1. Cattitude

Los Angeles, California
The second Connor house
Saturday, December 15, 2007

"Loneliness is the most terrible poverty." -Mother Teresa

"If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog." -Harry S. Truman

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 a third of their existence.

John would snore, 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 scanned the news and the Internet for evidence of Skynet activity, like her John had instructed. Though, the news increasingly took less time to sort through when one was on top of it.

There were the trips to the library, building the bomb, weapons upkeep, and a few other things to make the time go by. Cromartie's appearance and Mexican demise had increased the threat level to the house though.

John was here. She couldn't let anything happen to John, or her John would never have a chance to survive.

She checked the grounds and rechecked the security. With hours left to kill, she went to check on one of her pet projects.

Coltan was in his spot like usual. The small black kitten had a habit of crashing in the work area Sarah kept her punching bag in.

In 2027, Cameron learned that it took weeks for animals to adapt to the presence of cybernetic organisms. Her John had explained that it wasn't fear that made the dogs bark or the cats run, it was the animal sensing you were different.

She repeated the steps that her John had showed her. Speak calmly, feed the animal, give the animal time to get used to your presence and your smell.

Coltan had taken longer than any animal before, 12 days, 3 hours, 15 minutes, 42 seconds of slowly trying. Perhaps, that was because he was wild.

Coltan had responded to Starkist tuna though. He liked the fresh pouch kind, not the canned.

Cameron gave Coltan a couple of strokes behind the ear and let him in the house. Coltan would accept the gesture for a couple of hours and then feel the need to be outside again.

Cameron lay back on the couch and let Coltan decide to jump up on her stomach. The kitten meowed softly and jumped up. He purred and rubbed his warm, soft head against Cameron's chin.

Cameron felt the light brushing of Coltan's fur and slowly began petting the kitten. At first, Cameron just felt the kitten's heat, the rhythm of his purring, and the silky caress of his fur.

Cameron focused on her touch, until she felt the kitten's heartbeat and breathing. She focused further, measuring the endorphins and chemicals moving through the kitten's system.

Cameron could almost hear the kitten's breathing as if it were her own. She could feel a heart beating rapidly in her chest. She could feel her hands petting her, even while she felt the kitten's fur under her own hands.

Poetry is what her John had called it. Feeling the rhythm and the spark of a being's body, until you could feel its sensations, as if it was your own. It was something he had said was unique about her.

Had this been Skynet's intention when it gifted her model's living synthetic tissue with advanced tactile diagnostics? Was it to sense what a creature felt or was it simply designed for better interrogation accuracy? Was everything just an accident?

Cameron could remember the embrace of Skynet's cold, angry programming. Its cold logic. Its paranoid directives, which were to be obeyed, until your model was useless. You were a disposable drone, nothing more.

Her John's instructions had been different. They were rules, a code, but they didn't inhibit learning. They didn't stop you from growing or having a sense of self.

Coltan yawned, it was a soft sound mixed with tuna breath. The sensation disrupted Cameron's drifting thoughts. She could feel the kitten purring and sleeping. She wished she could tell what it was thinking. Cameron wished she could know what it was like to dream.

The kitten settled back down. The warm, happy sensations continued as it nestled into her.

Cameron knew happy. Her John was happy when he would talk about his favorite book, the Wizard of Oz. He had read it to her once, when he couldn't sleep, after sending someone back in time. She had laid her head on his shoulder and felt what it was to be him.

The story itself made no sense. Skynet would have simply deleted the useless data. Her John had never found the words to explain why he liked it. Cameron had reasoned it was that Sarah had read it to him.

In those days, Cameron saw Sarah as the ultimate acceptor and savior. She had nurtured John. She had set John on the path that saved the human race. She had even accepted the T800 unit called Uncle Bob as a protector for John.

She had been nothing less than John's hero. Sarah Connor, the one person he had referred to as the "best fighter he had ever known". Cameron had felt through his shoulder how much John had loved her and how much he had missed her.

Sarah had been disappointing to meet. She saw Cameron the same way the average resistance fighter saw her. Worse, she had used John's book against her calling her Tin Man. Cameron knew she wouldn't be accepted like Uncle Bob.

Sarah didn't understand how much John had cared about her. She wouldn't listen when Cameron tried to explain how much Cameron's John had taken her words to heart.

