Chains of Memory

With a start, Sarah Connor woke up.

She lay there in the bed. Not breathing hard, not sweating, not doing any of things she'd done for over a decade. She just lay there. Reflecting. Thinking. Doing all that before she glanced over at the radio beside her bed, that was kind enough to show her the time and date – 7:14, October 3, 2017.

Alarm didn't work.

She'd have to fix that at some point. It would be no. 11 on her list of things to do. No. 1 was to get up (which she did), no. 2 to head downstairs (which she did), no. 3 was get out some porridge (which she did) and no. 4 would come to mind soon. She had no idea why she'd chosen eleven, but no doubt she'd have a full list by the day's end.

"Morning mum."

No. 4 – say "good morning" to her son John, already at the breakfast table in the apartment they shared. Both of them had early starts. Both of them had had mixed fortunes in achieving sleep in the old days, and every so often, their ids returned to plague them.

"Morning," she said, pouring milk onto the porridge. It trickled out of the carton.

No. 5 – get milk.

"Sleep well?"

Sarah grunted. She did that a lot these days she reflected. She was 51, but looked ten years older than that. She also reflected yet again that it had been 33 years since she'd originally worked as a waitress, and now, at 51 years of age, she was still in the same old job. Different name and establishment of course, but entering retirement wasn't really an option right now. Somewhere in an FBI database was the entry Connor, Sarah, alongside "unidentified white male," both of whom were wanted for industrial sabotage and several counts of murder.

So far, no-one had come from them, either from the present or future. Looking at John, who was eating his own breakfast without question, she reflected that at least her son had aged well. He at least looked like a 32 year old, one who was working at a garage repair in downtown Los Angeles. Not exactly the military leader he was in an alternate future/timeline/reality/whatever, but…

No. 6 – get better brand of porridge.

But, she reflected, that was better than what the future had once held for him. The future she'd had nightmares about for 12 years, up until August 29, 1997, when 23:59PM passed into 12:00AM Pacific Standard Time, marking the dawn of August 30th. Nightmares that had plagued her for even a decade after that. Nightmares that had mellowed out in recent years, but-

"I had a dream last night."

She looked up at John, who was doing the dishes. He glanced back at her as she lit up a cigarette, as he shot her a look that said "seriously, I thought you were going to stop smoking." It was a strange family relationship – usually thirty-something year olds had moved out from their parents' house by then. Usually, they'd found members of the opposite sex (or same sex in some cases).

"Good or bad?" John came back to the table, and Sarah reflected that John wasn't a normal thirty-something year old. Normal thirty-somethings didn't have fathers from the future, didn't have cyborgs as surrogate fathers, and didn't go under aliases to prevent the name "Connor, John" from being searched again.

"Mixed," Sarah said. She sighed. "I was younger, for starters."

"How young?"

"Teenage young." She took another puff of her cancer stick. "Your father was there again."

John winced, but she continued. "As was the Terminator."

"Good or bad?"

"Good. But the bad one in 1984 came through, and the good one stopped him. Then your father and I travelled forward in time to 2016 to stop Judgement Day."

"I thought JD was meant to happen in ninety-seven?"

"Time travel," Sarah said, extinguishing the cigarette. "And then, well, you were there."

"Me?"

"You. I mean, not you-you, just a future you. You'd been…" She trailed off. "Doesn't matter."

"Come on, tell me."

"You…you were a Terminator," Sarah said. She lit another cigarette. "Something had happened to you. You were…infected, somehow. And then…" She took a breath. "Well, in the dream, we stopped JD from happening. The Terminator was still with us, your father was still with me, and…well, happy ending. Sort of."

John took her hand and gave it a squeeze. She smiled – not something she'd done much for over half of her life, but still, it happened. Looking back, she couldn't make sense of the dream – there was no need to fear the future, or at least, not in the way she once had. Sure, the world was fucked up in more ways than she could count, but so far there wasn't any sign of a military supercomputer initiating a launch sequence that would result in half of humanity being wiped out. Humanity wiping itself out was a possibility these days, but that was beyond her control. Twenty-two years ago, a Terminator of all things had given her hope for the future. Even now, despite the world she lived in, part of that hope still remained.

John took her now empty porridge bowel and walked over to the sink. She sighed, extinguishing her second cancer stick, and resisted the urge to light a third. She loved John. She knew that she was terrible at showing it, but he was her son, and the only light left in her world. Skynet had given her son as much as Kyle Reese had, and had likewise tried to take him away from her. Even now, it seemed that the computer was doing its best to take him away, if only in her dreams. Like the space-time continuum had been altered so drastically that time itself was giving her payback.

