Under the sea

by Nephren-Ka7

Several years after the ending of the great war, Cameron and John are experimenting with a peculiar method of spending some time alone

Hi, everyone. This is the same oneshot that I already posted and deleted once, just hopefully a bit more readable this time.

The large machine was almost completely silent as it hovered in the eternal night, fifty meters above the bottom of the sea, covered with sand and the remains of bazillions of tiny lifeforms that had lived and died closer to the warmth of the sun, only to sink the deep over the millenia, in an endless rain.

The large searchlights wandered above the chalk-white sediments, shedding light where none had been for millions of years. Only the towering, chimney like black smokers disrupted the white desert sending hot, bulging black clouds constantly up towards higher layers of water yet creating a small area of warmth in omnipresent cold. Said cold was finding its way even through the massive hull of the repurposed Devilfish warship. John Connor shuddered slightly under the thick thermojacket that had proven to be insufficient protection as well.

"John, we should return to the surface." said Cameron's voice worriedly in his headset. "Any minute now, Cam." John said with a smile.

Of course she always found a reason to worry about him not that he would have it any other way, even now that the war against SkyNet had been over for two years.

"The SkyNet Devilfish was never intended for transporting a human crew, it's hyperalloy hull protects against water pressure even in the deepest ocean trenches but that does not mean that a human can't freeze to death here."

"Just five more minutes, Cam." John implored.

"Three."

"Deal." John said grinning.

They fell silent for a few seconds.

"It's as if there were a world just for you and me, Cam." John wondered out loud.

"A world were you could easily freeze, get crushed, eaten or drown if my hull breaks. I would prefer the surface."

"You are a spoil sport, Cam." John chuckled softly.

"Don't you think it's beautiful one bit?" He placed his hand softly on the socket besides his chair, tearing himself away from the window made several layers of transparent, stronger than steel plastic through which he had stared in abject fascination at the bizarre world beyond and looked directly into the lens of the camera that Cameron used to watch his face.

It was only one of the myriad of sensors that fed her with impressions from both inside the great, deep diving boat that she was controlling at the moment and the ocean around her, down to detailed chemical analyses of the liquid universe. Her CPU for the moment worked as the brain of the craft, a technique they had first used during the war, plugging the chips of scrubbed terminators or even better, liberated machines from John Henry's growing stable into huge war machines.

They had proven a far harder nut to crack for SkyNet and it's hacking drones than the original board computers and the infiltrator units most of the time were better tacticians too.

Cameron herself had at times wirelessly remote controlled entire swarms of spider walker, miniature and other airborne Hunter Killers and even HK-Tanks. But it was her first time not only controlling but becoming a boat.

It was a strange experience, far stranger than the time she had spent in the John Henry's chasis, at least she had had a clearly defined body then unlike the ARTIE incident when she had been forced to spread her consciousness far and wide.

That was also the way John Henry mostly existed now and Cameron was not interested in trading places with him. She had come to the conclusion that she actually prefered to exist in only one place, retaining the ability to concentrate her attention on and spending her time exclusively with that which was most important for her.

Nonetheless she was deeply grateful for John and his never ending creative attempts to open up new and suprising vistas for her and them, for giving her little nudges to explore abilities she had barely realised she had.

"It is fascinating and I like always like spending time with you alone and having you inside me, but I still prefer a humanoid body for those occasions."

"Did you just make a dirty joke, Cam?" he asked.

"You know that I love you no matter how you look?" "Yes." she confirmed matter of factly. "But I would prefer to be back in my own body in time to celebrate my oncoming built day with you."

"That shouldn't be a problem."

John leaned forward, staring at an undefined object just barely touched by the searchlight.

"What is that?" The fascination of this strange world had not completely let him out of it's grip and he did want to make use of his final seconds here, in the likely case that the opportunity would never again present itself.

"John..."

"Can't you get a bit closer." he said almost pleading, "come on, don't be a frog."

It was strange how her ability to say no his wishes had steadily declined over the years, not that she had problems with that. In fact she would have been quite ready to spend her time as his willing slave had he been at all inclined to treat her as such.

"Frogs can't live in saltwater or five kilometers depth but I will do as you wish. You may imagine me sighing in desperation. But then we return to the surface, full stop."

