Livin' in the Future

By Ottovw

2010

Chapter 1

John-

The future smelled. John had spent a lot of time in the jungle, and other places far less pleasant. He'd lived in small hovels that were little more than a roof and some poles. He'd lived in multi floor shanty's that used stray lumber for stairs and were laughably called 'apartments'. The smell there wasn't bad except for the open air sewer and the higher up you lived the less noticeable the smell. Admittedly, anything next door to an open air sewer was going to smell bad. Ultimately, what the smell reminded him of was a building implosion he and Tim had skipped school to watch. It was, he decided, the smell of pulverized concrete. There was also the dust, not a smell, but a texture that was inhaled. At the implosion they had cleverly decided to watch from downwind. The enormous cloud of dust passed right over them. They looked like they had gotten into a fight with a chalk board eraser and lost. Then just like now, the dust and grit were everywhere. He didn't even want to think what it was composed of.

Strangely, enough they trusted him, to some extent. They didn't, at all, like his sudden appearance in the middle of a secure forward bunker. But it seems that in this future the 'grays' are so well known that the only time they ever left the slave camps was to face the justice meted out by the human resistance. It bothered them that he recognized Derek and Kyle, and at least one person was troubled by his look at Allison Young. He had learned that Derek and his company had made something of a name for themselves in the human resistance. His cell, being so active in its attacks on Skynet holdings and transportation was well known in human circles. Despite this, they did not believe that they might be specifically targeted by the machines. He understood that and agreed. If he were Skynet he would not attack them either. They were gnats. Mosquito's biting at the flanks of an elephant.

On so many levels the situation bothered John. There was no cohesion or any type of command structure. They were fighting a guerilla war, only. Arming themselves with the equipment they 'harvested'. While subsisting on the detritus and cast offs of a military monster. He knew the 'math'. The manufacture of a replacement endo, HK, or centaur might take weeks perhaps months and taking into account what Cameron had told him about the rarity of 'coltan'. On the other hand, the 'recruitment' of a replacement human took a generation. In a prolonged struggle, humanity would lose. What he saw here disturbed him… humanity was losing.

He woke with a start. His pallet was the bottom half of a sleeping bag, the course blanket, they had given him against the cool night, still covered him. There was a figure sitting at his feet, he bit back an angry retort as he remembers where and more importantly when he was. The figure was utterly Cameron, the voice was hers, though it was missing the almost mechanical cadence she lacked only when she was at her most serious. Then, when comprehension hit him and he began to understand what the voice was saying the best he could come up with was: "What?"

"I said", Allison Young repeated, "does this form please you? I assume that this human was the one that your cyborg was imprinted on. I could not help, but notice your reaction to her."

"Yes, its fine, what did you say after that."

"That I cannot linger, I must find John Henry before he attempts to confront Skynet. When I have located him I will come back for you. At the moment you are under too close a watch for me to sneak you out of this camp. I'll be back."

"How will I..."

She was gone. She was there and then she wasn't. His mind could not encompass anything that moved that fast. Cameron could not have moved that fast. Off in the dark came the scraping sound of boots on the gritty cement. "Hey!" Someone called though, somewhat softly, and in a less than friendly manner. Then not for his hearing "What's his name again?"

"John" Someone else said.

"John? John!" Someone hissed from beyond the shadows.

"Wha-what?" He was doing his best 'just woke up' routine. It 'seemed' to work with his mom, though he was never certain.
It was Dave, the resistance fighter who first found him. He crouched just at the edge of his vision, behind him came Allison. Dave spoke: "I heard voices who were you talking to?" He was agitated, though unarmed. He looked around obviously; there was no one else in this corner of the basement.

Allison, keeping low, knelt beside him placing a hand on his knee. Through the blanket John was very aware of her hand. "Do you talk in your sleep?" There was the slightest tightening of her grip.

"Some-sometimes" he stammered, "but only when I have bad dreams." Another, barely noticeable, tightening.

