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I woke up to the feel of fingers going through my hair. Blinking the sleep from my eyes, I looked to see Cameron standing next to me.
"You fell asleep at your desk, doing homework," she said. If there was one fringe benefit of being a Metal, it was not showing her embarrassment from getting caught playing with my hair.
I sat up, rubbing the heels of my palms against my eyes. "I finished my homework hours ago," I said, glancing at my alarm clock. It read 1:27 AM. "This is a…personal project." My desk was literally covered in books. Agriculture, green house construction, indoor gardening, food preservation, education, old clothing manufacturing methods, old style blacksmithing methods, holistic and natural medicines, a couple books on FBI profilers, even a tattered copy of "The Art of Warfare.".
"What is all this, John?"
"It occurred to me a couple weeks ago, that fighting a war was more than just strategy and tactics. We'll need food, water, shelter, equipment, things we'll have to build, because we won't be able to salvage it from before Judgment Day, or steal it from Skynet. We'll need to be able to make our own medicine, either from raw chemicals, or stuff we can grow in indoor greenhouses." I stopped my rambling, trying to stretch the kinks out of my neck, back and shoulders.
The cyber girl started to kneed my shoulders, releasing the tension there. "Why the books on profilers?"
I wasn't sure how to explain that without insulting her. "Profilers know how the criminal mind works, and figure out ways to stop them without becoming criminals themselves, at least most of them don't. I want to know that it's possible to understand how Skynet thinks without becoming a homicidal psychopathic slave master bent on world domination and the eradication of an entire race in order to protect myself." I shuddered slightly. In a way, Skynet was worse than a slave driver. Without being able to sleep, Terminators didn't even get to dream of being free. I could only imagine being programmed to do things without conscience thought. In a Fleshling, it would be the equivalent of mental rape.
"Does it bother you that much?"
"Some people believe that you have to become your enemy in order to fight your enemy."
"Do you believe that?"
I frowned. How do I explain this to her? Best to start with something she already understood. "I assume you know what an atomic clock is."
"Yes. My power cells run on cold fusion, and double as atomic clocks."
"So you know that those clocks have an error factor of three seconds every thousand years."
"Yes. Where are you going with this, John?"
"Have you ever wondered how we know they have that error in them?" She shook her head. I pointed out the window above my desk. "The stars, Cam." I dropped my voice, allowing it to take on a hint of awe. "The constellations move with such mathematical precision that you can measure an atomic clock against their rotations.
"Back before they had GPS, navigational beacons, and stuff like that, sailors on the open seas used the stars to navigate, to chart their courses to their destinations.
"Being the Savior of Humanity may be my final destination, but I get to choose what star I follow, what course I chart to get there. I can choose what kind of savior I'll become.
"I believe that I can fight Skynet by being the opposite of what it is. Mercilessness with compassion. Cold logic versus being as unpredictable as possible. Being machine like against thinking outside the box. Fighting cold hard steel with blazing passion," I chuckled. "Poor boy will never know what hit him."
I looked up to see if she got what I was trying to say. She was staring at me intently, with what I could only describe as an expression of quiet pride. "You really are a remarkable man, John." It was the first time I think she actually saw me for me, rather than HIM. She swung around rather abruptly. "You should get to bed. Call me if you need me, okay?" She started to leave.
"Negative. The T-1000 will defiantly try to reacquire you there."
"You sure?"
"I would."
Uncle Bob's words echoed in my brain. Similar creations could use their own instincts to predict what others of their kind would do.
Could I use what I would do to predict what future/alternate me would do?
If I was forty years old, no family, tired of the constant struggle, incredibly lonely (I imagine my Lt's are a bit like Mom, not liking me to go out on missions because "I'm too important") and found a Terminator that looked like Cam, what would I do with her? If you found a "child" of your enemy, abandoned, possibly mentally abused, what would be the honorable, humane thing to do?
"He was your father, wasn't he?" I blurted the words out, causing Cameron to freeze half way to the door.
She doesn't answer, but then, she doesn't really need to. It's exactly what I would have done. As the Savior of Humanity, it would have been impossible for him to have a relationship with anyone. Cameron would have been his only chance at anything resembling a family. In an insane world , the Terminator/girl would have been the sanest choice. Everything had come full circle, for him at least.
I slump in my chair, and let the regrets of the last several months wash over me. "I'm sorry, Cam. I'm sorry for all of it. I'm sorry that I treated you like a machine. I'm sorry I assumed you were programmed at all. I'm sorry I assumed alternate me sent you back. For all I know, something happened to me up time and you sent yourself back. I'm sorry for blowing you off that day at the gas station. I'm sorry you were betrayed by somebody you trusted in another life. Most of all, I'm sorry for defending you against Mom and Derek, then turning around and treating you the same way they did. You were a ready scapegoat for all the Skynet related crap I have to deal with." Sometime during my rant, Cam had crossed the room, and, proving yet again just how human she was becoming, actually pulled me to her in a hug. "I'm so sorry, Cam."
"It's alright, John," she said softly. Because I was sitting down, and she was standing up, my head ended up pillowed on her stomach. Once more, she began to run her fingers though my hair. "I knew you'd figure it out eventually."
"No, Cam! It's not alright! You deserve better than that!" I wrapped my arms around her waist, and continued in a quieter voice. "I expected better of myself than that." Uncle Bob would be turning over in his metaphorical grave right about now.
