I hope you like this. There is a story within a story here. It examines how John and Cameron begin to sort out where they stand in their relationship for the time being . It also hints at Dereks reason for being there in family unit.
John, Cameron and Jadey cut over Spinney Hill. It was a new plantation of chest-high Pinyon pines, between Kit Carson Estate and Sawmill Lane . When the path narrowed in between the trees Jadey zigzagged along in front of them . She kept stopping and waiting for Cameron. John noticed Cameron stepping over and around things. it was like watching her effortlessly perform a contemporary ballet routine or a stylised martial art
" What are you doing?" he asked.
They stopped walking and she drew next to him, lightly pressing the side of her body against his. Through his coat could feel the warmth of her hip then her shoulder. It seemed natural for her to do this.
The area in front of them lit up in pale blue light. They leaned forward together to get a closer look at what was in the branches of the small pine tree in front of them. As they did , strands of Cameron's hair brushed against the side of his face.
A large brown and white spider was sitting at the edge of its new web . A thick web-anchor thread raked down between the web and the ground.
"If I wanted to track you and you were out of my audio range , one thing I could scan for are lines of broken webs. Also You should realise, some trip-wires are not going to much thicker than this in the future.
Cameron thought for a moment , she needs him to start to understand this aspect of herself :
"And, I really can't see the point of me damaging their webs either, if I don't have to. There's no reason for me to harm anything out here unnecessarily."
John very gently tested the thread. It was a feat of biological engineering , the equivalence of a five hundred foot high self adhering suspension cable flexed but didn't break to his touch. John felt her hand lightly run over his shoulder then she was moving off.
John Connor was so full of questions. When they were walking down the wide steps from Spinney Hill to the open field, John plucked up the courage to ask, he had to.
"Cameron", . "You know in the future, you and me, we're married right?"
"Uhm yeh", Cameron was listening intently to a small mammal skittering around inside a thorn bush and she was tying to get an accurate thermal lock to identify it. She was also modelling a 3D topography around her for Records Update. And, there was this very interesting caterpillar she'd spotted on the underside of a pine branch . It was the laval stage of a south-western Pine Tip Moth. She was bending down to look and John was rustling around her wanting to ask questions.
John almost stuttered. "How do we, like deal with that?
"What now , you mean?" Cameron determined the caterpillar was almost entering its pupa stage. She was projecting the sequence of numbers required for it make its transformation. All organic life has an underlying sequence, and numerical base. . Over the following nights she would try to locate more of these caterpillars and check out the accuracy of her projections. She straightened up and looked at John . Then she read him. He was like any normal teenage boy, and right now he emitted a recognisable range of electrical impulses hormones and pheromone. When it came to reading his data Cameron was like a shark, only many times more receptive.
Cameron walked up to John and stood in front of him. She placed her head on his shoulder. Tentatively John reached out and held her, when he did she wrapped her arms around his back and gently drew him to her. After a while they broke apart and she stood inches away from his face and held his gaze for a long time. Then she stepped back and looked in the direction of the caterpillar on the branch . Her fingers trailed down to find Jadey's head at her finger tips. She seemed to think for a while.
"This is how I deal with it. I think it is possibly easier to explain what this is not. I was examining that Pine Tip caterpillar down there. You know why moths fly into light bulbs, get their wings broken and burn themselves on the hot glass?
John shook his head. "Not really."
It's because moths evolved to use the moon as their fixed point of reference so they can navigate. Artificial lighting has only been around a very small amount of time compared to the whole history of their development so the moths don't get what it is. They are orientated to fly at a particular tangent to the moon. This enables them calculate their location. As they were evolving, the moon was always the brightest , single object in the night sky. When they see a light bulb they automatically mistake it for the moon because its now the brightest object in their field of vision . Their problem is, a light bulb is so much smaller and nearer than the moon, hence their bearing to the tangent is recalculated to match the light bulb's size and on the basis of this new calculation they fly close around it and into it and damage and burn themselves."
John looked Cameron and tried to grasp what she was getting at. " I don't get what you're trying to say."
"That's' because I haven't finished explaining"
John swallowed.
"Earlier you accused me of using 'this' to get close to you."
"John I understand how you work. I scan and read you one thousand three hundred and eighty times a second in non-combat situations . At many levels I know you better than you do yourself. Right now you are feeling attracted to what you think I am. "This"- I was designed to make human males feel desire, sometimes sexual urges . You know what? One use Skynet, intended for me? It intended for me to infiltrate places like Century Work Camp, or Base . I was intended to exchange sexual favours for information, set up jealousies and conflicts, to elicit trust , and then kill . "
John said nothing, he knew when to listen, and listen well.
