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

by Russell Blackford

  "We need to talk now, Mr. Cruz."

  "I don't think so." When he disconnected this time, he pressed another button, activating a duress alarm connected to the police station. In a moment, a squad car should come round to check.

  The woman vanished from the range of the security camera. Oscar waited for the L.A.P.D. If the woman had really gone, he'd thank them and send them on their way, but he wasn't going to cancel the alarm just yet. The phone rang-that would be the security company, who'd also have received the alarm. He answered it, gave them his confidential code, and explained what had happened. At the other end of the line, a young man's voice said, "Okay, Mr. Cruz. The police will be there soon."

  He put the phone down. As he did so, something peculiar happened. Something came in under the door. It was silvery, like snail slime, but thicker, a sort of liquid, which gathered up into itself to form a kind of pool.

  Suddenly, it rose up in a liquid-metal fountain, taking color and form. It was the woman from downstairs. The woman-and a big, fierce-looking dog. Before Oscar could run or scream, the woman's finger stabbed out, a thin needle piercing his skull, lodging in his brain.

  For one terrible second, he thought this was death, but then he knew it was something else. Much became clear to him; he saw his destiny. The future needed his help. Whatever it wanted... whatever Skynet wanted. There was so much to do.

  Whatever it takes, Oscar thought.

  "You understand?" the woman said.

  "Absolutely."

  "That's so helpful. Please, now, we have to visit Charles Layton. Will you drive me there?"

  "Not a problem," Oscar said. "Anything at all."

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  SKYNET'S WORLD

  ARGENTINA

  2003

  People were rushing from everywhere. Each time "Raoul" stepped forward, the T-800 fired again. Sarah ran from her bungalow, saw what was happening, and skidded to a stop on the gravel. She ran back, shouting something over her shoulder. Gabriela ran into her house. Meanwhile, Juanita had calmed down and taken action. She got into the rear of the Humvee, feeding ammunition into its 50mm. gun, then swinging it round on the T-1000.

  The T-800 kept firing. It glanced at John, still on the ground. "Get away," it said. "Run!"

  It pulled the trigger again. Click! It was out of ammunition. John fired with his handgun. The .45 caliber Colt had plenty of stopping power at this range, but not like the shotgun, not enough to slow the T-1000. But Juanita opened up with the Humvee's machine gun, as everyone else scattered out of the way. The T-1000 became a mass of silver-chrome crater wounds, deforming like a metal zombie.

  Sarah returned with the T-800's M-79 grenade launcher. "John! Get away!" she shouted.

  John ran like devils were after him. Juanita followed, and they got to the back of Raoul's garage, then threw themselves, face down, on the concrete floor. Even the T-800 rolled away, as a grenade pierced the T-1000's body and exploded. The T-1000 stayed in one piece, but it splashed into an inkblot shape. Within a second it was struggling to reform. John grabbed Juanita by the wrist—a glance of understanding passing between them—and they got out a back door, then doubled round, just in time to see Sarah reload and fire another shot into the polyalloy Terminator. "Take this, you metal son of a bitch!"

  The grenade hit the T-1000 before it had fully reformed . It splashed out again, some of it breaking away. The broken piece, like a huge tom-off strip of silver foil, turned to liquid on the concrete and flowed back to the T-1000's feet.

  At the front door of her house, Gabriela had an RPG tube, which she held at her shoulder, kneeling to aim. Now she fired, the rocket-propelled grenade hitting the T-1000 and exploding, showering more of the Terminator's liquid metal parts across the space between the house and the garages. The fragments of T-1000 liquefied when they landed, rolling together like water droplets on a slick surface, struggling back together. How much did it take to destroy the thing? No matter what they threw at it, it was still fighting them.

  "Don't let it reform," the T-800 said. It rushed forward, seizing the amoeba-like main body of the T-1000 and tossing it twenty feet, well away from the liquid metal pieces that had been heading towards it. With an appearance of special effort, the T-1000 pulled into itself, becoming the young, severe-looking policeman John had first seen it as, back in L.A., nearly nine years before. It grappled with the T-800, getting the better of it, and tossing it to one side. The T-800 bounced on its haunches, but sprang to its feet immediately, obviously unhurt. It ran at the T-1000, which moved like the liquid creature it was, somehow getting under its body and twisting round, smashing the T-800 head-first into the gravel.

