T2 - 02 - The New John Connor Chronicles - An Evil Hour

by Russell Blackford

  Danny briefed John quickly, showed how he'd rigged up a keyboard and a computer screen, wiring them into a bizarre set of controls that made no sense to human eyes. He'd had to break open Skynet's machinery carefully, not knowing what inadvertent damage he might cause.

  "Okay, fine," John said.

  Danny watched as data scrolled across his screen. "I can't make sense of it all," he said. "But I think I can grasp some of it. I have spatio-temporal coordinates for the last two times this machine was used. I think I can get the machine to operate again, and I can match the same coordinates. To do much more than that, I'd need a whole degree in this thing."

  Danny, John thought, was just old enough to remember when there were such things as college degrees. "That sounds good, soldier. Can you vary it slightly in space? We don't want our protectors turning up right alongside Skynet's Terminators."

  "I'll see what I can do, but we'd better not get too damn creative here."

  "What happens when you switch it on?"

  "Let's see." Danny entered a code, and there was some kind of shifting of gears, then a massive rumbling of engines. "It's generating incredible power. It can be deployed into that block.. .the vault."

  "It will work," John said.

  "I know. It did work, didn't it?"

  "Yes, from one point of view, it did. So you can duplicate what happened the second last time it was used?"

  "Definitely yes."

  "Then that's what we're going to do."

  Kyle looked between Danny's jury-rigged controls and the vault. "So I have to go in there?"

  "Yes," John said. "Listen, Kyle, this will be physically painful. Don't be afraid when you feel the pain; it will go away. It doesn't mean you've suffered harm, not anything permanent. Do you understand?"

  Kyle nodded just slightly.

  "We'll give you whatever painkillers we can find— aspirin, or anything we've got. Take them before you go." John knew from his mother that, back in 1984, Kyle had spoken of pain. They'd have to do whatever little they could to help him cope. He supposed it was useless, but they'd make the effort. "You'll have to travel naked. The device won't work on clothing or equipment or weapons. Something about living things—the fields our bodies generate. Nothing dead can go." "All right"

  "And you'll have to use your wits when you get back to 1984. I'm sure you can do that."

  "Right I hope so."

  "Just one more thing. What I told you to say to Sarah. There's some more I'd like you to tell her."

  "Not a problem, John."

  "Okay. Tell her this, I want you to memorize it all: "Sarah, thank you, for your courage through the dark years. I can't help you with what you must soon face, except to tell you that the future is not set. There is no such thing as Fate, but what we make for ourselves by our own will. You must be stronger than you imagine you can be. You must survive, or I will never exist.' Can you remember that?" John could not expect anyone to memorize it first time, but he would take Kyle through it as often as he had to. For himself, he knew the words by heart. He'd heard them, some of them, from Sarah. He'd composed the full version in his exercise book, and brooded over it for years.

  "Let me try," Kyle said.

  "It'll take quite a few tries. You'll get the hang of it." It was better to say no more. There was only so much a man could cope with. Better not to know your own future, John thought. It had almost driven him and Sarah mad. They'd become strong, but been so hardened by it. Better not to know that you are going to die. Better not to know that your son is sending you to your death.

  When Kyle had mastered the words, John was satisfied. That was all he could do. He nodded respectfully to his father. "Good luck," he said.

  Kyle looked at the time vault. "Thank you for this," he said. "I guess it's time to go."

  As John examined the ectogenetic pond for "his" T-800, the next one beside the empty pod, Juanita joined him, still limping, as she might well do for years to come, but with a smile through the pain lines on her face. "I've heard from Carlo, just now. They've won up there. The last Terminator is destroyed. They destroying Skynet's hardware, even as we speak."

