I just got to thinking : what if? How long would it have taken for John and Sarah to figure it out. How good an infiltration model could TOK715 really have been if she had got to Cromatie before he tracked down John Conner?
14 days earlier.
Cameron slung Cromatie's body over her shoulder and carried it the last one hundred metres towards a neatly dug hole in the sand . She paused, turning around with the exposed metal carcass on her back to make a full scan of the area. She was certain this sector of desert was devoid of human life. The only living creatures emitting heat traces were those of small desert mammals and whatever else might be out hunting them tonight.
Cameron listened intensely,attending to , then filtering the noise of night- spiders spinning, knitting their webs in the thorn trees, and further still she followed the sound of a road train hauling its load northwards along the distant highway . If a human foot pressed into the sand or moved against rock within a five hundred metre radius, she would hear it.
As she bent forward Cromatie's body slid off her shoulder, making a dull thud as it impacted into bottom of the pit. She picked up the shovel and worked quickly with a singular concentration. Strategies reformulated in her mind. She had decided to source Thermite and return later for the correct disposal procedure.
As she stared into the shallow grave her gaze seemed penetrate into the disappearing carcass of metal and flesh. Her intensity wasn't hatred or any burning emotion. Simply a large element of her mission parameters had been accomplished. She'd taken out the triple eight sent to kill John Connor. If she had been human she might have smiled with a sense of quiet satisfaction and relief. Being Cameron, with no humans around , there was no requirement for her to make facial expressions or to simulate satisfaction.
Cromatie had leaked organic bodily fluids and lubricant on her clothing as she had carried "him". If a fuel cell had ruptured isotopes in the lubricant could temporarily damage her organic layer and she might even be mildly hazardous to other organic life until she could properly scrub down. She removed her top and jeans and placed them in a plastic liner for disposal . There were identical clean clothes and shoes in the bag at her feet. She would put on the clean ones later.
Thorn trees cast their elongated shadows across the sands. Cameron, her body alloyed in bright moonlight, carried on shovelling until the patch sand she was working became indistinguishable from the rest of the desert.
Strategies reformulated, There would be more triple eights to follow . Each one slightly more advanced than the last.
She must find and protect John.
14 days later.
John Connor ( recently John Baum) searched the faces of the students exiting through the main door. In each school, no mater in which State, all students looked and walked like this when going home. There were the loud ones in groups, the shy kids who usually found another shy kid to walk home with, boyfriends and girlfriends with arms round each others waist in their own universe, and then the odd loner usually , rucksack bouncing on his back, running for cover. He smiled at the irony of the odd loner. Geeks sure inherit this earth, although not in any way they could have imagined. There he was , future saviour of mankind and always the one walking fast, avoiding contact, making endless excuses getting home before the Connor cast-iron curfew came down. Honorary geek.
John rested his weight against the wooden gatepost. Stay invisible , keep out of group peripheral vision. He was already getting, "we suspect you might be a weirdo"- look from some of the students in the corridors. John shut them out of his mind. The name calling and testing wouldn't start for another week or so. He'd handle it quietly and calmly and do his best to fade of the radar. Just fade into the shadow, blend and blend until there was so little left of him it didn't count.
The chances were Cameron Phillips wouldn't even be there in amongst the students going home this afternoon. If she did turn up: John ran through probabilities why she would. He'd been through this "friendly on the first day situation" in some new towns and schools he'd been moved to before.
Probabilities for Cameron Phillips friendliness in order of certainty:
1. The student counsellor had singled him out as the potential weird loner , the troubled kid,and assigned her to help integrate him on his first day. It was part of her psychology assignment.
2. She was being polite and would drift away in a week or so.
3. She belonged to hyper-evangelical church and the girls were all this friendly before they begin pressuring to go to sunday service. Could be anything, maybe even one of those crazy snake-cult churches he'd seen on TV, they were out here, somewhere. Jeez what a hick-town. A God that doesn't intervene to stop the sky burning and three billion souls rising heavenwards on the heat, sure isn't going be the slightest bit interested in whether a rattlesnake takes it upon itself to bite into the arms of shiny eyed manic preacher in a tin shack down on a dry grass patch in Hickstown.
4. Cameron was hoping to sell his family a tractor.
5. She was too young for the FBI, CIA or any other group, so he ruled Government Agent out.
For some reason his palms started to sweat, and he breathed to control the rising nervous energies in his body. Then she was there, he could see her through the thinning crowd in the exit, her dark hair flowing over her purple leather jacket.
As Cameron came out of the main door she paused, scanned and spotted him straight away. Even from this distance John felt her eyes lock onto him . As she made her way towards him it was like all the other voices and faces faded out. Then she was walking in his direction, slightly quicker than the last groups of students straggling home. In that moment he felt like he was falling.
"Hi John, thanks for waiting," Cameron beamed
"Hi said John, not quite sure what to do next , his hand uncurled from a fist , it had been tightly griping the strap to his rucksack.
"Which way do you walk home John?"
When he answered , John sensed fate , it was reorganising invisible forces around him. He had been so fascinated by his glimpse of the fatemaking process, he'd hardly realised he had just told a girl (he hardly knew), where he lived and the route he took home. If Sarah found out , he'd done this on his first day, she'd predictably shout at him for fifteen and a half minutes, then move him to another town quicker than it took her to strip and reassemble the working parts of an AK47 , no blindfold, on the kitchen table.
Cameron's voice broke into his thoughts.
"That's the way I go too" Cameron replied her eyebrows slightly furrowed , as if to ask is it OK if I walk home with you? Her body language already signalling it was her intention to do so.