T2 - 01 - The New John Connor Chronicles - Dark Futures

by Russell Blackford

  When they'd left Raoul and Gabriela's estancia, they hadn't expected Cyberdyne to haunt them, and it hadn't at first, but now it was getting to them. Sarah had been growing more like her old, intense self. Maybe they needed to change something about their lives. The cyber cafe was a nice business, but the name and the decor ought to change. If Judgment Day might still be coming, the big Last Judgment painting overarching the room was out of place. It was like they'd crowed too soon. Skynet would have the last laugh.

  "Let's tidy everything up for the night," John said, standing and stepping around the desk.

  "I've finished most of that," Sarah said. "We can do a final scour of the place, if you like, then call it quits."

  "Excellent."

  They spent ten minutes getting the place spic-and-span: throwing out wrappers and drink cans that the customers had left behind; cleaning surfaces; washing dishes and cutlery in the kitchen out the back.

  "I don't like the way things are heading, John. I'm starting to get nightmares again."

  "I know. Me, too."

  "Are you?" she said, looking at him with fear in her eyes.

  "Uh-huh. Dreams about the missiles... and the explosions."

  "Oh, God, I thought that was my cross to bear." Suddenly, she reached out and hugged him close to her. He was now taller than his mother, and she seemed somehow vulnerable when he embraced her, though they still trained each day and he knew how tough she was.

  "Come on, Mom, maybe it'll all be okay."

  "Sometimes I dream about the missiles," she said, as they let each other go. "Other times, we're back in L.A. and the T-1000 is still after us. We can't find a way to destroy it."

  "It's all right. I have that dream, too. We were lucky, weren't we?"

  "I wonder whether we should move," Sarah said, closing a drawer full of cutlery. "Leave Mexico City. It's so hard to know what to do."

  "That's the sort of thing I was thinking about," John said. "You want to go back to the States?"

  "Maybe. Maybe we should get back in touch with Raoul and Enrique, and the others. We might need them, after all."

  "We could go to Colorado and check out Cyberdyne close-up. I bet there are ways we could suss out what's really going on."

  She looked at him thoughtfully. "It's dangerous, though. We might be recognized."

  "Hey, speak for yourself. No one would recognize me-I was just a kid when they last saw me. If you could lie low, we'd be okay. Then we could work out what to do." She must have understood what he meant, that they might have to attack Cyberdyne again. But could they do it by themselves, without the T-800 to back them up?

  "I'll think about it, John. We'll have to be very careful, whatever we decide. Let's sit tight for a while and see what happens. Maybe the world will stay in one piece if we leave it alone." But she didn't sound like she believed any of this; it was more as if she wanted reassurance.

  "It's nice that everything's okay now," John said. "We could be hanging out in a desert somewhere, in the middle of a nuclear winter, waiting for Skynet's machines."

  "Yeah, but I'd be happier if Cyberdyne wasn't still in business, and making a tidy profit every year." "Exactly," he said.

  Cruz and his people had started talking again about Cyberdyne's plans for nanoprocessing technology, but maybe they were just trying to get attention. After all, everyone else was talking nanotech, but no one had much that was concrete. Even if they did, maybe that was okay, as far as it went It might be cool if someone really did build some super-new computer hardware that could do amazing things with cyberspace, or even allow for some kind of artificial intelligence. There was no reason why it had to lead to Skynet and a new Judgment Day.

  What worried him was that someone might be following Miles Dyson's work. That was what they'd tried so hard to prevent back in '94. Miles had taken it pretty hard, but he'd agreed to destroy everything when they explained about Judgment Day. The T-800 had convinced him, acting without hesitation to show him what it really was. John recalled how the Terminator had gone about that. It had made a deep cut in its left forearm, below the elbow, carving all round, then made another cut along the length of its forearm, and peeled away flesh in a single swift motion, exposing the metallic skeleton over which living tissue had been grafted. Miles had seen how the Terminator's wounds scarcely bled, and that its system of veins and arteries was not truly human.