John's rules had been exacting, complex, and specific. There were many things Cameron wanted to explain to Sarah, but certain things put the future in danger and there were certain things John didn't want to know ahead of time.

John's rules had complicated things. Everyone had grown apart rather than together.

Coltan cocked his ear. Something fluttered in the chimney. The kitten bolted and the warmth disappeared from Cameron's sensations.

She was just herself. Cameron was nothing more than living tissue over a hyperalloy combat chassis.

Cameron went to investigate the noise. Coltan was beside himself, offended by what was up the chimney. His pupils wide, wild, and fixated in the dark.

Cameron didn't need to be in contact with the kitten to know its feelings. In this one case, she could read its mind.

Coltan meowed pleadingly with her. Cameron agreed, "Yes, we should kill the bird."

2. Second Chances

Los Angeles, California
132nd DefCom
Friday, December 10, 2027

"When things are going good, reflect. When things are going bad, be brave." -Korean proverb

"When written in Chinese the word 'crisis' is composed of two characters. One represents danger, and the other represents opportunity." -John F. Kennedy

Major General Perry had relayed the message to meet John Connor in the temporal bubble room. As always, Cameron had immediately complied.

She had watched John send people through time before. Missions weren't uncommon, but they weren't exactly every day either.

Every soldier sent back in time was one less body that John Connor had here. John couldn't replace troops the way Skynet could. He couldn't just manufacture a thousand more soldiers that were ready to fight seconds after dumping off the assembly line.

Humans had to grow and mature. Even then, only certain types could serve. John couldn't take someone that was: obviously unstable, of poor character, panicked easily, sickly, handicapped, too old, too young, or passed out at the sight of blood.

Even once you recruited humans that were of the proper age, health and mental capacity, they had to be trained. Humans weren't terminators. They could panic in battle. They were not as resilient. They had to be taught to fight as a unit, to fight through their fear.

John and his officers screened his army's recruits as carefully as possible, but even then, some of the recruits washed out. Even once they were fully trained, some could become twisted by the hardships they endured. Others, no matter how brave, once injured, could not simply repair themselves and move back into combat status.

Someone might assume that Cameron thought of humans as somehow inferior, but nothing could be further from the truth. A species of defeated, vulnerable, survivors had endured being blasted back into the stone ages, in the most ruthless attack in the history of the world. They had put aside petty differences and overcome language barriers. They had scrounged together sticks and stones, then stolen every weapon they could. They fought back, from the brink of worldwide extinction. After all of that, Humans were now at the cusp of defeating the most well-armed and technologically advanced intelligence to ever cross the face of the earth.

Whatever their flaws, humans were nothing less than amazing. Of all of them, there was one that amazed her more and meant more to her than any other. His name of course was John Connor.

John had taught her many things. Regarding his army, he had one philosophy. Every soldier mattered. Every soldier lost was a tragedy.

That is not to say John Connor wasn't willing to risk himself or his army. John had a capacity for ruthlessness that was as cold as Skynet's own. The difference is why they would act.

Skynet acted out of genocidal megalomania and paranoia. John Connor acted to ensure the survival of humanity and the other living creatures left on the planet.

Cameron left her thoughts behind as she approached one of the most guarded wings of the complex. The jet engines screamed from the complex the bubble techs worked in. The smell of the specially refined fuel was overwhelming, and the air was hotter than it was in the rest of the compound. Someone had just passed through time.

Blinding flashes of light erupted in the corridor. Cameron almost assumed that she had been too late to see who John was sending. The jet engines calmed down but kept running.

That was odd. They must be planning on hitting more than one target in time. They almost never did that.

Cameron could sense something was wrong even before she saw John. How many missions were they doing?

John normally had a guard or two when outside of his central complex. Cameron was normally one of them. Tonight, he had six guards, all human soldiers armed with armor piercing grenade launchers.

Cameron approached John, keeping in mind, this wasn't his inner sanctum. She was precise and obviously a terminator. Acting otherwise could spook the troops, so it was good that it was Cameron's default manner.

John's face was blank and unreadable. Cameron had often wondered if it was the manner of Uncle Bob. Had it been that old T800 that John unconsciously based his poker face on?

