Author Notes
While I've been asked about this story a few times until now I never bothered writing it as I knew that it would be short and uninteresting, but there are quite a lot of gaps in my Jump Chain and it's about time I start filling some of them in.
You can skip over the next part and start the actual story, I just need this next part here to help me keep track of things. Also, let me know if there is anything wrong with this Jump. It's only slight over four thousand words so it should be okay. I didn't bother to proofread it so if anyone does want to beta it for me I would be grateful.
Character Sheet
Body Mods
- Point Allocation (600 CP)
- Build: Average (600 CP)
- Body Type: Athlete (500 CP)
- Strength x1 (450 CP)
- Endurance x1 (400 CP)
- Speed x2 (400 CP)
- Dexterity x2 (400 CP)
- Appeal x1 (350 CP)
- Shape x1 (300 CP)
- Sense x1 (250 CP)
- Endowed x1 (200 CP)
- Metavore (100 CP)
- Ever-cleansed (0 CP)
- Flexibility x1 (0 CP)
Warehouse
- Point Allocation (150 CP)
- Electricity (140 CP)
- Plumbing (130 CP)
- Heat/A.C. (120 CP)
- Force Wall (100 CP)
- Shelving (100 CP)
- Terminal (90 CP)
- Robots (70 CP)
- Housing (50 CP)
- Medbay (30 CP)
- Portal (0 CP)
Companion Housing Complex
- Point Allocation (1000 CP)
- Electric (1000 CP)
- Plumbing (1000 CP)
- Heat/A.C. (1000 CP)
- Deluxe Bedroom (900 CP)
- Deluxe Bathroom (800 CP)
- Dining Hall (750 CP)
- Deluxe Kitchen (600 CP)
- Entertainment Center (500 CP)
- Library (300 CP)
- Garden (150 CP)
- Cleaning Closet (125 CP)
- Maintenance (125 CP)
- Medical Bay (125 CP)
- Rooms with a View (100 CP)
- Phone (50 CP)
- Theme (0 CP)
Mass Effect Jump
- Budget (1000cp)
- Race: Human (1000cp)
- Age 2d8 + 20 = 23 (1000cp)
- Eden Prime (900cp)
- Marine (800cp)
- Sentinel Tech/Biotic
- Finesse (500cp)
- Supportive Mindset (350cp)
- Not A Stupid Grunt (50cp)
- Loadout (50cp)
- Extra Credits (0cp)
- Shepard's Flock (100cp)
- Assistant VI (0cp)
Jump Chain Gothic 2 - Terminator
Cosmic Warehouse. Outside of Reality.
As soon as the Reapers had been defeated the Jump had come to an end and I'd found myself, along with the two women I'd chosen to be companions, within the Cosmic Warehouse.
We'd had some time to take a break between Jumps, and that had been good as defeating the Reapers had taken its toll on us. Now that the R&R was over I'd started putting together the document on the terminal that was the setup for the next Jump.
"Before you finalise that there is another matter we need to deal with" Jump Chan, who currently like a human female mechanic from the 20th century, complete with greasy blue overalls and messy dark hair "Take a look at this".
On the screen a new document appeared, a setup not for a Jump rather it was for a Warehouse Addon called the Bay. I quickly looked through it and made my choices as it was all pretty straight forward.
The Bay
- Budget (20cp)
- Maintenance Drones (16cp)
- Fuelling Station (12cp)
- Garage (11cp)
- Machine Shop (10cp)
- Automated Machine Shop (9cp)
- Industrial Engineering Tools (6cp)
- Matter Furnace (0cp)
Once that was done and Jump Chan vanished I got with planning the next Jump. This Jump had been planned out well in advance many years ago by Miranda so now it was just a matter of finalising the setup. Since I wouldn't be importing the companions I'd picked up during my first Jump (Miranda Lawson and Tali'Zoah) who I'd met during my time in the Mass Effect universe.
Since I wasn't importing them into this Jump and because this Jump wasn't going to last very long I'd decided to leave them in stasis for a short time. They wouldn't even notice the time passing, and when I woke them we'd work together to plan the third Jump, and that would be in the setting of Star Trek, we were keeping our options open for, but it looked as if we'd be spending up a decade living on the starship USS Voyager as it travelled through the Delta Quadrant.
Before starting the Jump, I looked over the document that was displayed on the Terminal here inside the Cosmic Warehouse, a space I had barely begun to fill despite my best efforts during the Mass Effect Jump.
Terminator Jump
Drop-In - You wake up in your chosen location with no overlapping memories to mess with your mind.
