Josh woke slowly to the sun shining in his bedroom window. He yawned and started going over yesterday's events in his head. He did this every morning so nothing he did yesterday would surprise him. It usually worked.
Let's see… He thought to himself. I woke up like now. It was my birthday, twenty seven years old, I'm getting older. He chuckled. It was also Independence Day. And Christine made sure to remind me of that again, like every year. And she made a very good cake.
Did anything else happen yesterday? He asked himself and pondered for a moment. Yeah, the damn tractor broke down. Well… at least I managed to finish what needed to be done with it. I won't need it for, maybe two weeks. I got to get it fixed. But I have no idea how to fix it, and no money to hire someone else to repair it.
While Josh continued to go through yesterday's events in his mind, he got a feeling that he had forgotten something important. Just to be sure, he went over yesterday's events again. But he still felt like he was missing something.
When he was about to do it a third time, he heard a soft knock on his door, and his fiancée Christine walked in.
If you asked Josh what the embodiment of beauty was, he would say Christine without thinking. She was about a head shorter than Josh. With blonde hair that ended just below her chin, sapphire blue eyes and a kind looking face. She had a slim but strong body, much of that strength came from her recent help on the ranch. Her father was a successful businessman back in Los Angeles, who was not overly supportive towards her choice in fiancée. He would rather see her married to a son of one of his many business partners.
But her father at least realized that Christine had the right to choose herself, so he tolerated Josh. But had made it clear that Josh was not welcome in his house.
Christine's reaction to her father's decision was to move to the ranch to help Josh and his parents. They were having a hard time running the ranch since Josh's older brother, Michael, died in the Great War in Europe. Josh had been too young so sign up for the army at that time. But Michael had been. He had been very excited to go and fight in Europe, and had apparently done very well according to his superiors. And then he had been hit by an artillery grenade just a week before the war ended. What remained of Michael was so little that it would have fit inside a backpack according to what they had heard from Michael's friends.
Josh's mother had not spoken for a month when she heard the news, his father had started to work, only pausing to eat and sleep for two weeks. Josh had gone into Los Angeles and had spent a lot of days drinking, smoking and getting into fights, until he woke up after being knocked out, on Christine's lawn one day.
She had looked at him with a worried expression on her face and offered him a glass of water. Then he had asked: "Are you an angle?" She had just laughed and helped him into the house.
And now she stood at his door, looking exactly the way he saw her the first time, like an angle.
"Good morning honey." She said with a cheerful voice.
"Good morning angle." He replied with a smile on his face.
She walked over to his bed and gave him a quick kiss.
"Breakfast will be ready in five minutes. Make sure you'll be in the kitchen by then. Otherwise I think Rex might eat it." She kissed him again and walked out of the room.
Josh smiled, gathered his strength, got out of his bed and walked over to his mirror. As he looked at his reflection he couldn't help but feel a bit of pride over himself.
He was about 1,8 meters tall with defined muscles all across his body. He had short black hair, light brown eyes, and an almost rugged looking face. A lot of that was thanks to his several scars he had gotten in Los Angeles after his brother's death.
He sighed sadly and started to get dressed. The scars always reminded him of his brother.
When he exited his room and started walking towards the kitchen Christine called out to him.
"Hey Josh! Why are there a huge man and a woman that looks like she could kill with her eyes in the guesthouse?"
Oh… Now he remembered what had happened yesterday evening.
-0-
SYNCRONISATION COMPLETE
LOCAL TIME IS: 06:15.43, 562016
LOCAL DATE IS: 05,07,1934
When the data scrolled across Kaylyn's HUD, she moved from the window for the first time in seven hours. During that time she had synchronized her internal chronometer to the local time, using several algorithms and observing the Earth's positioning to the stars.
Dave continued to stand by the window for another five minutes.
The CPU of the T850 terminators were not as fast as that of a TX. Davey couldn't either calculate the local time as exact as Kaylyn.
Now when the chronometer synchronization was complete it was finally time to do more important things. For example further interactions with humans.
Kaylyn had during her synchronization managed to observe five life forms in the main house.
Two of them were with a high probability male, another two were with an equal probability female. And the fifth was a dog.
As she continued to observe the humans and the dog, the female that was currently standing and appeared to be heating some kind of meat, suddenly walked to the room of one of the other humans. They appeared to have a short conversation, and then the female walked back to continue her business with the meat. The male stood and seemed to be putting on clothes, something Kaylyn did not care about since she had no concept of modesty. But she knew that not wearing clothes would cause humans to be more likely to determine that she was not a human, she wore them anyway.