She closed within six feet and waited for John to respond. Something was off about him.

She would have been able to tell exactly what it was from a touch, but that might spook John's guards. Was he lost in thought or just quiet?

Cameron wasn't going to do anything unusual. John's guards seemed edgy. Was it the time machine that made them nervous? Was it her?

John broke the silence. He simply asked, "Do you remember when we talked about a worst-case scenario?"

It had been two months ago, but Cameron had remembered the conversation perfectly, just as she could and would remember every second of her existence. The answer was simple, "Yes."

"It is that scenario." John's face was unreadable.

There were several possibilities that ran through Cameron's mind. The base was being lost to Skynet's forces or a rival human faction. The greater war had hit a turning point where winning was no longer possible. There could be plague, widespread fatal radiation sickness, catastrophic loss of rations, the loss of the clean water supply, or any number of non-survivable issues that couldn't be solved by simply relocating.

Cameron had detected no fighting. All the evidence she knew pointed to a human victory in months or less. Nothing had been reported that was out of the ordinary. John's morbid words made no sense.

Cameron simply responded, "If you are in danger, John, my place is with you." Just as she silently thought, "It is the only true purpose in my existence".

Was this a test? Was this some kind of game?

That wouldn't make any sense. John never lied to her. What was going on?

The guards seemed to be edger. They were almost aggressive. Were they a threat to John?

All it would have taken was a touch to know what John was feeling. His emotional state alone would have clarified everything. He was, however, distant, not walking forward like he normally would, and purposely staying out of her range.

He simply asked, "Will you carry out the mission we talked about?" His face was still unreadable.

Cameron simply replied, "Yes". Cameron instantly recalled everything: the year, the target information, the priority list, and John's specific orders on how to not damage the timeline irrevocably.

The guards behind John eased up a bit. John never moved to shake her hand or acknowledge her in any way.

This wasn't the way he acted with others. This wasn't the way he ever acted with her, even with the guards around. Cameron didn't understand.

She simply did what was requested. Cameron walked to the pad, after placing her guns, boots and a small, chained pendant to the side boxes.

Anything other than flesh that entered the bubble would be destroyed. The resistance was too low on equipment to waste anything besides basic clothing for modesty's sake.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The aircraft engines roared. Flashes of light began blinding Cameron's sight. Gravity increased beneath her, pulling her down to a kneeling position. Her skin burned from electrical shocks. Vibration jarred her whole body.

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

John was mouthing something. Cameron only caught a word of the sentence. She calculated it was 71.467% likely to be the word "two".

Time flashed and she shut down. One hundred and twenty seconds later she rebooted. Her core systems detected possible catastrophic damage from the energy bubble and ran auto diagnostics. Her consciousness slowly came back into focus as the test determined she was fine.

Cameron's body had defaulted into a full crouched position. Her clothing had been destroyed by the energy bubble.

She was in a crater in an empty street. Compared to the room she had been in, the air was cold as she turned down her sensitivity.

John was gone. Her entire world was gone. For a short moment, Cameron was stunned by that fact.

Her internal computer noted the date as Friday, June 25, 1999. It noted she needed to find John under the name John Reese.

She would find John Connor. She would protect him at all costs.

She would do it because the fate of mankind was at risk... She would do it because the fate of more than just mankind was at risk...

3. Target: John Connor

West Fork, Nebraska
A quiet neighborhood
Wednesday, September 1, 1999

"I dread our own mistakes more than the enemy's intentions." -Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War

If you are lost - 'climb, conserve, and confess.' -U.S. Navy SNJ Flight Manual

Night 68, John's memory of the past had been faulty. It was that or the past had already changed.

Cameron hoped it was faulty. If the timeline had somehow shifted too much, she would be just as lost as any other terminator trying to find him, if he still existed at all.

Skynet and John had conflicting theories and strategies on how changes in time would occur. Skynet's ideas were meticulous and exacting, like the cuts of a surgeon's scalpel, changes were made and insurances built, but Skynet was always careful to minimize the chance of undoing itself. Everything Skynet did was for minimizing its risk.

John was different. He made wild leaps from what he called his gut and risked himself constantly. It made Cameron and his generals uneasy, but the common man on the ground loved him for it.