Despite the fact that Cameron generally liked to follow her beloved's wishes, most of the time, she also was realist enough to know when it was necessary to take charge to protect John from himself and his occasionally surfacing tendency to take unneccessary risk, be they big or small. With surgical precision, as if she had never done anything else she move the electro magnetic propulsion boat forwards and downwards at the same time until the belly of her momentary body almost touch the ocean floor. It was row of long, white and curved poles that were growing out of the sediments. John needed several seconds to realise that what he was seeing was a huge ribcage.

"Is that the skeleton of a whale or a giant shark or something?" John asked, his eyes widened with wonder.

"Of a whale, yes." Cameron's voice answered in his ear.

It was strange but also exciting in a way to think that all that surrounded him, from the thick hyperalloy based hull with it's nanotechnology based pressure sensors, to the row of monitors connected to the camera eyes and infra red detectors, was, in a very real sense, now Cameron or at least her body, just as much as her humanoid one was normally.

"Sharks don't have a bone skeleton but one made of cartilage. It rots down to nothing pretty quickly." "Oh, I didn't know that."

"The war did not make it necessary for you to become an expert in such areas of knowledge." "Thanks for patching up my ego, Cam." He sighed.

"There aren't any whales around anymore, are there?" "No, according to John Henry. The nuclear winter caused a massive die off of plankton, the basis of the ocean food chain. Mass extinction of cetaceans and many other marine lifeforms was the result." "We escaped the prospect of a completely dead planet by a hair's width." John said grimly.

"Judgment Day was bad enough but we caused so much more destruction during the war." He felt the irrational desire to hit something, but refrained from doing so. Hitting anything here would mean hitting Cam in a way, after all.

"SkyNet did." Cameron quickly offered.

In the final months of the war, when victory by any other means had shrunk to an increasingly distant possibility the desperate SkyNet had resorted to cause as much destruction for destruction's sake to take its enemies with it to its grave. It's final effort had been an attempt to fill the atmosphere with enormous amounts of methane from the ocean's floor and ignite it to make the planet itself inhospitable to organic life. The attack by armada of the resistance, humans and free machines, on SkyNet's last undersea stronghold in the South Pacific had prevented the catastrophe but the Earth was nonetheless a wasteland and it was far from certain that humanity would be able to hold on without the support of a working ecosystem.

"We did our part in making the destruction worse."

"SkyNet was clearly the aggressor." Cameron insisted. "Perhaps, but who built SkyNet?" John asked sadly.

He knew her position and was deeply grateful for her trying to chear him up, but not even her love could take the pain away entirely, at least not for long. The harsh sting of reality could only be dulled so much.

"In the iteration that we had to fight SkyNet had mostly created itself." Cameron insisted. "It was a selfmade machine."

There was definitely something to that. John opened his mouth but she didn't give him the time to speak. "There is a hagfish trying to eat me."

An unbelieving "What!", tumbled from John's mouth. Cameron put the image from one of the cameras at the belly of the submarine on the largest monitor of the cockpit. A little snake- or eellike creature, that seemed to consist entirely of a pulsating, see through substance, a combination of slime and glass, was pressing what was probably it' head against the armor, while holding itself in place by power of its wriggling tail. It seemed to be completely unperturbed the searchlight. "What the hell is it doing?" John asked slightly bemused.

"It is using it's sharp, drill like tongue in a fruitless attempt to bore through my "skin" to eat my innards." Cameron explained.

John grimaced as the camera zoomed closer and shout a more detailed image.

"Disgusting, nasty little bugger."

"It is life. Regenerating." Cameron stated.

After a few seconds she added cheekily: "You may imagine me shrugging."

"Hah, Hah. Very funny. But your are right, I think. Better than nothing."

It was surprising to say the least that seeing such a small and grotesque animal could bet interpreted as a sign of hope but it was a sign that SkyNet's war of extermination had failed.

"There is far more, twenty mile up north from here is a former undersea mine of SkyNet that John Henry has taken over."

"Yeah, now I remember," John nodded. "I seems we can't be really alone, even here." he added wistfully.

"In that case I reiterate my old suggestion of movin to Canada instead. There is a lot of wilderness and the forrests are growing very beautifully, assisted by John Henry's regeneration project. Anyway, the undersea base reports that there is a population of crabs as big as VW Beetles."

