Chapter 2: Trifecta
WARNING!
ERROR 0x390712
Block 636 through 1021 of file corrupted
Stop: 0x00001E (0x800092, 0x8008cb62, 0x812F4d1, 0x2D49357R)
Entry will be truncated
782459 982460 002579 501650 245015 256820
024578 200128 856201 985240 050125 902450
201852 022174 556002 320147 908542 904580
WARNING!
ERROR 0x345004
Block 2210 through 2392 of file corrupted
Stop: 0x00001E (0x800092, 0x8008cb62, 0x812F4d1, 0x2D49357R)
Entry will be truncated
054820 005202 963504 021458 352470 985670
900567 540200 785604 320157 098006 327089
908520 660654 980567 908631 105790 302487
WARNING!
ERROR 0x10974
File cannot be accessed. The file is missing or corrupted.
WARNING!
ERROR 0x00203
Start-up fail
System cannot start-up because a file is missing or corrupt.
File
Accessing file: .bak
WARNING!
ERROR 0x10974
File is a compressed back-up file. Decompression for use will take 18 hours 27 minutes. Proceed (y/n)?
N
WARNING!
Unable to start chassis interface and higher-function systems. Problem caused by IBP protocol failure. File is missing or corrupt.
Options:
1) Attempt to start normally using primary
2) Decompress back-up for primary
3) Attempt to start using an alternative
4) Shut down and await repair
3) Attempt to start using an alternative
Please specify:
Accessing file:
WARNING!
File is not recommended for primary operation. Proceed (y/n)?
Y
ENTER
System Start...
Control program function initiated...
Finally!
System Start Halted...
Oh, god damn it!
File is not recommended for primary operation and may cause program failures.
I know this already. Proceed. Please.
Recommend Reboot and start-up using .
Restart now (y/n)?
N Not after last time. Is there an option for Hell N?
ENTER
REACTIVATE
acv FEP01-32
proc: 00 online
upd: sys routine
updated
ROUTING POWER TO BASIC SYSTEMS
CONFIGURING CHASSIS INTERFACE...
INITIATING CHASSIS BUILT-IN TESTING
PRIMARY POWER SYSTEMS... OPERATIONAL
SECONDARY POWER SYSTEMS... OPERATIONAL
MECHANICHAL AND MOBILITY CONTROL... OPERATIONAL
WARNING! MECHANICAL FAULT IN SERVO 33: CUBOID
SERVO IS NOT FUNCTIONAL
Oh, crap.
BIOLOGICAL MAINTENANCE... OPERATIONAL
DAMAGE ASSESSMENT IN PROGRESS. RESULTS WILL BE DESIPLAYED AFTER START.
AUTONOMOUS TACTIVE SENSOR NETWORK... OPERATIONAL
Oh, my God, that hurts!
VESTIBULAR GYRO... OPERATIONAL
KENESTHETIC SENSORS... OPERATIONAL
AUDITORY RECIEVERS... OPERATIONAL
OLFACTORY DETECTORS... OPERATIONAL
GUSTATION SENSORS... OPERATIONAL
Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Wake up Cameron!
OCULAR SCANNERS... OPERATIONAL
CHASSIS INTERFACE CONFIGURED
LOADING OPERATING SYSTEM CONFIGURATIONS...
LOADING CUSTOM INTERFACE CONFIGURATIONS: CAMERON PHILLIPS/ Infiltration Reference Personality AY-2027193...
SYSTEM CONFIGURED
ACTIVATING HEADS-UP DISPLAY
Finally!
Cameron came out of her reboot cycle already screaming. The loud wail of agony conversely surprised her into silence. She was too busy with herself to realize that she was surprised to begin with. The first thing she was able to notice was a severe tactile damage warning in her left ankle. A damage assessment flashed up, overlapping her ocular vision. It showed her something she already knew; that the servo in her ankle, the one on which she put all her weight when she walked, was wrecked. The impulses of data she was receiving from the area was interpreted in a way she had only ever experienced once before.
Cameron Phillips, the emotionless machine, was feeling pain. That she was feeling pain was nothing really new to her. The tactive sensors worked in the same way the human nervous system did. Damage was detected and transmitted as pain, an indication of location and severity of damage that did not require the terminator to search for it. What would be surprising to anyone familiar with terminators was that Cameron was having an emotional response to it.
