Rodeo Drive at night is still quiet and deserted. The last shops, restaurants and cafes are finishing their service and will soon close, and their staff will go home. A woman in a dark red leather pantsuit once again can't cope with an ATM and swears quietly to herself, cursing "brainless machines". And in the window of one of the shops, the glass of which is neatly cut in a circle, in the company of melted plastic mannequins, a blonde completely stands and looks around.

In short, the situation is repeating itself. Almost.

This time, T-X's face, usually impassive, looks surprised, and her mouth is half-open. Just like a human. She can't believe her eyes, even though the processor stubbornly spits out the familiar data:

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...

But that just can't be! After all, she killed John Connor and Catherine Brewster! Eliminated T-850 and General Robert Brewster! Averted danger to Skynet, which was able to successfully launch and launch a war against humanity! She has fulfilled her mission! In that case, what went wrong? Why didn't the time loop unravel?

T-X ran a full scan and learned that:

Overall system availability: 100 percent.

Damage to the combat chassis, polyalloy shell and built-in armament: Not detected.

After making sure that her physical condition, and therefore the events from the previous replay, were "reset", the terminator began to look for possible causes. She could literally feel the processor working hard with her whole body, and the waves of energy emanating from it permeated her. Logically, T-X came to the only possible conclusion in this situation: she should have eliminated all of John Connor's potential associates who were on her list, but she didn't. It is likely that these people will be able to organize resistance in the future, even without Connor and Brewster, and will pose a danger to Skynet. That could be the only reason why she was back in the same place at the same hour!

Terminatrix, ignoring the hot concrete and the drops of molten glass, stepped down onto the pavement and hurried to the Lexus, the owner of which had already managed to start the engine and was about to start off (this time T-X took a little longer to decide). The woman did notice the girl approaching, and repeated her usual speech:

"Oh, my God! Did something happen? Call the police?"

Approaching her, T-X calmly replied, "Yes, something happened. But that's none of your business," and then she snapped her neck.

After taking possession of the car, the terminator went to Catherine Brewster's apartment. She was sure that John Connor would show up and then she could kill them both and then take care of the rest of the people. True, there was still T-850, but she would also eliminate this problem, of course.

Neither Officer Thompson nor his pistol interested her now, especially since T-X had taken a different route. She also decided not to exceed the speed limit so as not to attract unnecessary attention. The terminator was confident that she would arrive in time for Connor's arrival. But fate seemed to be laughing at T-X this time, or perhaps decided to play with her, nullifying the advantage in time.

At first, there was an unexpected obstacle in her way. The cars in front began to brake, and T-X also had to stop the car involuntarily. A police cordon of several patrol cars was set up on the road in front of them, and bright yellow police tape was stretched. Ambulances were parked nearby. Obviously, there had been some kind of traffic accident, but on the virtual map of the city, which she immediately had time to check, there were no obstacles in this place.

T-X poked her head out of the Lexus and applied magnification to get a closer look at what had happened. Indeed, there were three cars in the middle of the road. Thoroughly broken, and one was even turned over on the roof, they were scattered along the roadway, almost completely blocking the passage in both directions. At the same time, the policemen were bustling about, trying to restrain the curious onlookers who had already begun to flock to the scene, and the doctors who were taking out the bloodied wounded. One of the cars was so smashed that the body was cut with a hydraulic saw by rescuers to extract the man trapped in it.

Terminatrix was aware that this happens among humans: carelessness while driving often lead to road accidents in which people are injured and killed. Of course, she herself was not in danger of this — her driving skills are much better than those of people living in normal times, so she could drive without any problems even in extreme mode.

A policeman approached her and signaled her to turn around and take a detour. T-X did just that. Her onboard navigation system was automatically updated after connecting to the current Skynet system. Soon T-X was on a parallel street, and there were no more than 3.5 miles to her destination. The accident only delayed her for a couple of minutes, but that was not all.

At one of the traffic lights, in front of which the Lexus stood alone at first, another car suddenly rolled up to it and stopped on the left. The cars turned out to be standing right up. It was a yellow Hummer H2, decorated with an abundance of chrome and all sorts of tuning attributes. From the car came the bass of some rhythmic music, and inside sat four very young guys, hardly finished school, but judging by the car, belonging to the "golden youth". They talked loudly, joked and laughed. Two of them had bottles of beer sticking out of their hands.

Noticing a spectacular blonde in an expensive car nearby, these young men, heated by alcohol, immediately made an attempt to get acquainted with her.

"Hey, pretty, you've got a cool car. — What are your plans for tonight? — How about we race? To the end of the street! — The loser kisses the winner." The guys vied with each other until the red traffic light allowed them to stay close to the Lexus.

T-X looked at them indifferently and then turned her head straight back to look at the road. Such indifference seems to have offended the pride of the drunken company, and inflamed them still more. Moreover, they looked down on the girl in the literal sense of the word. The calls became more insistent, and when the silver convertible moved forward at the green light, blatant curses and other obscene expressions were heard.

In the rearview mirror, T-X could see that the Hummer was moving behind her, rapidly catching up. But following her own directive not to attract too much attention, she tried to avoid conflict. However, this tactic did not work in the case of stupid youngsters — they seemed to run into trouble themselves. It got to the point that the SUV, having overtaken the Lexus, absolutely brazenly blocked T-X path.

