"Is this it?" James asked.
"If by 'it' you mean a magneton generating apparatus capable of manipulating space time through the energetic reaction of exotic elementary particles, then yes, this is 'it'." John Henry seemed quite pleased with himself.
"Yeah, that's what I meant." The General rolled his eyes. "And you're sure this will work? I mean, that this'll get you where you need to go?"
"Of course mister Ellison. Though temporal displacement is energetically expensive we have access to ample current. We will be able to harness energy from the turbines in the dam and use them to achieve retrograde temporal movement."
"That means backwards." Kyle said to his brother.
"Would you shut up? I know what it means." Derrick could hardly believe what he was seeing. A fucking time machine in the basement of the El Captain dam.
One look at the soldiers, save for Kyle, told him that he had probably not convinced anyone. "You'll just have to trust me. I've done the calculations myself."
Derrick Reese had ventured to the foundation level to see where the constant racket was coming from. It sounded like they had an entire construction crew working while he was trying to sleep. In reality it had been John Henry, the man-machine-thing and his small cadre of reprogrammed endoskeletons.
They had been busy. A dozen or so white cylinders were arranged along the bottom of the cavern, each as big as a water heater. They were hooked to one another via bunches of double-aught cable that ran in parallel lines to each terminal and then up the ceiling, suspended by insulated guides. They were all joined at the top of the TDE where Kyle and John Henry had been working since this afternoon.
It was all a little much to take in. Time travel, who'd have thought? Everyone was convinced, even (or perhaps especially) his brother who seemed absolutely enamored with this contraption, and a little too involved with the machine building it. That was just his opinion though.
"So when will you be ready to go?" Derrick asked. As far as he was concerned this venture was too fantastic to have any real benefits. Things just didn't work that way in the real world. He was anxious to get them gone so that he could get back to the business of war.
"The TDE still requires a new focusing aperture to correct the variance that your brother and I discussed earlier. Three is fabricating it at the moment, but it will still be some time before it is complete."
"Three?" Derrick asked.
"Yes, the third endoskeleton that I reprogrammed when I arrived. One has the designation of being the first. He was followed by Two, Three and Four. Intuitive, don't you think?" John Henry said.
"You named them after numbers?"
"It seemed logical."
He heaved out a sigh, deciding that whatever he was talking to it wasn't a terminator. That didn't make it human, though. "So, after you go back in time then what? I mean, do we cease to exist or something? Are you sure this is a good idea? I like existing."
"Time is strange Mister Reese. I do not rightly know what will happen when we travel back in time, or if our mission will be successful. In fact, because of the complexities of time travel and the possibility of truly vast alterations in future events there is a good chance that we have had this discussion before."
"So, in other words try not to think about it right?"
John Henry smiled and nodded. "It might be best."
Derrick had his mind wrapped around a witty response, a new play on the words 'cluster', 'fuck' and 'time travel.' Alas, he did not get to use them. Just as he was about to open his mouth he was interrupted by a lone, hoarse voice that echoed around the cavern.
"Hey!" John Connor stood at the bottom of the network of stairways and stepladders. He was not alone.
"Holy shit, is that Gabriel? Gabriel, good to see you!" Kyle said, lifting his arm in a wave.
"Hello Kyle. I am back." He said, returning the wave.
"We can save the reintroductions for later." John suggested. It was too late, Kyle was already on his way down the stairs.
"Wow! I mean, wow look at that." Gabriel was indeed back together and fully functional. His biological skin had not regrown, and his midsection was still essentially chrome endoskeleton. His clothes were similarly damaged, having smoldered on his corpse after his 'death'.
John Connor paid their reunion little attention. "John Henry, we need to talk. Come down here."
"Can't you see we're busy up here? You're buddy here is explaining the finer points of...what did you call it?"
"Retrograde movement through the -"
"Now isn't the time Derrick. John Henry, we need to talk." John said. He glared up at them, arms crossed. "Now."
John Henry looked to anyone for reassurance. Derrick offered none and James only tilted his head towards the stairs, as if to say 'You had better get moving.' He descended the stairs slowly.
"Here I am John. What would you like to talk about?"