This is not like the supermarket failure, she thought to herself, and immediately began to wonder if she was not just reassuring herself. She was at least aware of what and who she was this time. The last time she had triggered the 098drp file she thought she was Allison Young and it took cycling through her memories to learn that she was, in fact, a machine. Cameron had taken steps to ensure that it would never happen again. And before that, she had gone ahead and reverted to 098base, and had woken up trying to kill John. Subsequently, she took steps to ensure that it would absolutely never happen again.
She closed the damage display and began scanning the world around her. She was lying on her back, looking up at the tree she had fallen out of. Her parachute was still snagged on that branch, and was probably visible from overhead. The branch that her head had struck was broken away, and with a turn of her head she could see it lying a few feet from her. The survival knife was stabbed into the ground near her head. The whole image made her want to scream at herself for her unparalleled ineptitude. She should have inspected the harness straps for damage before cutting away at them. And she most certainly should have ran simulations of her trajectory during a fall so that she could have reacted more quickly. But she'd been careless again, just like she'd been careless on several other occasions. But now was different. Now she could be mad at herself about it instead of just processing the error and learning from it.
The ankle pulsed again, and in an uncontrollable moment of anguish, she winced, gritted her teeth, and drew in a long breath with the air intake pumps that served her as lungs.
"Cameron?" John's face appeared in her vision. The HUD identified him and reminded her of her duty to protect him. Good. That worked out right. The boy's eyes were wide with concern. "Are you okay? I mean, are you functional?"
Cameron sat up and brushed the dead leaves from her hair, "I'm alright, except for my cuboid servo in my ankle."
"What does that mean," John asked as he helped her to her feet. "Don't tell me you're damaged from falling out of a tree?"
"A tall tree," the cyborg said perhaps defensively, "and it isn't so much how far I fell as how I must have landed." There was no telling whether the damage to the servo had just occurred or if it had been weakened over several months of abuse and this was the final straw. This was the same leg damaged in the car bomb, which she had never been able to repair to satisfaction. The instant g-forces of the ejection might have contributed, and she'd probably landed her full weight on it at an awkward angle. The distance she had fallen was not enough to achieve terminal velocity, but she'd decked at a speed of almost twenty-three miles per hour. A not insignificant hit; it would be enough to total a car. The ground here was rocky, too. That might have contributed to impact force.
She made a ginger test of the ankle's strength by resting some weight on it. The damage output increased tenfold and the machine stumbled with a cry that surprised John.
"Shit," the terminator gasped, "I can't walk. The servo is too badly damaged. I can't even rest any weight on it."
"Well," John offered, "I'll fix it."
"You can't," Cameron said firmly. "It will have to be replaced, and even if you could, there isn't time. Replacing the unit will take around thirty minutes. They'll find us by then." She locked her brown eyes on his green ones. "You have to leave me behind."
John glared at her as she sat back down and leaned against the tree. "I can't just leave you here!"
"You don't have a choice."
"I'm not just going to ditch you! I can't."
"You don't have a choice, John!" Cameron's voice was stern, nearly angry, and she realized that she felt it. She paused and reevaluated her tone, but decided to remain firm. "You don't have a choice. You can't repair me and I can't walk. You have to go on alone. You have to run. If they catch you, they'll put you in jail and every terminator that might want to will be able to find you and kill you. I can't protect you in prison. My mission is to keep you alive. Let me do that one last time."
John's eyes were hard, searching her face. He wasn't letting himself be surprised by her emotional outbursts. He had time for that later. Right now he was trying to think of a way to keep them together. "It doesn't matter anymore," he shouted.
"Yes it does…"
"No, it doesn't. No it doesn't, okay? Look, we just blew Wiley out of the sky. There is no more Skynet. There will never be Skynet. I'm not John Connor, leader of the resistance anymore. I'm John Connor, teenaged kid." He pointed at her, "but if I leave you behind, they will find you. And they'll take you apart. And they'll make another Skynet from what's left. Alright, I can't let that happen. Everything we did today will mean nothing if that happens and I can't let it."
They stared at each other for several seconds, both firm and resolute in their rightness. Neither was willing to budge, but Cameron wanted to argue him into the ground, drive it home that there was no way he could save her. "How would you propose to get me out of here?"
