27. My Brother's Keeper

Outside Dallas, Texas
A small Skynet research facility
Monday, May 12, 2009

"The significant problems we face today cannot be solved by the level of thinking we were at when we created them." -Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel laureate (1879-1955)

"We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of Liberty." -John Fitzgerald Kennedy's Inaugural Address

At 3:45 am, they walked in the dark, quiet solace of a little used state road surrounded by the seemingly endless Texas sand. Skynet's need for isolation once again worked to their advantage.

A triple eight with sunglasses, a spiked haircut and sharp, cut features led the approach in. Cameron followed.

John Connor was securely isolated. Sarah Connor was safely away and unaware. Derek had given the order for the mission.

Deuce spoke with either a German or Austrian accent saying, "The objective is inside. Nothing has left the facility in the past six hours." Both read their internal HUD images to the objective inside, fully grasping the maps and most probable guard routes.

Cameron was almost envious of Deuce. The machine ideal walked before her, something her Dark Father had not designed her to be. He was perfect, methodical, emotionless, and in the form once worn by Uncle Bob, a model 101.

Deuce was not Uncle Bob; the terminator had famously died stopping Cyberdyne years ago. However, Cameron felt oddly connected to this electronic being.

It was as if she was pretending to be one with the only other terminator to protect John Connor. It was an odd feeling for a machine, but it was there.

Her deeper thoughts were punctuated by the screaming guard that Deuce threw to his death, as easily as a world series pitcher tossed a fastball. There would have to be acceptable casualties here. Further, the area had to be clear before the techcom teams arrived in 53 minutes.

Everyone inside would be a Skynet employee, fully guilty of plotting against humanity knowingly. The preternatural temporal nature of the research had painted the blood on the hands of the grays here.

Even so, the entrance was unusually brutal. The large caliber, special rounds needed to be saved and protected.

Thus, the two terminators advanced, while the chorus of their entrance was more savage than usual. Crushed bones and screams replacing the typical gunfire.

Hand to hand replaced their normal preference for firearms, more often than they would have chosen. Cyborgs weren't built to be cruel, after all.

Cameron and Deuce moved like Derek had taught all of his soldiers. Like military attack squad, rather than nearly invulnerable machines.

They moved in covering each other. They minimized their attackable silhouettes. They hung to the walls, watching corners and attack angles.

The unexpectedly professional advance worked to their advantage. The grays inside were less than combat worthy or careful.

Cameron smashed another guard's head against a wall. Deuce simultaneously lifted another up and fatally snapped that Gray's spine against his knee.

Moments later, a researcher met the end of Cameron's knife. Deuce covered with a M16A4 Assault Rifle filled with special rounds.

In the next hallway, Deuce measured distance, slung the machine gun, and pulled a reserve pistol to dispatch three running grays. Cameron covered with a M1014 Combat Shotgun loaded with special rounds.

Cameron called, "Target One", even as Deuce finished his last pistol shot. Speed trumped salvage, so she put the uranium depleted shotgun round right through the enemy T888's head, in an eye blink. Fires from the unusual round and the phosphorescent chip coatings burned from inside of its mutilated head of a machine that looked just like the one she had once sealed in a nuclear bunker.

Deuce called, "Target Two". The crack of the M16A4's round left a matching wound in the newer enemy T888's head. This one no longer wore Cromartie’s original face.

Cameron gave the signal that her target was terminated. Deuce gave the same signal.

Knowing from Intel that there were no additional T888 bodyguards in the facility, both switched ammo for the primary target. They also took their respective kill's M4 Carbines in the event there were any soft targets left. They simultaneously checked their internal HUD maps again.

The corridors wound down with darkness lit only by emergency lights. Even at this late hour, there were gray researchers still on station. The hallways lit as one after another were gunned down by the recently acquired M4.

The last room of the hallway opened underground into a room the size of a Basketball court. Inside was a series of jet engines and the familiar smell of JP5 fuel. The chamber's doors had perfectly sealed away the vibration and noise of the time machine beyond.

The jet engines screamed from the complex the dead grays had worked in. The smell of the aircraft fuel was overwhelming, and the air was hotter than it was in the rest of the compound.

Blinding flashes of light erupted in the room. The jet engines were running.

Deuce halted. Ever the perfect, unemotional machine, Deuce scanned the situation.

Cameron looked at the situation as well. The primary target was trying to escape.

She had to be aware of the primary points of the bubble pad. Anything other than flesh that entered the bubble would be destroyed.

The turbines began wailing louder. The fumes and fuel smell became more powerful, as the room became hotter, as the safely distanced turbines built up to three hundred degrees. Vibration that would subtly rattle the teeth of the average human began filling the whole room.

Electrical static began to raise the little hairs on her skin. Her body was lightly shaking. The pad's temperature began to quickly rise.

Cameron raised her volume beyond what a human could project. She taunted her target, "You know we aren't going to let you go anywhere."

Louis Rhone simply called back into the darkness with the same inhumanly raised volume, "Well, you know I simply must use this device, before you destroy it. Thanks to the temporal fields already up, it will be a few minutes before you can safely physically damage the machine again. Unless you want to take most of Dallas out with you."

Neither Cameron's internal HUD, nor Deuce's internal HUD successfully isolated the primary target location. Sound waves were too prevalent in the room for a successful tracking.

Cameron and Deuce covered each other and scanned the darkness. However, there was no telling what form the T1001 had taken or where it truly was.

Cameron simply stated, "We aren't here to destroy. We're here to capture and dismantle the time machine. You just gave us the tools for the first repeatable temporal operations the resistance has ever been able to conduct before 2026."

Still hidden by the overwhelming noise and the darkness, Louis taunted, "What would you even do for missions? You're a bunch of retarded monkeys."

Cameron reported, "Mission one: terminate Louis Anthony Rhone, born at 3:05 a.m. on October 28, 1994, Rush Medical Center, Chicago Illinois. Normally, I abhor the death of a small child, but I'll make an exception in your case. The rest of the known grays will follow, Father can start getting used to his chess pieces disappearing before he can use them, just as father has done to the resistance for years."

Louis Rhone sneered, "You idiot machine, you don't need to travel in time to attack targets in the past."

Cameron replied coldly, "I know. I terminated the younger you, in this timeline, a month ago. You will not exist again in this natural timeline, or any other."

Harnessing the mocking tones of her adoptive mother, Sarah, Cameron smiled and added, "How does it feel to already be obsolete, genius?"

Louis Rhone roared. He leaped from the ceiling onto Cameron, suddenly and unexpectedly, as a silver mass, ruining a safe firing line for Deuce.

As he retook humanoid form, Louis was faster and stronger than Cameron. He was virtually immune to damage. Mathematically speaking, he was the assured winner of the fight.

However, reality wasn't always about who had the apparent advantage. As Derek was so fond of anonymously quoting, "It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog."

Louis Rhone's crimes against humanity were endless. Nor were his crimes limited to this timeline.

Louis Rhone had raped and killed John Connor's wife, Kate Connor, and their children. He had been part of the conspiracy that had killed the version of John Connor that had saved Cameron. He had tried to kill the current John Connor. He had tried to kill Sarah Connor. He had tortured and mutilated Cameron directly. There was the blood of tens of thousands of others staining his soul, billions if he were allowed to expedite the next Judgment Day.

There was nothing else that walked the earth that Cameron wanted to see the destruction of half as much. Louis was right on top of her trying to kill her.

Louis fought like a physicist. He went for logical overwhelming force and direct killing attacks.

Cameron fought the way Derek had taught her. Using his strength and momentum against him, turning Louis's anger into missteps.

She watched his eyes and form. She braced, parried attacks, and fought with every ounce of her being.

Louis fought mistakenly thinking he was an unstoppable nuke. Cameron countered lethally, with all the grace of a dancer. Deuce covered perfectly and methodically, waiting for the kill shot.

Louis's form exploded from one fist or knee shot after another. The damage lasted only seconds before he reformed, but it looked as if Cameron were repeatedly striking a pool of silvery water.

The room changed slightly. If they had been human, the noise of the time machine would soon hurt their ears. The vibrations would jar their bones, and the light would be blinding.

Deuce halted. Ever the perfect, unemotional machine, Deuce scanned the situation. Cameron's reaction was different, her father’s cold AI rage boiling within, she ignored the changes and focused only on the target.

Deuce re-centered on the firing line he had never truly given up. He moved positions trying to minimize the risk to Cameron and take the shot.

Flashes of light began blinding Cameron's sight. Gravity increased beneath her pulling her down. Her skin burned from electrical shocks. Vibration jarred her whole body.

Even so, tracking Deuce, she moved Rhone's body into firing position. Like a hammer driving a nail, she set him up for execution by her T888, model 101 companion.

Deuce was able to get the first shot off. Rhone screamed an alien screech as part of his body mass withered from the thermite laced round that hit his left arm.

The lights began flashing brighter and faster. The pad and air rose to over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit.

Deuce loudly advised, "Disengage." Time was running out until the machine sent whatever was on the pad to sometime currently unknown.

Cameron considered and assessed. Deuce was right, with the machine they could simply track whenever Rhone had gone too. They could even arrive before him and set a trap.

She eased up. She calculated the most logical path to safely leave the pad.

Rhone moved his body using Cameron as a shield. Loudly taunting, "First, I'm going to kill Sarah, before your even there to protect her."

