Charles Austin was born in 1983 in San Diego, California. His dad worked in computer manufacturing, and his mom stayed home to raise Charley and, eventually, his younger brother Mark. Charles took to computers early, and his dad had a few friends who had been part of the '80s phone phreak movement, and so it wasn't surprising that Charles took to computer hacking just as the Internet was becoming a phenomenon.
Charles got into more than a little bit of trouble for computer hacking, including a few months spent in juvenile detention. With sloppy grades and a history of anti-social behavior, his best chance for college was the military, so he signed up with the Marines when he turned 18. It was there that he met his best friend, a fellow Marine from California who was a bit of a part-time philosopher. "Sophocles," as he was nicknamed, was pretty laid-back, and he was a moderating influence on Charles. The two became close friends, especially under fire when their unit was deployed for action in Afghanistan.
After two years in Afghanistan, Charley and Sophocles returned to California, and they both enrolled in college. Charley went to Cal Tech for Computer Science and Advanced Robotics, Sophocles went to a nearby smaller school for Philosophy. Charley got out of school with a master's degree (one year early) and got a job with an up-and-coming firm named Cyberdyne. The program he was working on specifically involved building smart robots capable of deep human interaction, and they were looking for people with a background in social sciences or philosophy, so Charley got Sophocles in with him.
Neither of them knew that they were doing the early work of designing the most effective killing machines ever designed. Charley thought he was helping to develop at worst a robotic soldier that could realistically replace humans and prevent all the deaths he'd seen in action in the Middle East, and at best a new species that would develop alongside humanity.
Economic turmoil in 2010 caused first Sophocles, and then Charley, to get laid off, and when they had difficulty finding more work, and things began heating up in the Middle East again, the two of them re-enlisted and were sent back into the field. They were in the Middle East with their unit when Judgment Day happened. By using black market connections that Charley had developed, Sophocles and Charley managed to secure passage back to the States, but not before the rest of their unit was wiped out. They landed in California, intent on joining the resistance against the Terminators, but an encounter with Skynet's forces resulted in Sophocles' death.
Charley was devastated to lose his best friend, but he managed to find a resistance cell, and his marine training quickly led him to a position of command. With that position, and his knowledge of Terminator programming, he advanced a fairly radical agenda that would involve reprogramming Terminators to help the resistance. Charley's cell captured a T-888, and Charley programmed it using his fallen friend Sophocles as the basis for its personality.
As it turned out, there were others under John Connor's command thinking along similar lines. Word got out about Charley and his pet terminator, and he was recruited into a larger unit that was also reprogramming T-888s for various missions. He was put together with a specialist in hijacking Skynet vehicles and re-purposing broken-down human transports for the resistance, and they became the core of a scavenging unit operating with the larger resistance.
Looks good to me. +1 FLEX point for Charley.
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