According to the trades, the original work is about:

a reclusive young inventor who must save his beloved creation from an evil industrialist before he uses it to corrupt the world.

Producer Nick Nunziata talked to CHUD (which he has a very close working relationship with) about their vision for the film:

This has been coming together for quite a few years, dozens of drafts, amazing conceptual artwork and pre-viz efforts and it is a visionary and deeply affecting story Troy has imagined... His work on Don't Be Afraid of the Dark has already turned heads, and Simple Machines is something he's been filming in his head for quite some time and I have no doubt that audiences will soon be adding his name to the list of filmmakers whose work is absolutely unmissable.

But what are these machines Troy and why are they so simple? Looks like we'll have to wait to find out more, as Troy is currently filming Don't with Guy Pearce and Katie Holmes in Australia.

So it turns out Terminator's future war against Skynet is as much a metal-versus-metal battle as a flesh-versus-metal one. And maybe that's because of the changes our heroes have made to the timeline?

In Friday's episode, John Connor figures out the truth about Jesse — but Jesse also finds out the truth about John Connor. Neither one of them likes what he/she sees, and it's almost like they're both looking into a dark mirror.

John reveals that he knew for a while that Riley was from the future, but he didn't do anything to save her, probably because he wanted to have it all: be John Connor and get to enjoy a regular relationship. And then he tells Jesse that even if her plan had worked and Cameron had killed Riley, he still wouldn't have gotten rid of his pet Terminator. She's just too useful, and John is already becoming more ruthless in the desperate fight to stop Skynet.

And then Derek tells John what he probably already knows: everybody, in that future battle, looks up to John Connor and gives their lives for John Connor. But they don't agree with everything he does, and they don't all love him or even like him. That's part of what being the leader is about, and you have to turn off parts of yourself to do it. Yes, like a machine.

Meanwhile, we see the tail end of all of the flashbacks/forwards to Jesse's submarine mission, where she realized the machines are keeping too many secrets from the humans. And she stopped trusting those machines so much. Those submarine scenes were brutal and psychotic. And it seems like that liquid metal Terminator had a mission of its own — to deliver a message to John Connor that "they" won't join him. Is this a rogue splinter group from Skynet? Could the liquid metal Terminator actually be Catherine Weaver?

And speaking of Weaver, she's already making plans to wipe out former FBI Agent Ellison, as John Henry/Beastwizard discovers. It seems like a weird way to go about things — bring in a guy to teach John Henry the value of human life, and then kill that guy callously. But maybe John Henry wasn't supposed to find out?

So at this point it's pretty obvious that all of this time travel and heroic future-hacking has led to some unpredictable outcomes. John Connor traces his dependence on machines all the way back to Terminator 2, when he bonded with the hacked T-800 and wondered afterwards why his future self didn't send another human instead of a machine. (Answer: machines are expendable.)

And all of their attempts, since then, to avert Skynet have possibly made matters worse. The more we see of Jesse's version of the future, the nastier it looks. And Derek Reese realizes it's a future that he helped to shape, by killing "Billy Wisher" aka Andy Goode, among other things. (If Derek hadn't killed Andy Goode, would John Henry still have fallen into the hands of Catherine Weaver? I can't remember how that went down.)

And yet, in a way, it seems like a pretty logical outcome that the war against Skynet would eventually become a war between machines. The machines are just so much better at wholesale destruction. You're left wondering if John Connor is even still in control, or if he's only a figurehead now. (Of course, maybe having Cameron around throughout his teenage and young-adult years will make him less keen to depend on her kind later.)

Anyway, this episode was chock full of great character bits, especially the look on Sarah's face when John said, "I'm sorry I doubted you," and she realized he was talking to the Terminator, not to her. Sarah's attempt at playing a mind game with Cameron was also terrific, and so was the conversation between Sarah and John about the little hippie town where there were kids named Sequoia and Sage and whatnot. "I was getting in fights every day." "You won those fights." "That's one way of looking at it." It's nice to feel like they really do have a history together.