"Y'know, for what it's worth," John said, "I get nightmares too."

"You do?"

"Yeah." He began stacking the now rinsed dishes in the dishwasher. "I mean, ever since the Terminator came to me, ever since we stopped JD, even after JD had passed, every so often I'd get nightmares. Little 'what if?' scenarios?"

"Like?"

John shrugged. "Like…well, there was this one dream where the Terminator came through again. Not the one I knew, but same model and all that. Skynet was still active, and it turned out that we'd only postponed Judgement Day. You were gone, and I teamed up with Kate."

"Who?"

John waved a hand. "Old school crush, back when I was with my foster folks. Anyway, it was just like when we stopped JD the first time, except this time…" He sighed. "This time we didn't. The Terminator Skynet sent to kill me was destroyed, but we couldn't prevent the war from happening." He sighed, rubbing his eyes. "Just a dream," he told himself.

Sarah remained silent. Why wasn't she there? Just a quirk of the dream, or was there a reason, one that John wasn't telling her about? She reached out a hand, but-

"Anyway, another dream I remember was a bit better," John said, as he put the dishwasher on. "Flash forward fifteen years and I'm a grunt in the Resistance. I get to meet my father as a kid, I get to meet the first T-800, I somehow manage to survive the bastard, and hey, I become leader of the Resistance. Sure, the world's fucked up still, like, Mad Max fucked up, but hey, happy ending right?"

"Right," murmured Sarah. She paused, not sure whether to push her luck, but hey, her son had enjoyed fictional movies about apocalyptic wastelands, so maybe his spirits were in good enough cheer to dwell on the subject further. "So, any further dreams? Ones where you led the Resistance to victory?"

"No." The dishwasher began its rinse cycle.

"No?" Sarah asked.

"No," he said. He reached for his mechanic's jacket, which was hanging on one of the kitchen seats. "Most of the dreams I have don't end well. I mean, those two are the ones I remember the most, but…" He put the jacket on and sighed. "You think it's really over?"

"What?"

"Is it over?" John asked. "I mean, in this timeline, well, no bombs went off, but I mean, how many other John Connors are there? How many other Skynets? How many other-"

"I don't know," Sarah said. "But if there are infinite John Connors across an infinite number of realities, are you really going to worry about all of them?"

John reached for his keys, pocketing them. An uneasy silence dwelt over the kitchen, broken only by the sound of police sirens, barking dogs, and the tick-tick-tick of the wall mounted clock.

7:33.

"No," John said eventually. He reached down and kissed Sarah on the cheek. "See you tonight."

"Hmm." She remained in place as he walked out the door. His shift began at 8am. Hers began half an hour after that. If this was a normal day, they'd both arrive home too tired to do anything. If it wasn't a normal day, they might catch a movie before hitting the hay. Sighing, Sarah listened to the silence, reflecting that it wasn't much of a silence at all. It was silence that was further broken by the kitchen radio as she turned it on – more bloodshed in Iraq and Syria, a looming crisis with North Korea, temperature records smashed in California…the world was fucked. Not as fucked as it might have been, but still, fucked.

She could live with that, she supposed. But still, as she sat in her chair, she was left to wonder exactly how much more fucked it could be. Whether John was right – she didn't understand how time travel worked. Even Kyle had never claimed to understand. But she did wonder if there were other Skynets, and other John Connors, and other cycles of creation and destruction. Wondered if the dreams were dreams at all, or simply her observing other realities. Some kind of telepathic leakage or-

No. 7 – stop being an arse.

She got to her feet and headed up to her room to get dressed.

That, at least, she could do. That still left four more things for her list, but hey, baby steps.

And that baby steps could be taken at all for her was a victory in of itself, however small.

A/N

So Terminator 6 is apparently in production. It's been outright confirmed that the film will ignore the events of Genisys and while I'm not 100% sure, it'll ignore the events of Rise of the Machines and Salvation as well. I'm not sure of the quote from Cameron, but apparently the other films are 'just a dream', or to put it more cordially, taking place in alternate timelines. This would bug me in other film series, but since alternate timelines are part of Terminator and there's never been any one single continuity, this doesn't bug me that much. I will say that I'm more partial to Salvation and Genisys than many others (not so much Rise), but I'll still admit that none of them have so far matched the original two films. So while I don't think a Terminator 6 needs to exist, I'm curious as to how things turn out.

Anyway, drabbled this out.