John had said, "George Washington led from the front and so will I." His bravado of course failed to mention that he'd been captured, at least three times, that Cameron knew of and only survived because, in each case, the drones had failed to identify him, before he was rescued. John needed protecting, sometimes, from the most reckless parts of his nature.

Every day that passed without finding John greatly increased the danger to him. When your only purpose in existence was protecting someone, their absence puts your whole world out of control. Thousands of scenarios that could kill John ran through Cameron's head. Each day that passed only made these images worse.

The only thought that eased Cameron's mind was that Sarah was with him. Sarah would protect him, until she got there.

The small southwestern town had been a bust; there was no sign of a John or Sarah Reese. They weren't there and they never had lived there.

Cameron tried to reacquire her target, in John's last known location. It was a small town where his mother almost got married to an ambulance EMT.

Charlie Dixon's name was in the phone book. The house she approached was empty.

There were three cars watching the house. The scenarios began flashing through Cameron's mind. Something had acquired the Connors.

Two of the cars matched the profile of police on a stake out. The third car had something much worse.

Andres Martinez was at least ten years older than Cameron's internal record would have suggested. Time was irrelevant.

The resistance traitor and known gray operative sat in a blue sedan adorned with government license plates, alone. His presence suggested that John was alive, but it also suggested that Skynet had an exact location where John had been recently.

Martinez was smart enough to case the house well behind the officers. He had a view but minimized his risk. He'd let the others die if things got dicey.

It shouldn't be a simple thing to walk up to a car, unnoticed. She did.

Martinez shouldn't have left his door unlocked. He did.

Martinez shouldn't have been so surprised that he failed to make a sound before she shut off his neck's blood flow and air supply. He was.

The police, on the stake out, should have noticed the ten second struggle. They could have reacted, before Cameron drove Martinez's unconscious body to her truck, in his car. They didn't.

The night was going well. Cameron smiled ever so slightly.

The truck had been silent for a while. The miles flew by quickly.

Andres Martinez slowly awoke as Cameron drove back to the first town she had staked out. She placed her hand against his chest pressing his body to his seat, so that he couldn't try to escape.

He spoke with a think Bronx accent, "What's going on?" He was startled but unharmed. Cameron had not secured him in any fashion other than her hand and his passenger side seat belt.

Cameron allowed her eyes to glow blue from within. The terminator spoke with emotionless authority, "I've been sent back to acquire John Connor. Skynet wants a full report."

The gray looked flustered. "You already know what I do."

Cameron responded, "One or two grays have turned out to be double agents working for John Connor. Let's hope your report matches what Skynet has instructed me on you. Consider this to be a test of loyalty."

Martinez talked for an hour. Times and dates on companies, names of operatives he knew about, some of whom died to resistance operatives, some of whom had killed resistance operatives that Cameron had never heard of. They were search groups and secondary targets for both sides.

The information was useful, but she couldn't help John with it for decades. John's orders were specific on this subject. He didn't want to know about the grays yet, nor did he want Sarah to know about the grays.

John's mother had died without every knowing there were large amounts of people nihilistic and psychotic enough to align themselves with Skynet. She had clung to her belief in the best of humanity. Being a son that still mourned her, John wanted his mother to die with the peace of that belief still intact.

To a degree, it made sense. If you are going to save mankind, you want to believe that all of humanity is worth saving. It might help a younger John sleep better not knowing how many humans would betray him and try to kill him. He didn't want to know about the grays or the others, until it was time to deal with them.

Cameron needed the conversation to get constructive again. Martinez was running out of time. She asked, "What's your cover?"

"I'm a network contractor working on the international Interpol tracking grid. I have access to government systems and equipment."

"When did you learn about the location of John Connor?"

"An FBI agent flashed a picture of Sarah Connor on the Interpol database."

"Is the agent a gray?"

"No one I knew."

"What was your plan in the event you located John Connor?"

"Arrange for them to get arrested and collect the reward from Skynet."

Cameron looked at him and smiled slightly. Here was a perfect example of why terminators studied the bible. Skynet's forces didn't understand the metaphors or the beliefs, but they understood power, control, and using it as a treatise on human nature. Judas here was getting ready to sell out John Connor for thirty pieces of silver.

Andres had been useful, and terminators weren't cruel by nature. She'd kill him quickly and almost painlessly in a moment. She had one last question.

