Terminator
The John Connor Chronicles
By "Bryan7"
Synopsis
In the Sarah Connor Chronicles, the trio of characters, John, Sarah, and Cameron, time travel from 1999 to 2007 in order to escape the clutches of the Terminator known as "Cromartie". In my version of the story, they Time Travel to 1990 instead.
Authors Notes
Why did I do this? Why 1990? First off, the story will never be out of date this way. I'm guessing that the original intent of the Terminator story was to avoid having to do the research it would take in order to do a period piece without accidentally making a few temporal plot holes. And since this is a personal project of mine, I can guarantee you that you will find some temporal plot holes in my story as well, however, I'll still do my best to not add technology or elements of the story that didn't exist in 1990.
The other great thing about this idea is that, ten years from now, this story won't feel outdated because it already started well out-of-time with the intention of being a period piece and not "a new fad of Science Fiction."
There will be some other surprises in store for you and I'll make sure to throw those surprises at you in the beginning so that you can see what you're "reading into" from the start. John needs to become more independent and that's just what I'm going to do for him.
The story starts off after their time travel. Only, instead of time traveling to 2007, John and Cameron go a different way.
Chapter One
If You Want To Live
"What is that?" John asked as Cameron pulled a bottle of black goo from one of the safe deposit boxes inside the vault they had locked themselves into. Cameron looked to Sarah with her blank, shark-like eyes while placing the tube into an injector device.
"This plan didn't work," Cameron stated plainly. "This will keep John from aging for seventeen years. The nanites are programmed to keep John preserved throughout the normal passage of time so that when you reach your side, we will all be with you."
The bank vault door began to rumble as the T-888 series Terminator attempts to get through. Sarah tried to pull the device away from Camerons hand but all it did was get her attention.
"No!" Sarah screamed.
"It will be like nothing happened."
"I'm supposed to protect him!" Sarah yelled.
"And you will following your arrival to 2007. We will be there. They aren't after you. You will require our presence upon arrival." Cameron stated plainly.
"Why? Why do you need to keep him from aging for seventeen years?!" Sarah demanded.
"We are going back in time, you are going forward in time." Cameron said.
"No!" John yelled.
Cameron grabbed John as he ran at her. Cameron grabbed John and twisted his arm to bring him to his knees. As John attempted to hit her, Sarah pointed the plasma bolt gun that had recently been assembled in the vault at Cameron.
Cameron finished injecting the nanites into John and then turned to face Sarah.
"At this range, you'll kill us both."
"Why would you do this? You can't tear us apart like this," Sarah said.
"This was decided by John himself in the future. It saves a lot of lives." Cameron said.
"I don't care!" Sarah said.
The door pulled apart enough for the T-888 to stick his arm through and shoot at them. Cameron pulled the gun away from Sarah during the distraction. As the door came down completely, Cameron threw the gun at Cromarte and pulled John and Sarah into the device. John yelled as the blue orb engulfed them both. Per Sarah vanished first, just before he saw the bank explode around them. There was a moment of blackness and suddenly, they were emptied out into the streets of Los Angeles.
John felt the warm concrete on his bare back as he looked up into the smog filled skies of L.A. He rolled over and looked for his mother but she was not there. Cameron, now naked stood in front of him. She didn't look like a machine at all; she just looked like a toned bodied teenager, admittedly, he looked and she was well groomed, or she just didn't grow hair in those areas, it was the first girl he had ever seen naked beyond the internet.
The internet... John realized he went back in time. There would be no internet most likely. He knew Cameron stated that he'd see his mother in seventeen years. He could have done the math but he was too cold, aggravated, and upset at Cameron to count numbers in his head.
"You bitch!" John yelled. "You just took my mom away from me!" He staggered to his feet and attempted to hit her but she grabbed his arm and tilted her head at him with that same blank gaze. John tried to knee her but when the knee hit, it was like slamming his leg into a brick wall. John fell back over as Cameron allowed him to land on the sidewalk. She stood over him a moment, knelt down and pulled him to a sitting position as she nearly straddled him.