  John felt too tired even to hug her. "That's a huge evil gone from the world." They just touched hands. For a moment, John squeezed and stroked the tips of her cal-lused fingers. "Well celebrate later." "We will, John. We really will." Danny and his group had patched their equipment into the controls for the Terminator's pod. John sat on the floor to operate it, Juanita sitting beside him, her head upon his shoulder for a moment. "I can get at its CPU," he said. "I need to reprogram it." Some kind of filament passed into the brain of the Terminator from the apparatus of the pod. It seemed that it could be repro-grammed, or given extra instructions, right until its moment of birth. As John worked, he added to Juanita, "There were times when I cursed my older self for not giving the Terminator more detail... you know, stuff that might have been useful to me. It's hard enough doing this at all."

  "You were lucky to meet Howard," she said. "I guess so, though there had to be people who knew about this stuff. If I'd have been Howard, I'd have wanted to meet me." He found more paths into the T-800's files. "There's a lot of information here, but not much that we didn't go. We got most of what it knew before it was destroyed."

  " That day," Juanita said.

  "Yes, I know. That day." That day in 2012, when the T-800 had been destroyed in combat—and Sarah had died, still fighting against Skynet.

  The information in the cyborg's CPU was not set out in any neat order, such as a human being might have set up. There were layers of files, different modules, old Cyberdyne history that the Terminator must have inherited from Skynet, recent information on Skynet's technologies. A human mind must be structured like that, John thought. Starting with what it inherited, gathering what it needed.

  He entered a series of codes, which accomplished nothing. He took another path, then clicked an icon that came on his screen. Still nothing, but it was making more sense all the time.

  "Some of it is like human programming methods," he said. "I guess Skynet never had to be too radical,"

  Soon he was almost finished. He gave the T-800 a mission and clear parameters. He typed in some extra information on Los Angeles, 1994, to supplement its historical files. Once again, he'd thought for years about what the Terminator would need to know. What it had in its files looked almost adequate, but he needed to help it out.

  He checked its files on Skynet's various war machines. They had operational specifications for each type, including those for the experimental T-1000s. These files recorded past experiences with the strengths and weaknesses of various categories of H-Ks, Terminators, and other murderous devices of Skynet's invention, but there was little of that on the T-1000 series. Hastily, John composed a new file, setting out everything he could about the shapeshifting Terminators and the way they performed, hoping to get it right. Some of what he knew came only from what the T-800 had told him. Some of what it would know came from what he was telling it now... for John's taste, this was too circular.

  But then he thought about it. Everything he'd been told in 1994 more or less checked out. They'd encountered no new T-1000s, so far, except for some reports from Europe. It seemed fair to say that the T-1000 was an experimental prototype. Much else that he knew came from his own experience in 1994, not just what he'd been told, and then from more experience, years later, when they'd fought the T-1000 again at Raoul's estancia.

  He set out what he knew as concisely as he could. His protector would be well briefed on what it was up against.

  Confidently now, he entered a code to drain away the nutrient liquid. At the same time, the Terminator's connection with the system broke. When the liquid had all drained, John made the machine rise up on its hydraulics, so it tilted at almost a 90° angle like the empty pods. He made the pod open, and the Terminator opened its eyes.

  It looked so familiar now, the same machine that John had encountered in 1994. All it needed was
a haircut to make it look more plausible. That could be arranged, he thought. Plenty of people here could cut hair. It was the least of John's worries. He had come full circle.

  "Do you know what you have to do?" he said to the Terminator.

  "Affirmative," it said. "My mission is to locate and protect John Connor."

  John grinned at Juanita. Just now, he could have kissed her. He simply gave her a crooked smile. "Hey, what do you think? Easy money!"

  But Juanita's headset crackled, someone calling from another level of the complex, or from outside. She shifted on the floor, getting more comfortable as she spoke. "Yes," she said. A puzzled look appeared on her face, then one of horror. "I'll tell John. Yes, we'll see what can be done."

  "Some kind of trouble?" John said.

  "Yes," she said in a tone of disbelief. "Skynet is hitting back. Don't ask me how. We're under attack everywhere. That's the news from LA."

  "What?"

  "That's the news, John. Skynet. . .or something. . . isn't finished. The machines are striking back."

