The Future Creates the Past
Cameron had been shaking for hours. Sweat soaked her skin. Her hair was matted rope. Another programming scramble had been solved. She understood fear. Fear was the point when the inability to persist past a predicted failure dominated all programming. He hated her! He had tried to destroy her, not in rage, but with a premeditated efficiency Skynet would have approved.
Two Amazon soldiers always stayed by her side. Sometimes, they pushed food on her. Mostly they held her and whispered bits of their philosophy. It was the Amazon way of comforting the wounded. Sorrow is part of the cycle. Like all parts of the cycle it will pass and return again. Sometimes the screams of her sensors abated with those words.
Acevada came into the room. She sent the soldiers away; then, sat down beside Cameron. "Derek's been sent back."
All her sensors spiraled downward. The probability of reuniting with Derek was no longer calculatable, so her existence would never be completed. She meet Acevada's gaze. "Terminate me."
"Don't be silly, hermana. You got to see Conner now." Acevada started to brush Cameron's hair.
Cameron shoved Acevada's hands away. The brush flew across the room like a grenade.
"I don't have to do anything! He doesn't have power over my programming!" Nothing controlled her now. Neither Skynet or the Human Resistance had value to her anymore. She didn't want to hurt the Amazons. She wouldn't hurt them. They had been good to her. She would leave their quarters and go where the other humans were. If she went on a rampage like the reprogrammed B6129Q, the humans would have to terminate her and termination was preferably to life without Derek Reese.
"Connor can send you back to Derek," Acevada said.
Cameron stopped. Her neuro-processors focused on the collected data she had for John Connor. He was the leader of the Human Resistance, the Great Hero of this new dark age, but often his behavior seemed less than legendary. When they were alone, he rambled for hours about the details of his life. It reminded her of Derek. Sometimes his expressions reminded her of Derek also. In fact, so much of his personality and physical appearance reminded her of Derek and Kyle, that she wondered if the Reese brothers' missions in the past involved protecting an unknown Reese relative that was somehow related to John Connor.
Acevada continued. "It'll be easier to seduce him the past. There'll be nice clothes, lots of water to bathe with, more places for privacy, less worries about food, food that's sexy even. Try chocolate and red wine instead of oysters."
Her neuro-processor had already made the calculations, but she wanted absolute confirmation. She gazed directly into Acevada's eye. "You knew me in the past?"
Acevada turned to stone. "I was ordered not to confirm or deny that. Connor's afraid of disturbing the time line."
"Sisters should trust each other before they trust any man." If that wasn't part of the Amazon's code, it would be.
Acevada sighed. She pulled out her tags and pointed to a yellow metal piece that had been welded to the back. It was that symbol the humans called a heart though it didn't remotely resemble an actual human heart and it had little metal dents pounded into the surface. "It was the anniversary of Carlos's death and Derek was still being an asshole. Everyone was getting tattoos like ink was going to protect us the future. You said let's not do that, let's do something different, something neither of us has ever done and that we won't be able to do in the future. So, we went to the Tiffanys in Century City and bought gold hearts. Customized them later. We tried on designer dresses, collected samples from all the cosmetic counters, and ate shrimp wraps. Then, you told me Century City was going to be the main disposal facility in a few years. We walked back over the mall eating See's candy. You wouldn't let me leave until I had memorized all the weak points in the walls."
No need for tears, the scale of destruction was beyond all that. Acevada laid her hand on Cameron's shoulder. "So, you ready to see Connor now?"
. . . . . .
ATTENTION IF YOU DO NOT WANT ANY HINT ABOUT HOW THE BALLAD OF DEREK AND CAMERON WILL BE RESOLVED, STOP READING NOW AS THE EPILOGUE IS COMPLETELY A SPOILER, BUT I LIKE WRITING EPILOGUES AND THINK THIS INFORMATION FLOWS BETTER THIS WAY IN THE STORY THAN TRYING TO INJECT IT INTO THE SEQUEL.
Epilogue, Part I
She had been left alone in one of the lab rooms while Connor and the techs finalized the time displacement coordinates. It was a strangely comforting place, so white and sterile. The last time she had been in a room like this had been with Derek. They had made love in a chaotic frenzy uninterrupted except for the times when Derek was too physically exhausted to continue. She remembered his weight on her body when he slept and how it felt like he was the only thing that kept her anchored to the bed instead of spinning around until she collided with the walls. It was the beginning of her realization that he might be infinitely more important to her than Skynet.
A Resistance fighter walked in. For a moment she worried that he might be a rogue member out for revenge. Derek wasn't the only member of the Resistance that questioned the loyalty of reprogrammed Terminators. He stepped out of the shadows. Her sensors overloaded. It was Derek! No! That couldn't be. Derek had already been sent back. The soldier came closer. His face was the same as Derek's, but he was younger and less scarred. "You're a Reese?"
"Yes." The young man's voice was soft. His eyes were very Reese, pure and blue.
She stepped toward him and extended her hand. "Do you know who I am?"
"Oh, yes!" His resemblance to Derek was remarkable. He grabbed her hand, kissed it, and continued to hold it.
"Derek and Kyle never told me they had a younger brother or a cousin." Then she realized that probability did not favor this soldier being a long lost Reese brother or cousin. "You're one of Derek's sons?" she said.