"Come with me if you want to live, John."
"You don't care, do you?"
"I care a lot," Cameron said. "I've spent more years with you than you realize. I've grown accustomed to your proximity, and in time, you'll learn to trust me and to love me the way you used to."
John tilted his head and blinked rapidly.
"What the fuck?"
A pair of headlights broke their concentration. Cameron looked over at a couple of onlookers wearing street gang colors as they honked their horn and made cheering noises at the two of them. John stood up with Cameron's help.
"Stay here," Cameron said.
John watched as the naked girl walked to the car. Inside were three men, all of whom were looking at her breasts and between her legs more than they were the rest of her body. They were speaking in Spanish, telling her that she needed to not waste time with the young boy and find a hotel room. She looked down as one man got out of the drivers side of the truck and placed his hand on her bare bottom. She smiled at him a little and looked to John before turning her head back to the man with his hands on her naked body.
"Where is the hotel?"
"Don't worry," he said in Spanish. "I'll take you to it. It's just down the street that way!"
"Thank you," Cameron said. She reached down and pulled a 2nd Generation Glock 17 from his waistband and pointed it at him. "I need your truck and your clothes – now."
John finished dressing as Cameron placed the last of the weapons she confiscated into the middle seat of the truck. Only one man was left with clothes out of the three.
"For gangsters, they didn't put up much of a fight."
"That's why they are still alive," Cameron said. She put the truck into gear and drove down the street.
"What are we going to do now?" John asked.
"I've acquired money from the – gangsters," Cameron said. "We will take the guns and money to the motel where we will then go shopping. You are to require clothes, educational books, weapons, a computer, food, and a place to call home. I will require additional material in order to manufacturer items that don't yet exist in this time.
"Sounds like a lot to do," John said.
"These missions will be accomplished."
"We still aren't done talking yet about mom," John said as he watched her pull into a hotel. "So she's going to see us as we are today, all these years from now?"
"Yes," Cameron said.
"And does that mean that there's two of us walking around out there in 1999?"
"Yes," Cameron said while stepping out of the truck.
"Do we meet?"
"No," Cameron said, "however, the Cameron that traveled from the future to 1999 will change places with me, so that I can go back again." Cameron explained.
"Wait," John said. "So, you keep on returning to go back – over and over again?" John asked.
"Yes," Cameron said. "That's how I know this works."
John sighed, "So, how many times have you beaten up that gang?"
"This will be my ninth time." Cameron said.
"Don't you get bored of doing the same thing, over and over again?"
"I don't get bored."
John stepped out of the car and adjusted his ill-fitting stolen clothes.
"So you know, absolutely everything that's going to happen?"
"Only if we stick to the course of events in the last set of times. If you do what I say, you will see your mother in 2007. If you deviate from the course of events that I have grown accustomed to, then my ability to predict the future becomes skewed and uncertain. The further away from the time that we arrived we are, the more uncertain the events naturally become."
"Okay, so, do we do anything that gets us more money?" John asked.
"Yes, easy money," Cameron smiled at him. John now realized that Cameron did indeed know a lot about him. She was like a mechanical physical loop in time. In a way, time itself had become intertwined with a machine. Only a machine could integrate into time, and Cameron had done so.
"Okay, so you said something about love?"
Cameron smiled at him
"At the right time. This isn't the right time."
"No," John said. "I just can't imagine myself attracted to a machine."
"You never believed what you said when you told me that," Cameron said. "You told me to tell you to cut the – bullshit."
John blushed as they walked around the front of the truck.
"So you're saying I love you."
"Not yet," Cameron said. "But you will. However, I advise against this."
"Why?"
"My power cell is due to expire this year."
"Wait, you're just going to leave me here all alone is what you're saying?" John blocked her path to the registration office of the Motel. Cameron looked John over and shook her head.
