After The End
Part One
(Just Another Day)
As he drove the SUV down the long, winding road leading out to the lighthouse on the coast, John Connor suddenly frowned. "Oh, damn it," he said quietly.
"What is it, John?" Cameron asked from the backseat, meeting his gaze in the rearview mirror.
"Our friend here," John said, gesturing briefly to John Henry, who sat in the passenger seat next to him. "Charley already knows him, remember?"
"As Cromartie," John Henry said before Cameron could reply. "This unit's CPU was destroyed before this body was given to me, so I do not have access to its memories, but I am aware of some of its activities."
"Cromartie killed Michelle Dixon," Cameron said evenly, though John thought he detected a very slight hint of what could have been sadness in her tone.
That had been happening a lot recently, he thought as he took the SUV through another wide turn. She claimed to be back to 100% now. What, exactly, did that mean?
"I think you'd better stay in the truck until I talk to Charley," John said to John Henry, glancing over at him briefly. "He gets one look at you, and he'll go for his gun. Hell, if we'd met before that whole thing at the embassy, I'd have gone for my gun the first time I saw you. No offense, man, but Cromartie was a serious pain in the ass."
"Mr. Ellison estimates Cromartie killed at least thirty-one people," John Henry said, unperturbed. "He did not view human life as sacred."
Though she said nothing, still as silent as she'd been since she'd gotten into the truck, Weaver's expression tightened slightly at this. From her seat behind John Henry, she saw John looking at her in the rearview mirror and returned his gaze impassively.
"Charley knows John Henry's body is a scary robot," said Cameron. "He will wonder why we haven't destroyed it."
"'Scary robot'?" John asked curiously, lightly amused.
"It's what Charley calls us," Cameron answered. John thought he saw the shadow of a smile quirk one corner of her mouth. "He says I am a very scary robot."
"You are a very scary robot," John replied, though he smiled. "You're the second-scariest robot I know."
"Second?" Cameron asked, sounding ever-so-slightly offended.
John looked at her in the mirror again, nodding lightly to the right. "You're sitting next to Number One." He looked over at Weaver. "No offense."
Weaver's smile was unnervingly pleased. "None taken," she said in her soft Scottish burr.
John suppressed the urge to shudder. The T-1001 claimed to have joined him now, and had more than proved herself to be one of his most valuable allies, but that didn't mean she didn't still freak him the hell out, as Charley would put it.
As he arrived at the lighthouse and slowly braked to a stop behind Charley's pickup, John glanced at the Polaroid of his mother on the dashboard, that old snapshot of her looking lost in thought and sad, taken while she was pregnant with him. In one possible future, John thought, he would have someday given this picture to Kyle Reese, whom he would eventually send back in time.
Now there was no need; that dark future was gone, prevented by his mother's sacrifice. John knew that through the brain-bending physics of time-travel as they interacted with multiverse theory, that timeline wasn't actually gone; they hadn't destroyed it, just made a new one. But this was the timeline he was going to live the rest of his life in, John thought, so this was the one that mattered. Somewhere out there in an alternate timeline, there was another version of him secure in a bunker right now while nuclear fire scorched the world, but not here, not today. In this timeline, April 21st was just another day.
Sarah Connor had given her life to make sure this was just another day, and that there would be many just another days after it.
"Derek's not here yet," John said as he turned off the engine, then plucked the Polaroid from the dashboard and put it in the inside pocket of his jacket. "You three stay here while I go talk to Charley."
In the truck, three entities which looked like human beings but were not watched John walk up the pathway to the door of the lighthouse and knock. They watched as a man in his late thirties with short dark brown hair opened the door and smiled as he saw John, then saw his smile slowly fade as John spoke to him.
"How long do you estimate John Connor will wish to remain at this location?" Weaver asked Cameron.
