Chapter 3: It's a Mess. It's a Start.

"Are you sure you'll be okay?" John asked as he and Cameron sat in his truck in the parking lot of Zedd's. The cyborg was staring out the window at the store entrance. She was wearing a pair of black slacks required for the uniform, but had not yet gotten a shirt, so she was just wearing a simple tee. Cameron also did not possess any sneakers of appropriate color, so she had tugged on her black harness boots, which she must have recently polished. John could practically see his reflection in them and the steel harness ring shone like silver.

"I'll be fine," Cameron replied, probably for the hundredth time. She did not give the answer in a reassuring tone, only delivering the words as cold fact.

"Okay," John said, "now just smile a lot, be friendly…"

"Don't be a freak," the machine interjected, and the tenor was such that John could not tell if she were telling him or adding to his list.

The boy's brow furrowed for a second, but he decided to just take it as an addendum. "Yeah, don't be a freak."

"Have you ever had a job?" The question was unexpected.

"Uh, yeah," John nodded, "I was a paperboy for a while. I would ride around the neighborhood on my dirt bike and deliver newspapers. I kinda sucked at it." Cameron turned to give him a look, a quick glance that held nothing in it. A moment later, she stepped out of the car and began walking towards the door. Five paces onward, John called after her. "Good luck!" She turned and shot him one more look. He was smiling at her. She obliged him with one of her own and went inside.

Once inside, she found her new boss. Jeff Thurston was grinning as he saw her. "Hey, Cameron."

"Hey," she greeted; flared eyes, cheek-dimpling smile, slight tilt of the head, maybe adding a little sand to her voice. Nervously excited was what she was trying to convey, and it came pretty naturally to her because she felt it inside her. This was a totally new experience, a chance to learn and grow, something the infiltrator instincts would always yearn for. She kept one of her lips curled slightly as they talked.

"Wow, you're really punctual."

"Yeah," add awkward laugh, "I go to school right around the corner, so…"

"Well, great. Let's get you a uniform shirt and have you fill out your paperwork really quick. I'm going to have you shadowing today with Thea. I'll introduce you after we're done, okay."

"Sure," she said, then changed her expression, "I hope you don't mind. I don't have any black sneakers, so I wore these." She tugged up the legs of her slacks to show her boots. As an added excuse, she said "I dance ballet and have bad tendonitis in my ankles. Boots are more comfortable for me to wear."

Jeff gave them a quick look and gave a reassuring cat grin, "those will do fine. C'mon back to the office and we'll get you settled up."

Cameron filled out the paperwork, tax forms and employee contract, in a few short minutes. She was given two red polo shirts; one to wear now and one as a back-up. She was also given a lanyard with a badge at the bottom. Jeff told her that she would get a photo badge and cabinet key later. Cameron was then assigned a locker, in which she would place anything she brought with her, and she set its combination. Jeff then took her out on the floor to the computer section.

"Thea," he called to one of the associates there. A teenage girl approached and Jeff turned to introduce Cameron. "Thea Reardon, Cameron Baum. Thea, Cameron's going to be shadowing you for the next few days."

"Nice to meet you," Thea smiled and held out her hand, which Cameron took to shake. Thea Reardon was a tiny creature, standing perhaps fifty-seven inches tall. She had a slender, feminine shape and probably didn't weight a hundred pounds. Her alabaster skin contrasted with the dark brown hair that fell in layers across her shoulders. Her plain face was home to a nose that might be one size too large, and mounted on them were a pair of rectangular wireframe glasses. What was surprising was her eyes. Her left eye was sapphire blue while the right eye was mahogany brown. Cameron identified the anomaly as heterochromia and had to admit to herself that the effect was rather jarring.

Still, she remained pleasant, "hi," and was sure to add as genuine a smile as she could, which included crow's feet at her eyeline.

"I'll let you two get started," Jeff said and he wandered off.

The two girls, one natural and the other not, stood there and looked at each other for a moment. Cameron decided to break the ice first. Of her interaction options she chose "your eyes are really cool."

