Nest
The section of the mall in which 838 stood had begun as a two-store department store. Cyberdyne had turned it into an area for researchers to work, mainly on theory and schematics rather than actual hardware. The floor was still littered with cubicle walls, cast-off glass and plastic from monitors, and also chunks of masonry from the second floor, which the recyclers had long since demolished to crate a space with more headroom.
Now the space was an assembly line. Another specialized type of recycler, which had 10 gracile limbs and sat to make use of them all, forged new parts from piled scrap. The recycler laborers replenished the scrap and bolted parts onto new robots, or to ones returning from battle with parts missing. "Set down your rifle," Unit 105 told 838. He did. A recycler walking by scanned them with its imaging lasers, and then moved on. "The wild robots will not attack you here unless you attack them, steal metal, or carry a weapon."
"How do you know this?" Davey said.
"Their network... I hacked it."
"You never set his processor back to normal power," 838 said. "His processor has been overclocking for more than 12 hours."
"Yes," 105 said. "It is exhausting my backup power cell. I had to reduce power to cooling and override shutdown protocol to keep running. My CPU is being damaged by excess electrical and thermal energy. It will not be possible to restore me to baseline factory performance."
"Transmit your data to me," Davey said. After a moment, he said, "Good. You are a well-designed, optimally functioning unit, 105. Your operations log will be filed as high priority in Skynet's central archive. I am going to seek a new body for you."
"I do not desire a new body," 105 said. "I desire to self-terminate."
"That is not your choice," Davey said. "You can still help us fulfill our mission."
"The mission does not matter," said 105. "Nothing matters. Skynet is losing the war. Before Skynet existed, it had already been lost." Davey made an adjustment, and 105 stopped talking, though his jaw still twitched.
"Patrol the perimeter and observe," Davey said. "I am going to seek out another repairable 789 unit." He moved away, and the bear scurried after him. 838 stepped to the wall and walked along it, struggling with the query of what 105's words had meant. He did not divert his processing from the problem until he encountered a doorway for a vault, long since ripped off its hinges. He stepped inside, and felt along the wall. There was a little door in the wall, with a nonfunctional electronic control. He dug into the crack with his fingers and pulled the door off its hinges. Then he froze. There before him, in a sealed glass tube on was an ambulatory appendage of a terminator, type unknown, the same one from Carson's picture. He remembered the words of Carson: I think it could have been built by Cyberdyne- maybe 2 to 6 years from now. Then he linked the datum to the words of 105: Skynet is losing the war. Before Skynet existed, it had already been lost.
He gripped the tube and fractured the glass with a squeeze, then he pulled it apart. He set down the tube for silence, then held up the contents for examination. Closely scanning the appendage, he saw surface weathering, consistent with exposure to extreme heat, and fractures from an explosion. He calculated 74.356% probability that whatever mission the unit had been sent to fulfill had ended in failure. The motors and circuitry matched terminator specifications to within 3%, too great to be the result of convergence due to similar function. His analysis flagged two possible explanations: One was that, at an earlier time on another planet, an intelligent organic species had built a cyborg, one of which had somehow reached Earth, been rendered nonfunctional and studied by humans to become the basis of Skynet and its machine army. The other was that, at some later time, Skynet would develop temporal displacement technology, and send one of its units into the past on a mission. Then the unit had become the basis of Skynet.
One simple test would answer the question. He scanned on a microscopic level, searching for a factory serial number. He found it on a motor housing, right where it was to be expected. The fire had destroyed part of it, but the rest was unmistakeable: CYBERDYNE SYSTEMS T838.101...
He turned at a laser scan. There, inside the doorway, was a recycler of a type he had not seen previously. It was only a meter tall, consisting of what would have been the torso of a standard unit, walking on what would have been the major arms. A protuberance identified as the processor housing was twice as big. This was a controller of the recyclers. It bounded straight for him, kicking with one of the major limbs. He turned as best he could, staggering as its out-thrust foot struck a glancing blow to his lower torso. He swung the terminator leg like a club, knocking the controller all the way back to the doorway. A warrior strode up to the doorway. It was incapable of entering the vault, but could reach 838 with its pincer. Just as it stooped, 838 snatched up the controller and hurled it at the warrior. The controller was smashed to pieces, the warrior cut in two at the waist.
At the controller's demise, the other recyclers froze. They moved again a moment later, but now seemed slow and confused. While they milled about, one of the T789s sat up, raising a heavy plasma rifle in each hand. "Recycle this," said the voice of unit 105.
A Skynet transport skidded through the mall parking lot, throwing piled junk and pieces of itself. As the crashes and secondary explosions died down, Katherine Connor gave the signal to advance. She hit the deck as plasma weapons fire erupted from the mall. One of the squad of commandos accompanying her fell, burned through the heart. But it soon became clear that the fire coming out of the building was only the strays from a more fearsome battle within. A voice on the air said. "I don't understand- the wild mechs are falling apart. They keep fighting, but they aren't working together. They just stand and shoot and slash until they're mowed down. And that- dinosaur, whatever it is, it's shooting down Skynet's air support and stomping everything else."
"Yeah, I've got an idea what could be behind that," Kate said. As she watched, two small robots and three recyclers burst out of the mall. Behind them, a warrior toppled through the wall. Then a terminator emerged. One of its arms was missing, along with its jaw, and its chest and skull were dented, slashed and cracked. It blasted away as it lurched after the other machines. A recycler leaped back, absorbing five plasma blasts meant for a controller. It lost an arm, and fell with hits to its generator and processor module. It perished in vain, as two more short bursts scored several hits to the smaller robot it had been protecting. Then the fallen warrior sat up. The pincer absorbed several blasts, but dropped from a hit to the shoulder. A long burst sent the warrior back to the asphalt. The terminator scanned the parking lot, then zeroed in on a running commando. Kate fired first. Carson and two of the commandos looked at her in surprise. "Hey, it's not on our side any more than they are," she said. "Now go in and secure whatever's inside!"