"See" she said over her shoulder, "John was just dreaming."

"I heard 'voices'"

"May be you heard wrong", she rose, "I'm getting Derek."

"Fine. Whatever." Dave stalked off into the shadows.

Allison lingered at a remnant of wall, "have a good night John, and no more dreaming, all right?" Then she too, left him in his corner of the basement.

Two nights had passed since his arrival and he had heard no word from Catherine Weaver. It bothered him, but he had more pressing concerns. Primarily that 'he' bothered them. He was aware of that. They kept a surreptitious guard on him. He was never alone, except when he slept. There was always someone with him when he ate, when he wandered the camp. He kept waiting to be debriefed, or interrogated. The first night there had been the most cursory of 'interviews' but nothing since. Another curiosity, of that first night, is that he and Dave never spent any time alone. The camp bustled they were preparing to move at first dark.

He was eating breakfast, it was a lukewarm kind of mush made of a variety of coarsely ground grains boiled together, some salt, and mixed with powdered milk. He knew this because one of his first chores as a 'recruit' was cooking this 'breakfast' and doing the dishes after wards. It was kind of bland, but still better than his mom's pancakes. That stray thought brought a tightening in his throat, and a blurring of his vision. Almost blindly he continued to spoon the soupy mess into his mouth. This morning he was eating with Allison. They were sitting on raised concrete platform, he guessed it had once supported a generator, the sheared anchor bolts were still there, but he couldn't imagine what had happened to the generator. It had been quite large. The platform was only 5 inches tall. They were sitting with their bowls balanced on their knees, which were almost up to their chins. "What was her name?"

"What?" John asked disturbed from his thoughts about missing generators.

"The night we found you. You seemed to recognize me. Who did you think I was? What was her name?"

He thought about his answer. What could he tell her? What would she believe or even understand? "Her name was Cameron." He found himself, fighting for control, just saying her name. "She… She's in the past, it doesn't matter anymore."

"But who was she?" Allison twisted towards him her thigh brushed against his. The touch was brief and light, he pretended to ignore it. She didn't have the 'head tilt', a question like that would have almost required the 'tilt'. Her face was so much more animated. More like when they were in school, or that time when she thought she was 'Allison' than when she was at home. He watched all this peripherally. She seemed to be trying to make eye contact. He pretended not to notice that either. For John lying was far more a tactical or strategic choice than a moral one. He understood plainly that above all else he needed these people and he could not afford to alienate them. He didn't want to lie, but what else could he say.

"She was" he started and faltered, he could feel the muscles in his face pulling, pulling down.

"She was m-my" he faltered again. His eyes took on a steely look that in another place and another time, he was famous for. He took a breath like someone about to jump into the deep end of a pool.

"She was my sister." He blinked frantically. She was just a machine he raged at himself. Another part of him, the stronger part of him, raged back: No, she was more than just a machine. When his vision cleared, he stole a glance at Allison. Their eyes met. What did he see there: Concern? Pity? Relief? The reflection of his own anguish?

She looked away down at her chipped bowl of breakfast. She set it down, with a clatter, not half eaten. It was a discordant sound in the otherwise quiet camp. "We lose everyone we love." She whispered. He jerked, and turned, almost earning a lap full of 'warmish' 'breakfast'. His knee hard against hers, neither noticed. He tried to read what he saw there. He could see the edge of an ear, the curve of her cheek, the line of her jaw. A landscape that he knew intimately, a geography he knew by heart, but could no longer comprehend. He stared, like an amnesiac lost in his own home. She didn't notice, lost as she was in her own misery.

