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

by Russell Blackford

  "No," Eve said. "The HQ is underground. We should track the surface of the planet."

  "But that means landing butt naked out in the cold on some mountain in the middle of a war."

  "Correct."

  He wasn't sure he'd gotten that point until now, though Rosanna probably had—no wonder she was scared to go. The thought was frightening, but it seemed like he had no choice. They had to help John Connor— that other John Connor-win his victory. His whole life, and Sarah's even more, had been based on that They couldn't let it slip.

  Another thought occurred to him, and he'd bet that Rosanna and some of the others had also worked it out. If they could travel across time, from one reality to another, so could Skynet It could work out how to do it If it triumphed in one reality, maybe it could be a danger to every reality.

  They'd already seen something like that: The Skynet of Jade's World had detected the Specialists traveling back in time from 2036 to try to create a world with no Skynet and no Judgment Day. That didn't threaten their world's Skynet, because they could not change their own past You couldn't use time travel like that — as a weapon to destroy your enemies retroactively. But Skynet had still pursued them. It seemed to detest the existence of any world in which humans survived and flourished. What if Skynet always acted like that, in every world, every time it triumphed? Even for their own sakes, they just had to stop it.

  John and Eve returned to the Cyberdyne basement. Jade, Rosanna, and Anton were working. The three of them seemed to get along fine, and it struck John again that the old Rosanna was coming back. He'd never known her before the T-XA had reprogrammed her, so he hadn't seen what her normal self was like, but he had a good concept of it He'd heard things about her from Jack and Samantha. She'd been kind of anti-social, but not a had person, not even unfriendly—just shy and absorbed in her work, maybe a little selfish, but nothing worse.

  She was still quiet, not relating to people except when working with the specialists, but she no longer cringed away from human contact. Rosanna was going to be okay.

  But it was Jade who made him smile. He caught himself grinning in her direction while she worked, and hoped she hadn't seen. "Just stay here," he said to Eve. He walked to the end of the huge basement, wanting some one totally by himself, but Jade stood and followed.

  "John?"

  "Hi," he said sheepishly. "How's everything with you?" "There is so much to think about." "Like what?"

  "About what I left behind. About what we are going to do, now — and what we can do to help." "It won't be easy." "No, but we can do it." "Yeah, I guess that's right," he said. But there were still so many issues. He changed the subject. "What about Rosanna? Do you think she's getting better?"

  Jade smiled, perhaps less sadly than usual, just a tranquil smile that showed a touch of pleasure. "I said we could help her, John. The more she gets back to work-to her plans and experiments—like the old Rosanna, the more she becomes that Rosanna. The neural paths are reforming."

  "So, the old Rosanna's coming back? That's how it looks to me."

  "Yes, John, I think so. Maybe not the old Rosanna, but someone much more like her."

  "What about all the others-all the other mindslaves?"

  "No, I do not think so. Not with them, especially not Mr. Cruz. I think that the T-XA found very compatible personalities with him and Mr. Layton."

  "That means Cruz will always be our enemy?"

  "Yes, he will be." Her face suddenly seemed to harden. "Perhaps we should have killed him."

  "Like Eve wanted."

  "Yes. But it's hard to do in cold blood — at least for us. Eve would hunt him down if you gave the word."

  "I know she would." Despite what they'd seen in Washington, he still found it difficult not calling the Terminator "she."

  Jade nodded in the direction of the time vault Rosanna was inspecting it ready for the next phase-Sarah, Jack, and Samantha entered the basement from an elevator. "We should rejoin them, John."

  Rosanna kept Elske in a large wire cage in the screened off area where she currently lived. She walked back there and lifted the cage where she'd left it on a workbench cluttered with books, computer disks, a CD player and portable speakers, and a small CD collection. As the time approached to send the mouse through time, she'd found herself growing fond of it, thinking of it almost as a pet It had been her only living company most nights she'd spent here.