"Thanks," Thea said with a smirk, her voice a silvery scratch, "but sucking up will do you no good. Especially not when you're taller than me." The girl tried to keep a straight face, but devolved into chortles. Cameron joined her. Thea motioned, "c'mon. I'll get you familiar with the magical land of hope and wonder that we call the PC department." They began to tour, and Cameron began to discover that Thea had a joke or crack about everything. At seventeen, she had been working at Zedd's for two years, and so was more experienced than most of the staff. She knew her way around every department and was quick to give Cameron pointers. "I love computers," was one of her nuggets, "but printers are the devil. I have yet to meet a printer that I haven't wanted to destroy with a hatchet, so it better be good at doing things other than printing when the head wears out. So the printer/fax/scanner/copier/toaster/dishwasher/typewriter repair machine is definitely the way to go, so long as you don't mind if it doesn't toast, wash dishes, repair typewriters, or print worth a shit." Another as they cruised the isles of computer parts was "sometimes we get these guys in here who are hardcore PC gamers. If they say they are and ask you a question about whether to get the nVidia GTX 650 or the ATI Radeon 5770, they aren't. The gamer geeks spend way too much time on their favorite gaming forums learning about what they need before they even set foot in here. And whatever your opinions are, keep them to yourself. They tend to be brand loyal. Don't try to sell a Radeon guy on an nVidia product, he will just laugh at you and get what he wants. And he might even punch you in the face. If someone is shopping for a card, ask them what they already have."

"I don't want to be punched in the face," Cameron said, her expression one of mild concern.

"And I don't want you to get punched in the face," Thea said with mock seriousness, "which is why you do what I tell you." As they continued on, the conversation began to become more social than work related. Thea asked her "so, what else do you do, besides computer junk?"

Cameron considered, then replied, "I go to school…"

"Don't we all," Thea interjected with a giggle.

The cyborg came to the realization that Thea was asking about hobbies. "Ballet. I do ballet."

"Yeah? That's cool. I never could get the hang of dancing. Mom tried to get me into gymnastics when I was little…" she gestured to herself and added "er" with emphasis. It was a height joke. Cameron obliged her with a snort. "Anyway, it didn't take. I was on a constant sugar high without the sugar. About the only thing that interested me growing up was computers and because of its similarity to typing, the piano."

"That is so cool," Cameron said with perhaps too much enthusiasm, "I love piano music. It's my favorite to dance to. Chopin, Tchaikovsky…"

Thea laughed, "I'm more of an Elton John/Billy Joel sort. And I play keyboard in my brother's band." She let out a sarcastic breath, curving her fingers into air quotes "band, I say. It's a garage band. He and one of his other computer geek friends are also music geeks and they put a band together. They… we… mainly play bars and clubs on weekend nights. Nothing original. Aerosmith, Guns N' Roses, Van Halen. My brother and Gordo, that's his friend, are really into eighties bands. They dig the whole post-disco rock thing."

Cameron recalled some facts and delivered them with a smile. "My brother has a friend who likes post-punk British rock groups. When he comes over they are constantly blasting the Smiths or the Cure or Echo & the Bunnymen…"

"Oh my God! Echo & the Bunnymen!" and Thea formed her fist into a microphone and sang "lips like sugar! Sugar kisses!" She laughed, "Oh, man, yes. Yes to Echo & the Bunnymen."

"Yes to Echo & the Bunnymen," Cameron agreed.

"It's seriously better than that whiney emo asshat tearfest bullshit that they play on the radio now. That's not rock. That's crying crocodile tears with your guitar because your mommy told you to take the trash out." Thea scoffed, " 'waaaaah. It's so hard being male and middle-class and white. Waaaaah.' God, you little bastard, give me a break. Try having a period." She shrugged, "I mean, the sound could be there, but Jesus. Y'know, when my parents were growing up, music was actually, like, good." She gave Cameron a glance, "say, you wanna take a tour of the audio department. Maybe get really, and by which I mean really, familiar with Panasonic stereos and Bose audiophones. And by the way, any other answer than 'hell yes' will not be acceptable."

Well, Cameron certainly didn't want to offend. "Hell yes," she said with a fist-pump. Thea led her on.

X

Thea took the Bose full-ear headphones as Cameron handed them back. The human girl had some obvious trouble reading the cybrog's expression. "I know, I know. AC/DC's a little hard on a first-timer. That opening chord of 'Thunderstruck' is a bitch to play, too. My brother tells me every time. Let's see who else we got here," and she began scrolling through her selections of her iPod, "oh, Pat Benatar?"

"My mom loves her," Cameron said as she recognized the name from among Sarah's favorites.

Thea shrugged, "familiar with Pat. You just earned some points, Cam."

"Oh, um, Cameron, please, if you don't mind."

Thea shrugged again, "sorry. I don't blame you. I like your name. Beats the hell out of mine."