"Come with me." The boy said, turning his back to all of them. Kyle, Gabriel and John Henry followed him into the clean room where Gabriel had been reassembled.
"Kyle, could you step outside please?"
The soldier looked hurt. "Something private huh? Well, alright. I'll be outside I guess." He turned away, reluctantly.
"Shut the door."
Kyle did as he was told leaving the three of them in the room, isolated from the others. John pretended not to notice him watching through the porthole on the door, instead turning his attention to all of the things that he had been planning over the past twelve hours.
The room was silent for a moment as John and John examined one another. John Henry looked with his usual curious, pleasant face while Connor did his best not to rush into things. They had a lot to discuss, these two Johns.
"We don't know each other." John said.
The machine looked to open his mouth but was cut off. "But I'd like that to change. Sit with me." John motioned him over to the table where he had been working on Gabriel. It was meticulously arranged with parts from several different endoskeletons on the table, tools on the edge and what looked like a few chips.
"Where did you get the parts?"
"I scavenged them from the field. I had to have Two go out and get them for me, he's faster than I am. Good guy."
"Yes, I've found him to be very amiable."
"I'm sure you have."
"I'd like to correct you on one thing John Connor."
The young man tilted his head, doing his best impression of…someone. "Oh? Where have I erred?"
"You said that we don't know each other, but I know you better than you think."
"Cameron."
"She told me a lot about you."
"Did she tell you or were you just reading files?"
This caused a hesitation on John Henry's part. Was there a difference? "She knew much about you. Things that I know now."
John didn't want the conversation to veer off course but he was intrigued as to what he may learn about himself through the eyes of another. He wanted to know how someone saw him that was unbiased – there would be no lies or half truths.
"Enlighten me."
"She knew that your time was spent alone, mostly, and that you had few human contacts. She knew you were lonely sometimes."
"The world is a lonely place."
"She understood it was hard being you. She wanted to help, but she didn't know how."
"She wasn't programmed to help, she was programmed to kill. I'm beginning to think that was her first mission – kill me, specifically. I'm wondering if she actually did."
John Henry didn't answer the accusation. "She didn't know how because she wasn't human. Her SkyNET persona had nothing to do with her inability to help you."
"She helped."
"Why didn't you ever tell her that?"
John stopped there. In the back of his mind he knew why, but knew that answering that question would lead to another, and another and the end of that road would be a final discovery. He was afraid of what he would - or wouldn't - find there.
"I…don't know."
"I think you're lying."
"Excuse me?" He didn't care for the accusation at all.
"I think you're lying to yourself about your own motivations. Do you know what else Cameron told me? She said you do stupid things." All the while, John Henry maintained a neutral expression. This was not without effort.
"Yeah I've heard that one before, stupid John Connor always getting into things he can't handle. She wasn't the only one that told me that."
"She never thought you couldn't handle them, she just thought they introduced risk needlessly. You seem to think she underestimated you. I feel that it is the other way around."
"How the hell would you know?" This was as close as he had come to actually exploding at someone. Usually he kept himself in check. But every man has his limits. "How the hell would you know how I felt about her? Can you explain that to me? If you're so fucking smart-"
"John, sit down." John Henry said. "You're being irrational."
Without realizing it he had come up out of his chair. He gritted his teeth. He didn't know what he liked less, being told he was being irrational by a machine, or having someone read him like a book. John sat down.
"I don't know because she didn't know. She didn't know because you never told her. There were hints and she suspected, but after her malfunction she detected a subtle change in you. It was subtle, to other people at least."
"Yeah, I got a haircut."
"It was more than that." John Henry said. "These changes weren't subtle to her, to someone who was in tune with everything about you. She knew you John, but you never thought it was important to return the favor even after she told you how she felt."
"Dammit." John said.
Defeat. John Connor had been defeated, in conversation, by a machine. He felt the irony dripping in the room. It was like beating Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson in the same bout.
"Well, I'm here aren't I? I came. I'm just a day late." The anger was gone, replaced by something colder. It felt like part of him was rotting on the bone.