  She returned with the cage, setting it down at her feet for a moment, as she checked the computer screen. She opened the time vault's door, then took the cage inside and reached in to take out Elske. "Best of luck, little mouse."

  Samantha followed her in there, with a small piece of heated and resolidified mozzarella that looked like it came from someone's pizza. She put it down in front of Elske, and they tiptoed away, letting the mouse nibble the cheese.

  Once everyone was well clear, Rosanna shut the heavy door. The flatscreens now showed Elske nibbling happily at her mozzarella. If the field was properly calibrated, the mouse's local space-time would soon be distorted so as to send her one hour into the future. They were not aiming to make this test too complex: The coordinates were meant to shift the mouse only in time, in this instance, not in space. The question was whether Elske could survive intact. If she could, hopefully, so could a human being.

  Rosanna brought up the magnification on one of the screens so they could all see clearly. Elske became a sharply-realized mouse, not just a small white dot disappearing into the background. When the cheese was gone, Rosanna said, "Now?"

  At her elbow, Jade said, "Enter the codes."

  Again the rumbling began, then lightning on the screens.

  The mouse soon vanished.

  Rosanna switched the images on the screens from the empty interior of the vault to an abstract pattern. "Now we wait."

  John pointed at the pattern on the screens. "Okay, so what's that?"

  "It's my latest masterpiece. Well... me, Jade, and Anton."

  John peered more closely at one of the screens. It made no sense to him without an explanation. It could have represented almost anything, or nothing at all. But Rosanna pushed her chair back, with a look of triumph on her face.

  "It maps the energies of the vault," she said. "It's what I've been working on... something to do at night when you guys aren't around."

  "Is this going to solve all our problems?" John said.

  Rosanna blanked out three of the screens, then stood and walked around from the console, pointing at the other screen. "We can create a space-time map, look for nodal points in time, where the time streams break off from one another. Look at this." She walked back to the console, looking eager. She remained standing as she typed in a code, then moved her computer mouse on its pad. That drew a red circle on the flatscreen. "Something happens here in 1984 that I can't even begin to untangle. We all know what it must be." She drew another circle, sitting again as she worked. "Look here. In 1994, there are energies as well. Let me simplify the whole thing." The image shifted yet again. The screen now showed a simple diagram that branched like a tree. "Think of space, and time, and the different timestreams as a five-dimensional space."

  "Easier said than done," Jack said wryly. "I find it hard enough thinking in four."

  "You can learn," Anton said.

  "I'm sure I can. It's part of the job."

  "Watch this," Rosanna said. "You'll see that it doesn't matter. We can reduce it to two dimensions for visualization-that's what I've done here. The spatial dimensions don't interest us for the moment." Again she used her keyboard and computer mouse to create a red circle on the screen. "Most of these branching points are notional; I don't have the refinement to map them. But what I've marked here is real. We have a crux in May, 1994. That's the raid on Cyberdyne."

  "What about right here and now?"

  "We're too close to it; I can't map it properly from inside. It looks like we're at another nodal point, or even a string of them."

  "You mean
the future's not set?" John said, exchanging glances with his mother, then looking to the T-799. It was impassive, so he merely shrugged. The Terminator still had a lot to learn about people.

  "Perhaps from our viewpoint, it's never set," Rosanna said. "From a God's eye view, it looks different. There are many worlds, all real, each one exactly as it has to be."

  "Can you displace us across the time streams?" Eve said.

  "In theory, yes, I can."

  Jade nodded at that "Rosanna's work is sound. We'll stay back tonight and finish it"

  Anton nodded. He hadn't been made a genius before birth, like Jade, but he seemed to understand all this.

  Rosanna put up more screen data and graphic analysis, some of it making sense to John, some of it too mathematical. She looked pleased with her work. Not only was the old Rosanna coming back, she looked like she could do what she said. At this rate, they were headed on a journey to Skynet's World. Eventually, she was silent. She switched on all four screens, and set them again to show the time vault's interior. No one spoke at all. Minutes passed as they waited for Elske to appear. Then the screens lit up with wriggling tentacles of energy that converged to form a ball of light.