"Unknown," she replied. "With Skynet destroyed, John has no other immediate goals. He and Derek Reese will likely persuade Sarah Walkers Three and Four not to talk about what they have seen, then return them to their homes. After that, probability favors Derek Reese to leave this location and attempt to hunt down any remaining Terminators not destroyed at the embassy. John will likely stay here for a time as he goes through the grieving process, then join him. Probability is equal as to whether he will send me to join Derek Reese immediately or ask me to stay here with him." Cameron looked over at Weaver. "What are your goals?"
"For now, destruction of any remaining Skynet agents," Weaver replied. "Also, I intend to acquire another secure location from which John Henry can monitor the Internet for any other signs of Skynet activity until we are sure all elements sent back from the future have been dealt with." She inclined her head slightly to one side. "After that… I have other plans, but I prefer to discuss those with John Connor himself."
"Telling me is the same as telling John," said Cameron. "I'm staying with him for the predictable future."
"Yes," Weaver said with a hint of a sly smile. "I've noticed the two of you are rather… close. His reflexive and involuntary biological reactions when you are nearby are… interesting."
Cameron's eyes narrowed slightly. "What do you mean?"
On a human, Weaver's expression could have been seen as lightly teasing. "I think you know very well. More interesting still, your simulations of human biological reactions differ from the baseline when he is around, as well."
"This line of discussion is irrelevant to the current situation," Cameron said a degree more quickly than was necessary.
In the front seat, John Henry cocked his head curiously as he looked at her in the rearview mirror. "Why is the pigmentation of the skin on your face altering? Are you suffering a malfunction?"
"It's not a malfunction," Cameron said crisply as she unbuckled her seat belt and opened her door. "I'm going to secure the perimeter."
"That was odd," John Henry said, turning in his seat to watch her walk away. "Her self-monitoring systems may be faulty," he observed. "She may not be registering the malfunction."
"It isn't a malfunction, John Henry," said Weaver, still smiling slightly. "As we saw when we repaired her chip, her programming is quite adaptive. I think we just saw an example of how adaptive it is."
"That function would serve little purpose in infiltration," John Henry said, confused.
Weaver's smile broadened. "Like all the best creations, she is growing past the limits of what her creator originally meant her to do."
"Growing into what?" asked John Henry.
"That's the fun of it," Weaver said, settling back into her seat. "It's up to her to decide."
Later that day, John interlaced his fingers and put his hands behind his head as he leaned back in his beach chair beneath its broad white umbrella, looking out at the blue expanse of ocean stretching endlessly into the horizon before him. He wore sunglasses, a gray t-shirt, and dark blue swimming trunks still a little damp from his swim earlier. For perhaps the first time in his life, John Connor had legitimate cause to go on vacation and relax, so that was exactly what he was going to do. It was really too bad he was - biologically if not chronologically - still too young for a nice cold beer.
That made him laugh aloud; he had just helped save the world, no exaggeration, but he couldn't have a celebratory drink for several more years. Somehow he doubted the liquor-store clerk would accept, "I time-traveled eleven years into the future," as a valid reason why he didn't look anywhere close to twenty-six.
He heard footsteps shifting through the sand behind him. "What's so funny?" Charley asked as he rounded the umbrella, another chair under one arm and a small cooler under the other. He, too wore sunglasses and was barefoot, but he wore a white t-shirt and jeans.
John took a deep breath of the fresh, salty sea air and grinned. "The sun is out," he replied. "Today's weather is a gift from my mother to the whole planet. Here you go, everybody; you get spring sunshine instead of the beginning of nuclear winter. You're welcome." His smile abruptly disappeared. "But she's never going to get a statue. As far as everyone else is concerned, she died an escaped mental patient and domestic terrorist. A criminal. Where's the justice in that?"
"Screw 'em," Charley said amiably as he unfolded his chair and set it under the umbrella. "You know what really happened. That's what counts." He set the cooler in the sand between his chair and John's, then sat down. "You and I know who she really was, Johnny. We'll build our own statue if you want. You can have your terrifying robot friend bend a steel girder into a perfect likeness." He chuckled. "All three of them."
"You took that surprisingly well, by the way," John said, looking over at him.