The clothes Josh had gotten her and Davey had actually fit them quite well. Despite Davey being much taller and broader around the shoulders than Josh.
She had however decided to change the skirt she had been given, in favor for a pair of pants. A skirt would simply hinder her movements with her legs too much she decided.
She walked over to the window where Davey was standing and managed to get a better look at the female who was standing in what Kaylyn assumed to be the kitchen.
The female appeared to be of the same age as Kaylyn's infiltration-sheath was currently set to appear, around her early thirties/late twenties.
The female looked up from what she was doing and spotted Kaylyn and Davey. She got a seemingly shocked expression on her face, turned around and called out to someone.
Despite that Kaylyn and the female were separated by tow outer walls, and about ten meters of open ground, Kaylyn's audio sensors could still pick up what the female was saying.
The female was asking Josh why Kaylyn and Davey where in the guest house. She also thought it seemed that Kaylyn could kill with her eyes. Was it something to take as a compliment? Of course it was! Kaylyn was the most advanced killing machine ever made after all. But the 'killing with her eyes' expression was incorrect. Kaylyn did not have the necessary control of her mimetic polyalloy to form her eyes into weapons. Only the T1002 series had been capable of that. Before Kaylyn terminated it in a test by Skynet.
She could also register Josh's answer. In his answer he addressed the female as Christine. Kaylyn quickly updated her information about the female, now known as Christine.
She was also interested of the relationship between Josh and Christine. Where they married, siblings, or something else? She was however certain that she would soon get the answers to her questions. Because Josh just exited the house and where walking towards the guesthouse.
Josh knocked on the door and Davey opened it. Josh seemed to be slightly intimidated by Davey's very large form. But he managed to regain his courage eventually.
"Good morning." Josh said with a bit of insecurity in his voice. "I hope you have had a good night's sleep as well."
To Josh's surprise it was Kaylyn who answered him.
"Yes we had. Thank you for asking." Josh was once again surprised by the sound of authority in Kaylyn's voice.
"Good." Josh said with a slight sigh. "If you could be in the house in about ten minutes the breakfast will be ready."
"Thank you for informing us. We will be there in time." Kaylyn said and smiled slightly.
Josh gave a smile in return and started walking back to the house. Davey closed the door and turned to Kaylyn.
"How am I supposed to ingest food? I am designed for frontline combat. Not infiltration. I do not have any sort of container for the food."
This information forced Kaylyn to access her files about T850s used for frontline combat. Luckily there seemed to be a lot of space in the chest and throat area that should be able to hold at least a few meals. But only if the food was distributed evenly. This meant Davey would have to chew, a lot.
"According to my files of your series there should be an amount of empty space in your chest and throat. I want you to store all food you ingest during the day in those areas. During the night I will make modifications to your chassis for a more permanent solution."
Davey processed the suggestion and checked that Kaylyn's information was correct. "Yes. Your information is correct. But I will have problems to remove the food from these spaces."
"I will take care of that tonight." Answered Kaylyn. "I will have to cut open your skin sheath to install your 'stomach' components." She then looked at Davey with a slight tilt of her head. "Are you ready for breakfast then?"
"Yes. I am ready." Davey answered and opened the door.
-0-
All of the four inhabitants in the house where eating their breakfast when the family's old dog Rex suddenly got up and started barking at the door.
"What is up with that dog?" Wondered Josh's father Bill. "Is he seeing ghosts or something?"
"Oh don't be silly." Answered his wife Helen. "He probably smelled something from the barn. You know that he always starts barking when he is in there."
Then the door opened and Kaylyn and Davey entered the house. Kaylyn looked curiously on the dog, trying to decide whether the dog should be terminated or not. Davey simply didn't care about the dog. His time in the Resistance had taught him that animals could sense that the machines were not human.
"Rex! Stop that!" Josh shouted. Rex stopped barking but was still growling at Kaylyn and Davey. "Come, take a seat." Josh said when he was satisfied with Rex.
Kaylyn stopped her observation of the dog and took a seat next to Helen and Davey sat down on Kaylyn's right side.
"Help yourselves with the food. And while you do that I will introduce you to everyone in the house." And with those words Josh started by introducing his father, mother and Christine. "And you have already met Rex." Josh finished.
"Indeed we have." Kaylyn commented with a slight dry tone.
