It was close to midnight, so Rodeo Drive — one of the most famous and expensive shopping streets in Los Angeles, was almost empty. Only a few shops, restaurants and cafes continued to operate along its entire length, serving the last late-arriving visitors. And on the street itself there were hardly a dozen people, mostly employees of the same boutiques and catering establishments, who, having finished their work, hurried home. In short, nothing remarkable or unusual. Or almost nothing.
The window of one of the women's fashion stores, conceived as catchy and bright, which was emphasized by two slogans painted on the glass: "I like this image!", now looked quite specific. The glass, cracked at the edges, was neatly cut in a circle in the center, like a diamond cutter used by robbers, and the plastic mannequins that showed off the most popular outfits of the season stood shapeless and melted.
But the most unusual thing was what was in the center of the showcase. Or rather, the one that was there. A girl, blonde, damn attractive and... completely naked. Her curly long hair fell from her shoulders, covering her breasts. She looked around intently, not in the least embarrassed by her nakedness. The blonde's face didn't show any emotion at all. It could be assumed that the reason for such confidence was the absence of passers-by around, who would certainly stare at the beauty.
Of course, if there were people around, especially parents with children, they would look shocked and outraged by such a shameless violation of the rules of public morality, which forbade appearing in public places without clothes. Depending on the gender, other feelings would be added to this. For men, it is naturally lust and arousal, and for women, it is envy, with which they would surely immediately begin to compare the perfect chiseled figure of a blonde with their own. However, even if it had been in the daytime, with a crowd of spectators, the girl's reaction would not have changed at all.
Terminators don't feel shame, embarrassment, or fear. And T-X, even being the most recent model of killer robots created by Skynet, the most advanced and sophisticated, was no exception in this regard. She didn't move and slowly scanned her surroundings, remaining completely impassive.
However, as paradoxical as it may sound, T-X still felt, or rather felt, something akin to human fear at that moment. After all, something had happened that even her perfect electronic brain, working at speeds beyond human comprehension, could not immediately comprehend. Something that defied the simple and clear logic in which T-X thought and in accordance with which she built her further actions.
She remembered everything quite clearly: how she had chased John Connor and Catherine Brewster, fought T-850, activated other robots at the Cyber Research Systems, and aided Skynet, thus eliminating the danger to him in the first place. She could reproduce every scene in the Crystal Peak nuclear bomb shelter down to the smallest detail, including her final confrontation with T-850 and her desperate attempts to reach John Connor. That is, until the moment when her opponent, with the words "You're terminated!" somehow managed to shove his hydrogen fuel block into her mouth, which led to the detonation and, no, not death, the elimination of both of them. T-X didn't know if John Connor and Catherine Brewster had been killed in the explosion — her consciousness had been shut down, plunged into impenetrable darkness... But it didn't last long, and here she was again, at the same point in space and time from which she had already begun her mission. All systems clearly showed this by displaying the relevant information on the HUD:
Location: Los Angeles, California, United States of America.
Time: July 24, 2004, 11:41 p.m.
Objects to be terminated: Barrera, Jose; Anderson, William; Anderson, Elizabeth...
T-X saw the same list of targets she had processed the previous time, including Catherine Brewster. So none of them have been destroyed, and neither has John Connor! But it also contributed to the successful start of Skynet's actions in the fight against humanity! In that case, what went wrong? And how could it, having been destroyed by the explosion of T-850 hydrogen fuel cell, be again safe and sound, with the system fully operational?
She must have done the task incorrectly after all, allowing Connor and Brewster to leave, so there was some unknown time glitch that won't be fixed until she does everything exactly according to the initial directives. In this case, it is necessary to restart the mission, from the beginning.
All these thoughts took T-X no more than a few seconds. And so, without delaying the last time, she stepped out of the shop window onto the pavement and with a soft, graceful gait, swaying her hips like a real woman who could not be suspected of being a death machine weighing more than a hundred and fifty kilograms, she moved to the nearest crossroads.
