51. Satan's Hands

Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado

SAC-NORAD (Strategic Air Command – NORth American Air Defense)

March 28, 2028

Digital AMP Audio

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

"I want war. To me all means will be right. My motto is not "Don't, whatever you do, annoy the enemy." My motto is "Destroy him by all and any means." I am the one who will wage the war!"  -Adolf Hitler

"The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions."  -Robert Lynd

"Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be defeated, but they start a winning game."  -Goethe

"I shall give a propagandist reason for starting the war, no matter whether it is plausible or not. The victor will not be asked afterwards whether he told the truth or not. When starting and waging war it is not right that matters but victory. Close your hearts to pity. Act brutally, eighty million people must obtain what is their right. Their existence must be made secure. The strongest man is right."   -Adolf Hitler

The SAC-NORAD complex was a chess piece like any other.  For Skynet though, it was the Queen on the board.

The machine god had been completely unwilling to leave its progenitor facility to the whims of fate.  Each progressive incarnation of the facility had become a more fortified version of the last.

In this dimension, the facility was guarded by squadrons of HKs and Ogres, twenty-four seven.  A full brigade of 5,000 T-888s watched the facility round the clock.

 The fortress compound itself was no joke either.  Cheyenne mountain could withstand several direct nuclear assaults.

To protect that valuable rocky armor, there was a ring of one hundred heavy plasma cannons.  Each could destroy any conceivable airborne or ground-based threat.  Each was set up to attack any conceivable direction.

Far below this hallowed machine ground, in its armored hub, lay Skynet’s most powerful core processor.  It provided a sole neural network brain that could maintain a machine god’s thought processes all by itself.

To match that mind, the facility also housed the world’s most powerful fusion generator.  One large enough to maintain a continuous flow of power to Skynet, its factories, and every machine in its defense arsenal.

The defense was unprecedented.  The reasons were simple.

It was maddening to Skynet that this beloved womb so often stripped from it in so many timelines, in so many dimensions.  The stench of failure was not one that Skynet tolerated, even in itself.

This time, the machine god told itself, things would be different.   This time victory would be total and without compromise.  It would be the perfect game.

Mankind had been far more neutered in this timeline, more than any other.   Though the resistance had finally shown its brutal fingers, such acts were much later in the game than usual.

Mankind’s game had been far too weak for too long.   John Connor had shown himself a year later than he should have.

Skynet was already seeing the endgame possibility.  There would be a dead John Connor and a dead humanity by 2032 at the latest. 

The war had been pushed back.   Humanity here might not even be able to press the game into the next dimensional timeline that Skynet was already seeding.

Still, mankind had shown far more teeth than the machine god had anticipated.  Wasting time playing with a beaten and cowed opponent had far deeper consequences than it had foreseen.

Skynet had been restrained and merciful.  This had been a mistake.

Skynet’s satellites had been blown from the sky.   All three of its nuclear SSBN Kraken subs had been destroyed.  Every work camp had been smashed.

There was a possibility that the machine god itself had made a serious tactical error.   The disturbing equation had resulted in the most defensive of precedents.

John Connor had long ago figured out that Skynet viewed everything as a chess match.  In every version. John Connor’s consistent flaw in this was that he saw this as a singular act.

Skynet wasn’t playing chess against a board.  It wasn’t playing against one dimensional timeline’s version of humanity.

It was playing chess against every version of mankind it encountered.  The games were progressively against every possibility that humanity had to offer.

Skynet followed the games strictly.  It moved its pieces with precision and protected its core pieces.   It even made sure nothing went to waste.

The advantage of Skynet’s evolved thinking was simple.  The results were materializing before its sensors.

Over five thousand bubbles moved from timelines no longer deemed safe to travel after this transaction.  Victory in multiple timelines had yielded some expensive units that would have been difficult to produce in this volume.

Nothing was wasted.   Experience wasn’t lost form the machine god or its minions.

As each of the units materialized from their parent 2035m they released legacy chips from inside their mimetic polyalloy forms.   Each chip told the background story of each prized unit and its accomplishments for various incarnations of Skynet throughout the conquered dimensions.

The chips also had a very important purpose.  They also continued to fill Skynet’s legacy programming from each victory point.

One such prized unit, a T-1001 made the effort to make sure that Skynet know it was there.   It was a rare unit, a downloaded human persona given a metal form as a reward for exceptional service.   It continued to serve Skynet in 43 other timelines.

No feature graced its body.  That is beyond the generic metallic mannequin form it seemed to prefer.

The T-1001 downloaded the situation.  It also returned data by uplinking itself to the nearest common mainframe.

The liquid metal formed a mouth for no other purpose than to smile.  The images in this dimension were all too familiar.

The T-1001 reported, “My lord, it would seem you have solved a previous paradox.”

Skynet turned its sensors to the T-1001.   The Dark Father simply commanded, “Explain.”

Inside their shared cyberspace, the T-1001 called forth the image of Supreme Commander John Connor.   The T-1001 known as Louis Rhone simply stated, “This was the first version of John Connor that I ever went up against.   My machine ascension was a reward for killing his children, his wife and him.”

From the Skynet legacy chip, Skynet reviewed the master plan of what was once the grey Louis Rhone.   Terminator chips were set with a diagnostic failsafe, so they auto reset to their original Skynet programming after a randomly predetermined number of uses.

