Rise of the Machines t3-1

by David Hagberg

  Parsons's body lay on its side, its face dark purple, its flesh surprisingly intact after more than a quarter of a century. But rotting meat required oxygen, of which there was none inside the mountain.

  Skynet was indifferent to gas or gas volumes, as it was indifferent to lighting, so the control rooms and various other spaces within the complex were lit only by the indicators and screens on electronic consoles and panels.

  But the AI was sensitive to heat and humidity, so Na-

  vajo Mountain Redoubt was kept at a comfortable twenty degrees Celsius at twenty percent relative humidity.

  Parsons's eyes were open, but neither he nor the dozens of other corpses with him were aware that the cathedral hush of the large domed room was broken when impossibly fast streams of data crossed the main status board and a pair of Advanced Utility T-20 server robots trundled off an elevator.

  Between them, walking flat-footed, back arched, head held high as if she were a soldier being escorted by the Praetorian Guard, was what Parsons would have considered the most perfect nude woman he'd ever seen.

  But Parsons was dead, and Skynet was indifferent to considerations of human beauty except where such considerations were germane to the parameters of a mission.

  She was a T-X, Enhanced Logic Weapons Systems Cybernetic Warrior/Infiltration Unit. T-X, for short.

  An absolutely brilliant creation of superior intelligence, beauty, speed, adaptability, lethality, survivability, and supreme indifference, T-X was Skynet's latest advance in projection-of-power technology.

  Stripped to her utilitarian battle chassis, protected by malleable ceramic/titanium armor, she was practically unstoppable on the battlefield, as the human resistance fighters under the commands of Colonel Steve Earle and Lieutenant Joel Benson had already found out.

  Adorned with her infiltration trappings: muscles, sinews, blood vessels, skin, hair, T-X would be just as deadly among the pre-Judgment Day human population as she was on the current battlefields.

  Possibly even deadlier if she could reach and eliminate the right targets.

  Although she weighed in excess of 150 kilos, her footfalls were whisper soft across the bare tile floor as she threaded her way through the corpses and computer consoles to a transmission sphere the twin of the one at the old CRS facility twelve hundred kilometers to the west.

  The T-20 robots that had escorted her backed off. T-X assumed the position, one knee and two hands on the pad as the sphere closed.

  Her head bowed, eyes staring straight down, she waited with complete indifference. One minute, one hundred years, it did not matter.

  Skynet's AI powered up the Continuum Transporter's circuits without fanfare, and seconds later the chamber took on a luminescent, electric blue aura.

  T-X disappeared.

  July 2003 Los Angeles

  All the stores along Rodeo Drive were closed, only a few eating establishments and night spots in the vicinity were still doing business.

  Traffic was light, the occasional car or SUV, one of them with a Bose stereo system cranked to full volume and bass, where during the day the street teemed with cars and with shoppers all looking for the ultimate dress, the perfect shoes, the neatest toy.

  An older woman in tight crop pants, with an artistically clipped full poodle on a leash, walked past the window displays of Sharron Batten: Fine Resort Wear, Beverly Hills, Palm Beach, Cannes.

  The woman glanced at the mannequins modeling clothes that only a size four would wear, and then only on the French Riviera. A large black-and-white poster hung from the ceiling and was cleverly backlit so it seemed as if the model standing hipshot, a thumb hooked in the elastic band of her brief bikini bottom, was illuminated by the setting sun. The caption read i like this look!

  The gauze print beach shirt on one of the mannequins ruffled in a sudden small breeze. The scarf around the neck of another moved.

  A mist began to fill the window display, until a bright blue sphere suddenly materialized in a burst of lightning and intense heat that instantly melted the plastic mannequins, burned through a sizable area of concrete floor, and melted a hole three meters in diameter in the plate-glass window.

  T-X raised her head to catalog her new surroundings, numbers and graphs crossing her head-up display with a rapidity that no human could follow. She rose gracefully from her kneeling position, and heedless of the still-glowing concrete and molten glass dripping from the window, she stepped out onto the sidewalk.

