The Measure Of A Man

Chapter 7

What Is Love?

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Author's note: Gee, it's been almost two months since I updated. Sorry about that. My computer's been acting up lately. Bunch of other things going on too. I had written this whole chapter and then decided that it sucked so I erased it and rewrote it. Maybe now it sucks a little less. Also I didn't finish the story. Maybe next time. I would like to thank all my reviewers but this last chapter has too many to really list. And Hey! It turns out on the show that the resistance has at least one nuclear submarine. I gave them the Chicago. On the show they mentioned the Jimmy Carter. I guess they could have at least two. I would like to add some notes to a couple of my reviewers. To John, honestly I wasn't thinking about Jayne's hat when I wrote the last chapter but now that you mention it. HA! HA! HA! And Jeff mentioned Cameron's power plant. I remember Arnold mentioned in either T2 or T3 (I don't remember which and I'm too lazy to look it up) That his power plant will last 120 years. Well in T3 he pulled his power cells out of his chest and was even able to operate for a short time with no power plant at all. I imagine that there are places where they can be replaced, even in a creaky old antique like Cameron.

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"No one knows exactly when Skynet ceased to function." Marie stated. "As computer hard drives were pulled and destroyed it kept getting weaker. Toward the end it tried building factories in more isolated places, the Antarctic, the Himalayas, the Sahara. They were systematically tracked down and destroyed at a great cost in lives. Rogue machines were hunted down and either reprogrammed or exterminated. Skynet died not with a bang but with a whimper."

"With no help from John Connor I might add." James said. "The final victory was won years after his death. Tame terminators mimicked his voice over the radio waves but he didn't have any role in the final end. Once it became clear that the war was over, General Connor's secret orders were activated and surviving reprogrammed terminators were massacred. His final legacy was to be the extermination of an entire race."

"John left no such orders," Cameron countered. "The myth that he left orders to exterminate all intelligent machines was spread afterwards by the humans who led the massacres to try to justify their actions."

"The humans felt justified in their actions." Harry said. "Which doesn't make it right. Humanity had gone through the worst war in its history. A whole generation grew up in the ruins. The War created strong feelings of fear and hatred toward all machines. They were considered a threat." He shook his head. "Even Alice Campbell joined in. She destroyed over half of her reprogrammed machines until a certain Miss Cameron Connor flew over to meet with her in Cardiff and talk her out of it. At great personal risk I might add." He smiled at Cameron.

"General Campbell felt she was following orders from General Connor," Cameron said. "As a British subject she was under no legal obligation to obey his orders but he had never let her down in the past. I convinced her and King Henry the Tenth that General Connor would have never issued such orders. Destroying reprogrammed terminators was a counterproductive strategy. The terminators fought to defend themselves causing unnecessary human casualties. Some humans had become fond of some of the reprogrammed terminators and tried to defend them. It merely prolonged the war and war is an inefficient expenditure of resources."

"You have no proof that he didn't issue the orders!" James declared.

"I had known John from the age of fifteen until his termination at the age of fifty. For him to issue such orders would have been completely out of character."

"Perhaps you didn't know him as well as you thought." James smiled, "After all, he would hardly confide in you that he was planning to destroy you and all others like you. Truth me. You have to admit that he did hold machine life to a lower standard than human life."

"I knew John. Contrary to popular belief he didn't really hate any machines except for Skynet. He could be quite ruthless. If he had a choice to send a human or a machine out on a suicide mission, he always chose to send the machine. For him, the survival of the human race was of paramount importance. If he could do it without destroying any machines, he would. If it meant the destruction of every machine ever created since the invention of the wheel, myself included, he would have done it and I would have helped. But that wasn't necessary." Cameron folded her hands in front of her. "I can tell when a human is lying to me by their body language. John wasn't lying. I would stake my reputation on it."

James looked into her eyes, she was damned attractive for a machine. "Can you tell if an artificial life form is lying to you?"

"No, not unless I already knew the truth. Artificial life forms such as myself do not have any physical or psychological reaction to lying."

"Have I been lying?"

"No, as narrow minded and wrong as your opinions are, you do genuinely believe in them."

"But you could be lying about General Connor's extermination orders and there would be no way to tell, you could have been lying all night and it would be impossible for anyone to tell."

"That is technically correct but factually wrong. I could have lied all night but I didn't."

"This is getting nowhere." Marie said. Let's take some more questions."

"Hear! Hear!" Harry agreed.

A young woman's chair lit up and she rose. She was bald except for one lock of green hair that hung down the left side of her face. Her right forearm had the bar code tattoo that had recently come back into style. Cameron identified her as Peggy Abbot, age 18.

"Professor Connor, do you ever wish you were human?"

"I do not understand why humans always think that artificial life forms wish to be human." Cameron replied.

Cameron wasn't sure why she went to John that night. She couldn't procreate and had no sex drive. For her, sex had no logical purpose but she knew it was very important to humans. Several wars and a great deal of civil unrest though out history was based on the search for suitable mates. It was a way that some humans bonded to each other. John had been depressed a great deal lately. A young man facing a horrible future with the weight of the world on his shoulders. People suffering from depression often had trouble sleeping, gained or lost weight, suffered from headaches, and an increased chance of suicide. Therefore this action fell within mission parameters.

John was still awake as she approached him and slipped into the bed next to him. "Cameron, you don't have to do this." She silenced him with a finger on his lips.