"No," Cameron said. "I have had over a hundred years to plan what to do. I will need your help but it's probably going to change the time line significantly and generate a set of variables that I can no longer predict."
John twitched as Cameron suddenly reached out to touch his face.
"I will never leave you, John."
It was the single most sincere thing he had ever heard come from a machine and it shocked him. She could switch from a cold gaze to a loving one that didn't seem to be dependant on programming.
It was learned.
"How long do you have?"
"Nine months," Cameron said. "We need to settle in first and then I'll brief you on my plans. For now, we need to get checked in. The gang will be coming to find us and I don't want the tenant of the motel to be in the office when they get here."
"How long do we have before that happens?" John said.
"Fifteen hours." Cameron said. "I'm going to get us checked in, and then I'm going to give the clerk food poisoning so that he will not be here when the drive-by shooting takes place."
John raised an eyebrow and squinted his eyes in confusion.
"Why don't we just go to a different motel?"
"Going to another motel would change the course of events too drastically and hinder my ability to predict based off of past time lines," Cameron stated.
John and Cameron stepped into the motel together and looked around. The lobby smelled from the piles of microwave dinner trays in the half-opened break room, the floor was sticky, and what was left of the counter-tops of the rotted reception area counter top that wasn't getting eaten by termites was glossed over with residue from cigarette smoke and who knows what else. The man behind the counter was wearing the same clothes from several days prior and probably spent way too much time behind the back sleeping in his cot in the room behind the counter. John could see a bare mattress behind the door with VHS Video Tapes strewn all over the floor, some of them even had covers on them that were obviously pornographic. The man scratched at his stubble and limped over to them at the desk.
"How old are you two? Fourteen?"
"We are both eighteen but we don't have I.D.," Cameron said.
"Uh huh... Eighteen... Well, anything to get you two off the streets wearing those colors. Let me tell you a little something, okay? You're not gangsters, and you're not Latino, so wearing those colors is just going to get you killed in this neighborhood." He then pointed to Cameron. "And you... You might make the gang, but your initiation is going to be brutal. Most likely, they'll find you both in the L.A. River... So, cash up front and leave the key in the morning, or in a few hours when you two are done..."
"Oh, we aren't..."
Cameron put her hand over his mouth.
"We will stay the night, and yes, we are."
The man chuckled.
"For you two, twenty dollars. But as long as it's just you two, and only if you keep paying by the night! No smoking marijuana, no leaving needles behind, and no cooking equipment! If I find out about any parties, visitors, or damage, I'm kicking you out. Understand?"
John and Cameron entered the hotel room. The sheets were draped onto the bed and seemed clean. The TV was working but it didn't have cable. The box was on top of the television but it seemed as if it had shorted out some time ago. John tried not to cry as he sat on the bed.
"I'm not going to see mom for – seventeen years? We could have talked about this," John said.
"There was no time," Cameron stated. "If it makes you feel better, your mom doesn't kill me when we finally meet again."
"I don't believe it."
"It's true." Cameron said. "We always show up a few minutes later with clothes and she doesn't have a gun when she arrives."
John started to laugh at that.
"Yeah, and that's probably the only reason she doesn't kill you."
John wiped his eyes after grinning a moment.
"John," Cameron kissed him. "I would make you promise to stay here, but then you would go out and get picked up by the police. She pulled at his shirt and unbuckled his pants. She had John naked whether he liked it or not.
"Cam... What the hell?!"
For a moment, he thought she was actually going to rape him. But then, she stood back up while he wrapped himself in the sheets. He watched as Cameron walked toward the door. She stopped and looked beyond the door as she opened it.
"I'll be back."
John realized that she knew he would have left, but his desire to not run around the streets of L.A. naked superceded his urge to act independently in Cam's absence. She must have known for sure he would do such a thing because she had over a hundred years experience with him, and every moment of his life in that span of seventeen years. John sighed and laid in bed with nothing to do but ponder what the hell he'd be doing while reliving the 90's...