  They'd gone about their destruction so thoroughly. After all that effort, was there any chance that someone could still reconstruct Miles's research? They must have done a good job that night-if they'd messed up, Cyberdyne would surely have invented a Dyson-style nanoprocessor by now. But maybe someone had kept notes, or had the knowledge in their head. With Cyberdyne still doing well, that could be seriously bad news.

  No, John thought, time wasn't like a block of amber. He knew that much-and they'd already changed the future. Judgment Day 1997 hadn't happened. But maybe it was like a rubberband, or some kind of big, powerful spring. Sure, you could change the future, but then it could come back at you, if you gave it half a chance. There was a shape it really wanted to go into.

  If that was the nature of time, something bad was still coming. Who knew what the future would bring?

  Two police officers entered the alley, walking cautiously, with long-handled flashlights in their left hands. The wind and lightning must have attracted their attention. The cops had drawn their pistols and pointed them directly ahead.

  "Who's there?" one of them said in Spanish. "What's going on?"

  The flashlights swept in arcs, back and forward across the alley, and Anton founded himself staring straight into their beams. Unmodified human eyes would have been blinded, but Anton's adjusted easily.

  The same voice spoke again. It belonged to a middle-aged cop, a heavily-built six-footer with a huge gut on him. He looked dumbfounded by what he saw: five naked people in superb physical condition, three men and two women.

  "My God," the cop said, still in Spanish. "Who are you?"

  Danny Dyson didn't hesitate. He replied in the same language. "We need your clothes."

  The other cop was taller, but he was young and athletic, with fast movements for an unmodified human. He shifted into a crouch, aiming his gun at Danny, two-handed, letting the flashlight hang from a wrist strap. "What did you just say?"

  At the same time, the first cop aimed his flashlight straight into Danny's eyes. Danny merely held up his hands, showing that they were empty.

  Robert spoke almost languidly, also dropping into Spanish. "My friend said we need your clothes."

  Selena said, "Right now!" The flashlight's beam moved back and forth, from one of the Specialists to another: Danny, then Robert, then Selena. When the police didn't reply, she added, "Don't worry, we're the good guys."

  "What's this about?" the younger cop said. "What's this good guys/bad guys stuff? You people have been watching too many American movies."

  "Besides," his partner said, "you're causing a disturbance."

  "You're the only ones who look disturbed." Selena sounded amused. Then she added, "I'm sorry, but we really must hurry. We'll have to take your clothes."

  Anton and Danny exchanged glances. Danny subvocalized, "Deal with it, Jade.

  Jade became a blur, even to Anton's enhanced vision. Me was glad she was on his side. Within a second, she'd covered fifteen feet, dodging easily, as the young cop opened fire at her. She seemed to anticipate his movement before he made it. In that same second, she knocked him unconscious with a sharp blow to the side of his jaw. In another second, she spun on her heel and kicked the gun from the other cop's hand. She turned him round face-first against an alley wall, then twisted his arm up his back. All of her actions unfolded in a single fluid motion.

  The cop bucked and kicked to escape her, but Jade easily resisted his efforts. Then, as if to give him another chance, she let him go, that sad smile on her face. She shrugged, showing him her open palms, just as Danny had done. Grunting, the cop threw a
punch at her, but she simply slipped away.

  “I do not wish to hurt you," she said in her slow but passable Spanish. “I am sorry about your colleague. Please give us your clothes."

  "You're mad," he said.

  In another effortless motion, Jade removed the flashlight from the thick fingers of his left hand, tossing it to Anton for safekeeping. "I wish there were time to explain," she said sadly. "If you understood, I'm sure you'd help us."

  "Do hurry, Jade," Robert said. "We don't have all night."

  "Very well." In yet another easy motion, she lifted the cop over her head and held him there at arm's length while he struggled like a landed fish. If needed, she could have held him like that for weeks.