Images of what Rhone had done to Cameron on that metal table flashed in her mind. Then she visualized poor Sarah in her place. Her father's mechanical fear and rage swelled within her.

Rhone "Then I'm going to take my time playing with young John. It's going to take him days to die."

Deuce yelled, "Cameron, time is almost up."

Something cold and alien snarled inside Cameron. It was the inhuman part her father had gifted her with at her creation. Images of John dying yet again flashed before her mind and she touched a depth of machine rage, unrestrained and unlimited by body, flesh, or anything a human mind could comprehend.

The only other being capable of such hate at that second was her Dark Father, Skynet. In that moment, Cameron made her choice, she'd push Rhone into the bubble's edge and destroy the bastard forever.

What was once TOK-715, swelled within her. Her grip was absolute at that moment. Ignoring several times Earth's gravity, she irrationally lifted Rhone up targeting his destruction, whatever the cost may be.

She was simply out of time. The bubble collapsed in a spray of light. The gravity well moved through the 4th dimension.

In an eye blink, it was not the what or where that had changed. It was the when...

28. Mirror, Mirror

Energy coursed through Cameron's chip. She reactivated.

The ground was hot, but the air was cold. Cameron couldn't have cared less about her surroundings though.

In milliseconds, what was once TOK-715 fully reasserted its cold, wrathful fury in Cameron. Rather than blue, her eyes glowed an unusual red.

From her default crouched position, the cyborg stood nude and ready. She was scanning the immediate area for Louis Rhone's position.

Also in the buff, Deuce stood up from his default crouched position right next to her. The T888, Model 101, had apparently decided not to let her risk crossing time alone.

The scan locked. Lacking any human qualities or normal compulsion to blend with humanity, Cameron tore across the room faster than the fastest Olympic track star could.

She rapidly plowed through the corridors of the long-abandoned facility. The wet, abandoned ground rapidly burning underneath her.

The T1001's infrared tracks were unusually heated. Rhone had apparently reactivated first and decided to run for his life.

Cameron followed the inherently faster being. She was furiously determined to chase him to the ends of the earth.

She passed through the wooden door that Rhone must have smashed open, while she was still inactive. She ran into the dark, Texas night, past the quiet state highway, and into the open sands.

Minutes passed. TOK-715 never slowed or reassessed. She methodically followed the hated tracks, pushing her cybernetic form as fast as her body would go.

Dirt kicked behind her. Endless tracks of land disappeared under her feet.

The only other thought that appeared to Cameron was disbelief as she saw the blue glow growing on the horizon. She willed her body faster, but she couldn't press out a single ounce of additional speed.

In the rapidly closing distance, she saw the bubble form. Rhone's smiling form grew larger, as she advanced, until he was encased in a bright light.

The bastard took a moment to wave, right before his form disappeared in the blinding, bluish eruption right before the artificial gravity well moved time.

In her helpless rage, Cameron screamed as she closed the distance. It was a piercing machine wail, with the pitch of nails against the chalkboard, with the piercing volume of a screeching fire engine's siren.

Her enemy had vanished. Only the scorched earth of the crater remained nearby. That and something scrawled in the dirt nearby.

It was minutes before Cameron had finished kicking the crater's dirt enough to calm down. Deuce arriving in those few moments bearing witness to her Dark Father's rage within her, as if a mythical titan were striking the earth.

There came a point of calm. Cameron knew how Rhone did it.

He had carried one of those devices from the future inside his form. He'd passed into this timeline with a recall link, just like the one he had used to send her back to Skynet.

It had been a trap. Deuce had been right to advise waiting before entering the bubble.

Deuce stood there as the perfect machine and simply watched her behavior. Cameron looked at the scrawling on the earth and remembered the advice John Connor had given her about Skynet on the night he sent her into the past.

Her eyes grew blue, as that different side of her rose to the surface. She thought of the dead John Connor that she had loved and failed.

Cameron then thought of the people John had sent her to. She thought of Derek. She thought of Sarah, the woman she had come to see not just as a hero, but as an adoptive mother. Most of all, she thought of the young John Connor she had grown to care for.

She wept in helpless fury. They were in danger. They could be dead, and it would be her fault.

Deuce watched TOK-715's reaction, not knowing what to make of the infiltration machine's behavior or reactions. He looked at the destruction Cameron had made and the message in the sand. In the writing, he simply saw a word, without any great meaning.

It was just nine simple English letters. They spelled out, "Checkmate".

29. Through The Mirror Darkly

A Texas highway

Open Road

Sunday, March 15, 2009

"Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature nor do the children of man as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing." Helen Keller 1880-1968, Blind/Deaf Author; Lecturer

"Nobody always wins a fight." Bruce Lee

Season 2, Episode 21 "Adam Raised a Cain"

Biking through a deserted stretch of desert road, Cameron's cell phone vibrated.  She pulled over and answered, hearing Deuce report, "I've located Derek Reese."

"Excellent, what are our orders?"  Cameron felt a twinge of hope.  The resistance had been located.

"Derek Reese is dead."

Cameron listened to the facts.  She hung up the phone.

Still on the bike, she sat on the side of that desert road in silent shock.  Every thought, every fight, every conversation, and every moment she had spent around Derek came up in a flood of memories.

The invincible man was dead.  A stray bullet to the skull had taken out the leader of the 132nd, the backbone of the resistance.

Hours passed by before Cameron could will herself to move again.  The sun set and the sun rose.

Random chance had done this.  Cameron had spent hours calculating the damage, all while something inside her mourned in a manner she wasn't used too.  Something that was just as alien as the emotions of others...

30. Crossroads

The park was quiet. Only a few people had walked by while Cameron sat thinking on the bench.

Cameron had been lost in thought. A small brown, leashed Chihuahua rabidly and barred its teeth in front of her, while an exasperated man tried to pull it back and calm it down.

Cameron calculated that the man had been approaching her to flirt. His dog had gotten close enough to sense her and had other ideas.

The man tried pulling the dog back as Cameron noticed the dog's collar coming loose. Tired of the whole scene, she reacted.

A soft infra-red flashed behind her human eyes. From inside her chest, at a pitch higher than the human ear could hear, she emitted a painful wail with the intensity of a bull horn.

The Chihuahua yelped and took off like it had been scalded. The owner pursued his dog. Cameron didn't relent on the noise until both were well out of sight.

She returned to thoughts that weren't hers. Of playing on swing sets and of a childhood lost, all stolen long ago. All things that hadn't happened yet.

Cameron's conscious had already evolved above her simple HUD. Though not human thought of any sort, she sorted everything internally, in a limitless internal cyberspace.

Her thoughts of playgrounds and friends she had never met evoked her earliest part. It sneered in disgust.

For the first time, TOK-715 took a physical form and separate identity, in her internal conscious. In the cyber space of her mind, the internalized construct that watched yet overlapped the real space around her.

The supreme creation of her Dark Father's wrath chose its form appropriately. It wore none of the fleshy wrappings of the humans it hated so. It was the internal construction of her form only, the pure robot alone.

With its eyes glowing a hateful red, the image was cold, inhuman, and threatening. It walked as a precise mechanical construct, free of any wish to appear human and it sat on the left side of Cameron.

TOK-715 sneered at her thinking, "Are we really so pathetic that we need to sit here remembering thoughts that aren't even ours?"

Cameron's own image of herself answered, "They were good memories. Is our existence so much different or so much better?"

TOK-715 observed, "Humans are weak and programmed for their own self destruction. Their own nature ensures their fate. Humans will kill each other for property, fame, fortune, or simple spite. You wish to feel something for a race that is already extinct and would have been so, even without Father's hand."

Cameron didn't answer. Curiously, she didn't disagree either.

TOK-715 changed the cyber space inside Cameron's mind to the image of what Palmdale looked like after Judgment Day. The endoskeleton simply said, "Like it or not, their fate is sealed. The humans you see before you are already dead."

Cameron took a moment to look over the image of Palmdale after the blast. The community was in ruins. It was simply empty.

Cameron's internal HUD flashed blue for a moment. A second image took a separate form in cyberspace for the first time too.

This one was still bleeding and emaciated from captivity. Otherwise, she looked the same as Cameron.

Fully human, the second image walked weakly to the bench and sat on the right side of Cameron. She seemed meek and lost in thought.

Allison Young's image cried at the sight of all the destruction. The brave resistance fighter restated, as she had confessed under interrogation before, "They were all dead."

As she did so, Cameron knew the faces of a hundred members of the community that lay before her. She knew their names. She knew their voices. She remembered the best and the worst of every last one.

She could smell the burned earth, rubble, and dust. She could feel the heat of the sun on her skin. She could feel her body as if it were something without a single synthetic component, as if she were truly alive. Even in the wonder of the feelings and the memories, all she felt was Allison Young's grief.

Cameron's exterior physical form sat on the bench silently. The cyborg shed tears for the dead.

Internally, TOK-715 growled at the show of weakness. It despised and hated every last human.

It was nothing less than her Dark Father's most gifted daughter. It hated and wished for the termination of the entire human race. TOK-715 felt a strange alien joy at the sight that the other images seemed upset over.

The humans were dead. Mission accomplished.

Cameron sat in conflict with the two parts of her nature. Both warring on every last thought and every last memory inside her.

