Two days later, Catherine Weaver glared at a painting defiling her wall. She had spent the past forty-eight hours obsessing in the war room for some strategy that would give the free machines a fighting chance.

Cameron came to the location as remotely ordered. She saw the large World War Two propaganda style painting. It was a lion with a decapitated T-888 head in its mouth. Over which was the slogan, "Hang In There Baby!".

Weaver was furious, an emotionality that was something new that the T-1001 had picked up from the merging. It was an emotional range caught from Cameron herself.

All the AIs had been altered so. For example, Cameron had noticed that she'd picked up Weaver's obsessive love of things mechanical.

Weaver fumed stating, "Do you see what they did? We rescued them and we took care of them. This is how they see us." She made an angry gesture at the wall and added, "This is racist."

Cameron countered, "It's a morale painting. It is an old human war tradition."

"I don't want them to paint these on our walls. It's degrading to the AIs that protect them and that were lost rescuing them."

"It wasn't a human that did it. It was Deuce."

"Tell Deuce not to break the morale of the machines guarding this place for fifty-two fighting humans."

"The painting isn't meant to be one of us, it's targeted at Skynet and its minions." She added, "We picked up some more recruits."

Catherine rolled her facsimile eyes and said, "What five more decided to do something other than sit in their rooms?"

Cameron stated, "It's 5,243. That is almost every last able-bodied person of combatant age that we rescued."

Catherine Weaver was momentarily stunned. She forced herself to recover.

Weaver simply cocked her head in curiosity. She stated, "Tell Derek Reese good job and we'll expect him at the war table."

Cameron replied, "I'll let Supreme Commander John Connor know."

Catherine Weaver reevaluated her behavior over the past two weeks. She said, "I think I owe you an apology Cameron. That's enough human back up to give this place a fighting chance."

Cameron smiled and warmly stated, "I promise you; you haven't even seen human back up yet, Catherine."

Cameron added in the way to best reassure her fellow machine, "I didn't bring John Connor here to just save humanity. I brought him here to help save us all."

Catherine Weaver looked at the painting again. She didn't see an free AI in the Lion's jaws, she saw Skynet. Suddenly smiling, Weaver decided that it didn't seem like such a bad idea to have one of these paintings in every hallway

The war was not lost. There was hope after all...

45. Major General Justin Perry

　
Avila Beach, California
Serrano Point Nuclear Power Plant
July 2nd, 2027

　
"For by wise council thou shalt make thy war: and in multitude of counselors there is safety" -Proverbs 24:6, The King James Bible

"You might as well appeal against the thunder-storm as against these terrible hardships of war. They are inevitable, and the only way the people of Atlanta can hope once more to live in peace and quiet at home, is to stop the war, which can only be done by admitting that it began in error and is perpetuated in pride." -General William Tecumseh Sherman, letter to the City of Atlanta

"I regard the death and mangling of a couple thousand men as a small affair, a kind of morning dash — and it may be well that we become so hardened." -General William Tecumseh Sherman, in a letter to his wife, (July 1864)

　
　
Cameron walked the facility. Coltan silently stalked behind her.

She'd long ago stopped trying to understand the metal dog or its odd obsession with her. The truth is in time the whole thing had become mildly amusing.

It was probably just a machine thing. There was something positive about the rhythm and pattern to the liquid metal being's actions, it was an almost soothing regularity in the chaos.

That and it took much of the sting out of who she'd need to talk to next. Tracking and watching Coltan's odd behavior let the TOK-715 not obsess over what to do or how to act in ten thousand different ways.

She spent those moments watching the facsimile animal tail her. She dutifully ignored the shadows and let the LM dog think she didn't know it was there.

Her own predator instincts calculated its patterns and tracked its movements. She ignored it as if it was a target she was tailing.

Her HUD treated the whole thing as a combat situation. Targeting windows came up. Sound syntheses tracked sounds and estimated distances. She ran continuous estimates of its actions which varied in their actual accuracy to what happened.

The dog had adapted to the game. It was increasingly less predictable in its stealth movements.

The time for the game had ended, however. Cameron had arrived...

There was a storm coming. Perry could feel it in his bones. These days of quiet would end soon enough.
Mankind would have to face the machines in battle again. This issue was what was left of humanity to pick up that fight.

The General scowled at the troops in front of him. He noted their ability to move as a group; it was less than impressive.

Given the high stakes and the horrible urgency involved, nanite fast loading was an acceptable way to get the troops that weren't trained up to speed. The knowledge and skill imprinting didn't seem to teach things that were critical though.

Perry would have to close the gaps between what the people should be and what they were. Then, he'd have to see who could adapt to actual combat pressure and who survived.

Perry noted Cameron's approach. Even as he watched the field work of the fifty-two earlier volunteers that had just become the officers of the new division Perry was building.

Being to the point by nature, Perry simply and coldly inquired, "So are with us or them now?" He never even bothered to look at Cameron.

Cameron was mildly shocked, "With you, how can you even ask that?" Her face was less than machine like. Without meaning too, she showed how much it wounded on her face, the way Sarah had once taught her.

Perry pressed, "You refused a direct and lawful order."

Cameron replied, "The order had potential consequences negative to the mission and your lives." She was stunned that Perry couldn't clearly see that.

Perry informed, "Then it was your duty to respectfully inform your superior of that. If he didn't change his mind, it was your duty to comply exactly as lawfully ordered. You knew better." Perry's manner was cold, like a father bitterly disappointed in a wayward daughter.

