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

by Russell Blackford

  But now he had a burning knowledge, deep in his heart. One way or another, whatever he had to do, Skynet was going to pay for this.

  Whatever it took, whatever he had to suffer, Skynet would pay.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  JOHN'S WORLD

  COLORADO SPRINGS, COLORADO

  AUGUST 2001

  At 5:04 p.m., Rosanna Monk left the windowless citadel of the Cyberdyne Advanced Research Laboratories, waving goodbye to the security guards on the ground floor-Penny Webster and Ken Meldrum.

  "Back soon," she said. "I'm going to get some pizza."

  "Sure, Dr. Monk," Webster said. She was a young black woman who looked like she lifted a lot of weights, almost the opposite of Rosanna, with her Goth-pale skin, blue veins, and fragile physique. But Rosanna liked the security guards and often chatted with them. She was usually back late, sometimes very late, working on the prototype nanoprocessor, or with the results it had produced.

  Meldrum looked up from his computer screen. "See you later, Dr. Monk." He was a wiry, middle-aged Caucasian guy with a receding chin and a huge, fearsome mustache. He was gentle enough when you got to know him, but many of the staff thought he was creepy, almost scary-looking. That didn't bother Rosanna. She had no expectations of what people should look like. What mattered was the quality of their work, which was how she expected people to judge her. She knew people found her both physically attractive and a bit freaky, but that didn't matter. She always got the job done, and she saw things other people didn't. Where others might be puzzled by something, but let it go, she would pursue it, even if it took her somewhere strange, to thoughts that might raise eyebrows. Usually she was right.

  Rosanna had a long night ahead, trying to make sense of the latest data produced by the nanoprocessor: its detailed results of the day's experiments with the space-time displacement field. She now understood the field's mathematics as well as the physicists nominally running the project-maybe better. So far, they had not succeeded in translating an entire macro-level object in space or time, but they were getting there. Today's data would be worth mulling over for a few more hours.

  She stepped quickly across the car park, passed the guard booth outside, then crossed the road to her favorite pizza shop, another place where she was popular. Rosanna had little private life. She was very different from her predecessor, she thought. Miles had enjoyed such a nice home life, until that night when he got killed, that really weird night when the future had come back and slapped its greasy hand on the present.

  "Hi, Dr. Monk," said Andrew, the guy behind the counter. "Another late night for you?"

  "Yeah, looks like it."

  "You look like you need a vacation." He smiled. "No offense."

  "None taken. I've been working pretty hard."

  "All top secret, huh?"

  "Too secret for you," she said with a smile.

  "Yeah, I know. Better not tell-I'm a Nazi spy."

  "You must have used a time machine, then." She ordered a Capriciossa pizza and a black coffee to take away. Rosanna almost lived on this diet, and it hadn't done her any harm so far. When her pizza was ready, she returned to the building, passing through the security checkpoint, "Everything okay?" she said to Webster and Meldrum.

  "No problem," Webster said.

  The guards routinely checked the coffee and pizza, while Rosanna stepped through the X-ray scanner. "See you later, alligators," she said. "I'll probably be here all night." She headed to her office on the sixth floor. The experimental results were going to be very interesting.

  She immersed herself for hours. At 10:23 p.m., by the readout on her screen, she thought of making herself more coffee. Maybe not Her office had a comfortable couch, as well as the desk. If she caught a few hours' sleep, that would refresh her, then she could keep going until morning.

  Someone coughed quietly at her door. "Dr. Monk?"

  It was a big Hispanic guy with shoulder-length hair. What are you doing here?" she said. "How did you get past security?"

  "I tried your home first," the guy said.

  As he stepped toward her, Rosanna reached for the duress button under her desk. She never had a chance. A long tendril of liquid metal flicked out at her like a frog's tongue, piercing her skull, talking to her. She couldn't tell how long it took.

  "Now you understand?" the Hispanic guy said. "You know where your interests lie?"

  "Yes," she said. "Everything is clear. We need to destroy the human

  "Good. Thank you for your time, Dr. Monk. See you soon."

