Chapter 2
Operation: Chrono Shield
March 23, 2023
The information I got from my mom 32 years ago said that SKYNET was going to send a terminator back in time. At first I didn't know how this was done. I knew that SKYNET would had built a time machine, I just didn't know when or how, until one of my tech spies came back from a dangerous mission.
When we are in battle we always use code names. My tech spy code name was Net. He was short for his age of 23. He had blond thinning hair, but you couldn't tell because he was wearing goggles on top his head all the time.
"I have good news and bad news chief," he said panting a bit as I looked at him, "The good news is that SKYNET had just built a Time Portal Device, also known as TPD. Unfortunately for them they can't get it to work."
"Why not?" I asked sitting in the command center with Katharine who was attending with another solider.
"Well, it seems that the electric proton charges doesn't work well with metal, but, it does effect living tissue."
"Living tissue?" I repeated then thought, "Well that would explain the missing people lately. SKYNET was probably using them as guinea pigs."
"Yeah, here's the bad news," Net continued, "the compound they have it in is so heavily armed, that I lost two of my men getting in. It's located where the Java Center use to be."
"I know where it is, " I replied, "Good work Net. Tell Hardball to round up a team. We're goin' in."
"Yes sir," Net replied and took off.
I wasn't sure if SKYNET had produced the T-800 yet. The model that had living skin organisms over its metal endoskeleton. But I knew SKYNET could think and produce at a geometric rate. I hope it hadn't
In about half an hour me, Katharine and Hardball as well as five other men gathered in the war room. The five men that Hardball recruited was the best he'd had seen. In fact one of them was an old friend of mine, Kyle Reese.
"Gentlemen," I started, "I just been informed that SKYNET had built a time portal device in were the old Civic Center has been. Now your mission is to go to these quadrants and destroy the TPD before SKYNET uses it. If SKYNET were successful of sending a terminator through it, its target would be my mother. The time of day would be September 3, 1984. If you were unsuccessful in this mission then as a second objective would be one of you to go back in time and stop the terminator. This operation is called Chrono Shield. Now, I need a volunteer."
It was silent. I knew who was going to step up. The five solders looked at each other, wondering who would risk their lives to save his. Then, as I predicted it Kyle stepped forward.
"You are a brave solider," I said to him, "For now on you're code name would be Timewarp. In 24 hours, you and your men will depart for the dangerous mission of your lives. You are dismissed. Kyle can I talk to you in privet?"
"Yes, sir!" He said.
"At ease," I said to him. I took out an old photograph of my mother and handed to him. "That is my only photo I have of my mother. Study it, memorize it, and make a mental copy of it in your mind. Kyle, protect her at all cost. Because, if she dies, I can not exist."
Kyle nodded taking a long look at picture. It was her sitting in a jeep. She looked like she was pregnant. He looked up to him and said, "Don't worry sir-John, I won't fail you."
"That's good to know," I replied.
When I first met him, I had told him how SKYNET was fucked up. They said it was a virus that screwed up the communications and it was SKYNET's job to eliminate it, but something went wrong and it started the war against the machines. I guess the TX also took part in it too. He didn't say much anything after that, and I wondered why. He didn't also didn't talk about his past, it was like he wasn't part of it. I didn't want to pry; I mean my life was fucked up too. Perhaps he made a wrong turn or a horrible mistake in his life that he didn't want to say.
15 hours to go before I could send my troops to destroy the future and the past. I wondered if that was a smart thing to do. I thought about two conclusions that could happen. One, with the TPD destroyed, I cannot send Kyle back and I can never be born, a fate i can even comprehend. Two, SKYNET can't use the TPD and can't alter the present. I then decided to tell the troops to get more info on the new terminators first.
10 hours to go. My field commander has informed me that they saw a new terminator, the T-800. It looked like any other human, tougher to spot it out among our own. It was first spotted in a subway tunnel where Kyle was staying, getting ready, mentally to travel through time. A good thing the dogs reacted when they did, or Kyle would be dead.
8 hours left, when the T-800 was spotted, time was the essence. The team was in the war room getting ready. One was adjusting his pulsar rifle; another was strapping grenades to his chest. These were the commandos of the future; these were people I trained all those years, to fight these types of machines. Hardball was the commando leader and then prompted that it was time. Kyle looked around and saw me in the doorway. When I saw him something in me told me that something was wrong.
He walked over and said, "John, can we talk privately."
"Yeah, sure," I said as I lead him to a bunker room.
"I- I can't go through with this," he told me, "What if something went wrong? I mean, do I ever get to come back?"
