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Sound is all our dreams of music. Noise is music's dreams of us.

- Morton Feldman

DEUTERO

B2 Eastern Quadrant. Thick, knotted veins split the concrete of a doorway. Water-seeking root ... grandfather tree ... decapitated ... relic of a world extinct.

From algorithms for the architecture of sub-branches, fractals of verdure sprouted in her mind, open hands leaning toward the light. Her own idea of what a tree was, based on what she learnt from John. Chimera of pine, hawthorn and sycamore. Imagined slow, brown tree thoughts, encoded logic of photosynthesis and thirst, as alien to her as human thoughts.

Her hand met the lifeless remains of this dismantled giant as she passed on the way to the barracks. Survivors performed the gesture - all, including John, unthinkingly. Touch the length of the wood, wear it smooth, as she did now. Just one more piece of misfit data that Cameron did not understand, could not categorise.

One enigma of human behaviour from a growing subdirectory of events, but it seemed like something she should do.

'How does that head of yours work, exactly?'

'Not like yours.'

'You think that or you know?'

Kyle Reese looked away from the needle Cameron was using to sew up his arm - into the darkness of the abandoned tunnel, anywhere but at her. With the last of the alcohol expended in cleaning the wound, she thought it highly likely that he was only speaking to her to distract himself from the pain.

'I don't understand the question.'

'That's my point. Do you know the first thing about how human beings think? Skynet teach you? Or have you figured it out on your own, by studying us?'

'Not Skynet. John told me.'

'John...'

Cameron cut the string on the last stitch and wiped her hands on what was left of Kyle's shirt. Another skill John taught her was deciding when to lie.

'He doesn't talk about you. Or anybody in particular.'

(All this stuff. ... Useless, superfluous stuff, these are the things that matter. They're what's necessary. The day you realise that, everything will be different.)

Cameron watched the bright blood leak over her hand, slowing, limping from the man's wounds now; listened as his heart staggered agonisingly. She rose to her feet.

'He's lost too much blood.'

Derek Reese pushed her heavily aside, knees slipping on concrete, black and wet under the light of two emergency torches held by Nix.

'You don't know anything. He's been hit worse before and lived.'

'If he were my target, I would close the file as completed.'

'He's still alive!'

'Not for much longer.'

She recognised it, the pressing end like a shadow over the body ... weak, failing vital signs ... probabilities diving to a point of origin ... the cold breach. She would regret his death; the man was a medic. His name, she remembered, putting human label to the face, was Cage.

'He's your friend. I'm sorry.'

Murder in his eyes, Derek attacked her.

'You don't know the meaning of the word. Fucking machine.'

And then the voice of John Connor, sharp and terse: 'Enough.'

(How?)

(You remember everything, you remember with every part of your body ... senses ... emotions. Altogether. Things that mightn't seem significant at the time. Things that you'd rather forget.)

John loaded his computer with the virus to cover Cameron's retreat if Skynet discovered her hijack. He motioned for her to sit. Taking out his knife, he looked at each member of the team in turn - Nix cranking the generator, Kyle and Derek Reese on either side of the old ruined entrance, Cage by the window, its glassless panes overlooking what used to be University grounds. They nodded in confirmation. Then John parted the hair on the left side of Cameron's skull, an inch down from her CPU, and began to make the incision.

'You download what you can and you get out, understand? No analytics, nothing but the raw satellite footage. We'll figure out what it means later.'

He was not saying anything she didn't already know but she acknowledged his concern.

'All right.'

When the external port was exposed, Cameron cut off her sensory receptors one by one - touch, hearing, and finally, sight. The last thing she saw was a strand of hair being brushed away from her face, and John saying something that she had to read on his lips.

Ready?

She closed her eyes. And opened them to a tapestry of white, blue and grey. The planet from 23,000 miles high.

Kyle Reese asked: 'What did you see?'

And she said: 'Everything.'

Wires were torn out of her, and instantly, she was back. All functions engaged. Someone slammed the laptop shut, abruptly cutting off its high pitched alarm in mid-peal. Cameron looked about for John.

'Report.'

There was so much she could tell him, so much that she had seen. First things first.

'Skynet has traced my location.'

'How long?'

Cameron considered the surrounding topography as seen from the satellite.

'Aerial HK's are less than four minutes away. Ground forces, ten minutes. We have to hurry.'

They moved out, Derek leading the way back to the truck. There were no accusations, not within her hearing, until Cage died.

'And what if it works, Connor? The metal goes geosynchronous, sees other survivor settlements, they're sipping tea in Mongolia or herding goats in Ecuador - then what? Do we get on the phone, hop on a plane? There are no planes. Skynet'll intercept any long range signal we pump out there. Those guys might as well be on Mars.'

John calmly strapped on his guns, nothing larger than a pistol because his computer would be weighing him down, and accepted the grenades that Cameron held out to him.

'Derek.'

The younger man took a deep breath, remembering himself.

'Sir.'

'What's the one thing more important than reinforcements, more than supplies, more than facts?'

'Leadership, sir?'

John looked at him with cold disapproval.

'No, lieutenant. It's hope. The world hasn't abandoned us yet, so let's not abandon it.'

(So much is right in front of you that will never be again. Signal noise, trash. Dark matter makes up most of the universe. Don't evaluate or dismiss prematurely - merely witness. It might never make sense. It doesn't have to.)

Darkside. Internal clock indicating that it was night, she picked through the idiosyncratically lit tunnels like a shelter-flea born to them. Avoided guard posts and stations where soldiers occupied beds in turn at the changing of the watch. Toward the nursery as air parted, light slid away. Metal-dust and ash never settled on her antistatic skin.

Silence was death. Here, its absence reassured her: the rising and falling, rasping sigh of gas filling tiny rib cages. Small animals. Progeny. She felt the wave fronts, shallow but regular in sleep - intersecting ripples over her neural fabric.

Amplified, the recurring signal thrummed subsonic through her ligaments, melding with the vibrations of the ventilators which ran from the ground up her endoskeleton. A medley pulse ... winding roots ... curve around her, ever-present ... holding her gently like the palm of a hand. She let it dwell, irreducibly random.

THE END

21 April 2008