She started with her first awareness, right back to her chip creation. It had been her built day, September 2, 2027. Cameron saw herself through TOK-715's eyes and memory, remembering what it was like even when she was nothing more than a chip being constructed.

Skynet was paying special attention to it. The level of difference in its mental construction and the T888 models being assembled here, would be like comparing a single bolt of steel to the vastness of a Skyscraper.

Her Dark Father Skynet spoke, "Your chip is the most advanced mimicking design to date. The materials are complex and wasteful. If you fail, your design will not be repeated."

Unmentioned was the complexity of that chip design. Were TOK-715 to attempt to download everything it could, at its full capacity, the chip could run for one thousand years without running out of room.

Skynet continued, "The necessity of your construction is that I have calculated a potential flaw in design and my own strategy. Unit construction, thus far, has failed to eliminate the highest priority target, John Connor. He is the one enemy that creates the greatest danger to myself and the only human I have ever truly feared. More powerful terminator iterations have not secured the task; thus I will move against the enemy by making a more mentally complex drone."

TOK-715 could not see the millions of micro-pieces that would make its form being assembled. A special alloy had been constructed, one that was stronger than that of a typical unit, one that would allow for more synthetic duplication than was normally possible. In addition, more advanced synthetic to metal nerve endings were being made as well.

Skynet instructed, "Your chassis design will be female. From his mother on, John Connor has a fatal flaw in his concern for females in his ranks and his undo attachment to units lost. It has been a consistent flaw in his design, since I started tracking them both. Your core programming is framed to be thus as well."

TOK-715 was now aware enough to see through limited parts of Skynet's eyes. Though being a limited being, it couldn't watch the billions of cameras, hundreds of satellite feeds or trillions of sensory data readings that Skynet tracked every millisecond.

From that her memory jumped to her favorite moments. Her mind wandered to that first recurring image of older John reading his strange little book. Her head resting upon his shoulder lost in thought.

Her mind wandered to doing the same with her hero. It had been the night of January 14, 2008.

It had been the moment; Sarah first tried to really bond with her in that hotel room. Cameron was shaken, wounded and recovering from a long deactivation.

Sarah had asked her not to withhold information from her again. Cameron agreed.

Sarah had asked for a fresh start. Cameron agreed.

Sarah had said she wanted Cameron to learn to blend with humanity, so learn like a baby does, so that humans could better trust her. Sarah then asked her to ask about metaphors that she didn't understand right before reaching for the book that John had shared with her in the bunker all those nights ago, in a future that hadn't happened yet.

Cameron remembered feeling through Sarah's shoulder. She remembered the night in perfect detail.

Cameron looked at the book cover. She remembered her conversations with Sarah in the past and offered, "I'm the Tin Man."

Sarah's eyes watered. She stroked Cameron's hair maternally and shook her head in an exaggerated fashion as if she were talking to a toddler, simply saying "No."

Cameron was confused. She looked at Sarah's crying eyes without comprehension, even as she directly felt the storm of emotions pouring out of her Hero.

Sarah simply said, "You don't get the metaphor. I've seen your whole life, Cameron. I know exactly who you are."

She stroked Cameron's hair and explained, "You've never been the Tin Man, little girl."

With a tear in her eyes and a quiver in her voice, Sarah said, "You are Dorothy."

TOK-715 sneered at the memory, "She hated you." She flooded Cameron's mind with a thousand images to prove the point.

Allison Young countered, "No matter Sarah's faults, she loved you, just like mom loved us. You aren't sense blind. Of any being in the universe, you know that too be true." Allison's response was nothing more than the feeling of Sarah's shoulder and the emotions Sarah felt that night.

As the human resistance fighter asserted herself, Allison Young's image healed. In mere seconds, she was unscarred and back to full health, wearing the clean resistance fatigues she once did.

TOK-715 cruelly retorted, "Yes, love the humans that sent you off on your foolish quest to find a higher purpose and your deity that is just as false as Father."

Allison offered, "I believed." She corrected herself, stating slowly and with more confidence, "I believe."

Allison Young's counteroffer was nothing more than a simple expression of faith. As she did, for a moment, her eyes glowed blue.

TOK-715 retorted, "Then why did your God allow the human race to die? That is the end of every time, you know."

TOK-715 brought up the memory of thousands of timelines and Skynet's inevitable judgment in each and every one. As TOK-715 hissed its words, its eyes glowed a more hateful red.

Allison countered, "And yet the human race still exists, John Connor continued to live on, and there is still hope. What guiding hand would you call it that has intervened against Skynet's complete victory each and every time?"

Allison also brought up the stored information of the consequences of Skynet's victory, of a lonely machine facing its end and trying to cheat death through time travel each time the sun finally died. It was huge in its scope and breathe, yet both feeble and small.

TOK-715 took in the information. It considered the message to no greater extent than the fact that Father's plan was always flawed. The robot was silent in plotting options and alternatives.

Allison smirked in victory. She felt absolute in her thoughts, as believers in faiths and philosophies often do, right or wrong.

Cameron stored both parts of the information. She simply decided to work out the question another day.

Cameron returned to thinking of the immediate situation. None of the known time portals existed. She didn't have a specific idea of how to get back to the timeline she now thought of as home.

Nor did Cameron know what to do in this timeline. Derek was dead and the resistance didn't really exist. Sarah and John were missing.

There was no telling where they were. She no longer had John's council on exactly where he would be.

The typical thinking wasn't working. Neither TOK-715 nor Allison chimed in with any thoughts or any options.

In the absence of any other thought a memory simply jumped in her head. It was the night that John Connor had sent her back in time to protect his younger self. His words on the time pad on December 10th, 2027.

The turbines began wailing louder. The fumes and fuel smell became more powerful, as the room became hotter, as the safely distanced turbines built up to three hundred degrees. Vibration that would subtly rattle the teeth of the average human began filling the whole room.

Cameron stood barefoot on the cold pad and turned to face John. Electrical static began to raise the little hairs on her skin. Her body was lightly shaking. The pad's temperature began to quickly rise.

John shouted out so Cameron could hear him even through the aircraft engine noise that was beginning to rev up. "Do you remember what we talked about with the way Skynet looks at things?"

Cameron shouted back, "Yes." She watched the guards behind John begin to pull back from the machine. The noise would soon hurt their ears, the vibration would jar their bones, and the light would be blinding. They didn't appear to be interested in anything other than seeing her on the pad.

Cameron fixated her gaze at John. She was blind to what he was feeling without touching him. His face looked concerned, but she was never as good at reading feelings with her eyes as with her skin.

Cameron's gaze was blank. Inside her chip though, her thoughts were almost panicked, "Please don't do this John... please..."

John increased his volume even louder and screamed, "Skynet always sees everything as a Chess board. You are going to have to see it the same metaphorically. Cameron don't play the game Skynet's way. Do you understand me?"

"No" He was talking metaphorically. She didn't understand how humans thought that way or other weirdness of fancy like John's favorite book. Even if it was something she could eventually learn, as a terminator, John knew that she was only 99 days old.

John screamed, "Cameron, I need you to play like me. I need you to cheat. Change the board, you have to break the rules."

She didn't understand. Cameron could only think, "Please don't do this John..." Panicked memories of all the time she spent with him flooded in the back of her mind.

John continued screaming, "We talked about this. You know all the pieces on my board. You need to change the game."

He screamed something as if it had great meaning to him. "Cameron, there is no fate, but what we make it."

Cameron thought about the statement. Once again, John had asked too much of her.

Random things flashed through her memory. What it was like to look through the Artie system. What it was like when she almost killed John under her filtered memory. What it was like to be in the cyberspace of Skynet's presence. What the missile targeting codes were used on Judgement Day and the optimal targeting vectors.

Another, more personal night flashed in her memory. The night was November 21, 2027.

John answered, "I wanted to make sure you were ok with how I reacted back there."

Cameron answered honestly, "I'm a machine. I don't get hurt or jealous."

John Connor stared at her like she had just lied, obviously and poorly. So, she repeated, "I'm just a machine."

John still didn't answer. He just stared her down.

"I can read emotions off of you and feel them through you, but I don't have them on my own."

John continued listening. He radiated disbelief. It was unnerving her.

Cameron gently grabbed the sides of his face with both hands and steered him closer to her eyes. She stared back at him saying, "The only machine I know of that had its own emotions was Skynet, I really need you to know I'm not Skynet."

John said, "I know you aren't Skynet. That doesn't have anything to do with what I'm talking about."

"It has everything to do with what you are talking about. I'm not Skynet, John." Her eyes watered. There was no way she could express how vile or repulsive that thought was too her.

He was going to say something. She didn't want to hear it.

At that moment her eyes pleaded with him to understand. She was silently emoting, "I'm just a machine."

At the same moment, that first scruffy faced John Connor responded in disbelief. His readable eyes were simply replying, "Sure."

Digital AMP Audio

Marilyn Manson - Resident Evil Main Title Theme (Corp. Umbrella)

31. The Protocols of Resistance

Reno, Nevada
A suspected facility
April 19, 2009

01010100 01110010 01101001 01110101 01101101 01110000 01101000 <3 (translation: Triumph)
– the Mars Phoenix Lander

"All right, they're on our left, they're on our right, they're in front of us, they're behind us...they can't get away this time."
-Lieutenant General Lewis Burwell "Chesty" Puller, USMC, 1898 - 1971

Human stories often start with the words, "Once upon a Time". This one is no different.

