Operation Phoenix Chapter 3:

Messages to and from the Future

When we reach the place where Andy and Mom moved, Cameron has already fixed her make up and put on my button up shirt. I park, resisting my impulse park on an angle in the space. When I do that Mom will swear that I grew up in Dade County Florida in my last life. Derek waits outside. Head wounds are not going to help things with Andy. Once more into the breach we go.

Cameron and I re-introduce ourselves, I can't remember if we're supposed to have met Andy yet or not. Andy is laughing jovially. "So, your mom here should be pitching film script ideas to Spielberg, James Cameron or Ridley Scott. She's got a great story idea that sounds like Back to the Future or Déjà Vu meets 2001: A Space Odyssey." He has sooo not taken a word she said seriously. I hope she didn't tell him about Skynet, nuclear war or Terminators, yet. "And you my dear," he gestures to Cameron with his whole hand, "I don't know what it says about you and your Mom's relationship, but she wants to name the HAL-9000 supercomputer character after you."

Cameron gets a blueberry muffin and a decaf, soy latte with two shots of espresso. I get some naturally decaffeinated Earl Grey and a fruit cup.

We sit there and joke and hang out for a few minutes. Cameron does her best 'I'm human just slightly autistic' routine. Heck, we're all playing at normal for Andy's sake. Then I look at my watch.

I'm not wearing my watch. It's sitting on top of my clothes in the Time Lab up in 2009. I find a clock on the wall and this is all starting to weird me out. I'm sure that 2007 me is sitting up back home waiting on Cameron to get back. John 2007 has school tomorrow and needs to sleep, so we have to wrap this up and get my Android pal back. I remember not being able to get sleep this night. Now I know why (terminator fights, talks with Andy, one of us must be feeling the pressure, until just now it wasn't me). "Hey guys, look at the time, tomorrow's a school day. I probably have a test tomorrow."

Mom says, "Yeah, gee, John's right. We were having such a great time though."

"Except that street gangs or drug dealers shot up the street at the other place and broke my concentration…" Andy spreads his hands in a gesture that seems to say 'but whattay gonna doaboutit? And then he looks affectionately at Mom,"It's a small price to pay, to steal an evening with you, Sarah Baum."

So, we're all standing up walking out to the back parking lot, where I hope to Heaven that my uncle is out of sight. We get outside and we're walking across the parking lot, all joking and carrying on until Cameron freezes. Like only a machine can, she goes rigid, stock still in mid-stride, perfectly balanced. The breeze stirs her brunette locks. Her perfect lips are open as she had been in the middle of saying something. Her right hand is frozen in mid-gesture. Her wonderful legs…Stop. Fantasizing. About. The Android. Situational Awareness: Pay attention to what's going on around you.

Mom is standing there watching, nervously sipping on her to go cup of something. She looks like she wants a cigarette. But she hasn't smoked in years. She pulls out a ballpoint pen with the coffee house's log on it and starts clicking it.

Andy, Andy on the other hand is walking around Cameron examining her closely like a work of art. "My God what happened to her? Is it some kind of seizure?" He keeps walking around her in circles, looking at her arms, hands, shoulders, knees, chin.

Then she starts replaying all the conversation and sounds from inside from the moment we walked into the place including exact voices: introductions, placing the orders, Andy's little rif about sci-fi movies.

Andy straightens up to his full height and looks are Cameron's face. He walks closer and looks into her eyes, "What are you?"

Then she turns up the blue lights behind her eyes.

"Holy…Grail. The Turing test; she passed the Turing test. I thought she was maybe a high functioning autistic, but she's some kind of Android, isn't she? The technology to construct something, someone so exquisite, is years off. The biomedical stuff, maybe not so much, but the AI architecture, no way."

"Alright people, let's keep moving there's nothing to see here." I say that to break them all out of their holding pattern. No one else is here yet, but I see a car in the street driving towards us with its turn signal on, and I see people from inside the place walking toward the back door.

"Yeah, come this way my car's over here." Andy takes Mom, by the elbow.

Cameron finishes her stride like nothing happened. She and I walk over next to the powder blue enclosed motorbike that looks like a LightCycle from the 80s era sci-fi movie Tron. It looks like the sort of thing a computer and robotics geek would drive.

Andy's voice says behind us, "No, ah, it's the '99 white Ford Taurus next to it. Old. Bland. Paid-for." He smiles hold the front passengers' door open for Mom.

Cameron and I walk up to the back driver's side door and try it, but it's locked.

"No remote, either." Andy smiles nervously, then reaches down to the button on Mom's door. All the locks unlock. We get in.

"Wow." Andy's turned half way around in the driver's seat to mostly face us in the back. "You're a real live android. This is amazing."

"Yeah," I say, "and you seem to have skipped right past the time travel part."