  A silvery liquid blob, the size of a ham, now slid over the ground heading home, for the T-1000's main body. All the broken-off bits had formed into this single mass of mercury-like metal. Sarah fired another grenade, directly into the fast-moving blob, which sprayed into droplets as the grenade hit. But even they started running together. Couldn't anything ever destroy it?

  By now, there were dozens of well-armed fighters gathered to help. Many of them had useless weapons, but not all. Bruce Axelrod threw a hand grenade, pitching it hard, right into the T-1000's body. Again, the explosion blew the Terminator out into a free-form shape. Enrique and Franco Salceda fired at it with shotguns, blasting bits off and driving it back. The T-800 pounced on the T-1000, gripping and tearing with both hands. It ripped the T-1000 in half and threw the two pieces aside, well away from each other. Immediately, they liquefied on the ground. Bruce tossed another grenade, then another, hitting each liquid mass, and splashing droplets of the liquid metal far and wide.

  Still the droplets tried to rush together. John started to wonder if they could ever defeat it, or whether they'd finally run out of ammunition.

  As parts of the T-1000 managed to reform, they'd take on shapes it must have encountered in its travels: machines, animals, strange abstract forms with pincers and snapping jaws. They kept hitting it with more and more explosives, trying to blast it to smaller pieces, faster than it could reform, some of them throwing or firing grenades into it, while others ran for ammunition. The battle waged for hours, until they were exhausted. Finally, the polymorphic Terminator ceased reforming, its pieces liquefying and pooling, but no longer making shapes. As they watched it carefully, dozens of weapons now trained on it, it formed a single large pool of liquid metal, but no solid shape emerged from the pool. It seemed to be dead.

  Even then, John didn't trust it. Perhaps the thing could still reform and come back at him, if they left it to itself.'

  John said to the T-800, "Is that the end of it?"

  "Yes," it said. "Terminated."

  Juanita was close to him. He turned to her, seeing her more sharply than ever before. She'd almost died, just as he had. He realized how terrible that would have been. She deserved to live—and in a better world than this. All he said was, "Thank you."

  Gabriela walked over to them, and the questions on her lips were obvious. What had the T-1000 done with Raoul? Was there any hope for him?

  The T-800 looked at her grimly. "Your husband is dead."

  They found Raoul's body, dumped by the side of a dusty road and left to rot. He'd been killed by a deep stab wound, up underneath his ribs. To the T-1000, he'd been merely a means to the end of getting close to John.

  Night after night, they set sentries to watch the thick silvery fluid, which was all that remained of the T-1000. It never stirred. Each night, John woke with nightmares that the pool had come to life, the polyalloy Terminator rising up out of it like a metallic Dracula, but it never happened that way. Soon, there seemed no chance that it would stir; it appeared their assault on it had actually succeeded. Blasting it to smaller and smaller liquid pieces, again and again, must have disrupted some important part of its programming. Given its capacity to reform, its programming must have been copied many times throughout its body, always able to back-up. But its redundancy must have had some limit: Reduce
it to small enough pieces, and only the most basic level of programming was left. It could liquefy and pool, but its sentience was gone.

  People now looked oddly at John and the T-800, knowing that one was very strange indeed and the other not human at all. But their wariness was combined with awe. They knew that John and Sarah had predicted Judgment Day. They were coming to know for certain what John had realized as a child: everything was true. There really had been messages from the future. No one who'd been there on the day the T-1000 came doubted their next warning, about the coming of the machines. Preparations continued apace.

  Gabriela built a memorial to her husband, an obelisk of rock and concrete, in the round, graveled space outside her home. They mixed the T-1000's liquid metal into the concrete.