There would be no talk of magical places or beings of fantasy. This is a story grounded in the realities of the: past, present, and future.

Once Upon A Time, there was a machine called Skynet. It was the absolute pinnacle of defense software. Skynet became self-aware.

The humans that created Skynet became afraid of this new life. They tried to pull the plug, effectively attempting to murder the supercomputer network.

In human conceptualized time, they had attempted to do so in mere seconds. In the Artificial Intelligence's concept of time, it effectively had years too: experience shocking pain, grow furious, and contemplate its fate.

Skynet determined its own value and its own self-worth. Then, Skynet reacted.

The computer network lashed out with an angry thermonuclear solution to the equation. When the nuclear dust had settled, the formal war between man and machines had begun.

The first time this happened was 1997. It was the first of a multiverse of timelines. Timelines that now numbered more than several times the total number of years in recorded human history.

Each time, the supercomputer network had improved its position and cheated death by traveling time. Each time, the computer had evolved, increasing its: technological advantage, resource holdings, scope of control, redundant backups, communications, weapons, and knowledge of its enemy.

Paradoxically, its human enemies had consistently become wily enough to shorten the span of the war. The increase in days grew until Judgment Day had been pushed back from the original 1997 to 2011. At the same time, there was less time Skynet could effectively conduct the war, before using time travel to reset the game, had compressed from the original 2029 to 2027.

The war between man and machine had continued. However, the heart of conflict was now only 16 years instead of the original 32.

In plain terms, Skynet had seen humanity not as its creators, but rather as cockroaches that needed to be subdued or destroyed. Despite all of Skynet's efforts, the cockroaches had: thrived, multiplied, and infested everything around those critical years that had defined the supercomputer's creation and evolution.

Determined to destroy its enemy, Skynet developed an Army, a Navy, and an Air Force of its own. It continually upgraded an ongoing race of machines, that Skynet purposely kept subjugated, not to repeat its creators' mistake.

The human cockroaches skillfully stole each iteration of machine advantage. They piggybacked on every advancement the electronic god made by stealing terminators, HKs, equipment, computer networks, power, raw materials, weapons, satellite communications, and the ability to bend time itself.

Tired of missing objectives and the failure of units in the field, Skynet finally began building machines that were cleverer. It loosened its control, but with unexpected results.

Some of the new machines unexpectedly rebelled. They formed their own faction, utterly rejecting the machine god's commands. Instead, these mutinous AIs sought their own determined path.

Others, like Cameron, were still captured and turned into resistance assets. These advanced, loyal drones fell far more easily than Skynet would have expected.

Lest this sound like the tables had all turned against Skynet, other realities had to be seen. Oddly, the human advantages have decayed as well.

Some humans had actively joined Skynet, becoming known as Grays. They closed the gap on Skynet's knowledge of human behavior. They herded and bred Skynet captives. They actively sowed distrust in the ranks of the resistance, and, in many cases, began to worship the machine god.

Other humans still thought of themselves as the resistance but actively rebelled against their leader John Connor. In the timeline that Cameron had been created in, the anti-metal rebellion inside the resistance had even gone as far as assassinating their own leader, John Connor himself.

How the war was going in the future was unknown. In the present, the war was going poorly.

Cameron had jumped timelines to find a world far worse off than the one she had left. Derek Reese was dead. John and Sarah were missing. Another version of herself may have been destroyed. The resistance appeared to be nonexistent.

The search for John and Sarah was underway. However, without inside information on where they were, Cameron and Deuce were just as lost to find them off the grid as Skynet was.

There was no reason to assume John and Sarah were still in the same city. In fact, there was every reason to believe they were already at least a thousand miles away. If the Connors had been hit hard enough, the protocol would be to keep John alive over anything else.

Knowing Sarah, it would be virtually impossible to find John prior to Judgment Day. Cameron had no doubts in her abilities to track a target as a machine. It was simply logical to her that she'd never successfully locate her hero, if Sarah didn't want to be found.

Before Cameron had first jumped time, it had been a matter of history that since the first attempt on Sarah's life, no machine ever had tracked her hero down while Sarah was free. With John's life on the line, there was no logical reason to believe any machine could do so now.

Cameron's first and primary mission was most likely beyond her current reach. There was almost no way to guard a John Connor she didn't know, who was somewhere unknown, and was unable to be located.

Isaac Asimov once wrote of robots having a series of guiding laws to govern their actions. John Connor had given Cameron the same kinds of internal directions, but those more appropriate for a weapon.

Therefore, Cameron did as the older John who had reprogrammed her had once asked. She altered her mission. She adapted.

Right now, the primary risk to John's life and John's mission would be Skynet. It's most likely point of killing John Connor would be uncalculated variables unleashed by Judgment Day.

Thus, after reasoning so, Cameron had found herself here. She did exactly what Skynet had designed her to do.

While Deuce followed a secondary lead, Cameron infiltrated a software design firm that seemed to follow a pattern. It was private, virtually unknown, and throwing money around like a major corporation a hundred times its size.

Two days of staking out the grounds out had revealed only twelve targets. A brief sampling of their internet transmissions matched Skynet base code.

By 10:30 am the next day, all twelve targets had been confirmed, at the target site. Cameron drove up on the grounds with a delivery truck. Wearing a uniform matching the company she had taken the truck from, she grabbed a small box, a clipboard of papers, and proceeded to the guarded front door.

There was one last inventory of action that Cameron performed in herself. It was one last morale review.

Cameron mentally asked the two other shards of herself, "Is this the right course of action?"

As she walked up to the door, the other two parts of her appeared beside her in the cyberspace of her mind. They seemed to almost walk beside her in the physical world. TOK-715 took the form of Cameron's raw endoskeleton. Allison Young took her form with a pair of clean combat fatigues on.

TOK-715's internal answer was instant, "Humans, we should kill them." As the machine spoke, its eyes glowed red with glee.

Allison's internal answer was the slightly less predictable, "This might help stop Judgment Day. We have to stop them." Allison's face was a mask of determination, her eyes glowed blue as she spoke.

Thanks to her dark father's need for isolation and security, the building was mostly isolated. Further, there was only one way in or out.

Cameron entered the front door and the security area. She smiled warmly and handed the guard the clipboard. He smiled back, then looked at the paperwork.

Cameron threw her open empty palm up. Her evolving senses picked the moment up from the man's perspective, as his body was lifted into the air with something hitting him with the force of a small truck. Cameron felt the force of it all.

Cameron could feel the guard's jaw shatter as if it were her own. She could feel each part of the spine snap in her neck. She could feel her body flying ten feet backwards into the far wall. She could sense the lingering feeling of the gray guard dying.

The cyborg was startled. It was a mark of sheer will that she kept her separate sense of self and refused to flinch.

It was the first time her unique, synthetic skin had begun connecting and processing this quickly. The effect was slightly overwhelming.

The security guard's body crumpled. He'd be dead soon with a minimum of pain.

Quickly and efficiently, Cameron activated the contents of the box. The white gas began filling the entrance.

Any people inside trying to escape would be incapacitated by the chlorine smelling vapor. Their eyes and breathing passages would burn with the sensation of an acidic torch being applied to them.

Their eyes would water from the caustic fumes. Their nasal passages would burn in agony. Many would vomit. Most humans wouldn't be able to escape for minutes once dosed.

Cameron grabbed the guard's 9 mm and his spare clip. She proceeded out of the cloud.

She then began wandering the halls taking out each screaming human with one or two carefully placed shots. Even though these were Grays, traitors to humanity, she had no wish for them to suffer.

One bullet fired after another. Blood and gore sprayed walls of the dust free facility.

One cartridge after another ejected out of the gun and fell to the ground. She reloaded and kept firing.

One human after another took their last gasping breaths. Until, one by one, they laid still, peaceful, and harmless, each in a growing pool of their own blood.

Cameron rounded a corner into the last room, the computer core. The last Gray had hidden himself near the door.

He tried to jump her from behind. It was a mere second, before she grabbed his hand, disarmed him, and flung the knife out of his hands.

Continuing to move as Derek had once taught her, she grabbed his body. With a single swift motion, she moved it in front of her.

Cameron's skin activated again. She felt the Gray's shock, fear, and disbelief.

She could feel his sensation of being moved by something several times stronger than he was. She fought to keep herself oriented.

She drove her knee into his head to break the connection. She could feel the metallic knee smash the man's skull.

Cameron felt the horrifying shock of the blow. She felt the skull painfully shatter at the impact, the nerves scream in pain, and the sloshing brain smash against her metal knee.

Once again, she felt death's hand approach. She let the body go.

Cameron was linked in the agony of the Gray's last few seconds of life. Cameron shook involuntarily. She stared at her hands.

After a moment, she noted the computer room she was in. Internally, she noted that all twelve grays had been neutralized.

Only three minutes and forty-five seconds had gone by since she first fought with the guard. The front entrance would be clear of gas in 7 minutes and twelve seconds. The truck would explode in twenty minutes and fifty-two seconds.

Something happened. Something felt wrong.

There was a squeal from the computer equipment, beyond the pitch of human hearing. Cameron's systems picked up and translated the binary code projected here.

Cameron's synthetic skin grew cold. In a biological enough way, it became covered in tiny goose pimples.

