Sunday 14th October 2029 – 6.03pm

The barn wasn't as full as Erica had expected. She hadn't expected the new arrivals to come, but she had every opportunity to scan the faces of the crowd, and there were a few that were missing. It didn't bother her too much though.

She was standing next to Mr. Sansom on the makeshift stage. He was droning on. Collette's body lay at his feet.

No-one was really religious any-more. Most people believed in some sort of God, but the idea was vague and distant, and no-one really knew the rules of any religions, so funerals were a weird combination of things; military protocol, prayer, little rituals that had sprung up over the years. Whoever was leading the funeral – Mr. Sansom in this case – would regale the story of the dead person's life.

Not that Collette had had a boring life, but Mr. Sansom hadn't known her that well, so he didn't know the best bits, when Collette was a hero to her daughter. Like the time she'd brought a Twinkie and some Starburst home from a scavenging trip. The Twinkie was disgusting, but the Starburst were amazing. Erica'd had one. Her mother had told her to share the rest, but she'd eaten them all herself. Neil still complained about it at every opportunity.

She saw Neil now. He was standing a little way off with the camera, recording everything. He saw her looking, opened his mouth wide and ran his tongue over his teeth as though trying to see how dirty they were. Erica, who hadn't quite gotten over the giggling fit, barely hid her amusement. It was just like Neil to try and make her laugh in the middle of her mother's funeral.

Mr. Sansom had gotten to the really sad bit, when Collette had gotten ill. It had been hard. So hard. In Erica's eyes, Collette had gone from being this invincible bad-ass, to a meek helpless invalid unable to pull herself out of bed.

The doctor had put her on a whole cocktail of medicine. Collette, at one point, had joked that she'd become a drug addict. Erica didn't really know what that was, but she'd laughed anyway. It sounded bad.

Thinking back on it though, Erica realized that Collette hadn't lost her strength when she found out she was sick. She'd gotten stronger. For as long as she was able, Collette always had a smile and a joke or some comforting words for her daughter. It was really only in the last week or two when Collette disappeared completely.

That was what had made looking after her harder and harder. She'd already been gone. Erica was crying now. Horrible, gasping, blubbering crying. She became abruptly aware of the audience as they began to sing en-masse.

This was always the worst part of the funeral in Erica's eyes. The song had no words and went on and on. There wasn't really a designated length, and as awful as it was, the more willing the people were to sing, the longer it went on. The length of the song was the measure of the people's grief, the measure of how loved the dead person was.

Collette's wasn't very long.

It wasn't that she wasn't liked, she got on well enough with everyone, she just hadn't gotten close to anyone. The people in the mart were one huge, sprawling, convoluted, complicated family. Just Collette and Erica weren't really a part of it.

Then came the procession. Erica and Neil, as the people closest to Collette picked her up from the stage, Erica at her head, and Neil at her feet. Usually there would be more people to help, but there wasn't anyone else that loved Collette, so Erica and Neil struggled alone.

They led the way out of the barn, a couple of hundred people trailing behind. Luckily they didn't have to go very far, but they had to stop to rest for a moment in the middle. People stood back and waited for them patiently and respectfully, but Erica felt the need to get it over with, so they quickly picked Collette up again.

They reached the end of the road – a wall. This was their graveyard, the final resting place for anyone who died in the camp. The bodies lay in front of it for forty eight hours after their deaths, to allow those who wished to come and say their goodbyes, but almost no-one ever did.

There were already two on the floor. As they put Collette down, Erica looked at the faces of the others. One she only vaguely recognised – one of the soldiers, she thought. She didn't really know any of the ones that hadn't come from the mart.

The other was a girl she'd known since they were children, Natalie. Natalie had been a year or two older and had joined the military resistance as soon as she was old enough. She'd never been happy sitting around in the mart with everyone else, and it had gotten her killed two days ago.

Mr. Sansom handed Erica a drawing of her mother's face and a piece of blu-tack. They had used photographs up until a few years ago, when the one remaining Polaroid camera had given up on life. Now they were down to drawings, but Erica had heard rumours the paper was running out. She wondered what would happen when it did. Then she wondered if she'd live to see it. Weirdly, they still had loads of blu-tack.

She stuck the drawing next to Natalie's. They were running out of space, and they'd all started to over-lap. Mr. Sansom gave her a pen and she wrote at the bottom of it, "Collette Hart, 1993 – 2029".