And yes, John Connor was pretty badass in the episode. He definitely made some strides towards convincing me that he's going to turn into the all-important future leader of humanity and savior of the human race. I still don't entirely buy Thomas Dekker's performance — he still seems petulant when he's shooting for resolute — but it's getting way better and there's a definite progression happening now. He had a lot of heavy lifting to do this time around, and he carried it off pretty well. (Including crying on his mom's lap at the end.) The episode's MVP, of course, was Brian Austin Green. As always. If he'd had any more screen time, he'd have stolen the whole episode.

What did you guys think?

The situation has already become dire. You lose track of people for a few months, and the next thing you know, they've become dongles. One Scranton, PA man was turned into a laser printer for a mad supercomputer. A recent study* said that people are now 29 percent more likely to lose their humanity than their innocence. That means there are potentially millions of posthumans running around who believe that it's not them, it's you.

The thing about humanity is, it's like pregnancy. You're either human, or you're not. There's no middle ground, no half-and-half — bite me, Mr. Spock! — and you don't get to straddle. Pick a side!

I recognize that some of you are fine with being no longer human. It's a valid lifestyle, and I fully support your species-traitor agenda. (Freakazoid.) However, this article isn't aimed at you, but at the people who are still human or human-identified. (Or human-questioning.) Also — and it pains me to have to say this — you robots who want to be human? Go away. Ditto for you trolling cephalopods. It always goes the same way — somebody starts a helpful discussion for current and maybe-former humans, and some A.I. has to come on there and try and reverse-Turing-test everybody, in some perverse bid for human validation.

Seriously, Pinnochio-bots — leave now. This isn't for you. And no, I won't trade validation of your humanity for sex. I don't care how fully functional you are. I still have nano-crabs from the last time.

Okay, now that it's just us, let's get started.

What is humanity?

Countless philosophers and science fiction authors have devoted billions of words to debating this question, because they didn't ask me. If they'd asked me, it would have taken five minutes, and they could have moved on to solving more pressing questions, like "Where is my Debbie Gibson comeback?" Or: "What happens if someone accidentally watches Moulin Rouge without being on the movie's recommended dose of Ativan?"

It's pretty simple: humanity is a mood disorder. It's a chemical imbalance that makes people manic-depressive, needy, passive-aggressive, sexually compulsive and epileptic-bulimic-lactose-intolerant and sponge-throwy. There, we're done.

The creator of humanity, as a concept, was 16th century thinker and fish-thrower Michel de Montaigne. The inventor of bling (see picture at right), Montaigne shaved his head and coated it with a special substance which converted it into a massive lint roll. Thus armed, he would rub his bald head over everyone he met, while shouting, "Que Sais-je?!" which is French for, "Is that a pubic hair stuck to my head? Is it? Is it?" If you heard someone shout "Que sais-je?" you had about five seconds to dodge, before a megacephalic bald head charged you and coated your clothes with head-glue. Sometimes Montaigne would enlist the aid of two specially bred hairless llamas, Pepe and Marino. He also had a belt with a large number of flasks, each containing an adhesive puffer fish, which he could throw with uncanny accuracy at a distance of up to 50 centimes.

Anyway, Montaigne needed a theory to explain to his llamas why he couldn't keep gluing his head to theirs at night, a practice which made the llamas happy but which gave Montaigne terrible neck cramps. He needed to explain what separated him from the the llamas, other than walking upright. Thus was born his theory of ennui-fu, which converted our uniquely human boredom and disaffection into a martial art that could snap your spine in three places. To be human, Montaigne said, one must be able to kill, not just in cold blood, but even in tepid saliva.

Some easy methods to determine whether you are still human:

Okay, so enough theory. Here's the practice. Test yourself to find out if you've lost your humanity, or might be in imminent danger of misplacing it. Answer the following questions:

You have mistakenly eaten a piece of fruit belonging to an archbishop. A mango, say. Do you
A) Hide the iniquitous pit and claim innocence?
B) Confess your error in an elaborate Latin-esque verse?
C) Conceal yourself inside a giant chasuble and pretend to be made out of incense thanks to the judicious application of dry ice?

You face a complex ethical dilemma. What do you do?