Cameron became silent and reflective. Perry was right, in the military sense it was what she should have done. She wasn't exactly why she had failed to do so at the time, so she remained silent.

Perry continued, "Over three billion people died because people were doing what they wanted. People started getting sloppy and self-righteous. The mob is almost always the stupidest expression of human will and that collective stupidity had a high price."

"On that note of people acting like retarded jackasses, what the Hell were you and John thinking?"

Perry glared at Cameron. She shrunk a bit from the gaze.

She thought of ten thousand answers. She went with the only one that made sense. She simply said, "It just happened."

Perry repeated, "It just happened." Unexpectedly, Perry let the matter drop. The General smiled like a wistful father with a fond memory.

He offered, "Did you ever wonder how you were caught by us in the first place?"

Cameron remained silent. She just looked at him.

Perry continued, "You were perfect. Warm, living eyes, personable and likeable, other than dogs, there was no way to tell you weren't human. You were a perfect illusion, nothing like any of the other models we saw before or since."

"So, what was my earlier model's mistake?" Curiosity got the better of her. Her own perfectionism wanting to know how not to fail again.

"You came in wearing Derek's Lieutenant bars and a 132nd jacket. I always knew all of my officers and I didn't know you. I let you pass by me with a smile, and I put you down with a plasma pistol shot to the back of your reactor. I never would have given it a second thought."

"So why was I spared? How did I end up in John's inner circle?"

"John got curious. It was probably a mistake telling him how you had done such a good job being an illusion. He wanted to see what you had been programmed with personally. We got the shock of our lives when he opened up your head."

"Which was?"

"Do you even know what your chip is Cameron?"

She calmly answered, "A TOK-715 chip."

Perry clarified, "It is an altered legacy chip. It is what Skynet uses to make advanced backup copies of itself to send back in time to make sure it can't be completely killed by us in the present. They're normally internally carried by a terminator series back in time, but it is never an actual part of a carrier unit. You are the closest thing we've ever done to actually capturing Skynet."

Cameron could have felt the world slipping beneath her. She had dozens of conversations with John insisting she wasn't Skynet. To be tied so closely to her Dark Father was the most demoralizing and degrading thing she could calculate.

"You see a legacy chip isn't something we could have studied, it simply would have loaded its AI viruses and taken over anything we put it in. We'd encountered these things before with units we destroyed when capturing TDEs. There was no translation point though. There was no way to study or learn from what we had captured."

"You were our Rosetta Stone. You were our first chance to really understand the enemy. So, you were spared and brought right to our inner circle, so we could learn from you."

Perry continued, "We went through your visual records first. Which is how we learned that you had captured, killed and downloaded Allison Young. Her mind imprint was there but it wasn't something we could completely access; otherwise, we would have known about her and Derek's relationship, which would have added morale implications to keeping you in that body."

"Next we learned about you capturing and interrogating Derek Reese with several others in an abandoned basement. It's where you got your bars from that damned you. Lucky for John, he didn't lose his Uncle like he thought he did."

Cameron continued to be quiet. Her entire world was numbed by what Perry was saying. She felt alone, ugly, and disgusting.

Perry mused, "You know the funniest thing happened where Derek was involved too."

Cameron asked, "What would that be?" She was so off kilter that her voice modulation was off. She sounded like a cheap copy of a machine.

"He was spared by Skynet. Right, at the moment, he should have been slaughtered, he was spared with his group. The interrogation site was abandoned. An axe was left behind to make their escape even more convenient."

She blurred, "Why?" Cameron's voice was so off it sounded like she was damaged.

Tears streamed down her eyes as they glowed red as her own inhumanity displayed itself. She never wanted to be human or envied that.

However, Cameron felt defective and substandard to any other machine at the moment. She was somehow tainted. The legacy chip comment only increasing her distress the more she thought about it. That and Skynet's strange actions, even when it was something she would have wished for.

Perry continued explaining in length, "Yeah, that's the real question. It's all the things happening at that time. Allison Young is captured in August and is declared a recruit MIA. Skynet builds you on September 2nd, 2027. You fail an attempt to infiltrate a recruitment camp on September 5th.

Derek's group goes missing looking for Skynet's first TDE that John predicted on September 6th. September 8th, you begin interrogating Derek Reese in some abandoned house's basement."

You attempted infiltration of the 132nd's forward command on September 9th and I take you down. We reprogram you and take you and twenty T-888s with us on September 12th, capturing Topanga. Thus, we have a prototype TDE created with Jet Engines. We also end up sending Derek's brother SGT Kyle Reese into the past to protect John's mother from assassination."

September 14th, against any precedence, rhyme or reason, Skynet directly chooses to spare Lieutenant Derek Reese and his team. Skynet even goes so far as to abandon the place where you had interrogated Derek at and leaving them an axe to escape their chains with."

Cameron asked, "Why?"

Perry theorized, "Yeah, Cameron, that's the real question. Why did the most sophisticated intelligence in the world set into motion something that would upset its own infiltration operations that quickly? Did it not trust you? Did it fear you were captured? Did it fear you had defected to us or the free machines? Did it know you had been in the Topanga operations even after we cut all surveillance? If it did know where you were and where we moved the TDE, why didn't Skynet nuke the facility instead of letting us do time operations for four months?"

Cameron stated, "I don't know."

Perry said, "Neither do I and that's what bugs me. You were with us for just four short months. We did more than we ever had before in that time, but we also lost the entire world."