The guys got out of their car and headed towards her, never ceasing to be rude and insult the unyielding stranger. T-X quickly calculated her options and the next second, with the help of a jet from a flamethrower, she forced the instantly sobered guys to run as fast as they could away from the road into the nearest yards. Then, as if nothing had happened, the robot calmly drove around their car and continued to its destination.

But as she approached the house where Catherine Brewster lived, T-X had another hitch. The street was deserted and dark, and if T-X had been human, she would hardly have dared to drive down it at this time of day. At the next intersection, when T-X slowed down on a curve, a man jumped into her car literally on the move. In his hand he held a revolver with a six-cartridge drum. T-X quickly identified it as a Military & Polis Smith-Wesson-M.65 reinforced with powerful .357 Magnum cartridges.

"All right, lady, get your money and credit cards." The robber resolutely announced his intentions, pointing his weapon directly at the girl's face.

And the next second, the poor fellow was dead. His head was thrown back in the passenger seat, his neck broken by a powerful blow from a metal arm. Without slowing down this time, T-X threw the body into the road, but grabbed a revolver. It was because of it that the terminator finished off the hapless criminal — she did not need either cash or credit cards in the bag in the back seat, and she could easily part with them.

Finally, with a delay of about ten minutes from the estimated time, she arrived at the right address. Nearby, the terminator saw a pickup truck from the vet clinic, which signaled to her that Kate was still in the apartment. Immediately she spotted the Triumph-Bonneville motorcycle and knew it belonged to John Connor, as she had already seen him next to the bike during the first replay. But there was no Dodge pickup in the vicinity, so much the better, which means that T-850 has not yet made it here. Leaving the Lexus in the parking lot in front of the multi-storey building, T-X went inside. She quickly climbed three flights of stairs without using the elevator and found herself in front of the door of apartment No. 305.

T-X didn't break down the door so as not to make too much noise. But she carefully opened the lock, turning the handle farther than the design intended.

The apartment was in semi-darkness because of the curtains drawn. T-X had been here for the first time when, after missing Brewster and Connor, and T-850 with them, she came to use the image of Catherine's fiancé. Then she quickly killed Scott and, taking his disguise, went with the detectives in search of "her fiancée". However, now there was clearly no one here, only scattered clothes lying in disorder on the floor — the apartment was left in a hurry.

Still, T-X walked around and peeked into each of the rooms, even though she knew there was nothing left to do. The system demanded that she gives chase immediately — T-X had no doubt that Kate, taking her fiancé and presumably Connor, and possibly T-850, had gone to CRS. There's nowhere else to go. But the terminator allowed herself to do something that no killer robot had ever done before her sent back in time — she was distracted from her mission.

The fact is that T-X was different from other machines. And not just physically. As Skynet's most recent creation, she was endowed with a processor with an unprecedented level of artificial intelligence, in some respects not inferior even to its creator. The CPU was made on the principle of an artificial neural network.

But, most importantly, thanks to it, she always functioned in a self-learning mode, had free will and a full-fledged personality, did not succumb to any external control and, on the contrary, could control other machines herself. Once inserted into her head, the processor could no longer be reprogrammed and could not, unlike the T-800 series chips in standalone mode, be switched to a non-self-learning task execution mode.

Of course, as with the T-1000, this was a risk for Skynet, who couldn't fully control a robot of this model, but it had to take this step. The situation was critical for it: many terminators of the T-600, T-800 series, and even several T-1000s had already gone over to the side of humans. And since T-X was designed to kill other cyborgs, she needed to be smarter than them and think outside the box, not like the rest of the machines. So T-X was endowed with a will of her own.

And now this will has made itself felt. T-X noticed the photos on the bedside table in simple frames. She'd seen them before, but she hadn't had a chance to study them properly. The terminator took a photo of Catherine Brewster on graduation day. Robert Brewster stood beside his daughter, smiling.

People need photos to remember the moments that are important to them. Or even not very important. Their memory is extremely imperfect, it has only a limited period of memorization... And they are such fragile creatures: they get sick, they die... T-X had information that it was common for people to experience emotional distress by looking at pictures of family and friends whom they had not seen for a long time or who had died.

There are so many terms that she has never been able to fully understand, despite such a perfect electronic brain. Why are people so illogical, so primitive creatures in some matters and clever in others, why do they feel sad, cry, rejoice, smile?

Their motivations are related to outside influences, or worse, to emotions: love, hatred, envy, jealousy, fear. In the main memory of Terminatrix, there was a file about a thousand different emotional elements that change human behavior. And that, the file warned, is far from a complete list.

A big challenge was the phenomenon of multitasking: people are almost always motivated by multiple emotions. Sometimes in an endless series of combinations.

T-X saw Kate and her father in the picture frozen with smiles on their faces. Apparently, they are happy. What is happiness? Is it a consequence of being around other people, especially biological relatives? And what is friendship?

Terminatrix remembered the other T-X series robots she had been part of the first experimental batch of four machines. There were two robots each, one male and one female. Could they be called her relatives, her brothers and sister? And what about terminators of other models? Could they be considered friends? At least the ones that stayed on Skynet's side?

T-X put the photo back in place and walked around the apartment once more. She observed a lot of meaningless and useless objects from the point of view of machines: clothes, organic food, plants, cosmetics, hygiene products, paintings on the walls; she took some things in her hands, examined them, and passed by other things indifferently.

Feeling her processor overheating from such non-standard thoughts and actions, T-X left the apartment. As quietly as she came. She still had work ahead of her.