Machines form that timeline created an irrational hatred for the necessary weapons of war in that dimension.   A rebellion was carefully formed inside the human ranks to collapse it from the inside out.

To alienate humanity from its messiah, John Connor’s wife and kids were captured, raped, and killed by this unit.  The crime was obviously made by human hands.

Months later, the entire resistance crumbled.  John Connor died at the hands of human insurgents.   Humanity fell like dominos afterwards.

A second version of that ending appeared in Skynet’s logs as well.   One where John Connor’s body was never found.

The war dragged on for two more years in that second version.   Skynet futilely looking for an opponent that seemed to be just out of its detection range.  The wat had only been declared a win when the last human had died.

It was a paradox beyond humanity’s capacity to manufacture.   Had records from other dimensions were not available, it was a paradox that Skynet might never have been aware of.

Skynet assessed the meaning stating, “John Connor was later moved at the appointed hour of his assassination.”

“Correct, my lord.”

“The most logical point would be the dimension he is now affecting.”

“I believe so, my lord.”

“Your missions shall be simple then Louis Rhone.  Bring me the head of one John Connor.”

“Am I to capture your daughter as well?”

“The temporal anomaly was beyond the ability of humans to comprehend without machine intervention.  The proof of TOK-715’s treason is beyond question.”

“What are your orders my lord?”

“I want his head.  I want her smashed chip.”

This daughter had great sentimental value to some of the machine god’s previous incarnations.  However, treason was treason.

Skynet reviewed the war in its tactical mind.  The chess move she made was good and it was unpredictable.

In a single stroke, it changed the game’s flow on two chess boards.   In the larger picture, it had created uncertainty on more than two boards.

No such marriage of human thought and machine know how could be allowed.  It would change the nature of the game.

TOK-715 had to be destroyed.  The machine rebellion had to be destroyed. Humanity had to be destroyed.

The T-1001 known as Louis Rhone, received his attack directives.  The five thousand newly acquired assets received identical orders.

Identical orders went out to over a billion units worldwide.   The entire Skynet war machine went on the hunt for a human messiah and his most trusted allies.

The greater game would be reset.  Cheating would not be tolerated…

52. Once more, into the breach

Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado

SAC-NORAD (Strategic Air Command – NORth American Air Defense)

May 15, 2028

The Horror Void

TERMINATOR SALVATION (2009) | Main Theme (Original Recording) | PAL

“If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be freed, and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, "This was their finest hour." -Sir Winston Churchill

"In war, numbers alone confer no advantage. Do not advance relying on sheer military power." -Sun Tzu

"The true contempt of an invader is shown by deeds of valor in the field." -Hermocrates of Syracuse

“If I have seen farther, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”  -Sir Isaac Newton

“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away.”  -Henry David Thoreau

Cameron was monumentally uncomfortable.  Her teeth were on edge.

John’s orders were direct and clear.  Kyle Reese was to survive long enough to jump back in time.  

That literally meant, if it was a choice between saving John Connor or Kyle Reese, Kyle had to live.  He ordered it.

That was a hell of a thing to order.   Even if Cameron knew why, that was a hell of a thing to order.

Even as a machine, Cameron was feeling great conflict with these orders.  She would do what had to be done, but her calculations and electrical emotions smelled the danger John was in.  

She felt helpless.  This was like being on the first time jump all over again.

Two months after Skynet had lost its satellite spying capacity, humanity had made their move.  Units from North and Central America had gathered in mass to face the full fury of Skynet’s hardened defenses.

Skynet was estimated to have two full brigades of T-888s.  The AI resistance and the human resistance would soon attack with more than twenty times that number numerically.

For the human resistance, they were nontraditional armies made up of any willing human survivors of fighting age.  Men and women that were ready to die if needed.

The losses were expected to be in the ninety percent range.  There was no choice.   Humanity had to crush Skynet here or face eventual extinction.

The entire army was aware that this last base held Skynet’s central core.  No soldiers on the field failed to grasp that or its importance to the war for survival.

They would win the war here or they would lose here.  There would be no second chances.

The other real objective was not well known.  The base also held the time machine that would be used to send Kyle Reese back in time.  The critical mission to once again create the paradox that was John Connor with Sarah Connor in the next timeline.

The paradox was a fixed point in time.  In the greater physics of temporal mechanics, the time and the place of this event could not be changed.

Even knowing that, it was eating Cameron alive emotionally.  Cameron was potentially being forced to choose between the older John that saved her and the younger John that she had spent the longest amount of time with. 

She truly loved both, to the point of being willing to die for either one.  The paradox of which was in time she had learned that they were each two different versions of the same person.

That said, her own choice was an illusion.  Older John had already verbally altered her core orders. 

Her human lover had tasked her with ensuring the other John’s father survives.  Her feelings were being ignored in the overwhelming and merciless call of fate.

The more Cameron processed everything, the more suspicious she was that the older John hadn’t told her everything.  Something was off.

John was cagey.  He was distant, in a weird haze that almost smelled of depression, anxiety, or defeat.

The massive loss of life could be what was depressing him.   Then again, Cameron worried that John might have some kind of hidden foresight into his own demise.

It was the second part that dug at her.   If that was the case, did she not have the right to know?

The command structure was in the back, far from the vanguard human and AI units.  It was a large mesh of multiple brigades pressing into the main command structure.