She then took up a piece of bacon with her fork and put it in her mouth. Her special teeth, powerful enough to bite through steel, slowly crushed the crispy bacon while she was studying the texture with her tongue. She did not have a sense of taste, Skynet only used artificial taste buds in its most advanced infiltrators, and she was mostly designed for combat.
Despite lacking taste, she still found the texture of the bacon, interesting. Almost… enjoyable. Yes, she enjoyed the texture of crispy bacon.
"So what is your story then?" Asked Christine curiously. "How did you end up here?"
Kaylyn looked at Christine and smiled slightly. "It all started a couple of weeks ago…" And then she told the story that she had designed as cover for Davey and herself.
She told them that they had gotten into problems with the mafia, and how they had tried to make everything right again. But ultimately failed. Then the mafia decided to show them what happened when you got in trouble with the mafia.
She told them how the mafia had taken everything if value Kaylyn and Davey owned, and then set their house on fire while forcing them to watch.
"…And after they burn our house down, they chloroformed us. The next thing I can remember is waking up in the desert, completely naked."
The lie seemed to have worked. When she could see how the humans reacted. First it was with curiosity. Then with fear. And at last with compassion.
"That's horrible!" Christine said when Kaylyn had told the story. "You are going to talk to the police about this, right?"
"No." Answered Kaylyn with a sad smile. When she saw the looks of confusion around the table she decided to explain why that would be a bad idea. "The police in our hometown are incredibly corrupt. If we go to them, the mafia will probably kill us for causing more trouble."
"Well you are welcome to stay here for as long as you need." Bill offered. "We don't have any sort of luxuries. But we always help people in need."
Kaylyn put on a grateful smile. "Thank you. That would be very helpful."
"Well, I'm going to try to figure out what's wrong with the tractor." Josh spoke up.
"What? Is there something wrong with it?" Bill wondered. He had started to forget things from time to time.
"Yes." Answered Josh with a frustrated sigh. "You were there when it broke down yesterday. Don't you remember?"
"Ofcource I remember. I was just… Oh never mind." Bill also had a tendency of trying to hide his memory problems.
"Perhaps I can be of assistance?" Davey suddenly offered.
Josh looked at him with a slight look of doubt. "Do you have any experience of working with machines before?"
"Yes." Davey simply said, stood up, and walked out the door with Josh and Bill.
Kaylyn was actually a little bit surprised that Dave offered to help with the tractor. The T850 series was not exactly known for helping, unless they were told or asked to do something. In that regard the T888 was much better, since they were often used as infiltrators.
"So while the men are out working, what should we do?" Asked Christine.
"Why don't you show Kaylyn how good of a painter you are?" Replied Helen. "I'll be fine in here. I won't need any help from you for at least a couple of hours."
"Are you sure? Just tell me if you need help with anything." Replied Christine in a slightly concerned tone. Despite Helen being a healthier person than Bill, she too had begun to suffer from old age.
"I'll be fine." She reassured Christine with a slight wave. "You go and show our guest how good of a painter you are."
"Okay. Just remember that I'll help you with anything." Christine then clapped her hands together and smiled at Kaylyn. "Now if you follow me I can show you what I do when I don't have to help out here in the house or our on the fields."
"Lead the way." Kaylyn replied with a tone of curiosity and excitement, courtesy of her infiltration sub-routines. But at the moment she actually was as close to curiosity and excitement as she could currently be.
Painting. I have no point of reference to painting in my database. She thought to herself. Knowing what this is might become useful in the future
-0-
After 20 minutes and 44 seconds, Kaylyn had decided that painting was not something that would become useful in the future. She had also decided that it was harder than it looked. To copy the landscape she could see before her eyes right now, on to a piece of paper, was not a problem. But choosing the correct colors was something she had trouble with.
This problem was caused by the fact that she did not currently process full color vision. Everything she saw was in different shades of blue. She could determine the color of the paint if she analyzed the wavelength of the light reflected back into her eyes. But she thought that it would be a waste of CPU power to analyze something as trivial as paint.
But she continued to try. She was the most advanced piece of mobile technology ever made. She would not fail at something that should be easy for her.
I need to re-write my optical sensor drivers. She thought to herself. Full color vision may also aid in further infiltration. It would be…useful. At this thought she smiled. She was quite surprised when she realized what she was doing. Why am I smiling?
Her HUD came up with an answer in a couple of microseconds.
REALIZATION OF POSSIBLE SELF-IMPROVEMENT CAUSES UNKNOWN ANOMALY IN FACIAL AREA.