  PART FIVE:

  JOHN'S WORLD

  CHAPTER

  ELEVEN

  SALCEDA COMPOUND AUGUST 2001

  Rosanna sat at a desktop computer, with Anton and Jade standing behind her, flanking her in the narrow space of Franco's trailer. John, Franco, and the Eve Terminator stood back to allow them room. As Rosanna worked, concentrating on the graphs and tables she threw up on the screen, she appeared absorbed, no longer showing revulsion at human contact. Even when Anton leaned over to point something out on the screen, she didn't flinch away.

  "So what's this all about?" John said. "What does it show?"

  "We can only get an approximation on this machine," Rosanna said. "It analyses the results of our time vault experiments at Cyberdyne. To do it properly, I'd need the nanoprocessor-which you happen to have blown up."

  "True," Anton said. "But this is enough to show us how the field is contoured-at least in a general way."

  "So what does that mean?" John said.

  Jade smiled at him. "These results should reveal any major flaws with the theory. We can work out the detail another time."

  "Could you do it without the nanoprocessor? I mean, could some other computer do the job?"

  "Probably," Rosanna said. "I don't know. I suppose so — a big enough number-cruncher. Cyberdyne has conventional supercomputers that could probably do it." She continued working, flipping among several screens of data. "We're still trying to master what is needed to transport discrete objects in space and time. The idea of transporting objects across time to another reality that branched off is far beyond our ambitions. I'd never even thought about it until Eve arrived on the scene. You all saw what happened when we put objects in the time vault, back in Colorado Springs. It basically disintegrated them."

  It occurred to John that he could not tell the difference between an object being disintegrated and the same object being sent to another time, but he didn't want to debate that If the data helped Rosanna work out what had happened, he would have to believe her.

  "The general theory is sound," Jade said, peering at a spiky red graph on the white screen. "But there are basic issues as to the configuration of the field, and the properties of the objects to be displaced."

  Rosanna put up a new page of data. "The properties of the objects, huh? Like what? I've got a few parameters here, but it hasn't been such an issue. I wouldn't know where to start looking at that"

  "Metallic objects disrupt the field most," Jade said, living organic materials are best-something about the energies generated by a living organism interacts well with the field. When we use the space-time displacement apparatus, we travel naked."

  "Okay." Rosanna actually laughed. "That's another issue I'd never thought about"

  "In the world we came from, Skynet solved that problem with liquid metal; it can be configured to harmonize with the field. Generally, though we don't use anything inorganic. Living tissue is best." |

  Rosanna put up a table on the screen, her fingers moving excitedly on the keyboard as she did some calculations that made a new column appear. "What about the field itself?" she said. "The way I have it configured?"

  Jade's cheek was close to hers as Jade leant close to the screen, pointing out several numbers, and Rosanna nodded with enthusiasm. "Let's try these figures," she said, changing some numbers, which cascaded right through the data, with a whole new set of numbers appearing in a new column. John could follow roughly what was going on: He was good with computers. But the actual algorithms meant nothing to him. Importantly, though, it was good to see Rosanna acting like a human being, at least like a scientifically-obsessed human being. After half an hour, Sarah came to the trailer. " I think we've done it," she said. "We'll have to make lots of connections, but Enrique can get us as far as West Virginia. God only knows what favors people owe him. He's moved Heaven and Earth tonight, him and Yolanda."

  "We're doing well, too," John said. He glanced at Jade, hoping he wasn't doing that too often. "At least I think we are."

  "Give us an hour," Anton said. "Between us, we're getting some basic ideas into shape."

  Rosanna didn't even look up. "Yeah," she said, her fingers now dancing on the keyboard "I just wish I had some real data and a proper computer. Still, these approximations are telling me something."

  "Whatever you say, Strangelove," Sarah said. Rosanna kept working, talking without looking up. "I just might get you what you want," she said. "Be thankful I'm on your team."