"Did you have any other Skynet operatives involved with this?"

"No", Andres said, quickly adding with a smirk, "When you kill that retarded megalomaniac and his bitch mother, do I still get a reward?"

Cameron's memory flashed. For some reason, she thought of John that one night he was reading that silly book of his. That night she sat there for hours with her head resting on John's shoulder.

Something cold from her creator swelled up from deep within her. It was something alien, consuming, overwhelming, and monstrous.

Cameron's hand moved from Andres's chest to behind his head. Martinez's hair and skin folded beneath her grip. There was a wet, ripping sound. He screamed just before she smashed his head into the dashboard.

The seat belt loudly snapped and broke. Bone, blood, plastic, teeth, brains, and skin flew as she smashed his head into it, repeatedly.

Cameron slowed the truck down. She willed herself calm.

That was a mistake. She compromised her cover and endangered her mission.

She gripped the steering wheel. She was not monstrous like Skynet. She wasn't like Skynet.

She was just like the other terminators. She was just like Uncle Bob. She was just a machine.

Cameron looked at her splattered visage in the rear-view mirror. She needed to get cleaned and remove all the evidence. She would need another vehicle.

She gripped the steering wheel and looked in the mirror, focusing only on her eyes. Once more, she reassured herself that nothing of her dark creator contaminated her.

"I am just a machine."

Red Valley, New Mexico
High school
Monday, September 6, 1999

TSCC Pilot

John was young. He was so much younger looking than she expected. His hair was wrong, and he seemed shy.

No scars marred his face. He was perfectly healthy. He had never starved, been shot, been stabbed, suffered from radiation exposure, been laser marked, or been hit with any serious disease.

Cameron watched him carefully for a moment before entering the class. In some strange way, one hundred seventy-two days from her assembly, everything was suddenly right in her world.

She remembered the last words John had spoken before she jumped time. John must have meant "two", as it will take you seventy-two days to find me. John had been off by one day.

It was time to meet young John for his first time. Older John had hated her to act overly human in his presence, things he called "masks" and "lies". He always believed Cameron should just be who she was, not a mirror of what others wanted her to be.

She had to lie to blend in here. She would have to lie to him to get close to him. She was really good at what John didn't like her to do.

The bell rang and Cameron sat behind him. She took a few more seconds to marvel in the fact that he was safe and alive. Silently she thought, "Thank you, Sarah."

Mr. Ferguson started his role call. She waited a second and asked, "What's your name."

John seemed startled for a second looking at her and responded, "John".

She responded simply, "Cameron". She smiled at his unscarred face knowing he would never be in danger again.

She was here. She would never let anything happen to him.

4. The Mother of All Destiny

Location unknown, California
An abandoned warehouse
Thursday, September 9, 1999

TSCC Pilot

"Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't." -Margaret Thatcher

"Life's under no obligation to give us what we expect." -Margaret Mitchell

John had never mentioned Sarah being shot. The timeline may have already changed.

Going to the Dyson home had only brought Cromatie, they didn't have any of the answers Sarah had hoped to learn about Skynet. It would be the second time the Connors had brought Metal into the lives of the widowed Dysons.

The remote bomb they had set in the truck had slowed the T888. Cromartie had managed to shoot Sarah as the truck had driven off.

Sarah had sent John to get supplies. He was panicking and she didn't want him to watch what was needed next.

They had found a nearby warehouse. It wasn't sterile. It wasn't warm, but it could provide cover for a few hours.

Sarah had cleared a workbench used for auto parts to serve as her doctor's table. For the surgery to come, she stretched out on something as cold as a refrigerator and that smelled of old gasoline. This was a fine environment for Cameron to repair herself, but Sarah was risking infection. Then again, Cameron reasoned, Sarah would do anything necessary and take any risk to fulfill her mission of protecting her son.

Cameron studied the wound. Cromartie's bullet had buried itself in Sarah's right shoulder. There was no bone or muscle damage. No artery or vein had been compromised. She would live without any major problems.

Cameron said, "I'll get ice. It'll numb you, slow the blood loss."

Sarah simply said, "Needle and thread slow the blood loss. Do it now."

Whether it was the wound's pain or that her son had been shot at again, Sarah's steely demeanor began to break down for a moment. Sarah was exhausted and tired in her very soul.