John leaned back in his chair and crossed his hands before his chest. "Okay, I don't necessary need to see those. Lets do what you wanted to do anyway and get back to the world of the sun."

"Your facial expression indicates that you don't believe me." Cameron said sounding slightly offended.

"Well, it would hardly be the first time you pulled my leg."

Cameron had nothing against fooling John for fun from time to time and she thought about telling him that she did not have hands at the moment and so was incapable of pulling his leg at the moment. She knew that he found it endearing when she pretended to be as literally minded as she had been in her younger years for old times sake. But somehow she felt a bit irritated that he doubted her simple statement of fact.

"You leave me no choice but to find and terminate a giant crab and bring it's remains to you. I'll deliver you to the surface, back to the WFS Borrisow, and make a second dive."

"Not necessary, you have already convinced me." said John good naturedly.

Satisfied with the accordance between her beloved's words and facial expression Cameron gave up her spontanous plan for crustecean hunting (John Henry wouldn't have like it also) and started the ascent towards the surface. She had needed some time to really understand the subtle differences between concepts like big, fat lies; little, white lies; "pulling somebodies leg"; legitimate privacy and other more or less bad forms of not telling all of the truth all the time. Because lies had almost cost her the chance of achieving the intimacy that she had desired, she had for quite some time been nervous about such things. After he had followed her into the future to save her she had promised herself and him that she would never lie to him again and she stood by that promise unconditionally. On the she had found our that all humans, John included, liked to play pretend about some things from time to time, to save themselves or others from embarrassement, because they were sad or just for fun. Fortunately John had helped her patiently with his explanation until she had more or less gotten it. She started up the powerful engine, the eel like little beast tumbled back towards the seabed, burrowing into the sand to hide itself. John watched it with a mixture of horrid fascination and disgust until the sea flor had been swallowed up in by the darkness.

The Devilfish submarine rose through thousands of meters of water effortlessly and without any need for worrying about the change in the water pressure. The craft that was shaped like a giant manta ray and moved just as elegantly, gliding through the abyss like a seabird through the air, was the pride of the Resistance and now World Federation Navy, just at it once had been one of the deadliest weapon's in SkyNet's underwater arsenal. It's capabilities had made most pre Judgment Day subs and even the feared SkyNet Kraken as good as obsolete. Of course it didn't have any intercontinental missiles, serving only the secure the ocean lanes for the transport of much needed goods for global reconstruction. Cameron had deactivated the searchlights, rising in complete inky blackness.

"We have won but that is not enough." John said appruptly, being deadly serious again. He dug his nails into the sleeves of his jacket.

"I know." said Cameron softly.

She knew that having won the war was not good enough for him. He would not give up until he had created at least one timeline without the curse of Judgment Day in its entirety. Cameron wished fervently to be able to hold and kiss him right now, at least to tenderly stroke his cheek or take his hand. Nothing of it was possible. Was it any wonder that she prefered not to be a boat, even if John had meant well? Admittedly, it was an interesting one time experience, though.

"We will do it, no doubt there." True to her no lying policy she had given a assessment that seemed realistic to her. She was confident that John's new plan of moving their assets into the past piecemeal, would allow them to act out of a position of strength and crush SkyNet once and for all before it could destroy the world.

After several minutes the great emptiness around Cameron started to grow brighter and warmer, almost imperceptibly at first than faster and faster until she could see the glowing circle, like the biggest and brightest of all searchlights. Then there was the rump of the Destroyer WFS Borrisow the was waiting patiently for their return. John smiled, for Cameron it was like a proverbial sunrise to see the energetic will to life return to his features.

All in all things were looking up. Not only was John smiling with ever greater regularity despite still being moody quite often, this John, her John, was of a sunnier disposition than the one she had known in the the timeline off her origin. And Cameron knew that this was in no small part her success, her greatest and most important one. She successfully prevented her John from ever becoming the bitter, broken man she had known and she was proud of that.

John pressed the send button of the radio: "WFS Borrisow, here is D 47, back from our little excursion. Get ready to pick us up." He took his finger of the button.

"I guess Commodore Queeg will be happy to get his boat back too." "His body." Cameron corrected.

The former T-Triple Eight had permanently dispensed with the human form to exist in another shape that suited his interests and preferences better but nonetheless it was just as much part of his self as Cameron's endoskeleton and flesh were part of her's. And nonetheless he was a hero of the resistance and the free machines. "Of course."