I frown at his question, "I don't know Kyle, but you must go. Why did you volunteer? I know it wasn't to meet my mother."
The thought about it for a moment before he answered, "Remember when we first met, and you told me that SKYNET went haywire with a virus in the communications?" I nodded as he went on, "I never told you who I really was and what I did." He paused, "I was the one who created that virus."
I just looked at him astonished. It was him, it was him! I couldn't fuckin believe that he was the reason that 20 billion people died. And I was going to send him back to protect my mother, to protect my existence. I wanted to kill him right then and there, but then I remember what Katherine said to me when we had our first argument about her father not knowing what he was doing. I didn't want to go through that again with Kyle.
I sighed and asked him, "Why?"
"It was my father," He said sorrowfully, "He was main person on the SKYNET programming team back in 1998. When he started that project he neglected me. All- All I wanted from him was some attention, so I decided to design a virus to infect it, but I couldn't. Instead it…"
"Infected the entire communication systems around the world," I finished.
"Yeah," he said, "I thought if I went back in time to protect your mother, I could maybe stop myself, on another mission. But you didn't say if I could ever come back. I then got second thoughts."
"Don't worry solder, let me tell you something my mother told me," I said to him. "The future is not set, there is no fate but what we make of ourselves. You have to go back. It can't be anyone else."
He nodded knowing I was right, then we heard Hardball calling for him and we were off. It was nighttime, my guess it was around 11PM, it's hard to tell these days without a working clock. This was a covert mission. It was simple, get in the facility, use the TPD, send Kyle back in time, and destroy it.
We decided instead moving above ground that we take the tunnels. It was quick and quiet, which was point of this mission. When we got into vision of the building, we carefully surfaced. I took the night scope and looked though it. There it was, it was huge building surrounded by HKs (or Hunter Killers) and battalion of terminators. Just like Net said, it's not going to be easy. I nodded to Hardball as motioned to two of his solders, Mole and Shocker. They both enter the zone and started to fire at the HKs. The terminators and the hovering machines took noticed as the two solders took cover behind some old ruins, left by building of the past. They kept blasting their pulsar rifles and throwing grandees towards them. It was then out move. While Mole and Shocker kept the machines busy, we were left to enter building. We zigzagged through the maze of the ruins while blasting a few terminators. One of them got lucky and hit Joust in the chest. He died instantly. No matter how many men we lose I still feel sorry for each of them, but then I honor them for giving their lives for our freedom. We got to the outer point where a AC vent was left open. This is where Net said they entered, so we've decided to follow the same path our spies went through. SKYNET would never think someone would try entering the same door twice. We hurried our men through including Timewarp.
When we got inside, it didn't take much time when we found the Time Portal Device. We heard electric discharges in the main room and hurried over. The device was in a dome shaped room and in the middle of the room was a concaved ditch on the floor and above was five rods attached to the ceiling. On the end of the rods were round crystal balls all where facing towards the concave ditch. The entire room looked like something you see in a mad scientist movie, but in this move there were terminators at the controls. My men fired upon them as they fell in pieces.
"Take off you're clothes Timewarp," I ordered Kyle.
"Why?" he said looking at me quizzically.
."Because, you have to go naked, " I replied, "The only thing that can go through is living tissue. And frankly your clothes aren't living."
He nodded, as he got undressed. He was totally naked as the others stood guarding the door. They were firing any thing that approached them. Kyle then stepped over to the metal concave ditch, I told him to kneel as I went to the controls. It looked very simple as I entered the right coordinates and time. I pressed the numbers:
09/01/1984
I then typed:
2 Boulevard Ave. Los Angles, CA
Finally I pressed the red entry button and suddenly the machine went to work. The balls on the rods began to glow and started to emit electric discharges all over. Suddenly they came around Kyle as it formed a sphere like shape. Then in a big flash and bang, he was gone. The mission was complete, or at least for Kyle's mission that is as I was still here in this hellhole. I nodded the others as they started on phase two of the plan.
"Are you coming Sir?" Hardball asked.
"I'll be right behind you just set those chargers," I ordered as he nodded and soon they were off.
I looked back on the machine. I remembered what Kyle said about going back and stop him self from uploading that virus. He was right. He can't stop him self, but I can. I got undressed, and pre set the machine. I quickly hacked in to SKYNET and learned that the virus was uploaded on June 1, 2001. I set the machine 3 days prior to that date; the place was San Juan, Texas. I stepped in the ditch, kneeled and hoped for god that I was doing the right thing. The machine started up again, soon all I saw was bright light and I was blinded for a second as I heard the big bang. Everything went dark. Was I dead? Did it work?