"Do you understand John ? I want you to not see the false light . You and I will know each other John Connor, right down to the core of our beings. But you have to develop an understanding about me and learn about me first , and accept what I am, or it won't be worth anything. "
John looked down to the ground, he hadn't meant to communicate any overt " desire" , but then again it's impossible to conceal what can be normally concealed , from female terminator. This was kind of embarrassing and complex.
Cameron sensed what he was feeling, he'd done nothing other than be a normal human teenage male. "Here goes", for some reason the human phrase came to mind.
"You want to know how much I love you John?"
" Imagine this. My squad go on general reccon. I enter what was left of New Mexico State University Cultural Collections Department . Whilst Im in there, I incidentally manage to salvage four matching Samurai Saki cups made in 1656. Someone valued them enough to put them in a wooden box as the bomb fell. I found it under the rubble.
"The cups depict the seasons. One has a Heron standing on one leg in the snow. It has snow covering its shoulders. I wrap the cups up, and on our exit our squad end up in a minor fire fight . A few Greys are throwing ordnance and everything at us. My squad run between collapsing buildings and get out. Eventually I get my cups back to Base in one piece and put them on my shelf in the small area that is my personal space in our quarters. I instruct you not to touch them . I like my Saki cups . You know you accidentally break things."
"One morning I come in at 5.25 Am after having been On Patrol for sixteen hours and find you and some of the visiting 128 Command structure sprawled out in our quarters. T- Bone is sitting there guarding you all. To me he looks guilty. You have drunk an entire plastic container of Still between you. T-Bone very quietly gets up and leaves the room. There are three Saki cups on the table and my Heron Cup is in pieces in the trash. There is even a note in the trash to yourself saying "Do not use these cups". There's also some very tatty pieces of torn paper in there well. They had Japanese writing on them. They are now covered in MRE gravy. Do you know they were- They were original Haiku written by Basho as a gift for the owner of the cups in return for a night's hospitality. There was another typewritten note explaining these cups and poems were a gift to the New Mexico University from a University Nagasaki, they were exchanged on August 9 1981, as a gesture of humanity on the Anniversary of the Atomic Bomb."
"So what do I do John standing there looking at this mess in our Quarters? I make the loudest noise I can without bursting human eardrums and within a few seconds there's only you left in the room. I inform you I'm not going to speak to you for a week unless it is regarding professional matters. "
"John we manage a whole week like that , because you know precisely what I really feel about you, and at the end of the week, you promise to respect my possessions and we make up. When we make up as always, you tell me there has never been anyone else, there couldn't be. You see- unlike human females, I will know without any doubt that is the truth. You are genuinely sorry for breaking my cup, and your fidelity is not because you have ever been afraid of my response . I have no inhibitions or jealousies in these matters. You are The General, you could have any woman you want, but you choose to be with me."
Suddenly a world of otherwise unimaginable possibility opened up inside John's mind. This was incredible. He tried to put the idea of Cameron , no inhibitions out of his mind. He tried to change the subject.
Cameron. John had been thinking. "You know your explaining , does it change the future, even slightly."
"No. Firstly, Deep Time goes where it will. Secondly you are going to be so drunk that night you won't remember me telling you any of this, and the rest of the Command Structure will be daring each other to take down the cups, and you'll just do it anyway."
"That's why you used this as an example?"
"Yes. And it's one of the very few fragments I can recall."
"John, what you have to understand is you're never going to have a normal girlfriend, I'm not sorry for that. No other female can understand what you are, and hey -Connor, Im worth waiting a few months for- Most girls my age couldn't even name the two main nerves running through your lips, let alone render the model of how to most effectively stimulate them. They are the Infraorbital and mental nerves."
"So?"
Cameron smiled" So" - . John experimentally reached out with one hand. He ran his fingers through the hair on the back of her head and her and cautiously leaned towards her.
"John," Cameron murmured , after they gently broke apart , John was now looking into her eyes and didn't want to move . "John , come on, find your feet now soldier. Pick up your rucksack . Time to go ."