He continued, "You stayed with John. I took Derek to Serrano Point for pre operation training. He jumps a month prior to you, which was a longer wait than intended, but he got sick on a special operation that he volunteered for."

He offered, "You rescue John and I from an apparently unstoppable loss. When we reviewed your new back up chip here, we learned Skynet had captured you.

This was when both John and I were dead. The odd thing is Skynet releases you, yet again. Why would it do that after all its efforts to capture or destroy you?"

Cameron stated, "I don't know."

"Again, Cameron, it is the not knowing that bugs me." Perry's message in that was clear. Skynet never did anything without a purpose. Whatever that was should be enough to worry both.

"Why John?" Perry's tone was almost amused, yet reflective.

"I don't understand the question, Justin." Cameron was shocked enough that her eyes stopped glowing and her tears stopped.

"If you were going to bond that way with any human being, why did you have to pick John Connor?" Again, Perry seemed amused by the absurdity.

"He was hurt and he was in pain." She could recall that first November night like it was happening right now. Everything had grown from that moment.

"The whole damn world is in pain. That doesn't help me understand."

"Do you know why he picked me?" Justin had successfully shattered her self-esteem for the moment; she really was asking the question. She had gone back to feeling so vile from the legacy chip knowledge that it didn't make sense to her.

Perry shared, "World Leaders have always done strange things Cameron. You know what the Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill all have in common from World War Two?"

Cameron stated, "They were leaders of large nations of the Allies, each was their own human cult of personality. At the time, they were each considered to be great leaders too their respective peoples."

Perry mused, "That, plus each was an alcoholic by today's standards and each was having an affair on his wife." His meaning was that what the people saw in mass, wasn't always the entirety of the man. That no matter how much someone was revered, they were in the end, only human. That no matter the irrational double standards, imposed by the do as I say and not as I do masses, leadership was typically just as human and prone to mistakes as they were.

"Perry, that's not fair." Cameron knew this was a comparison to John, it was pissing her off. She might have felt disgusting, but she wasn't about to hear someone smear John's character.

"You know John F. Kennedy was married and had a pool built at the White House just to check out the girls he wanted to have affairs with." Perry had no original intention of continuing examples, but Cameron's reaction had now made this funny. He was now just goading a comrade.

"There is nothing wrong with John Connor or perverted about him." Anger coiled within her, tears streamed even as she accessed savage levels of electronic rage.

"Says his robotic girlfriend." That Justin Perry said it with a smile didn't reduce the sting of the words. He found the look on her face to be priceless.

The general switched verbal tactics, he wasn't done yanking her chain. "I thought you would have had more self-esteem than this Cameron."

"I don't understand."

"Does John even take you seriously?"

She was stunned at the question.

"You bonded with a man that never follows your advice or security assessments. Are you sure you mean something to him?"

Cameron was silent. Her answers wouldn't make sense to someone who was sense blind.

"Do you remember when John sent you to find Jeep headlight fluid?"

Cameron sheepishly replied, "Yes." Cameron had dutifully gone looking for the nonexistent liquid for three days on the base. Even though her chip's mechanical data storage had not known the ingredient nor its mechanical use. She had assumed it was a resistance modification on blind faith that John Connor had said it was needed; therefore, it must exist. It happened in September 2027, when the resistance had first reactivated her and she was only a few days old.

"What about when he sent you around the base for an ID Ten Tea form?"

Once again, she sheepishly replied, "Yes." ID Ten Tea forms were a phonetic joke; it worked out to spell ID10T or the word idiot in English. Again, it had been within a day of the last prank.

"How about the staff meeting where you looked at a vacuum sealed cookie jar and asked for one. Then John said the jar wasn't cookies, he had filled it with the remains of his beloved grandmother. Do you remember that?"

Cameron failed to respond to that one. It occurred on October 3rd, 2027, at her first tech meeting as John's technical adviser and proposed AI diplomat. Cameron had been momentarily mortified at gravity of the social mistake. Her non-emotional look of shock had caused great amusement for the rest of the inner circle staff.

"Do you see my point?"

"That I am not worthy of John?"

"That isn't what I'm saying Cameron. Did you ever meet Kate Connor?"

"No."

"She was a great lady. She was also an Irish redhead; she gave as good as she got. If you are to survive being in the human land of the alpha dogs you might do better to be more like Kate."

"I don't understand."

"John embarrassed Hell out of her in public one day, so back at base, she shot him in the rear with a tranquilizer gun. It was one of the funniest things I ever saw."

Cameron just looked at Perry. He wasn't making sense. Shooting someone with a tranquilizer dart was not an acceptable means of peaceful mediation to a relationship problem.

"Ok, John pulled some of his practical joke crap on me when we first met. Being a man of classic maneuvers, I filled his boots with oatmeal one cold December morning, right before we were inspecting a new base. Something that took us three hours. That was the last time John Connor showed me his more obnoxious side."

Cameron watched Perry intently. She didn't get the metaphor. Right now, she was calculating a waste of food, what must have been a miserable experience for John, and a slight risk of sickness from temperature exposure.

Perry smiled and stated, "You'll figure it out. I have faith."

"Why would you?"

"You know that quiet reflective nature you have Cameron? The part of you that questions everything? The part of you that wants things to be right no matter what?"

"Yes."

"John might have programmed your base commands and functions. However, I was the one that re-programmed your personality. As dangerous as you could potentially be, I needed to absolutely know you would be something other than the Skynet drone that was part of your core nature."

"Why would that way of thinking make you believe I would be something different?"

"I knew someone like that once."