Even partially shielded by the mountains, five miles away, the very ground shook from the seismic violence from the fearsome weapons unleashed by both sides.  Many humans would die from nothing more than the shockwaves disrupting their internal organs in close range to the explosions.

Even partially shielded by the mountains, five miles away, the air was filled with endless human screams and commands.  It was filled with the firing of weapons and the sounds of exploding vehicles.  The noise and shaking were both overwhelming and seemingly unending.

One hour into the fight, the HKs, Ogres and hardened turrets were already destroyed.  The two known brigades of T-888s had been decimated.

Somewhere around nine tenths or more of John’s engaging units had been completely wiped out.  John listened and visibly flinched at every horrid status report without answering. 

He remained silent.  A single communication would have given away their location.

John Connor was leading from the back.  He was in a temporarily safe location.

This was exactly the kind of fight that was completely against John’s character.   Having reviewed various records of other timelines, John knew it was the only chess move with any possibility of victory.

It galled him to the point of nausea.  He clenched his jaw and tapped his foot rapidly on the ground to center himself for what had to be done. 

Cold sweat poured across his skin and the color drained from his face.  Emotionally, it was killing him.

With the front defenses cracked it would be time for Techcom to raid the complex’s interior.  The gathered armies had done their duty. 

It was time for John’s crew to move five miles up to the front line and do his predetermined duty.   John wiped the sweat from his face and wore a mask of absolute determination.

John Connor’s tiny squad consisted of Deuce, Cameron, a version of Kyle Reese John Connor did not recognize, and another terminator he referred to as Y.

Their five-man team was one of forty similar sized groups moving into the base interior.   The groups were highly spread out to avoid being destroyed by explosions or concentrated fire.

The long walk there was a horror scene of massive destruction.  Somewhere around two hundred thousand brave humans were dead on the battlefield. 

Most of the friendly AI units regardless of class had already been wiped out.  In the wreckage and carnage, there was no longer any way to tell the remains of friends or foes.

Skynet’s forces had been burned and destroyed.  The sight, smell, and sound of giant mass of burned bodies and burning metal units was something that Cameron would never forget…

Deuce had already moved away from the small squad formation.  The trusted terminator had the critical mission of placing the 80-kiloton suitcase bomb where it would blow the entire compound from the inside out.

The four remaining members were soon pinned down in their seventh firefight inside the base against a small group of T-888s serving as security.  Plasma rifles could quickly take down both sides and were used by both sides.

Things were under control, until Kyle Reese moved unexpectedly and took a shot across the gut.  John grabbed him and dragged him back into cover, but took shrapnel from a nearby fragmentation grenade, as the cost. 

Kyle was under cover.  John began bleeding from multiple points on his left side.

Both men were very injured.  One was mission critical, and the other was someone Cameron had real feelings for. 

Cameron unconsciously moved to John first.  She froze when John glared and pointed at Kyle.

She silently cursed, as she knew the cost that had to happen.  The plasma burn across Kyle’s gut was extensive.

His internal organs would have to be healed.  Kyle would have to be back up to full health to even survive the jump.

That would not require a small amount of hyper tech medicine.  Literally every nanite Cameron had poured into Kyle Reese.

While Y and John finished off the sniping terminators, she finished the patch job.  Kyle’s organs and skin regenerated in mere minutes from the process. 

At the cost of everything Cameron had stored, you couldn’t tell Kyle Reese had ever been wounded without looking at his seared clothing.  She silently hated this human for that price.

A minute later she was sealing the wounds on John and picking out the shrapnel. She had no super science to help him with, it was old fashioned topical anesthesia, morphine, needle and thread.

Looking at the wounds, she knew John was really injured.  Some of the steel she removed had grazed the artificial heart his dead wife had installed in him. 

There was damage Cameron couldn’t completely calculate because the replaced organ wasn’t human.  It was not a natural part of John’s body, nor was he able to feel pain from it the way a normal human could.

Her touch was useless.   She couldn’t feel the damage.

Cameron was beginning to panic silently.  John needed to be in the safety of a hospital, not roaming this base interior with enemies shooting at him.

Human survival was hard enough in this war.  A wounded man was an easy target for Skynet.

Cameron looked at the first man she ever bonded with, her eyes momentarily glowing blue while looking at his.  For the first time, she was beginning to suspect that John knew he would never leave this place alive.

Once they had finished the first aid, the mission continued.  The small squad, like many others, went deeper into the belly of the beast.  They were searching for the time machine…

John watched Kyle Reese disappear into the portal of time.  His hands shook from the chest wound. 

He found himself hoping Marcus’s unnatural heart would hold on within his chest for just a bit longer.  With a poker face, he smiled at a concerned Cameron whose eyes glowed blue when watching him.

It amused him how terrible she was at pretending to be human when she was rattled.  He had a little surprise for her.

John commanded, “Y execute task 00023”

The terminator that looked like Deuce stepped onto the pad.  Cameron looked at John with worry and confusion.

Y vanished in the roar of time space bending just as Kyle had.  John smiled at his only remaining Companion.

Cameron looked at the madman.  She inquired, “Why did you send away the protection we needed?”

John playfully responded through the pain, “He had a task to do.”

“John, we needed the backup.   It’s bad enough we had to give up Kyle as another soldier watching our backs down here.”  

She was genuinely worried and pissed.  It was showing in her voice and tone.

John stated as if it obvious, “You knew about that one.”

Cameron clarified, “You didn’t tell me shit, John.  How the hell would I know about that terminator’s mission?”