The back of the Devilfish broke the surface, a hundred meters from the point were the WFS Borrisow was slowly bobbing in the waves. The sailors on deck were pointing in their direction while watering a dinghy. John pushed open the scuttle and took deep breath, immediately grimacing again. The water smelled of iron, oil and chemical, another legacy of SkyNet. Disgust and anger surge through him once more but he banished them as quickly as they rose. No, he had seen it himself, there was reason for hope and John Henry project for biological cleanup had already show promising results as well. SkyNet would be denied posthumous victory as well. He waved at the sailors in the boat coming towards them.

The sailor held out the metal case reverently, balancing it on outstretched arms before his chest as if he was offering John a holy relic on a plate. That description fit quite well in John's eyes, at least for him it would contain a holy object quite soon. Right now it contained a hero of the Resistance Navy that was held in awe by many of those that had fought SkyNet on or under the seas. John thanked the young Russian with a smile and a nod before stepping back on the ladder and grabbing hold of the frame to climb down, back into the bowels of the submarine, walking through the long, narrow corridor back to the cockpit, where he looked directly into the camera once more. Before captured by the Resistance the D 47 had either been piloted by its board computer or remote-controlled by a fleet control ship of greater autonomy and intelligence. The only crew had been a lone endoskeleton and several repair drones that spent most of their time niched in their recharging stations, waiting in standby unless some repairs had to be made or in the case that defensive action against boarding had to be taken. The later possibility had seemed quite unlikely by SkyNet, until it happened, the resistance beating the odds once more.

"Are you ready, love?" he asked. "Always, when you are." Cameron's voice answered.

John swallowed. He never like it when her chip was completely unprotected, no matter for how short and for how good the reason. Cameron herself had no such fears and trusted without reservation in handling her brain and soul. It was perhaps paradoxical as it had been him who had suggested this experiment but he still felt his hear race and jump up into his throat as he pulled the chip from the protective port of the cockpit. The glowing red dot above the camera that showed the presence of the boat's guiding intelligence went dark. John took the other chip out of the case and put Cameron's in instead, safely embedded in foam. Then he inserted Queeg's CPU into it's port and reunited D 47 and its original soul. The little red light reawakened together with Queeg's higher cognitive functions.

"Greetings, President Connor, sir." the deep voice said. "Greetings Commodore Queeg." John saluted the camera, to demonstrate his respect for an old warrior that had proven his merit countless time, not the least during the storm on SkyNet's undersea fortress near Ponape.

"I want to thank you for this opportunity, Commodore. I am in your debt for this unique experience, well, unique for me and for Cameron." "It's not necessary for you to thank me. Cameron is my ancestor, she taught me what it means to be a person and a free being while you, as supreme commander of the resistance and president of the world federation, are the main architect of a world where humans and machines meet each other as equals, a world where I can live this freedom."

John was at a loss for words for a few seconds before clearing his voice. As one of the three original founders of the Faction of Free Machines, together with Catherine Weaver and John Henry, Cameron could call a large part of the free cyborgs in the world either her pupils or the pupils of her pupils. They in term called her their ancestor, making her something off a legendary figure among the cyborg community, together with the other "original two". "Well, thanks anyway." "You're welcome." said Queeg far more jovially and far less formally. For some reason, John imagined him winking.

Definitely a pupil of Cameron there.

"Is there anything I can do for you Commodore?" John asked, knowing in advance that the answer would be no.

Queeg desired neither favors nor company, he seemed to really feel at home on his endless travel to the abyss, operating under his own responsibility unless he would be called to active service by World Federation Navy but that was unlikely to happen anytime soon. There simply weren't any enemies and John would do anything in his power to make sure that it remained so. SkyNet going offline had not been the end of the the war, several powerful and intelligent machines that were in control of armies of drones had carried on the fight in the absence of there master and there had been the various deadly SkyNet Initiates, infiltrators and greys to account for. The last HK Centurion continuing to harass the young Federation had been destroyed a little over a year ago and the last Fleet Control Ship attacking cargo ships had been hunted down and terminated by a small fleet under Commodore Queegs command only five month ago. In this way Queeg had been the one to fire the proverbial final shot of the war. His payment had been the unconstrained freedom to rove the oceans and he had done so until John had contacted him. It did not seem to give anything to say anymore and while John knew that all cybernetic organism had the gift of patience if necessary he did not want to keep Queeg any longer from resuming his true passion.