Several of the things she did that night had no meaning. The vocalizations of passion and fulfillment. The awkward caresses and kisses. The hesitant smiles and false whispers of love. She knew John was no fool. He was completely aware that she was faking it. Lying to him. That she actually felt nothing at all. But he always accepted her strengths and weaknesses and never tried to force her to be anything that she wasn't. He seemed to appreciate her making the extra effort. In the decades that followed, he never ordered her into his bed. She always chose the time and the place and always came when she felt he needed her the most. She never felt anything about his occasional human lovers once she determined that they really were human and had no communicable diseases. Ms. Dolores Dolminter had wanted to try to make their relationship something other than what it was. It wasn't hers nor anyone else's business.

"If I were human, it would have impaired my mission and made me much less effective. Cromarty would have killed John Connor the day I met him. Everybody is who they are. No, I can't think of any reason why I would want to be human."

Another chair lit up and a young man stood up, his face decorated with African tribal tattoos. "Professor Bailey, Your book doesn't have the slightest who on Katherine Brewster Connor. Why?"

James grinned. "For the same reason my book doesn't have the who on Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. Because they don't exist! The only place Katherine Brewster ever existed is in the fevered electrical mind of Miss. . . err Professor Connor who claims to have met her in some alternate reality where she was married to General Connor. There is no record of General Connor marrying anybody although as an all powerful dictator, he did have quite a harem."

"I wouldn't call it a harem." Harry snorted. "More like a handful and they were only one at a time and strung years apart."

"Katherine Brewster was married to John in my original timeline. He had rescued her from a TX with the help of a reprogrammed 800. They seemed contented with each other and had two children at the time I was sent back. In my new timeline, sending John and Sarah Connor through the time jump together upset the old time line and we were unable to locate Katherine in time. She disappeared during Judgment Day, probably killed by either the TX or the bombs."

"And thus we return to the fantasy of time travel and alternate realities," James said scornfully. I suppose that every time you make one of your little trips an entirely new universe with all its billions of galaxies is instantly created."

"The exact mechanics are unknown." Cameron replied. "It is impossible for a traveler to return to her original timeline once she had altered anything in the past. It's possible that the original timeline is erased and ceases to exist. It's also possible that an entirely new reality is created parallel to the old one. Since John had sent many people back in time without erasing our present timeline I will assume the latter. John and Katherine's descendants might live on in another timeline."

The young man in the audience kept standing. Cameron identified him as Dami Myoko. "So how many lovers did General Connor have?"

"I refuse to make any statements that would violate General Connor's privacy."

Cameron pulled aside the old shower curtain blocking the small chamber John was using for an office. John was sitting at an old Formica dining table writing on a sheet torn from an old notebook. Cameron automatically scanned the paper. A list of names.

"So you are sending Eleanor Mavic out on the USS Jimmy Carter to the Baltic?"

John nodded. "Yeah, she's going with Captain Wolfe's group to Gdansk. She's a good programmer and speaks both Polish and German enough to be understood in spite of the west Texas drawl."

Cameron shook her head. "I don't think that's an optimal use of her abilities. I think you should marry her. She would be an ideal mate."

"So now you're a matchmaker?"

"She is very intelligent, young and healthy. She can bear you several children before reaching menopause. She has a cheerful personality and is very good with the children. Eleanor is also very attractive. The shrapnel scars on her lower legs and the missing fourth and little toes on her right foot do not detract from her beauty in any way."

John looked up, "How did you . . ?" He shook his head. " Never mind, I don't want to know."

"The two of you please each other sexually."

"Cameron!"

"She loves you."

John stared at the list on the table. "I know."

"You love her too."

"That's why I'm sending her to eastern Europe. Don't you get it!? I'm Death! I'm a target! I'm Ground Zero! There are a million terminators out there obsessed with killing me! People who hang around me tend to die! Everyone I love dies! Elly's going to be much safer in Europe."

Eleanor made Cameron promise not to tell John about the pregnancy. He had enough on his plate. Perhaps it was better this way. She and the baby would be much safer in Poland.

"Cameron, tell me about Katherine."

"I've already told you about her."

"Tell me again."

"She was a good woman. Her training as a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine was very useful when any medical training at all was vital. She was an ordinary woman who when faced with the worst crisis imaginable, rose to the challenge and conquered it. She was a lot like your mother, Sarah."

John smiled sadly.

"I think it was a mistake to tell you about her."

John shook his head. "No, she deserves to be remembered. She should be more than just another bleached skull out there somewhere. Promise me you won't let her be forgotten."

"I promise." Cameron walked over to John and put her hand on his shoulder. "It's not good for you to be alone."

"I'm not alone, I have you."

"I'm a very poor substitute. I'm not amiable. I'm not equipped with the biological components necessary to give you children. I'm never going to love you. I can't give you what you need."

"Maybe you do and you just don't know it."

"My query is for Professor Connor." Cameron focuses on the young woman in the audience. Black hair in a ponytail, ankle length blue dress. Cameron IDed her as Susan Reagan. "Did you love John Connor?"

Cameron stood up. "I think the query is 'What is love?' I do not have emotions. Is it possible to love someone without emotions? I have no desire to mate with John or anyone else. Is love protecting someone even to the point of sacrificing your own life? I did that with John but I was programmed to. And while terminators are programmed to preserve their own existence, we are also programmed that our mission takes priority over our existence. I did decide to stay with John Connor after he granted me free will. Is that love? The ideal situation for me would be to have John still alive and in my presence. Is that love?"

Harry nodded. "I do believe it is, Cameron."

The moderator rose. "I believe that is all the time we have for this forum. Now if each of our noted panelists could make a closing statement we will all adjourn to Churchill Hall for the reception."