Cameron pulled back so she could look me in the eye. "A very wise man once told me, 'What idiot wants the weight of the world on his shoulders?' I do understand, John." It was amazing how hands as strong as hers could be as gentle as they were then. Taking my head between her hands, she held me steady, as she seemed to search my eyes-my soul-for something. Giving a tiny nod, as if she had found what she had been looking for, she let me go. "Do you have a knife?"
The sudden change in subject caught me off guard. "Um, yeah ," I stumbled, "I should have a survival knife in here somewhere."
Cameron waited as I rooted around in my desk drawer for the requested knife. She took it from my suddenly trembling hand. What exactly was she planning?
She checked the knife's sharpness on her finger (although I don't know why: with Mom around, every knife in the house tended to be in tip top shape). She set the knife back on the desk.
Then she took off her shirt.
Okay, I admit it. I stared at her naked chest. I mean, honestly, how much was I supposed to take? Any guy who wouldn't stare at a half naked Cameron Phillips is either gay or blind. (Although I think even the gay ones would look and go "Damn, girl!") I stood there with my mouth hanging open, at least until my mind caught up with my raging hormones.
"Cam!" it came out a startled squeak, as I spun around to put my back to her.
Her response was an all too human giggle. (She giggled?) "You've seen me naked before, John."
"Oh, yeah," I said sarcastically. "Like I had so much time to enjoy the view when I was standing naked on an LA freeway, with my equally naked mother standing next to us." Talk about killing the mood.
"Please, John," she whispered, putting her hand on my shoulder. "I want-I need you to see this."
I'm such a wuss. I just couldn't say no to that pleading tone in her voice. I turned back around, locking my eyes with hers. Thru sheer force of will, I never once looked down. She needed me to be mature about this, so that was exactly what I would be.
Picking up the knife again, she began cutting into herself. The first cut was just under her collar bone, starting at one shoulder and going across to the other. The second was just under her rib cage. The third started at the middle of the first, just under her throat, dropped down her cleavage, and connected at the middle of the second cut.
After returning the now bloody knife to the desk, she dug her fingers into the third cut, and pulled. The organic skin separated from the metal endoskeleton with a splotching noise. Then, her shining ribcage swung open, and I finally looked down.
There, nestled between the two airbags that allowed her to simulate breathing, was a circuit board, with six memory sticks in it.
"Cam, what is that?"
"That," she said, in a voice so quiet, so…intimate (Yes, you can be intimate without it being sexual)…that it took my breath away, "is my heart."
I stared at it for several seconds. "You…have a heart?"
The "I believe I just said that" look on her face was priceless. "Yes."
I couldn't help it. I started laughing. Soon, I was laughing so hard I fell off my chair.
Cameron just watched me with…was that a look of amused affection?…the entire time. "What's so funny?"
"The Tin Man," I choked out, in between guffaws. "The Tin Man already had a heart when they went to see the Wizard. Mom's been calling you Tin Miss for months, and you already had a heart!" That was just too funny. Ironic even. Wait a minute…
"That's why you didn't get bent out of shape about it." Nobody could get one past me. Sharp as a marshmallow I was. "It wasn't that it didn't hurt you because you were a Machine, it was that you knew something she didn't!"
Cam's answering grin was a tad bit smug. Who am I kidding? It was really smug.
"Why do you have this, Cam? I mean, it doesn't look like it was part of your original design, and Skynet wouldn't have a reason to give you a heart anyway."
"You gave it to me, Mr. Wizard."
I did? "Why would I do that?"
"Because I asked you to."
That was probably one of the things that annoyed me most about Cameron being a Metal.. Like most computers, she only answered the questions that were put to her. "Okay, how bout you give answers that are more that one sentence long?"
"How about you ask a question that needs more than one sentence to answer it?" she teased back. I realized that she was doing it on purpose and gave her an annoyed glare. She immediately looked contrite.
"When I learned of the other reprogrammed Terminators going bad, I asked you to find a way to modify me so it wouldn't happen to me. This was your solution."
I frowned slightly. "Why call it a heart though?"
Cameron's voice changed slightly, not doing a full impersonation, but the inflections and tone changed enough that I realized she was quoting someone else. "Along time ago, the heart and mind were not considered separate entities. The heart was considered the hub, the center of one's being. Some of our expressions still come from this time. 'The heart of the matter' is a good example of this.
"My heart contains my core programming. Every time I reboot, I automatically transfer a copy of my program from it to my CPU. This would also stop me from being captured by Skynet's forces and re-reprogrammed. Since nobody but John and I knows it's there, as soon as I rebooted again, I'd go right back to my program." She frowned slightly. "There is a slight design flaw."
"The explosion." I really didn't have to explain which one.
"Yes. The neural pathways between my heart and my chip were damaged. I only had bits and pieces of programming to go off of. When you 'saved' me, one of the fragmented routines found a way to access my self repair systems, effectively bypassing the damage until full repairs could be made." The look of guilt and sadness on her face nearly ripped the heart of out my chest. "I'm sorry I hurt you, John."
"Skynet hurt me, Cam, not you. You were just an innocent bystander that got brainwashed into doing something you didn't want to do." I looked intently at her heart. "It's not a bad idea, though. We'll think about it some more, maybe we can find a way to further modify it so it won't happen again."
"You…you'd do that for me?" she asked, as she carefully swung her chest closed.
I rolled my eyes. "We're friends, Cam. I'd do anything to help you. Don't you know that by now?"