  "Nicely timed," Rosanna said. "Our little mouse is back."

  Elske was there. The mouse writhed furiously, rolling on its back, then onto its paws, its back again, head moving fast, every tiny leg tearing at the air. A creature in the extremity of pain.

  PART SIX:

  ACROSS THE

  DIMENSIONS

  CHAPTER

  FOURTEEN

  SKYNET'S WORLD COLORADO JULY 2029

  When John returned to the surface of the mountain, he did so with a heavy heart. Skynet, it seemed, had led them into a trap. They had destroyed it here, but at an enormous cost. An unacceptable cost. He radioed Los Angeles to speak with Gabriela Tejada, whom he'd left in charge back there, in his absence and that of all the active soldiers.

  "What's the report?" he said.

  There was still some shooting in the distance—mortars, RPG tubes, the sounds of phased-plasma mechanisms echoing across the mountains. The remnants of Skynet's forces still fought them, autonomously, it seemed. They had no new plans, but just kept attacking the fringes of the Resistance army.

  "More reports all the time, John," Gabriela said. "We've had Terminator attacks everywhere, in every war zone: North America, South America, Asia, Europe, Northern Africa. Terminators just appearing from nowhere. And there are other reports that I have here...of H-Ks on the move in Canada and Europe. It seems like Skynet is hitting back at us."

  He wondered whether this was Skynet's death throes, or whether it had survived. Perhaps it had forces already in place, programmed to carry out last acts of revenge. Then again, perhaps it was being coordinated. He needed the explanation—quickly. "All right, Gabriela. Can you give me any specifics?"

  "I'll give you a list of the main cities attacked in North America and Europe. In some cases, our people are safe; the machines must not have their locations. Then there are other cases. The machines must have been planning, and they've waited for this moment. Some locations are silent."

  "All right."

  "The other thing is the kinds of Terminators involved." "What? T-800s?"

  "Not just T-800s. Even old T-600s. They're throwing everything they have at us. This looks like the start of a new crackdown by the machines."

  "Yes. Skynet must have known how much we'd be weakened."

  "John, we've had at least five reports of shapeshifting Terminators, like the one that killed Raoul." "T-1000s?"

  "Yes. Skynet. . .or whatever it is . . .is deploying them. You know how hard they are to kill. People are being massacred."

  "All right, give me the list of locations. I'll work on this. It's not clear to me, but I'll... I don't know. I'll need to think about it, talk to Danny and some others." For the first time, he was confronted with a problem that was defeating him. This was totally unexpected. "You know how to destroy a T-1000. Get that information out. It's our only chance. Never mind if Skynet taps in on it. Our people will still be better off. They just have to survive."

  "All right, that's what we'll do."

  "Good. And listen to me, Gabriela, this isn't the end by a long shot. We'll dig in and fight our way through this, just as we always have."

  "I know, John. But it's a huge blow. People were thinking we'd won. Now they have to get up and fight all over again."

  "Tell me about it. You should have seen what we've been through here, today."

  "Yes, John, I know."

  "All right, give me the list: the centers, the casualties." Once again, he wondered how much she blamed him for the husband and son that she had lost to the machines. Yet, she'd never complained, just soldiered on. She was entitled to feel some disappointment—even deep disappointment.

  "I'll give you what I have," she said.

  "Thank you, Gabriela..."

  When they were finished, he returned to the inside of the mountain, wondering what to do now. He'd planned to destroy this whole complex, once they were through with Skynet, but now he questioned the wisdom of it. Perhaps they could use its technology.

  On Level H, he met with Danny, Juanita, Cecilia, and Carlo. "All right," he said. "It seems we're in trouble. What's the report here?"

  "Skynet has gone," Carlo said. "We destroyed its hardware."

