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Thank you for choosing Cameron Car Rental. We hope you find your Hummer sufficiently armor plated. Please feel free to open up a crate of high-caliber ammunition and use a couple rounds. We don't want to alarm you, but we are required by law to inform you that we are not responsible for any ambushes by "robots-gone-smart". Oh, and unless you fill up the tank, the cost in this post-apocalyptic world might be kinda expensive. There's a few abandoned vehicles around the corner you might be able to siphon some gas from.

Welcome to the world that is the logical extension of historical events set in motion by the Grand Challenge. What happens in Nevada stays in Nevada, excepting the Pentagon-sponsored race across the Mojave desert early this month. Thousands of nerds-who-will-never-have-bachelor-parties-in-Las-Vegas gathered at the 132-mile course to wind up their toy cars and let em go. A Volkswagon...yes...a Volkswagon crossed first. Some humvees finished out the top spots, getting Arnold Shwarzenegger pumped up.

The Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA, which we really know stands for Dastardly Assisted Robot Produced Annihilation) gave $2M dollars to the fastest vehicle to cover the race in less than 10 hours. Taxpayer funded.

According to the AP: The so-called Grand Challenge race is part of the Pentagon's effort to cut the risk of casualties by fulfilling a congressional mandate to have a third of all military ground vehicles unmanned by 2015. If that isn't setting us up for T1-T3, then I promise to do something kinda gross. The vehicles were equipped with the latest sensors, lasers, cameras and radar that feed information to several onboard computers.

So in several years, when we are all huddled amidst the rubble of our burning cities while fending off wave after wave of relentless robot warriors using a dwindling supply of ammunition, look to me with your desparate eyes and I will simply respond with a hungered, dehydrated and equally desparate tone: "I told you so". That's a long sentence.

Bonus fun: Terminator 2 Fact -- Given Arnold Shwatzenegger's $15 million salary and his total of 700 words of dialog, that translates to $21,429 per word. "Hasta la vista, baby" cost $85,716.