And with that, the funeral was over. The crowd dispersed and Erica was left standing alone looking at the wall. The drawing of her mother was quite good, she wondered who'd done it. A lot of the others hadn't been so lucky. Natalie's drawing was terrible, it looked nothing like her.

Erica had never really understood Natalie's urge to get up and do something. Erica was happy hanging around the mart, getting older with no real memorable events. But now... Now Erica had begun to see. It wasn't enough just to survive, you had to live. It was a cliche Erica had heard many times before – one of her mother's favourites, but she'd finally figured out what it meant.

Erica wasn't going to sit around and wait to die. She was going to do something the hell about it.

Saturday 31st August 1996 – 7.45am

They sat down the back, with Patton closest to the window. As the bus was pulling away, the puce volvo pulled into the station.

"Ha! We've lost him!" This was great!

They watched the man get out of the volvo. He walked over to the truck driver and said something. The driver turned and gestured after them. The man pulled out a gun and pointed it at the driver.

At that moment, the bus passed a large building and the gas station was out of sight. There was a distant bang, and Markus desperately tried to convince himself that it wasn't what he knew it had to be.

Markus lived about twenty minutes outside Charlotte and knew the city pretty well. He never used the buses though, and had no idea where this one was taking them. It meandered slowly out of town, then turned and headed back in. They, as far as Markus could tell, were heading to the city centre.

Somewhere in the suburbs Markus nudged Patton. "Here. We get off here."

"You can't go home."

"No, I don't live near here, we've just got to get off."

The bus stopped and they waited impatiently as an old man with a walker clambered ungainly off. He hurried away at top old-man-walker speed, which was still not very fast.

Markus started to lead Patton down a side-street. He headed deeper and deeper into a colossal neighbourhood. All the houses were clean and nice and new, and looked identical; dormer roofs, large front gardens, small porches out front.

He stopped outside one that was indistinguishable from the rest, except perhaps a little shabbier, and rang the doorbell. He glanced at his watch and groaned inwardly. It was way too early on a Saturday morning and Cecilia would probably not be happy.

Sunday 14th October 2029 – 8.29pm

Erica was in her usual spot, at the front of the balcony in the barn. Right now though, she was pressed so tightly up against it that the railing was rammed right into her stomach. Someone's elbow and someone else's shoulder were pressing against her upper back, so she was forced to lean right out over the writhing crowd below.

She was fairly concerned that she'd drop the camera, but the weird angle allowed her to turn it from the masses behind her on the balcony to the people below to stage with ease. There were a couple of children placed precariously on the edge of the stage – nowhere else to put them, Erica thought to herself.

The room was packed – Erica had never seen it this full. There were all the people who usually went to these meetings, plus everyone else from the mart – what had happened last night had spread like wildfire and no-one wanted to miss out this time. Then there was what looked to be everyone from the military, which was extremely unusual – the two never really mixed en-masse like this.

And then Erica thought she recognised a lot of the people who'd arrived earlier. She would be every surprised if there was anyone in the camp that wasn't in the room, besides the sentries that were constantly on guard and John Connor himself.

Children and short people were dotted around the room on the shoulders of others. People strained and shuffled around, trying to find a slightly better view. Erica wondered how many of them would end up not being able to see or hear anything. Quite a lot, probably, the room was just too crowded.

At exactly half past, the sea of people around the door began to part. A narrow path formed which led to the stage. As Sackhoff crossed the room, the path closed behind him.

He was pushed onto the stage by the hands of the people nearby and everyone fell completely silent. Any noise now would jeopardise everyone's ability to hear what was being said.

He didn't say anything for a minute, just looked at them. They looked back. He wasn't surprised, so much as over-awed, Erica thought, but she didn't think he was gullible enough to believe that everyone in the room supported him. There were plenty that did, and plenty that didn't. But for most it was more of a morbid curiosity that drew them there. These were the people that Markus had to win over.

He held his left hand up over his head. Erica could see that it was strapped up tightly. He began to speak, and the crowd lent forward in anticipation.

"When I was a teenager, the machines sent a terminator back in time to assassinate me." This was news to everyone.

"THAT THING did this to me." He brandished his arm forcefully.

The eyes of the crowd were fixed on him. He was shouting at the top of his voice, but Erica could see many at the back straining to hear anything.

"One of them took everything from me... My entire family, two of my closest friends. And then they took away the world." A very few cheered at this, but most were mesmerised

"We created them, we trusted them with everything, and they destroyed it all." Now the crowd was behind him. There was a huge cheer and as it died out - "but it WAS OUR FAULT." The noise stopped abruptly

"They are things. THEY cannot FEEL, or LOVE, or DIE. And we treated them like PEOPLE." No-one was sure where this was going.