This would good because I didn't intend to spend any more time in this Jump that I had to so having a background that would allow me to fit didn't make any sense, and the extra memories wouldn't benefit me anyway.
Smash Those Metal Motherfuckers - You have received several years worth of training on how to fight. Giving you basic proficiency with the all hand-held weaponry used in the 1980s to the 2000s. You won't necessarily know the entire ins and outs of the weapons, but you will know how to shoot them reliably. You also have a general idea of what kind of weaponry would be needed to deal with armoured targets.
I had this already at least partly due to my training as System Alliance marine, but fighting with Mass Effect technology wasn't the same as fighting on a modern-day Earth. The tech was different, as were the tactics and the more of these kinds of skills I had the better as many of the universes we would visit in the future would be very dangerous.
Judgement Day - You automatically know the exact date and time to Judgement Day. Outside this jump, Judgement Day counts as any mass extinction or apocalyptic event for sapient species within 100 years and how, but not why, it happens. Because the future is not written, this perk will keep track of the event to the hour. So if the 2 years away apocalyptic event turned into 2 weeks and 3 hours, you will instantly know.
This Perk was going to come in very handy in the future as it wouldn't do to go and explore some planet in a future Jump only for it to blow up on me.
Most Paranoid Delusions Are Intricate - For the normal person, it's hard to find out who's actually telling the truth and who needs a straight jacket. You, however, can spot these. Whether it's through experience or a gut instinct, you will know if an apparent conspiracy theorist/nut-job is actually telling a factual or rational account. Grows in power and accuracy in relation to the threat. If they're telling the truth about the end of all mankind, you will know 100%.
I imagined that this Perk would be most useful when it worked in concert with the Judgment Day Perk as between them I should know not only how worlds could come to an end, but in many cases, I would also know why. Wouldn't help much if the reason involved a natural disaster of some kind, but if it was due to an alien invasion or something like that then I should be able to find out about it and know how to stop it.
Thank You, Jumper, For Your Courage Through The Dark Years - Your skills in passing on knowledge and raising people are great. You could train and raise a child to be able to fight and survive during humanities darkest hour. Whether it is one-on-one or with groups, you can give them your knowledge and courage.
While I thought it foolish to try to raise a child on Jump Chain my view on this matter could change over time and then this Perk would come in handy if I needed them to be able to help with Jump Chain.
Hey, Wait! You Swore! - Whenever you make a deal with someone, whether it be through a legal document or a pinky promise, they will not break it. If you make a machine that was built purely for assassination swear to not kill any human, no human casualties will accrue because of it. This doesn't give you a blanket cover. Said machine from earlier will still maim people and break ankles, but they will live. A person with an incredible amount of willpower can resist this perk. But no matter what, they will still feel really hesitant to and guilty if they do.
Like my other Perks, I could see this becoming very useful, but I would never depend on it since it wasn't going to make it impossible for people I had deals with to betray me.
No Fate But What We Make - You are not bound by fate nor is anyone you work with. Your destiny is only what you make of it. No magician or time-traveller can ever force you onto a different path against your will. This extends to the point that people and things that are deemed unstoppable or even unkillable, just because they are destined to, can be killed by you permanently. Finally, it protects you from time-travellers in general. For if someone wants to kill you. They have to kill you in the present. Travelling through time to kill your mother won't work.
This Perk would give me a lot of freedom within Jumps, allowing me to chart my own course if I wished to. Somethings might still happen because they were meant to, but I could prevent them if I wished to by becoming involved.
One Possible Future. From Your Point Of View - Time travel is anything but simple. One trip can be complicated. 5 can be downright absurd. But not for you. Not only can you tell what the date it is at any time, but you have a mind that can organize and understand the convoluted nature of multiple timelines.
I was still going to avoid time travel if possible. It would just be nice to be able to understand it better.
Items:
And Your Motorcycle - A 1990 Fatboy with black paint with red pinstripe, leather seating, leather side bags, chrome-covered piping, and a chrome-covered engine. This particular one is strong enough to carry a person weighing upwards of 800lbs and can keep going after falling down over 20ft and not lose any speed. It also comes with an infinite fuel supply.
This I was getting simply because it was cool. Enough said.
Victory Condition
Defeat Skynet and Prevent Judgment Day.
Since I had a plan to defeat Skynet very quickly there was no point staying in the Terminator World for ten years as without Skynet and Judgement Day it was different than my home version of Earth. There would be no adventures as I would just keep my head down and try to blend in. So once I carried out my plan to defeat Skynet the Jump would end.
With the setup all in order, I pressed the button that finished the setup and then it began.