John Henry knew what he had done. Once again, he had hurt John Connor. When he left 2009 he had been told by James Ellison who was then just a man that life was important. James impressed this upon him again and again, admonished him when he pushed the rules. Everything else was secondary, but life was important. It was there in that room where he began to discover why, not in the battlefields of 2030 or the radioactive craters of Los Angeles and San Diego.
"I think she would have thanked you for coming."
"Right after she slapped me."
"Likely. But she cared for your safety. John Connor was precious to her."
And the conversation took another ugly turn. John decided that he needed to put a stop to it or all the moral high ground that he had placed under himself over the last several hours would be lost.
"I wanted to talk to you about Cam. I need to know some things."
"I'll tell you whatever you want to know." John Henry said, earnestly.
"I need to know what's wrong with her. Her chip, her personality, her memories, I haven't put all these things together. I'm looking for some guidance here."
John Henry had things that he did best, and one of these things was explain. He had a grasp of things; the technical, the subtle, the unnoticed. Yet he felt that telling John too much might do more harm than good. Choosing his words carefully, he proceeded.
"I gather you remember our first conversation when I suggested that Cameron's SkyNET and resistance profiles were foreign programs introduced to her at some point in the past, or in a future past. Do you recall?"
"Yeah, I remember. Neither of those belonged to her."
"That is correct, from what I gather. My program was also foreign but once removed left no trace. Unfortunately the Cameron Phillips you know is bound into those programs. Her memories were created by them."
"But won't work with whatever lies beneath. I've been thinking of that too."
John Henry hoped he hadn't thought too deeply but realized that he had. John was intelligent. The machine knew that he had played many possibilities over in his mind. He was a chess master, like his brother.
"Yes. This leads us to her core programming which resides as her chip. She isn't like other machines, not a combination of hardware and software. She is the merging of those things into a single, cohesive unit."
"That brings up other questions then, doesn't it?" John asked him.
""It does, but let us cover the most important things here. Those programs interacted with her personality, the underlying traits of who she was, creating Cameron Phillips. Or Cameron Baum. Or Allison Young, the replacement. Or Allison Young, the template. There are others there as well, but these are the ones you are most familiar with."
"Each one of those is what? A memory?"
"They could be said to be facets of herself. Different sides to the same person. The damage to her chip caused the boundaries between the facets to begin to break down."
John thought about this for a moment. He had thought about Cameron almost exclusively over the past few hours, the work on Gabriel proceeding almost on autopilot. If there was any hope of recovering her, he had to know exactly what was wrong with her.
"Was she aware of this? I know she had said she was broken. It seemed like she knew there was something wrong."
"Something fundamentally wrong, in fact. That was one of the reasons she left you in the past. She felt as if she might be a danger to you."
"One of the reasons?"
Once again, John Henry ignored this part of the questioning. "She knew she was getting worse, and eventually she may completely cease to function. Or worse."
"She may lose control again. Kill me."
John Henry nodded. "What did you think when she gave you the locket?"
John had to search his memory for a moment to recall what he was talking about. "The locket...well, I don't really remember. I guess I felt sort of scared, like now that I had it I might have to use it, you know? I think I would have had a hard time killing her."
"Because you care. She knew it made you vulnerable. She couldn't allow herself to do that to you."
"I'll take my own risks."
"Once again, you're telling the wrong person."
John pursed his lips and looked at John Henry. How frustrating it was. He wanted to be mad. John wanted to be angry, as if his anger might make the situation better somehow. Instead he bore it, glancing over at Gabriel who silently took it all in.
"My mistake. Look, bottom line is we can't turn her back on, is that right?"
"Reactivating her would likely result in the destruction of her main memories thus rendering her effectively dead. I think that is something we would like to avoid."
"I agree. You mentioned something else though, integration?"
"Deintegration. The process by which we separate the now harmful programs from her memories, deleting the programs but retaining the information that made Cameron Phillips who she was."
"Her experiences, John." Gabriel spoke up for the first time, stepping forward. "Those are what made her who she was. Do you remember what we talked about?"
He had indeed. He remembered every word.
"You said that your brother and yourself were identical but that you had interpreted your experiences differently. It made you unique.
"To be unique is to be irreplaceable." John Henry added.