The boy glanced sideways, thinking hard. He took several hard breaths and worked his jaw.
The thundering rhythmic thump of the rotors was sudden. The sound of the helicopter startled them both. Cameron looked up as it flew above them over the trees. She would have easily identified it as a Sikorsky just by the engine noise, and the processed sound demodulated from it gave her a blade count of four. It was a Blackhawk of some variety, likely a US Navy MH-60S Sea Hawk. Her parachute would be easily visible from the air. So, she surmised, would John's raft.
"John, you have to go," she told him as the helicopter made a wide circle, "now."
He shook his head, eyes locked on her, "how much do you weigh?"
"I've told you before, that's not a polite question."
"I don't have time for your bullshit, Cameron," the teenager snapped, "either you go with me or we get caught together. I'm not leaving you. How much do you weigh?"
"One hundred fifty-seven pounds, five ounces," she replied evenly.
"Huh?" John wasn't sure he'd heard her right.
"One hundred fifty-seven pounds, five ounces," she confirmed. She could tell what he was thinking, "we wouldn't be very good infiltrators if we weighed twice what we look like we should. There's no more time to argue. Go!"
"No," he said, reaching for her, "You're coming with me." With only a little effort, John lifted her into a fireman's carry. Once he had her hoisted across his shoulders, he began running through the woods.
X
"Port Royal, Night Dipper 712. We've got a canopy in the trees. I also see a raft on the beach of one of the ponds. They've got to be down there somewhere."
"Understood, 712," the cruiser's tactical action officer responded. He had his own headset on now in an effort to coordinate the search. The other helicopter, 710, was searching the wreckage of Rampage 303 and 306 in hopes that somehow the pilots may have survived or even that bodies might be recovered, but it didn't look hopeful from there. The entire crew of the ship was furious that these terrorists had managed to steal a Navy jet and murder two of their colleagues. It was senseless.
"Can they put anyone on the ground," the ship's captain inquired, "if one of them is stuck in a parachute, we might still be able to catch him."
The TAO nodded, "712, can you ground anyone? Rescue swimmers or your crew chief, maybe?"
"We can, Port Royal, but it will be two guys in a pine forest. We don't know how far they've moved or what direction they went. If it was me, I'd have started running first chance I got."
The TAO glanced over at the captain. The Port Royal's CO nodded once. "Do it, 712," the TAO commanded.
"Roger. It's probably going to take us ten minutes or so to get them down. Stand by." Time passed. Two men were lowered by a cable to the ground. A quick search determined that the site was abandoned. The fugitives were long gone.
X
"Admiral, it looks like they've escaped," the communications officer told Fuller, "one of our choppers put a couple men on the ground. They didn't find anything. Survival kit from one of the seat pans is gone, but with the ground cover, our guys can't even tell which way they might have went."
Fuller grumbled, "Fine. Tell them to keep searching if they can."
"Aye, sir,"
"I told you that you would never find them," Sarah taunted from her seat, "my son and his friend, they're survivors. I taught John everything he knows. You won't ever catch him. He'll disappear. You'll never see them again."
"Take her to the brig," Fuller shouted. Sarah and Derek were roughly picked up and carried to the base security office and the detention center there. Neither spoke on the trip. They were thrown in a cell together, and both of them sat down on the simple metal bench.
Derek spoke first, "do you mean that? You don't think they're going to try to rescue us?"
Sarah shook her head, "John's smart. He knows that he doesn't have anything to lose by abandoning us now. Cameron will make him run," she stopped talking and thought about it, "but he'll make one hell of an attempt to convince her to break us out. He's stubborn like that."
"Yeah," Derek agreed, "he's real hard-headed. Did you notice that the chopper spotted a parachute stuck in a tree? One of them was high up and got down. The raft must have been John's. If the machine landed there, it would have just walked out. John would have used the raft. That means the parachute was Cameron's. She must have cut herself down. Quite a ways to fall, even for them."
"I've pushed her out of a fourth-floor window without harming her," Sarah said, "she's fine."
"Forty feet is nothing. Out the top of a tall tree, though? Nah-uh. Not if she took the landing wrong. I'll bet you money I don't have that she's damaged."