  In the distance to the southwest, down Rodeo Drive, T-X's infrared systems picked up the heat signatures of a woman and a much smaller quadrupedal mammal das-

  sified as Canis familiaris, and immediately rejected either as possible infiltration personas.

  She looked northeast. A ground conveyance, classified as a Lexus SC430, was parked in front of a concrete, steel, and glass building, with the legend barclays in brass. The heat signatures from the automobile's engine compartment and exhaust system were consistent with a condition known as idling.

  A secondary heat source stood approximately eight meters to the north of the automobile. It was a female human. T-X enhanced her optical system and overlaid the mission's requirements. The female, who was attempting to effect a transaction between herself and an incredibly primitive computer via a small plastic card in which were programmed several hundred bytes of rudimentary information, was not a currently listed target, but she was of the proper weight, height, physical shape, and apparent age for mission purposes.

  The ATM machine beeped several times, and a crude, machine-generated voice said, "Sorry, we are unable to process transactions at this time," as T-X crossed the street.

  Nancy Nebel was only mildly irritated. She'd never had much luck with machines, partly because she wasn't interested and partly because that's what men were supposed to do for a girl. At thirty-two she was what her friends in the business called a looker. Blond, blue-eyed,

  with a knockout figure, she was dressed this evening in a rust-colored leather jacket and skintight pants, beneath which she wore a black lace thong and lace Wonderbra. Why give 'em brains when all they wanted was cleavage, was her motto.

  And it had worked so far.

  Nancy put the gold American Express card back in her purse, and got behind the wheel of her car, the reasons she needed the money tonight already forgotten. She had just enough time to get over to Spago before Lenny got too worried about her.

  She looked up as she was about to reach for the gearshift lever in time to see a tall, very sexy blond woman, stark naked, walking up the sidewalk as if she didn't have a care in the world.

  A little thrill of fear tickled Nancy's stomach. Something was way off base here. She leaned out of the car. "Hey! Are you okay?"

  The woman didn't miss a beat

  Nancy fumbled for the cell phone on the dash. "Did somebody attack you?" she asked the woman. "I'll call nine-one-one—"

  T-X stopped at the driver's side door and Nancy looked up at her makeup-free, totally flawless complexion. The woman's breasts were firm and perfectly formed. Her stomach was completely flat. She was perfect. Too perfect.

  "I like this car," T-X said.

  It started to dawn on Nancy that the broad was some kind of bad news. Somebody's bimbo on a bad trip. "You're on something, aren't you?"

  T-X reached in and gently caressed the lapel of Nancy's leather jacket. "I like this look."

  "What—" Nancy said, rearing back. This was big trouble. She wanted to get away, right now.

  T-X placed a thumb and forefinger on either side of the woman's spinal column at the base of her skull, and pinched. The bone crushed easily.

  T-X was not programmed to be squeamish. She dressed in the woman's clothes, including the lace underwear.

  When she was done, she got in the driver's seat and studied the dash instruments, the steering wheel, shift mechanism, and pedals for a moment, her processors building a more complete picture of the engineering of the machine than even the original Lexus engi
neers had.

  She dropped it into drive and sped off, peeling rubber as she accelerated, a map of the Los Angeles freeway system appearing in her head-up display.

  The telephone rang. T-X answered it, perfectly imitating Nancy Nebel's voice. "Hello?"

  A man came on. "Honey, I'm at the restaurant, where are—"

  T-X broke the connection. An extremely rapid string of numbers crossed her display, which she entered on the cell phone's keypad, her fingers moving faster than any human's could move.

  A crash of static came over the speaker as the connection was made. T-X opened her mouth and emitted a

  series of eleven beep tones. The distant circuit rang once, followed by the squeal of a high-speed modem. T-X made the audible connection with the proper signal, and moments later data began to stream back and forth between T-X and a Los Angeles County database computer downtown.

