I'm taking a break for a few days to sort some things out. Have a safe new year.


Chapter 11

They drove straight through, stopping only to refuel the truck and their bodies until they reached Ft Stockton, TX and then Sheldon declared a 'rest day' and he found a nice clean motel outside of town and got them a room with two twin beds.

The clerk looked at Sheldon but took the two Ben Franklins in lieu of picture ID and Sheldon slipped him another Ben for the room.

"Need a room in the back. Twin beds. Her husband is looking for her and he's a mean bastard. Cops won't do anything about the abuse since he's a big wheel in a hick town. She's all the family I got left so I'm taking her home to San Antonio."

He deliberately misled the clerk in case any of Sky Net's mechs came looking for them. He didn't think it would come to that but he was through taking chances with her life.

The clerk's smirk told Sheldon nothing at all. His inability to 'read' subtle facial expressions was a plague on his existence. Luckily it wouldn't matter much longer.

He pulled the truck around behind the motel and told Penny the day's plans.

Penny jumped at the idea of a hot shower and getting clean and so while Sheldon unloaded the truck and then went to a diner and bought breakfast, she quickly scanned his journal and then locked herself in the bathroom, totally distraught.

She washed herself clean, washed her hair and then repeated the process. By the time Sheldon got back, she was on her third washing and still didn't feel clean.


Sheldon stood outside the locked bathroom door and knocked and called her name. He was concerned about her. Ever since they'd awakened that morning in such a compromising position, she'd seemed to withdraw from him. Sheldon was afraid of some 'female' emotional breakdown that might be sneaking up on them. He knew he had 'issues'. He could handle them but he had no idea how to handle anything that might rise up in Penny after such a series of physical and emotional traumas.

"Penny, I'm going to break down this door if you don't open it immediately. I need to make sure you're okay, Penny, nothing more. Please open this door…"

He couldn't hear anything other than the shower and so he forced the door open using Cameron's combat knife that she'd given him as a 'going away' present. It was razor sharp and made of the same metal that Terminator skeletons were made of and thus virtually unbreakable and slipped between the door and the tongue of the lock easily.

He pulled back the shower curtain and tried to 'find' her in the steam. Sheldon reached in to turn off the water but Penny had other ideas.

"No!" She grabbed him and wrapped her arms around him, dragging him into the hot stream. He tried to break loose but she had the advantage of surprise and leverage. He was trying not to fall into the tub while she was already in it and thus had the advantage.

"Pen – " he tried to get her attention but she was in a full-blown panic, turned so far inward that he didn't know if he could bring her out of it. He remembered what Omaha had done Up Time and then the PG-version that Cameron had used to calm him and help him center himself in reality again. He would leave himself in her hands and pray that he made the right decision.

He simply gave up, surrendered, allowed the weight of his world push him down deep and he did so fully aware that he might not be able to come back. He did it willingly for her.

She sensed his defeat and then how he turned into rubber-man Gumby and suddenly she was the one who had her hands full dealing with dead weight.

"Sheldon! Sheldon, damn you! Help me out here. You don't get to do this to me. You don't get to leave me all alone to handle this shit, not again, not like in your precious fucking Up-Time. I can't be who you need me to be, Sheldon. I can't be your fucking Omaha, I just can't. I'm weak and she's – damn you, help me! Stand up, you stupid fuck! You helped Cameron and she's just a fucking machine! I was right! You could only get it up for a damned computer…"

Sheldon shoved her away and she ended up on her back on the cold tile floor of the bathroom. The breath was knocked out of her and he'd followed her out of the tub and was lying across her naked middle, his forehead on the cool tile. She couldn't tell if he was conscious or –

"Sheldon," she whispered, trying to get a deep breath of air into her lungs. "Sheldon, I'm hurting, and I can't help it if I'm not her – "

Sheldon practically leaped up without flexing a single muscle that she could feel. He slipped his arms under her upper back and behind her knees and carried her into the bedroom and deposited her on the bed furthest from the window and any drafts. He returned for towels and then proceeded to dry her thoroughly, ignoring how intimate some of the pats were, and how long he tended to certain spots.

"Sheldon, could you please look at me and stop what you're doing? I panicked, okay, but I feel a lot better now and I need you to take off those sopping wet clothes before you get pneumonia, okay? I won't peek if you're hung up on modesty."

He didn't move or say anything, just stared down at the wet carpet. He looked at the towel in his hand and dropped it like it was a dirty sock. His face had that vacant look she'd seen in the mirror herself earlier.

"Hey, I read a part of your journal, okay, and I have questions but you have to be alive and healthy to answer them fully so, please, go into the bathroom and get undressed and hang those wet things over the shower rod. I'll find you something to wear in your backpack."

He felt it then. The sense of déjà vu from the first night back from Up Time in his apartment. She had cared for him, kept him safe for those first hours, fed him, wrapped herself around him while he slept. Her programming had been so natural…just like this one.

"Penny, what's the cube of 17?" A casual question asked to cover his actions as he dug into his backpack for his pulse pistol. He felt sick to his stomach when he couldn't find the pistol. He eyed the motel door and wondered about his chances to escape her. He still had his knife and if he could disable her chip…

"I have no idea, Moon Pie. But is this what you're looking for?" He turned and almost smiled at the irony. She held his pulse pistol casually, almost comfortably, and it was aimed at his heart.

Penny knew what she held and she knew why he had been frantically looking for it in his backpack. She'd seen what it could do in the warehouse and her cool exterior belied the panic she felt inside.