  "Put me down!" the cop said. "I don't care who you are, you can't act like this."

  Jade simply dropped him, and he landed hard. "I am really terribly sorry," she said as she stood over him. "I hope for your forgiveness, but it's in a good cause. Now, please, your clothes."

  He looked from one of them to another. "She's got a point," Robert said.

  The cop unbuckled his belt.

  Robert and Anton pulled on the cops' outer clothing while the others tied and gagged the cops with their own underwear. They weren't being too nice, for the good guys, Anton thought, but they needed to slow the cops down a bit; they couldn't be allowed to interfere. That was the problem with fighting Skynet in a pre-Judgment Day metropolis. There were so many innocent, unenhanced humans in the way, all of them so easily hurt.

  The younger cop's uniform was tight on Robert. Its | owner was tall, but Robert was even taller, and the uniform rode up on his wrists and ankles, making him look slightly ridiculous. Still it would have to do. Finding better clothes for him would not be easy. The other uniform fit Anton reasonably well. It was just a bit loose round his waist. He had to tighten the belt as far as it would go. They checked the cops' handguns. Both were in working order and fully loaded, save for the wild shot that one cop had fired off when Jade rushed him. It was comforting to have weapons, however primitive and ineffective they might prove if Skynet had sent back any opposition.

  They still needed clothes for Danny, Selena, and Jade.

  Anton and Robert stepped out of the alley into the street. The police car was parked just a few yards away, and Robert had the keys. For the moment, the street was deserted. They got into the car, started it up, and Robert drove closer to the alley so the others could pile into the back, unseen by anyone who strayed past. A few seconds later, a group of revelers came by, two couples who looked they'd come from a party or a dance club. One young man wore a purple velvet dinner suit. The other had a plain black business suit with a flamboyant lime green tie. The women wore short dresses, tight round their hips, with low-slung belts. They tottered on high heels. Such absurd clothing people wore in this era, Anton thought. Especially the women. Those clothes could never be practical for fighting. Still, they might do for Selena, and Jade, at least for the moment.

  Robert pulled up alongside the partygoers, winding down the car window when they ignored him. They glanced over at the police car, possibly wondering what they'd done wrong, or maybe just feeling drunk and aggressive.

  "Excuse me," Robert said in Spanish, "but we need your clothes..."

  The T-XA stepped forward, and the policemen fired a shot into the air. "Put down your weapon," one said. "This is your last warning. Drop to the ground. Now!"

  "That won't be necessary, officer."

  "Now!" The police fired in the air. At the same time, the T-XA's pseudo-dog component sprang for one officer's throat, its mouth unhinging and its teeth elongating into throat-tearing daggers. The other officer fired, and several bullets impacted on the pseudo-human components of the T-XA, scarcely affecting its polyalloy construction. The male human component fired its laser rifle just once, as the female component commandeered the car. Its work done, the dog component jumped into the rear of the vehicle.

  The pseudo-man had a last task to do. Quickly, it extended a finger into through the skull of the policeman that the dog component had terminated. As it probed the human's brain, the polyalloy extension broke down into thousands of minimally programmed nanoware fragments. These swarmed through the human's nervous system according to a preprogrammed routine, eating, digesting, and analyzing nerve fiber, building up sufficient data records to reintegrate into a highly simplified version of the man's personality and memories. Seconds later, the tiny components streamed back into the T-XA, carrying all that information with them. The Terminator reintegrated them into its body, and its main software reconstructed the information it needed.

  Unfortunately, little of the information was of direct use. There was nothing about Sarah and John Connor, but, in that regard, the T-XA had what it needed. Skynet had given it good files of the Connors' futile actions in trying to prevent Judgment Day, including their address in Mexico City. Most usefully, the policeman's recent memories included reports of strange blue lightning in the direction where the T-XA had sensed a space-time disruption.

