The Mulholland Scenic Corridor – 2007
Derek Reese kept playing it over and over in his mind as he worked his way down the slope to the landing below. All he could think of was the failed mission he and Jesse led twenty years in the future. He recalled how his men were cut down by the machines lying in wait and how he and Jesse survived.
Thomas dodged a plasma bolt before it exploded on the ground. "Come on Tommy Boy," he said to himself out loud, "you've been in worse!" He took cover behind a tree while reloading his weapon. "Blake," he cried into his headset, "how am I looking pal?"
Blake had taken a minor hit to the leg, fortunately for him plasma weapons were designed for straight kills and not to wound. It had taken a nice chunk out of his calf, but it had also cauterized the wound. He had just finished pulling off the cap of a pre- filled field syringe with his teeth when Thomas called. Give me a sec, he thought as injected the needle into his injured leg and emptied the contents of the syringe. He felt himself going into minor shock as the medication took effect. He lifted his eyes to get the perimeter reading in his headset for Thomas.
"Blake!" Thomas called, "I think I'm pinned down pal. Can you give me…?" Thomas did not finish his request, a plasma bolt cut through the tree trunk, his back, heart and out of his chest before dissipating off in the distance. Thomas barely felt it, and although it may have seemed he was aware of the gaping hole in his chest before he doubled over. He was already dead.
"Tommy!" Blake cried as he watched the soldier's life sensor fade and an enemy signal appear next to his own. "Oh shit – oh shit!" he exclaimed as the metallic red eyes of a terminator rose in front of him firing its weapon in rapid sequence. Blake didn't have a chance… The machine lifted and dangled his dead body several feet off the ground while it tapped into dead man's headset searching for the locations of the other freedom fighters on the grid while simultaneously feeding that information to the whole of Skynet's surrounding forces.
Derek and Jesse were both surrounded by heavy fire, but had good cover and were well hidden under a rocky ledge. They both turned to each other knowing the worst as Blake and Thomas fell off the grid. "They took a tap sir," Jesse reported as she spat away the soot that had accumulated around her lips. "The metals think they know where we are. They don't. …Blake's decoy rig," she said, "it triggered the moment he died." Her eyes shifted to the left and then the right. It's bought us some time"
Death is the one true constant for resistance fighters and the metals had quickly discovered that tapping into a dead humans gear often betrayed the location of other targets on the grid. The decoy rig was often the resistance fighter's last act of defiance. It could be triggered one of two ways - manually if captured or automatically at the time of death. Once activated it would feed decoy information into the sensor apparatus – an array of phantom targets for the metal's to pursue.
"Not much... No, not really…" Derek battled to keep his cool. "Decoys have fooled them one to many times. Sanchez, Henderson, Nguyen listen up," he called into his headset, "We've lost Blake and Thomas. "Decoy protocol override," he ordered. "I repeat decoy protocol override." Derek could see Jessed didn't agree with him. "Trust me." He said flatly, "We'll get trapped in our own trap if we do any less." If what Derek anticipated held true, they had a better chance of getting of here alive if they followed the presumption the enemy had not been distracted and was still bearing down on their positions.
Moments after he had given the order to hold their positions and maintain radio silence the eerie stillness of a post assault ensued. "Nothing," He whispered, "no movement at all." Then after a few minutes the metals made their move and the attack resumed. Derek was right. Had they trusted in the decoy's they'd all be dead by now.
Sanchez was the first to break radio silence. "Commander," his voice crackled, "Nguyen's been hit. He's been hurt pretty bad sir." The young Vietnamese had taken a shot to his midsection and was spitting up blood. "Gut shot sir!"
Henderson tapped his headset, "Are you in a position to provide us with cover – over."
Jesse replied "we're pinned down ourselves, but will try" She looked to Derek as if he could read her thoughts."
"On the count of three," he said, "One, two…" As Derek and Jesse rose to their feet they both of them heard a sudden burst of static in their ears. It was followed by a blinding light and a wave of compressed energy hurtling them through the air.
Derek and Jesse landed on the ground a short distance from each other. They looked to the stars and then across the clearing to each other. "Hey you guys." Derek managed to say, "Jesse and me..." But there was no one left to hear him, including Jesse who had just fainted. In a bizarre twist Derek caught a glimpse of something just within his peripheral view.
He turned his head and saw what appeared to be a pale skinned red-headed little girl wearing a white laced velvet read dress. "What..?" he managed to ask still lying on his back.
"It's alright," whispered of a little girl in the darkness, "they won't kill us here," she said.
"Who are you?" Derek asked.
The little girl answered, "My name is Savannah Weaver."
"Savannah Weaver, what are you doing here? Where are your parents?"
"I have no parents," The child's reply was as dark as the night and as threatening as little Alia Atreides announcing to the Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV that her brother Paul "Muad'dib" Atreides had arrived to seal the fate of Frank Herbert's Dune. "I was asked to wait for you here by you Derek Reese," she smiled hauntingly, "and by John Connor."