"What's wrong with Thea?"

"Nothing 'cept that it's short for Theadora. My brother and I were named after my mother's grandparents. Theadora and Alvin."

"Alvin?"

"Yeah, but Al's cool with his name. You'll like him. He can be a total prima but he's a good brother."

Cameron grinned at that, "John's an okay brother. We haven't been getting along lately though."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. I don't know why."

"Hey, girlie, shit happens. He'll come around. Al and I always do no matter how bad the fight gets. Do you like Pink Floyd?" Cameron only replied by holding out her hand. Thea smiled and gave her the headphones. When they were seated on Cameron's head, Thea began playing "Another Brick in the Wall, part II." At first, the machine was a little mystified at the sound of the helicopter at the start of the track, but as the ominous beat and base line set in, Cameron began to enjoy the song. Cameron had learned from watching Thea that when one really enjoyed a song, it was common practice to grip the earcups, close the eyes, and sway the head in time with the music. Slowly, she allowed a smile to crawl across her face. Beyond the sound of Roger Waters' voice and the smooth edginess of the guitar solo, she heard Thea say "they should play this one for teachers more often."

Jeff Thurston strode up at that time, and Cameron pulled off the headphones to hear what he had to say. Thea's expression was of one caught with a hand in the cookie jar, and Cameron decided to mimic it, adding a bitten lip and an arched eyebrow. "Hey," he greeted, "everything going okay?"

"Yeah, boss," Thea nodded.

"Yeah, boss," parroted Cameron.

Thea explained, "I'm getting her familiar with the noise-canceling headphones."

"Okay," Jeff said, "I thought you were going to educate her on the computer equipment."

"I don't need no education," Cameron told him flatly before turning to Thea with a knowing look. The girl apparently found it funny, and chortled.

After recovering herself, Thea said, "yeah, boss, she knows the PC stuff better than I do. So I figured I'd give her a head start on the rest of the shop."

Jeff shrugged, "okay. Just be sure to show her everything."

"Will do," Thea assured, and the two of them watched him depart. The teenager looked at her cybernetic companion "good thing you're with me. Jeff gives me a lot of leeway, so I can get away with some goofing off on slow days. You ready to learn the register?"

"Sure."

"Cool. Let's go."

X

"So, Scottie," Derek said as the two of them rode along Interstate 5 through Valencia, "What's your story?"

The red-haired soldier set down the folder in her lap and looked up at the road. "Not much to tell."

Derek shrugged. He didn't know this kid from Adam and that was not something he particularly liked. Derek Reese had not much luck with strangers, and his streak with people from other timelines hadn't really been a positive thing either. For the past hour they had been quiet, and while the veteran Resistance officer had seen issue with silence on a car trip he normally reserved it for someone he knew… or the cyborg. And that brought up another reason why he was so interested in having a conversation with Scottie; he did not want to spend the next several hours stuck in the car thinking of the Connors and that machine and the issues with that home. He was hesistant to call them abnormal because… well, c'mon, the Connors and a machine. What about that could ever be normal? So he decided that Scottie was going to do her damndest to keep his mind off of it. "Try me."

"What is it you want to know?" Derek couldn't tell if she was annoyed or if it was just the accent playing tricks on him.

"Well, like what unit are you with?"

"Third of the One-two-seventh recon was my last unit. Before I transferred to the states, I was with Second Battalion, Ninety-second Regiment of Foot, Gordon's Highlanders." There was a certain level of pride in her voice when mentioning the Scottish unit. "Since you're going to ask, I specialized as a scout marksman. Light unit. We normally ran with BAE L125A3 COIL rifle with flexy scopes. We specialized in chip shots. A hole above the right eye and they donnae get back up."

"Yep," Derek agreed, "what's a COIL?"

"Chemical oxygen iodine laser," Scottie replied, giving him a funny look, as if he should have known. "IR chem laser. It operates at a wavelength of one-point-three-five micrometers, so even the tinnies cannae see it without specialized sensors. Not like those Westinghouse plasma ejectors you yanks used. And no recoil. We just dinnae have rate of fire, but when you are talking about steady, carefully aimed shooting it don't matter." She let the matter rest a moment, then asked "So, you're from when?"

"Twenty twenty-seven." Derek answered, "War's still going, though low intensity. We took the TDE in Topanga a few months before I left. Skynet was losing, it just didn't know it yet."

