How does one person affect all of our lives? It is a question many ask but few ever really find an answer to. My son, John found his answer. He saved the world. Whenever we talked about our time fighting Skynet, John always claimed he was no hero. He said it was the groups of soldiers who had died on the field of battle and a small band who fought when no one else believe the threat was real. He said they were the heroes. That is not what I say.
With the help of Catherine Weever, the police finished their investigation of the warehouse and found nothing of interest. Once the police had lost interest in their investigation, John led us back into the facility. This time we found our way into the collapse tunnels without any trouble. No cyborg tried to stop us. No Grays shot at us. John found the endoskeleton of Cameron. Most of her body had been crushed under concrete, but her head had survived. We left John to say his last goodbyes. The process was slow, but we managed to cover every last shred of evidence in thermite. When we left there, the whole area was in flames. The steel, concrete, computers, terminators. They all just melted away.
That night, we all got drunk. The was was over for all of us. Some of us celebrated being free from the hell that had run our lives. Others of us mourned for those who had died to give us this victory. I spent the night, after everyone else had gone to bed, crying as I thought of Kyle Reese.
In the years following our battle with Skynet, I did develop cancer. It was a long, hard fight. A fight that most people would have given up from and just died. I was lucky, I had my broken, little family to see me though it all. I survived the cancer and lived to see my family grow old.
Danny Dyson was returned to his mother. He went back to school and became a brilliant computer programmer and inventor. His mother and I still meet from time to time in the cemetery where we place flowers on the graves of those we both lost to the damned war.
Martin recovered from his wounds. After a few months of spending time with his parents, Martin finished his military training. After finishing his training, he got time off from the military and came home to us. He proposed to Lauren Fields and the two were married in-between his tours of duty. He was deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan, and wherever else the army saw fit to send him. In the war against ISIS, Martin Bedell was a great help to his fellow soldiers. In all, he served six tours of duty and was promoted through the ranks. When he finally retired, he was promoted one last time. A single, silver star decorated his shoulders. He spent his retired life with Lauren.
Lauren and Martin both looked after Lauren's sister. We all helped, of course. When Sydney was old enough to go to school, Lauren attended university classes and became a nurse. She worked hard and saved many lives over the years.
Catherine Weever rebuilt her company. It began to be even more profitable. She ran the company until her daughter Savannah was old enough to take over the business. They ran it together for many years before the T-1001 officially retired from public life. She then devoted her time to protecting John Henry, Savannah, and all of Savannah's children from any who would dare threaten them.
Savannah group up to quite the beautiful woman and eventually married. Her husband had a hard time understanding everything that we told him when he come over to meet us. Eventually came to terms with the fact that Savannah's "brother" was an AI.
John Henry never left the basement again. He served as our means of always staying in contact. When a new threat would appear, he would destroy it. We will probably never know just how many possible Skynets John Henry had killed over the years, and honestly, I don't want to know. In many ways, he became a ghost in the system. Always watching and protecting.
James Ellison continued to work for Mrs. Weever and then Savannah. When he retired, Ellison found some comfort in his church services. It brought him peace when he passed from this life. We all gathered for his funeral. Every year, on the anniversary of our victory, we would gather at his grave.
Derek probably suffered more than the rest of us. He had lived through a hell that I can only imagine. With the war over, and the fighting done, he developed PTSD. At night he would scream. In the morning, we would find him cleaning his weapons. Every day he would grow more and more distant from us. It was John that saved him. Together, they worked though the PTSD. Derek never really did recover fully but he at least returned to the man we all had come to know and love. Derek took up traveling during his spare time. Sometimes he would be gone for weeks at a time. When I asked him where he went on those trips, he only said that he wanted to pay his respects to the buddies he had lost in the war.
Alison and John began having around each other a lot. four years after the death of Cameron, John proposed to Alison. The two were married. They gave birth to a beautiful little girl with they named Cameron. A year later, they blessed me with a grandson name Kyle.
After gaining an education and finding a way to deal with the nightmares and pain, John ran for the Senate and won. He served his state and his country for many years before he retired. John had saved his country many times over the years. He was the leader they needed. He never spoke much to me about his time in the future or the pain his leg still caused him. I know that he is still in pain and still suffers from the effects of the war. I can see it in his eyes.
It wasn't long after he became a Senator that I learned he had managed to save Cameron's chip. When we had left him to say his goodbyes, John had pulled the chip from her skull and had managed to restore it. Every now and then, he would hook the chip up to his equipment and would talk to his friend. I think she helped him though much of the pain that he felt. The chip never leaves his possession.
Cameron is missed by all of us. All of us who knew her fills an emptiness within our hearts. I wondered why a hunk of metal should mean so much to us. Well, after years of thinking about it, I came to an answer: Cameron wasn't just a Machine. She was our family. To some degree, she had become a daughter to me. She meant something to each of us. Despite her being a cyborg, she had found her own way of becoming human.
We all fought. This was a war no one ever knew existed but we scarified our lives and the lives of our loved ones so humanity could live.
What is the worth of one man? We won the war because of my son and the love and bond that created our family. We needed each other. We needed the strength the others provided. I would say that the worth of just one man is great.
(Author's Notes: This is it. This story is one that has taken me over two and a half years to finish. I had so much fun trying to discover what might happen next as I spent some time writing and exploring my imagination. I hope that you enjoyed it. Please let me know what you did like about it and things that you thought might be better. Thank you all so much.)