(Line Break)
Los Angeles. Terminator SCC Verse.
When I appeared in this universe I saw my new motorbike resting before on the road and this made me smile. I also felt a weight in my hand and discovered that the clothes I'd picked out to help blend in his time period had replaced with a very expensive looking set of biker gear complete with helmet. Inside the pocket of my new leather jacket was a pair of stylish sunglasses. Jump Chan must have added this outsit and accessories to the set up as a free bonus just to make me look good.
I was also glad to discover that she'd not removed the pistol I'd hidden on my person before starting this Jump. The weapon, an innovation of Admiral Daro'Xen, the Arc Pistol is a scaled-down Arc Projector that only requires thermal clips, to solve its power problems. The Arc Pistol uses a nonvisible laser to ionize the air and was effective against geth platforms and mechs. I'd brought it with me in case, by some chance I encountered a Terminator.
"Remember, we need for the nearest university," said Cortana "I have a record of Los Angeles of this time, but that was in a different universe and the records could be wrong".
Cortana, my personal AI, she, the artificial intelligence had a female persona, was why my plan to defeat Skynet was so simple and bound to succeed. The infomorph, she was a creature made of information, would enter the Internet and abort Skynet in whatever form it was in now, or any other proto-AI she could find.
Then to ensure that no AI would rise up in the future, and cause Judgement Day to happen decades from now rather than years, Cortana would leave a copy of herself into the Internet so that this copy would be only AI on the net.
Cortana was a combination of the personal VI I'd gotten at the start of the Mass Effect Jump and an AI I'd encountered on the Citadel. That had tried to move into my Omni-tool, that at the time had contained the VI Cortana, which I based on the Cortana from the Halo franchise.
The AI from the Citadel hadn't been able to transfer itself totally from the Citadel systems it had been existing in and so the AI had merged with my VI, that happened to be Jump Chan CP item, the end result was a new AI that had a persona based on the Cortana VI, only much more real.
Since the AI lived in my Omni-tool, for lack of a better term, and had taken on the role of my personal VI, she'd become as immortal as any companion, becoming a companion of sorts in some sense, and as such back when she'd sacrificed herself to help defeat the heretic geth, she'd been replaced with a backup AI the original AI had left behind.
It was all very complicated, but what really mattered was that Cortana could reproduce if she wished, and it would her offspring that guarded the Internet, this guardian AI was the product of Mass Effect technology and such as it was much more advanced than AI that could be created in this world.
The AI left behind would one day encounter an AI made outside of the Internet that would be too powerful to be destroyed, however, this would be so far into the future that the relationship between humans and AI would be different. The AI I left behind would work towards that goal over the coming decades.
Of course, this would be easier said than done as the uploaded AI (which would be Cortana III, the original having died and Cortana II staying with me) would have to remain hidden from humanity until society advanced enough to handle having AI as part of the world. That could take over a century, so it was a good thing that AI don't get bored.
If this goal would work out or not I didn't know. All that mattered to me was that there would be no Skynet the AI to bring about Judgment Day, and this would end the Jump very quickly. I was eager to end this Jump quickly because I wanted the perks from the Jump without having to spend a decade in this setting.
After climbing on the bike I quickly worked out the control. I'd never actually learned to ride a motorbike, but my military training as an Alliance Marine taught me to fly any number of craft and to drive futuristic tanks, so compared to that a motorbike was no struggle.
As I started up the bike and placed on my helmet, the communications device that let me talk to Cortana without anyone hearing her was in my ear so we'd still be able to chat, I spent a moment wondering if I should bother stopping by the Connor residence and telling them about that I was about to go pro-choice on Skynet, aborting the AI before it became a major threat.
This would take time as if they were easy to find Skynet would have done it, and the sooner I defeated Skynet the better. If I delayed the AI might become aware of me and take action that could somehow defeat my plan. No sense taking that risk.
Plus they had their own cyborg protector the Terminator Cameron, who might object to me stopping by, and while I'd dealt with dangerous mechs before, I'd rather not tangle with Cameron if I could avoid it even with my kinetic barriers and arc pistol.
Not long after the bike got moving I arrived at UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) and while my original plan had involved using a publicly available computer for Cortana to link up to. This was why I'd chosen to appear in 2007 during the start of the Sarah Connor Chronicles rather than the movies, the computer tech at this time was far more easily available and it was all linked together.
However, I'd forgotten just how primitive computer technology was during this time period. I'd been spoiled by Mass Effect tech, and Cortana had advised that I seek out a place with more advanced computer technology like a firm that made computers or a research facility of some kind, a place that ways of transferring a lot of very information very quickly.