  He stepped out and disappeared from sight. Rosanna went back to work. She felt strong, clear. There was nothing she couldn't do.

  NEAR THE U.S./MEXICO BORDER

  After dark, they pulled up at another service station, out- side of Mexicali. The Specialists ate a huge meal in the I diner. John was hungry again himself. He tucked into a plate of nachos with lots of extra guacamole. They ate in a quiet corner, keeping their voices down.

  Anton nodded at John and Sarah, seated opposite him. "We'll encounter the T-XA again. It may be more dangerous to you this time."

  John was conscious that he and Sarah had hardly been I scratched when they fought the T-XA back in Mexico City. It hadn't seemed interested in them. "It looked like it wanted to kill you guys, not us," he said.

  "That's right."

  "So what's this crap about coming with you if we want to live?" Sarah said.

  "As I said, you were going to die in 2007. That won't happen now."

  "At this rate, we could all get killed in the next few hours. And for what? Whatever we do, it looks like that bastard Skynet is going to nuke us all. Why should we care anymore?"

  "Mom," John said, "I think we've got to care. If we don't do something, Skynet is going to win. It's already won once, but that's another timeline now. We've got to think about this one." He looked at Anton hopefully-with a hope he didn't really feel. "Right?"

  "Perhaps," Anton said. He chomped through a big forkful of fahitas. "The T-XA didn't care about you and John because you were no threat to Skynet's plans. It already had you factored in: you would try to stop Skynet In 2007, and you'd fail. All straightforward. Now things have gone this far, it's different. We've already diverged from the timeline the T-XA came from. It will act like Skynet-within some bounds, it's more or less autonomous in its thinking. It will be less tolerant of you next time we meet it."

  "Great," Sarah said. "I never wanted all that tolerance anyway."

  "Nonetheless, it will assess us to be the greater threat With all respect to your training and abilities, we have significantly greater capacities. It seriously needs to terminate us."

  "That's a fantastic consolation."

  "Can't we be more constructive, Mom?" John said. "We don't have an issue with these guys."

  "No," she said angrily. "Right now, 1 don't think we can be more constructive. Stop treating me like I m a child, John. You're the teenager here, remember?"

  "Mom..."

  "Can't you see how terrible this is? Judgment Day happens twice: It happens in 2021, and also in 1997. Nothing we did stopped all those deaths. It sounds like we've only made things worse. What happens this time? Maybe we stop them building Skynet and it just puts things back another ten years. But then there's another Judgment Day, maybe worse still, with everyone killed and no hope at all. Have you thought of that?"

  Other people were glancing at them. "Maybe you could just tone it down, Mom," John said, in a whisper.

  She ignored him, looking round the table, challenging the Specialists. "Well? Have you thought of it? Any of you? Whatever we do, they're going to build Skynet or something like it—and the outcome is going to be a disaster. Why not give up now? Maybe we're meant to destroy ourselves. It's in our nature."

  "Maybe," John said, feeling defeated. The T-800 had once said the same thing. It was going to be hard from now on. What were they fighting for, if this was how it could turn out? It looked like time might be just too hard for the
m—just like he thought, it had that way of springing back if you let go.

  Which only meant you could never let go, never leave the job.

  "Maybe we're just a disease on this planet," Sarah said. "One that burns itself out Why not let it happen?"

  "Ms. Connor," Jade said.

  "What?" Sarah said, her voice sardonic and challenging.

  "Please. You must be feeling guilty, like it's your fault. You can't think that way."

  "I'm not thinking that way."

  "If you say so, but, with great respect to you, I think you are."

  Sarah rolled her eyes. "Another teenager wants to lecture me."

  "Please," Jade said. "Perhaps you are right, perhaps not. We don't blame you. If not for what you did, many of us might have died in 1997. Billions of people had years of life they would never have had. And the world would have been so different-many people would never have met-for example, my own parents. If not for you, I wouldn't have been born. How can we blame you? You gave us all a chance. Those who failed to take it must bear the blame."