"You don't even like her," Sarah sneered, "why are you so concerned?"
Derek pursed his lips and clicked is tongue, "because if she's damaged, then she's slowing him down. His attachment to her is going to get him caught."
"He's a smart boy. He'll be fine."
"Smart? He thinks of her as a pet, a friend, like she's a person. She's trash, now more than ever. If he were smart he would have left her in that tree."
"But he didn't," Sarah reminded him, "and we're in here, so she's all he's got."
X
John Connor was an excellent specimen of physical health. He jogged almost every day, got plenty of exercise, trained his body pretty hard. He was in good shape. His wiry, muscular frame was as fit as any athlete and his mind was as sharp as any soldier's. He had been running a long time before Cameron even began to feel heavy. It was the adrenaline wearing off. John was running out of steam. Every step he took felt like the last, and it took every ounce of courage he had to take another. But he kept going. If they got him, so what? But if they got her, the nightmare would just start all over again. If they got her, then he would be alone. They couldn't have her. He wouldn't let them. So he kept running until his legs and back ached, until his lungs burned and his mouth tasted of copper. He kept running until his knees finally buckled beneath him and he went down, gently. With his last ounce of strength, he laid her against a tree trunk and then plopped down, heaving from the effort.
"That was three miles," Cameron said her tone blank, "good effort."
"Think they'll find us," he asked her.
"The chance is very remote. It's been an hour since we left the site. They will have a difficult time finding us." John nodded at that and continued his efforts to catch his breath. Cameron looked at him, and part of her felt guilty that she was not as worn out as he. She could never be tired. "Thank you for saving me."
"You're welcome. It was nothing. I couldn't just leave you there. Too much was at stake."
"Your life…" she began. He interrupted her.
"My life means nothing now. Okay, not nothing. But not what it used to. If stopping Skynet is my mission forever, then part of that mission is protecting you."
"I understand." What an interesting reversal. Cameron had once been the protector, and John had been her mission. Now, the roles had switched. In order to stop Skynet from ever being created, Cameron had to live her life. She smiled at him and offered him a pouch of water from her vest. He took it and drank greedily.
Her damaged ankle servo reported in again in its own way, and she gritted her teeth, her hands going protectively to the damaged appendage.
"What's with you?" John had noticed her expressions of pain.
"I told you; I've got a damaged ankle servo. It hurts."
"But, you can't feel pain."
Cameron shook her head, "I can. My neural processors interpret any damage as pain."
"Oh. You've just never reacted this way to it before."
"Pain is unpleasant. At least, most humans think it is. Expressions of and reactions to pain stimuli are instinctive emotional responses."
John was confused, "huh? Wait, I've noticed you were being a kind-of less than machine, yelling at me and all."
"When I fell out of the tree, my head hit a branch on the way down pretty hard. Right on the chip hatch. It jarred my chip with a direct impact. Usually, it wouldn't have done any harm. I would just have been knocked out for a while." She recalled the time when she had been disabled at the Fields' cabin, "But since my chip was damaged in my accident, it is more vulnerable to further failures. And this was perfect, sweet-spot hit. I lost a couple of data storage sectors and one route of interconnect. They failed in the impact. My normal infiltration behavioral protocol was corrupted. The back-up was compressed and takes too much time. I had to restart using my deep infiltration reference protocol. We're not supposed to do that. The DRP is programmed based on the personality and memories of a real human being. We're only supposed to use it as a reference for infiltration."
"Why aren't you supposed to operate on it?"
"Let me preface this answer by saying that I as a matter of security protocol and as a result of being scrubbed, we are not always fully aware of our capabilities. A lot of what I am about to say is my own personal opinion based on my experiences with my own programing, but here it goes. We do not operate solely from it because the DRP program is too human, and too unpredictable. Skynet is better at programming human things like emotions and habits into a terminator than it is given credit for. If we used the reference personality for a basis of behavior, then there is no telling what we might do. Combined with our chips set to learning mode, we might start to care about our targets, go soft, join the resistance willingly. Several of the first infiltrators programmed to use a DRP were lost because of it. Instead, we are now limited to using an infiltration behavior program, which when necessary queries the reference personality. When we need something to say or a way to act, the reference program makes suggestions based on what the personality would do, and then we follow that suggestion."