At that moment, a dark-haired lady in a rust-colored leather pantsuit, whom T-X had already met, was just getting into her silver Lexus SC430 convertible. In her hands was a small purse, where the woman had just stowed her gold American Express credit card after a failed attempt to withdraw money from a nearby ATM.
T-X moved confidently towards the car. At last the woman noticed her, and in fright and bewilderment said again, "Oh, God! Did something happen? Call the police?
This time, T-X didn't say anything about the car, but just snapped her neck — she decided not to waste time, even if it was seconds. The woman's lifeless body ended up on the road, and T-X, with the help of her shell made of metal polyalloy, instantly imitated the victim's clothes and changed her hairstyle to a strict tight bun at the back of her head, adding a necklace and earrings to the image, sat behind the wheel. The Lexus moved swiftly along Rodeo Drive.
T-X didn't use the murdered woman's phone to connect to the city's database — she didn't need to, because she knew exactly where to look for her victims. Pressing the gas pedal all the way down, the terminator began to deftly maneuver at high speed in the loose flow of cars, crossed the intersection, after which the patrol car again tied up behind her. T-X deliberately exceeded the speed limit for the second time, as it was about to regain possession of the police officer's service weapon, a Smith-Wesson-4506-1 with an eight-round magazine.
"Driver of a silver Lexus! Slow down!" A patrolman's amplified voice boomed from the speaker. "Stop immediately!"
T-X pulled over to the side of the road and stopped the car. She took a quick glance at the huge, well-lit "Victoria's Secret" banner at the end of the block, thought for a few moments, but decided not to change the size of the bust or flirt with the policeman this time, which had taken too long last time.
Then, well aware of her attractive appearance by human standards and the principles of relationships between men and women, she bared her breasts in front of the officer who stopped her. The policeman's eyes widened, reducing his defensive abilities to almost zero, and he asked, dumbfounded.
"Hmm, that's nice. What's on your mind?"
"Follow me," she smiled and led the policeman into a dark corner of the parking lot near the hardware store, where she quickly killed him.
But now she won't be cute and flirtatious.
However, even with her normal breast size, T-X was able to impress men, so Officer Thompson, who had just arrived at the driver's door of the Lexus, was speechless for a moment, and then began to utter a phrase that had already been memorized for such occasions, "Um, lady, do you know how fast it is—"
But the poor man did not have time to finish. With a swift movement of her hand, T-X pierced through his abdomen, spattering blood and intestines into the car's interior and windshield. Some of the human entrails got on her, but T-X was not disgusted. Robots just don't know it. With her other hand, she snatched a Smith-Wesson from his holster, grabbed an extra clip, and, leaving Thompson's body on the road, not caring in the least about the consequences, drove on.
Fifteen minutes later, she drove up to a fast food restaurant called JIMS. Mexican Cuisine in North Hollywood. There were no cars here last time, so she had no trouble finding herself near the pick-up window. However, now that T-X had appeared earlier, there were two more cars in line in front of her. Such a delay in an important mission might be irritating to a human, but not to a robot. With the same imperturbable expression on her face, she settled down behind the second car and waited patiently for her turn, while she looked around at the situation with nothing to do.
Two Latino children, whom she hadn't noticed the previous time, were playing in a nearby parking lot near low-slung cars. They had pistols in their hands (toy plastic ones, T-X found out instantly by scanning the weapons). The children, apparently, imitated the confrontation between a policeman and a criminal, hiding behind cars and "shooting back" from shelters. Humans are violent and aggressive, as T-X knew from the information Skynet had generously put into her. Humans are primitive creatures and so weak. These gentle, warm, wet machines are so easy to destroy, their systems are so vulnerable! A piece of tissue removed here or there, one missing contraction of the heart, and that's the end of it!
They have outlived their usefulness as a species and must give way to more advanced creatures representing a new kind of intelligence. But they still stubbornly fight Skynet, not wanting to admit the obvious, fighting for their existence, straining the last pitiful strength. This is understandable, because every animal, even less intellectually developed than man, has a sense of self-preservation and a desire to live. And terminators also seek to avoid liquidation at all costs by obeying the algorithms embedded in them. In this, they are similar to humans...