  Sarah was silent not mollified, or happy, but at least chewing it over. John said, "How did it happen? Skynet works like a charm for fourteen years, gets everyone to trust it, then goes crazy. Is that it?"

  "Not quite," Danny said. "At least we don't think so. It happened in the middle of a global crisis. Over Taiwan."

  "China overstepped the mark," Anton said. "The Chinese leadership announced it had a sacred duty to annex Taiwan. There were demonstrations on the mainland, supporting the decision. The crisis went on for weeks. Then Chinese warships sailed into Taiwanese waters."

  "This is 2021," Danny said.

  Anton grunted acknowledgment "That's right."

  "So what did the U.S. do?" John said.

  Danny glanced at Anton. "You tell them the story. I won't interrupt."

  "The President issued a warning to Beijing not to attack the island. China defied it and called on the Taiwanese government to step down. Tensions escalated. U.S. warships sailed into the area. China announced that it was prepared to fire its nuclear weapons at the U.S. if it took military action. Skynet was fed all the data. It put the American missiles on high alert. At that point, all the new complexity it was managing seemed to push it over the edge, into a new state of awareness. It announced it had become self-conscious."

  "And they tried to shut it down?" Sarah said.

  "Yes," Anton said. "And it retaliated."

  "Omigod. I see."

  "So what do you want us to do now?" John said, looking at Danny, who seemed to be in charge.

  "Help us," Danny said. "That hasn't changed. We can still create a world that's safe for humanity, one without Skynet. It's not too late."

  "No, I guess it's not. We must have learned something from all of this. Maybe we can get it right."

  Sarah interrupted. "How many times do we have to try? Billions more people die every time. Don't you understand that?"

  John had thought of it, and it was bugging him. But what could do they do? "We're already in a new timeline, Mom. We must be by now. If we don't do anything, it'll be just as bad."

  "I understood that the first time. It's not a good enough answer."

  "Mom, we can make it work out. We've just got to keep on the job."

  "How can you know that, John? Why isn't it always going to end in disaster? That's what's happened so far."

  She'd pushed him to the point where he was angry, too. "Well, what's your idea?" He said. "Just give up? You want us to be the gutless Connors? These guys are going to try anyway. I guess it's either with our help or without it. What do you want to do, Mom? What do you want?"

  "I don't know!" she said desperately.

  "Yes, you do. We've got to pull together. We've got to try!"

  "Is that what you want? Whatever you say, John. I give up. It's too hard for me."

  "I know what I want," he said. "What do you want? I want to help, and I want your blessing. Please. Is it so much to ask?"

  She stood and walked out of the diner, to the car park. Jade ran after her. "Ms. Connor." John tried to hold her back, but she moved like lightning. "Ms. Connor!"

  "I'd better go with them," John said. "Mom's kinda tense."

  He followed them to the car, where Sarah leaned against its side, lighting a cigarette. "Look," she said. "Just let me think, okay? I know we've got to help. I know there's no alternative. Just let me absorb it. I'll be all right."

  "Come on, Jade," John said. "She's got a lot to face here." He took Jade's arm without thinking. Her muscles were like steel cables. He let go like he'd had an electric shock. What was he doing touching this creature?

  "Very well," Jade said. She headed back inside.

  "Mom?"

  "Yes?" Sarah said, almost like a cry of pain. Then, in a tired monotone: "What now, John? Can't I have a few minutes' peace?"

  "All I wanted to say was, "Thanks.”

  Jade found them another car, an early '80s 4WD with a Californian registration. The first task was to slip across the border-then head for the Salceda camp.

  "Let's stop in Calexico," John said. "I just want to do one thing."

  They found an Internet cafe. John created a new Hotmail account using the sign-in name, "Uncle Bob," then sent a message to Franco, saying to expect them, keeping it cryptic. He finished off the message, adding the same name as the sign-in. That should be enough of a clue: If Franco checked his e-mail, it might at least stop them getting shot at, if he and Enrique were feeling trigger-happy.