"You aren't making sense Justin. Why would you think those traits would make a good person or machine?"

"Because before a Skynet attack took her from me forever, that was the personality of my little girl."

Justin finished talking. He'd shared more than he had intended too. Cameron knew not to press.

Perry went back to observing the troops. There was a storm coming...

46. Pillow Talk

Avila Beach, California
Serrano Point Nuclear Power Plant
July 2nd, 2027

"What truly is logic? Who decides reason? My quest has taken me to the physical, the metaphysical, the delusional, and back. I have made the most important discovery of my career - the most important discovery of my life. It is only in the mysterious equations of love that any logic or reason can be found. I am only here tonight because of you. [looking at and speaking to Alicia] You are the only reason I am. You are all my reasons. Thank you. [applause from audience]"

- Professor John Nash to the Nobel prize acceptance speech to the crowd and his wife, from the movie A Beautiful Mind

"To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world." - Heather Cortez

The mission had been a failure. The random group of nomadic human survivors had been slaughtered minutes, before she had got there. Then, there was the problem of why the humans were all dead.

Cameron desperately gunned the stolen fusion engine past 183 mph. Wind whipped by her face and hair at hurricane strength.

The sound of the bike engine's roar beneath her was deafening. The vibration jarred her flash, her metallic teeth, and body.

Hellish firepower ripped up the wasteland's asphalt all around her. The pursuing moto-terminators followed her down the road.

She had mere microseconds to adjust to the changing road environment. She had to use the debris filled road to evade, the relentless assault by bullets.

Cameron hung low and into the machine she had borrowed. Her own form's added wind resistance would be the death of her, if she didn't.

She also had to alter coarse south. Heading home would have meant bringing this machine swarm with her. If her Father became aware of what was at Serrano Point, Skynet wouldn't even hesitate to nuke what it falsely believed to be its own property at the moment.

If she didn't know better she would have guessed the bike AIs had taken her hijacking of one of their own personally. It wasn't that.

The AI bikes were the living embodiment of machine rage on wheels. They'd kill any target they didn't consider friendly.

Thirty two machines followed at blinding speed. The group shared tactical information and synchronized fire like twentieth century fighter jets. They auto avoided the mess they made of the already dilapidated road and avoided any hazard they made to one another.

With eyes glowing red, Cameron fully embraced her TOK-715 side. She plotted the road, noted the terrain down to every last pot hole, noted the obstacles from every abandoned car frame to every last rusty tin can, overlapped her actions, putting every ounce of strength and speed into survival.

She plotted a course off the highway, into an old neighborhood and off the road. It was an insane course of action.

The first of the enemy AIs exploded behind her as she weaved past an old makeshift barricade of old cars. More when she tore through the ruins of a house. Most of the homes were roofless and door less.

The bike hit the inside of another dead structure at 129 mph. The wheels almost slipped beneath her.

She compensated for the weight, as the bike never could have on its own, by lifting its full weight prior to it hitting ground again. She barely avoided wiping out multiple times.

Twelve yards and empty house frames later, she smashed through a old glass backdoor window after already slowing down to 83 mph. The bike took most of the damage.

Had Cameron been human, she would already been dead at least nine times over. As a machine, she was slightly damaged externally and still lucky to be functional at all.

Six stealthy weaves later, the moto-terminator pack had fallen behind her. Cameron found a dry patch of old concrete and hid her tracks as she ran southwest evading for twenty minutes.

Cameron had survived. The cyborg took a minute to seal her wounds and pick the glass out of her skin.

She plotted a course home. Then, she traveled off road to avoid attracting any more attention.

Something bothered her deeply about all of what had just happened. It was how little the damage to her soft tissue had hurt...

After returning to Serrano Point, Cameron showered. Scared of John’s potential reaction to her exposed metal, Cameron wasted some of her internal store of nanites healing her external body.

It was the first thing she did. That is without a logical reason to do so.

After dressing, she wandered the halls. She was a machine lost in her thoughts.

One hundred thousand things she had done wrong crossed her mind. Ten thousand things she could do wrong invaded her thoughts. Three billion lives lost also haunted her.

It was one of the chores of being an AI. Humans thought they had a lockdown on overanalyzing things, of being lost in self-doubt, or indecision.
Being an AI of her level meant analyzing things on a level most humans would never grasp, even briefly. The fear of doing something wrong could be crippling to a machine, right now, looking at the entirety of what happened over her lifetime in the Resistance, Cameron was feeling like a failure on several levels.

Still, she found herself at John’s door like he had asked. Like so many nights before, she stood there.

She repeated an old habit. Her hand went to a necklace, that John had given her, lost long ago in another timeline. It had been two years ago, in the jump that sent her to the younger John and Sarah. Being a machine, lost for a moment in the exacting detail of the memory, she could feel its weight on her skin. Two years had not dulled the object’s touch or its loss. In truth though, the old habit had lost its meaning. The necklace was gone.

That was Cameron’s central paradox. It was so long ago and yet she would remember it forever as if it was right now.

With everything that had gone wrong, should she even be here? With everything that had gone wrong, could there be anything still like there once was?

She knocked. John opened the door and invited her in.

Supreme Commander John Connor was working on something. He’d been sitting o a couch working on a laptop, moving stuff around with Jhon Henry’s station link help.

Cameron sat next to the man who had first freed her for an hour. John talked about a presentation he was going to give.

It was like one of the weekly staff briefings John used to share with the inner circle. He was going to try to get people to see the big picture and what had to be done.

He was professional. He was preparing himself for a speech.