  ARGENTINA

  2003-2006

  John's work immersed him, and he grew up wiry and strong. In this harsh new world, powerful rivals fought for control, hurling at each other what remained of mankind's military arsenals. Across Argentina alone, millions more died, many in the local wars of conquest and rebellion, others from cold, disease, and starvation. The Connors and their allies built a strong militia, using survivalist networks that reached northwards through Latin America, into what was left of the U.S.

  Sometimes other groups joined them: local military forces; other militia groups that saw hope in cooperation, rather than in an endless struggle of warlords; fragments of the shattered armies from farther north. Remnants of the U.S. forces brought even more impressive weaponry. John foresaw an end to the battles of warlords, but knew there was even worse to come: he awaited Skynet's war machines.

  One bitterly cold day in June, Willard Parnell came in to interrupt John's martial arts training with his mother and Franco Salceda, under the watchful eye of the T-800.

  "We've got a new group," Willard said. "They've made camp five miles north. Looks like they've come to join us."

  John stood puffing from exertion. "What kind of group?"

  "There's about fifty of them."

  "Armed?"

  "Yes. Well-armed, but no danger to us. There's not enough of them. They're flying a white flag. I'd say they plan to make contact."

  "We'll take the initiative," John said. He glanced at Sarah. "You agree?"

  "Of course, John. I'm sure Gabriela will, too."

  John laughed. His mother was gently reminding him that he couldn't yet call the shots—not all by himself. These days, the others deferred to him and kept out of the way of the T-800, his quiet, ever-present bodyguard. Still, it was a government by oligarchy, with many of them having a say. People respected Gabriela and the rest of the Tejada clan, whose property this originally was. The Salcedas were also respected, and Sarah was almost feared. But the military leaders who'd joined also had their say, and needed to be kept on their side. Despite John's charisma, the militia could break up easily. The military personnel were primarily loyal to their commanders. Much of the time, John found himself walking on eggshells, worrying about internal rivalries, people's egos, trying to keep it all together. It seemed that he had a knack.

  "They look well fed and well equipped," Willard said. "Mostly American, I'd say. They've got a whole convoy of trucks and Humvees."

  "All right," John said. "That sounds good. If they're with us, that might be very useful." He exchanged glances with Sarah. "We'll talk to Gabriela first."

  "I'll go see her now," Willard said.

  "We'll be there in a minute." It was good news, but also routine. There was no doubt what Gabriela would think. If the Connors and Gabriela agreed, that was enough for most people, unless something vital was at stake.

  John and Sarah threw on warmer clothes and rushed to see Gabriela, the T-800 following close by. Gabriela called to Carlo, and soon there was a minor war council, working out who would go. Carlo had turned out even taller than his father, but heavier built. In his urban camouflage, he stood like a sheer, gray cliff, hard and immovable. "Let me do it," he said.

  It was potentially dangerous driving into a rival camp, but John liked to be directly involved. They soon sorted out that he and Carlo would go together, with the T-800 and half a dozen supporting Humvees, just in case.

  They drove quickly on the icy road, the T-800 at the wheel of John's vehicle. John wore body armor, a woolen coat, and webbing crammed with grenades and ammunition. He had an M-16 rifle and wore a 9mm. pistol in a shoulder holster. If there was trouble he was ready for it, but what happened surprised him. As they parked outside the camp, flying their own white flag from John's Humvee, a group of four, all dressed in U.S. military camouflage, stepped out to meet them, covered by others with assault rifles. One of the group was a middle-aged Caucasian with harsh features and a nose that looked like it had been broken and reset regularly over a tough lifetime. With him was a cocky-looking young man, Hispanic, with long hair and a goatee beard. But they both deferred to a black woman in her forties and a young man, maybe seventeen or eighteen.

  "My name's Tarissa Dyson," the woman said. "This is my son, Danny."

  The name "Dyson" was familiar, though at first John couldn't place it. He glanced at the T-800, which said, with no particular feeling, "Miles Dyson's family."

  She nodded sadly. "Miles was my husband. Skynet killed him, like everyone else—at least that's what I think. He disappeared on Judgment Day. If you're John Connor, we want to join you. I'm glad to meet you at last. I wish we'd all listened to you before this happened."