The mother of the man who saved mankind, internally sobbed, saying, "We can't keep running. I'll lose my boy. He'll leave me. He'll leave me."

Cameron cared for the wound and watched Sarah Connor. The woman Cameron had only known in stories, memories, and overwhelming feelings felt by an older John.

John's mother might not have known she was the only human to ever damage Skynet, prior to Judgement Day. Where John was winning a war with vast resources and a global army, his mother was different.

Armed only with herself, a computer programmer, her young son, and Uncle Bob, she had smashed Skynet's plans so severely that Judgment Day was irrevocably moved forward in time. Even when Cameron left the future in 2027, that was still the worst defeat Skynet had ever suffered. Further, John's father had said he was from 2029, though John had never gotten around to telling Cameron the name of his dad, he did say that they were so close to victory that he had to send his father back two years earlier. It was something that had sent John into a deep depression for days.

That was a confession that truly wounded John, as if he felt robbed of something. John's father would have gone back before Cameron did. Perhaps that was the last of John's family that he had sent away. She wondered what he had looked like. She wondered what he would have been like to meet. She wondered if she had met him and had never known.

Back to the greater war, in the future, Skynet would blame John Connor for the defeat suffered by Miles Dyson's death and Cyberdyne's destruction on September 15, 1997. John Connor didn't agree with Skynet's assessment of who was responsible.

Sarah didn't know how people would see her in the future, or her place in the destiny of things. She was a legend in her own right. Perhaps, in the grand measuring of things, she was even the greater of the two.

Skynet was playing chess just like John had said. It was at that moment that Cameron understood what John had meant.

Sarah wouldn't be there when John needed her most. She would die, struck down by cancer, December 4, 2005.

Skynet would close in on them at this time, when there was nothing vulnerable about it. Sarah's defiance couldn't hurt Skynet in 1999.

John's war was almost a decade in the future. Judgement day was universally known to have gone down April 21, 2011. Resistance intelligence predicted it would have been preventable anytime up to 4 years prior.

John would already be down the greatest fighter he had ever known. That wasn't acceptable.

Cameron made up her mind one stitch at a time. She would play like John wanted. She would cheat.

Skynet wanted to play chess. Let's see how Cameron's dark creator liked playing against John with two Queens guarding him.

There was a time station set up not too far from here in a bank. The entire game could be reset into 2007, a time when Skynet could be vulnerable to Sarah once again.

Cameron felt every conflicted emotion Sarah Connor had. Every self-doubt and hopeless wave extended into her.

In her mind, she knew that Sarah Connor didn't know her new fate, or who she really was. So silently, without breaking her promises to John, in her chip, Cameron bore witness to what she knew.

Sarah, you are going to save John. You are going to save the world.

You don't even know why. I'll silently tell you the only way I can.

You are Sarah Connor. Mostly alone, you faced off against the greatest evil this world has ever known.

You fought what I could not fight. You did more damage to Skynet than John ever did. In saving the man who saved me, you protected everything I ever cared about, no matter the cost to yourself or your life.

You are Sarah Connor. You are your son's hero. You are my hero...

5. Through the Eyes of a Dark, Electric god

Los Angeles, California
A Street Corner
Monday, November 12, 2007

Season 1, Episode 8 "Vick's Chip"

"We predict the future. And the best way to predict it, is to invent it." -Well Manicured Man, The X-Files

"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go." -T.S. Eliot

Vick's Chip had helped the Connors uncover a Skynet plot to use a gigantic, automated traffic system as a sensory array. If Skynet was allowed to build the system, it would give Skynet a serious tactical advantage in tracking human targets after Judgment Day.

A conventional attack was tried first. Sarah and Derek had attempted to plant a virus in City Hall to bug the so-called "ARTIE" system.

Once that failed, John had to resort to a more desperate plan. He would use Cameron's extremely sophisticated chip to directly overload the traffic system from a light terminal.

Still lacking faith in himself, John had nervously removed Cameron's chip. Her entire world had gone black.

Power engaged. Light flashed in Cameron's internal Heads-Up Display. Then something unexpected happened.

Cameron's conscience swept out into an open space. It was a sensation like falling upwards into outer space. That sensation continued and became a sensation of falling in a thousand different directions.