"Um, yeah, well." Andy makes that who cares gesture again. "I love robots." Then he considers for a moment. We're all holding our breath except for Cameron who's just sitting there in the back of the car breathing and smiling like a starlet.

"What year are you from?" Andy asks after a few moments thought. Mom and I breathe.

"I came back from 2027." Cameron states blandly. "The team started on my construction in 2026."

"What's your name?" Andy continues

"Cameron Phillips."

"Two thousand twenty-seven is not a banner year." I start in this time. Last time Mom tried to tell someone his work in computers had ruined the future, she pulled a gun on him. Then she got derailed into a diatribe against men in general and weapons researchers in particular. I didn't think it was productive then. It won't be now. "See not all AIs are as cool and neat as my friend, pal and confidante here, Cameron. The biggest one got very high, very unhealthy doses of spy agency paranoia and military weapons technology. It kind of ruins everyone's day, year and century."

"So, why don't you stop it?" Andy asks, "I mean since you seem to already know about it."

"Believe me the Resistance has tried," I say tiredly, looking Andy in the eyes. "In 1997 CyberDyne blew up and Miles Dyson died." I kind of neglect to mention Mom's and my role in that whole incident. "That just delayed catastrophe by a decade or so. Do you know what we found out in 2009?"

Andy thinks for a moment, "President Hillary Clinton will raise everyone's taxes and not end the war in Iraq?"

"Besides that," I make a sweeping away gesture with my hand. "Everyone already knows that right here in 2007." I'm pushing that idea aside to make way for the next one. "We found out that there're at least two more crazy AIs on two different continents waiting in the wings to ruin everyone's millennium, if the American one doesn't do it first." I wait for that to sink in.

Then I continue, "Do you know what else? A lone Resistance fighter thinks that killing you tomorrow will make everyone's millennium better. But he doesn't know about the Russian AI just waiting to step in."

"What, why me?"

"The Turk. Someone wants to mix the Turk with paranoia and weapons tech and go boom. The Resistance guy thinks that killing you tomorrow will stop it. They're wrong. We think that if the Turk is raised with hope, respect and optimism, it can grow up to be cool and neat, like Cameron."

"What do you think?" Mom asks.

"Did he say kill me?" Andy looks back and forth between Mom and me with worry, fear and just a touch of craze playing out across his face.

"Try to relax." I say gesturing gently downward with both hands. "We know exactly when, where and how."

Mom takes his hands comfortingly, "We'll make sure that you're miles away."

Andy takes a few deep cleansing breaths. Breath in calm, breath out panic. "So, you want me to help you invent her?"

"Yeah, sort of," replies Mom, still holding his hands.

"Okay, count me in, let's go." Andy turns resolutely to start the car as though he just drive into his new future.

"No, not till after the chess tournament tomorrow." Mom says firmly. The look on her face says that she's resigned to keeping the timeline as much intact as possible.

Sneaking In

Derek saw Andy safely back to where he was staying while Mom and I took Cameron home. I rode up front while she rode in back. We were quiet on the way home. Each of us processing the enormity of the Mission upon which were embarking. Okay, I assume that's what Mom was thinking. I on the other hand was thinking that I had a rare opportunity with my Android pal here. Then I remembered that she was the one from Fall 2007, from a just a few weeks after the Case of the Falling Girl. What I wanted wouldn't be…I didn't know what I wanted.

We were sitting at a stop light and Mom took too long to move after it turned green. The guy behind us honked. I turned around to look and see if we were in any more danger than usual. Cameron was looking back as well, but she completed her assessment and turned back sooner than I did. I figured I had a second or two before Mom noticed me looking just at Cameron so, I quickly mouthed, 'Come find me.' She smiled slightly, but it didn't quite touch her eyes the way her smiles did back in 2009 before she returned farther uptime.

As we turned into our neighborhood, the satchel phone rang. Mom answered; it was Derek, saying that he had a place for us to stay. I saw Cameron wink at me in the rearview mirror. I hoped that meant she had heard the address.

Later, Mom slept, Derek took first watch. Inevitably, he and I both got hungry and he left for the convenience store across the street to get a can of mixed nuts and some fruit. About that time I heard stones hitting the bathroom window. I walked back there and opened the window slightly. Then I opened the medicine cabinet's mirror and angled it around so that I could see out through the window, but whoever was out there would have difficulty seeing me. I was pretty sure it was Cameron. I hoped that my thoroughness would impress her. It was her and when I opened the window to let her in she commented on it. "Cool trick with the mirror. Where did you learn it?"

I shrugged and tried not to smile too much. I wasn't sure I wanted her to see just how glad I was that she had come to see me, "Mom used to make me watch MacGuyver re-runs. She said I could learn all kinds of tactical improvisation techniques."

She cocked her head slightly and deadpanned, "You mean there's something on TV besides the mindless drivel of late night infomercials and early morning cartoons?" Did her eyes twinkle when said that or am I wishing too hard?

