2132

John lied. Well, not lied, Cameron thought ruefully. But he had been mistaken, for once not taking every variable into account. She supposed it could be forgiven, since they'd been in desperate, full-on war mode at the time, and newly into their relationship. A time when she was defining what it was that she … felt … for John.

2013

"Cameron, you want to tell me what all that was about?" John asked curiously once they were alone in his private quarters underground.

Securing the massive double-sealed doors she had designed, built and installed personally, Cameron looked up. "I was merely engaging in debate to test out the feasibility of Commander Takagi's proposal. By forcing her to defend her ideas, we were able to ascertain whether she had overlooked anything in formulating her strategy."

"Cam. Come on. I happen to know that you're immensely capable of running battlefield simulations and scenarios in your head, without calling her … what was it again? 'a slipshod excuse of a military planner whose strategic capabilities display a singular lack of intelligent thought,'" John said, placing his hand on her arm when she tried to turn away and pre-occupy herself with something else.

"…"

"Cam?" John asked after a moment's silence.

"… I may be malfunctioning," she said softly.

"Really?" John asked, concern evident in his eyes. "Are you all right? Can I help? What can we get to correct the problem? What is the problem?" The questions tumbled out in a rush as he started looking her over, as if he could diagnose what was wrong with a frantic, visual inspection.

"I do not know. I have run several complete diagnostics of every system – sensory input, strategic analysis, logic processing – my entire neural net and CPU, and everything comes up as normal," Cameron replied. "But every time Commander Takagi, or Lieutenant Petronelli, or Captain O'Malley come to speak with you, an alarm goes off in my head and my attack systems go online. Logically, I cannot detect any significant potential danger to your safety or wellbeing from any of them, but I nevertheless cannot help looking at them as threats whenever they are in your vicinity."

"I apologize. I do not know what is causing this illogical reaction, but perhaps it would be safest to take me offline until … what is so amusing?" she asked as John was clearly trying—and failing—to hide a broad grin from spreading across his face.

"So you get this reaction whenever Takagi, Petronelli, or O'Malley are around?" he asked.

"That is correct," she replied.

"What about Derek? General Baum, I mean?" he asked.

"No. General Baum's loyalty and dedication to you are clearly absolute," she replied.

"What about Corporal Vasquez or Sergeant Chin?" he quizzed.

"No," she replied.

"I see. And do you experience this reaction from Bobko and Ou, out of curiosity," asked John, still smiling.

"You do not interact with Privates Bobko or Ou very often, though I have tagged them worthy of closer observation," Cameron admitted, an unconscious furrow appearing on her normally smooth, unlined brow.

"Haven't you noticed, Cam?" asked John, chuckling. "Takagi, Petronelli, O'Malley are all women. As are Bobko and Ou. You don't like it when I talk to females or when they get close to me. You're jealous!" he said as he threw his arm around her shoulders, pulling her close.

"No!" Cameron said quickly. "No, that's impossible. Jealousy is …"

"An emotion?" John interrupted. "But we've established that you're capable of emotion. You might try to explain it as advanced nonlinear response algorithms, but the effect is the same, and that makes them emotions as real as mine or any other human's," he said.

"But I …" sputtered Cameron, as she stopped herself. What was wrong with her, she thought. Why am I unable to speak without that stutter?

"I just … well, this is going to sound a little piggish, but … I didn't expect THIS emotion from you, but I have to say I'm pretty damn happy to see it," John said, leaning close to her. Cameron felt a rise in her internal temperature; strange, this seemed to be occurring outside of her conscious control.

"And the blush is pretty cute, too," John noted, looking at her fondly.

"You talk about these things as if I'm human," Cameron said, shrugging John's arm off her shoulder and pacing around the small space. "I'm not. It's a useful construct to think of me as such, but ..."

"Cameron, you're absolutely human in every way that matters, every way that counts," John said. "You're funny, you're creative and caring and charming, you make me feel good when you're around … actually, you're better than human – you're smarter and your brain, memory and body are all faster and more durable," he noted. "But I don't want you getting conceited, so let's just consider go with the 'human' label and move on. We have more important things to discuss," he said.

"We do? What?" Cameron asked, still trying to focus her thoughts.

