I do not own Terminator: Rise of the Machines.

I am not in a machine apocalypse. From a certain point of view. ;)

Not A Church Youth Group Sleepover

Here At The End of The World

Here are the numbers John Conner knows as his mind wanders aimlessly, despondently, as Kate cries herself out in his arms.

The numbers the Terminator told him when he was thirteen, the numbers his mother had raised him on.

Five point eight billion human lives on the planet on Judgement Day.

Three billion lives wiped out in a blink, ended when Skynet sent nuclear bombs to Russia and Russia retaliated in desperate, bewildered, teeth-gritted finality.

Another billion in the following months from injuries, radiation, starvation.

Hideous, inhumane slaughter of human beings by other human beings.

Who no longer had anything to stop them from what they chose, for whatever reason, to do in the aftermath.

Hundreds of missiles, thousands.

To every major city, armed forces base, and hidden whatever else it could be documented to be found.

By the end of six months, perhaps less than a billion people left, spread across seven continents.

Left to survive one to five years of nuclear winter.

Until the Earth's cycles cleanse the atmosphere enough to for a rebirth of kinds.

In that time, city and town dwellers will devour themselves within the first six weeks and many of those who flee to the countryside will just die out, starve, die from sickness, injury, despondency.

His mother had said his father had said he, John Conner, had brought humanity back from the brink.

But what exactly was the brink?

How close?

Minimal sustainable population.

A phrase most people never need to be aware of in their lifetimes of grocery store shopping and reality tv show indulgence.

A term first coined when deep thinkers of the late twentieth century began realize shit was quite possibly soon going down.

It was the estimate of the number of individuals required for a high probability of survival of a population over a given period of time.

How many people needed to successfully repopulate the planet.

Fifty.

Fifty people necessary to combat inbreeding.

Five hundred necessary to reduce genetic drift, a change in frequency of an existing gene variant in the population due to random chance.

The VIP fallout shelter tucked away deep in the Sierra Nevada Mountains currently had less than ten.

There are more pockets of people, probably thousands, tens of thousands, maybe millions, left on the planet when all the fallout, both chemical and human, was said and done.

And that was before calculating in the 'orderly disposal' carried out by the machines.

So the question was, what exactly was the brink?

And how close were they going to get to it?

Kate eventually quietens, stills, in his arms.

He talks her down as much as he can, encourages her, reassures her.

He thinks she might have fallen asleep from emotional exhaustion.

But then she speaks.

"How are we going to survive this, John?"

The only answer he can think of is 'together' and that sounds too corny to say out loud.

So . . .

I don't know but we do.

At least until Uncle Bob kills me.

That's what he said anyway.

. . . he doesn't.

He just kisses her.

Cups her cheek in one hand, raises her tear-streaked face to his.

And presses his human lips to hers.

Not in a human-pair-bonding type way.

Just in a you're-not-alone-I-love-you-come-back-to-me way.

And she doesn't recoil, doesn't object.

And when he breaks contact, her eyes, large and watery, search his desperately.

And then she kisses him back.

Nearly lunging for him, claw-like hands reaching out to clutch at his head, pull it toward hers, mouth hungrily seeking his for comfort.

And he goes with it, she needs it, maybe he needs it too.

They're human, they can't lose that, their humanity here in the machine apocalypse.

The affirmation of life continuing, the sheer human defiance of it.

Kissing, kissing, over and over again.

Clinging to each other in low grade terror and desperate love.

Then her hands begin to pull at his clothes with urgency.

And he doesn't want to lay them down on the cold concrete floor, everything so harsh and unforgiving in this new ugly world, the world that has always been his anyway.

So he stands, pulls her up with him.

And takes them over to . . .

"John . . ."

"Kate . . ."

. . . the softer bed.

He keeps his face close to hers during, unable to allow any separation between them that doesn't have to be.

They are destined to be together, destined to lead humanity, destined to continue the human race.

But the future is not set, the specifics shift.

His death day may be a fixed point, so said the Terminator.

But so was Judgement Day.

And that changed too.

So he has no grounding, no set force.

Nothing but Kate.

And she is here and he is too and this is all they have, here and now.

"John . . ."

And he will not take a moment of it . . .

"Kate . . ."

. . . for granted.

Her question still stands.

"How are we going to survive this?"

It, and everything surrounding it, has not magically evaporated just because they had really passionate, extremely satisfying, desperate sex.

And this time he decides he must answer her.

"I don't know."

Though the answer he provides isn't very good.

They lay together, wrapped up together, for a while longer.

And then . . .

"I guess we have to go back out there."

"I guess."

. . . neither of them get up.

"John?"

"Yeah?"

And then . . .

"I don't want to."

"Neither do I."

. . . they do.

Sometimes humans need comfort when they need it.

So anyway, that is the end of this mini-story arc. I posted all of it at once because I didn't figure anybody would want this long and drawn out to keep waiting for something else awful.

Thanks for reading if you're still out there.