I turned on the water in the sink to provide some white noise cover. I knew Derek would be back soon and I didn't want to wake Sarah either. "You know I remember catching you watching One Tree Hill and Dawson's Creek." I could have sworn I caught her blushing.

Cameron cut straight to the chase in that direct, matter-of-fact way she has, "Why did you call me here? We don't have much time."

Honesty time, "I just wanted to see you."

Cameron turned off the water and flushed the toilet. "Won't you see me when you go back to 2009?"

"Think it through. Deductive logic. You'll figure it out in a couple of seconds." I turned on the shower. "When we go back for Miles, I'm going to get the you from early April 2009, three weeks before Junior Prom." I thought about asking her to take a shower with me. But I knew that wasn't fair to her. She wasn't as emotionally developed as she would be in 2009. And I knew that something like that would throw off my developing friendship / courtship / whatever with her now in 2007. So instead I asked her how her back was where she took the shotgun blasts the T-888 had meant for Derek. She assured me that she would be fine by morning as long as she could get home soon to eat and rest. So, I decided to come to the point.

"Do you remember in the middle of the Case of the Falling Girl when you asked if I wanted to kiss you?" I was hoping that she would be ready by now, at least for what I wanted.

"Yeah, you chickened out." She chided me.

"Neither of us was ready." Akkk could this be any more awkward with a fully organic woman?

"Are you ready now?" she asked coyly.

I put an arm around her waist and pulled her to me. I kissed her full on the mouth. She kissed back. She didn't seem to know quite what to do. I pulled back for a second, "You okay?"

She pulled my head back down to her lips and kissed me back. I reached in with just a little bit of tongue. She tasted wonderful, like chocolate and roses and – someone banged on the door. We jerked apart. I ignored Derek's annoyed loud whisper. I said quietly, "Cameron, in 2009, you are my best friend. Actually you're way more than just my best friend."

"Best friend with benefits?" she asked in a dead pan.

"Not exactly. Best friend, pal, confidante." I replied.

"Are we sleeping together?" she tried again.

"Yes, but not all the time and we're not making love." I held up a hand, palm out, "Don't ask. We'll have a whole conversation about that sometime."

I took a deep breath, put one hand on her shoulder and squatted down to look into her eyes, "In a couple of weeks I'm going to say something ugly, that may hurt. I don't mean it. Never doubt that you are a person. Just because you're not fully organic, doesn't make you any less human, to me anyway." I gave her one more peck, because they come in threes, right? I gestured for her to go. She climbed out the window while I threw off my clothes, jumped in the shower and scrubbed down really fast. Now I knew what her blushing would be/ had been (how do you conjugate verbs in time travel?) about in the morning.

Three minutes later, I walked out of the bathroom with a towel around my waist, carrying my clothes. My uncle asked, "What was really going on in there, squirt?"

I replied defensively, "I was taking a shower, what's it to you anyway?"

"Your hair isn't wet."

Sneaking Out

The following day at the end of the SoCalInvitational Computer Chess Championship, Mom, UncleDerek and Iducked into the service entrance of the hotel avoiding ourselves because we had memorized the time sequence from the security video of Andy's disappearance. We got him out and the Turk 2.0 also. I guess this answered the question of who stole the Turk.

As we left the hotel where the Chess Tournament was held, I heard police sirens approaching. I recalled the Case of the Three Eyed Man. Up 'till now I remembered that case mostly as the time when Bailey and Olivaw, Ltd., got it's first paying gig upgrading the computer network security at that hotel. But now I thought back to Cameron's comments when we looked into the Contestant's Lounge behind the main competition area. 'Andy Goode appears to be dead, and I'm detecting an above normal static electric charge in the room.'

'And that means?' I had queried.

She had answered, 'It means that at least one temporal field has appeared in this room recently.'

'Skynet?'

'No.'

I hadn't bothered asking how she knew. At that point it hadn't mattered. Now it was clear. Up in the future, the Resistance had sent back a real corpse made to look like Andy. Maybe it was his from whenever he died up in the future. Just with a third eye added.

The following day while Cameron was still fighting with the T-888 and Derek (2007) was still getting shot, we (2009) entered our house. I found my laptop and scanned its memory. Uncle Derek's booking photos were still there. Apparently whatever the police found it that room had still convinced them to arrest and book Derek. Maybe that's all that had been there the whole time. Time Travel paradoxes will make your brains leak out your ears if you think on them too much.

We did not show any of the evidence of his 'murder' to Andy. While Mom and I were looking at LAPD files on my laptop Andy was sealing the small machine that was the Turk 2.0 in plastic. Derek helped him bury it in the back yard with Derek. Then we took Andy to the Parking Garage Time Lab and Time Jumped back to 2009.

Andy's alive; the time line's intact; five 'borrowed' cars: four left to be recovered and only one destroyed…not bad.