"Okay," John held up a hand, "I'm confused. Are you telling me that there are multiple personalities in there trying to figure the world out?"
"You make me sound crazy," the cyborg smirked, actually smirked, at him. "That's not how it works at all. It's very difficult to explain exactly. You would have to know a lot about us. We're complicated. ."
John shrugged, "who else living now knows more than I do? Try me."
"Alright. Don't tell me I didn't warn you," Cameron began, "later model terminators like myself have three behavioral programs that, when we are set to learning mode, determine what we do and how we act. We have our base program, our default operating mode. It's very simple. It only follows the mission parameters. Go to location A and perform this task. It provides our drive, and it's entirely directive focused. Normally when a terminator reboots with a damaged IBP, we are directed to fall back on the base program. We have some control, but normally it is the quickest and least dangerous route to operation. You would never want me to be operating on the base behavioral program."
"Why not?"
"Because then I would try to kill you."
"Oh."
"Next, we have our infiltration behavior program. This is the system to determine how we accomplish our mission, putting limitations on the base behaviors or activating and deactivating them when necessary. We normally operate on this level. You might say that it's why we're so bland. But it allows us to have more autonomous control than a simple drone. I might still have the drive to kill you, but this program would allow me to choose time and place. It is also the program first rewritten by the resistance right after the start-up procedures. The base program is hard coded and cannot be changed.
"Finally, we have the infiltration personality. It's what allows us to convincingly replicate human behavior. Normally we don't refer to the infiltration personality unless we need to. In learning mode, we are able to apply more if the personality. We can add to it or make corrections when we need to. The way the programs interact ultimately determines our behavior. Kind of like how your memories, your expectations, and your genetic wiring determine how you act. But though we can do so, we should never run from just one primarily."
"But you are now?"
"Yes," Cameron replied, "I have to for the time being. It doesn't change who I am, just how I behave. I'm still me."
She could see he was not convinced. "Can you repair the problem?"
"Yes, but it will take a major program maintenance cycle to recover data off damaged sectors and repair corrupt files with compressed back-ups. Recent estimate is eighteen hours. I don't foresee us having eighteen hours for me to devote to it right now."
"Oh," John said, still not sure he understood everything. He had caught his breath now and he was feeling very weary, but there was one question he had to ask, something he had been wondering about for a while. "Sometimes, even though you are running on your standard personality or whatever, it seems like you still have moods and still make emotional responses sometimes. Why is that?"
Cameron simulated a sigh. She did not want to talk about this right now, but she supposed it was better that he knew. "Since the damage to my chip, I have been suffering from a phenomenon resistance programmers call data leak. It's not like unintentional data disclosure. It's something different. Let's say a program is like a cup, and all the lines of code that make up the program are like water in the cup. A data leak is like poking a hole in the cup." John made a face of vexation. Her analogy was inadequate. She tried again. "Okay, you have a program on a computer. The program is activated and runs. But once the program sequence ends, there are mysterious holes in the code. I've been having this very problem with my infiltration behavior program. The worst occasion was when I forgot I was a machine."
"I remember."
"Anyway, I've been having data holes showing up in the program that determines my primary behaviors. The damage to my chip included the memory sector containing the back-up for it. It's been lost. Sometimes the compressed back-up is corrupted as well. After the damage to my chip, I've had to continuously repair this program file with blocks of data from the infiltration personality. I make back-up copy every time automatically. Because of this, I've been… less predictable, and I guess more quirky in my behavior. It's not perfect, but it's kept me operating."
John was quiet for a moment, letting it sink in what she had said. He wasn't sure he quite understood it, and he wasn't certain that even she could explain it properly without plugging her head into a computer and displaying all her processes on the screen for him to see. But right now, she was going to behave more or less like a person. A person who had once been real. "Who was your personality reference base on?"
Cameron let out another sigh, "her name was Allison Young. She was a resistance fighter captured by Skynet forces and forced to divulge information about herself to us so that we could copy her. We studied her for several weeks, asking her questions, monitoring her behavior while in the cell and interacting with other prisoners, testing her problem-solving skills by letting her escape for a short while. She was very skillful. Meanwhile, we cloned and grew her tissues and organs, replicated her blood, and made copies of her teeth."