"I don't know what you're talking about," Derek squinted and examined the child more closely. "I've never seen you before."
"I assure you, what I am telling you is true," she replied. "I am the reason your John Connor sent you here and I am what your soldiers died for: A terminator that has been reprogrammed to side with the resistance and unlike the flawed T-scrubs my allegiance programming is permanent."
"All terminator models," she said, "are vulnerable to the same exploit used to modify me," the child smiled. "Skynet cannot fight what it does not know," she claimed.
Suddenly out of the darkness seemingly endless rows of blue lights rose cowering up from behind the child. They were the visual arrays of the very terminators attacking only moments before, the blue lights clearly indicating they were now functioning in override mode. "These terminators are no longer a threat to you. I have reprogrammed them."
"I don't understand," Derek said barely able to speak as he fought to stay conscious, "How?"
"Too much," she said, "First you must meet my John Connor a few miles from this location and give him this in the year 2007." She revealed a T-888 chip in her palm, but did not give it to him. "And there is one last thing you asked me to do," she said pointing in Jesse's direction. "She is pregnant with your child."
Derek had always thought it was some kind of weird dream. The only concrete memory he had from the mission was waking up days later at Serrano Point alone. And now he was here twenty years in the past hoping to answer the lingering question. Was any of what he experienced real? He was just a few miles from the location where the child machine said he'd be. He looked up at the sign that read "No Trespassing – Designated Nature Preserve," this was the place. He checked his pocket making sure he had Vic's chip. A day hadn't gone by that he didn't want to destroy it, but if the child cyborg was telling the truth the resistance was going to need it.
All the pieces were in play. Derek figured Sarah and John Connor would be showing up at any minute now and he'd finally get to the bottom of this mystery. He also thought about Jesse and how much he missed her. She was somewhere in the future on a secret mission aboard the USS Jimmy Carter and he was here in the year 2007 thinking to himself, he'd never see his soulmate again. "Have yourself checked," he remembered encouraging her the last time he saw her, but she told him he was bonkers. Since that day he has remained haunted by how the light sparkled in her eyes before she kissed him goodbye.
Derek could hear a vehicle approaching from the distance but by the sound of it; it wasn't the Connor's Dodge Ram. It sounded more like an old panel van rattling its way along the dirt road running the length of the fence. When it finally turned the corner he saw that it was a black 1950 Ford pickup.
The truck stopped and white haired man in his late sixties wearing grounds keeper's uniform got out and approached Derek. "Mind me asking what you're doing here Mister?"
"Just trying to figure out how to scale this fence," Derek answered.
"That'll get you ten to sixty in the county lockup son," the grounds keeper countered.
Derek studied the old man's face closely before confronting him, "What you say we cut the bullshit, John," Derek couldn't believe his eyes. "and you tell me what the hell is going on? You can't possibly be in your sixties and yet here you are and what about your sixteen year old counterpart?
"Well Derek," a woman's voice said behind him with the unmistakable sound of a shotgun shell being chambered. "therein lies the rub,"
Derek turned to the woman with the shotgun, "And who the hell are you?"
"Fine Thank you, and how the hell are you?" smiled the elderly woman, "John said you wouldn't know me, but I do know you, or used to know another you in my time. The Derek I know called me his favorite rat catcher." The older woman looked him over, "damn you look just like him, but you smell a hell of a lot worse." She laughed jokingly. "By the way," she lowered the shotgun having never really pointed at Derek to begin with and extended a hand, "I'm Riley, Riley Dawson Connor, and my husband and I are here because we've been on a mission to save the future for the last forty seven years."
The elderly John Connor walked past Derek to stand next to Riley, "I know this is a little much to take in, but I'm the very same John Connor you took to the park on my birthday. But I'm not the same John Connor who's on vacation right now with his mother and Cameron. Your John Connor isn't struggling with having killed a man on his sixteenth birthday as I did. You see Derek, Riley and I..." John's words hung in the air, "Well, What you say we take a ride and bring you up to speed on what we're all doing here?"
New York January 12, 1943
"This is a most unusual request Ambassador Kosanovic," replied the funeral director of the Ferncliff Cemeteryand Crematorium charged with task of cremating the final remains of Nikola Tesla."
"None the less," responded the Yugoslavian ambassador and Nikola Tesla's nephew, "My uncle's wishes are explicit; his remains are to be buried anonymously in the plot he purchased. You are to cremate an empty coffin. The ashes are to be placed in a black onyx urn and entrusted to Doctor Mica Trbojevic who will see the urn is shipped to Belgrade. I believe you have been compensated sufficiently to have secured your confidence and silence in this matter."
"Very well," answered the funeral director, "I will see to it that Mister Tesla's final wishes and your instructions are handled discretely. An empty coffin will be incinerated during the private service at the crematory chapel, and his body will be buried in an unmarked grave."