Author's Note: This story takes place in the general vicinity of the year 2027 before John sent Cameron back. There is some bad language here, so if that kind of thing offends you or you're too young, take thyself elsewhere. Please feel free to review, whether it be good or bad. Constructive criticism never hurt anybody. Thanks for reading!
Disclaimer: None of this belongs to me. It's a property of 20th Century Fox, C-2 Pictures and Warner Brothers. All I'm doing is amusing myself with these lovely characters to pass the time.
Reprogramming a machine wasn't difficult if you knew what you were doing. He had programmed terminators to stand guard, act as moving shields for his men, or serve as heavy lifters for machinery that would normally require another machine or several soldiers.
This one was special, though. SkyNet had created a masterpiece in this machine. A smaller, denser chassis carried living tissue unlike any terminator he had seen. Capturing it had cost him the lives of good soldiers.
They had found it on the move into Topanga. Unlike the other terminators found on site, this particular machine appeared to be in charge. It had organized the machines, moving them forward to defend the site. It had been impressive, in hindsight, to see tactical maneuvering used when brute force was nearly always preferred by the machines.
In the end, though, he had brought too many soldiers and overwhelmed them. Nearly a dozen terminators had been captured, their chips safely removed for reprogramming on a later date.
The first several machines were trial and error. He would wipe the drives, which erased the original code and gave him a blank slate. He then set about reprogramming them. Tinker here, put a new strand of code there, then see what happened. All were programmed to defend Tech-Com. It wouldn't do to release monsters in among the population. Even with everyone's guard up, a machine would be able to kill a dozen or so before being put down.
His final project was the special machine. He agonized over the code for weeks. What little sleep he allowed himself was intermittent at best. He would wake during the night, the unfinished code calling to him, demanding his attention.
It was a relief now to be finished. His mind and body exhausted, he placed the chip within its housing and made a quarter turn clockwise. It was gratifying to feel the snap as the piece locked into place.
He was shocked to see the ocular sensors did not glow red, but instead a cerulean blue. Using its metal endoskeleton, it bent sharply at the waist and rose to a sitting position, fastening its attention on him. Either this was going to work or he was going to be very dead.
He decided not to allow it to speak first. Breaking the silence he asked, "What is your model class?"
"TOK715," it said. Its voice was confused, as though it had woken from a disorienting dream. The machine looked around, taking in its surroundings, evaluating the situation he assumed.
"What is your mission?" Checking the basics was always the first set of questions. It helped when a reprogrammed terminator didn't kill outright, but you had to be sure the hardwired stuff was ingrained.
"John Connor," it said simply. That wasn't what he'd asked. Before he could ask the question again it stood, moving toward him. None of the others had done this and he found himself more than a little alarmed, but he held his ground. "John Connor, male, forty-four years of age, height: seventy-two inches, approximate weight: 81 kilograms --"
Before it could continue he interrupted, "Stop." Taking a step closer to it he said, "What are you doing?"
"You are John Connor," she said. "Body type and facial structure is a match."
"How do you know me?" He demanded. This wasn't something he had wired into her. He had intended on simply declaring himself, but she already knew who he was. This wasn't good.
At all. He was still alive, though, so he decided to see where this was going.
He noticed now that it seemed to be searching its databanks. A normal process run for a terminator took fractions of a second, but the silence stretched on for several breaths. "I seem to be missing files. There are large gaps present in known data storage units." Its head tilted to one side, indicating confusion.
"Yes. You've been reprogrammed." That seemed to bring some comfort to it. If it had been human the expression on its face would have been one of sudden awareness. A dawning understanding of the situation one found itself in. As it was, the information simply provided a logical answer to the query.
"Now tell me how you know me," he said again.
"Your physical description is on file. It appears that those files were not removed upon reprogramming." There was a pause for evaluation. "May I ask who performed those duties?" What was this thing doing asking him questions? All they did was take orders.
"I did," he said. The machine had no response for this, simply continuing to look at him. Its eyes had stopped glowing blue, instead reverting to the liquid brown he had become accustomed to seeing for the last two weeks.
"I am Cameron," it said without prompting.
"Who named you?" He asked.
A long pause again. He wondered how her neural net was constructed. It was obviously different than any of the others, because while its entire memory bank should have been destroyed, there were obviously spots within this creature's wiring that he had not stumbled upon. At current this didn't worry him, as the information she was conveying was in no way threatening, but he might need to go back in later.
"Unable to acquire data," Cameron said. Her eyes had a far away look to them, one he recognized in humans when they, too, tried to remember something that was just beyond their reach.
Waving his hand he said, "Don't worry about it." That was an absurd thing to say. Machines didn't worry. This was simply a matter of a computer not being able to find data. "Tell me what your mission is, Cameron."
He had her full attention now. Sharp eyes looked directly into his as she said, "My mission is to protect John Connor."