About a year ago, around the time the lockdown in Texas was taking place, I watched The Terminator. While I was watching it, I started imagining the Stranger Things characters playing in the key roles of The Terminator’s plot.
My initial idea for this potential project started with Joyce Byers as Sarah Connor with Jim Hopper as Kyle Reese and Will and Jonathan Byers as John Connor. From there the idea spread until I had several ST characters occupying roles within The Terminator films, resulting in the idea of my 2020 NaNoWriMO Project, No Fate.
The title of the story comes from the words Sarah Connor carves into a table in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. The words come from a quote that Kyle Reese is said to have told to Sarah in the first film (though it’s never heard in the first film and only heard in a deleted scene from Kyle in T2): “The future is not set. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves.”
No Fate stays relatively faithful to the first two Terminator films, with elements of some the later films present.
The prologue of the story takes place in 2050, when the end of the war against Skynet is imminent. It shows Will and Jonathan leading the resistance into a final assault against the machines before Skynet activates its contingency to eliminate Joyce Byers in the past, thus preventing Will and Jonathan’s births.
Jim Hopper volunteers to go back to 1999 to intercept a Terminator programmed to kill Joyce and to protect Joyce. Part one of the story stays true to much of the first film, with a noticeable difference at the end.
Midway through the story is what I call the bridge chapter, which bridges part one and two. It’s a week after the defeat of Skynet and sending Jim back through time when the resistance learns of another contingency Skynet has put into place. Skynet sent back a T-1000 to kill young Will and Jonathan as teens, as well as all of their other future lieutenants.
Will and Jonathan send back a reprogrammed Terminator to protect their younger selves, their friends and their families. Part two of No Fate largely follows the plot of Terminator 2, though the ending is changed drastically.
I hope you all enjoy the story!
You can read No Fate by clicking here.
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