Chapter 07
Nova and Sara gave each other an expression that spoke volumes. It was amazing at what these people had built. An underground network of housing, war rooms, utilities, and other necessary places that large numbers of people need. It was incredible, considering that they were supposedly in a war time situation…which was made more and more likely as they kept going. One man with PTSD was easy to find…but there were hundreds of people in the compound. Men in armor and guns protecting the women and children.
However, the stares were very unnerving. Every human they ran into stared at the girls with wide eyes and disbelieving expressions. "Can they not do that? It's really starting to freak me out." Sara muttered.
John gave them a quick grin, "You aren't dirty. Your clothes aren't worn or ragged. You have no scars or wounds. I couldn't make them stop staring even if I wanted to. And I don't want them to… you are the very image of the world we want to create with the end of this war."
Nova blew out a breath as they came to the biggest war room she had seen yet. It had several different people in it, whom she assumed were commanders and other strategists. "Okay, can you explain this again? We believe that you've had a war. It was a devastating one too. We saw outside. We get it…but only 3 billion dead? In a nuclear holocaust? It's not possible. Not to mention, what is Skynet?" Every single person who could hear her questions froze and turned around to stare even harder at the pair. The shock in their faces was clear. A few were amazed. A couple hopeful. Nova rolled her eyes in irritation. "And we are back to the staring. But I mean it. What is Skynet? You said a machine. What kind of machine?"
John shook his head at their ignorance. "Skynet is an A.I. that became self-aware in 1997—"
"You said that. You're repeating yourself. I'll clarify. What is it? You said A.I. I know at least four different people that could be confused with an Artificial Intelligence, just because they are that smart. Scary smart. Still, they are living people." She gestured around her. "They wouldn't inspire this…and any weapon would kill them if you hit the right spot."
John shook his head again in exasperation, "We just had the Colorado team take down Skynet's central core processor. I mean a machine. Gears. Metal. No living parts in it at all. A computer on steroids. A machine."
Sara cocked her head slightly and looked over at Nova. "Well, that changes some things. Can't be the Valeyard or the Time Lord Victorious if he's a machine. Or the Doctor."
"But why does he look exactly like the Doctor then? That makes no sense. If they are right of course." Nova glanced at John, "Did you actually verify it's a machine? Try a heart monitor, that sort of thing?"
"Infrared caught nothing but room temp. Is that sufficient?" he almost growled in annoyance.
Nova nodded absently as her mathematical mind ran through the problem. Then an idea came to her and her eyes went wide in fear and horror. She looked up at her sister in shock. "I think I've figured it out…I know why he looks like the Doctor…oh Sara…this is bad…if I'm right…I don't know that we can fix it…"
John's eyes sharpened as he gestured to one of his officers to start recording what the girls were saying. He hoped he could keep up with their logic.
Sara was more focused on the redhead. "What? What could be worse than the Valeyard?" She couldn't think of anything or anyone.
"What is the one A.I. that we know of?" Nova asked her quietly, "The one being that knows exactly what the Doctor looks like…" she trailed off, seeing if Sara reached the same conclusion she herself had.
Sara frowned for several seconds before the confusion cleared and her eyes widened in horror. "The TARDIS? You think Skynet is the TARDIS?"
"I don't think so. Probably just an avatar. But think about it. It makes sense. He looks exactly like Eleven. Why? Well…what would happen if the TARDIS lost the Doctor?" Nova looked ready to cry at this point, her heart breaking at the possibility.
John intruded, "Wait. What is a TARDIS?"
Both girls shifted to look at him. Sara explained, "A TARDIS is a ship that can travel in space and time. The thing is that all TARDIS have a very tight bond with their Pilot. They have a living mind inside that ship. A type of A.I. if you will. As long as they have their Pilot, they are just like every other ship. It's when one of their crew is in distress that the TARDIS does things on its own. Rescues, unlocking doors, things like that. But if the Pilot of a TARDIS ever dies…"
Nova picked up the dialogue, "…then the ship can go insane from despair. The Doctor is the Pilot of the last TARDIS. There are no more. No more TARDIS's and no more Time Lords. They are the last."