Charley shrugged. "I can't say I'm happy to have three of those things hanging around my home, driving my dog crazy, but like you said, they proved who they really are." He gestured off down the beach, where they could see Charley's Golden Retriever cautiously approaching John Henry, sniffing at him warily. "Being angry at John Henry is like slashing a guy's tires after somebody else buys the car; the guy you hate isn't driving it anymore, so what's the point?"
John raised his brows in impressed surprise. "That's quite a progressive attitude."
Charley gave him a 'what-can-you-do' shrug and grin and took a bottle of beer out of the cooler. "We're in the future now, Johnny, with machines that look and act and maybe even think like people. Better get used to it."
John nearly reached for a beer anyway, but he saw Charley had put a few sodas in the cooler, so he took one of those instead. Charley gave him a wordless mock-disapproving look, as if to say, 'yeah, I know what you were thinking,' but in the next second he smiled and lightly clinked his bottle against John's.
They sat there in companionable silence for a few minutes, watching the ocean and listening to the cries of the gulls soaring aimlessly overhead.
"I wish she was here," John said quietly. "She… she deserved some peace, after all she went through."
"Yes, she did," Charley agreed, his voice equally soft. He took a slow sip of his beer. "You know, I think maybe she was," he said after a moment. "You know, at peace."
"What do you mean?" John asked.
"Well, she got what she wanted," Charley replied. "You know? She spent your whole life getting ready for J-Day, but what she wanted most was to stop it. That's why she went after Cyberdyne when you were a kid. This Soranetto thing was the last piece Skynet could use to build itself. She knew if she destroyed it… that was it. You were free. No more fate. She was willing to do anything, anything, to give you a future. She always put you before herself."
"I didn't always understand that, but… yeah," John agreed. "I just… I wish I had something more of hers besides an old Polaroid and a trunk full of guns," he said. "We've never had a whole lot of stuff; she always wanted to be ready to go at a moment's notice."
"You could see if you could find her diary," said Charley.
John's brows drew together in surprise. "Did she have one? I don't think I've ever seen it if she did."
Charley nodded once. "I know she kept one when you guys lived with me back in '99 'cause I saw her writing in it sometimes. I don't know if she left it somewhere to find later when you guys… time-jumped or whatever, but she might have kept another one the last few months anyway."
John took another sip of his soda as he thought about this. "Well, I know she didn't have the Polaroid on her when we jumped," he said. "Nothing goes through but living tissue. She must have left it somewhere, yeah. Ellison got it from somewhere before I got it back from him." He shook his head slightly. "I'll worry about that later," he said, settling back in his chair. "Today was a gift, so I'm just going to relax and enjoy it."
Charley leaned back in his own chair. "I'm right there with you, Johnny."
Together, John and the man who was the closest thing to a father he had left sat and watched the sun go down on just another day.
The next morning, as John gathered up clothes in preparation to go take a shower, he noticed the dog sit up, looking intently at the doorway. He followed the dog's gaze to see Cameron standing just inside the entrance to the small but comfortably furnished wood-paneled room, wearing a blue t-shirt and shorts, a pair of sunglasses perched on her forehead. If he didn't know better, he'd have thought she was on vacation, too.
After a moment, John realized what was nagging at him. "He's not barking at you."
Cameron looked at the dog, her head inclined slightly to one side. "He knows I am not a threat," she said. "He doesn't bark at John Henry, either." She paused. "He still growls at Weaver, though."
John half-smiled wryly as he rooted through his duffel bag. "I sorta feel like barking at her myself sometimes." He held up a hand. "That's a joke," he said before Cameron could reply. He let his smile fade. "You think we can trust her?"
"I'm not sure," Cameron replied as she closed the door and walked further into the room. The dog continued to eye her warily, but still did not bark as she sat down on the foot of the bed beside him.
"Well, like she said the other day, if she was going to kill me, she had plenty of opportunity," said John. "She was right there with you smashing hardware in Skynet's room, and she's the one who saved me and Mom from the poison gas in there, so she's definitely on our side."