'He thinks I'm one of them! He's in a panic just like…me!' Penny saw how pale he'd become and how his hands seemed tremble and then steady and then begin to tremble again. His control was slipping.

She tossed him the pistol and he fumbled with it before steadying himself and aiming it at her head.

"I asked you a question, Penelope. Kindly display some modicum of decorum and answer me. What is the cube of 17?" He ignored her nakedness and instead concentrated on her facial expressions.

"Fuck if I know, Moon Pie. You're the one with the computer brain, remember? I'm just the alcoholic who makes poor decisions about who I fuck, remember?"

"Yes. And I'm the weirdo who will only have successful coitus with a machine. Yes, I was there, Penny. Your comments were most insightful and I should thank you for them. I was forced to rethink my very existence and it opened new areas of investigation and study. As I told you that first night back in my apart – oh, wait, you weren't – I mean, it wasn't you who held me and – "

"Whoa! Hold it right there, Sheldon. Are you saying we had sex?"

"Of course not. Although you did seem more approachable but perhaps it was only because 'you'," and here he made air quotes that brought a smirk to Penny's lips, "were a machine and I could only become erect and functioning as a true male with a machine."

She almost whispered her retort. "I'm sorry for saying that, Sheldon. It was mean and – "

"It was the truth and sometimes the truth hurts. I can't relate to human females. Perhaps that why I get along so well with Cameron. She's a synthetic person or didn't you know that?"

"The brunette who pulled me out of the cage? She's a terminator thing? But – "

"She was a terminator, Penny, but the General reprogrammed her to be a…a companion. He and I were a lot alike, Penny, are a lot alike, I mean. We both relate better to synthetics than people although John will never admit that he loves Cameron as a true woman."

"And you and this Cameron…did you ever, I mean, well, the way she was so upset with you leaving…"

"She's John's, Penny. She was and is simply my friend."

"But she's a fucking machine, Shel…she's not really a person at all. She's like one of your laptops only in a nicer package."

"She saved me, Penny, Up Time. I almost went crazy with fear and – and she talked to me. Hell, no one believed me at first except for her and the General. When you stabbed me – "

"What! Wait a damned minute. I was there in the future? I stabbed you? What the fuck, Sheldon!"


Journal Entry – date unknown – entries by Cameron Philips and Dr. Sheldon Cooper

Once I was stabilized and stitched up, she started asking questions. Pain meds were almost unheard of here and what little they did have was reserved for the 'severely injured'. I guess my injuries weren't 'severe'.

Her voice was pleasant. She had no accent. Her words were carefully chosen and at times seemed almost apologetic but she asked the same questions over and over, sometimes not even restating them to confirm a previous answer.

'Why would a member of our Resistance stab you? Do you know Omaha? She says you're metal, a new model of terminator. Are you?'

'I don't even know who 'Omaha' is. I didn't get to see much of her face but what I did see was hate-filled.'

'She says she was married to you and that you died of radiation sickness. You don't appear to be sick, Dr. Cooper.'

'I take care of myself and limit my exposure to situations where I might encounter pathogens. Cleanliness doesn't seem to rate high on people's priorities around here.'

Her laugh was a joy to hear. I couldn't see her, of course, because she was standing at the head of the stretcher/bed I was lying on and I could not turn my head.

'One of the comments Lt. Reese made when he captured you was that you were 'too clean' to be from this time period. So, what year are you from and how did you get here? Who sent you and why? Are you some new kind of model for infiltration? If you want water, you'll have to earn it, Dr. Cooper.'

'So I am a prisoner. Who are you people? Terrorists? I came here for the purpose of learning. I am a theoretical physicist and I am one of the five most intelligent people on the planet. My disappearance – '

'Why would your wife try to kill you, Dr. Cooper?'

'Wife? I assure you I am not married. I have no interests in relationships. They are too time-consuming and I have my research goals. I was simply proving the existence of alternate universes running parallel to my own. I did the math, developed the controller and made 43 successful transits to other time lines before stumbling into this one. I have no need of females and their confusing ways. Besides, I have it on the highest authority that I would only respond sexually to a machine since I have no real emotions.'

'So far, Dr. Cooper, I've catalogued fear, anger, dismay, pride and lastly self-pity. None of those are of a sexual nature of course, Doctor, but I'm sure I'll recognize others. It's one of my programmed skill sets – recognizing the thoughts behind emotions, suppressed or not, in human beings. And I'm very good, Doctor.'

'You're – you're a program? I'm talking to a computer program? Fascinating.'

She stepped into my field of vision and smiled. I'll never forget the surge of emotions I felt when first I saw her. She was about 20 and very beautiful with eyes that seemed to bore into my soul.

'Hi, Doc. I'm Cameron and I think you and I have a lot to discuss. But for purposes of experimentation only…"

She leaned down and kissed me and I had never felt such a surge of emotions in all my life.

"Hmm. Interesting. I detect all the signs of sexual arousal catalogued in my database. Let's try that again, for experimental purposes, of course.'


Penny looked crushed and closed the spiral ring notebook and tossed it on the bed. Sheldon had persuaded her to read his initial entries for 'purposes of understanding the situation a little better' while they ate.

"You kissed her?" Her chin quivered and she scrunched her eyes closed as if she could squeeze out the mental image she had of Sheldon and the brunette. She ran into the bathroom and curled up in the corner and started to sob.

I made him like this. Me and my drunkenness and shitty decisions. I've lost him to a fucking pretty machine!