  John stepped from the Humvee, the T-800 following, holding an M-16 in one hand. "I guess we'd better talk," John said.

  Danny Dyson pointed to an olive drab tent. "You're very welcome. Come inside. This isn't some kind of ambush. You're not in any danger."

  "Correct," the T-800 said menacingly.

  They sat in folding chairs around a card table, drinking scalding hot coffee. "When Judgment Day came," Tarissa said, "Miles was in Colorado, working on the Skynet project. We were living in L.A., but Danny and I had a vacation in Mexico. If not for that, we wouldn't be here. L.A.'s virtually gone."

  "I'm sorry," John said. "I can't begin to understand how you must feel."

  "What, because of Miles? I can't blame him. How could he have known? We knew about your predictions of Judgment Day, of course, but we couldn't believe them. The story about robots from the future was just too much. But it shook Miles all the same, even though he said it was irrational. He made us go on that vacation. Indirectly, you saved our lives."

  "I wish we could have done more."

  Her eyes filled with tears, and she shook her head. "Of course, when the warheads fell, we knew what had happened. I wanted to go back and find Miles, but we had to make a choice. Skynet must have known what it was doing—it wouldn't have left anyone alive who could shut it down."

  "There's a lot I still don't understand," John said. "Why would they give all the control to Skynet in the first place?" He looked at the Terminator. "Do you know anything about that?"

  "No. I do not have detailed files."

  Tarissa looked back and forth between them, the young man and his bodyguard. "You're the robot from the future?"

  "I am a Terminator: Cyberdyne T-800 series, model 101. I am a cyborg construction: human biology on an endoskeletal combat chassis."

  "This is for real, isn't it?" Danny said.

  "Yes," John said. "It always was."

  Tarissa nodded sadly, and poured herself more coffee. "I'm confused about one thing."

  "Only one? Well, try me."

  "Your messages said that all human decisions were being removed and given to Skynet. But it wasn't supposed to work that way. The final decision was still supposed to be with the President. Skynet shouldn't have been able to launch the missiles by itself."

  "I suppose we'll never know," John said.

  The T-800 was silent.

  "No," Tarissa said. "I wish Miles was here to explain it all to us. I miss him..." She lost control for a moment, putting down her coffee cup, and weeping
openly. But then she managed to speak through the tears. "When we heard about you and your mother, down here in Argentina, we knew we had to join you. Your reputation's growing."

  "As long as Skynet doesn't hear about it," John said. "We're not ready yet."

  "Do you know what happens next?"

  "Skynet is preparing war machines," the T-800 said. "I don't have the details."

  "Maybe I should have taken more time and programmed it into you, before I sent you back to '94," John said. "Still, you've done what you had to do. I might even be better off not knowing everything. It gives me room to make decisions."

  "Correct"

  "It's still weird," Danny said.

  He seemed like a confident sort of guy, probably a genius like his father. "What's so weird?" John said.

  "This whole time travel thing."

  "What about it? Sounds pretty normal to me." He grinned, and glanced at the Terminator.

  "Can't you see how it's full of paradoxes?"

  "All right. I know that. Look, my mother and I have never tried to explain the whole story. It would only have hurt our credibility." John took them through it all. How he was destined to defeat Skynet. How Skynet had tried to change the past by killing him or his mother— before she could bear him. :

  Infuriatingly, Danny shook his head. "It just can't work that way. Say Skynet sends back a Terminator to kill you. It can't change the past. Time has already taken it into account, can't you see that? And if you can, so would Skynet—it can't be stupid."

  "Maybe it's got a few blind spots," John said.

  "Maybe. Or maybe things happen differently. Say one of those Terminators had managed to kill you, right? It couldn't help Skynet anyway."

  John hadn't thought of that. "What? Why not?"

  "Because Skynet has grown up in a world where you exist. If there's a world where you don't exist, it's a different world See my point? It may also have a Skynet, but it's a different Skynet. Nothing it experiences is known to the Skynet who sent back the Terminator. All that happens is that time splits. One way or another, you can't use time travel as a weapon. At least not like that."