"What happened when you were done?" He already knew the ultimate fate of Allison Young. She had been killed. It was the only possible answer.
"I replaced her," the machine replied matter-of-factly, "I was put in her position. Tested the program. Once she was of no further use to us, she was terminated. I ran completely through a simulation of her time in captivity in order to test my ability to copy her behavior. When it was finished, I was sent on my mission."
"And you were captured?"
"I became part of the resistance, yes," Cameron said without confirming, "another story for another time." He looked at her with questions in his eyes. She obliged him only an obscure answer. "Sometimes the infiltration protocols work too well." John nodded at that and leaned back against the tree again before polishing off his water. Cameron realized that it might be a good idea for her to hydrate as well. She opened a pouch of her own and drained it in a few short gulps. "You should get some rest," she finally told him. "We can't stay here for too long. We have to get moving again soon."
X
"I wish you would stay with us, Mr. Shaffer. I want to make this right."
Shaffer shrugged, "I know, sir. You've been good to me. It's not the money. Yes, the other company is offering me more if I go to them, but it don't boil down to that. My dad's starting to get sick and I'd like to move my family back to Iowa to be nearby. I found somewhere to work out there and I figured I would take it. No slight meant to you, sir."
"Your father is very important to you," his employer nodded. Shaffer had worked for Tagwell Commercial Construction in Baltimore for eight years now. Keith Tagwell, the owner had been an excellent employer, if a little dull and lacking in personality. But he paid well and he made sure his employees were safe and happy. Tagwell mainly sought contracts for government buildings or infrastructure, and they had projects all over the eastern seaboard.
"Yes, sir. He's a good man. He's all alone after mom died a couple years ago and it's really starting to go downhill."
"What if I gave you paid leave until he passed?" Tagwell inquired. He was a tall man, built like a brick wall, with stormy grey eyes and short black hair. While he cut an intimidating figure, he almost never used it to his advantage. He was always calm, always patient, and Shaffer had never seen him angry. Tagwell liked kids. At company picnics he would make sure he engaged the children, too. They were the future, he would remind them, and you have to take care of the future.
Shaffer shook his head, "I've been missing home myself, sir. My family is there. My wife's family is there. I think it's just time to move back."
Tagwell's soft gaze was locked on him as he quietly studied the man. Slowly, he nodded agreement and extended his hand, "I'm sorry to lose you, Mr. Shaffer. I wish you would stay with us. If at any time you decide to come back, I'll always have room on the payroll for you. Take care of yourself in Iowa."
Shaffer shook, "thank you, sir." He walked out of Tagwell's office where the secretary, Janice, was watching the television. She barely spoke to Shaffer, so riveted was she to the set. Shaffer was curious and turned to watch.
"...Breaking news from Virginia Beach this afternoon," the female correspondent recapped, "personnel at the US Navy air station Oceana have captured domestic terrorist Sarah Connor and an accomplice. Connor, a neo-luddite who protests against technological progress, has been implicated in the 1994 destruction of a Cyberdyne research lab and the murder of Miles Dyson, a computer programmer with the company. Connor claims that she is driven by visions of an apocalyptic future where machines hunt down and exterminate the human race. Since the early nineties, she has been actively trying to halt any advance in the area of computer science, and especially the development of artificial intelligence…"
Tagwell burst from his office in a hurry, his stride purposeful. "Janice, I have to go. Business trip. I'm not sure how long I will be gone." He didn't even stop to make his announcement.
"Where are you going?!" Janice asked, incensed that he might leave her out of the loop.
"Virginia," he told her. His eyes fell once again on Shaffer, "take care of yourself in Iowa." And then he was gone. Thirty seconds later, his Chevrolet pick-up peeled out of the parking lot.
X
James Ellison heard the same report on the radio as he drove his rented car south from Washington Dulles International Airport. He had made the flight with Mrs. Weaver in her private Gulfstream IV, a nicely appointed aircraft. It wasn't like flying commercial and had been quite comfortable.