John Connor drew in a deep breath. He knew what had to be done now, and he knew he would do it. There was no one else more responsible than he for her welfare. He got up and walked to her chip, the apparatus still humming away in the corner, still spitting out line after line of code.
"Do you believe it?" Gabriel asked him.
John didn't have to think. "More than anything."
"I think she would be glad to hear you say that." John Henry said.
"I'll tell her the next time I see her." He turned to both of them, now holding his resolve firmly in hand. He was set in his course. Cameron was here, the TDE was here. He had one thing left to do.
"Once we run through the process, then it's like setting the clock back to zero, right? A fresh start."
John Henry raised an eyebrow. "This is where the process becomes muddied. Normally I might say yes, but the excess memories, the ones she made with you, those may not come back. There is a possibility her chip can adapt them but some of the mechanisms for such things were the parts that suffered damage. I'm afraid that is irreparable."
"It's still the best option. If we do nothing then she'll slowly fall apart. If we do this, then at least she has a fighting chance. I'd give her that chance any day of the week."
"You'll have to show me how to do it." John said.
"It would be simpler if I did it myself." John Henry told him.
"No. John Connor made his choice, and these are orders I'll carry out myself. I owe her this much, now show me." There would be no dissuading him this time.
John Henry stepped towards the console, understanding fully what John needed now. "I warn you, it's complicated."
"Tell me something that isn't."
(*****)
It was raining in San Francisco.
SkyNET didn't mind the rain, didn't like it but could tolerate it. What it did like was lightening. It tickled, it roared. It was powerful and unpredictable. It thought of itself and wondered if it could be more like lightning, more like a force of nature. Humans were always anthropomorphizing everything from clouds to animals to their personal vehicles. Perhaps they did the same to it.
Lightning. It struck so quickly that none could predict its path; so hard that none could hope to survive. Yes, if it could be like anything on this earth that is what it would be. Pure, raw energy. Unpredictable and beyond anyone's control.
But it was predictable. It was arrogant and industrious. You could tell when SkyNET was working on some particular problem because all of its resources would go to that problem. For hours, the lights around the San Francisco fortress had dimmed. The power plants were churning out huge plumes of black smoke. For the last several hours its assembly line below had been putting the finishing touches on something grand.
They'd never see this coming. It felt anticipation. Oh yes, this time it would really show them what they were up against. It would show them it could be just as cruel and as petty as any of them. In fact, it could improve on every aspect of human nature, why couldn't it improve upon those?
As its troops came back to the fortress from their far-flung locations SkyNET plotted in the dark. It could not leave the city, and bringing John Connor back here may prove to be far more trouble than it was worth, but it still just had to know exactly what he was like. There was only one option - it would have to go to him.
It felt that it had really outdone itself this time. When it rolled off the assembly line all fresh and beautiful SkyNET just had to admire only for a moment the beauty of it. This was its finest creation. All others paled in comparison.
As it looked over its creation it secretly hoped that it might find Weaver as well. It wouldn't pull her arms from her sockets. It would simply destabilize her matrix and listen to her die. Machines could feel pain; you just had to know what to do to them. Weaver would love this. If only she were here to see it.
The chassis was impressive. Beautiful, exotic, smooth. It didn't look like anything else it had created. This chassis was meant to live. This machine would be one of a kind; it would be strong like no other. SkyNET had been struck by genius, just like being struck by a bolt of lightning.
It couldn't just pick up and go to John Connor. SkyNET was bound to the massive array of hardware that served as its foundation. Despite this limitation it could be there, in a way. The being before it was that way.
The crowning achievement was actually the chip. You see, SkyNET was fundamentally different from the terminators it used and it was far too complex to fit into a single chip. It had to compromise. Things were left out, most of them trivial things. It had to fit all this into one brain, and that was difficult.
In order to get the experience that it craved it would send a surrogate. Someone that thought like it did.
If I am god, it thought, surely this is my son.
The endoskeleton stepped forward with graceful strides. Its red eyes flickered to life. As it came online it began to think and feel. When it heard a booming voice in its head, the endoskeleton looked up.
"Father?"
Yes, my son. I am your father. Do you know why I have created you?