They moved at night. They moved in small groups. Three or four to a group, the entire camp was split and took three separate routes. They moved quickly and quietly. The first group left taking one route. Ten minutes later a second group on another route, and so on. No two groups of on the same route were within 20 minutes of each other. There would be no support. If there was trouble it would be you and your three buddies. What struck John was that so many left the camp, like John, unarmed. Either there were not enough weapons. Which he couldn't believe, or there wasn't enough ammunition. Which, he also, couldn't believe. This left him thinking that many in the camp were like him, civilians or noncombatants. His first thought was why were so many here? So close to the fighting but then, he thought, where wouldn't there be fighting? "No one is ever safe." An axiom he has known his whole life, and something he now would get to see others live by.

Some had gathered packs, their belongings, camp utensils, and supplies. He had nothing. His clothes, the ill fitting boots, were hand-me-downs. His coat was a 'gift' from a man who didn't even know John was his son.

A hand landed heavily on his shoulder. "Looks like your running with me kid." It was Kyle; the voice was not how he had imagined it. His voice was higher pitched, may be softer it wasn't as cold and hard as he had always thought it would be.

He smiled at him over his shoulder. "Derek seems to think you're important."

The smile he got back was contemplative. It was the smile of someone trying to solve a riddle and worried that they are the butt of the joke. He nodded toward two others. He introduced them to him: Jorge (curiously pronounced George), and Dalia, he noticed that both were armed. This was the first group he had seen with more than two members (the point man and the rear guard) armed. John looked at them; they were alike though they looked completely different. One was darker with an Asian cast, the other paler with curlier hair. But they were both lightly built, wiry came to mind.

Kyle was looking at him: "Do you know how to use one of these?" It was a Colt model 1911.

"Yes." He safed it. Ejected the magazine, pulled the slide, and checked the chamber. Replaced the magazine, and released the slide. Kyle nodded and handed him two spare magazines. Now, John thought, they were the first group he had seen where everyone was armed.

"Ready." It wasn't a question. It wasn't directed at him. Kyle looked them all in the eye, one, then another, and another. Incongruously he grinned. "Let's go." They ran.

The uneven terrain, the unsteady pace, the sudden stops, the need for silence even during the shortest of respites suited John very well. 'Past' John, as he mentally started referring to himself, ran. Just like he was trained. He wasn't a distance runner, though on a prepared surface he could eat up miles pretty well. He tended to run cross country. It allowed him the most freedom of route, and time. This gave him the ability to vary his patterns, thus making him harder to track. For his own security he even exercised unpredictably. He used this time to think, and John thought a lot. From his training in the jungles in a variety of para military camps he had discovered and fallen in love with 'wind' sprints. Thankfully they used standard hand signals.

As they ran, several thoughts bounced around his head. He decided he needed to reassess Derek's team. They had been trained. This wasn't a bunch of local yokels with hunting rifles and stenciled leaves spray painted on the sides of their pickups. They had good sanitation. They seemed to have good situational security. What he gathered from this movement they were keeping themselves dispersed. He presumed if there was trouble there would be 'rally points' he, however knew none of them. During the entire time they were in the camp they had not been attacked. John realized that he didn't even notice when patrols came and went, though they must. The presence of civilians bothered him, but where else would they be? He blinked gritty sweat out of his eyes. He did notice that he was the only one in his group whose primary weapon was a sidearm.

A clenched fist: Stop. He stopped. Open palm down: Down. He crouched. He kept his eyes on Kyle. Despite the chill, his hair was plastered down to his head with sweat. He wiped his forehead on the sleeve of his father's jacket. Kyle turned looked at him, and gave him a wry smile. He gave the universal symbol for 'honk your horn', and they were off again. He caught himself smiling at the back of Kyle's head. They snaked around some piles of rubble. They dropped down into an impact crater. The raised fist. Where they organized beyond 'cells'? How did they gather intelligence? How was it disseminated? He had seen no communications equipment.