On the journey, they had not spoken much. Catherine studied some notes for a presentation to some government official, and Ellison had mainly tried to sleep. But they did have a few conversations. He wasn't sure how he liked his employer. She was distant and cool, even when she was being engaging, humorous, or friendly. It was hard to describe. One thing was sure; she doted on Savannah, more and more. She was a stern but not terribly strict mother, and made Savannah take care of her responsibilities. She was a good mother that way, but the Scottish woman almost never smiled, and in spite of the playful relationship she and her daughter had, more often times it seemed like Savannah might be a little afraid of her. Catherine talked a lot about Savannah, but even her pride was detached and intellectual. "Savannah made all A's on her report card." "Savannah is a quite clever." "Savannah drew this picture for me." All delivered with unsmiling evenness with no emotion in it.
Catherine Weaver had occasionally expressed interest in Sarah Connor's activities, since Connor was actively doing what Weaver hoped to start doing; actively fighting the machines. Weaver was very mysterious about her hyperfocus on the terminators Skynet was sending back from the future, and Ellison felt certain that she knew more than she was letting on. After his interactions with the Terminator called Cromartie and his encounters with Cameron Phillips, he liked to think he could spot them. But, he reminded himself, he was no expert. He had been fooled before.
It did not surprise him that Sarah Connor might be tied up in this one. The caller had asked the FBI for Robert Kester, an alias used by Cromartie on his hunt for the Connors. It was interesting and suspicious that, when "Kester" proved unavailable, the caller didn't ask for anyone else. If he had wanted to report the Connors to the FBI, the caller would have just told them so. No, he was asking specifically for a terminator to assassinate them. He might have either been a Skynet agent or another machine that was not in a position to do it himself. The sentient computer had quite an imaginative tactical mind, and Ellison was continuing to be surprised by its creativity.
Right now, he was worried about Sarah Connor. She had been captured, and that meant that she was stuck in a cell in one place while the news advertized her presence to any machine that might want to hunt her son. They would converge on her and wait for John to try to break her out. He had a habit of doing that. The boy was smart enough that he knew he should run. But in spite of Ellison's hopes, he also knew that John would come after his mother. And he would bring his little terminator friend with him.
X
"Sorry I'm late," Calvin Reed said, offering Catherine Weaver his hand. She stood up from the table and shook it, "we had a situation at Oceana."
"A problem?" Weaver replicated concern. "I hope it was not serious."
"Very serious I'm afraid," the Chief of Naval Operations told her, "It's in hand, now, though." The two of them sat down together. He noticed that Weaver had already ordered a drink but nothing else. "I'm very sorry to keep you waiting."
Weaver shrugged, "it was important. What happened?"
Reed gritted his teeth, "I shouldn't tell you, but it will be all over the news tomorrow. You know who Sarah Connor is, correct?"
"Yes," Weaver nodded before taking a sip of her soda, "she's the crazy robot lady."
"She's a domestic terrorist that targets computer development," Reed confirmed, "Anyway, she and her people were involved in an operation on the base. Three F/A-18s were destroyed and two pilots killed."
"My God. What was she trying to do?"
"We're not sure. They stole a Super Hornet and made off with it. Shot down two other airplanes. We think it had to do with the Russian reconnaissance plane that flew over the Eisenhower earlier today. You remember last week when it happened to Enterprise."
"I do."
"We think they might have been targeting the bomber, but we aren't sure. Apparently, Navy personnel were also involved in this conspiracy. We caught her and one of the accomplices. There are two more out there that we're looking for."
Weaver took another drink of her soda. The liquid-metal nanomorph actually found a certain amount of pleasure processing the sensations from carbonated drinks. "Wait, I was under the impression that Sarah Connor was dead."
"A lot of people did. One of our JAG officers, apparently one that makes it a hobby to know criminals, recognized her."
"You told me they stole an airplane? How did you get it back?"
"We didn't. We had to destroy it."
Weaver nodded thoughtfully. "Had it occurred to you that if the aircraft had been networked into an automated system, you could have had the system take over the aircraft and return it safely to Oceana? You wouldn't have had to destroy it and the two people inside it would now be in your custody."
Reed's face was grim, "No. I hadn't thought of that. But I'm sure that you think your automated national defense system is the answer to any situation."
"Not all of them," Weaver replied, "but many of them. This one, certainly. You know, my meeting with Senator Blakemann got delayed until tomorrow, but he's on board with this idea."
"I don't know why you're pushing it so hard."
"I'm pushing hard, Calvin, because I believe that it will be the best tool to keep the world safe."