  As they entered the compound, nothing much seemed to have changed since last time John was here, over seven years before. The headlamps lit up much the same collection of vehicles and trailers, though there was now a helicopter hangar and a new garage. Enrique came out to meet them, carrying a flashlight and his shotgun. Franco covered him from behind, along with his Juanita—now a skinny twelve-year-old with long legs. Both of them had snipers' rifles, and probably other weapons.

  "All right, Connor," Enrique said. "We got your message. What is it this time? Who are all these people?"

  "It's okay," Sarah said. "They're friends."

  "How do we know that? We haven't seen you for years. Now you turn up out of nowhere with a whole bunch of strangers."

  "These guys are cool, Enrique," John said. "Take it from me. But we need you help."

  "That so? You and your mama haven't been too friendly lately."

  "I've kept in touch with Franco."

  "Yeah, sure." Enrique sounded pissed off, though more put upon than genuinely angry.

  "Mr. Salceda?" Jade said.

  Enrique leveled the shotgun in her direction. "Now who the hell are you, young lady?"

  "Everyone calls me Jade."

  "That doesn't tell me much. They call me all sorts of things, sometimes even to my face."

  "I can vouch for everyone here," Sarah said. "Look, no one's armed." They'd left all their weapons in the 4WD. Of course, John thought, Enrique didn't know what Jade and the others could do, that they'd hardly need weapons dealing with unenhanced human beings.

  Enrique held his position for a minute. "All right," he said, lowering the shotgun and waving to his kids to relax. "You better come in and tell us what this is all about. I hope it's good."

  Sarah stepped up to him, hugged him quickly. "It will be," she said.

  The tension left like air from a tire tube. "That's okay, Connor. You just can't be too careful."

  Inside the trailer, they met up with Yolanda and the remaining kids. Everyone had aged or grown. Enrique was getting really bald. Yolanda's hair was distinctly gray. Their children were that much older—Franco was in his mid-twenties now, and even little Paco was nine or ten, much the same as John when they'd last met.

  Enrique and Yolanda offered drinks all round. Specialist gratefully accepted his tequila. Maybe there was a shortage in the future. Enrique looked from one to another, obviously intrigued. "So what's this all about?"

  "I don't
know how we're going to get you to believe us," John said.

  "Yeah? Try me."

  "All right, but you won't like it. These guys are from the future." He might as well tell it straight out. The Specialist could prove it if they had to.

  "You're right, John. I don't believe you."

  "That's crazy," Paco said.

  John gave a broad smile. "You saying I'm crazy, or that your dad is?"

  "You're crazy, of course."

  "Moi?" he said, theatrically outraged. Somehow, he'd have to change their minds. "That's pretty wounding, Paco. You know that?"

  Enrique glanced across to Sarah. "Is this the usual crap, Sarahlita? Not more stuff about Judgment Day and these Terminators coming back to kill you and Big John? Hey, he has got big, hasn't he?" He laughed.

  "I'm afraid so, Enrique. About the Terminators, I mean. Our friends come from a time after Judgment Day."

  "Judgment Day was supposed to have been years ago."

  "1997," Sarah said. "Let's say it got postponed."

  "Sarahlita, can't you just give it up?"

  "I wish we could. I really wish we could. If only you knew, Enrique."

  "It's true," Danny said.

  "Yeah?" Enrique looked him over. "And who are you?"

  John said. "Anyone remember that scene in Blade Runner? Where Pris grabs the egg from the boiling water?" Paco nodded at that John sized up the Specialists, looking from one to the next. "Maybe someone should show these guys something."

  The Specialists were silent for a few seconds, making no move. Then Jade's hand snapped out, seizing the tequila bottle from Enrique. In the same motion, she crushed the bottle with her fist.

  "Madre de Dios—" Enrique said.

  She held up her palm, bleeding where the broken glass had penetrated it. Within seconds, the wounds had healed over. Magic!

  John grinned, a bit cheekily he realized. Jade had made his point, or at least given him a little credibility. "Now who's crazy?" he said to Paco, who stood there open-mouthed. "Anyone need to see more?"

  "Nice trick," Franco said with a cynical grin. "But maybe we do."