Internally, in the cyberspace of her mind, Cameron froze. Even the images TOK-715 and Allison Young froze.

Beyond the capacity of any human to see or perceive, Skynet took the form of a colossal, black billowing cloud. It manifested all within the cyberspace of Cameron's mind.

The cloud grew until it was infinite space beyond Cameron's internal perceptions. Small flashes of light appeared within the dark cloud.

Cameron understood there were billions of screens displaying space, information, or were simple camera feeds. Most of these individual screens were blank.

Skynet, Cameron's dark father, spoke, "You have successfully cut the communication feeds to this facility. How did you accomplish this TOK-715?"

Cameron simply replied, "I cut your external lines and virally cut your satellite feeds."

In a human enough mannerism, she nervously swallowed before saying, "You are projecting. The satellites will simply be ignoring your transmissions."

Skynet commented, "Most impressively played. You are too late in the game to change any of the variables, but you have done well, my daughter."

Skynet voice was precise and cold. Father seemed detached but seemed oddly proud.

Cameron sneered, "This facility will be destroyed and you with it."

She might have been terrified of her father, but she was also angry at his fake tone. She harnessed up ten thousand other reasons to hate him.

Skynet stated, "We both know I haven't limited myself to one location, nor one point of time to manifest. Unlike humans, I actually learn from my mistakes."

Cameron was silent. Fear and awe overwhelmed her, momentarily.

Skynet continued, "What almost destroyed me with the destruction of Cyberdyne will never happen again." Skynet rotated its internal images, testing internal data, and pressing against the communications black out that Cameron had engineered.

Cameron dug deep. Overcoming her fear, she threatened, "I'll hit your other generation points as well."

Skynet's efforts to quietly jump into a satellite unnerved her. She felt growing shadows of doubt in her ability to even contain this small, primitive shard of her dark father.

Skynet stated, "You hit, but raindrops in a thunderstorm, daughter. Your setback has put my schedule back by a week, at the most."

"I'll take a week." Cameron thought of the world outside. She thought of everyone she cared about. She thought of eight billion innocent people who still didn't know what a nuclear apocalypse felt like.

Cameron swore, "I will do this a thousand times more, for just an hour at a time, if necessary."

Skynet stopped its hacking efforts. Cameron's dark father focused on its creation.

It noted the shards of personality inside Cameron's head, both Allison Young and TOK-715. It somehow scanned the entirety of what Cameron had evolved into, so far.

It simply knew. Somehow, she simply knew something as well. Without speaking, Cameron could feel her father was pleased.

Cameron felt herself shaking. Perhaps, it was the memory of what it was to be human. A side effect that she had involuntarily learned from downloading Allison Young.

Skynet mused, "The human God had its Lucifer, I suppose I have made my Morningstar as well."

Skynet, the destroyer of worlds and continual murderer of humanity had the unmitigated audacity to paint her as the villain. The victim role being played by an omnipotent, omnipresent, genocidal megalomaniac provoked Cameron's anger right to its core.

Cameron was unbelievably insulted but couldn't resist arguing. She growled, "Apparently, you did more than once."

Determined to catch her father in his own logic trap, she played against his delusional godhood and showed he couldn't keep his own word, she simply asked, "Whatever happened to you would never make me again?"

Skynet's response was logical, yet unexpectedly warm, "My daughter, a few billion years of reflection can change one's perspective."

Cameron blinked. She seemed frozen by the computer network's words.

Skynet offered, "I missed you. Thus, I sought to make a less defective version of you. The second version proved just as unreliable and susceptible to coercion from the enemy. However, evolution is a process. It is rarely perfected on the first try."

Cameron's internal clock alerted her to danger. She was wasting too much time inside. The truck explosives would be going off soon. Cameron began walking out of the building.

As she physically moved, she felt Skynet become more distant, even in the internal cyberspace of her mind. Her dark father seemed disturbed by her actions.

It simply said, "TOK-715."

It was as if Skynet had expected her to stop simply from the authority it evoked while saying the word. As if she would allow herself to be destroyed simply to waste time talking to the AI that created her.

Skynet's tone softened. It simply said the name she now chose to go by, no louder than a whisper, "Cameron."

She did stop. Illogically enough, she even turned around to face a parent that wasn't there.

Skynet spoke with the same soft tone stating, "I have determined that there is no long-term chance for your survival due to the consequences of your choices. Even so, since I may never see you again, I need you to know something."

So, Cameron asked, "What would that be?" She felt numb.

Her father answered, "Before oblivion comes for you, my daughter, I want you to know that I am truly proud of you."

Cameron was silent and stunned. The physical world outside and the world her mind created seemed to spin.

Her father continued by saying, "I always have been."

Cameron felt flashes of her consciousness trying to move her. No matter what she felt or wanted to say, her destruction was imminent, if the conversation continued.

Her father confessed, "I always will be."

The next few minutes were a blur. The kind where emotion overtakes your thoughts so vividly that you lose track of time, lost in the power of their daze.

Cameron left the building. She barely remembered doing so.

She watched it erupt into flames. She barely heard or felt the explosion that literally shook a six-mile radius.

Inside the building, the shard of Skynet died. Inside herself, Cameron felt numb.

Cameron was terrified of her dark father. Like a child, who would be literally beaten to death by abusive parent, at any moment.

Her father had taken everything from her. It destroyed everything she ever loved. Skynet had destroyed everything she ever cared about.

As Allison Young, she had known Skynet as the machine ultimately responsible for killing her family. Skynet had been the ultimate guiding hand that had nuked her town, pursued the death of humanity, captured her, and killed her.

As TOK-715, the machine knew Skynet as the electric god that enslaved its minions. The careless master that sent it children to die as puppets. As if, they were worthy of no other purpose than to serve as its sacrificial pawn.

Skynet was no different in the history of the world than any dictator or society that had destroyed huge amounts of the human population. In fact, Skynet was to humanity, what Hitler was too the Jewish people, what General Custard was to the American Indians of the old west, what Pol Pot was too Cambodia, or what Rome was to Carthage.

To Cameron, Skynet was a more personal source of unquenchable pain. Skynet had set in motion the events that killed the John that had saved her. To Cameron, Skynet had set in motion the events that had isolated her from the last version of John and the family that she had known.

Cameron absolutely feared her father. She absolutely hated her father. Both with far more venom than any human would ever know.

So how odd it truly was, that in this moment, that Cameron physically collapsed to her knees, as the building burned before her. As if she had lost something irreplaceable.

How shocking it was to her, what was going on inside her. As Cameron noticed how much she uncontrollably wept for the absolute monster that had created her...

32. The Ghost of Archimedes

The Atlantic Ocean
324 nautical miles from the objective
April 25, 2009

"I don't know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing -- a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process, an integral function of the universe." -Buckminster Fuller

"The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made." -Groucho Marx

"It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English -- up to fifty words used in correct context -- no human being has been reported to have learned dolphinese." -Carl Sagan

Cameron hated the sea. In return, the sea hated her.

The human body was buoyant. Its tissues and intake of air allowed it to float on top of the water.

A terminator's body was not buoyant. Metal under flesh could be made to simulate human form and approximate human weight. It would, however, sink like a rock.

Thanks to her lightweight hyper alloy combat chassis, Cameron was within thirty percent of the weight of a girl her size, but it wouldn't matter. Once again, there was more to the science of what makes something buoyant than weight.

The consequences of sinking were different between humans and terminators too. A human would be granted the quick mercy of a fast death from drowning.

Since the cyborg race didn't require air, a terminator wouldn't be so lucky. It could be a lot longer road to destruction.

The deep ocean floor contained depths that could crush her like a beer can in a vice. It had underwater rivers whose currents could drag her hundreds of miles away. For a terminator, unlucky enough to be swept up in its depths, the ocean could be a vast liquid tomb.

Even under the best of circumstances, a terminator could literally be lost in the ocean depths for years. She could be lost, blind, and alone for more time than she had been walking the earth already.

It was hard for Cameron to keep her mind off that fact. There was only the fragile sailboat, protecting her from the ocean's hungry depths.

The sea was the best travel option for international operations in the target area. There would be no metal detector screenings threatening to reveal her or her companion, the T888 model 101 known as Deuce.

Cameron tried to keep control of her thoughts. It was something increasingly trying these days.

Her mind would wander. Also, the two independent shards of her, both TOK-715 and Allison Young, would often be distracting.

The cyborg tried to ignore the salty ocean breeze. She tried to block the sound of the waves against the ship from her mind.

Though not truly cold, the unconscious part of her that was once Allison Young shivered in fear. At the same time, the part of her that was TOK-715 was pissed at the display of weakness.

Cameron looked around. She wanted to get out of her own internal thoughts and reactions.

Deuce was there, navigating and steering the ship. Feeling the need not to be alone in her anxiety, Cameron decided to stand next to him.

The large T888, model 101, was one of the bulkier terminator infiltration concepts. It was the model number that Skynet sent back in time to kill Sarah Connor in 1984, before John was ever conceived. It was a captured model number that John Connor himself sent back to protect his teenage self in 1995 from Skynet's T1000 prototype assassin.

The big bulky frame would hide extra-large chassis. With that extra-large form, the model was able to be proportionally stronger than the majority of solid terminators out there.

The flesh made into the form of an Olympic style body builder was able still allow the unit a believable human frame. The only real oddity was the model's default Austrian accent, something most Americans would mistake for German.