  As the male component slid into the car, it discarded most of the information it had retained. The complex organization of a human brain, even when drastically simplified, was too much for it to incorporate efficiently in its dispersed, multiply-redundant programming. It kept only what it needed. It placed its hand on the female component's shoulder, letting their polyalloy bodies run together to share the policeman's significant memories. Then it withdrew. The female component extruded a finger into the car's ignition mechanism to start the engine. The T-XA headed for its destination: the city square known as the Zócalo.

  It cruised the area slowly, looking out for the human time travelers. There were no apparent signs of any recent space-time displacement event, or of any encounter between time travelers and the humans of this period, but the T-XA had fairly precise information about the lightning-like disturbance in a back alley. The pseudo-woman parked the police car in the area, and reached for the laser rifle, as its pseudo-male counterpart opened the passenger side door, then liquefied into a dozen quicksilver blobs. These took shape as streamlined catlike creatures, which ran from the car, faster than any cheetah, rushing in a search pattern through the nearby alleys.

  After a minute, there were screams. Soon, the pseudo-cats returned to the police car, then merged to reform the human male component. Once reintegrated, the male shared the newly-gained knowledge with the female, then extended an arm over the back seat to mingle programming with the pseudo-dog.

  The pseudo-cats had discovered six humans, tied up in an alley, and taken the opportunity to terminate them. Two of them had been police officers, and all of them had encountered the time travelers. The pseudo-cats' information included the registration number of a police car that the time travelers had commandeered, as well as detailed data on their appearances, voices, capabilities, and methods.

  Once more, the T-XA retained only the most useful in- formation, sharing it through all its components. Next, imitating the voice of one of the police it had terminated when it obtained its own car, it reported that the other police car had been stolen and its occupants killed. That might cause the time travelers some difficulties.

  Meanwhile, it knew where they had probably gone: the Connors' cyber café, El Juicio, slightly north of here. That was their logical destination. The pseudo-woman turned the wheel, and accelerated.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  SKYNET'S WORLD

  ADVANCED DEFENSE SYSTEMS COMPLEX

  COLORADO

  JUDGMENT DAY

  The phone rang, and Jack answered it. He was silent, listening, but he beckoned them ail back, pointed downward to say stay right there.

  "What?" he said into the handset. Miles listened, trying to work out what was going on. "My God...Do whatever you have to. Just make sure Miles can get into The Cage...Yeah, he's going there right now—him and Sam Jones." Jack replaced the receiver. Given what had happened with Skynet, Miles thought, what could possibly be so im
portant?

  Jones said, "What's wrong?"

  "That was Steve Bullock. He says we're under attack."

  "What? Who from? Demonstrators? Or do you mean for real?"

  "Oh, it's for real, all right." Jack took a .45 caliber handgun from his desk drawer, and checked the mechanism. "It's only one intruder, but somehow she's gotten past all our outer defenses and she's headed this way." He started shutting down his terminal.

  "But there's over a hundred people in this facility," Samantha said. "Most of us are armed. What can one intruder do?"

  Jack headed for the door. "I know all that. Why don't you tell Bullock? Come with me, folks, unless you want to be in the middle of a firefight. Steve has herded her onto this floor."

  "Her?"

  There was a sound of rifle fire nearby, from the direction of the elevators—a series of single shots, then three-round bursts. Miles wondered how dealing with one intruder could require so much firepower.

  The Advanced Defense Systems Complex was built with the newest, strongest alloys and ceramics. It was hardened to withstand a near miss from a high-yield warhead, and was full of armed servicemen. It had sophisticated security systems making it almost impossible to penetrate or attack. Even for Eve, it was no soft target.

  But it could be done, with the right knowledge.

  Once inside the elevator, she found the electronic keycard that she'd taken. She touched it to a glowing sensor, then entered the six-digit security code on a touchpad. By now, the humans would be fully alert to her presence. They would surely stop the elevator at Level A, to ensure they met her when she exited. There was little she could do about that, so she accepted it as a mission constraint, and pressed the button for that level, 1000 feet below.