Tuesday 16th October 2029 – 12.53pm
There was a knocking on the door. George poked her head in. She looked surprised to see Erica waking up in Connor's bed, but didn't question it. Today was the sort of day when unusual things happened.
She spoke to John; "it's time."
Erica tried to stand, to go with them, but they both hushed her back down. Connor smiled - "I'll be fine. Get some rest."
This was exactly what Erica had wanted to hear, she just hadn't known it. So she nodded uneasily, and lay back down.
After being alone a few minutes, she sat up. She loaded the first tape into the tape deck, and set it to start capturing the video. She loaded a new tape into the camera – well actually, none of her tapes were new, she was recording over all the old nonsense she'd recorded over the years. But it was a tape that had no documentary footage on it yet.
She was playing around with settings when John came in, half an hour later. She immediately began to record.
"Well?" she asked.
"Guilty," he pronounced, looking remarkably un-upset. Seeing the look on her face, he began to clarify, "I am guilty. I am responsible for the deaths of all of those people..." he trailed off.
But then he smiled again. "This will make them feel better, executing me. We're all going to die now anyway, I'm just going to do it a few hours before everyone else. Call me a trend-setter."
He was brushing it off, Erica could see. She didn't think it was the execution that was bothering him, but rather what he was being executed for – for ending the human race, essentially. She had no idea how someone could possibly deal with that, but she didn't think he was – he was pushing it down, getting on with it.
He stopped and sized her up. There was more, she knew, and he didn't think she could handle it.
"Just tell me."
"Camps thirty-four and twenty-one have been destroyed. It's just us now. Two-hundred and twenty-six – twenty-five people."
He said this almost casually, like if he didn't make a big deal about it, it wouldn't be a big deal. And it sort of worked.
The tape was ninety minutes long, and still capturing. There were two more, plus the one she'd just started.
"Can I see the footage?" he asked.
"Yeah," Erica said, and began to play the first file.
Friday 6th September 1996 – 9.07am
Everyone else was already there –Markus wished they would have woken him. They were deep in discussion.
"I finished sorting through them last night – there's so much stuff, not just reports and things. People sent back stories, novels and poetry and drawings. Records of births, deaths, marriages. A couple of people recorded audio messages to themselves or their families. There's a whole bunch of photos too," John was saying. "And – I haven't read it all yet, but there's a diary. Of everything – before Judgement Day and after."
They were all watching Sarah. "Okay," she said. "Put it all online."
"All of it?"
"Are you sure?"
She dismissed their unspoken objections. "We don't have the right to decide what people should and shouldn't see. Those people trusted us to get their story out there, to stop it happening all over again. We have to put it all up."
This was such a one-eighty from her opinion a few nights ago. Markus didn't have to wonder what had changed her mind – the documentary had been so powerful and they'd all seen bits and pieces of the other stuff that had been sent back. It was heart-breaking, devastating.
One woman had recorded a message to her teenage self – the girl had been depressed and thinking about suicide. The future woman had talked about how her family had helped her overcome it, how she'd been doing so much better. And then, Judgement Day. The woman had basically told her teenage self to go head and do it, they'd both be better off.
A father had told his wife who, in 1996, was pregnant, to get an abortion. It had hurt him too much to loose first his daughter, then his wife.
A sister had written to her brother and told him to get out of the army, then he'd have a chance. And it went on and on. Hundreds of messages from loved ones, warning them of how bad it was going to get. Very few told whoever the message was for to be strong, that it would be okay, because it wouldn't be. They were all going to lead short, brutally painful lives, and lose almost everyone they loved.
"Hold on, who says you get to decide?" Dave demanded. "We need to think about this. This could change everything."
"That's the point. If we don't change everything, it's all going to happen all over again. We have to change everything to stop it," John argued.
"Vote! Can we have a vote?" Dave proposed to Sarah.
Everyone immediately deferred to Sarah – and it was obvious why; she was just a leader. She knew what to do, how to handle things. If John was like that in the future, Markus thought, it was no wonder people followed him so blindly.
Sarah agreed to the vote.
Markus didn't know if it was such a good idea to release it all though. Stuff like that – it could cause panic. But he could see Sarah's argument too, it wasn't up to them to decide.
There'd been an interview with older-Markus in the documentary, but there was no message from himself to himself in the rest. Markus didn't know why he hadn't left one, but he knew if there had been one, he'd be pretty pissed if someone had hidden it from him.
So, despite his reservations, when Dave said "hands up if you think we should put it online," Markus raised his injured left hand above his head. So did Marita, Jack, Sarah and John. Dave was outnumbered.