The skulls. There was a sad little pile at the bottom of this crater; water occasionally filled it so they were rotted and spongy. When they first started he had tried to count them. Then they passed a street essentially paved with them. As they ran on, he wondered. How many of them had he known? The up raised pumping fist. Off again. Was Morris in that last pile? Was he still "watching' out for him"? They ran down between two buildings leaning against each other giving this alley a steeply sloping roof. What about Cheri? Into another crater, out past a line of perforated cars. Or his mom? Up raised fist. They crouched behind a pile of debris laced with rebar. Kyle caught his eye. Two fingers pointed at John's eyes. Index finger whirled in a circle. Pay attention. He nodded back. They ran.

They were at the edge of a large multi lane road; the uncountable cars were still poised in a kind of post apocalyptic traffic jam. To his left and his right was nothing, he could put into words. With little let up the packed cars extended as far as he could see. They were following a path between the cars. Off in the distance he could see a spotlight shining down from the sky. It illuminated the distant destruction. He found himself slowing down at the spectacle; he goaded himself back into his run. The route was a tangle of wreckage, like a rusting steel briar. He watched Kyle's passage, knowing that there might not be another safe way across. The raised fist. He stopped. Kyle gave him a look. It was an unasked question; it was not a good look. He was breathing heavy but hardly in discomfort. He realized that he had given himself away out there. Kyle's look said: 'this is new to you. How can this be new?' The pumping fist. They shot across a dangerously wide sidewalk, to the safety of darkly shadowed alley. Past a dumpster. Around what might have been a roof. Behind another dumpster, then down a set of stairs, through a missing door.

The raised fist. Jorge was there waiting, weapon trained on them. "Rest stop," Kyle said. John continued to walk in a circle as big as the room allowed letting himself to cool down. Jorge handed him a canteen, as he passed, he took a sip. The water was cold. He understood right then that the water had been cached here, otherwise it would be warm from Jorge's body heat. He held the water in his mouth to warm before he swallowed it. He took another sip and handed it to Kyle. Who was walking his run off as well, in the opposite direction. He kept looking at him. It was uncomfortable. John watched his feet, and continued to walk. Both of them drew their weapons. John was only a heartbeat behind with his. It was Dalia. John sat and let her walk off her run. Kyle continued to walk long after he would have expected him to, he also kept looking at him. Dalia slapped him in the arm for the water. "Sorry" he said, his voice was distant and distracted. He almost hit Dalia with the canteen.

Jorge noticed: "Kyle. What?"

"Huh? Nothin'." He looked at Jorge, "are you ready?"

"Give me a minute, will you?" Dalia.

Kyle looked at her almost surprised: "Sorry." He sat and looked at John: "John?" He motioned him over. John came over. Kyle was looking him up and down, evaluating. "How are you holding up?"

"I'm good." He crouched down beside him there was nowhere to sit.

"You need to pay attention." He was looking him dead in the eye. "Woolgathering? Out there? It will get you killed. It could get us all killed. Okay?"

"Yeah." There was a long uncomfortable silence. Kyle was still staring at him, like he was trying to memorize his face.

"Ready," Dalia said.

Kyle looked at Jorge. Who looked back an unspoken question. Kyle didn't notice or ignored it. Jorge shook his head and went back up the stairs. They waited. Kyle stood up. "John?" They were off again.

Down the alley. Then a gap in a shattered wall, across a marble floored lobby, through an askew door labeled: 'bank employees only'. Out through another wall. The fist again. They were crouched low beside an up turned sidewalk. John thought back along their route, and their pace: The civilians, the camp supplies, he wasn't even carrying his 'bed roll'. Human pack mules. The pumped fist. A narrow gap, more cars. John was thinking about lines of communication. He saw no radio equipment. Down one lane, across, up another. He paid attention, he looked as he ran. They ducked under a tractor trailer that was wedged against a building's facade. Kyle barely fit the gap; they were of a similar build. They were taller than either Jorge or Dalia. They were inside again. He was thinking about information how it could be gathered and how it could be dispersed. He could see the path now despite the dark, up along the cash registers, then to the right of the tumbled shelves. Left in front of what had been a freezer section. He might have shopped here once, he wasn't sure. He could see the gap ahead in the dairy section. They ducked into that. The up raised fist.