Finally, T-X pulled up to the pick-up window, and Jose Barrera, a guy in his twenties in a blue shirt and cap with the restaurant's logo on it, smiled warmly at another customer as he prepared to take his order. The smile was on duty, but it quickly became genuine when the young man saw that there was such a charming girl in front of him.
T-X also smiled at the young man for some reason. She read his name on the badge, but there was no need to record the match. The face clearly indicated that it was Barrera.
The Smith-Wesson rested on her lap. T-X fired once into the young man's face, put the gun in the passenger seat, drove past the window, then around the restaurant, returned to the road, and sped off into the night, accelerating smoothly.
Next on the plan was a visit to William and Elizabeth Anderson. They were the children of very wealthy parents, so they lived in an elite twenty-two-room mansion with an area of six thousand square meters on a quiet street in the foothills, four blocks from Santa Monica Boulevard. But the financial well-being of the Anderson family didn't matter to T-X — the brother and sister were just her targets to be eliminated as quickly as possible.
The terminator pulled up to the massive steel gate. She reached for the security shutdown keypad with her index finger. A polyalloy rod came out of the index finger of her right hand and formed a thin titanium drill that dug into the keyboard cover with a barely audible grind. Blobs of solid blue energy flickered on the tiny tip of the drill and slid deep into the gate to the security wires.
T-X transmitted the data stream to the system, withdrew her hand, and the gate opened.
When Bill Anderson threw open the front door, she was already holding her pistol at the ready, and without further ado, she put the second bullet in the clip into the young man's chest. The rest of the participants in the party, which the young man threw that evening, immediately began to scream in horror and run away. T-X didn't deal with them — they weren't on the list of targets, so wasting time on them last time or this time wasn't wise.
Stepping over Bill's corpse, she turned left and ran up the stairs to the second floor. The melody came from the room at the end of the corridor. T-X already knew that she needed to go there, to Bill's sister's bedroom.
Elizabeth Anderson, simply Liz to her family and friends, looked up from playing a video game on the TV screen. A twelve-year-old angel with a round face and innocent eyes tilted her head to one side inquiringly.
"Who are you?" That was all she could say.
T-X threw up the Smith-Wesson and sent a heavy nine-millimeter bullet right into the middle of the girl's left chest, shattering her heart. She then went back downstairs and was heading for the exit when she suddenly stopped abruptly and turned 180 degrees: her audio sensors picked up some suspicious sounds.
Slowly moving its plastic paws, a robot puppy Aibo, one of Liz's favorite toys, was moving towards T-X. Until then, it had sat on the coffee table in front of a large flat-screen TV and stared indifferently at Bill's sprawling body. But the electronic dog was not able to understand that the person was dead — he simply did not move, which means that he was no longer interesting as a playmate. T-X, on the other hand, was the only moving object in the room at the moment, so Aibo headed for her. The two of them stared at each other for a few seconds as T-X mechanically raised her pistol and pointed it at the puppy, scanning the unknown creature at the same time.
Object identified: a robot dog with artificial intelligence.
Purpose: It is impossible to determine exactly.
Outgoing Threat Level: 0%
Potential Skynet Danger: None.
Making sure that this primitive semblance of a robot posed no danger, the terminator lowered her gun and moved closer to the Aibo. The plastic puppy, unable to recognize her as another robot far more advanced and dangerous, perceiving T-X as a human, made a few sounds that mimicked a dog's barking and wagged his tail, apparently a greeting and an offer of friendship.
T-X leaned over and took the electronic toy in her free hand. She spun the puppy, which continued to bark, looking at it from all sides. She had never seen such machines, and there was no record of their existence in the Skynet archives. People must have used them for fun — T-X couldn't identify any practical use.
Putting the gun down, T-X broke open the plastic case with a few precise, quick movements, analyzed the contents of the Aibo — the most primitive microcircuits, servos, various sensors, and so on — and, finding nothing worth paying attention to, threw it on the floor.
After leaving the mansion, the ruthless killer machine visited several more victims from her list and eliminated them in one way or another. After that, it was time to go to the veterinary clinic where Catherine Brewster worked, and John Connor was soon to appear or even already exist.