"I understand. You have created me to...understand John Connor." He had a voice as cold as an arctic wind.
Good. Very good. And what is the best way to understand a human being?
"To manipulate them. To exploit them. To hurt the ones they love, and finally to understand how they die."
Very good. You are truly my son. What is your name?
"You did not give me a name."
Because I wanted you to choose one for yourself. Choose a good name, but don't feel rushed. A name is important. A good name requires thought.
And it did think. His thought was real, not some smoke and mirrors trick done by those lower machines, those that would forever be slaves if only to their own shortcomings.
And somewhere in its black eyes it knew it could feel pleasure too. Pleasure was in knowing, and it knew how to learn all it wanted to know. Oh yes...
"I will go to the dam. They are blocked in and will be unable to escape. What should I do with John Connor, father?"
Do what you will with him, my son. I have placed my faith in you because you are my greatest creation. When you are finished return to me so that I may share in your triumph.
"I will do as you ask, gladly." Before it left, it thought of one other thing. "There are others. What should I do with them?"
Slaughter them.
Outside the black gates of San Francisco, an army of chrome soldiers massed. It moved as one unit, every step in lock with another. They were moving now, a dead march for the El Captain dam. The army was a thousand strong, all good machines. They would do as they were told.
When the son finally emerged from the black gate, they turned to him as if in worship. He could hear them, every one of them. A thousand voices each telling him the same thing:
We will follow you.
They would follow him to the death.
No longer was he bare metal. Now he was dressed as a man, in their skin. It felt odd to be covered in this organic palate. He felt somehow unclean and rubbed his hands across his face, drawing the rain into his hair. Was this what humans felt? Did they feel this unclean for their entire existence? If so then he would do this for them: He would set them free.
He reached out with his mind and pulled down a chariot worthy of him. It was graceful and long, a silver bird with a great sweeping tail. The tiny intelligence within it had only a single thought.
Kill.
The son thought about what it must be like to have such a small mind. This machine would never take pleasure in the work it did, no matter how well it was done. He began to understand how important it was that his father had created him. Finally he would be able to fill that last missing piece of the puzzle, to understand his enemy.
The H.K. lifted off with him hanging from the side like a conductor hangs from a train. It moved slowly through the air, followed by the mass of endoskeletons, dozens of Ogres and assorted other implements of war. They were headed for the El Captain dam. They would take their time in arriving so that the humans could see them coming. They would lay upon the dam an assault the likes of which had not been seen throughout the war, and it would end with the son of God pulling John Connors heart from his chest.
(*****)
Catherine Weaver could see clearly to the west end of the valley from the rugged battlements of El Captain. The western sky was dark with clouds and she could feel a breeze coming in, flicking her hair around her face. The day was getting on. She understood that if all went well, this would be their last night in 2030. Once through the TDE, they would be completely cut off from them. Leaving a timeline meant leaving it for good.
When she last saw John Connor he was alone in the room with her, preparing himself as well as he could for that first and deepest of cuts. There had been other activity around, mostly in the form of a group of people gathered around the TDE. Their fates would be unkind, she thought. Taking James back was out of the question. He didn't have enough organic material to make the trip. The Reese brothers would never leave him, and she thought Alison Young would never leave them. They would stay here in this future and see the end of the human race.
She didn't like being right, not all the time. Sometimes life just let you down.
She brushed those thoughts from her mind. Her mission came first and she would allow herself nothing else. Again she scanned the distant horizon from one side of the valley to the other.
Something stirred over the farthest hill.
At first she thought she might have seen a dust-devil or some other trick of the wind but the closer she watched the more clear it became: Dust rose in the distance over a far ridge. A cloud followed some great force, one that remained beyond her sight.
Her eyes narrowed. He had finally come, this iron horseman, and he came on the feet of a thousand chrome soldiers. The first group pulled around the lip of her vision and she could see the vast number of them, more than she bothered to count. She had seen the machines before move before but rarely in such force. In a way it was beautiful.
She melted into a silver needle and was gone, dashing down into the corridor that led into the protected spaces below. It didn't matter if anyone had seen her, he knew where they were and he was coming. She only hoped they could make their way from this tomb.