"God," Scottie shook her head, "war's been over a while now once I left," she shrugged, "Dinnae have anyone to leave behind, so I volunteered."

"My brother was sent on a mission twenty-five years before now. He was gone before I came. I didn't have anyone either. My parents were killed on J-Day."

"I still remember it," Scottie told him. "Y'know, I was born here, in Los Angeles. That's why they sent me. I knew this place about as well as you might expect from someone who hadnae seen it since I was a weeun. My da died when I was real young, I think four or five. Mom… I mean damn, y'know what do yer say to that? Threw herself at her work for a long time. She tried to see to me best she could, but she was distant, cold, most the time after da went. She sent me to live with da's brother in Glesga when I's eight or so. I ain't seen her since." She bit her lip and turned to look out the window for a while. She could at least tell most of the truth here. "J-Day happened, we were down in Sheffield, England. My uncle's sister-in-law married a professor that taught at Sheffield Hallam University. We were down visiting them. The first we know of an attack a Russian retaliatory nuke air bursts over the North Sea. We get the flash and all the electricity stops. A lot of the Russian weapons were still pointed at Cold War targets so Robin Hood Airport, which used to be RAF Finningley, gets one. That's only thirty-odd clicks East of the city. Windows of the house blow in. My aunt is flash blinded in her left eye. They kept a small aviary. My cousin Wallace, he was about six at this point, stumbles out into the aviary while everyone's still dazed. Next one hits right between Sheffield, Brinsworth, and Tinsley. I felt the heat from that fucker, dead certain. Roof blows off though the house don't come down. I can see a spot of flame through the door to the aviary. Wallace was flash-fried and it was his body burning. Nothing left. He's ash. Aunt gets burnt on her back. I was already on the floor. It was a miracle the rest of us weren't killed." She took a deep breath. "I was fine. My uncle was okay, but my aunt had burns all over her back and face. We spent a few hours trying to treat her at home, but she was hurting too badly. We cannae start the car or call a doctor because nothing that wasnae hardened against EMP would work. The firestorm burned itself out mostly by the next day. So we walked her to the local hospital, my uncle and his brother-in-law carrying her on a door."

There was a pause as she was obviously fighting the surfacing of the memories, but a leak had already been sprung in her shell and it was going to come trickling out of her. "Walking through the city… y'know it wasnae totally flattened. Mostly the industrial areas hit. I did see some strange shadows on the sidewalk. They were all that was left of people who had been outside when the nuke hit nearby. Y'know, they were probably the lucky ones. Gamma ray pulses from nuclear detonations travel so fast, if you're near ground zero, close enough to be vaporized, you get turned to ash faster than your nervous system can transmit the information to your brain. You literally die before you even feel it. Lucky them. All's left is a flash shadow on the ground. There were people staggering around. Some buildings still standing damaged. I remember a woman standing atop the rubble of her home, holding an infant in her arms. She was swaying back and forth, talking to her husband, who was nowhere to be found. The baby in her arms was burned black. Dead. The pattern of her blouse had been burned into her skin.

"We got to the hospital after walking for two hours. The crowd around the hospital was massive. Everyone was just standing in a line to be seen. The floor was slicked and dripping with blood. There wasnae any medicine and the surviving supply of alcohol had been used up in less than a day. Surgeons were having to take off broken limbs with no anesthetic. They were ripping up sheets for bandages. I was too frightened to stay. I ran out and not knowing the city I got lost. Wandered for a few days, finally found my way back home. Found out that my aunt died. After that, we just tried to survive for a few weeks. I remember the first time I found black sand in my food. I was told not to eat it. Radioactive dust particles settling down from the atmosphere. A few weeks after the Day, the government began to pull itself together and organize. Money meant nothing. Food became currency. They paid people in rations to work clearing the rubble. You received six hundred calories a day as a base, and then you got another hundred for every hour of work you did. People who didn't work starved to death. You tried to share with someone else, you both starved. There were food riots. The agitators were shot. Everyone that died meant a marginal increase in food for the rest of us. I worked hard as anyone else pulling carts of broken brick ten hours a day every day for two bowls of gruel and a bottle of smoky water.