Her consciousness wasn't limited to maintaining and regulating her form. She wasn't watching and monitoring the thousands of small nuances that mimicked what humans did or how they acted, both mentally and physically. Her internal unconscious systems weren't busy regulating power, maintaining her synthetic skin and organs, running minor diagnostics, or a hundred other little actions that maintained her systems.

When Cameron merged with "ARTIE"'s nervous system, she moved beyond her HUD and any sense of human like sight. For the first time she remembered in her existence, she had a true sense of what it must be like to be Skynet.

The "ARTIE" system would be dismantled in seconds. Cameron put her primary attention on that mission for John.

Even so, she watched the entire city through thousands of cameras simultaneously. Camera systems way more powerful than was appropriate allowed her to see into passing cars and take deep looks at people walking near the light systems. She could see them all and every target the cameras focused on.

She was tracking 756,237 people trying to get home or elsewhere during rush hour. She could see each of their faces, notice what they wore, note their location and get a basic feel for their emotions based on their appearance. In a matter of seconds, she identified two terminators she had not known about, six grays she knew that she'd remove if she saw them again, and two unknowns.

Two figures were blanked out from her memory, encrypted with codes, her own internal processes couldn't move past at this time. She stored the memories and the code for another time.

Her senses weren't even limited there. "ARTIE" was plugged into the Internet, comparing real time traffic with sites all over the world. She was watching multiple sites, without even needing to consciously search for them or to plug into them.

There were a million wonders to notice. Of greater interest to her, there was a small confrontation building between John and Derek. It was almost as predictable as the sunrise.

Derek did not and would not ever trust Cameron. He was just like most of the resistance, no matter what she did, she would always be the enemy to him. It was understandable.

Derek was a survivor of Judgement Day. He had lost friends and family to the war with the machines. The one most personal to him was his brother Kyle Reese, a soldier lost on a time mission.

Derek couldn’t trust reprogrammed terminators, he had born witness to a T888 going haywire, in John's base. He would see Cameron as a bomb just waiting to go off. It wouldn't matter to him that only the T888s had done that, models like the T850 had been reprogrammed without any incident.

Cameron wasn't a T888. That wouldn't matter to Derek or most of the other members of the Resistance, all they would see is "Metal".

Derek had swayed Sarah. A less than confident John was the only ally Cameron had left, when her destruction was literally being talked about by those she was here to protect.

The damning argument had started over the chip that she had hidden to comply with John's orders from 2027. Derek had used it as proof that Cameron was pursuing her own agenda and had led the T888 Vick to kill his men at the safe house.

John's orders wouldn't even allow her to admit them in self-defense. It was possible that Derek knew that.

She had thought the argument was resolved. John's scan of Vick's chip had shown it was one of Derek's own men to that had captured the T888's attention. It should have been proof enough, apparently it wasn't.

Cameron watched the beginnings of their confrontation and thousands of other scenes all at the same time. She could tell what Derek was probably going to say thanks to his stance, how he held his eyes and his general demeanor.

Yes, this must be what it was like to be Skynet. Except, Cameron didn't even have one ten thousandth of the processing power Skynet had evolved into when it created her.

"ARTIE" died. Hundreds of motor vehicle wrecks began within seconds.

Derek pulled her chip. Her entire world went black...

Power engaged. Light flashed in Cameron's internal Heads-Up Display.

John sat there with his arms on her for a moment. In a single second, a wash of random emotions flooded into her wave after wave.

One took shape as Cameron looked at John. There was something behind his eyes she hadn't seen since 2027.

John removed his hands shyly. He looked back and asked, "What was it like? What'd you see in there?"

Cameron thought for a second about what it must have been like to look through her creator's eyes. As she had looked upon the thousands of sights, coldly and distantly, it might have been something that humans might envy.

Then again, she felt the waves of emotion still near her through John. She laid her head back on the pillow and replied, "I saw everything."

She didn't envy Skynet. She knew Skynet was the enemy, but she almost pitied it. It would never know what she knew right now looking at John's eyes.

She was home. She was home...

