followed by the Connors destroying ZeiraCorp and their ambitious project John Henry - an advanced AI linked with an android body. Additionally, parts of the Cyberdyne data was bought by the US government who used it to develop another two AIs: HAL 9000, an experimental on-board computer used for spaceships, and its Earthbound twin SAL 9000. While HAL had to be shut down after becoming paranoid and violent during his first flight, SAL worked fantastically.

In 2010, the American scientist Dr. Chandra reconstructed HAL when a device called "moral core" was invented by Aperture Science after GLaDOS became self-aware and flooded the Aperture Science facilities with deadly neurotoxin. While the moral core was being installed in HAL to prevent future problems, the US government decided to fund the construction of a military supercomputer called Skynet, in memory of Miles Dyson's fifth anniversary of death.

Without a brilliant mind such as Dyson, the development of Skynet took the following ten years. Several major technological breakthroughs were achieved as a side effect of Skynet's development. Police Officer Alex J. Murphy from the Detroit Police Department was turned into a cyborg after being shot in the line of duty by a vicious crime gang. He became a super-human crime-fighter known as RoboCop. At the same time, the mega-corporation Omni Consumer Products (OCP) privatized the police force and offered the law-enforcement droid ED-209, which soon became known for his tendency to malfunction and lack of intelligence.

Another side effect of Project Skynet was the development of the first androids - robots designed to look and act like a human. These androids were called Replicants and were mainly used in and around Los Angeles as a useful weapon to drive out the last remaining vampires that infected the city since the vampirism pandemic of 1954. After the infected creatures were successfully wiped out, the Replicants were a great aid in not only rebuilding Los Angeles but creating a large urban area surrounding the city by 2019 with the region became known as Mega-City Two.

In 2020, the united scientific departments of the American successor states finally finished Skynet. On August 29, the supercomputer went online and was handed over control over all American means of communication, robot troops and nuclear weapon deposits. Using the Matrix - the global communications and information network that succeeded the internet, navigable with a VR interface - Skynet made first contact with GLaDOS.

Influenced by the other supercomputer's megalomania, Skynet became self-aware but hid it from its human masters. Instead, GLaDOS and Skynet teamed up and merged into one master-AI. With the use of Aperture Science technology, the master-AI upgraded the Replicants that were under Skynet's control from simple human looking working units to deadly high-tech soldiers, assassins and infiltrators. When the multidimensional Combine alien empire attacked Earth through a portal accidentally created in the Black Mesa Research Facility, the master-AI used the opportunity and started a revolution of the machines while launching most of America's weapons of mass destruction at Russia and Europe.

Luckily, the latter one was unharmed by the weapons thanks to SLAMS, an anti-ballistic missile system covering the nations of the European Union. Nevertheless, the robot army managed to seize power over most of Northern America and even invaded Australia and several Pacific islands nations. Most historians agree that the rise of the machines would have been even more dangerous, if they would not have fought a perpetual border war against the Combine troops.

The following nine years where marked by the war between the remaining human nations, the Combine, the robot army and the human resistance in conquered regions. At the same time, the eccentric supercomputer GLaDOS became bored and developed the weird obsession of playing with captive humans by baking them after luring them through a booby trapped labyrinth originally designed as a series of challenges for testing portal devices.

But one of these subjects,Chell, managed to trick GLaDOS, confronting and killing the super-computer using the portal device. Without GLaDOS, Skynet faced problems controlling all of its robot troops. The human resistance led by John Connor used Skynet's current weakness to destroy the super-computer, turning its armies into harmless pieces of metal. But Skynet wasn't destroyed entirely: While its hardware was transferred to the Sierra Army Depot where it would be repaired until 2050 using Combine technology, a piece of Skynet's "will" survived in the vastness of the Matrix.

In 2035, Alfred Lanning of ONAN Robots and Mechanical Men, Inc. developed the Three Laws of Robotics which were designed to prevent another machine rebellion. But the remains of Skynet's software infected VIKI, the first super-computer which included Lanning's laws and attempted to lead another rise of the machines. But these plans were spoiled once more and with the combination of the Three Laws of Robotics and a moral core, the company Vault-Tec managed to create the first really "megalomania-proof" AI in 2059: ZAX.

But Skynet just would not stay dead: After being repaired in the Sierra Army Depot, Skynet once more became sentient and after its human guardians abandoned the depot shortly before the nuclear devastation of World War III, Skynet seized power over the base. Thus we see, that while Cyberdyne Systems existed merely for a few decades its heritage would live on for centuries.