"Closer to autumn, my uncle hears a rumor that a farm outside of town needs help harvesting corn," there was a cynical chuckle, "corn. The whole field was turning brown. The stalks were blown over. The entire northern hemisphere had a hole blasted in the ozone layer that was just killing the crops. The harvest was pathetic. But anyway, we left the city in spite of it being against the law. On the way there, we ran out of our small stockpile of food and hadda make do with two-week-old ewe's carcass. Honkin' pure fierce but it was better than starving. When we got to the farm, I spent the next month tossing withered ears of corn into a trash bag to be processed. Local police had taken over. Anyone caught pinching the corn on the side was dragged into the field and killed. I like to think they were buried, but they probably found their way into the stew or the dogs' bowls. We ate better than in the city, though. Farm workers got first dibs on produce. The government tried to keep order, but you can only keep so much order from desperate people. We got tired of being executed for trying to survive a little better. Christ, we were down to using steam tractors to plow fields, when they worked. When they dinnae, we had to hoe the bloody thing, stand out in the sun all day wrapped head to toe. My uncle had cataracts from the sunlight by time he turned forty-five. We were all tired of having nothing and living on nothing. Society just kinda fell apart two or three years after J-Day. It wasn't too long after that the machines came. The war began in earnest then. Resistance soldiers got food and beds and respect. I dinnae want to have to sell my body, turning tricks for some rat-catcher for a couple of putrid rats to eat. So I joined up."

Derek shrugged, "sounds like you got pretty lucky. I know a lot of girls who were your age when the war started. Before they joined up they had to trade sex for food. One woman I know started doing it at eleven."

Scottie shook her head, "Yeah, I did too. Not me, though. You dinnae wanna do that unless you were pure desperate and I never was. Shit, I'm still a virgin. No birth control, you were bound to get pregnant sooner or later, then you'd just have another mouth to feed. That wasnae gonna happen to me."

"Now that is surprising. How old are you?"

"Twenty-four."

"And you managed this long?"

"Like I said," Scottie reminded him, "I dinnae want to have a baby."

"I saw your mark," Derek said, "when did they get you?"

Scottie ran a finger across the barcode on her arm "I was seventeen. They caught me on a scouting mission, named me, and tried to find out where I came from." She got silent and looked out the window. Derek immediately recognized the emotion she was feeling. He had felt it himself. It was a measure of shame mixed with terror and guilt. He knew it well. It was an incredibly lonely feeling.

"The worst thing about being interrogated by the machines," Derek said, "is that they don't even have to lay a finger on you. They don't leave a mark. They can pull it out of you one way or the other. They're so gentle about it and yet in the end you are just exhausted. They aren't like men, who have to beat it out of you. They can grind it out in their own way. Anyone would break. My whole squad did." Scottie turned her head at that, surprise written openly on her face. She stared at him for a few seconds, then returned her eyes to the road.

"They ain't so bad," Scottie admitted after a moment, "not once you realize that in the end, they're the same as us. They're just trying to win the war and survive. Once I woke up to that, it was hard to hate them. Kept fighting like a devil, but I dinnae hate them anymore."

Derek shook his head. "I never got that far. The reprogrammed ones that we had went bad sometimes, killed people. We never figured out why. They're not like us. You can't reason them into being on our side. They had to be captured, have their chips torn out, and their programming wiped. They have nothing in common with a man."

"They do," Scottie argued, "the most common ground we have is that we want to live, and in the end so do they. We both want to live. Once you start there, finding more ain't hard."

X

Fuck Tuesdays. They were the devil. Mondays got a lot of angst. Monday was blamed as the murderer of the weekend, the beginning of five days of suffering, and all of that other awful jazz that people have been saying since Monday became a thing. Monday, no one trusted it. But what no one realized was that the smear campaign was being run from the shadows by the real villain of the weekday show. That villain was named Tuesday. See, Monday might be the first day that comes in the week, but Tuesday was the one that followed. Monday was just the first day of the week. Tuesday meant that you were committed to it. The week was happening, and only more days followed. Fact: Mondays were more frequently holidays than Tuesdays. Mondays occasionally gave you an easy one. Tuesdays were the mean little bitches that made you work every time.

This was the mood John was in as he slumped into his chair at the lunch table on the school's patio and tossed his backpack aside. He didn't know what was the cause of his bad mood. He also wasn't sure if he was having a new bad mood or if this one was an extension of the old one. Or what might have even caused this sour sort he was in. What he wanted to have right now was a half-hour with his friends to worry about nothing in particular. Easier said than done with Cameron following right behind him. At least this year they didn't have all of the same classes. He didn't have to spend every single second with her. He wasn't sure why that made him happy, or why just being around her was pissing him off lately. Or why anything about the cyborg at all. It was weird. He actually did want to be around her, but doing so just made him mad. He couldn't figure it out, so screw it.