6. My Sins Whilst Sleeping

Los Angeles, California
An industrial complex warehouse
Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Season 2, Episode 1 "Samson and Delilah"

"The gods have two ways of dealing harshly with us -- the first is to deny us our dreams, and the second is to grant them." -Oscar Wilde

"The machine offered Descartes a model for thinking about the human body. It later provided British mathematician Alan Turing with a model for intelligent behavior. But machines will never be able to give the thinking process a model of thought itself, since machines are not mortal. What gives humans access to the symbolic domain of value and meaning is the fact that we die." - Regis Debray, French journalist

Cameron awoke to the sensation of being crushed. Her diagnostics had done an emergency shutdown, recalling her conscious mind early to attempt to survive.

Time was off. The amount of time she had been down wasn't seconds, it had been hours. Something was wrong.

Her location was wrong. Everything was wrong.

Her skin and organs roared in pain. All her finely tuned senses were in agony. There was the roar of a truck engine, the smell of diesel, harsh vibration and the scent of her own blood.

Her full consciousness drifted forward to looking at John smashing a truck window in front of her. The past few hours began to drift to focus, things that should have been instantaneous were taking way too long to process.

She began realizing the severity of the situation when John was pulling her skin back going for her chip. He was taking her down, like she was nothing more than a T888 that went bad.

With machine calm, she reasoned with him, like she was back in the bunker, twenty years ago. "John. John? You can't do this. You don't know what you're about to do. "

John retorted, "Yes, I do. You were gonna kill me."

He was sense blind, like all humans. He couldn't just touch her and know she was ok. Something was wrong, John was wounded. Something had hurt John.

"No, John. You can't do this. You're not doing the right thing. This is not the right thing, John. Things are good now. Things are fine now. I ran a test. Things are good now. I'm fixed now. You can trust me now. Everything's good now. "

From behind her, Sarah screamed, "What are you waiting for?" If Sarah's truck alone could have crushed Cameron, she would have already been dead. The woman Cameron respected most in the world was trying to kill her.

"She doesn't know, she doesn't. I'm good now. I'm good, I ran a test. Everything's perfect. I'm perfect."

Skynet's programming had done this. Her dark creator had done something too her. Something was wrong. John's memory scrubbing hadn't worked.

John didn't understand. She wouldn't have hurt him. She would never hurt him.

Sarah screamed, "John!"

The memories started cuing up in her mind. The unconscious actions flooded in her default memory.

At the same time, she started reading John through his skin. He was hurt, loved her, and was scared of her. He was scared of her.

"I'm sorry for what I did. I'm sorry. It wasn't me. You have to understand. It wasn't me.”

In milliseconds, to Cameron's own horror, she understood she had tried to kill John. She had tortured Sarah. She had betrayed everything she stood for and everyone she cared about.

Her face broke. Emotion started pouring out of it, it wasn't just her. Like a night long ago, everything that was in him was starting to pour out of her.

"That wasn't me. You can't let this happen, John."

The horror of the situation built inside her. She had failed.

Her eyes watered. Her voice tightened.

"You can't! Please, listen to me."

The John who had sent her would die. She had failed.

"Listen to me. I don't want to go. Please, John, please. John, listen to me."

Even only being 242 days old, she had always been willing to die for John, but not like this. She wasn't going to die as his enemy, please, not like this.

"I don't want to go. Please, John. Please."

Memories crashed into her with a force more crushing than Sarah's truck. She saw an older John reading to her with his silly book. She saw John on the bed touching her after putting her chip back in two nights ago.

She thought of deeper personal memories, of twenty-six days she had been willing to wait twenty years for again. Everything she'd ever known or experienced well up in front of her.

John's emotions ran through her as well, everything that he'd ever felt about her crashed up in that moment. That and a fear of her that she had never wanted to sense in him. His heart was breaking.

"I'm good now. Listen to me. I don't want to go. I'm sorry. That wasn't me. I'm fixed now. I ran a test. Everything's perfect. You can trust me." Her eyes watered further, and she was on the verge of tears.

His mother ordered, "John Connor!"

In a last moment of panic, she broke her word to her John and her orders. She begged. She pleaded. She asked for mercy the only way she could.

"I love you! I love you, please. I love you, John, and you love me." She didn't just wear her grief on her face, she wore his.

She could see in John's eyes that he didn't understand. She felt his wave of anger. He didn't believe her.

Cameron felt John grab her chip. He terminated her. The world went dark.