"One of the things the Doctor did more than anything else was help humanity. Keep humans from killing themselves, or being invaded by alien species."
"If the Doctor is killed, then the TARDIS may try to take it out on humanity itself."
"But first it would need an avatar. Some way that it can interact with the things around it. Remember, it's a ship. It can only do so much. It's not bipedal like us."
"And the best avatar for the TARDIS would be the Doctor."
John's eyes had gone from girl to girl as they explained their theory.
Sara's heart started to sink, feeling utterly horrified. The Doctor here was dead if what Nova's conclusion was true. "It's just so…." She swallowed. "When my universe was destroyed, a TARDIS saved me." She remembered the thoughts about the dying TARDIS in the void space from the Doctor's mind. "She gave up the rest of her energy to help me survive and…."
"She bonded with you, Sara because of your Time Lord TNA." Nova told her sister quietly, feeling her grief. "This TARDIS had no one to bond with. Nothing. She just went mad."
Sara took a deep breath and nodded. She had to come to terms with this. "But, we have Time Lord TNA. Nova, you likely more than I. If you could try to initiate a bond…"
Nova was thinking hard. "In this form, it will be difficult. Probably take us both. A TARDIS was always meant for more than one pilot."
John was astounded by this sudden explanation that was so contrary and in opposition to what he had been brought up to believe. But what had he been brought up to believe? Skynet would become self-aware on a particular day and consider humans a distinct threat to its survival. He would be the leader of the human resistance. The girls spoke of time travel. If he had not seen what they could do with his own eyes, he might question their sanity but now he was suddenly having to face the impossible.
"You're saying Skynet out there was an alien time machine and space ship that was sentient." He took a deep breath.
"Is sentient." Nova clarified. "Always has been. She's usually very kind but…." Her voice trailed. She dreamed of the TARDIS. Felt her joy and her pain. This was utterly horrifying but it made sense. She had wished the TARDIS to send them away from the Doctor they were with previously and from what it seemed, she travelled from one TARDIS to another. Nova had just the TARDIS then. One very insane avatar of the time machine she treasured.
"Kind?" John was shaking his head. "Three billion humans are dead. They're gone. We've been living in squalor, fighting to survive. Thought the machines finally fell and…"
"Time travel was used." Sara finished. "I'm sorry, John. Usually, a TARDIS would commit suicide by throwing itself into a sun or would go into the Void." She saw the look of confusion on his face. "The cushion between dimensions. But once in a while, a TARDIS can go mad. Without the Doctor here, that's a possibility."
"So say, you're right." John clenched his jaw. "How do we kill him?"
"Kill a TARDIS?" Nova looked at him circumspect. "You don't. We just told you it takes the power of the sun to destroy it. Otherwise, the life span is infinite." She shook her head. This was an utterly worse scenario than they encountered before and the avatar didn't seem to realize who he used to be. "Perhaps that's part of the problem." She raised her eyebrows at John. "Why she's taking this out on humans was because perhaps her host died as a result of humans. All that time spent saving your world, the very universe, and he died from a human attack." She could consider numerous scenarios where that might have occurred. "You think his TARDIS wouldn't be upset about that?"
"But none of us were responsible if that actually happened!" John exclaimed. "And that doesn't give a reason to kill three billion people."
"No, it doesn't. We're just trying to explain why she focused on humans in particular." There was sadness in Sara's tone as well. After all, she had TARDIS energy in her cells. This atrocity ran deeply with her. She considered the rules of time in this case but she didn't know whether this Judgment Day was a fixed point. The TARDIS was capable of a number of things, time travel least among them. "Time can be rewritten." She repeated the Doctor's words. "But this?" Oh, she felt them too inexperienced for this kind of damage. She didn't want to risk a devastating paradox. She looked at her sister for help.