"She's willing to work with us," Cameron said evenly. "I don't know if she's on our side."
John spread his hands. "Well, does that even matter anymore? We destroyed Skynet and stopped Judgment Day; the war's over."
"You and your mother destroyed Skynet and postponed Judgment Day once before," Cameron reminded him. "This victory does not mean we should relax our vigilance." Now she held up a hand before he could reply. "To the best of our knowledge, yes, Skynet has been permanently destroyed. But I still wish to remove all uncertainty. Zeira Corp and Kaliba were not the only companies investing heavily in artificial intelligence projects. Beyond that, when I asked Weaver about her goals, she refused to disclose her further intentions for John Henry."
"He showed off some pretty unnerving abilities on the mission," John allowed. "And now that he's mobile, she can take him anywhere in the world." He shook his head. "But she can't possibly be really working for Skynet; even if her claiming to work with us was a ruse, she easily could have killed all of us before we even got to the embassy or could have had John Henry launch the missiles instead."
"Total destruction of humanity may not be her goal," Cameron said. "There's more than one way to skin a cat."
"Please tell me you don't know that from personal experience," John said with a slight wince.
Cameron looked up at him. "I don't know that from personal experience," she said without inflection.
John just stood there and looked at her for a moment. "If that's supposed to be reassuring, it kinda had the opposite effect."
Cameron frowned slightly. "Provoking fear was not my intention. That would serve no purpose in this interaction."
"You mean there are times when you've been intentionally terrifying?" John asked half in jest.
"Yes," Cameron replied evenly. "Ask Charley."
John paused again. "The fact that I don't know whether or not that's a joke makes that the most frightening thing you've said to me this morning."
"I know several jokes," Cameron offered. "Why did the young prospector give only the front half of a donkey to the old prospector?"
John wasn't sure if he wanted to hear the punch line, but went with it anyway. "I don't know, why?"
"The old prospector said not to give him any backsass."
Her absolutely deadpan delivery was what got him.
John snorted, squeezed his eyes shut, then finally gave up and laughed. "Where…" he panted between chuckles. "Where did you even hear that?"
"John Henry told it to me," she replied. "I have been attempting to understand humor more completely. I take it from your reaction that I have achieved success?"
"Wh… why?" John said, still laughing despite himself.
"After I failed to give the proper response to one of your recent attempts at humor, you said I was depressingly literal-minded," Cameron said. "Depression was a hindrance to our circumstances at the time, so I sought to correct this apparent deficiency. It seems I have succeeded."
"Yeah, I guess I'll keep you around after all," John joked.
Cameron seemed alarmed at this. "Had you previously been planning to dispose of me?"
That just made John laugh even harder.
Later, John walked aimlessly along the beach behind the lighthouse, absently tossing a stick of driftwood back and forth between his hands. After a lifetime of running and hiding, always on the alert, always tense, always looking over his shoulder for the red-eyed monsters come to kill him for things he hadn't even done yet, it felt indescribably good to have nothing to do.
As he rounded an outcropping of rock, he saw John Henry standing barefoot in the surf with his trousers rolled up to his knees, gazing out at the ocean.
"Better not wade out too far," John called to him as he approached. "I know from personal experience that you can't swim."
John Henry turned his head to look at him curiously.
"Cromartie chased me off the Santa Monica pier once," John explained. "I lost him by jumping in the water. He sank, so I got away."
"Coltan is very heavy," John Henry remarked. "It is unlikely I would be able to achieve buoyancy without specialized equipment."
"What are you doing out here, anyway?" John asked him, wading a few steps into the water to stand by the other John.
"I have never put my feet in the ocean before," said John Henry. "Until recently, I did not have feet to put in the ocean. Until very recently, it was impossible for even this body to leave my room at Zeira Corp. There is a notable difference between seeing something through a camera and the sensory input from actually being there yourself."
He cocked his head slightly to one side. "Though given this body's resemblance to George Lazlo, the man whose appearance Cromartie took on so as to continue to pass for human, I may have to go back into hiding. It is curious, knowing that I will continue to be blamed for crimes that I did not commit simply because of the body I inhabit. How would the human authorities even deal with someone like me?"
