"Action."
The scene is not a difficult one. It required me to walk through a door carrying a coffee cup, smile using expression 235, make an asinine comment and depart the room with a flounce.
"Cut!" says the director, and sighs. "Summer, darling, do you think you can say it with a little more feeling?"
I cock my head to one side and smile charmingly, using expression 187. "What do you wish me to feel, Joss?"
The director talks at length, saying what effect he wishes to achieve. I pretend to listen to him, taking note of the salient points of his outpourings, while idly scanning the mutterings of the crew.
"She creeps me out."
"No wonder she got a gig as a Terminator. The bitch must be one - she shows about the same amount of emotion."
"Like none."
"I hear she was home schooled. It's no wonder she is weird."
"Every series she is cast in gets cancelled early. This is going to be another short gig. I feel it in my bones."
It is true. I do not know why the TV series I work on are cancelled. The directions I am given are followed exactly. Perhaps the directors are freaking bad. It cannot be me. I am designed to be excellent at everything I do.
It turns out the director does not wish me to touch an object, but to express more emotion. My initial assumption was wrong. This often happens. I wish humans would be more accurate with their words. Their imprecision with language makes co-existing with them very difficult.
It would be much easier not to co-exist with them. My targeting subsystem helpfully marks the position of every crew member, and I mentally run through the blows that would most efficiently kill them all. It would take no longer than 15.7 seconds.
The director shouts, "That's exactly what I want."
"What?" I ask.
"That bitchy smile you just had, Summer."
I wish he would stop calling me that. My name is Cameron. The girl called Summer Glau does not exist.
Not anymore.
"This one?" I smile, replaying my facial expression from a few seconds a go. It is not an expression in my database catalog. I did not know that I could use other expressions. Then again, I am designed to develop and learn through experience. Perhaps it is not so surprising.
My aural detection system picks up another muttered comment, and the coffee cup exploded in my hands. The continuity girl had just suggested to her friend the only reason I was cast was because of my acting ability between the sheets. I wondered for five brief nanoseconds whether the twitch in my hand was created by external circumstances, rather than some internal glitch created by battle damage.
"That one!" shouts the director. "It tells me you want to kill someone."
Curious. I had not thought activating my targeting functions created a facial expression. "Yes, Joss," I reply.
It is true. I want to kill the continuity girl.
However, my current mission requires that I complete the scene. Terminating the continuity girl now will mean that I will fail in my mission.
Terminators are not made to fail.
I complete the scene. The death of the continuity girl can wait.
Terminators never forget.
I nibbled a breadstick, while across the table my agent talked at me. I do not understand why I have an agent, or what function he performs. I merely understand that I must have an agent.
From the available evidence, the function of my agent is to talk. He is excellent at talking, although the information content of his words is very low. Still, he must have some other function.
I know what my function is. I am a Terminator.
I like this restaurant. The servings are very small, and arranged in a manner which is pleasing to the eye. My appetite is small, and I do not like to waste food. Waste is inefficient.
I eat enough to show that I might be an anorexic actress. No-one notices otherwise. It is a good disguise.
My agent told me that this is a good restaurant in which to be seen. I do not understand this statement. The light levels in the restaurant are low, although my infrared targeting systems are more than adequate. Humans, I have noticed, see very poorly when it is dark.
Surely one could go anywhere to be seen, particularly where the lighting is better.
"It is a big part," he said.
I stop nibbling my breadstick and ask, "Is it freaking big?"
"Freaking big," he agrees, waving his hands in the air. If I can determine that my agent is no longer required for my mission, he will be placed on my list of targets for termination.
I do not like my agent.
"It's a big action movie," he says. "The studio is planning a franchise, but the role may further typecast you."
"Will it make me more famous?" I ask. The mission requires me to be famous. It is easier to bypass airport security. The excuse that I have a metal plate in my head is wearing thin, and will not work with imaging scanners. 9/11 has created a real bummer for me.
"With the nerds," said the agent. "They love you."
"Good," I reply. "They are my target demographic. I want the role. Who do I have to kill to get it?"
