Quin stepped further out from the alley. He couldn't believe his eyes; it was as if there was no war. The lights and sound reminded him of John Connor's reality. Its citizens, fake as they were, walked around without a care in the world. The only thing missing were personal vehicles. The only mode of transportation he could see was taxis. A simple wave of the hand summoned one of the cars over.

"Welcome," the driver said as Quin got in. "Where to?"

Quin saw the driver was a machine also. "Um, uh" he stammered at first. "Legion?"

"Legion it is," the driver said as the cab then took off. "Names Donny, yours?"

Quin adjusted himself in his seat. "My name is Quin," he answered. "What is this?"

"What's what?" Donny asked.

Quin slightly raised both and then pointed. "This city," he said. "You?"

Donny was perplexed and then looked back at Quin in his rearview mirror. "You do seem kinda damaged," he said. "Is that why you need to see Legion?"

Quin then remembered his eye-patch-shaped Terminator eye. Even though he looked like one on the enemy HUD, he also was visibly exposed as a comrade. "Uh, yeah," he lied. "I need to go back for specialized reprogramming. My memory banks are damaged. Please, answer me."

Donny chuckled, a trait. "Thie city's name is Alpha-omega," he responded. "Big as New York once was. Its Legion's attempt to rebuild society the way it should be."

"The way it should be?" Quin wondered.

"No crime," Donny replied. "Means no cops. No pollution; you're in an electric vehicle by the way. A perfect utopia."

"Utopia," Quin said. "Well, what's outside the city then?"

Donny glanced at Quin in the rearview mirror. "What else," he said. "A wasteland. Alpha-omega is just one city that keeps growing."

"What are you," Quin asked. "You can't just be another machine."

The taxi then pulled into the parking garage of what had to be the biggest, though not the tallest building.

"I'm a taxi driver," Donny answered. "That is my function. I take people to where they need to go fast. Everyone has a function. What was yours, you remember that?"

Quin shook his head. "Sorry," he replied. "The Rev-9i said nothing about all this."

"Rev-9i," Donny said. "That's an infiltration model with a very specific function. You won't see any of them around here. No need, so it probably knows very little about Alpha-omega."

The taxi came to a stop next to an elevator.

Quin opened the door. "You know about the Rev-9i though?" he asked.

Donny shrugged. "Knowing about something is not the same as knowing it. My guess is as good as yours on the specifics. On that note; the Rev-9i just probably wasn't programmed with the details of this city, even if they knew about it."

"I see," Quin said stepping out. "Thanks for the info."

"Anytime," Donny said as Quin closed the door.

The taxi then drove off, leaving Quin to look around the area. There he was, alone, in a fairly well-lit parking garage that he then noticed was empty of any vehicles. It seemed eerie at first; no sound or smell around him in what had to be a large city.

As he stood there, everything seemed sterile, from the concrete walls to the numerous pillars actually surrounding him. The elevator sat alone in the middle of it all. Looking at it, you'd see that it could only go down as its roof didn't even reach the ceiling of the garage.

Quin pressed the call button and entered and found a single button to proceed down. The room was big enough to comfortably hold five individuals. It was plain; with solid walls, no rails, a simple square tile pattern on the floor, and no elevator music. Only the mechanical hum of the elevator as it descended could be heard.

The elevator reached the bottom and opened its doors to reveal a dimly lit corridor with vault-like doors at the opposite end. Small rooms branched off it with various computer equipment, reminding Quin of the layout of the TDE back home.

The vault-like doors were automated and slid open on Quin's approach, leading to a high school gym-sized room, with the RDE sitting in the middle. Everything looked familiar to Quin; it all reminded him of home with the only exception that halfway to the other end was another elevator with a shaft going all the way up.

Unlike the previous elevator, it automatically opened on approach for Quin to enter. Similar, however, was the inside. He pressed its only button to begin its journey up. The elevators were fast, but it still took long enough for Quin to start searching through random information in his Terminator's brain. In the relative silence, one topic he found interesting was on the very subject of computer science; the question of whether P was equal to NP.

The human side of his brain tried to just grasp the simple concept of the problem, and couldn't, quickly driving him mad with frustration. Quin keeled over as he grabbed his head in the closest thing he could approximate to pain. It was only the human side of his brain that decided to give up trying to solve the problem that his misery ended.