"So, what do we do with the documentary?" Markus spoke up.
"TV. We put it on television," this was Marita. Markus immediately dismissed it as ridiculous.
Sarah re-adjusted in her seat, winced, and then began to nod slowly. "We put it on television."
"We do?" Jack asked sceptically.
"Yeah. Just think about it," John said. "It's kinda brilliant. There's no denying the footage, and even if people think it's an elaborate hoax, they'll want to see it. What TV station wouldn't want to air that? Plus, if we get it on TV, it's got a whole bunch more credibility than something that people just stumble upon on the web."
"Okay, how? Does anyone here have any TV connections? How about phone numbers? Email addresses? And even if we do get in contact with someone, who'd believe a bunch of crazy survivalists living on the boarder between Panama and Colombia?"
Jack was right, Markus thought. Without seeing the footage, no-one would believe them. And if no-one believed them, no-one would watch the footage. They were stuck.
But Sarah smiled. "We take it to them. We don't give them a choice."
"I'll start working on putting things online. There's a lot of data. It'll take a while, and I'll have to make a web-page or something to put it on," John said pointedly. No-one got the point.
"I'm busy. Get out."
Tuesday 16th October 2029 – 1.37pm
Erica barged into the farmhouse. She was sick of being careful and polite and unobtrusive. But she was recording.
George, Sackhoff, Mr. Sansom and the four soldiers were in there. The last that remained of any military or government.
As she entered, Sackhoff had been saying "I just don't think there's anything else we can do." And Erica smiled.
"There is something we can do. We can fix it." She'd just watched the whole of the first tape with John. It was good. It could convince people, they just had to give them a chance to see it.
"We send the documentary back."
Sackhoff groaned, "it's not going to work-" he began, but seeing that everyone else was listening, he gave it up.
"But not just that, we send military reports, history, messages and photos from the people in the mart. Everything we have." Erica was impassioned. She knew this would work. "Just give me that box thing, me and John can figure the rest out."
"Even if, somehow, by magic, you manage to get that thing working, no-one's going to believe it. People before Judgement Day, they won't understand. You're too young to get it, but," Sackhoff looked to Mr. Sansom for help, but Mr. Sansom shot him down.
"What's the harm in trying? Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, but it will give the people here hope."
George began to nod too. "I'll help too,"she said. "I'll get the stuff together from the mart, scan it, whatever."
Sackhoff looked around the room – even the silent, nameless, soldiers seemed to agree.
"Alright," he said. "But Connor's execution stands. He has until six."
Tuesday 16th October 2029 – 3.31pm
"Mr. Sansom," Erica began.
"That's me."
"You were president during Judgement Day?"
"Yes."
"What was that like?" Erica could not imagine it – not Mr. Sansom being president, or what it must have been like, being president on Judgement Day.
"We didn't have a clue," Mr. Sansom began. "The missiles started coming down, and we thought it was North Korea, or Al-Qaeda maybe, or one one of a whole bunch of others. We told people to stay in their homes, not to panic." He stopped talking.
"And..." Erica prompted.
"And then there were the nukes. City after city levelled. Within hours, all the major cities in America, plus most of the others across the world, were gone."
"How did you survive?"
"I happened to be on Air Force One at the time, flying back from a meeting with the Irish Taoiseach." He saw that none of that made any sense to Erica, and laughed.
"Air Force One was this massive, really cool plane that was used to fly me about. A Taoiseach was like the Prime Minister of Ireland. Sort of. Anyway, they flew me here, and I've been here pretty much ever since."
"Where is here?" Erica asked. "I mean, what was it before? A military base, right?"
"Cheyenne Mountain. NORAD."
"That's a military base, right?"
At this, Mr. Sansom laughed outright. "Yeah."
"So why is everything farm related?"
This threw Mr. Sansom a little. "Farm related?"
"Yeah, the way we've named things. The farmhouse, the barn, the mart, the feild... Why?"
Mr. Sansom shrugged. He didn't know either.
Friday 6th September 1996 – 4.09pm
It had been a long and boring day. There was nothing to do, beyond watch over John's shoulder while he worked, and John really hated that. So, Jack, Markus and Dave had taken to whittling grave markers for the dead.
They were sitting out in the sun. Marita was sitting nearby reading "The Idiot" in its original Russian. Sarah was off on her own as usual. No-one was ever quite sure where she went, or what she did, or when she'd be back. Markus really hoped she was getting her bullet wound seen to – he couldn't imagine getting shot and not seeing a doctor.