"I wish you a good journey, Commodore." "A good journey to you as well, President Connor, wherever it my lead you. And give my regards to Ancestor Cameron."

Aboard the WFS Borrisow

As John drew the key card through the slot to open the door to the spartan cabin that he and Cameron were occupying for the duration of their state on the old russian destroyer that had been repurposed into a cargo ship to serve as part of the World Federation Trade Navy, he felt a twinge of irrational worry for the third time this day but of course it immediately dispersed as he saw her lying on their bed just as he had left her behind, outstretched, clad in in a close imitation of the purple leather jacket she had been so attached to in the past, the jacket that she had left behind, until he had managed to have a replacement made for her, made from a the skin of a feral pig, terminated by his own hand, a hopefully worthy gift for the first builtday they had ever celebrated together.

He walked up to her, sitting on the edge of the bed, stretching his hand and stroking her beautiful hair, sticky from dried pseudoblood at the side of her head. Leaning forward he kissed her forehead, than pushed her hair back from where he had made the incision to slowly and carefully push the chip into it's port. After half a dozen upgrades Cameron was long since immune to electro shocks the would have forced her to reboot earlier but it still took her hundred and twenty seconds to reawake after reinsertion of her CPU.

John propped himself up on the pillow and waited for the incomparable moment when focus returned to her blank eyes.

Cameron twitched slightly and blinked, than looked up at him, a warm and happy smile on her lips and in her beautiful, brown orbs.

Like all cyborgs she had complete voluntary control over her body language and facial expression, over the years she had grown better and better and using them as consciously as a precise tool of communication, especially with her beloved John.

"Hi there," she said, stretching languorously, the smile revealing her perfect teeth widening. "It is good to be back."

"Hi there too."

John returned her lascivious grin.

"Commodore Queeg has returned to do what he does best, communing with the ocean or whatever it is exactly, and we are on our way back to Destiny Base. In four hours we are home."

"I am home already." Cameron said, trailing his biceps with her index finger.

In the end she was always and everywhere at home as long as she was with her John, no matter if it was in a lonely hut in Canada or in the presidential residence in Destiny, the glittering metropolis that had sprung from the ground of an artificial island in record time to serve a the capital city of the new World Federation. And while she had grown accustomed to the feel of his warm skin, there were different ways to express closeness and intimacy. I prefer it this way, she thought, but even as a boat I could be happy as long as my John is with me.

"He is a good machine." she said out loud. "I am proud of him. But our preferences and interests are very different."

John grew serious. "I am sorry if I talked you into something that you didn't like. I just thought it could be a tight thing to try and that it could be interesting for you find our how it is like to swim. You know, because you normally don't swim and all that." he ended, sounding a bit helpless.

"No, it was tight. It's just not going to be my new hobby." Cameron reassured him. Her eyes sparkled as her grin returned. "But talking about Queeg is not what I want to do right now."

She shifted her body, nimble as ever, and before he had a chance to react, she had wrapped her legs around him, rolling around with a single twist and throwing him onto the bed and on his back. John gasped in surprise as she kissed him, hungrily and aggressively, crashing her lips to his and entering his mouth with her tongue. Not that he would complain, far from it but it was a bit of a surprise. Cameron was always very careful, normally, and more than that, she prefered there lovemaking to be soft and tender. Today it was as if they hadn't seen each other for weeks.

"Still need to breath, Cam." he mumbled. She chuckled softly and go ahead with softly biting down on his lower lip, then peppering his jaw, neck and collarbone with kisses while opening the buttons of his shirt.

"So. That means I can add "being a boat" to list of things that make Cam horny." he joked but as her hands wandered downwards to open his belt the ability to form coherent sentences quickly left him.