  "So where are those attacks coming from? What do they mean for us?"

  Danny pursed his lips, unwilling to speak, but John told him to. "Okay," he said. "It looks like we've been outsmarted. I've been trying to hack the whole cybersystem in this mountain; Skynet's hardware was just a part of it."

  "And?"

  Danny shook his head. "There's no trace of Skynet, or what it's done—at least not that I can find. Perhaps some or the Terminators knew its plans, but we've been destroying their CPUs. That's the best way to stop them. If one had a mission to assist in this, we'll probably never know."

  "Right," John said. He glanced at Carlo. "The ones that protected it on Level B?"

  Carlo said, "I wish we'd known about this. No, I don't like our chances. It's like Danny said, we always finish them off by shooting for their CPUs."

  "There's no plans that it left behind," Danny said, "nothing I can trace as to where it's gone."

  John picked up on that. "Where it's gone? Just what does that mean?"

  "I should have thought of this earlier, John. Skynet didn't evolve like us. It may have a different concept of identity. Let me ask you this: If someone made a precise copy of you, then destroyed your existing body, would you feel you'd survived?"

  John raised an eyebrow. "You want to discuss philosophy?"

  Danny allowed himself a grin. "Say someone came at you to kill you, but you knew the other you existed— you'd defend yourself, right? You'd want to live?"

  "Of course I would—the copy isn't me. I'd still want to live." He could see now what Danny was getting at, that Skynet could have made a copy of itself.

  "Yeah," Danny said, "well, that might just be a prejudice. You've evolved to protect your body, the physical you. . . not your memories and ideas. A computer consciousness might not think that way."

  "Okay, I can see what you're saying."

  "Right. I'm saying that Skynet could have alternative hardware somewhere, just waiting for this moment— housed in some backup headquarters. We'd never know if it did. It could transfer itself there, program the hardware with all its memories and experiences, right up to date—and it might be perfectly happy, not like you or me. We keep expecting it to think like us, but it's not like us. It's a completely alien kind of mind. Probably smarter than we are. .. anyway, very, very different."

  "So it's conducting the war from a new HQ?"

  "I didn't say that. It's just one possibility."

  "Is there a better one?"

  "Not that I can think of."

  "Well, anyone? Carlo?" John looked around for any theories.


  "It sounds right, John," Juanita said. "It's the only theory we've got."

  "Probably. Or it could have some kind of machine lieutenant somewhere to take over. . . Look, my hunch is that Danny's right. It's transferred itself somewhere else, probably a site with time displacement equipment, just like here. So now it's sending Terminators all over the place. They've been appearing out of nowhere. Everything that Gabriela told me fits." Damn it, he thought, even as they puzzled it out. Damn it to Hell!

  They were beaten. Skynet had suffered huge losses today, but their own losses were even greater. All those lives for nothing.

  Sure, they'd fight back. They'd eventually locate Skynet. But the war had gone horribly wrong. If only they had reserves of their own. But they didn't—not enough. Yet that led him to a thought. A crazy, wild thought.

  JOHN'S WORLD

  CYBERDYNE RESEARCH SITE

  COLORADO SPRINGS

  AUGUST 2001

  Eliske survived. Within a few minutes, she could move normally but it shook them all to see the pain that the mouse had suffered as the effect of time displacement.

  Rosanna refused to send it back into the vault, and called for other animals. The effect was always the same: The creatures arrived from their journeys twisting and writhing in desperate agony. But they always survived.

  That, at least, was something.

  Rosanna kept the mouse, but only as a pet. She still related badly to human beings, and only Jade and Anton could really talk to her. Even then, it was mainly about their work. But she was no longer the heartless psycho she'd become when the T-XA had raped her mind. She'd once referred to human beings as "scum," but not anymore. She had changed again.

  On the final day, the whole group gathered round. The five of them who were leaving on a space-time journey wore white cotton robes for modesty. Soon they would shed those, and step into the time vault.