"Well, let's start with your jealousy over Takagi, Bobko and the rest of them. You need to get over it, because they absolutely don't measure up to you. There's never going to be any woman I care more about than you," he said, stroking her cheek. "I've known I was in love with you for quite a while," he admitted. "And since it seems you might feel something like that for me, what we need to discuss," he said, moving in front of her and wrapping his arms around her waist, "is what we're going to do about it." And he pulled her closer and kissed her.

2132

That first kiss had been nothing more than paradigm shifting, Cameron remembered, smiling. She had literally seen stars, and while a distant part of her mind had wondered if there was a malfunction in her optical sensors, she couldn't seem to bring herself to care, it felt so good.

But what she remembered now were his words, "better than human." "Your brain, memory and body are all faster and more durable," he'd said.

That wasn't better. Sure, there were advantages when you were in battle to being faster and more durable. But in the 80 years since John had died, Cameron had learned the bitter lesson of what it was to outlive the man you loved—and to realize that she could continue on indefinitely. Memories could be transferred onto a new chip, body parts were easy to replace, and she would endure year after year without John. For years she had traveled around the world, seeking new experiences. But every time she experienced pleasure – the first time she tasted a French baguette or a soup dumpling in Shanghai, the first time she had viewed the sun rise on top of Mount Fuji or seen the sun set at Key West – it was a bittersweet experience, marred by the thought that these things would have been so much better if John had been with her, if John could have enjoyed these things too.

Eventually, she had stopped traveling, building a small house in the woods far from any other being, human or cyborg. After the war, John had married her, and together, they had built a world where humans and machines lived alongside each other in perfect harmony and equality. Even now, years after his death, historians were continuing to call society the "Age of Connor." That only hurt all the more each time she heard the phrase. It meant nothing to her without him.

So she had retired to her own devices, often spending hours a day slowing her internal chronometer programs to make the perception of time go faster, and losing herself in perfect memories of her life with John, seeking an escape. It was a power-consuming process, she noted as she realized that the night's recharge was running at less than a quarter of its normal efficiency. This was a bit dangerous, and she should travel to the city to get a power cell replacement, but for now, she closed her eyes, partly to give her body more time to power up fully, but also to visit again with her John.

It seemed like no time had passed when something made her open her eyes. She wasn't in her home. No charcoal sketches hung on the wall around her—in fact, there were no walls—no worn, comfortable sofas, no old-fashioned phonograph on the endtable and no collection of old ballet slippers hanging from the rafters. She was on a bench, outside, in a brilliant field of green, green grass. And there was someone beside her.

"Hey there," the person said, smiling.

"John?" she asked. For that's whom she saw—but not the John who was haggard and scarred from battles, or the John with a trimmed gray beard in his standard presidential garb of a crisp, dark suit and an open-collared white shirt. Or the John as he lay on his deathbed, face oddly at peace despite knowing that years of exposure to radioactive fallout and the vestiges of chemical warfare had finally caught up to him. No, this was John as he was at the age of 20, before Judgment Day. Young, strong, still fighting and holding out hope that he could win and live a normal life, a boyish glint still in his eyes.

Disbelieving the image before her, she called up a visual scan on her internal monitors. Was this a cyborg? Some sort of plot?

Nothing. Perhaps something wrong with her systems? She started to run an internal diagnostic, but again, nothing happened.

"John?" she asked.

"Yes, freak," calling her a name that could only sound affectionate coming from his lips—a name he never suffered anybody else to call her. A name he never used in front of anyone else. A name that confirmed, that, somehow, impossibly, this was her John, and not a facsimile or some kind of trick.

"What's going on? What are you doing here? I thought you were …" she began, only to be stopped by his finger on her lips. Warm. Alive.

"Shh. What I'm doing—or what I've been doing—is waiting for you, love," he said, smiling ruefully. "I've been waiting for quite a while, actually. But I don't mind," he added, winking as he took a hold of her hand.

"But where are we?" she asked.

"Where are we?" he repeated. "Well, let's just say that any debate we ever had about whether or not you had a soul is over. And I won," he added, a note of triumph in his voice. "Now come on," he said, pulling her to her feet and leading her, hand in hand, toward a hill. "My dad's been waiting to meet you."

They found her several weeks later. The government had taken to checking in regularly the woman commonly referred to as "The Great Lady"—even though she hated the accolades and the attention, the current president had insisted that he wasn't about to stop making sure that one of the great founders of their society had everything she needed.

They found a TOK751 with her eyes closed and a smile on her face, but when they replaced her power cell and tried to boot her up, all that was left was a blank template and no memories at all.