"That was our mistake. They are things, and we confided our deepest, most trusted secrets in them, and they DESTROYED OUR WORLD. And one among us has started to trust them again."

There was a sick feeling in the pit of Erica's stomach that had very little to do with the railing. Sackhoff was going to do it, he was going to take power from Connor. Maybe not in name, but any minute now he was going to win the hearts of a third of the human race. And it would destroy them all.

"Earlier today, the machine we have invited into our home killed three of our people." Sackhoff looked around. He knew he had them eating out of the palm of his hand. "Instead of killing it right there and then, JOHN CONNOR took out it's brain. He took out it's brain and is, at this moment, trying to fix it."

"John Connor IS IN LOVE WITH A MACHINE!"

No-one knew how to react. It hit Erica like a ton of bricks – it was true. She'd seen enough over the last two days to know that it was true. That look in his eyes when Alison had come in that door...

"And John Connor -" He lowered his voice to normal speaking level, but he might as well have been whispering. Erica just about made it out. "is trying to make it into one of us."

The people who'd heard erupted. Those that couldn't hear joined in anyway because they knew whatever he'd said had been huge.

The thing was, Erica couldn't tell if they agreed with Sackhoff or not. Some clearly did, and some clearly didn't, and both were shouting about it at the top of their voices. There were some who just seemed to be shouting for the sake of it, because it seemed to be the thing to do.

She relaxed a little. Maybe Sackhoff wouldn't win. Connor just needed to get his side in, but Erica knew that wouldn't happen until Alison was fixed, and who knew how long that would take.

Sackhoff smiled. He was smart, he knew it wasn't a slam-dunk, but it was written all over his face that he had another ace up his sleeve.

"AND -" The audience, who'd almost forgotten him in their fervour, turned back. "He's been lying to us all. Camp thirty-eight has been destroyed." There was an audible intake of breath. "Not only that, but six others have been destroyed over the last few months. There are six camps left, including us. There are two thousand five hundred people left in the human race."

No-one knew what to do. How are you supposed to react to that? So nobody did anything. "He wants us to fight this battle on Tuesday morning, with no plan, no back-up, no hope. JOHN CONNOR WILL LEAD US ALL TO OUR END!"

A woman wailed. It was desperate, aching, painful, agonising. Erica had never heard anything like it, and she hoped she never would again. It went on and on until no-one could bear it any longer. As soon as it died off, everything exploded.

Pro-Sackhoff supporters turned on their pro-Connor neighbours. People from the mart who had grown up together attacked each other. Soldiers who had fought together, bled together, were now fighting each other, making each other bleed.

Sackhoff stood on the stage, watching. Nobody was paying him any attention any-more, the crowd had taken off on their own. His face was blank, and Erica was too far away to be quite sure, but there was a look about him, the way he stood. He was ready to fight, but Erica didn't think this was what he had intended. She didn't think he'd wanted to divide the people, not now, not right before the Final Battle.

Then something happened. Someone elbowed their way to the front of the crowd, side-stepping the brawling masses. One of the children sitting on the stage helped the old man up.

Mr. Sansom started to shout. "Stop! Stop!" He might not have even been there, for all the attention most people paid him, but one or two people looked up.

"LISTEN TO ME!" Another one or two. Slowly, the crowd started to hear him. When enough had stopped fighting, Mr. Sansom began to speak.

"What the hell are you doing? Look at yourselves!" Some of the audience sheepishly straightened clothes and wiped their bloody noses. "WE HAVE A CHANCE!"

"There is a chance to end this terrible terrible war. We can do this. We can make it so our children grow up in a world where they aren't constantly looking over their shoulders, constantly watching, constantly waiting to die."

"WE CAN HAVE PEACE!"

This sentence reverberated through the room. Even the most viscously fighting couples turned to listen.

"We can do this, we can win. All we have to do is stick together. I don't know who's right. I don't know if John Connor is still the best person to lead us." Angry shouts, but Mr. Sansom hushed them.

"I cannot count how many times John Connor's leadership has saved my life. Can you?"

"He deserves the benefit of the doubt. He deserves our respect. He deserves the chance to save us again. He deserves the chance to save us all."

"Now go home."

Tensions were still high, but Erica was pretty sure Mr. Sansom had just prevented an all out civil war.