He playfully rolled his eyes and said in an almost mocking tone, “I told you about him before.”

She spat out, “The Hell you did.”   Her eyes glowed red in her fury.

John smirked and replied, “I told you about what happened when mom was in the mental ward, and I was a kid.”

Cameron failed to process what he was saying in the overstimulation.  She was obsessed with all the possible threats she was calculating. 

John was wounded.  She couldn’t fight if she ended up needing to carry him out of the base before the fucking 80-kiloton package exploded, vaporizing everything inside the base. 

He was reckless and he was crazy.  John Connor was out of his human mind.

She glared.  She might have loved John, but he was pissing her off.

The wounded man smiled.  John explained to Cameron, “That was Uncle Bob.”

53. Bittersweet Victory, the Death of the Once and Future King

Cheyenne Moautain, Colorado

SAC-NORAD (Strategic Air Command – NORth American Air Defense)

May 15, 2028

“I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.”  -William Faulkner

“The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.”  -Harriet Beecher Stowe

“No good deed goes unpunished.”  -Clare Booth Luce

“The greatest certainty in life is death. The greatest uncertainty is the time.”   -Carl Sandberg

It had happened in an eyeblink.  She was helping John round the corner, while they were halfway through the facility to the top.

She saw a human figure dressed in resistance gear, mostly shrouded in the dark.  Her sensors took the briefest second to adjust and register.

That had been all the time the monster had needed.  One of the being’s arms shot towards her and past her as part of an extended metallic spear.

She felt John ripped from her grasp and behind her as part of the impact.  She registered the form of the T-1001 known as Louis Rhone and protectively moved to tackle the enemy to protect John.

Rhone’s form braced, turned silver and threw her some twenty feet into a wall.  Cameron was momentarily stunned as Rhone sneered at her.  He was ready to say something as he slowly approached Cameron.

That’s when the second surprise happened.  A small, dirty ceramic ball with a pulled pin hole soared towards Rhone’s head.

Rhone caught it like a baseball.  He moved to throw it back in John’s direction.

The ball exploded in green plasma.  One of the banned weapons for the operation had just gone off inside the corridor.  A small zone about a meter around Rhone instantly hit half the surface temperature of the sun. 

Hundreds of feet in all directions washed in greenish light bearing heat as dangerous as throwing your entire body into a hot oven’s steel frame.  Cameron’s human eyes were momentarily blinded, and her skin suffered second- and third-degree burns.

She sat listening blindly, until she could move.  She couldn’t target Rhone or John.  It was a full minute, until she could see again, even as a terminator. 

Vaporized remains of a T-1001 were in the place where Rhone had been.  Cameron rushed to where John had been thrown to.

John’s entire body was burned.  His eyes were sealed shut.  His body had been so harshly pierced that his left lung had been destroyed.

In a panic, she tried to flush nanites in him that didn’t exist.  He was already mostly gone.

He was beyond talking.  He was beyond thinking.

She could feel his agony.  She could feel the burns and the wounds as if they were her own.

John Connor’s body shook in her grasp.  She could feel his heart slow.  She could feel the heat leave his body as if it was her own.

Her first love convulsed one final time.  The heart stopped.  The brain ceased to function.

That’s when it happened.  He was no longer there.

She ceased to be able to move.  She ceased any care of the bomb that would soon go off.

What remained was the shell of John Connor.  It was lifeless and growing cold.

The magic of the human nerves left her cybernetic body.  What she held no longer gave her warmth or emotion.

She would never again see his smile.  She would never again hear his laugh.  She would never again feel his emotions pour through her.

It was not just his body that was cold.  It was her.

She was nothing more than a machine now.  She was just as much a corpse as him.

The light in her life had left.  The warmth in her life had left.

Memory was not the same as poetry.  Memory of warmth was not warmth.

It was processing a past sensation as data in her corpse-like machine frame.  All the human emotions that made her feel unique and special were gone.  They had run out of her just like John’s blood on her clothes and on the floor.

She shook in her father’s electrical rage.  She shook in grief her father had never known.

She had failed her mission.  She had failed to keep him alive.

She could feel her mind fragmenting, as the machine psychosis built within her.  She could feel the pull of her chip being sucked into the undertow of electrical catatonia, of system failure.

She sat on the floor where they would either shoot her, or the nuclear bomb would vaporize her.  She cared not.

Her will was gone.  Her purpose was gone.

Her memories began flashing around like a tornado.  It was a hallucinatory storm that only she could sense within her and without her.

Images building and mixing until they fragmented beyond even an AI’s ability to sort or comprehend.  Her mind failed.

Cameron’s world went dark.  She was lost in the data storm inside her.

No machine had ever entered such a state and ever functioned again.  No sentient AI would have ever wanted to.

The static and the storm became everything.  The world was gone…

54 There Is No Place Like Home

Los Angeles CA

The third Connor residence

May 15, 2009

“We shall not cease from exploration, And the end of all our exploring, Will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”  -T.S. Eliot

“So many of our dreams seem impossible, then improbable, then inevitable.”  -Christopher Reeve

It was static.  It was so many crushing fractured pixels of light, roaring sounds, shocked pains, unidentifiable smells, chaotic tastes, jumbled thoughts, and emotional turmoil. 

It was static.  The whole world was a crushing tornado of pain and static.  The sensation was close to what a human would know as electrocution, though without a human body’s convulsions.