  Tiny lines of text along with dozens of charts passed T-X's head-up display: names, addresses, medical, financial, and employment data along with images, mostly head shots.

  The photographs of two humans, one male, one female, youngish-looking, lingered for a full second in T-X's display, followed by an address in the foothills above Westwood.

  T-X was in no apparent hurry, but she drove very fast, and for normal human response times and abilities, apparently recklessly, weaving in and out of traffic, even running red lights when her sensors registered and computed no obstructions.

  She jumped onto the Hollywood Freeway, but got off almost immediately because of the traffic. Her onboard navigational systems booted up, automatically merging with the Skynet system currently in orbit for this era.

  She was working her way through streets of strip malls and businesses, traffic sometimes heavy, but most of the time light

  An automobile with lights mounted on a roof rack shot out from a used car lot and fell in behind T-X.

  She glanced in the rearview mirror with one eye, her

  sensors scanning and evaluating the new phenomenon. The automobile was a Los Angeles Police squad car. Its red and white lights were flashing; its siren whooped several times.

  She was being pursued.

  "You, in the silver Lexus! Slow down and pull over!" the amplified voice of the lone police officer boomed from the radio unit "Pull over immediately!''

  T-X considered the situation for something less than one millisecond before getting off the accelerator and braking to a hard stop as she pulled over to the side of the street across from what looked like an office or business complex of some sort behind a tall iron fence. Brightly colored graffiti was painted over all the brick walls inside the empty parking area.

  At the end of the block a large, well lit billboard for Victoria's Secret displayed a beautiful model wearing nothing more than a wide, toothy smile, a very low-cut bra, and brief panties.

  T-X was aware of the squad car stopping behind her, and of the lone male officer getting out of the car and approaching. He was beefy with a square face and short-cropped hair.

  She was also aware of the Victoria's Secret advertisement and what its significance was vis-a-vis the human male-female sexual relationship.

  ' She flexed her shoulder and back muscles so that her breasts became more prominent, turned her head, looked up, and smiled just as the cop reached her.

  "Good evening, Officer," she said.

  His eyes strayed to her breasts. "Um, lady? You know how fast you were going?"

  "Eighty-two point three miles per hour," T-X said.

  The cop had to smile. This was one for the books, something he could tell at the precinct house. Christ, but she was built. "It's a thirty-mile-an-hour zone," he said. He'd opened his ticket book, but flipped it shut. How could you ticket perfection? "I really oughta write you a ticket here."

  T-X glanced at the cop's shiny patent leather utility belt. She catalogued the sidearm as a Sig-Sauer P226, with a fifteen-round detachable box magazine. Total length was 196 mm, its weight empty was 750 g, the cartridge was a 9mm Parabellum with a muzzle velocity of 335 meters per second with the 115-grain JHP round.

  She smiled again at the cop whose name tag read barnes. "I like that gun."

  c.5

  The Valley

  He had trashed his bike, permanently this time. The frame was bent all to hell, the gas tank punctured, the engine case cracked when it hit the boulder, both wheels folded like pretzels.

  Riding in the rear of the ratty flatbed truck back down into the valley, John Connor had plenty of time to feel sorry for himself, and to be pissed off as well by his own stupidity.

  He knew what his mother would have said about it; she had been the one talking all the time about how fate was what we made of it. Not the other way around. He had done it to himself, this time, with no help from anyone.

  Any of her biker boyfriends would have laughed, clapped him on the shoulder, passed him the tequila, and said something like: "Next time you go rodding around in the middle of the night, maybe you should wear a parachute." Or something like: "Did that big, bad deer knock you on your ass, kid?"

  There'd be no sympathy from anyone, but there

  would be a grudging acceptance that he'd had the cojones to pull off such a stunt in the first place and the bald-ass luck to survive it

  The stuff from his packs had been scattered halfway down the hill to the ocean, and it had taken him the better part of two hours, climbing up and down in the loose sand and rocks, fighting his pains, to find most of it and get back up to the Drive.

