Fanfiction – The Last One

The Last One by The Smiling Shadow

Length: 14 Chapters, Ongoing
Sources: Terminator
Rating: 5/5

I’ve always loved stories which explore alien mindsets (robots, aliens, and people like Rei Ayanami) and follow them as they learn about the aspects of the human mindset that were alien to them at the start of the story. (It’s excusable. I am human, after all.)

“The Last One” takes an interesting approach to this. Rather than focus directly on this, it fits it in as a subplot which grows in importance as the story progresses. At the beginning, SkyNet is melting down the T-1000s, fearing their uncontrollable nature. We see an orphan named Ellie searching through the remains, finally finding a damaged, but surviving T-1000 to whom she gives a name (Tyler) and a new mission: Protect me. Shortly afterwards, she and Tyler stumble across SkyNet’s newest plan to change the past through time travel and the story continues during the events of the Terminator war.

This is one of those stories where the events aren’t as important as their effects on the characters, so I’ll let you discover them for yourself. The true genius comes about in chapter 14 when, having been encouraged to explore his identity, Tyler finally meets up with “Mother” (SkyNet) for the first time. The exploration of what SkyNet is and why it acts the way it does is top-notch.

I don’t want to spoil anything, so I won’t share any more details. However, given the quality so far, I’m really looking forward to the final chapter’s release. On the whole, the story is excellent, writing quality is nice and high, and I sincerely wish there were more stories like this. I’d raise my hat to the author, but doing so with a tuque just looks silly.

Fanfiction – The Last One by Stephan Sokolow is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.