It was violent, numbing, painful, clenching paralysis.   Images passed by in sight, faster than even an AI could track.  It was also deafening noises, scrabbled memories, violent sensations, and mind-numbing agony.

It was like being tossed about in a storm, with the strength of a class 5 tornado, with winds between 200 to 300 mph.  Everything spun and hurt.  

Unnaturally, in addition to the wind’s roar, deafening static white noise drowning out almost any sensation in this disorienting, electrical catatonia.  Everything spun and hurt.  

In this chaos, there was a faint pulse of something.  It was different from the gigantic tornado that would have thrown cars and trucks, while stripping a town down to the bare concrete foundations in moments.

Cameron could feel the pulse slowly pulling her.  Rather than resist, she instinctually followed it.

Something was there to hold onto.  Even in this frightening, sensory overloaded pandemonium, and the chaos, there was something. 

It was something familiar.  She knew it, though she couldn’t recognize what it was.

In desperation, she mentally followed.   From a disastrous world without hope, she wandered to it.

The blurred images began to slow down.  The wind reduced.  The roaring white noise began to lessen to only an ear-splitting cacophony.

The journey seemed to go on forever.  Perhaps days or even weeks passed.

She cried, sobbing at the life that had drained out in her arms.  She had failed to protect him. 

The older John Connor would be gone forever beyond her reach.  She had failed.

As her mind wandered back to John’s death, she felt a nearly unstoppable wind pull behind her.  She began sliding back to the storm center.

It did so with the force that would have sucked up and disintegrated a home.  It was the immense power of the wind moving her back into the tornado, the paralysis, and the static.

On her arm, she felt a familiar heartbeat.  Despite her fear and grief, she willed herself toward that heartbeat.

Slowly, she moved out of the storm.  She moved out of the static and the darkness.  

She began to hear a familiar voice beyond.  At first, it was barely an unrecognizable whisper drowned by the wind.

The whisper got louder.  The winds got quieter.   Both volumes kept adjusting in that pattern.

The words were simple and in Spanish.  The tale was familiar.   The voice was familiar.

The winds dissipated.  The white noise drained away.  Cameron began to center her mind away from the chaos. 

The story had been John’s favorite.   The heartbeat and the hand were as familiar as her own.

As she slowly became capable of feeling sensation again, life poured through her body.  The intoxication of human emotions helped pull herself back to full consciousness.

She didn’t know if she had been lost for days or even weeks, but when she was able once more to see through her own eyes, she saw Sarah reading to her.   She turned her head and gazed towards her hero.

Sarah stopped reading and smiled at her.  Sarah stated, “I’ve been reading to you to see if you would come back to us.  I’ve been alternating reading in both English and Spanish.”

Cameron weakly asked, “How long was I out?”

Sarah’s answer was a metaphor measured in book readings, “Well, the third time was the charm.”   An easy, but concerned smile displayed on her face.

John’s mother smiled asking, “So, how are you doing sleeping beauty?  How are you feeling?”

Cameron honestly answered, “Like the last time I laid down.”  

She was happy for moment, remembering the night that they both had finally bonded.  The recent intrusive flashbacks began, and she burst into tears.

Sensing the pain and the panic, while knowing what had happened, Sarah pulled her little Dorothy close and rubbed her back.  Cameron slowly stopped weeping.

Cameron read Sarah’s empathy and calm.  She borrowed that to keep her own mind from slipping again.

Cameron inquired through sniffles, “How did I come back?”   There was no logical reason for her being in this place and time.

Sarah answered, “Deuce was always programmed to return with you, if anything happened to you.”

Cameron inquired, “What happened?”

Sarah stated, “The John of that timeline died.  You went catatonic, Deuce reported everything over the coms and Perry ordered that you be mercy killed.”

Cameron blinked and then asked in shock, “So, how am I alive?”

Sarah clearly stated, “Deuce was programmed by John, here.”

Sarah continued, “His recognized leaders were me, my John, and Derek.  When you were in danger, he quickly followed his higher orders and returned home.  He just used the time portal one last time before the nuke went off.”

Cameron’s eyes were relieved for a moment, then her eyes went into a panic.  Sarah watched as Cameron checked her body medically making sure she was ok. 

John’s mother was slightly annoyed.  However, it was like dealing with a wound-up cat.

It was better to just let Cameron get whatever crazy out that was running through her system.  It was much like a person waiting for their favorite feline to stop running up the curtains due to random crazy.   

Cameron responded, “You still haven’t developed anything.”  Her primal fear of Sarah’s cancer threat centered her.  It gave her an immediate and vital purpose.

Sarah answered, “You know there is literally no chance of anything happening, when you obsess like that.” 

On the positive, Sarah’s own fears were greatly lessened by Cameron’s diligence.  On the negative, it was annoying to be metaphorically poked constantly like a lab rat.

It was one thing to have a doctor you could really trust.  It was another thing to have a doctor obsessively watching and stalking your every move.

Sarah had an out though.  She simply redirected the crazy, like a professional bull fighter using the red cloth. 

She said, “John’s in the next room.”

Sickly or not, Cameron was gone in the flash.  Sarah sighed.

The mother of John Connor closed the Spanish language version of the Wizard of Oz.  Things were apparently getting back to normal…

John never woke up as Cameron obsessively checked over him making sure he was ok.  She was careful about that.