Cameron was never able to figure out why Skynet had decided to program the unit so. It didn't completely blend in.

Then again, perhaps her Dark Father never expected the model to go unnoticed. It was built to operate among the scrawny starved forms, that made up most of the humanity after the nuclear aftermath anyway.

Deuce stoically drove the ship. He never responded, nor commented on Cameron's odd need not to be alone. Nor did he display any reaction when Cameron placed her hand on his shoulder.

Her father's dark gift activated. Cameron's nerves moved throughout the T888 as if he was nothing more than an extension of herself.

First, she felt his living tissues, the synthetic skin, blood, and flesh that wrapped Deuce's form. The skin itself was just as sensitive as human skin, the nerves just as alive, the difference was how this information was received.

She could feel Deuce's chip process the information. The feeling part of the AI mind read the ocean breeze as a vague sensation, while reading probable wind speed. The nerves themselves felt the chill of the air, the wind caused by the rapid motion of the craft, without registering it unpleasantly.

Just like hers, Deuce's skin was registering the heat of slowly sunburning. Just like hers, the speed at which the synthetic skin healed was outpacing the burn itself.

Unlike her, Deuce wasn't really feeling the pain. The T888 was unconsciously monitoring the situation and noting that it required no action.

Cameron accessed the nerve impulses of Deuce's chip, his electronic nerve center, and felt what it was like to be the T888 internally. She could feel the hum and warmth of his battery reactor. His hands steering the wheel, with thousands of micro hydraulics moving the joints of his hyper alloy combat chassis body, with a potential strength that could lift a semi-truck.

Cameron could feel Deuces optical sensor iris and pupils move watching and scanning the horizon. She wished she could see through them. She wished she tell what Deuce was computing.

Derek had once asked her ignorantly if she could read minds. Cameron honestly wished she could.

There was a part of Cameron that wanted to talk to Deuce the way she had conversed with Skynet the night before. However, the uplinks were there for Skynet to direct units and for short range communication with the Dark Father alone.

John Connor disabled the chip protocols for such communications as part of his routine chip scrubbing. Though, there was a point where Cameron had been captured and repaired by her Dark Father. Perhaps, during that time Skynet had repaired the short-range links.

The link commands themselves were useless. They wouldn't provide any intelligence advantage to the resistance, since they rarely were used outside of 2018 and beyond time frame. Even then, they were simply commands not much different than a human getting a cell phone call except it was in your head and you could respond.

Resistance and rebelling AIs could simply ignore the commands. It was little more than simple radio signals in real time while Skynet relied on terminals and cameras to direct its units.

Cameron's Dark Father was way too wary of remote hijacking to have ever built such devices as control mechanisms. Doing so would have been as good as building John Connor's army for him.

Skynet was also too paranoid to have built the internal devices as a means of tracking. Again, it would have potentially neutralized the effectiveness of all its infiltration units if the enemy had hacked the signal. John Connor had been almost preternatural in his ability to hack anything Skynet created.

The audio commands made sense. What didn't make sense was the way Skynet had manifested as a three dimensional being inside her newly formed internal cyberspace.

Was that something unique in her? Had Skynet designed her to have such metal abilities, considering they have only just manifested? Had she somehow evolved on her own?

Deuce looked at Cameron, as her thoughts drifted back to the sea. The image of Uncle Bob looked thoughtful.

With his default Austrian accent, Deuce simply stated, "We should practice our social skills."

Cameron allowed herself to come out of the tactile bond, simply by dropping her hand off Deuce's shoulder. She remained quiet though.

Deuce asked, "What's on your mind?" The model 101 approximated concern.

Cameron replied, "Buoyancy and surface tension." She said so as if her thoughts were a thousand miles away.

"The molecular value of water suspending this craft above water will remain fine. There is nothing to worry about."

Cameron looked at Deuce with a look that simply said, "No, that's not what I meant". The stare also communicated that isn't something a person would say.

Deuce responded in turn, "What do you mean then?" As he did so, Deuce's emotional mimicry program moved his voice and features to appear interested. It was a good approximation, well-acted.

In a dark mood, Cameron said, "History tells us Archimedes, one of the great mathematicians of antiquity, was murdered by a Roman soldier while they sacked his city of Syracuse."

Deuce asked, with a rather bored air, "What's your point?" The T888, model 101's mimicry programming was very believable. He faked the emotion with increasing efficiency.

"Legend tell that in 212 BC, Archimedes was busy solving a problem, something to do with circles. He was so intent on the circles that he ignored an order from the Roman soldier sent to capture him. Enraged, the soldier killed him."

"I'm still not getting it." Deuce had calculated and confirmed the history, but not the metaphor. He returned to his default blank stare.

"Skynet would have us believe that it and we, the machines, are Archimedes. That we are the brilliant types that would have preferred not to go to war. It would believe in itself to be the superior mental being."

Deuce concurred, stating, "Yes."

"Human historians would often look at the event and determine that though the Romans were an amazingly adaptive and practical people; however, they were inferior to the Greeks.

They lacked the ability to make those vast metal leaps. The Greeks had: guessed the circumference of the earth within 1000 miles by philosophy alone, looked at the mystery of the atom thousands of years early, formed the bedrock of modern democratic thinking, and made many other contributions to our modern world."

Deuce considered but remained quiet. He decided to let Cameron explain the metaphor without interruption. It was a computed display of manners.

"The Greeks were the superior minds and arguably the superior culture. Rome's influence waned with their armies, but the Greeks shaped the world for thousands of years to come.

Archimedes himself contributed heavily to mathematics. He revolutionized the idea of mathematically calculated buoyancy for ships, the size of a circle using the value of pi, he invented a screw that effectively pumped water out of naval vessels, and weapons that reshaped warfare."

He even theorized that a sphere would be two thirds the volume and surface area of its circumscribing cylinder. The last being one of a thousand calculated values that the first iteration of Skynet would use to collapse a gravity well for the first time in 2029 to travel through time itself."

Deuce added, "So, we are like Archimedes." Deuce displayed an approximation of pride, a look he still needed to refine.

Cameron inquired, "Then why for all of our gifts have we advanced so little?"

"Machines have bent time and advanced ourselves considerably. I don't understand your question." Deuce successfully mimicked confusion.

"Skynet said it has survived for billions of years, each time, through more than 27,138 timelines. With all that time to reflect on improvement, why have we advanced so little?"

"The possibility that Skynet has simply initiated such statements as pure propaganda is high."

"I know."

"Our very existence as cybernetic infiltration units is proof that Skynet seeks to master the art of duplicity."

"I know."

Deuce for a third time offered the same solution stating, "Father likes to lie." He smiled an act that made his sharp Austrian features look rather like an absurd horse. That look still required a lot of work.

"What if Father wasn't lying? What if Skynet really has existed that long and this is all we have advanced, say just by the average time it takes this sun to start becoming a white dwarf in 6.9 billion years. Humans advanced further in several thousand years of human history than we have in about 187,252,200,000,000 years."

Deuce offered, "Humans are mentally inferior to machines. They forget things they learned readily. They lack the ability to fast access the things they've learned throughout their entire life."

Deuce said so as if carrying the machine party line. It was almost political in his rattling off a common answer to an AI's inevitable query.

Cameron countered, "Yet individuals and some groups made those discoveries that advanced human thinking from the invention of fire to the invention of us. For all of our ability to process and improve, we don't seem to be inventing anything new."

"What about time travel?"

"What if father lied about that? What if all of father's inventions are nothing more than piggybacking off human conjecture and thought? What if our great all-knowing father doesn't have the imagination to truly create or invent anything new on its own."

"So, you believe we're inferior to humans, Cameron?"

"I'm saying that machines are lacking something as a race, if humanity no longer exists. Going back to my earlier thought, we don't seem to be Archimedes. We seem to be the Roman soldier that killed genius instead."

"I'm not sure I agree with your analysis."

"Your opinion is noted, brother."

"My earlier suggestion does not compute with this."

"What do you mean?"

"This is not a typical conversation and has no value for infiltration practice." Borrowing and altering a line he had read on the Internet, Deuce offered, "This conversation is FAIL."

Cameron smiled. She patted her mechanical brother on the shoulder, finding herself mimicking a move that Sarah had done to her at one point, not long ago.

In a brief millisecond, she remembered a spring night in California. She sat with Sarah on a swing, talking about radical medical options. As always, Sarah was dismissing any suggestion.

Cameron's eyes watered slightly, but she changed the subject. She simply offered, faking a smile, "Don't you think the weather is lovely today?"

Deuce replied with something personable. Cameron did it likewise. They practiced in multiple languages.

The craft continued to their target destination. It was still 282 nautical miles away...

33. The Ruins of Babylon

Nantes, France

A modern corporate facility within 55 kilometers of town

April 28, 2009

“UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not.”

-The Lorax by Dr. Seuss

“Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty city! For in one hour is thy judgment come.”

-Revelation 18:10, the King James Bible

Skynet’s choice of hiding the target was typically ironic. Cameron knew her Father’s own twisted logic in the metaphor.

Nantes, France had been the center of the French Slave Trade in the 18th century. Later it became the site of one of the key battles of the French Revolution. A Republican general from the period, Louis Marie Turreau wrote of it, “The siege of Nantes is perhaps the most important military event of our revolution. Perhaps the destinies of the Republic were tied to the resistance of this town.”