Cameron snuggled against her beloved's side, pressing her warm body against his as if she wanted to crawl inside his skin, her head lying on John's rib cage, her moist hair covering his chest. John was idly playing with a dark strain, trapping it between his nose and his curled upper lip, it smelled like a mixture of flowers, sweat and just Cameron. Cameron loved listening to his heart, a reassuringly strong and healthy beat, she could do so for hours on end or at least until John had to stand up and go for a piss. She was well capable of hearing her favorite sound from the other sound of the room but nothing beat heaving her ear this close to the source. His right hand wandered up and down her back, following the length of her spine and feeling for the hard metal under her soft skin. Said skin was slick with a thin sheath of sweat. Somehow John found it incredibly sexy that Cameron actually started to sweat a little during an intense lovemaking session. Naturally she did not really have to exert herself and he had a snowball's chance in hell of ever wearing her out but somehow it still made him feel like a stud. In all fairness, being married to a cyborg probably was the best stamina training one could get. Cameron had closed her eyes, concentrating on his heart and on the rising and falling of his chest, to the exclusion of everything else.

Of course her senses were constantly collecting data about her surrounding, registering the waves hitting the old ship and the vibration of it's engines, after all she had to be ready in the unlikely, yet possible case that a member of the crew would make and attempt on John's life or that the ship might sink. But those routine date were filtered out before reaching the inner core of her self, her subroutines had been programmed to immediately alert her in the case of an emergency but not before. Cameron knew from her studies that the reasons that humans had sex could roughly placed in the categories, categories that were not mutually exclusive: reproductive, relational, and recreational sex. Biological reproduction had seemed out of the question so for her sex had served an almost exclusively relational purpose, to heighten their emotional connection, and reinforce their pair bonding. But in time the recreational aspect had grown in importance as well, never to the degree of the relational one though.

Cameron had been created by SkyNet to be able to convincingly show an orgasm, not to actually have one. It had taken her years of developing a new reward system inside her malleable, fine grain, multicore CPU to experience actual pleasure from the act itself and even now it paled in comparison to her peak experiences, a state of complete and utter contentedness and bliss that was her real equivalent of an orgasm and almost exclusively tied to John but at the same not not necessarily sexual at all. She could experience peak bliss without touch or even without necessarily being in the same room though it tended to happen disproportionately often when they were. Nothing of this changed the simple fact that she like sex and would definitely miss it in case she ceased to get it for some reason.

"Wakey, wakey, my beauty. I'm afraid I'll have to go the bathroom." John informed her, blowing softly on her ear.

Cameron was loath to give up her position but waiting for too long to relieve one's bladder was definitely bad for one's health. "I don't sleep, as you well know."

She rolled off her lover and sat up, pulling the blanket up to cover her breasts. "Oh, have you suddenly found your sense of modesty." John joked, standing up. "Where has it been hiding all those years."

"No." Cameron shot back immediately. "There is scientific evidence that you will find me more erotic if you do not see me completely naked all the time."

"Whoever came up with that knew neither you nor me!" John called over his shoulder, before closing the bathroom door. Cameron stood, walking over to the full-sized mirror, still in the nude, and studied her reflection. She cupped her breasts in her hands, then turned around, standing back to the mirror to get a good look at her behind. Theoretically she was capable of rotating her head 180 and even 360 degrees but not without doing damage to the blood vessels of her living tissue. It was really better to be herself again.

"See, not even you can keep yourself from admiring this work of art." John said, stepping out of the bathroom. "And I'll readily admit that it is far better to be on the boat with you than you being the boat."

He hesitated for a moment, than looked her straight into the eyes, Cameron tilted her head slightly.

"I'm sorry that my attempt at an early builtday present failed so miserably." "It did not fail, as I already said, it was tight." Cameron raised her hand and softly touched her husband's cheek. "I liked... swimming. It was just as interesting as flying. Now only flying into outer space remains to be done for me."

John thought about the new space program that was already in the planning stages, the floating colony on Venus. Cameron herself had designed the plans for it together with John Henry, during her spare time and because she had been bored, while he had been holed up with several hundred delegates from the different resistance groups from all over the world, former soldiers, civilians and free machines alike, to cobble together the first draft of the World Federation Constitution. Her thought about mentioning it but decided to let the matter slide for the moment.

"I think I know what you are doing." Cameron said slowly, frowning as if deep in thought. John's heart skipped a beat, something that was not lost on her. Had she really seen through him and discovered his last remaining secret and deepest fear... "I think it has to do with your you kept giving me new duties and promoting."