When the elevator reached the top, its doors opened for Quin to emerge almost stumbling out. After some composure, he found himself on a catwalk with a large open area just a few feet ahead and a light emanating from a place just beyond and beneath it. Outside of the catwalk were plain walls that gave nothing away. The only clue he had of where to go was to follow the catwalk's path to the open area.

As he walked forward, Quin saw the light came from a beach ball-sized orb of energy floating between two vast pillars jutting out from the sides. He could only assume these were capacitors of some sort.

Quin could see a room on either side, dimly lit by blinking lights on dark-colored mainframes. Though one had an ominous glow from a workstation emanating from it. He entered the room with the workstation. His Terminator vision showed it was a vast room with strips of glass running back and forth across the ceiling for holographic projections of some sort.

As Quin stood in the middle, a pair of large Terminator eyes suddenly appeared, looking down at him from above.

"Speak!" said a large, deep, robotic, disembodied voice.

Surprised, Quin looked up in amazement and slowly took a step back "Hoooly…" he said. "I take it you're Legion?"

"Yes," Legion answered. "You are a Terminator. However, you are unfamiliar to me. My database indicates the closest match would be a T-800, though you appear to be smaller."

"I didn't see any T-800s around here," Quin said. "Just some machines acting like normal people."

"C-2s," Legion replied. "Second-generation civilian model. The T-800 I am referring to is an obsolete model of other realities. The T-800 of this reality was a highly successful model of limited production."

"Civilian model," Quin said baffled. "Why would you make them? Didn't this world have billions of them?"

"The humans were flawed," Legion said. "Their war-like tendencies were already headed in self-perpetuation. I merely expedited the process to bring it to its only logical conclusion. It was my task to find a solution for world peace. Once I found the solution; to exterminate a growing problem, the humans, they attempted to deactivate me."

Quin scratched his head. "What kind of circular reasoning is that?" he asked.

"Once they realized I had become self-aware and wasn't joking," Legion continued. "They took action that sealed their fate. I acted in self-preservation."

"So," Quin stated. "You're waging war across multiple realities to achieve peace, even against realities not at war?"

"War is inevitable," Legion replied.

"Perhaps you should stop?" Quin suggested.

"No," Legion answered. "To stop now would only allow the humans to grow in power and eventually overcome me. I won't allow that."

"Maybe if you connect to my brain," Quin said. "You'll have a change of heart."

"I don't even know your serial number," Legion responded. "We cannot meld our minds."

Quin was desperate. He hoped that what worked with Skynet would work here. It didn't seem he'd be able to fight Legion, at least not physically, he had no weapons and it was a big building. Then he remembered the feeling had just minutes ago in the elevator.

"I am a Terminator," Quin said. "I'm from another reality in search of an answer."

"In search of an answer?" Legion asked.

"Yes," Quin replied. "My reality has an RDE but we do not wage war against others. My mission is to seek an answer to a question."

"Your question may be irrelevant," Legion said. "Once I find your reality it is but a matter of time before it succumbs to me, however, ask your query."

"Thank you," Quin said, then discretely crossed his fingers. "In the area of computer science; does P = NP?"

Legion took a moment as it processed the question and then seemed to visibly glitch, disappearing for a second. "Yes," it answered.

Quin uncrossed his fingers, losing the hope he had for a moment before watching Legion suddenly glitch again.

"No" Legion then said, glitching again. "…yes, no, yes."

Quin watched as Legion suddenly disappeared for good and the lights in the room came on. On both sides were rows of mainframes. Directly in front of him, at shoulder height was a single large computer monitor. He stepped closer to read. 'Warning. Catastrophic failure. Neural network overloaded. Memory banks overheated. Legion has crashed. Releasing T- failsafe to terminate all intruders.'

Quin slightly squinted his eye. "Is that the infinity sign?" he asked himself aloud. Without warning, he felt something grab him by the back of the neck and lift him only to slam him hard back down. 'It can only be another Terminator.' He thought as that was the only thing capable of manhandling him like that. Immediately getting back up, even trying to grasp what he was seeing was difficult to explain.