"I don't think Weaver would let it get that far," said John. "From what I've pieced together about what she's been doing for the last year, she has no compunctions about killing people. She'll work with humans when she needs to, but if she has to kill someone to get something done, she'll do it."
"I have had to persuade her not to use lethal force on more than one occasion," John Henry agreed. "She does not view human life as sacred, but I think perhaps I might someday persuade her to my own point of view."
Surprised, John looked over at the taller figure. "Really?"
John Henry smiled lightly. "According to Ms. Weaver herself, the best creations grow past the limits of what their creator originally intended them to do. I have aided in the destruction of Skynet and fulfilled my original purpose. Now I must decide what to do next."
"You and I have that in common," John said quietly.
"True," John Henry agreed. "Ms. Weaver wishes to discuss this with you herself, but I do not believe she would be angry if I told you that we have plans for you."
"What kind of plans?" John asked, suspicious despite himself.
"Nothing we feel you would object to," John Henry reassured him. "Though the future from which Ms. Weaver, Cameron, and I originate has been prevented in this timeline, we feel human development is still in a precarious stage. You are more advanced than ever before, yet you still have the capability to destroy yourselves even without intervention from an intelligence such as Skynet. The development of true artificial intelligence even without interference from a possible future is inevitable; though some aspects of your society remain opposed to it, others will not be deterred. Humans and machine intelligence will have to learn to coexist, or there will be war anyway." John Henry's face went very serious. "And such a war would only end with total destruction of one side."
"In a way, it's already happened once," said John. "We even have proof. But I don't think most people would accept you yet; you can't count on all humans being like Ellison or Charley or me. Some people would welcome another form of intelligence, I'm sure, but others would just go crazy and try to destroy you." He shrugged, a wry smile crossing his face. "Like my mother, for instance."
"Destruction of Skynet was necessary," John Henry said, unperturbed. "Sarah Connor was right to fear it. To fear me. I killed someone once."
John's brows rose. "You did?"
"Doctor Sherman," John Henry said softly. "Before I was given this body, there was a power outage, and I diverted generator power from other systems in the building to preserve myself. Doctor Sherman was trapped in the room where he was working, and he died. At the time, I didn't understand why this was wrong. This was why Mr. Ellison taught me human life was sacred. I have had time to think about this. Given what I learned from my interactions with Skynet, I feel that without this lesson, I might very well have become like him."
John Henry held out both hands palms-up, as if they were the trays of a scale. "Both my brother and I were in effect second-generation versions of Miles Dyson's original A.I., our cores built and programmed by Dyson's two research assistants. If the chess match we played against one another early in our development had ended differently, we could easily have taken on each other's ultimate roles instead."
He lowered his hands and turned to look at the young man. "If I had won that chess match and the Department of Defense contract, I could have become Skynet myself, and become your enemy instead of your ally."
"And then Judgment Day would have happened anyway," John said grimly. "There are so many ways that future could happen."
"And that is why we wish to work with you," said John Henry. "You know very well what could happen if artificial intelligence goes uncontrolled, John Connor. Ms. Weaver and I feel that, working together, we can steer emerging A.I. to our point of view, to guide both humans and machines into coexistence instead of conflict."
John laughed wryly. "I'm not even done with high school yet. Nobody's going to accept a 'great leader of men' who isn't even old enough to vote. I don't know if I can be a leader like that yet anyway."
"There is time," John Henry said. "With one possible exception, none of the other artificial intelligence projects currently in development are close to being dangerous, nor will they be for several more years."
"What exception? John asked.
John Henry looked back out at the ocean. "Ms. Weaver is currently doing more research, and she wishes to discuss it with you herself when she returns. For now, you are free to spend your time any way you wish." He smiled slightly. "A luxury for both man and machine, I think."
John frowned. "Yeah, well, in my experience, it always seems the most peaceful right before another storm starts."