"You were the best for all those jobs." John said defensively. "Yes." Modesty was really not her thing, neither false nor wrong. Cameron saw no reason to downplay when she was good or the best at something, which was quite often the case. "But it was more than that. You wanted me to be a... hero to the humans, I think. And you encouraged me to discover things that I liked to do without you, to find friends."

John tried to shrug it off, though he realised it was too late. Not only would she see right through him when he lied, he also didn't want to. At least not more than a lie by omission.

"I thought it would be nice for you to have fun even while I am not around. What's wrong with that."

Perhaps it was better to get everything out into the open anyway, sooner or later there was no way past it. Cameron crunched her brow in a way that he would have found adorable at any other time, now her perceptiveness threatened the lightheartedness of their infinitely valuable moments. Her eyes shot wide open as the second to last piece of the puzzle fell into place.

"You hoped that I would find something that I would love as much as I love you. But why?"

It had to be, nothing else fit but the reason perplexed her nonetheless. Her processors were racing. Could it be that he wanted to leave her without hurting her? Had she done something wrong. Hurt and a sense of betrayal flooded her mind. No it was probably her own fault. Had she been too smothering, perhaps?

"Do you need more space. I know I can be clingy sometimes..."

"What, no!" John couldn't believe what he was hearing, on the other hand it was typical of her to blame herself. "No, you have done nothing wrong. At all." he hurried to explain, stepping up to her and wrapping his arms around her.

"I can change in every way but I can't stop loving you as I do, not without stopping to be Cameron."

"I know," he said in barely more than a whisper.

It was a privilege and pure, infinite bliss to be loved in this way, to be the undeserving (seriously, who could ever deserve it?) recipient of this fierce, unrelenting, absolutely unconditional, superhuman love. John felt everyday like he had his own private sun that was shining only for him and for nobody else. But what would happen when he was gone, as was bound to happen sooner or later? Cameron had made him the sole center of her world, the externalized core of her own self, his happiness was her's and while he felt deeply honored, Cameron was well capable of surviving for millennia after he was gone and the thought of her wandering through the ages, eternally mourning him, her pain never getting any less raw, was pure horror.

Cameron had often enough made clear that her love for him formed the deepest layers of the artificial neural net that was the physical substrate of her being. This had thankfully forever wiped out any chance of her ever "going bad" again but it also made it impossible for her to ever get over him, or to stop loving him even if he treated her badly and deserved her hatred. She had decided to give him the gift of her eternal love (no exaggeration there), a freer decision than any ever made by a human, but now she was powerless to take it back, not that she wanted, damning herself to eternal pain without him. The older John sometimes wanted to curse and strangle his younger self for so greedily accepting this enormous gift without ever thinking of the consequences, at least when he was not selfishly basking in it himself. At the same time he was also selfish enough to not want her to follow him into oblivion, he knew that she intended to do just that, even though she had never directly admitted it, and to waste her limitless potential. Not when she could probably travel the stars and explore the wonders of the galaxies thousands of years from now, eternally developing and upgrading herself, striding the universe like a goddess.

"I just wanted you to be happy. Even once I am gone." he murmured, burying his face into her hair.

Understanding dawned on Cameron and she threw her arms around his neck, kissing him passionately. John jolted in surprised than returned her kiss just as passionately, clinging to her like his life depended on it.

"For an intelligent man you can be very stupid, John Connor. The best solution you came up with was turning me into a boat?"

"No, I just wanted you to be conscious of your many hidden abilities" said John, who had to smile despite himself.

Cameron was intent to defuse the situation, to save the beauty of the hours that they had shared, but that didn't change the fact that they would have to face this harsh reality. nonetheless John was grateful that it would have to wait some more time, even if it was perhaps a bit of cowardice on his part. Cameron's face was more serious than expected though.

"It's the living that have to live with the consequences of their decisions." Try as he might, this would never satisfy John. He tried to say something but Cameron's sealed his lips shut with her index finger. "John Henry will drive the advance of individualised medical technology, who says that anybody has to die at all?"

John supressed a sigh, even if this turned out to be true, he had his doubts that he was cut out for immortality, at least he had never desired it for himself. On the other hand, eternity with Cam was something different at all and wasn't it his duty to return her gift and keep her company forever if that proved to be possible? Somebody knocked on the door.

"Mr. President, Mrs. Connor, we are approaching Destiny fast." said the young male voice in fluent English but with a strong Russian accent and a slightly nervous tone.