Nova bit her lip as she tried to concentrate. Suddenly, she hit her knees as she let out a choked scream. Tears filled her eyes as she looked up at her sister. "It's the TARDIS. I'm sure of it…she's screaming, Sara. She's screaming. In rage and anger. It's all she's doing. It's all she's been doing for years." She sniffed. "We can't let this happen. We can't. Please…I know it's against the rules. I know it is…but please…let's fix it. Please."
"Hell yes we fix it!" John Connor yelled, making both girls look at him in shock. They had forgotten him. He hauled Nova to her feet and glared at her in the eyes, all of his command coming to the fore as he became a general. "You are going to do anything you have to. I don't care if it's against your rules. You do it."
Nova shook her head, "You don't understand. The Rules of Time are absolute. Even if we succeed…you will all die."
John jerked back at that to stare at her in disbelief. "What are you saying?"
Sara brushed her hair away from her face. "This is why we told you not to use time travel. You don't know the rules. You don't understand what you are doing. If we do as you say and go back and save the Doctor…or if we can't save the Doctor and just manage to connect with his TARDIS before the avatar is created… It will prevent all of this from happening."
"That's the point!" He yelled.
Nova sighed, "You don't get it. You will no longer be yourself. The John Connor that will be born will have no idea who or what Skynet is. No memories of his mother teaching him to be a general. We will be creating a new timeline. This timeline will cease to exist. Everyone here will die. New versions of them will be born. They won't be them anymore, because their memories will be different. They won't be soldiers fighting a war. They will be parents or teachers or a host of other possibilities. Don't you understand? If we do this, we will be the cause of more deaths than your Skynet. We will be the cause of every single human, plant, animal, and bacteria to be crushed. And not just on this planet, but every planet. We will kill trillions of species." She shook her head as she looked over at Sara, "and I think I want to anyway. She is in so much pain, Sara. She hasn't stopped screaming for decades…"
"We never wanted to fight in a war." John Connor insisted.
"We know that." Sara closed her eyes. "But….what we are talking about is essentially destroying your universe. Your reality." She looked at her sister. "However, if the TARDIS as Skynet with the damage that's been done to time. Causing paradoxes in the past…" She shook her head as Nova nodded. "This timeline might be dying already." She knew there were a lot of aborted timelines and Sara knew that in the timeline the Master created, time was reversed. All the people of that time frame essentially died. Obliterated from existence. But if this got any worse, it could have an effect on other universes surrounding this one. The number of casualties would simply increase.
"You need to fix it." John's voice softened, starting to understand what they were telling him. A new timeline would be created. He wouldn't exist but another John Connor would. One that might have his family involved. Maybe he would get married and have children of his own. Take a real profession. But this version of him would die. Wasn't he willing to die? He had struggled to prevent Judgment Day before but it didn't work. Of course, it didn't work. He swallowed. "If we caused this…" He looked at his people. From what these girls told him, their chances of survival were now very low. And he remembered the agony of what that machine tried to do to him.
"We have to stop this Nova." Sara said. "This timeline. It's so badly damaged…" Her voice trailed.
"But where in time do we go?" Nova asked. "We don't know when the Doctor died."
"Well, this 'Judgment Day'." Sara started. "August 29, 1997, you said?" She asked John Connor who nodded simply. "The TARDIS can go anywhere in time. She might pick that particular day as one of significance. The day the Doctor died. The day, she went back after decades of agony and took her vengeance." That still left another quandary. Neither girl was adept at traveling through time without the TARDIS to assist. "I mean, I don't know if that day makes sense or it was a random choice." Sara muttered. "But if it is that date, how do we get there?"