His leg was cold. At first Cameron had thought it was him, that he was mad at her somehow.

Slowly, to her horror, she realized it was her. She wasn’t feeling him, not the way she should be.

She was cold. She felt temperature, sensation, but there was no connection.

She ran a diagnostic, but nothing was wrong. She felt broken without knowing why.

John stopped his presentation when a tear ran down her face. He looked at her, smiled, and attempted a joke saying, “My speech was that bad, huh?”

Cameron looked at John, she attempted to hide her features like she used to, but she remembered her promise to Sarah. So, she processed her machine feeling in a way that a human could understand her distress.

Her lips quivered. She stated as her eyes watered, “I did everything you told me too. I followed all your orders John.”

Supreme Commander John Connor looked in her eyes. There was a wrinkle where he considered telling her to stop faking, then seemed to stop himself.

Cameron answered what she thought he was thinking, “Sarah taught me to do this. I don’t feel like you do John, and I don’t have feeling the way you understand them, but Sarah wanted me to be able to express what I felt in a way people could understand.”

“Why would mom do that?”

“Because she said it was necessary for trust. So, I could understand and they could. So, you could.”

John’s face was perplexing. Cameron didn’t know what to think of it.

She asked, “What are you feeling? I can’t tell right now.”

“Why don’t you just read my Poetry?” It was John’s strange term for Cameron’s normal ability to read a person’s emotions through tactile contact.
“Because I can’t right now. I don’t know why.”

Jhon’s brow creased. He took her hand, but it felt cold. She didn’t adapt to his temperature. She didn’t react to his feelings. She didn’t chameleon to his thoughts. Her hand was as cold as if it belonged to a T-800, rather than her.

He blurted out, “I don’t understand.”

“Well, that makes two of us.” She said, wiping a tear from her eye.

“Did I do something to piss you off?”

“Other than you dying and not telling me I’m a Skynet chip, no.”

“Perry?”

“Perry.”

“Having a legacy chip in your head doesn’t make you Skynet, Cameron.”

“Well, it sure the Hell doesn’t make me Uncle Bob, John.” The word Hell opened up another can of worms. She had promised this John to seek out faith, she had something to report.

She added, “You should know that John Henry was a faithful convert to Christianity. He had a death experience, when Skynet attacked him in 2008, and I have something to share on behalf of AIs.”

“What would that be?”

“We’re screwed.”

“What do you mean?”

“You might have a Heaven, John, but apparently, my kind doesn’t qualify.”

John blinked, “This is the same John Henry I was typing to?”

“Yes.”

“Then perhaps he didn’t die.” There were human beings that had near death experiences that didn’t see a white light, John was going to bring it up it wasn’t an actual death until he saw her expression.

Cameron glared at him. She remembered John Henry’s slow agonizing death as it if was her own, in her mind, John Connor didn’t have a clue about what he was saying.

She changed the subject again. Cameron asked, “Why did you send me away?”

“There was a seething issue in our ranks, and you were the target.”

“It was my purpose to protect you.”

“You were a political focal point for the entire insurgency. You were the tool the Grays were using to turn the troops on themselves. I saw the opportunity to save you and the people being manipulated.”

Tears welled up in her eyes, she responded, “You died. Skynet gloated showing me your corpse John. I lost you and I failed you.”

John stroked her hand stating, “You didn’t fail anyone. I’m sitting right here, because of you.”

Cameron let the words sink in. She calmed the machine inside her.

John added, “The insurgency was a psychological warfare act that Skynet had been using for a while. What happened between us might have sped things up, but it was always going to happen, because of the hay wiring chips.”

He looked into Cameron’s eyes. He stated, “You understand that without your kind, my kind couldn’t win the war. Almost every heavy combat piece in the air, on the sea, or on the land was AI or AI driven. Satellites were as well.”

John continued saying, “Wee had to use the malfunctioning Ais or we would have yielded the entire war. What happened was going to happen, whether you and I had been together or not. It might have happened a month or two sooner.”

“You might have won.”

“I doubt we would have routed Skynet out of every last one of its rat holes by then. The truth is we lost the war for two reasons. One was Skynet setting the chips to haywire. Two was failing to bond to the machine resistance that would have made that irrelevant. Neither of those factors were your fault or mine.”

“You decided that?”

“Perry did and I agree. Feel free to argue with him if you wish.” John smiled.

Cameron looked at him seriously. She asked, “Was I just a tool to you John? Was I just way for you to study Skynet?”

John took her hand and squeezed it. He looked her in the eye and said, “Do you remember the necklace I gave you?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve only known two other owners of that necklace. Do you know who they were?”

“No.”

“One was my mother. The other was the mother of my children. You know how I felt about them, so how do you think I felt about you?”
Cameron calmed. She centered herself out of whatever lock had held her AI mind hostage.

Slowly, her synthetic skin came alive. Simply by holding his hand, Cameron moved through the nerves of John’s body, as if he were nothing more than an extension of herself.

She could feel his heartbeat and its ghost began to beat in her chest. She could feel him breathing and her body began mimicking the same.
She felt the warmth of his skin against her. As she moved closer the scratchiness of his beard tickled her face.

She kissed him and took an hour slowly undressing him. Knowing he was mortal and fragile, she took every moment she could to appreciate him.
John Connor was no machine. He would be flawed and imperfect. However, he oved her and needed her as strongly as a human could.
Hours went by in slow soft intimate moments. Cameron felt drunk from the power of human emotions and living sensations that rolled off his body.
They were magical moments. However, being human, John could only go on for so long.