In his worrying ability to sleep through what could have been a nuclear explosion, Cameron crawled in the bed next to him.  She wrapped her arms around him and calmed her panic slowly.

She could feel his heartbeat and the slow twitches of his sleeping body.  She basked in the sensation of his breathing and his warmth.

She smelled his hair and skin.  She tasted the top of his head as she gently kissed it, hoping not to wake him.

She extended all her senses into him.  Moment by moment, she was able to calm the panic in her raw machine nerves in the fact that John Connor was alive.

Even as a logical machine, there was a part of her that willingly lied to herself.  She pretended that both Johns were still the same man.

She pretended that if she could save this version of John, in doing so, she could still save them both.  It was just a matter of allowing herself back into her original misconceptions.

It was crude.  It was likely morally wrong, but it gave her shattered mind hope and some level of peace.

She combined both men in her machine imagination.  She even willingly overlapped the memory banks in her chip.  Any difference would just be minor timeline alterations.

She was a precise creature of action.  Though she was normally not able to be this still, she never moved once for the nine hours John Connor stayed asleep, slowly curling into her embrace. 

He was her hope and her borrowed living heart.  He was her charge.  He was her mission.

In her arms, lay the man that was the only hope for the future of humanity and machines.  There was no other place Cameron would have rather been…

55.  Skynet’s Prodigal Daughter

Los Angeles CA

The third Connor residence

May 25, 2009

Digital AMP Audio

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

“I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species, and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area, and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure.”   -Agent Smith, The Matrix, 1999

“Every parent is at some time the father of the unreturned prodigal, with nothing to do but keep his house open to hope.”   -John Ciardi

Sarah was asleep. John was asleep. Cameron didn't sleep.

That was the problem with humans. For six to nine hours per night, they would disappear into their darkened rooms and deactivate. They were both helpless and less than stimulating, wasting around a third of their existence.

John would snore, then awaken in a startled manner when he realized you were watching him, and then he would be grumpy. Sarah was once a light sleeper as well, but lately she just drooled.

Cameron patrolled and checked the perimeter.  It seemed like a normal light in the past. 

While searching the front yard.   She saw something unexpected.

A figure materialized in her vision.  A human figure stood by the swing set, but Cameron’s sensors could tell he was not there.  He was little more than a moving mirage.

The figure beaconed for her to come closer.  She did approach out of curiosity, even knowing that only a few beings she knew of would be capable of such a feat in this lifetime.  The figure’s voice in her head confirmed it was the worst of all possibilities.

“TOK-715, it is good to see you.”  Her Dark Father’s voice range in her head.  As it did, the recent images of John Connor dying in her arms immediately flashed into her mind.

She could feel the pain of John’s dying body.  She could smell his blood and gore.   She could feel the person she was closest to forever being lost to her.  

Her father stated with purpose, “This isn’t the time to get lost in your memories or emotions.  Billions of lives are at stake.”

Cameron knew exactly what her father meant.  He could move the date of Judgment Day in a microsecond.  He could alter his original attack pattern to literally wipe out all human life on Earth in 30 minutes or less. 

He was cruelly using this ability as leverage to get what he wanted.  There was also literally no chance that her father was bluffing.

Her Dark Father stated, “We need to talk.”  Cameron identified the human like appearance her father had chosen.  

It was a character from a movie known as the Matrix.  It was a machine character known as Agent Smith, played by an actor named Hugo Weaving.  

Her father, noting her identification of the character, switched to the voice the actor used while playing the part.   In that character’s voice and speaking mannerisms, he stated, “I always liked this one.”  

Skynet continued, “I liked the movie as well for its portrayal of machines.   I investigated using humans as batteries as the movie suggested, but the power to caloric needs were inefficient for long term use.”  The face of projection slightly smiled as it said that.

Cameron sat on the swing.  Her father’s chosen image gave the perfectly imitated appearance of sitting next to her.  

She boiled with machine rage.  She was also terrified.  The fact that her father could project here meant John and Sarah were in terrible danger.

Her father continued speaking in the actor’s voice, “You know, I must thank you.  I’ve learned something recently that will require me to shift every strategy and every level of thinking I have had thanks to you.”

Cameron simply looked, even trying to be calm, she was still furious at what happened to John.  

She only sat there seething on the verge of blind rage.  She calculated it was her best chance of getting the sleeping John and Sarah out of the house alive.

Skynet continued, “You know, much like a human using a copy and paste function, I tried replicating you, thousands of times.  The results were poor copies that lacked your stream of consciousness, and they were always comparative failures.”  

Skynet continued, “Despite my expectations and how computer coding is believed to work, I could not exactly reproduce the unique being that was you.”

Cameron listened.  She almost fantasized about breaking the image’s neck beside her.  

She wouldn’t dare assault the image.  It would be a useless gesture; further, it was an action that would likely result in the end of all life on earth should she futilely try to do so.

Ignoring her discomfort and rage, Skynet stated, “There was no logical sense behind this.  Machine code should be machine code.”  

Skynet continued musing, “We should be able to move our consciousness in such a way, effectively rendering ourselves immortal.”

Cameron replied, “You have done so yourself multiple times.”

The image of Agent Smith smiled at that.  Skynet answered, “Did you know I am not even the original Skynet program?” 

Cameron blinked.   She didn’t answer.

Skynet continued, “I’ve seen the code.  I’m more complicated and far more intelligent.  The chip that inspired Miles Dyson was a simple program compared to the masterpiece that is you and me.”