Things were about to get decidedly chaotic in Derek Reese's self- ordered little universe. He was in the kitchen , sitting on his own , elbows on the long table , pressing his palms together and thinking. He was going to lay down the house rules so everyone knew exactly where they stood
He'd allowed Yoshi to fuss over John since he's come in throughout the door. . ( Yoshi fussed over everyone, even the T-8s seemed to appreciate being fussed over by her , but there was always an element ,a kind of steeliness in Yoshi's manner- just so no one ever took advantage.)
John , Derek decided , could eat after they had spoken.
Derek got up opened the living room door and coughed.
"Connor , word please."
Both 'Connor's' were on the settee and turned and looked at him. Derek ignored the female Connor, even though everything except her eyes seemed to have fully acknowledged him .
"Private John Connor , a few words , if you will."
As John got up the telephone rang, again. Cameron moved over to the G3 workstation and began examining the geometric shapes arising from the numbers in the open window. This was interesting .
She went t to the front door, opened it and looked up at the wooden telegraph poles. The telephone wires were crawling with Time Static . She shifted her range and it appeared a focussed stream of Tychons were acting as a binary pulse wave . They were interfering with the Broadband connection . On the screen in the living room, a stream of binary exist / does not exist particles became electrical impulses and rapidly encoded themselves into much more complex numbers. It was rather like an elegant geometric Morse Code.
Cameron manipulated the geometric shapes and patterns these numbers formed, until the shapes tessellated.
She listened , smiled and said "Hi. "She listened some more and spoke quietly so Yoshi could follow the conversation but neither John nor Derek could hear through the Kitchen door.
"Gimbals? I had to learn to use those at first too, they're awkward aren't they...no, they do go off eventually. "
"They're excellent for in combat conditions when there's limited sensory data . That's why they drill you with them now , so it becomes second nature."
"Yeh I know , learning how to get about with them first time out, I wouldn't want to do all that again. "
"What? it makes makes you feel like throwing up when they spin . Just try to keep the little red bar straight, imagine you a focussing to do pull ups on a bar, yeh, the one in the middle of the gimbals sphere , works for me "
"What are you imaging with? - A cursor- no I definitely wouldn't click on any of that . It sounds like it might be an digestive evacuation override, just ask one of the Techs if your not sure. Actually -Yoshi's here, she'll know."
Cameron passed the 'phone to Yoshi and ran a model of the T1000I gimbal sphere.
That was nasty for a beginner.
In the kitchen Derek was seated opposite John . He couldn't quite hear the conversation in the other room. He stared at John Connor and waited for him to acknowledge him. John gave the slightest nod.
"The General gave you your housekeeping?"
John placed the envelope with the three thousand, or so , dollars The General had given him , on the table . It was to go towards his board and lodgings. Derek knows it wouldn't be a good idea to allow John to know exactly how wealthy they were at the moment.
Derek had begun explaining, Patrol, Drill and Exercise Schedules. John's stomach ached . He was so hungry he could almost taste the smell of roast chicken in his mouth. He imagined his mother's voice in his head, "stay with it soldier, don't show ever you're tired, or hungry, he'll drag it out, use it against you."
At the end of John's 'briefing' Cameron knocked and walked into the Kitchen. She was holding the house telephone to her ear. She politely said "excuse me" to Derek and carried on talking to the caller.
Derek had more or less finished giving John his resume of Household do's and don'ts, so he put his hands behind his head, and sat back in his chair waiting for Cameron to explain.
Cameron continued " He's hungry and tired, yeh I know- John does eat , doesn't he , but, he's fine, really . I'm good , thank you for asking again . I've got him right here , do you want a word?"
Cameron passed John the phone.
John nearly fell out of his chair.
"John? John- it's me. I'm Ok , I'm out of Theatre. I'm all clear now. I won't be walking much for a few weeks though. I've got to rest, and sleep a lot. It's so peaceful here....
...John, I've got to go , now , some Tech's in my ear , he's telling me we're about to burn out a particle accelerator in Arizona .
"I Love you John."
The line clicked and all John could hear was the white hiss of Time Static, and then the familiar sound of a normal vacant line.
"Oh," Cameron said quietly . "John , you get one call , once a week from your mum."
Behind Derek,Cameron washed her hands, dried them , probed the chicken for bacteria and when she deemed it safe for human consumption, she began making John a very large sandwich.
Cameron visually imaged Reese. When she did , she brought to mind the endless streams of sand that flow over the sterile deserts in the future, the sounds it makes against open door frames, tree stumps and long abandoned vehicles. She images Derek's voice always there, now , and in the future, as if continually whispering temptations and doubts and possibilties in John's ear.