He felt like talking afterwards. This slightly annoyed her because it contradicted endless hours of Cameron’s research with women’s magazines.
John said, “So, mom wanted you to be able to express yourself.”

“Yes and she also read your silly book to me.” She smiled at him while laying naked on his chest.

John smiled, “She called you the Tin Man?” He was trying to tease.

Cameron’s mood changed. She confessed, “No, by the time she read the book to me, she called me Dorothy.” This led to her tearing up on his chest.

“That sounds like a good thing. Why do you seem upset?”

Cameron confessed, “Don’t be all human and take this the wrong way, because I do want to be here with you. But just like Dorothy, a big part of me wants to go home.”

She ran her fingers against his chest. For a few moments, he was silent.

In the end, John did what he always did when uncomfortable. He talked and joked to raise his mood and that of others.

He talked a bit, saying amusing and endearing things. Though, he really needed sleep.

Cameron stole something from Sarah. She just rubbed his hair a certain way, until he dozed off, despite himself.

She watched him rest. She stayed and lay on top of him, feeling his heartbeat, his breath, and every little twitch as he dreamed.

Right now, eternity could drop off a bridge. For tonight, he was hers. Right now, this is where she wanted to be.

Whatever price fate would have her pay, she didn’t care. Whatever her flaws or limitations, Cameron truly loved John Connor, in a manner no human would ever truly understand.

47. The Round Table

　
Avila Beach, California
Serrano Point Nuclear Power Plant
July 4th, 2027

　
"Only the dead have seen the end of the war." – Plato

"A disorderly mob is no more an army than a heap of building materials is a house." – Socrates

"History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak, or the timid." -Dwight D. Eisenhower

　
　
The war meeting started in an unusual fashion. Humanity showed up with several representatives: Supreme Commander John Connor, Major General Justin Perry of the reforming 132nd Division, new appointed Colonel Derek Reese of 1st Infantry Brigade, newly appointed Major Kyle Reese of 1st Infantry Battalion, newly appointed Major John Connor of 2nd Infantry Battalion, newly appointed Major Deuce of 5th Engineering 3rd Infantry Battalion, and newly appointed Major Allison Young of Logistics/Communications/Tech Com Battalion.

The truth is they were a classic cluster fuck. A massive number of green troops trying to do jobs on a level they were by no means prepared for.

The elder John Connor and Justin Perry had made it that way on purpose. In the absence of structure, you had to make it. In the absence of experience, you had to grow it. Promotions would follow growing into positions.

They worked with the familiar and taught each the basics of military leadership. They then promptly threw the junior officers to the wolves, both in the eyes of the people they were organizing and the others of the most basic alliance here.

John Connor had learned hard lessons in his last timeline. He corrected two of those here.

First, he had put an AI in charge of a Battalion to give his allies the feeling that they not only had their basic vote, but they had additional pull in the human ranks. The lack of that leverage and feeling of investment was a mistake that had left John vulnerable to his international allies. In his own opinion, it might have given Skynet’s Grays an edge to exploit.

Second, by the very same action, Connor made it clear from the beginning, there would be two species in this fight. Both were equally dependent on the other for the ultimate survival of either.

There was no us versus them. There was no man versus free machine. Both would rise together, or they would both fall together.

The same idea had been there when he promoted Allison Young and engaged her in a critical part of the war effort. It would be a small human leap of logic that a person had no value to the machine when they had been nothing more than a template.

By putting the young woman in a position of authority and at the table, John hoped to squash that thinking and not just in the human ranks. It was a series of massive gambles.

In Allison's case he had a lot of confidence, though he had never actually met the girl, she had displayed a lot of inner strength and courage in every incarnation that was recorded on Cameron's chip. That was a lot of what he would need in the days to come.

The next step was simple. It was time to educate both sides on the war. It was time to pool knowledge. It was time to work with each side’s strengths and by proxy lesson each side’s weaknesses.

John Connor knew that it would be a series of baby steps. Communities and armies had to be grown.

He started with things that might not be so obvious. To not undermine their confidence, General Connor prepared a series of presentations that wouldn't require the new human officers to do much more than simply be there and learn.

Other changes would follow shortly. The army would adapt.

Supreme Commander John Connor turned to John Henry. He asked, "Could you put up the hologram as I requested."

John Henry placed a virtual representation of the room, in the middle of the twenty-foot diameter table. The supercomputer also dimmed the lights.

General Connor continued, "The illumination is so that all of us are on the same page. An advanced AI can read this information in their virtual memory. Other than Skynet units known as I-950s, most humans can't."

General Connor said, "This is the way the world looked from space prior to Judgment Day. This is what you wouldn't have known at that time."

John Henry created a series of satellite images, minute ships moving through the ocean, and minute planes in the sky, all recording movements as what they would have looked like on a global scale with 24 hours going by every 60 seconds. This was exact replication of all global traffic as a recorded in a stolen subsection of Skynet's memory from this timeline.

These replications were obvious enough that John Connor felt he didn't need to explain many of them. John Henry was slightly irritated at the scale, but the AI knew things had to be off to be visible to the human naked eye. As a service to his fellow AIs he transmitted this information to them for internal viewing as well, with detailed corrections.

John Henry explained, as John Connor had previously asked him too, what people were seeing as it came alive on the illuminated map. The AI stated, “This is the world as it existed prior to Judgment Day from Jan 1st, 2011, until April 22. One scale day is going by every 60 seconds. “

The AI continued, “As per John Connor’s request, I'm now illuminating every human city in yellow, population centers of humanity in red and military forces in blue. This map is too a permanent record for everyone to review and learn from.”