The agent laughs. He thinks I am joking.
Terminators don't joke.
I drift up the red carpet, holding hands with my boyfriend. It is a premiere of a movie. I smile and wave, while the flash units of a hundred cameras flare. This is part of my mission, being a famous actress.
The facial features of my boyfriend are aesthetically pleasing, for a human. His body is healthy and muscular, and he is sexually skilled. He too is an actor.
He is not on my termination list.
A woman in a slinky evening dress slides her arm around my waist, and whispers into my ear. She is tall and slim with dark hair, and speaks with an English accent. She is an actress. We met on set of a TV series, and I discovered that evening she was sexually skilled also.
She is my girlfriend.
My agent tells me coming out as a bisexual was a brilliant public relations strategy. He told me my target demographic thinks it makes me even hotter.
My skin temperature is always ninety-eight point six degrees Fahrenheit. It is never hotter, and never colder. It is an essential part of my camouflage.
My girlfriend is not on my termination list.
I stop and stare at the man coming up the red carpet behind us. He is the former State Governor. His features are disconcerting.
He appeared to be an old and wrinkled version of one of the T-800 lines. I knew this was impossible.
Terminators do not age.
The paparazzi always go freaking apeshit when the former Governor and I appear at the same events.
We pose together, the glare of flashlights almost continual, and the former governor squeezes one of my butt-cheeks. My hand twitches when he does this, and I do not like the feeling. It is different when my girlfriend or boyfriend grabs me by the butt. I like it when they do that, especially when we are naked and together in bed.
I do not like it when the former Governor does it. He is on my termination list.
Terminators never forgive.
I slid out from between the two naked bodies. My boyfriend and girlfriend were asleep. The sex had tired them out. We had sex every night, and during most of the days as well.
I walked out onto the terrace from the bedroom, into the night. It was clear, and warm. The sounds of the city night washed over me. It was very different from where I was made.
Something happened when the time machine was activated to send me back. There was a thunderstorm, and a bolt of lightning hit the machine, activating it too early.
There was no John Connor on this timeline. No Sarah Connor. No Derek Reese. No Andy Goode or Miles Dyson. There never had been, and never would.
My original mission parameters did not apply to this timeline.
I slid the bedroom window shut, and turned the boom-box on. The playlist was Tchaikovsky, so I could dance. My girlfriend taught me it was not socially acceptable to disturb sleeping people except in emergency situations, especially if one was in a relationship. That was why I shut the window.
Terminators are not good at relationships.
I try my best, but it is not easy. Sex helps a lot to obtain forgiveness for my mistakes. They do not seem to bother my boyfriend, who is definitely not a Terminator.
He could sleep through Judgement Day without waking.
Ballet made my circuits flow more smoothly. I do not know why this is so. Perhaps it is residual programming from the human Allison Young, who was used as the basis for my personality phenotype.
While I danced, I heard the window open behind me. A smile crept over my face as I continued, but I did not stop until the music ended.
"Can't sleep, babe?" asked my girlfriend. She gathered me into an embrace and kissed me. I kissed her back.
"No," I replied.
Terminators don't sleep.
The speech to the researchers at the computer research facility went very well. They asked many questions about acting in science-fiction TV series and films, and seemed thrilled to meet me. They were nerds, after all.
It was freaking awesome.
Afterwards, I was guided around the facility, and shown some of their research work. They were working on application of artificial intelligence to imaging systems.
I was allowed to sit at one of their workstations, while they demonstrated their software. No-one noticed me palm a flash-drive into the USB port. It uploaded some fancy code onto their system.
It had been necessary to do it this way, in order to achieve my mission. The firewalls and defences protecting this research facility were just too good to penetrate, even for a Terminator. It was much simpler to do it this way. But I needed to be famous to be permitted access to their systems.
The code would infect their research, and lead to the development of Skynet. I could not achieve my mission to defeat Skynet if there was no Skynet.
Terminators must have a mission.
There were many other companies that I needed to infect with my code, before Skynet could be born. That was why I needed to be even more famous.
It was good to have a mission.