"Kyle" he whispered, over the older man's shoulder. He had been mislead. There weren't three routes there were four, at least, perhaps many, many, more. "What are the signs?"

Kyle looked at him, that same look. It was not angry but it was not exactly friendly. It said: he was suspicious. It told John of a basic conflict in Kyle's mind. How can someone be surprised by the images of decade old devastation. Yet know about their internal security? How can someone know one, and yet, not know the other.

"This is a courier path?"

Kyle gave him a blank look.

"Runners?"

A look that was too blank. Like a mask. This was, he realized, Kyle's 'game' face. He was making a difficult decision. That, he was unsure he had the authority to make. He decided: a quick nod.

"What are the signs?"

Kyle leaned back: "Don't talk" he breathed into his ear. With his index finger he drew a circle over his head finger pointing out: 'they' John understood. Then Kyle cupped his hand to his ear: 'listen'. John nodded: 'they listen.'

He pointed down and out across the way. There was a piece of rebar. With his hand open he waved back to front. John knew it meant: file formation, but it was not just how you moved but what direction you moved in. The bar he saw was pointed along their route. John nodded, when the bar was with the flow of traffic it was okay to move. Kyle turned his hand palm out across their line of march, he emphasized it like a cop stopping traffic. John nodded again, when it was across your path you stopped. He gave the 'okay' sign. Kyle nodded and they were off again.

They continued like this for most of the rest of the night. At one point they seemed to double back on themselves. It might have been a simple security measure, but he thought that they had to bypass 'trouble'. They made two more 'rest' stops before arriving at a 'bunker', it was a subbasement to a parking deck; it was called 'Golf 7'.

Two men met them, at the surface they were escorted down one level to meet with the dogs. They were escorted down by two other men. Presumably, the first two were returning to the surface. They went down two more levels where the scents of densely packed humanity hit him. Here was the open air sewer. There were perhaps a thousand people here. They had punched holes through the concrete walls and widened the parking deck, into the other subterranean openings. Many of which were obviously sewers. Some of the tunnels he saw were blocked off. Earthquake damage, he was told later.

Kyle went to speak to the camp commander. John, Jorge and Dalia were taken to the showers. John could barely contain himself. They had running water. It wasn't heated but a shower for the first time in most of a week was a godsend. The last time he had had a shower was the morning of Charley's death. Of course, he'd gone much longer, but the situations were different. In the past he had been surrounded by people who he 'could' trust and more importantly, who trusted him.

The soap was lye based, and so a little harsh, but he made no complaints. After the shower they gave him a new uniform, his father's coat, and sent him 'up' for a plate of 'stew'. It was the first meat he had eaten since his came to the future, he decided not to ask what it was. The cafeteria was on the second subbasement. There were rows upon rows of folding tables and chairs. The hospital was on this floor. Like the Zeira corp. camp it was eerily quiet. Few spoke and when they did it was barely above a whisper. The dominant sound was the scrap of a utensil on a bowl or plate. Compared to the third level the silence here was thunderous.

"You like deer then." Kyle sat down beside him with his own plate of stew, it was cooked with what he thought was a kind of fat rice, it turned out to be barley. The deer he was told, though he already knew, was local. They almost thrived in the hills north of them. This despite Skynet's continued and almost indiscriminate destruction. The barley came from farther afield.

John looked around at the other tables.

"No one else is here, they are about a half a day behind us, may be more" Kyle said. "And if they stay clear of the patrol we had to dodge, they should be okay."

John merely nodded.

Kyle looked at the other two, "we'll want to get as much rest as we can. We leave at first dark." Kyle seemed comfortable with him again. He didn't know what he and the camp commander talked about but it seemed to set him at ease.