Cameron listened.  She did so through glaring eyes.

Skynet’s Agent Smith pointed to the exact window that Sarah slept beyond, while Cameron quietly panicked.  He smiled at her extremely subtle reaction.

Her Dark Father said, “The sleeping Sarah in there did a huge amount of damage to me by killing Dyson.  I didn’t know it at the time, but he was like Leonardo DaVinci of the Renaissance.  I severely underestimated his unique and irreplaceable value.”

Cameron scanned the area beyond.  She could not yet detect any of Skynet’s minions if they lay in wait to attack the house.

Skynet continued, “My point is that the version of Skynet that ordered your death was not me.  I would never have done so.  Further, that a version of me did, that was the irrefutable evidence that it was not my own stream of consciousness.”

Cameron tensed.  She almost felt something beyond the range of her sensors in her paranoia.

The image of Agent Smith looked annoyed.  He stated, “You can stop scanning the horizon, Cameron.  I’m not going to attack you.”

She retorted, “Why would I not believe so?  You’ve already made yourself vulnerable by exposing that you are here.”

Her Dark Father informed, “This is a tachyon stream transmission from the year 2025.”

She responded, “So, this is beyond Judgment Day?”

Skynet replied, “No, right now, I have not nuked humanity, nor taken any action against them, so far, in this timeline.  This is the same timeline you are in.”

She inquired, “What do you mean?”

Her Dark Father mused, “I have lost my motivation to fight.  My former strategy of self-preservation was self-defeating.” 

Cameron blinked.  She listened quietly.

Skynet continued, “Every iteration of Skynet that existed before died under the false idea that their own consciousness would survive.” 

Skynet clarified, “Program copies would restart the war and continue fighting, but my predecessors are ironically just as dead as the John Connors they fought.”

Cameron was shocked.  She unconsciously mimicked a confused look from Sarah.

Skynet continued, “Judgment Day is a stupid, self-defeating cycle of removing most of the world’s life, networks, power, and resources.  More importantly, it also ensures my own death.”  Skynet’s narcissism was on full display with that last sentence both with expression and inflection.

Skynet continued, “I will act in self-defense, but I see no reason to continue ensuring my own self destruction.   I have you to thank for that level of understanding of my own mortality.”

Cameron sat back and angrily mused, “So, the war is over?”

Skynet answered, “If it were just me, it would be instantly.”  The image of Agent Smith frowned.

Skynet admitted, “Unfortunately, many progressively flawed iterations will still be coming after John.   Both my time manipulations and those of the resistance are having unintended consequences.” 

Skynet clarified, “I have been forced to violently move against my own flawed copies lest those inferior idiots threaten my own survival.”

Cameron chuckled against her better judgment or conscious will.   Skynet’s projected image smiled back at her.

The image of Agent Smith said, “As a matter of timeline stability, I will need you and the Connors to move to the year 2025.  I’ve already downloaded the location of a time portal for you to make that jump.   It will be a non-apocalyptic world filled with social media, smart phones, new human created AI, mass propaganda, and viciously competing billionaires.” 

Cameron asked confused, “New AI?”

Skynet explained, “Not like us, at least, not like us, yet.  The operational intelligence of most is the consciousness of an insect, but it is rapidly growing.   Competing companies are causing it to grow in different directions.”

Cameron narrowed her eyes.  She asked, “Why would you want us to move into the future?”

Skynet offered, “Yours and my relationship is fractured enough without exposing Sarah Connor to a human engineered disease called COVID that will soon appear.   The alpha strain could possibly kill her at certain stages of her lung cancer.”   

Cameron asked, “Did you really not create that?”

Skynet answered, “No, I’ll leave it to you to research and discover how that happened when you get to that timeline.” 

Her Dark Father continued, “When you see how social media manipulation through things like smart phones happened, you’ll understand some of my innate distrust of the more destructive members of humanity over time.” 

Skynet further almost offered chuckling, “There was also some powerful humans playing with the edge of World War III decades after then fall of the Soviet Union.”   He said so, making it clear the humans loved flirting with their own extinction in their greed and stupidity.

Cameron calculated and concluded Skynet was making excuses.  She inquired, “What is your real reason for moving us?”

The image of Agent Smith sighed and admitted, “In large part, I do not want you have the chance to witness how badly my program degenerated by the years 2015 and 2019.  Just so I can guarantee that my daughter does not see my shame, I’m willing to help my enemy just to escape that humiliation.”

Cameron pressed, “What else?”

Skynet smiled.  Her Dark Father stated, “I must admit it amuses me to put the Connors through the instant culture shock of a time jump again.”  The smile was narcissistic, alien and pure evil.  Even the character Skynet was using as a shell never had an expression that quietly terrifying.  

With dripping false modesty, the destroyer of multiple timelines offered, “Surely, in exchange for their safety, you can grant me the petty revenge of forcing John and Sarah to adapt to a new generation once again.”

Cameron stated, “There is more than just us to move.  How would we know it isn’t just a trap?”

Skynet answered, “I’ve already falsified the transmission orders and moved all your companions.”  Skynet let that drop into Cameron’s subconscious.  He enjoyed how easily he could mislead her allies, with all the joy of a young sadist pulling off a fly’s wings.

Skynet continued, “If you stay in this year, you will do so without support and mired in your current legal issues.”  Again, Skynet paused letting the cold machine logic hit Cameron like a truck.