What do you mean, you need more info? It's an ethical dilemma. It's complex. Okay, okay. It's an ethical dilemma with at least seven separate aspects. And you have to choose who lives, and who dies. What do you do?

What are you wearing?

What percentage of your body is covered in glowing bubble wrap and/or little bits of electronics? Has your chest/nose/kneecap/genitalia/hair/brain/toenail started behaving outside of your control? Is the sensation that usually tells you when you're no longer hungry now saying that you no longer need to breathe?

When was your last bowel movement? Was it made out of metal?

How about now? What are you wearing now?

How to get your humanity back:

This is the part where it really helps to have watched a lot of science fiction, and possibly have listened to some German industrial music as well. There are clues, there are roadmaps. Many science fiction novels are the work of people who later transformed almost entirely into bubble wrap, as you can see by looking at photo albums from WorldCon. (Every time I'm in the same room as John Shirley, I have to sit on my hands to keep from popping bits of him.)

From my intensive immersion in SF, I know that it helps to freak out. If you even suspect that you are approaching a non-human event, start screaming and breaking stuff. Especially in public, or in front of your coworkers. This can actually help to reverse the dehumanizing effects of vaccines and gadgets just by itself. But it also lets everybody know that you're SERIOUS about staying human. If you remain calm or take the time to think stuff through, you're already sunk.

Don't fall into the trap of going back to nature — it is most likely the inhuman babble of voices inside your head, trying to trick you into infecting the natural world with your contagion.

Don't go macrobiotic. That's usually the last thing people try before they succumb completely, and it never works. Worst of all, it's tantamount to admitting you're about to become a machine-creature, or just a regular creature. Also: If you hear someone saying they've gone macrobiotic, avoid avoid avoid. They are probably half-slug already. Vegans, also highly suspect.

Self-mutiliation works, if only you remove the right parts. Trouble is, people invariably get confused and remove their last vestiges of humanity, which they then sculpt into hortatory figurines, for the remaining "temporarily human" people to gaze upon in horror.

Don't join any groups. Or associations. Don't go to anyone's clubhouse, or "tea room," or especially not basement.

Really, the only surefire vaccine and cure for post-humanity is patriotism. It terrifies and horrifies the agents of cyborgity and mutatedness, because it's beyond their comprehension. Bonus points if you're patriotic for some place you've never actually been, like Tonga. March around shouting slogans and singing anthems, and possibly also hurling insults upon people whom you supect of being from Niue, that inferior land.

It's almost, but not quite, too late. If you don't do something right now, this could be you. Or possibly your boyfriend:

* There's no study. I made it up.

This picture isn't just gorgeous. It's also confirmation that mining technologies haven't changed much over the past two centuries, though the engineers' shiny Hazmat getups have. Images by Andrew Caballero-Reynolds via Getty.

This is a picture from Artzybasheff's book Mechinalia, depicting a "modern executive."

Images via Been Publishing I'm Back and a Robotics and Animation summer course.

The machine analyzes the gas espresso gives off when heated, translating combinations of ions into subjective descriptions like "roasted, flowery, woody, toffee and acidity." Called an "electronic taster," it was created by chemical engineers at Nestle in Switzerland, and will be used as a quality control device in the coffee industry. And perhaps as an evaluation tool for a few coffee snobs (for the record, the machine only tastes ristretto pulls).

Analytical Chemistry published an article this week about the amazing machine, including a precise scientific evaluation of "coffee headspace." According to a release about the research:

The multisensory experience from drinking a cup of coffee makes it a particular challenge for flavor scientists trying to replicate these sensations on a machine. More than 1,000 substances may contribute to the complex aroma of coffee.

Coffee scientists have long been searching for instrumental approaches to complement and eventually replace human sensory profiling.

When Machine Tastes Coffee [Analytical Chemistry]

Microscopy nerds and beam geeks, rejoice! It's TEAM, the coolest damn microscope you'll ever see. A beam of energy pulses through it and, with new error-correcting tech, is able to reduce image noise normally associated with electron microscopes that measure atomic structures. Images courtesy of DOE's National Center for Electron Microscopy.

Debut of TEAM 0.5 [Eurekalert]