Life in their little corner of the world went on.
Markus was finding the carving extremely difficult. He only had the use of one hand, so he was balancing the piece of wood on his lap and using a knife to carve the letters with his right hand. Dave was struggling too, with his shoulder and had managed three. Jack had no such difficulties and had carved five. Markus was still on his first, and he wanted to get it right. He'd already scrapped three attempts.
Annnnd... It was done. There hadn't been much to put on it – no-one had known Patton's last name, or her date of birth, or anything else about her, so Markus had just put "Patton" with a crude carving of a daisy. He didn't really think Patton had liked daisies, but it had just been so blank that he'd had to add something, and he'd no idea what she had actually liked.
"Come on," Jack said. They stood up and crossed to where the graves were – brown mounds of earth interrupting the stretch of grass all around. Patton's grave was on the end, and Markus went over to it. He placed the wooden plaque right above where her head should be. And suddenly, he was extremely angry.
"I don't know who's buried where, I was busy having a bullet dug out of my shoulder!" Dave was complaining loudly.
"I don't remember either," Jack was saying. "Markus -"
But Markus interrupted him; "Where's Sarah? Is she back?"
"She's inside, I think. You alright?" Jack looked concerned.
"Yeah." Markus was anything but alright.
"What are you going to do?" Dave shouted after him, but Markus didn't answer. He didn't know what he was going to do.
He burst in the door. It slammed against the wall beside it with a bang, making John, at the computer, jump. Sarah was inside, eating something. She took one look at him and ordered "Outside. Now."
Markus obeyed without thinking, but when they got back outside, he wished he hadn't – he'd given her power over him.
Marita glanced at them briefly, but clearly decided her book was more interesting and went back to that.
"What?" Sarah barked at him.
Being angry at Sarah was not an easy thing to be, but Markus knew he was right. "Patton. You said you didn't know that it wasn't a trap, you didn't know that the message wasn't from the machines?"
Sarah shrugged in a "yeah, so what" sort of manner, and Markus just got more pissed.
"You thought it might be a trap, and you thought "Hey, let's send the twelve year old in!" She was a child. She had no business dodging bullets, or zip-lining off skyscrapers. She had no business saving me. She was a child."
For once, Sarah looked taken aback, but Markus didn't stay to let her defend herself. He just took off.
Tuesday 16th October 2029 – 5.47pm
They'd gotten so much more from the mart than anyone had expected. Everyone had recorded a message, or had a photo, or a drawing, a poem, a short story that they wanted sent back. George had taken over capturing the video, and had started compiling everything in the farmhouse.
Erica and John were in John's room. He was trying to figure out the tech from the communications room in the Skynet base. The tech that was supposed to make this all possible.
But he couldn't get it. There were firewalls or something, and John couldn't crack it. This was awful. So frustrating – they were so close, they had everything. They just needed some way to send it. And John's deadline was fast approaching.
There was a knock on the door. Erica knew who it was before she opened it, and as she did she started to protest "we just need five minutes, five minutes, please!"
Markus nodded. "Yeah, you've got, like, ten. I just wanted to see how it was going."
This surprised Erica, but the ten minutes passed in silence. And then five more passed.
"I'm sorry," Markus said – he actually sounded like he was. It was nearly ten past. "We've got to go John."
John stood up with an air of finality. Erica began to protest again, but John stopped her. "I'm running some decryption software. If that doesn't work, there's nothing more I'd be able to do anyway."
Erica nodded.
"I do have one request," John looked to Markus.
Erica had almost forgotten that for thirty years, these two men had been best friends.
Tuesday 16th October 2029 – 6.18pm
They were outside, right on top of the mountain. This was nothing like it had been this morning. The sky was orange, and pink and purple, and there were little clouds scattered around, illuminated by the sun that was about to set.
Most of the camp hadn't bothered to turn up. Nothing mattered to them anymore. But about fifty or so had. John Connor knelt before them, a look of resolute determination on his face. A look of bravery, Erica thought.
He hadn't set out to end the world, he had set out to save it. And he still might, or so Erica hoped.
Markus stood over him, pistol pointed straight at John's head. It looked like it was harder for him than for John, and Erica, recording, could have sworn the on-board mic picked up John saying, under his breath, so only Markus should have been able to hear "it's okay. You're right to do this. It's okay."
And Markus pulled the trigger. But by then, none of the crowd were paying attention – none of them saw John Connor leave the world. They were too busy staring at the road in the valley below.
The machines were coming.