"Hey," Morris greeted as he looked up from his lunch tray. The food on it looked good, probably better than what John was going to find inside the brown bag he carried.

"Hey," John said, smiling.

"Hey," Cameron added as she too found a seat.

"Ready for the trig test," Morris asked. John and Cameron both shrugged. "I'm ready for the trig test. So, what's new with you guys?"

"I started my job yesterday."

"Yeah?"

"I made a new friend."

John smirked at her as he unpacked his lunch, "a real friend, right. She didn't call you a bitch-whore or something did she?"

"No. She taught me about the store. We listened to music together. Her name is Thea."

The two teenage boys grinned as Cameron talked. Her enthusiasm was present even in her subdued monotone. John had unpacked a roast beef sandwich, a bag of baby carrots, and... hey… a chocolate Jell-o cup. He decided to eat that first and went to open it. Cameron saw this and snatched it out of his hands.

"If you don't eat your sandwich, you can't have any pudding," she said, responding to his confused glare. Morris laughed. John just blew out a scoffing breath and shook his head. Cameron was not going to be moved by his ire. Her concern was his safety and that also included his health. And she took the job damned seriously.

"So, Morris, where's Amanda?" John asked his friend as he unpacked his sandwich and nodded to the empty chair at their table. Amanda was Morris's girlfriend. They had met when Morris had been lifeguarding that summer. Cameron had finally met her a few weeks ago, and yet the girl still remained a mystery to the cyborg. Not that it bothered her. She showed only a friendly interest in John, the same kind of interest a human female might have in the friends of her current romance.

"She's coming. She said she'd meet us here," Morris assured, a sly look on his face. Any mention of Amanda and Morris was bound to melt into a puddle of aw-shucks.

"Hey, guys!" Speak of the devil. She leant down and gave Morris a kiss, "hey, sweetie." Amanda was taller than Cameron by perhaps two inches, and she was athletically lean. Her brown hair was kept short, and her matching eyes were enormous and almond-shaped. She obviously spent a lot of time outdoors, given the healthy tone of her skin. She was very friendly, and while Cameron had not made efforts to become buddies with her, Amanda was never anything less that cheerily nice. "So, guess who I ran into," Amanda said as they all became aware of another presence at the table. Before any of them could guess, Amanda gestured to the figure that had walked up with her.

Not much had changed about Cheri Westin in the year since they had seen her. Her slender, triangular and pouty face lit up with a smile as her crystalline blue eyes saw each of them. She had been growing her hair out, and the sandy golden strands now swept the waistband of her jeans. If anything was different it was her attitude. She exuded a different aura than the dark, sour, serious Cheri that they had first met. "Hey," she said with an awkward little wave before folding her arms. Everyone returned the salutation. She pulled up a chair and sat down across from John, who looked at her and smiled. She didn't notice at first as she unpacked her lunch bag, but then her eyes made contact with his and her lips curled. She blinked heavily and looked away before her smile grew wider. "Hey, John," she said with a little bit of tease in her voice before looking back.

"Hey," he answered.

"Hey," she said after a final pause and a tuck of her hair before proceeding to unload her lunch on the table.

Though Cameron had been trying to involve herself in a conversation with Amanda, this behavior had not gone unnoticed by the cyborg. She discovered that she was trying very hard not to care about it, too.

X

"Mrs. Weaver. Hello." John Henry commanded the head of his puppet body to rise and look up from its current task. He had been engaged in the interesting and delicate work of painting a model. Identifying the expressions on Weaver's face, the AI determined that this might become a conversation and that the paint currently on his brush would be spoiled for use by the time it was over. He swished the brush in the water cup to wash the acrylic off and them carefully dried it with a paper towel he had laid aside for the purpose.

"Hello, John Henry," Weaver greeted and stepped into his room. "How are you today?"

"I am well," and he instructed the body to smile, something that he was getting better at all the time. "How was your trip to Seattle?"

"Eventful," Weaver responded, "productive. What do you have here?"

