Title: A TechCom Trainee's Journal

Chapter 11: Entries 29-30


Entry #29 10-03-2027

I saw her again. This time she just seemed to be patrolling the armory in the main barracks area. I stopped her again and looked into her empty eyes. It pained me so much to see her like this. Allison was once to full of life. So "feisty" as Kyle had said. Now, she seemed to be as blank as a machine. I started to get choked up thinking about what she must have gone through to make her this way. "Allison..." I choked.

"I told you four days ago. My name is not Allison. It's Cameron. You must have mistaken me for..."

I shook her shoulders before she could finish and pleaded with her. "No! Allison. Allie. Please. You have to remember. I loved... I love you." I stared deep into her hollow eyes as I spoke, and for a brief moment, I saw life return to them. It wasn't for more than a few seconds, but for that moment in time I saw my Allie return to me. I saw not only life, but love in her eyes as they started to glisten with tears. "Allie?" I said, meekly, almost scared of the response I would get. Her mouth hung open for a second before uttering a sound.

"I..." was all she got out before her face went completely devoid of any emotion again. I could almost see Allison being dragged away from me down a dark tunnel, clawing at the floor until she was out of sight and all I was left staring at were the black-holes of lifeless nothingness that were this... Cameron's pupils. I wanted to scream. It was like losing her all over again.

"You need to leave this area unless you have a signed order for a munitions withdrawal."

"What? No! You can't do this to me! Allison! Come back!" I protested, but all she did was grab the collar of my shirt and lead me to the door of the armory. She shoved me through the door and slammed it behind me. All I could do to restrain myself from breaking down and weeping right there was to start punching the concrete wall with my bare fists and scream "No! No! No!!! No!!!"

After a few blows to the concrete, my knuckles were beginning to bleed. Before I could hurt myself any more, I felt a hand on my shoulder, and a voice behind me saying, "Hey. There's something you need to know." I turned around to see that the owner of the voice was General Connor.

He told me everything. A couple weeks ago, a search and rescue team had brought Allison back to the bunker. She appeared to be nearly dead, and was reported to have been mumbling that she wanted to see her father. It wasn't Allison at all. It was a machine. A goddamned machine built to look exactly like Allison. She... IT killed six guards and two medics when she/it re-activated when John entered the infirmary. It would have killed him and completed its mission if John had not electrocuted her/it with a high-powered stun-gun and promptly removed her/its CPU. Over the course of a week, John reprogrammed it and scrubbed its memories. He said it had detailed files on Allison. It knew everything about her, and had a complete personality copy of Allison in its "brain". Maybe that's what I saw back at the armory. This "Allison persona" built into Cameron's chip, must have resurfaced momentarily. But how? John said he scrubbed the memory of Allison from her chip.

I asked him if its chip had any information on Allison's current whereabouts. I was almost sure of the answer, but I needed to know. I needed closure. I needed to know if that thing walking around was the last entity of Allison's existence, or if she was still alive somewhere. He didn't have to answer though. The sadness in his expression and the heartbreak in his eyes told me that he had seen things on Cameron's chip that no father should ever have to witness. I felt sorrier for him at that point than I did for myself.

When I asked him how I could have seen Allison's persona resurface momentarily when I confronted Cameron, he admitted that he did not delete the personality function; only Cameron's memories of Allison. He told me he couldn't bear to delete "Allison", because it was all he had left of his daughter. Even though it's not really Allison, and even though I know it's just a program, I kind of understand where he is coming from. I find myself wanting to go find Cameron in hopes that I might spend another few seconds with my Allie. I know this isn't mentally healthy, but I can't help it.

"John," I told him, "You need to delete 'Allison', for both our sakes." He turned his head away from me to hide that fact that he couldn't fight back his tears any longer, but I saw a drop of clear liquid fall to the floor.

"I know," he responded.

Entry #29 11-27-2027

It's been nearly two months now, and I'm just starting to get over the initial grief enough to be able to write about how it played out.

The day after John and I had our talk about deleting "Allison" from Cameron's chip, I set out to find Cameron to possibly get one last moment with "Allison" before she would be deleted. Of all places, I found her standing outside Allison's old quarters, just staring at the door. Our conversation went something like this:

"Cameron? What are you doing here?"

"I don't know. Something about this location seems significant."

Was she remembering? I had no idea. "It's the door to Allison's quarters. Do you remember Allison?" I asked her.

"No. However I have a personality function titled 'Allison Young' locked in a secure sector of my chip. She was someone you knew?"