Nova shook her head. "No, we have to go further than that. That was just the day that Skynet woke up. The TARDIS must have been programming her avatar since before that. Not much before that though. It is a TARDIS after all. If we go to the beginning of August, we should be able to catch it…I think. With the possibility of waiting for a while."
"Still, how do we get there?"
John cleared his throat and gazed at them with a raised eyebrow. "You did just come from a time travel device."
Both girls paled, "That thing? That's worse than Jack's Vortex Manipulator by at least a factor of one hundred! It would probably even cause pain to the user."
"Yeah, that's not even a skyhopper. It's more a horse-drawn carriage."
John had no idea what they were talking about, but he did catch that they were afraid. "Is there an alternative?" he asked quietly. "We are ready to lay down our lives to end this war. We can get you in."
Nova grimaced again but slowly nodded. "Sara, I don't think there's a choice. Every time I've used my connection to the TARDIS to travel, it's been between dimensions. We want to stay in this one. Though…there is one thing we need before we can leave." She looked over at John with determination. "I need to get to your science department. Engineering."
Sara raised an eyebrow, "What are you planning?"
"What else? We need a screwdriver…I'm going to build one."
John was confused again, but he gestured to a commander. Instantly, he held a flathead screwdriver and offered the handle to Nova. "Will this work?" the girls looked down and then giggled.
"Sonic screwdriver, John. I'm going to build a sonic screwdriver."
"Wait, Nova." Sara intervened. She knew they were tired and were both apt to forgetting. "You took the Doctor's sonic. The other one. Before we got here. You still have that right?"
Nova's face flushed as she searched her pocket, pulling the tool out. "Sorry." She said to her sister. "That's right. Before we ran out of the TARDIS."
"There's a problem." John said from behind the two girls and they turned to look at him. "You're trying to bring a device through the time displacement field. Nothing non-organic will go. No metal, no clothing and-"
"You're serious." Sara asked. "That's why Kyle Reese wasn't wearing any clothes?"
"Well, it certainly wasn't to make a fashion statement." John muttered. "It's just the rule of the device. Not one I made either."
Sara's expression pulled into a frown as she glanced at Nova. She knew that her sister had likely used her to wish them between dimensions but even if she could utilize her energy to travel back in time, she would have no control over it….but the machine might.
She thought for a moment. "What if I channel my energy through the device and around us like a buffer or a field to carry us through? It carried me through the void." She offered.
"But can you sustain it?" Nova asked with concern.
"Probably for twenty to thirty seconds." She winced. "You probably won't be in pain when you get there. We get to keep our clothes on but…." Sara hesitated.
"But….?"
"Well, there will be a good ten to fifteen minutes I won't be able to move." Sara looked at Nova. "I'll need your help then."
"Ten to fifteen minutes." Nova nodded. "I should be able to manage that." She had to until her sister got her strength back. At least they would get back to the specific point in time. She turned to John. "Thank you for doing this. All your sacrifices. We'll try to make it worth it but I'm sorry. Really sorry, this has to happen."
John merely looked saddened. "At least there will be a me out there doing what I always wanted, living a normal life. My mother always taught me there is no fate but what you make for yourself."
Sara thought about all the future knowledge they had but how things could change depending on the presence of the person involved. How the course of events could be altered in dramatic and unexpected ways.
"There's still free will, John." Sara told him. "If this works, in this new timeline, people can still decide their own fate."
"Will that version of me see either of you there?" John asked in hesitation.
"If we succeed," Nova offered a sad smile. "We might check in, but you won't remember us."
"Promise you'll do it anyway." He insisted and both girls assented. Sara felt tears in her eyes as she followed John back through the corridors. This time the squadron accompanied them. With the avatar out there, they couldn't take chances. Sara thought it was a risk but Nova in turn saw the necessity. An insane avatar. She needed to be kept busy, disoriented if they were going to have a chance to reach the time device.
And it seemed such precautions were fundamental. The avatar was right there waiting for them. "I calculated that you were certain to return." The voice was flat and chilling.
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