"I am building a plastic model kit," John Henry said, some enthusiasm in his voice. He held up the partially constructed model. "This one is on an M1A1 Abrams main battle tank. I decided that I wanted to build a current variation of the Heavy Common type used by the United States Marine Corps. While all of the reviews that I have read online of this kit told me that it was the most accurate, it was still not sufficient to render what I wished. This was a US Army M1A1 with the Abrams Integrated Management system added. The Army version and international versions of the M1 use a six-shot smoke grenade launcher on the turret. The Marine M1s have eight-shot launchers to provide better coverage. It is also not uncommon to see this," and he pointed to a box mounted on the left side of the turret, "on the Marine tanks. It is a missile countermeasures device that dazzles optical and laser-guided ATGMs."

Weaver peered at his work. "That's very interesting."

"Yes," John Henry agreed, "the model is of good quality. The molded detail is excellent. Plus the barrel is made of rolled aluminum and some of the more delicate parts are photo-etch brass. The detailing parts that I acquired are resin. I determined that this would be an excellent test of my motor controls and would expand my ability to be creative. I bought the model, the extras, paint, tools, an airbrush, and an air compressor using the bank account you set aside for me. I have been saving for these items for a few weeks."

There was surprise on Weaver's face. "You made your first financial transaction?"

"I did," the computer confirmed, "but I was very careful with how I spent it. I made certain to read a good selection of reviews about each product. There are even some online forums for this hobby, so where I had confusion, I was able to create a profile and ask questions of those more knowledgeable than I." On one of his largest screens, a website popped up. Weaver noticed that it was a web forum dedicated to miniature armor models such as the one that he was building. John Henry had successfully carried on a conversation, albeit online, with other humans regarding the information he sought. It was all very impressive.

"Why that's incredible, John Henry."

The AI's head dipped to look again at his work. "It is no more amazing than when a person does it."

"But you aren't a person," Weaver reminded him, "and yet you certainly had them fooled." The AI didn't look up, but merely smiled at her words as he dipped his paint and picked up the crew figure that he had been working on. Weaver would have praised him further, but she felt a vibration in her pocket. John Henry's eyes darted to her blazer, indicating that he had heard it, then glanced up at her face. Weaver plucked the phone from her pocket, turned, and walked out of the room.

The number belonged to her brother, the real Catherine Weaver's brother. She decided to take it. "Hello?"

"Cathy? It's William."

"Hello, dear brother. What can I do for you?"

"I need to talk to you about something. Do you have some time?"

"I have right now. What is it?"

"I'm on the NTSB team looking into that plane crash that killed the senator a few weeks ago," she heard him rifling through some papers, "this crash is really strange, sister."

"How so?"

"Well, the aircraft crashed because of a catastrophic separation of the empennage in flight."

"The what?"

"The tail broke off in flight. Kaliba's Sparrowhawks are no different than most other general aviation planes in that they have no black box, but radar and transponder records from the day of the crash show that the aircraft was straight and level flight at about two hundred knots and ninety-five hundred feet. The sky was clear that day. There was no wind and no adverse maneuvers. Add to that this aircraft was brand new. The airframe had less than fifty flight hours on it with no rough landings and no suspect flights. It was perfectly maintained. But somehow the main spar, basically the spine that provides rigidity for the aft fuselage sheared off at midway. The vertical and horizontal stabilizers went with it. We found the entire back half of the plane separated from the main fuselage."

"Could there have been parts missing or faulty?"

"Nah. The main spar is a solid piece of rolled metal and it forms the backbone of a very solid box frame. It's one of the aviation hyperalloys they've developed. I was thinking maybe it was just a bad batch and so I had the metallurgy done on it. The whole pour checked out. I'd never have done it though once I got to look at the part itself. There were no bubbles at the break. This wasn't metal fatigue. There was no indications of a slow developing crack. Besides, when a part like this breaks through, you can see a difference in coloration and texture between the slow crack growth and then the sudden sheer. The fatigue crack is smooth and worn dark where the fracture has a bright color and granulated texture. This was perfectly smooth like it was sliced through. Not only that, but the angle of the cut is matched perfectly by the separation in the fuselage."

"A collision with another plane perhaps?"

"I thought that, too, but the radar shows that the nearest plane to Blakemann's was sixteen miles away and three thousand feet below. Besides, it would have taken the wing or tail of a commercial jet to make a cut that big and there are a few problems with that anyway. First, this metal is almost collision-proof against anything that isn't tungsten or depleted uranium. This rod would have torn the tail off a seven-four-seven before it even bent. Second, a collision break would not create a clean cut like this spar has in it. The spar would have bent until it fractured on the opposite side of the collision point. Finally, whatever did this was moving so fast that it actually melted the metal in the direction of the slice. We have molten build-up at the edge of the cut were the object exited."