He nodded.
In the world that was, that would make you my stepson, I think, but you wouldn't want to know that. Unless your parents are dead? Are you like me looking desperately for whatever connections are left? "Did I know your mother? Is she still alive?"
He began to tremble. His words came out slowly as if he had to search quite a bit to find the right ones and then they only came out at great pain. "I don't know how to explain it. My mother died when I was a boy. The Amazons raised me."
"That can't be. The Amazons only raise the children of their sisters. Derek never had sex with an Amazon."
There were tears in the soldier's eyes now. "There was one."
Realization struck her more powerful than a nuclear blast. He was her son! In the past that was about to become her future, she would be reunited with Derek. They would be husband and wife again and this young man would be conceived, the child of love, not functional mating, that Derek had always wanted. She put her arms around him. "What did they name you?"
"You named me Adam Kyle."
Adam guided them to the couch and she held her son in her arms as best a mother could when her son was a grown man. "Do you remember me?"
He shook his head. "Only a little. For a long time, I thought you were a dream. A fairy godmother my imagination had created from legends. My aunts tell me you held me until the septicemia left you too weak. After that one of them held me beside you until you died."
He spoke of termination, but it didn't matter. What he represented was far more important. She ran her fingers across his face. "You look exactly like your father."
The edges of Adam's mouth turned slightly. He wasn't as solemn as Derek. Of course, raised by the Amazons, he had a better post-apocalyptic childhood than most. "Everyone tells me that even General Connor."
"One day, when there is peace, there is more that you should know about our family. The Amazons know some of it and Connor knows most of it, maybe some of his inner council does to. When Skynet is defeated seek them out. Hound them. Make them tell you everything until you have all the pieces."
He looked skeptical. "General Connor didn't want us to meet. He's terrified of further disturbing the time line. His wife was the one who finally convinced him. She . . . she said, imagine how you would feel if someone kept you from seeing your mother one last time."
Cameron had not heard anyone mention John's wife until now. But it was a mystery that did not concern her. Instead she thought of something else, something small, but wonderful at the same time. "I had a wedding ring. Your Uncle Kyle made it. It may still be in what's left of my quarters at Alpha."
"Major Acevada took it when the Amazons left Alpha. She gave it to me when I arrived here." He took her wedding ring out of his uniform pocket.
She folded his fingers back around the ring. "Keep it. Only living tissue can go through a time displacement. One day, hopefully, you'll have a woman to give it to."
Adam blushed. Derek had certainly never done that. She should have realized a healthy, fertile young man would have already been encouraged to breed. "Is there someone special? Or many some ones special, perhaps?"
He took some photographs out of his pocket. "This is Mercedes." He handed her the first one.
She was older than Adam, but not by much. An Amazon's daughter by the tattoo on her shoulder. Cameron already had a good idea who her mother was without asking. In the past, will I tell Acevada about this? Will we be like some women friends she had watched joking that our kids will one day marry as we prepare for their births? We must have been. Mercedes's eyes were kind and even in this small, simple resolution photograph, it was clear she adored the man she was with.
"She wanted to come here. She wanted to meet you, but I asked her not to risk it. They're at Crystal Peak. It's the safest place in the world now."
"You sound exactly like your father," Cameron exclaimed.
Adam pulled the photograph away to reveal the next. She gasped. Adam was holding a young boy.
"This is Derek Thomas Reese II. He's my oldest," he said. There were two more photos: a boy baby in a plain sleep sac and a girl baby in sleep sac with Amazon symbols. "And these are the twins: Ariel and Michael."
It will be a battle to not blurt all this out the minute we're reunited. Derek, I saw our son before I was sent back! He named our first grandson after you! He might gun her down in an instant if she said that too soon. But somehow she would tell him that his secret dream, children with the Reese name who carried both their DNA, had been fulfilled.
Adam stayed until the techs came take her away. He told her about his family, probably told her more things than John Connor wanted her to know, but they had only a few hours to compensate for a lifetime. However, it was more happiness than many people had. Then her son kissed her good-bye. John Connor walked her the rest of the way to the time displacement equipment.
She understood him better than Skynet's originally programming had ever hoped to succeed. He was the leader of the Human Resistance. To be a symbol meant burning away much of the characteristics that made him a man, but not everything. To do that would have created an completely organic Terminator.
"You understand the parameters of your mission?" John Connor asked.
"I'm not like one of your human soldiers. What I'm told once stays recorded forever." She detected uncharacteristic nervousness in the human leader, but he was often this way around her. There was something still hidden. "I don't know everything about humans, but I know enough. There's something important that you still haven't told me."
John stopped. His gaze met hers. His eyes were so perfectly blue. "It's not important in the grander system, but it may be useful for the mission. When I meet you next I'll be fifteen. I'll be more mature than most human boys, but immature still. I'll have crush on you for most of my adolescence and I will be very annoying. Do you understand?"
She nodded. She thought she understood. The time displacement added another layer to understanding behavior. "You want to apologize now for what happened in your past, that I will occur to me soon."
He nodded.
Cameron held out her hand. He took it and for a moment an image was recalled by her sensors, not of Derek, but of Kyle on the day Derek didn't return from patrol. Connor kissed her hand; then walked out of the chamber. Her sensors detected the energy beginning to grow around. It had begun.