CAUSE FOR ANOMALY CAN BEST BE DESCRIBED AS SATISFACTION.
The answer confused Kaylyn slightly. I will need to analyze this anomaly more closely later. She thought, andquickly updated her objectives for the day. She currently had four objectives: Attempt to infiltrate without causing suspicion amongst humans, upgrade T850 unit 'Davey' with a food-processing unit, rewrite HUD drivers, and lastly: Analyze anomaly in facial area.
"How are you doing over there?" Asked Christine who was sitting next to Kaylyn, and was currently in the process of adding the finishing touches to the barn in the foreground of her painting.
"I don't know." Replied Kaylyn. "I've never painted before as I said. What do you think?"
Christine looked over at Kaylyn's painting and studied it for a couple of seconds. "I think you are doing a very good job for your first time. The details are very good. Actually, I don't think I've ever seen such good details." Christine paused for a second and then spoke in a soft tone. "But you really need to work on your use of colors. The barn for example," she pointed at Kaylyn's painting of the barn. "Is not so sparsely painted. There is a lot more red on the real barn than in your version."
"Yes, you are right. I will work on that." Kaylyn replied in monotone and compared her view of the barn with her painting. To her they looked almost identical. Identically blue.
Christine smiled warmly at Kaylyn. "Hey," she said in a cheery tone, "practice makes perfect."
Kaylyn also smiled at this. And for some things you are made perfect, she thought, things like killing for example.
-0-
The rest of the day, as a human would say, passed in a rush. Davey had managed to fix the tractor to Josh's great satisfaction. And both Davey and Kaylyn had helped with miscellaneous tasks on the ranch. The cyborg's strength and inexhaustible stamina proved invaluable.
When the night fell, there was a very satisfied Brown family that went to sleep.
Kaylyn and Davey on the other hand, were searching for parts to use in Davey's upgrade.
They didn't find anything of coltan or titanium at the ranch. The best they could find was a steel pipe, a pair of old knifes, some copper wires and a magnet.
It might not have been much, but it was all Kaylyn needed to make the upgrade. At least a temporary upgrade. With the parts she could make a small motor powered by Davey's fuel cell, an artificial 'throat', a 'stomach' and a shredder to take care of the food issue.
"How long will we stay here?" Davey asked after Kaylyn had removed the day's food that had gathered in the upper section of the terminator's body, and were in the process of installing his new 'stomach'.
"I don't know. We will stay as long as they allow us I plan. It is best if we don't interact with too many humans at the time. The less people that sees us, the greater the chance of successful infiltration." Kaylyn replied while she was welding the 'stomach' to Davey's endo-skeleton using a tiny amount of plasma from her plasma cannon heat the metals to their melting points.
When she was finished she reconfigured her cannon back into an arm and handed Davey a needle and thread. "Stitch the wound close. I will go and bury the food." She then walked out of the guesthouse.
She walked to a faraway corner on one of the fields and started digging with her hands.
After twenty seconds her proximity alarm pinged, she immediately stood up, transformed her arm into her Tracking EBlaster, the only weapon in her arsenal that was only designed to stun enemies for capture, it was essentially a heavily modified Taser. She was ready to deal with any threat imaginable.
But the threat was not much of a threat. It was the Brown's dog, Rex. He did not seem scared of her this time. He simply walked up to the pile of chewed food and started eating.
Kaylyn watched Rex eating and slowly transformed her EBlaster back into an arm. She also wondered why the dog had decided that the need for food was greater than its fear of her.
When Rex had eaten all of the food he looked up at Kaylyn, licked his nose and scratched himself behind his left ear. Then he sat there as if he was trying to tell her something. Kaylyn didn't know what the dog wanted. Even though she was a fluent speaker in every known language, she did not speak dog.
After a minute of simply staring at her, Rex stood up and walked back to the house.
Kaylyn locked after him until she couldn't see him anymore. When he disappeared behind the different buildings on the ranch she could only think of one thing.
I didn't need to dig a hole. How inefficient.
AN: So yeah. That was chapter two. It took longer time to write and became longer than I first had expected.
But am I happy with it? Yes, mostly. I still believe there are some places that could use some improvement. But I don't know how I should improve this chapter as a whole.
In the next chapter things will start to happen. Remember that Kaylyn and Davey have a whole heap of wars ahead of them before the Connors becomes active.
Thanks to TheWizardofOzbourne, geega-pax and olischulu for the reviews!
Until next time: Stay safe!