  It'd only taken one minute, however, from the moment he'd reached the tangled mess that had been his bike, until he came to the conclusion that it was beyond repair. He might have been able to salvage some parts, but he'd been unable to find his tools or flashlight, and he didn't have the heart to lug around a bunch of useless crap.

  He'd had the balls, or the stupidity, to pull the stunt, but he had to wonder if he'd been lucky after all. If there was no purpose in living, then why live at all?

  It had been a recurrent theme of his. Maybe it was time for him to finally do something about it.

  Put up or shut up, his foster mom had told him once. That was when his real mother was in the nuthouse up at Pescadero.

  The first vehicle that had come along had been the flatbed loaded with ten Mexican laborers nearly blind drunk, laughing and singing.

  They had come from one party and were headed to a sister's house somewhere over near Van Nuys. None of them noticed that John was banged up, his hands raw

  with road rash, jeans torn up, blood oozing from a long gash in his leg.

  Never mind that the beer was piss warm, and the tequila was so cheap that kerosene would have tasted better. They were willing to share.

  They had no trouble deciding who and what they were, or where their lives were going. They had never been fed any delusions about becoming a world leader. Nor probably had they ever been the target of some machine, sent on an assassination mission.

  They had come down out of the hills and passed under 1-101 before Connor looked up out of his morose thoughts and became aware of where he was.

  The neighborhood was blue collar, industrial. They passed a small bank and a supermarket, and at the end of the block, across from what looked like a construction site or maybe a place where they stored heavy construction equipment, was an animal hospital.

  John flexed his leg, which had stiffened up on the long ride, and fresh blood oozed out of the wound. He needed help, but he wasn't willing to go to the emergency room of some hospital. There would be too many questions. And that was the one thing he was very bad at, answering questions, especially the kind that cops were bound to ask. He had no permanent address, no real money, not even a proper ID. He was in no one's database, so far as he knew. He had never applied for a loan or a credit card. He had never owned a house. In fact he'd never owned anything, except for his bike, which he bought from a

  down-and-out biker who needed the cash for drugs. If the cops started
digging into who and what he was, he figured that he would be in trouble.

  He pulled himself up and pounded a fist on the roof of the cab. The driver stuck bis head out the window and looked over his shoulder at John.

  "Que?"

  "AcA me bap," John shouted at him.

  "Si, si," the driver said, and he pulled over, bumping up on the curb and then down again. Everyone laughed. This was great fun.

  The sign on the building read universal rentals, and behind the chain-link fence a big yellow mobile crane, its massive telescoping boom fixed over the truck's cab like a tank's cannon, loomed over the neighborhood.

  Across the street a small glass-fronted building was lit only from the outside. The sign on the front read emery

  ANIMAL HOSPITAL.

  Connor gathered his tattered packs and bedroll and climbed painfully down from the back of the truck.

  "Gracias," he called to the driver, who waved back.

  "Si, si," the man said, and the others waved as the truck took off in a cloud of smoke and dust, leaving Connor standing alone in the middle of the street.

  There was no traffic here at this hour, and after the truck was gone the night turned silent.

  Connor limped across the street and looked through the front windows into the darkened reception room of the animal clinic. It was unlikely that a place this small would have a night watchman, but you could never tell.

  He made his way around to a back loading area. A small window looked into a kennel where animals undergoing treatment were kept overnight

  He pulled a towel from one of his packs, wrapped it around a fist, and smashed the window.

  Immediately the bigger dogs started barking and growling wildly, while the small animals yipped and a few of the sicker ones mewled or whined.

  "Shh, it's okay, guys," Connor told them. He reached inside, undid the latch, and lifted the window. "It's okay," he called. He dropped his packs inside, then climbed in after them.

  The kennel was filled with animal smells only partially masked by the odor of a strong disinfectant Water was running somewhere, and the compressor motor for what was probably a refrigerator kicked on. But there were no alarms, and the dogs were already calming down, more curious now than frightened or aggressive.