"Yes. She was my girlfriend... well... more than that. We were lovers, and I'm sure that she would have one day been my wife if she hadn't been..." I couldn't finish the sentence.

"Cameron, how come Allison's personality resurfaced the other day when I was talking to you? And why did it only stay active for a few seconds?" Immediately I realized that I had just called a Terminator by name, and referred to my lost love as an "it". It was disgusting.

"Something you said triggered a response from the personality function known as 'Allison Young', causing it to attempt to take control."

"Attempt?"

"Yes. It was not successful. If it were to take full control of my motor functions, it would be very difficult to regain control of myself. Usually a hard-reset is required to relinquish control back to the base program," she explained.

"How does one perform a hard-reset," I asked, innocently.

"The most common and simplest method is to remove my main CPU chip, wait a few seconds for the memory buffers to clear, then reinsert it and reactivate me."

After a few seconds of contemplation, I took a deep breath and said, "Cameron?"

"Yes?" she responded with an inquisitive look.

"I... I'd like to say goodbye to Allison."

She tilted her head slightly. "You wish for me to relinquish control to the Allison Young persona?"

"Yes. I'll do a hard reset when I'm finished. I swear."

She nodded, but with reluctance. "Okay."

I opened the door to Allison's quarters and motioned Cameron to step inside also, then closed the door once she was inside. "Alright, I'm ready," I told her.

After a few seconds, her face changed. Not physically really, but just...changed. I don't know how else to explain it. Allison was back. I couldn't stop myself from embracing and kissing her on the lips. Yes... I was kissing a machine, but I didn't care. At that moment she wasn't a machine to me... she wasn't "Cameron running a program of Allison". She was Allison. I was thoroughly happy to be reunited with her, and at the same time I marveled at the intricacy of Skynet's copy of Allison's personality. She responded to my kiss exactly how Allison would have. How could Skynet have known about the subtle, nuanced movements her tongue makes? Or about how she moans under her breath sometimes when we share a deep, passionate kiss? Even the way she tangles her fingers in my hair. It was so good I had to remind myself to stop.

I pulled away from our embrace and looked into her eyes, which immediately started to tear up. "I'm not really here, am I?" she softly asked.

"No, Allison. You're not."

"I'm dead. I can't be here. What's going on? Please help me." Her lower lip was quivering as she fought the deluge of tears that wanted to pour from her eyes.

This was much more painful that I thought it would be. I thought I was going to be the one grieving and finally finding some twisted form of closure. I hadn't expected her to be doing the same. She knows she died, but I couldn't tell her that she was trapped inside the very machine that killed her. "Allie... I can't explain this but we don't have much time."

She squeezed some tears from her eyes and nodded, understanding that whatever was happening was not natural, and could not last.

I locked eyes with her, and told her, "Before you go away again, I just needed to tell you I how much I loved you, how much I still love you, and how much I'll love you forever."

A look of happiness seemed to wash over her face as she took in what I had said. "Ditto," she said, smirking.

"Smart ass," I responded, making both of us chuckle a bit, breaking up the tears.

"I actually have something for you," she said as she wiped her eyes and stood up. I watched her step over to her locker, work the combination dial and open it up. She reached in and grabbed a sealed envelope with my name written on the front.

"This letter is for you," she said when she handed it to me. "I wrote it in case I never made it back from West Hollywood. Read it once I'm gone."

I didn't know what to say, so I just nodded and put the letter in my pocket for safe keeping. What came next was probably the hardest thing I have ever had to do. I had to remove Allison from my life for good.

"Allison..." I said, tenderly holding her face with both of my hands as I kissed her one last time. "It's time to go."

Her eyes were welling up with tears again as she said, "Okay."

"Goodbye, Allison Young. I'll always love you." I moved my left hand from her cheek to her scalp, and found that the skin had already been cut like a flap from when John had removed her chip to reprogram her.

"And I'll always love you," she whispered and closed her eyes in preparation for the end of whatever kind of experience this was for her. "Goodbye."

I had to summon all of my willpower to pull the chip out, but I did. Luckily for me, Allison had her eyes closed when I removed it, so I didn't have to look at the vapid lifelessness of them again. None the less, I still broke down and cried, holding her in my arms for quite some time.

After what may he been hours, after I just couldn't cry anymore, I laid her body down on Allison's cot, and left her quarters with Cameron's chip in my hand. I took it to John so he could delete the Allison persona once and for all. All he told me was "I'll take care of it," so I set the chip on his desk and left.