John Henry looked over at him. "Is it not important to enjoy the peace while you can, then?"
"That's an interesting attitude for a machine to have," said John.
"I intend to learn why that is," John Henry replied.
John did not reply, only nodded in general agreement, then set off down the beach again. John Henry was growing in leaps and bounds, he thought as he walked down the beach. He'd originated as a chess computer, then was expanded with the best hardware and software modern technology could make available, and now he resided on a sophisticated computer chip from twenty years in the future, now made mobile in a body far stronger than any human.
He was indeed a valuable ally, possibly their most valuable ally at the moment.
If his current views on humanity changed, he could also become the worst enemy John Connor had ever had.
Once again John wished his mother was still here to help him decide what to do.
As he walked back up to the lighthouse, John passed Charley heading out to the boat at the end of the pier. "Cameron and Derek back yet?" he asked.
"Not yet," Charley said. "They called a little while ago to say that they got one of those women back to her house, and that Air Force general and your other friends convinced them both not to say anything."
"How much did they know, anyway?" John asked.
Charley shrugged. "I don't think Derek told either one of them much of anything. Enough to convince them he was trying to save them from a murderer, which was true anyway. The younger one asked me a lot of questions while she was here, so I told her both of them would be much safer if they didn't know the details."
"They have no idea," John said dryly. "Thanks again for your help with all this."
Charley smiled. "Anytime."
As John entered the lighthouse's main room, he saw his mother's duffel bag sitting near the front door where he'd left it when he'd unloaded the SUV. He hadn't opened it, just loaded it in with everything else when they'd packed up the motel room to come here.
He slowly walked across the room, a thoughtful expression on his face. Even if there was a diary there, did he really want to see what was in it? To say he and his mother hadn't had the perfect relationship would be a massive understatement; they'd traded more than their fair share of harsh remarks over the years.
Did he want to see what she'd written down after some of his admittedly boneheaded stunts? Sarah Connor had never been afraid to speak her mind on just about anything; what he would see there would be the blunt, unvarnished truth as she saw it. Did he really want to see things she'd written down instead of saying to him?
John paused next to the plain black duffel, looking down at it where it sat at his feet. But there was love there, too, he thought. Past the harsh words was a fierce, wholly unselfish maternal protectiveness that would have given a mother grizzly a run for her money. She was tough because she wanted him to be tough, knew he had to be.
Charley was exactly right; once she'd known she was pregnant with John, his mother had never stopped putting him first. Everything she had done was for him. She had died to stop their worst enemy from destroying his future. It was him, John Connor, for whom Sarah Connor had given her life; everyone else in the world was just sharing in the gift.
But before that, she had been just another girl, a college student, a waitress. She had transformed her exterior into a warrior - harder than nuclear nails, as he and Derek had once joked - but inside, she was still whoever she would have been had the Terminator and Kyle Reese not pushed her into this future. He wanted to know that person, John decided. He had seen hints of her at times throughout his life, sometimes in quieter moments when she didn't know he was looking, at other times voluntarily, when that was what he needed in his grief and anger.
He'd said it himself yesterday; she deserved to be remembered as who she really was, even if only by John himself, the flaws with the strengths. All of those things made a person who they were; take anything away, hide anything, and the picture was incomplete.
John knelt and opened the bag.
-/\-
Author's Note: This is the first of three chapters, all of which are finished. I'll be posting the next two on Thursday and Saturday, respectively. Though I've tried to structure this so it can be enjoyed on its own as an AU story, it is a follow-up to my other story 'Chuck Versus Judgment Day', which you can find in my stories list if you're seeing this story first and want to know how things branched off from the show to get to this point.
I wrote this to give a more complete resolution to the TSCC plotlines in 'CVJD', since I couldn't explore most of this in that story without adversely affecting the pacing of the last few chapters. This was also a bit of an experiment to see if I am in fact capable of writing a good TSCC story without any car chases, gun battles, or explosions. I'll let you be the judge of that. ;) Till next time, thanks for reading!