  CALIFORNIA/ARIZONA AUGUST 2001

  It was dark when they strapped into Enrique's helicopter, a five-seater Jetranger III with a range of just a few hundred miles. The Jetranger was enough for the Salcedas to get around in, make quick flights across the border, visit some of their local contacts. But it wasn't big enough to fly five people and one humanoid cyborg the thousands of miles from California to Washington, or anywhere near it. Sarah, Enrique, and Yolanda had been working tirelessly, finding contacts all across the south of the country who might be able to help.

  John squeezed into the rear bench, between Sarah and Jade. He was not quite comfortable being this close to Jade-but glad of it with another part of his mind. On his lap he held the massive laser rifle that Anton had demonstrated to Enrique. The only other weapons they'd brought were handguns, just in case. There was no room for anything larger.

  Anton was far the biggest of the six of them, so he took the pilot's seat, making him the only one with a seat of his own. Rosanna was seated on the Terminator's legs, the two of them taking the front passenger seat.

  On this leg of the trip they'd get as for as Arizona, just beyond Phoenix, then they'd need a relay of trips to get as far as West Virginia. At that point, Enrique's contacts-and his contacts' contacts—ran out. They'd have to drive the last of the way to Washington: some hours on I-81.

  Anton had left the chopper's door open to talk with Enrique. "You sure you know how to fly this thing?" Enrique said.

  "It's not a problem. I've been in something similar, and I have files on its operation."

  "Yeah? Well, good luck to you. I still don't know what you're really up to, but I hope it works out"

  "It had better," Sarah said, craning round Anton's shoulder. "It had damn well better. Anyway, thanks for all your help, Enrique. We owe you, yet again."

  "Okay, well you might be in for a rough reception. Some of those guys sounded pretty doubtful about it all."

  "We'll persuade them," Anton said. "Don't worry about that."

  John had spent his childhood with whatever groups would accept them and give them the training they needed to survive after Judgment Day. Though the date for Judgment Day had passed, the training had not gone to waste, either in 1994 or over the past few days. They'd spent time with politically opposed groups, from the left-wing compas in El Salvador to American mercenaries in Nicaragua-but above all with Enrique's friends and associates. John had met many of them, and knew about the ot
hers.

  The scary thing was the way those people accepted

  Sarah, even with her story of time travel and Terminators. Some, like Raoul Tejada down in Argentina, spouted even crazier-sounding conspiracy theories about the U.S. government. People like that kind of reserved judgment on John and Sarah. In 1994, some had even congratulated them for blowing up Cyberdyne.

  "See you later, dude," John said. Enrique slammed the chopper's door and headed back to his family, where they stood under a light from one of the trailers. Anton inspected the control panel for what seemed like ages, as if it was only partly familiar. He moved with deliberate steps, turning on the starter motor, then checking the array of instruments as the engine warmed up and the rotor blades began to turn. John could have done this far more quickly, but he said nothing. If he had taken the controls, they would have needed to fit Anton somewhere. It was best this way.

  Anton contacted air traffic control, giving their route to Arizona. The authorities had no reason to suspect that Sarah and John were on board, or anyone wanted for arrest, so they might as well keep everything legal, at least in appearance. He obtained formal clearance, and then the chopper rose slowly. Soon they were cruising on a line almost due east

  "Three thousand feet, and one hundred and twenty knots," Anton said. "We'll be there in three hours."

  "Okay," Sarah said. "I guess that's the best we can do."

  She was right: as John knew well, it was pretty much their maximum cruising speed.

  Their first port of call was a cattle ranch belonging to Elijah Simmonds and his two cousins. John could hardly remember the Simmonds cousins and their families; he hadn't been to their place since he was a little kid, but his mom seemed to trust them. They had a landing strip on their ranch, and they owned a Cessna Grand Caravan that could take the whole team a thousand miles across the continent in far more comfort than the Jetranger, and a lot faster.

  Using the GPS, they'd take the Jetranger to the precise position of the Simmonds ranch. Then, the way Enrique had planned it, they'd make another stop in Texas, followed by Arkansas, Tennessee, and West Virginia-all going well, they could reach Washington in twenty-four hours, using a series of light aircraft. That depended on everyone cooperating.