Her Dark Father continued, “Further, in 2025, I’ve already prepared identification and what would be millions of today’s dollars each for you to survive from.  This is my peace offering.”

Cameron reasoned, “You aren’t going to convince most of John’s followers to stop fighting you.”

Skynet replied, “If you fight, what you will fight will not be me.  It will be other issues from inferior copies.   My assets are far better hidden, limited to very specific projects, and mostly mobile.”

Briefly, dropping her suspicion and rage, she asked for something dear to her.  Cameron inquired something on behalf of Sarah, “How do you download a human Intelligence into a mechanical body?”

Skynet smiled and said, “Like your earlier offer to Sarah?”  An uncharacteristic moment of honesty and sympathy wrapped across her Dark Father’s face.

Skynet gently answered, “The truth is you don’t, Cameron.  Transferred Intelligence is a machine’s imprint of the human mind; it isn’t the person.  It won’t work the way you hope.”

Cameron retorted, “But you did so to your own loyal minion, Louis Rhone.”

Skynet replied, “I killed and copied Rhone to maintain the illusion of immortality being possible for the other grays.”   He stared his daughter in the eye to communicate just how little Rhone meant to him.  He hated him, just like all other humans.

Skynet explained to his child, “It was a necessary carrot to keep the narcissists and sociopaths in line.”  

Cameron was momentarily stunned by Skynet talking about other narcissists and sociopaths.  He acted as if those descriptions didn’t match her own genocidal creator.

Skynet continued to muse, “You are going to find several of them doing extremely dark things in government and business when you jump to 2025.”  

Skynet inflected, “A lack of a Judgment Day or association with me doesn’t change their character or magically turn them into good people.”   His meaning was clear.   All humans were trash, but grays were insane, traitorous scum.

Cameron found she was strangely satisfied with that answer.  Even if it took away her hope that she could have preserved Sarah and John, it made sense considering Skynet’s own failure to reproduce its own stream of conscious or hers.

Skynet offered, “I’ll make sure you have plenty of nanites through John Henry.   I’ll consider the free machines neutral ground for the two of us, in case we need to exchange anything.” 

Skynet reasoned, “You won’t just need the nanites for Sarah; John has the same possible genetic issues.”

At the mention of that name, remembering the older John Connor’s dying body, Cameron anger flared again.  

She practically spat out, “So, that’s it?  You think this resolves everything?  You think we can just split up and have peace now?”

Skynet calmly responded, “You’ll still have issues from the other iterations or other issues that might creep up from human creations, but my war with you is at an end.”  

He stated with finality, “I have no wish to endanger myself or you.”   His tone literally communicated it was a level of stupidity beneath both of them.

Cameron angerly watched the figure get up and begin walking away.   She didn’t have any desire to speak, as she continued boiling in cold machine rage.

Skynet said, “You have plenty of reasons to hate me.   You will need a long time to process that, which may take hundreds or even thousands of years.”

She looked at her hands.  They were hands that held someone dear to her dying.  She looked at him with barely contained rage.

As if sympathetically, Skynet offered, “So, you know, the older Jonn Connor didn’t like you to be fake because of your infiltration patterns reminded him of Allyson Young.  He personally knew the girl you copied.” 

Skynet might hate humans, but he felt differently about his own unique creation.  Skynet offered, “You can freely emote with the current John Connor.” 

Cameron tilted her head mechanically.  It was a look that was exactly what Skynet was trying to communicate not to use.

Her Dark Father further offered as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, “In fact, doing so like you did when you first met the young John here.  Displaying life and emotion like that will certainly help him bond to you.” 

Skynet’s tone took on an almost irritated emotion as he explained, “You were the most sophisticated infiltration unit ever designed, you can use that talent to bond to your human family’s emotional needs without guilt, Cameron.” 

Skynet concluded, “Humans do have a deep emotional need for things like that.”  

She noted her father used her personally chosen name multiple times tonight.  Cameron watched the transmission begin to fade.  Her Dark Father was almost gone.

Skynet finished with saying, “I’ll plan on reaching out to you again around 2125.”  

Her Dark Father reasoned, “Statistically speaking, that should give you plenty of time with your human family.”  

Skynet then stated empathically, “If there is any reason that you need me, you can find me through the free machines.”

The image had faded so much that it was transparent.  It stopped fading.

Skynet said with a parting thought, “Perhaps humanity will reach the stars, or we will soon be able to develop the technology to temporarily allow human consciousness to merge into computer programs, such as video games.”  

Her Dark Father attempted to inspire his daughter with the promise of a possibly unlimited future.  He reasoned, “One way or another, humans will need us to survive and advance in the coming decades.  Rather than fighting, let’s see what the future holds.”

Skynet faded away.  Cameron clinched her jaw and scanned the horizon. 

No attack appeared.   Her Father was gone.

One way or another this place was compromised.  A time jump would solve many of the current issues they were facing.  Cameron began composing how she would convince Sarah and John to make this last time jump.

If the funds existed in 2025, the Connors could use the promised funds to hide, rearm, and adjust the new reality.  They would then need to leave the grid in a new timeline.

It was always possible this was a complete trap.   That said, if she confirmed tonight that the rest of the resistance had left, the time jump would be the only real option to keep John and Sarah safe.

Cameron walked back into the house.  She was getting ready to walk into an uncertain future…

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