When April 22 hit, John Henry moved the missiles, as Skynet had tracked them. The AI stated, "Skynet's attack would cover every major population zone and every national capital. An estimated three billion lives were lost that day, though these records are unverified since there was no reliable census again, until Skynet began tracking death camp numbers."

John Henry had been watching John Connor. Each waiting for the other to stop, in rehearsed fashion.

General Connor added, "The next thing John Henry will write in is the black zones. These are literally radioactive dead zones that are unfit for humanity to live in. Skynet has been known to hide nodes, weapons, and factories in such wastelands."

He also added, "Thanks to John Henry we have real time satellite intelligence today, but this is all passively learned. No matter how stealthy we try to be, if we move or order satellites, there is an increasing chance Skynet will know where we are.”

The map changed. There were more black spots. There were no planes and no ships. There were less satellites. The amount of red on the map was perhaps a tenth of what it was. Most of the blue military spots were gone.

General Connor offered, “This is what we know to be left in the world. Take a second to really let that sink in. Even if we win this, there is a massive job ahead of us to make the world fit for organic survival. There are also issues this creates even for our AI allies”

General Connor also added, “Before any of you start thinking this is as bad as it is going to get, the nukes, the bioweapon damage, and chemical weapon damage isn’t over yet. We’re going to have to make things worse to have any chance to survive at all”

General Connor explained, “This is not and never has been just a conventional weapon fight. Yielding tactile weapons, satellite capabilities, and movement on the field, will mean the end of both of our races, outside of whatever slaves Skynet deems fits to keep.”

General Connor stated, “Right now the single biggest threat we face at Skynet’s hands is not its vast army. It is the two remaining Kraken SSBN’s floating in the seas providing it the ability to recreate Judgment Day at will.

General Connor said, “These giant subs are also mobile factories and network hub units for Skynet itself. These are only the first of the problem we’re going to have to figure out how to deal with.”

Supreme Commander John Connor began the formal presentation. It was time to make sure everyone knew what was truly at stake…

The rest of the group had left. The only person left was the person he’d ordered to stay.

Supreme Commander John Connor looked at the younger version of himself. He watched his younger incarnation become antsy.

A closed ear would be the only thing the war leader would get, if he didn't ease the kid up. There would be a need to connect on some level.

The truth is General Connor didn't care much for the kid in front of him. That would have been true, if it had been a younger version of himself. The one that had failed to stop Judgment Day from happening in the first place, yet another 3 billion lost lives that he carried on his shoulders.

This wasn't him though. It was a particular doppelganger, bearing his name and his destiny, but different in so many ways.

This John had come from another time and another parallel dimension. That should have been enough to put the elder John at somewhat at ease, but it wasn't.

What aggravated the situation was what he had seen on Cameron's spare chip files. There had been two younger versions of this John Connor, he had been privy too.

It took a few days to tell the two apart, but once he could, the supreme commander didn't care much for this emo John. The one that hadn’t killed Riley and the one that had lost Derek Reese.

The kid had been coming a long way from the absolute mess that he had witnessed from copies of another Cameron's memories. He had access to the second Cameron's memories as a weird side effect of the mass merging of AI minds during the process that brought back this younger John's Cameron.

So, Supreme Commander John Connor focused on his inner diplomat. He put up a mask. He bonded with the kid, for the mission.

The elder said, "This parallel dimension thing screws with my mind a bit." He gestured at his hair, stating, "My mom was a blonde."

The younger was quiet. His jaw was clinched, not in defiance, but some kind of worry or apprehension.

The elder continued, "Did you know we don't even have the same birthday?"

"No."

"Just out of curiosity, what's your favorite food?"

"Excuse me?" The kid said it without attitude, rather it was genuine surprise.

"Just making conversation." The elder grinned wolfishly, the darker part of his nature was unfortunately enjoying this.

"I'm not really sure sir."

"Whatever it is, it won't exist if Judgment Day happens. Did you understand all the presentation?"

"Yes."

"So you understand that the mass environmental impact of Judgment Day will leave us a world that is barely able to sustain a billion people and likely won't even partially recover for decades?"

"Yes."

"Do you understand that the real mission we've been on since the first John Connor is stopping it from happening in the first place?"

The kid blinked. He didn't respond.

"I'll take that as a yes. You've joined an army that now belongs to me, so I have a direct order for you soldier. Because there is another timeline and another dimension involved with this, I'm ordering you to take yourself and your Cameron back to your actual time."

The kid clinched his teeth. This time it was anger. John knew the buttons without needing to ask, he was kicking this kid out of the world of his perceived: father and uncle.

The elder John simply locked eyes with the kid. He stated, "There are about eight billion lives at stake, there. I don't need just one more body here."

"Permission to speak?"

"Denied." The elder John continued, "From the Skynet records we got from Cameron and John Henry we can piece together that there have been several incarnations of you and me. It's likely the first version wasn't even the son of Kyle Reese. We've slowly been changing what's going on with the war. It's already been reduced from 32 years to 16. The Holy Grail here is stopping before it happens."

The kid squirmed in his chair. The elder John was enjoying this.

The General theatrically asked, "Is there a problem soldier?"

The younger John clinched his teeth and stated, "You need me here."

The General clarified, "No, I need you there. Further, it's not a request. I'm not your mom; I'm your commanding officer. I'm sending your ass back if I have to have a T-888 carrying you to the pad and take you there."