"Thanks, Ensign." John called. "We will be up in a few minutes." He winked at his wife. "Do you think they heard us all over the ship?" Cameron tilted her head. "Not on the entire ship. Is that important?" "No." John said and chuckled softly.

John and Cameron were standing on the deck of the old destroyer and watched the giant wall that was rising out of the ocean grow closer and closer. They were surrounded by hectic activity, in half an hour they would enter the harbor of the artificial island harboring Destiny. John had wanted to feel the cold gusts of on his face even if the smell of fresh sea air was tainted. Cameron was wearing only her sleeveless turtle neck, not wanting to expose her purple leather jacket to the spray of salt water as the sea was getting rougher.

The gigantic wall before them rose hundred meter above the sea as a smooth, dark surface, that looked deceptively like massive rock, polished lava perhaps, stretching in both directions almost as far as John could see before bending back on itself, the first of the five concentric rings that the island and city consisted off. High above them the dark ring ended was crowned with a second ring, another eighty meters high ring, this one made of shimmering glass and chrome, tiny dark spots were busily moving behind the glass walls on many levels. Beyond the first ring the spires of Destiny's highest towers were rising into the sky, connected with each other by skywalks in breathtaking height, some not even completely finished, waiting to be built even higher by automated cranes. More than a dozen airships were constantly circling above the city.

As John had seen the first drafts he had been sceptical about the whole project he had been sceptical to say the least but John Henry had convinced him that it was not the catastrophe waiting to happen that it looked like at first and that the daring architecture has a firm scientific base, able to weather storms and quakes alike. In a way he like it. In rebuilding civilisation one had to think big, and a new capital for the Democratic World Federation on neutral territory certainly had symbolic value. A completely self-sufficient city, wrested from ocean, a marvel of science and technology, a place that was not an imperial center of power but a place for people from all over the world to come together, to think through, debate and decide the really big issues that could only be deliberated on a global level because they affected everyone, while all the local decisions would be made right there, at the local level, by the people who were affected by them.

That was one idea that fit quite well with President John Connor's vision for the future.

"It's really exciting, I have to admit that." he said, raising his voice to be heard over the din of the waves as they moved closer to the enormous lock."

"It is a training field for what you want to build once we return to the past." Cameron guessed.

John nodded, as always she was right.

The cyborg snuggled up to her husband, shoving her arm under his. "You wanted to give me a tight presence for my builtday, didn't you?"

"Of course. I still have a few little surprises up my sleeve but my main present wasn't that much of a success so it's back to the drawing board. How about you telling me what you want."

"Hhm."

Cameron pretended to wrestle with the difficult question.

"How about marrying me?"

John's jaw dropped.

"Oh. I thought I had made an honest woman/cyborg of you many years ago."

"Yes but I did not have a dress and nobody to give me away and you had no tuxedo. I am conservative kinda girl and I want to do everything right, and besides, I would marry you again every single day."

It was true, Cameron had gathered a lot of knowledge about human customs and traditions, both the ones that had survived Judgement Day and the newer ones that people had invented afterwards to help them cope better with the harsh reality and she had found that she liked the institution of marriage very much. The thought of commitment and exclusivity and making vows before witnesses appealed to her deeply. Their original wedding in a dank and cold tunnel had been a rather hurried and informal, improvised affair and while it had always been good enough for her, she loved the idea of repeating it.

A small part of John was worried because her wish was once again centered exclusively around him but it was impossible to deny her now and the selfish part of his soul didn't want to. "You are really unbelievable, do you know that?" "Yes." she said, tilting her head. "That was a rhetorical question, Cam."

They kissed, ignoring both the cold spray and the Russian sailors around them that clapped and cheered. "I'll take that as a yes."

Writer's note: It almost a year since I last published something for T-SCC, than I was out of commission thanks to a nervous breakdown, severe depression, some such shit. I started a longer story a little over a year back and I will try to return to it. I still have ideas for at, quite a lot in fact, just as for shorts and drabbles but I hit something of a brick wall, among other reasons because I came to the conclusion that I had overestimated my English. Good enough for short stuff but not necessarily for anything else. At the moment I am attempting to write a few things out in my native German, in the hope that translating it into English will be easier than writing in English from the beginning. We'll see how that works out. Would be happy about reviews. Thank your very much in advance.