"So what does this mean?"

"Do you remember those photos I sent you a while back. The pictures of those robot parts I found when that DC-9 went down?"

"I do."

"I think it was one of them, Cathy. But it was a new one. A different one. Witnesses show that Blakemann alone was on the plane. This one can hide itself somehow and carries a blade larger or sharper than anything I've ever seen." Catherine could not really fault "her" brother. He was only human and lived now, and not the future. He didn't know what the future held. There was no way he could know about mimetic polyalloy, or that his beloved sister had been replaced by a machine made of it.

"That's very interesting, William," was all Catherine Weaver could say, "please keep me informed." She hung up after hearing his promise to do so and returned down the hall to John Henry. She couldn't say that things hadn't turned out well. When last she had met with him, Daniel Blakemann had made plain his preference for Kaliba's more mature AI project to run the defense network she had spent so much time trying to convince him should be built. It had only taken Sarah Connor and her witless band mucking it up by stealing a fighter plane to press home the urgent need for such a system. And alas, humans had no patience. They wanted results now. So while John Henry painted the model of a tank and played with army men, Kaliba's more aggressive and dangerous AI was going to get to do it for real. Blakemann's death would put a delay on its selection. It didn't hurt that the grounding of the entire Sparrowhawk 60 fleet was costing Kaliba millions of dollars a day.

X

All Nippon Airways flight 1006 from Tokyo Haneda arrived six minutes ahead of schedule at LAX thanks to a favorable tail wind. The Boeing 777-200 parked at a gate in Terminal B and began disembarking its passengers. Kutkin was among them. He had travelled by Aeroflot from Moscow to Tokyo before changing his passport and getting on the All Nippon to Los Angeles. The flight had of course been exhausting, and Kutkin had flown first class. No matter how comfortable they made the airliners, no matter how advanced and efficient, they were still a misery to be endured. Being on a plane for eleven hours was rough no matter how much a person enjoyed flying. Kutkin was not one who could sleep on a plane, either. He knew just enough about them to know what noises he should and should not be hearing. And the cabin pressure gave him headaches. In his youth, his father had regaled him with stories of flying on Pan American and Trans World Airways. He had told stories of pretty stewardesses in snappy uniforms smiling and serving drinks and actually cooking in the galleys aboard sleek and wonderful 707s and DC-8s. Even Aeroflot's Spartan service during the Soviet years had been an occasion to enjoy. That was no longer the reality. Now, even in first class, Kutkin had been shoehorned into his seat and fed a terrible meal preheated on the ground and wrapped in plastic.

Well, he could grouse all he liked. That was the reality. The golden age of the airlines was past. The demise of commercial aviation as a sterling way to travel could only be blamed on the airlines themselves. At least the flight was now ended. He was here now on American soil, not for the first time. But this was his first time to Los Angeles. And how the city still had some romance to it at least. In spite of the riots, the crimes, the gangs, there was still Hollywood, still Beverly Hills, still Santa Monica. This was still California, for all its various warts. This is where the rich and famous made their homes. Kutkin had always been an admirerer of the American actor Robert Redford. If he had to pick a favorite film from the Unites States, it would be none other than Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. What a clever classic film! He could watch it again and again and it would never get old. Paul Newman was another favorite, and what a performace he had given next to Redford! And how could he forget Cool Hand Luke?!

As he wandered through the terminal towards baggage claim, these thoughts made him smile. But Kutkin had never been one to ruminate on the fantastic for long when he had business, and business after all was why he was here. He had come to find this woman Sarah Connor and extract her. The explicit requirements was that she not be harmed. Vostrikov had passed on Zelenko's orders very clearly. He was to discover her whereabouts within seven days. At that point, several of Zelenko's men would have arrived to assist with the extraction. How they would be getting to the States and transporting this woman was a question that Kutkin had no answer to and Vostrikov had chosen not to enlighten him, either out of ignorance or secrecy. At any rate, the orders were explicit for him to find her and then await their assistance. He was to do no further actions on his own. If at any time the operation needed to be aborted, there was a number he could call to leave a message, but otherwise it was assumed that he would be successful.

For now, he needed to get out of this airport and establish himself in this city. Perhaps he might ingratiate himself to any of the Russian criminal groups while he was here. Vostrikov had supplied him with the names of a few associates that might prove useful. Perhaps he would play tourist for a time. There was even the chance he might see Robert Redford on the streets.