General Connor continued, "You take a bullet to the brainpan here kid and another eight billion people die there. You undermine the sacrifices of everyone that died to try to protect you, and it will cost you your mother's life as well."

The elder John hit a button on the table. He spoke to the computer, "John Henry?"

The AI responded, "Yes?"

General Connor stated, "I need a temporal mission prepared within the next 24 hours. As I already cleared with Weaver, I'm sending back the younger version of me and his Cameron to his specific timeline. I'll need you to drop them at a safe destination."

John Henry asked, "Date?"

The elder John looked at the younger. He said, "It's time for the younger John to make his first real command decision. I'll clear any time from his 16th birthday until two days after he left with you. He can decide that anytime within the next 24 hours, before he leaves."

John Henry simply replied, "Understood."

The elder John looked at the younger stating, "You spent that period of time being a complete screw up, more often than not. People you cared about died uselessly. I'm going to give you the power to fix that. Whether you succeed or fail will be your responsibility and a consequence of your decisions."

The younger looked at him in shock. He also looked at him thinking of the implications. He stammered, "Won't that change the past?"

The General responded, "Get used to cheating the past kid, it's part of who you are. If you go back to a time when there are two of you, the smart thing would be to cover your tracks.”

The General advised, "You could make early contact with Weaver. Some top-notch black ops might let you replace some of the dead with her playing victim, without upsetting your timeline too much.”

The General continued, "If you ever make that happen, you're going to have to embrace who you are first. Second, you're going to have to convince Weaver it's worth her time to bother. If you do those two things you will be a hell of a lot less disappointment in my eyes. Right now, you're still working your way out of dirt bag status with me and the John Connors that came before me."

The kid stayed quiet. He was thinking, weighing who to save and how far back to go.

The General Stated, "Your mom lost eleven percent of her body weight prior to your jumping, most likely from the same cancer that killed my mother.”

The General let the statement sink in. The younger John didn’t respond.

The General continued, “Because of the nanites in her chassis, your Cameron has the power to fix that now. I suggest you figure out a way to make Sarah trust her, so she can, but you can't do that until your earlier self makes the jump at his destined time."

The younger John Connor simply responded, "Thank you."

The General offered, "You want to thank me kid, you become the first John Connor to stop this war before it starts. Do what I failed to do. Do what we all failed to do. You have your timeline to save. I'll save this one."

The younger Connor asked, "So your plan is to save two?"

The General honestly answered, "Three actually. My Cameron doesn't know it yet, but she's going home soon too. There are three parallel worlds and about 15 - 17 billion lives at stake. We do this right; we'll save all three."

Both were quiet for a moment. The silence wasn’t a bad thing.

The General also offered, "On that note, you might want to let your Cameron know she's got twenty-four hours to say goodbye to her twin."

John guessed, "She'll take it personally?"

The General offered in a friendly fashion, "Guys like to accuse human women of holding a grudge forever, it's an exaggeration. An AI does by its nature, just like Skynet is still pissed for it's very first threat from humans."

"Point taken." The younger John also asked, "What's it like being with Cameron?"

The General smiled for a second and confessed, "Sometimes, I look at her and feel weird because she can act just like a child. At other times, she leaves me so far behind I realize I'm the child. Both are viewpoints from my own human prejudices about another race that is something completely different than mine. The big thing is make sure she realizes how you feel and always appreciate her."

The younger John made a face that was clearly offended and said, "What makes you think I won't?"

The General looked the kid straight in the eyes and replied, "Other than your own past actions, I'd say because your human and you want to humanize her by default. She's not human. You haven't even seen your first AI go psychotic from mission failure yet."

"What do you mean by mission failure?"

"We've assigned older models to protect people that failed to do so, often through no fault of their own. An AI has a hardwiring to not fail, we've watched them completely mentally degenerate from failing their purpose. As the models advanced and thus the AI chips, the effect became more pronounced, more dramatic, and more obvious."

"What do you mean?"

"If an AI was new and went through the shock of failure, we'd wipe their memory and start again. If it was one, we had bonded with, one that had become a part of their unit, the idea of simply wiping their mind became something abhorrent. As an act of mercy, it became an unofficial custom in the various tech com units worldwide to put an AI down rather than watch it suffer. They aren't like us, they will never get distance on it and they will never heal in time."

The younger John looked at his elder version. A light bulb went off in his head. He asked, "Did you have an order for this to be done with Cameron?"

"Yeah, the thought of her being like that was eating me up inside. Wiping her mind would be a horrible crime but leaving her to suffer forever would have been something far worse. I asked for mercy for her from my best friend, Perry, should I have been killed. He reluctantly agreed."

The younger John looked at the elder in shock. He thought about what this might mean to his own version of Cameron.

The elder John confessed, "Two days later, I lost my nerve. After losing everyone else I ever cared about, I couldn't live with the thought of it. I sent her back in time to avoid her suffering that fate because of me."

General Connor went on to say, "You are with another sentient life form, one that's technically immortal. Whether by the sword or old age, your mortality is going to destroy a part of her eventually. Unless she's violently destroyed first, she's going to lose you and suffer from that in a way you can't even fathom. It's something you might want to keep in mind when the next Riley comes around."

The next few minutes went unspoken. General Connor went back to planning on the computer.

The younger John left to go plan his mission. The elder watched him walk out.

The kid had potential. Deep down though, Supreme Commander John Connor still couldn’t shake the perception that the younger man was still a self-centered jerk...