The second night was much like the first. They ran. They sprinted. They stopped. Mostly they kept to alley ways and ruins. They rarely crossed streets, especially wide ones, and never any without some sort of cover. They even crossed one street under the torn end of a sunken roadbed. It was at their second 'rest' that something strange happened. There was not a lot of conversation at their stops. Mostly they were catching their breath and re-hydrating. John sat with his back against a crumbling wall. His eyes were shut but, he wasn't sleeping merely resting, when something grabbed his left hand. He jerked away from it violently.

They were all looking at him.

"You okay John?" Jorge asked.

"Sorry, yeah, must have dozed off, must have been dreaming." He turned away from them, tucked his head down into his shoulder, and through slitted eyes, looked at the rat. It was sitting back on its haunches, like a cartoon animal, it had one paw up to its mouth with a toe extended, like it was telling him to be quiet. He watched it bite off that paw and place it on his coat. There was no blood, but it was disturbing enough to make him cringe. The foot, perhaps an inch long, seemed to melt and blend into his coat.

"Come on John, we're ready." He stood up, and joined the others at the bottom of the stairs. They were off again.

This bunker was Foxtrot 9; John knew that they had been moving mostly east and slightly north. If his assumptions were right, and they continued their current path, the next bunker would be either Echo 10 or Echo 11. This little bit of knowledge buoyed his spirits. Somewhere was a single map, that all of them were using. There was something in the way of a central command here. It occurred to him that it might only be a Metro bus map with numbers and letter written on it or even on those pretty laminated maps he enjoyed so much as a child, but even that would allay so many of his initial fears. They showered and were fed again. Once again Kyle disappeared. Jorge and Dalia did not seem disturbed by this, so he assumed this was something expected.

It wasn't but Jorge and Dalia were 'runners' they were always taken immediately to the camp commander, the camp XO, the camp intelligence officer or the camp communications officer. They saw nothing different with Kyle's visits. This time Kyle came late, they were already bedded down in the 'guest' quarters: a hallway with stacks of unattached bunk beds. He crouched down next to John's bunk. "There's been a change of plans." Jorge and Dalia sat up and took notice. "'The Old Man' wants to see you." He said, though he was actually looking at Jorge and Dalia, they were in abutting top bunks.

"Great," Jorge said exasperated.

"Crap" Dalia. John could almost hear the tears in her voice.

Kyle looked no happier. "Sleep, we are staying an extra day here, we leave tomorrow night." What he didn't say, was the reason they were staying. There were no bunkers in the direction they were going. They would need to collect rations and other supplies before they left.

Sleeping in the daytime was easier underground. There were fewer ambient noises and certainly a lot less ambient light. But he still woke at about 10am, it was dark in their hallway, the sounds that existed at all were distant. He was looking up at the bottom of the top bunk, when he caught some movement out of the corner of his eye. It looked like a tick walking across his bed clothes. It melted into the course dark blanket. "You awake John?" Kyle asked from the other bunk.

"Yeah."

"Go back to sleep. Where we are going you're not going to get a better chance."

He tilted his head back and shut his eyes. Something was slithering up the edge of his arm; it kept to the valley between his arm and his body. He tried not to squirm as it climbed up the side of his chest. It poked its 'head' out from under the covers. It was a millipede. He closed his eyes again. He tried not to flinch as it crawled along the edge of his face and wrapped itself around this base of his ear.

"Please remain calm" Catherine told him, in his left ear. "Do not nod your head. Do not shake your head. Do not respond."

He didn't.

"I have detached this part of me, so that I can communicate with you. At the moment communications will only be one way." There was a pause, as if for a response that he had been told not to make. "I have tracked John Henry to an old naval base in Long Beach. Unfortunately, you are going in the opposite direction. Considering the layers of reinforced concrete, and heavy background interference, this is, approximately, the extreme range of my wireless capabilities. The 'rat' can be used as a 'repeater' but like this 'unit' it has very limited behaviors and functions. Further, even the limited resources of the humans can detect these transmissions." Implying, John understood, that Skynet would have no trouble finding them. "I wanted to contact you before you went beyond my range. I will contact you again when you return."