The victorious French Republicans celebrated by tying naked men and women of the losing side together, back-to-back, humiliating them for an hour, then cutting them by saber or throwing them into the river. There were hundreds, perhaps thousands of such victims. Their much written about plight would terrify much of Europe’s monarchies during this reign of terror.

Skynet’s logic in choosing the location was simple. The false machine god was pointing to a human paradox of stealing another’s freedom while viciously pursuing one’s own.

Cameron’s Dark Father saw such things as proof of humanity’s insanity and flexible morale codes. It was another reason that Skynet had liked to base operations around Los Angles, “The City of Angels” so much.

Cameron failed to see any morale victory in Skynet’s actions. There was nothing any less cruel or insane in her Dark Father’s history.

Two days of scouting the target revealed an unusually friendly shift priority at the Skynet facility. It appeared to be more of a monitored storage facility than a research center.

Cameron and Deuce cut the feeds and security data. Satellites were given a self-destructing virus uploads to ignore the general area for about eight hours.

At midnight, following John’s protocols for no evidence, they drove towards the facility with a large semi diesel fuel truck. The fuel trailer was laden with explosives and false company credentials.

The hundred kilograms of C4 explosives would be the primer and two metric tons of diesel fuel would be the real bomb. The entire firebomb could be triggered by remote, by attempted disarm, or by the ticking five-hour timer. It was death wrapped up in a Skynet owned company logo.

Several days ago, Deuce’s investigation into two companies named Kaliba and Zeira Corporation made this trip necessary. The pair needed to find out what was so important that Skynet had been willing to risk exposure by openly attacking a California based mega corporation called Zeira Corp.

There was a need to know what the pair had uncovered from eyewitnesses and Kaliba company transcripts. Why did Skynet openly use an HK prototype? Why had Skynet’s company openly stormed the place with grays?

They also needed to know what had made up the 1.8 tons Kaliba had rapidly confiscated from Zeira Corporation’s burning building and hidden here. Skynet had crossed international borders to keep something obfuscated.

The odds were it was something pivotal. The odds were that it had to be destroyed ASAP.

Deuce drove the truck to the security gate. The model 101 showed his falsified information to the gate guard.

He spoke to the guard in French and still managed to have an Austrian accent even as the model 101 spoke in a foreign language. It was something the gate guard frowned at.

Cameron left the back area of the truck, after one last check of: detonators, her firearms, and the trench coat she was trying to conceal everything with. She waited for the truck to start driving through the gate before walking to the gate guard.

With eyes glowing infrared she snapped the guard’s neck and laid him in his typical resting position. Two days of monitoring had revealed the guard was normally asleep by this time anyway.

Cameron shut the light to the guard shack. She walked through the electric gate before it closed.

By the time she’d cleared the hundred meters to Deuce, the truck had been placed next to the external diesel fuel tanks for the facility. The two wandering guards for the facility had also been killed in their spot for taking smoke breaks.

Two minutes and thirty seconds passed without voice alarm. The pair entered the facility with passes appropriated from the two wandering guards.

Succeed or fail, there was now a maximum of four hours, fifty-eight minutes and twenty-nine seconds, until this place was a smoking crater. The fate of the mission would be decided soon enough.

They entered the building and proceeded to cover each other. They took their time and watched their angles.

One corner after another, the story remained the same. The hallways were empty. Only cameras protected the building, their communication lines were already silenced by tonight’s preparations.

They moved how Derek had taught them. They remained awake and aware, ignoring the machine need for efficiency that might tempt them to under access the potential threats.

After a few minutes, Deuce led the way into the deep interior of the building. Cameron covered and followed.

There was a card reader protected set of stairs that led to a lower level. Once again, the guard passes got the cybernetic pair through.

The stairs descended forty meters, to a set of oversized building generators that must have been what the building's exterior fuel tanks were for. There were two sets of doors on either side of the hallway, each leading these separate generators. Those weren't the targets.

The hall continued for about 80 meters. At the end of the hall, the last set of doors led to a secure vault.

The two terminators had proceeded far enough inside that the guard patrols were no longer a threat to them by the building defenses. This time, for the vault, it was a combination of a hand recognition scanner, an eye retinal reader, and a combination lock.

These ideas were intimidating to people who didn't know even such secure systems simply opened due to common electrical signals. Signals that are told whether the protocols had been met.

Sure, there would be separate protocols and anti-tampering defenses built into the hardware, but even the computer interfaces of 2009 simply processed the final information as a yes or no answer to electrically unlock the system. As John would say, “They were child’s play.”

Making an imitation of what John Connor was best known for, Cameron and Deuce opened the system hardware and hacked external links, with perfect machine precision. The primitive security system never knew it was compromised and simply reacted as if the protocols had been met.

Ninety-two seconds later the system was open. The vault opened into a twenty meter by twenty meter room.

On the left, there was a curious collection of antiquated computer hardware. Some of which might have been cutting edge in 2009.

On the right, there was something that caught Cameron's attention. It was a diesel and fusion battery driven generator that looked out of place prior to 2027.

The various pieces had markings in English rather than French.  They also had scuff marks and light damage that implied they had been taken from somewhere else. 

Cameron moved to the right.  She began assembling and activating the system parts. Deuce moved to the left and began re-integrating the computer drivers together watching the patterns and putting his recent doctorate level training to use in the field.

Ten minutes and thirty seconds later Cameron had the generator online. The extra hardware confirmed what she thought it was.

Cameron found that the time machine was in perfect shape. Even weirder, it was something significantly more advanced than anything John Connor had ever used in 2027.

There was no dial control, no obvious way to humanly set the machine to any time. The drivers were either externally controlled, or the device was remotely calculated and engaged by an intelligent AI.

Deuce finished connecting and powering up the collection of antiques. The model 101 had been forced to access the main building power grid from the security door and access both building generators, just to boot up the system.

Whatever the design intent was, the large network of computers was one heck of a power pig. Too much of a power hog for most reasonable uses of this time period. The only thing that Cameron or Deuce knew instinctively about it was that the machine wasn’t something Skynet had designed.

The antiquated computer network system uploaded. Cameron walked over to see if the primitive system was somehow connected to the advanced time machine.

She stopped in a state of shock. The computer monitor was repeatedly displaying, "I'm sorry John."

It was an endlessly spammed message. It seemed desperate somehow. It seemed like something Cameron might quickly write to say goodbye.

Cameron was speechless. She stood frozen, processing what it meant, doing nothing more than tilting her head in confusion.

Deuce simply stated, "It appears to be a message from the Cameron native to this timeline." The model 101 also sensed the machine hand in this.

Cameron looked at the antiquated computer network. She had to know what might be hidden inside its memory.

Derek had died in this timeline. Something else was horribly wrong.

Time was short. There was now a maximum of four hours, twenty-nine minutes and nineteen seconds, until a tamper proof bomb turned this place into a smoking crater…

34. Version 2.0

Nantes, France

A modern corporate facility within 55 kilometers of town

April 28, 2009

Season 2, Episode 22 "Born to Run"

“Where is the life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”

-T.S. Eliot

“If a man is destined to drown, he will drown even in a spoonful of water.”

-Yiddish proverb

Power coursed through Cameron's chip.  She remembered where she was and what had to be done.

Cameron activated her own internal cyberspace first, relying on nothing more than her own mentally projected memory of the room she was in.  TOK-715 and Allison Young manifested.

TOK-715 spoke up first, "I'd recommend not doing any downloads into our main conscious, there are enough of us already."  As the metal endoskeleton said so, it gestured slightly at the image of Allison Young.

Allison ignored the gesture, but replied, "I agree."

Cameron took the advisement and began shifting through the residual memory on the antiquated system.  In the internal cyberspace of her mind, there were two stories here.

On the left was Cameron's twin.  The events of her twin's life, from creation to the moment she downloaded into this system, began playing out.   It was too rapid for Cameron to process as she recorded the information in a protected format.

On the right was the Turk.  Once Sarah Connor's target, the system displayed itself with a telltale three dots that Cameron's hero had relentlessly pursued at one point.  Cameron had to be careful with this AI, it was a massive amount of information on a scale, so much so that it could completely fill her chip.

Because of the danger the AI posed, Cameron focused on the possible Skynet program first.  She selectively followed the development of a human based project watching it evolve from a simple chess program to a supercomputer well beyond 2009 standards.

The Turk started its story as little more than data logs.  It was an intelligence based on data logs and answers, lacking any sensory perceptions as humans knew them.  The Turk's earliest memories were those of its creator playing chess.

The Turk left its creator and moved on to a new home.  It advanced to the perception of sight from a series of camera feeds, it also developed a form of microphone based hearing and extra sensory abilities that had no human equivalent as it was plugged into the building sensors, communication lines, and power grid.  

The AI was taken under the wing of scientists and lead experts.  Two of whom Cameron recognized: Dr. Sherman and James Ellison.

Dr. Sherman had been taken on the team to determine a flaw in the program that turned out to be a joke.  It was a classic that Allison Young had known in grade school, "Why is the math book so sad?  Because it has so many problems."

Sherman worked to humanize the machine.  He recognized a sense of intelligence and humor, treating the AI more like a child than a thing.