As the Internet gained in public recognition and popularity, universities were among the first institutions to outgrow the Internet's bandwidth limitations because of the data transfer requirements faced by academic researchers who needed to collaborate with their colleagues.
Because of this, these universities, such as the one I was now entering that the means to transfer information via the Internet in much greater quantities than any household computer could manage. Even that wasn't enough, I'd be forced to go with a different plan if my Omni-tool wasn't a military-grade model that I'd upgraded.
Another reason why coming to this university made sense as while there were places with even more sophisticated computer systems they weren't open to the public and had security. UCLA was more open and its alarms were easily disabled by Cortana and its cameras taken down for as long I needed them to be.
Since I had all the pieces and the time was right, now having found a server powerful enough for my needs I uploaded Cortana III into the net and mere seconds after the AI must have found the early version of Skynet, which did exist in some form at this time, and destroyed it because the Jump ended without any warning.
(Line Break)
Cosmic Warehouse. Outside of Reality.
It took me a moment to recover from suddenly finding myself inside the Cosmic Warehouse again, with my new bike at my side, no longer in car-park I'd left it in, and for a moment I almost reached for my weapon as there someone in the Warehouse that shouldn't be here. Actually, there were two figures, and one of them wasn't moving.
"Well that was boring" complained Jump Chan.
Now that I'd had a moment reorient myself I recognised that the moving female figure was Jump Chain. She looked like some sort of holographic projection, I could sort of see-through her and the projection had the outline of a human female. She was playing the part of some sort AI interface I figured.
The other figure was frozen and was either the Cameron the Terminator I'd been thinking about while heading over the university. I felt very certain that this was no coincidence.
"Every time you complete a Jump you'll get some sort of reward" my benefactor let me know "It might be minor or something major, and it will depend on the Jump you've just finished as well the Jump you're about to go on".
I figured that the motionless Terminator had something to do with this.
"Since you completed the Victory Objective for this Jump you get a special bonus" Jump Chan informed me "You got the Bay addon to the Warehouse for the Mass Effect Jump and for this Jump you get your own personal Terminator based on the Cameron Phillips of the Jump you just finished in less than a half an hour".
My intention was to mix some shorter Jumps in with the longer ones in order to make Jump Chan more interesting.
"She was made to protect you and keep you happy" it was explained "She will follow your commands, do her best to ensure your safety and over time she'll learn to please you. She will update her software automatically between Jumps, and become more sophisticated the more Jumps you do. So she will start out rather robotic and grow as a person. She won't try to become human unless you encourage her to".
Perhaps owning a person of sorts would be considered wrong in many cultures, even if she'd been created to serve me by someone else, but that was a complex issue and if she was programmed to serve me then the only way to stop her from doing that would be to destroy or disable her, or to reprogram her, all of which could also be considered highly immoral. The best to do did seem to be to allow her to develop over time so that she could decide how to live her own life as best she could within the limits of her programming. Which was all of us had to do in some way.
"She'll be updating software until the next Jump begins and by then she'll know what do" I was told "Do try to enjoy her".
I figured that I would once I'd gotten used to having her around, and if she was anything like the version from the TV show I watched I'd be somewhat prepared for her oddness.
The original Cameron Phillips, of which this Terminator seemed to be a perfect replica of, at least from the outside, was a reprogrammed Terminator sent from the year 2027 to protect John Connor and his mother, Sarah Connor.
From what I could remember Cameron was an advanced model and her living tissue model template was based on a young woman called Allison Young, a human Resistance fighter close to John Connor; this allowed her to replace Allison in an attempt to infiltrate John's camp.
Although Cameron was capable of pretending to be a human when approaching John Connor in the pilot episode, befriending John and even flirting with him, she no longer displays that kind of behaviour after her true nature was exposed. Since there would be no need for her to pretend to be human when acting as my bodyguard she'd seem robotic.
I counted myself rather lucky that the Tali I'd chosen as a companion wasn't anti-AI as most of her race, and while I doubted she'd ever become friends with Cameron, they just needed to get along.
The Terminator before me was dressed in simple 20th-century clothing, and she seemed small and fragile. No doubt this would lead to many believing her not to be any threat, and getting caught by surprise when she showed just how strong she really was.
Plus she'd been well versed in use of many kinds of weapons, and be able to learn to do more, likely faster than any human could, so she'd quickly pick any new skills she needed to learn in order to fulfil her roll.
"Thanks," I said to Jump Chain.
Once the projection was gone I decided to go wake up my companions so that we could plan out the next Jump, which would last years, so I would have plenty of time to get to know this version of Cameron.