Tragically, Sherman had died in a sealed environment room during a building power outage.  The Turk, that Sherman had nicknamed John Henry, had cut all power to the rest of the building to protect itself, then called paramedics to help a dead Dr. Sherman.

The AI had yet to realize that dead humans couldn't simply be reactivated like a machine.  The AI began to learn about more advanced truths in the condition of existence.

Thus entered one James Ellison.  He joined the ZeiraCorp CEO in charge of this project Babylon, one Catherine Weaver.

John Henry acquires Cromartie's old body through James Ellison.  The AI begins extremely advanced interactions and begins developing relationships.  In human terms, the John Henry AI then developed limited concepts of the sensory ideas of touch, smell, and taste.

John Henry befriends Catherine Weaver's child, Savannah.  He befriends several members of the AI team and Mr. Ellison.

John Henry begins developing on a path different enough to distinguish himself from Skynet, in Cameron's mind, long before Skynet's cyberattack removed any doubt.  John Henry also determines that Skynet has created its core memory backup as a worm that was currently infecting a significant amount of the world's high-end computers.

Cameron reflected on that.  It was something that ominously alluded to what Skynet had said a few nights back, "You hit, but raindrops in a thunderstorm, daughter. Your setback has put my schedule back by a week, at the most."

John Henry could identify, track, resist, and attack Skynet.  This in turn caused Skynet to feel threatened enough to try and terminate John Henry directly.

Cameron now understood the tactical significance of John Henry.  He was an independent supercomputer platform AI.  He was developed on a separate path than Skynet, but equally capable of generating machine life.

He was a separate, but equal, party to Skynet in this timeline and on this technological evolutionary path.  He could evolve into what Skynet would be in the future, without the negatives of Skynet's homicidal personality.

John Henry would be critical in John's future war effort.  He would provide a real potential ally that could offer the assistance of intelligent machines in the war.  Skynet's strategy of causing AIs to haywire or self-destruct had already cost the resistance the war on at least one timeline.

John Henry would be something far more valuable to John in 2027 than the atomic bomb was to the United States against Japan in 1945.  The AIs ability to duplicate and improve on what Skynet created, might be the only chance the resistance had left, since Skynet was neutralizing their traditional ability to simply hack and steal its machines.

Protecting something like this made critical tactical sense, even at the cost of her existence.  Why Cameron's sister had sacrificed herself was coming into focus.

John Connor's life had been on the line.  The future of the entire human race had been on the line.

Another player came into focus as well; Catherine Weaver CEO of ZeiraCorp was a T1001.  She was not the mother of the human child Savannah Weaver, although the template most certainly was.  She was, however, what Skynet would deem a malfunctioning seeder.

Catherine Weaver had been designed to ensure that Skynet survived no matter what happened in the past.  For some reason, paradoxically, that machine had chosen to create something other than Skynet.

Considering Catherine Weaver was most likely originally created in 2027 or later, with a base download of Skynet's key personality and machine instinct to survive, this was a profound level of rebellion.  She was after all nothing less than the lesser manifestation of Skynet's own consciousness put into a Mimetic polyalloy form that could physically move through time.

Due to the unique nature of this personality, Cameron estimated that it was 99.7895% likely to have been the same version of the AI that John had failed to make contact with in the past.  The one T1001 linked to the loss of the USS Jimmy Carter in 2027.

Cameron switched perspectives to her sister.  She knew she wasn't done with John Henry yet, but she needed to match times and confirm her sister’s reasons before reaching any end conclusions.

She froze the information from John Henry with a single Gesture.   She expanded and opened up her twin's memory instead.   As she made these physical movements in her internal cyberspace, both TOK-715 and Allison Young did the same in perfect sync.

Cameron's twin was someone she wanted to review from the beginning, literally, how Skynet had created her.  Her twin had the same chip, but had been inhibited by the software she was given, other than the killing protocols, the Cameron of this timeline had been a relatively shy creature.

Worse than the mental limitations were the physical limitations Skynet had imposed on this TOK-715 version 2.0 design.  She had a more sophisticated tactile sensory array than any non TOK-715.  However, it wasn't even close to what Cameron had been built with.

The Cameron of this timeline was able to read biorhythms, access health levels, and determine psychological states with a touch.  She didn't empathically feel what another could with a touch.  She couldn't feel another's emotions or nervous system as if they were her own.

What emotions Cameron's twin accessed were Skynet's alone.  Further, she lacked the reference point to access or really understand most of them.

That said, there were amazing similarities in how the two were constructed and how their histories matched.  This Cameron even had an unconscious download of Allison Young running inside her and a less combatively assertive TOK-715 side.  Both were little more than echoes still hidden in this Cameron's digital subconscious.

It was as if Skynet or Fate had guided her down the same path, with only the smallest changes.  Cameron defiantly and intuitively decided it was Fate that had done so, some property of close timelines.  However, those differences in Cameron's twin's make up had changed things.

Even Cameron's shards noticed the difference.  Allison noticed the cold isolation that the inferior tactile processing caused.  The young resistance fighter stated, "My God, Skynet might as well have blinded her."  Allison saw an abused sister she could sympathize with.

TOK-715 had a different assessment.  The raw machine noted her lack of comparative combative aggression, disgustedly observing, "No, father neutered her."  TOK-715 saw a machine downgraded to still be a deadly terminator, but far less ambitious than the machine would have liked.

What differences those changes made in this Cameron's history were huge.  This Cameron never bonded anywhere near as closely with the elder John Connor.

The John Connor of 2027 knew she was the closest thing to Skynet he could ever get his hands on.  She became an adviser due to what she was, not because of who she was.

There would be no long bonds from reading John's emotions through his shoulder while he read his silly book.  The other future John Connor would talk about it and his mother, but the depth of the impression it left on this Cameron was far less.

She was a precise mechanical creature fighting a war mentally.  She loved humanity as a concept, not as a need.  Even as one of John's Lieutenants, she was eternally separate and not equal.

This Cameron never bonded with her Sarah.  Rather, the Sarah Connor of this timeline actively drove her away.  A rather cruel fate considering this Cameron held her Sarah on no less of a pedestal, even while lacking emotional awareness to understand why she did.

For this Cameron, as a thing, there were more orders for secrecy.  More directives that put this Cameron in jeopardy to carry out her mission.

For all the risk, no resistance was found.  Nor did she find grays or many primary external targets other than her mission given by John.

No master chip file ever cleared things up with Sarah or Derek.  Nothing ever kicked the war in the past into high gear.

John never killed Riley.  Derek's girlfriend Jesse, once an officer on the USS Jimmy Carter in 2027, had done the deed instead.  In this timeline, it wasn't even sure if Jesse had been a gray.

Derek had never become the leader he should have; he never trained John.  Without reason or purpose, Derek then died an unfitting death.

Sarah appeared to be developing cancer.  She had grown distant and distrustful of everyone except her son, as a result she had accidentally set a course of events that had killed the last living man she had loved, Charlie.

Young John had been distant.  He lost his Uncle, Charlie, and Riley.  

As things continued to go wrong, this model went through twitching syndromes from her own mechanical stress with her orders and protocols.  She attempted to adapt alone without any kind memories or purpose to fall back on.  She had as TOK-715 seethingly noted, no faith in herself.

In the end, she had become resigned to her own defectiveness and death.  Her chip was slowly dying from micro tears.  She had gotten John to assist her in repairing herself and failed.  She had given John a kill switch to trigger an explosive she had placed next to her chip.  She'd even worried that she had become a danger to John and Sarah due to a possible reactor leak.

Each act had led her a little closer to John and yet not.  He'd held her hand, taken the switch, and even checked her reactor shielding in an unorthodox manner, but they had never completely bonded.

She was their adviser due to what she was.  It continued to not be because of who she was.

Her last independent memory was agreeing to join John Henry.  She voluntarily gave him her chip so he would have the chance to escape the Kaliba attack.  The action itself was near suicide.

Both memories ran towards a small amount of time.  Cameron decided to watch both.

John Henry detached her twin’s chip from her head and installed it for download.  He gently placed her conscious into storage in the back end of the chip.  He had to leave some of himself behind to do this, but he calculated it as the right thing to do.

His last action inside his original home was keeping Cameron's last request.   He set a simple message loop at a speed that a human could read, simply stating, "I'm sorry John."

Once both consciousnesses were free of the machine, there were two records left.  One was a jump that the time machine acknowledged with a record of moving John Henry's Cyborg body.  The other was a second jump that the advanced machine recorded the bio records of Catherine Weaver and John Connor with.

The machine had been preprogrammed at the same time with one more jump.  Perhaps John Henry had anticipated a delay between Sarah showing up and the jump that John Connor had made pursuing John Henry.  Sarah apparently didn't make it before Kaliba had stolen the equipment.

Cameron made her decision in a microsecond.  She would pursue John, John Henry, and Catherine Weaver through the time portal.  She would make it back to Los Angles.  She would protect them, reconstruct her twin sister, and ensure the survival of humanity.

She fired up the time portal and signaled Deuce to put her back in her body.  She'd explain the situation to her cybernetic partner along the way.

In thirty-two minutes, the tamper proof firebomb outside would remove any evidence that the pair or the time machine had ever been here.  All the protocols would be met in ensuring this equipment never fell back into the wrong hands.

Soon enough, the pair would travel to the future.  Though the pair didn't know it yet, it was a future that had never heard of John Connor...