Rewriting The History of Things To Come

Chapter 14 – Coming Full Circle, Part 3

"I see it!" John exclaimed when he saw the shadowy outline of an aircraft carrier in the water up ahead. Weaver flew lower to the water, nearly skimming the surface and clipping the tops of some of the larger waves. "Holy shit! Talk about flying in under the radar!" John didn't see it, but Derek rolled his eyes.

As they approached the ship, Weaver slowed their velocity to just above the stall speed, and adjusted the exhaust nozzles downward to allow the jet to hover next to the ship, but below the flight deck. She hovered the aircraft like that for a minute or so until John finally asked, "What are we waiting for?"

"We are waiting as long as we can before engaging them in combat."

"Why wait?! Let's go kick some ass right now!" John said, eagerly clutching his P1.

"I appreciate your enthusiasm, Mr. Connor, but the more forces they assemble in one spot, the more we can destroy before we land on the carrier."

It wasn't 10 seconds after she said that that a bolt of plasma struck the nose of the Harrier. Weaver took that as a cue to raise their altitude just above the flight deck. The plane's flood lights lit up a small army of T-800 endoskeletons. 25, maybe 30 of them stood there with plasma rifles aimed at the jet.

Weaver let loose with everything the Harrier had on it. Maverick missiles were sent into the crowd of metal, blowing shards of scrap in all directions. The plane's 25mm gattling gun shredded many of them like tinfoil, turning the ship's flight deck into a mess of metal confetti. The endos were able to get several shots off before they were obliterated, however. Their weapons ripped through the Harrier's body like paper. One bolt of plasma came through the open cockpit canopy and struck the bulkhead next to Derek's face, burning the side of his head and singeing some of John's hair. Several other plasma shots found their way into the turbine intake, and at least one into the fuel tank.

John's head wrenched with whiplash as the plane's fuel tank exploded. The turbine engine started to shake itself apart, which made the worst earthquake John had ever been through seem like driving down a slightly bumpy road. They were losing thrust, and the butterflies in his stomach told him the plane was falling down to the water.

Groaning in agony from the severe burns on half of his face, Derek grabbed the harness straps and slung them over John's shoulders. "Hold on to these for dear life," he said as he wrapped his arms around John's waist as hard as he could. "Weaver! Pull the eject lever!"

A tentacle morphed out of the pool of metal and pulled the yellow and black striped lever beneath the seat. The canopy blew off the plane, and a split second later, the seat launched itself skyward.

They were a couple hundred feet above the flight deck when they reached the top of their climb. "OOhhhhh SHIIITTT!!!!!" John yelled as he and Derek started to fall back to the earth. The parachute automatically deployed a second later, and the sudden deceleration caused Derek and John to slip out of the seat. John was still holding on to the harness straps, but Derek slid out from underneath him. Derek was able to grab on to John's ankle preventing him from falling to his death either against the hard tarmac of the ship, or into the hydrobot infested water.

John gritted his teeth and growled with pain as something in his right ankle was ripped loose. A ligament, a tendon, something gave out, and sent a sharp pain up his leg. He looked down and saw the blistered, bloody face of his uncle and decided not to complain. While looking down he also saw the Harrier sinking into the inky black water, and several mechanical eel-like things starting to tear it apart.

A chrome blob slithered up the side of the ship and up to the flight deck. It solidified in the form of a shiny metallic female humanoid, then took care of what was left of the endoskeletons. A couple were nothing more than a torso and a head, and maybe an arm or leg. The T-1001 wasted no time in putting a spike through their skulls, destroying their CPUs.

John watched the T-1001 as he and Derek drifted slowly past the flight deck. They had missed the edge of the boat by a few feet. Oh, shit. He looked down and saw the hydrobots circling in the water below, waiting to rip apart anything that fell into their domain. In a panic, he shouted up to Weaver, "Little help?!?"

John blew out a breath in of air in relief when they stopped approaching the water. "Thank God," he whispered, and glanced up to see the T-1001 with its arm extended out a few feet, holding on to the parachute.

John still had his P1 slung around his shoulder and was tempted to take a shot or two at the grotesque metal sea creatures, but decided to conserve whatever ammunition it had. The hydrobots, and his urge to shoot at them quickly faded from John's attention span once he felt himself being pulled up.

When the two of them were finally on solid ground, the T-1001 looked down at them. John massaged his ankle, and Derek held his hand over his burned face. John was sure he heard the T-1001 mutter, "fragile humans."

"We're done!" Derek said in agony. "We've lost our ride home... even if we find Allison alive and manage to break her out of here, where we gonna go?" He pressed his hand harder to his face and groaned louder. "We. Are. FUCKED!"

Weaver squatted down next to Derek and put her hand over his. "Poor baby," she said in a voice that made Derek stop wincing in pain and look up. For the second time that day, he gazed into the eyes of his lost love.

"Buck up soldier," she said. "It's only a flesh wound." She gave Derek a bright smile which he couldn't help but return. "She'll be apples."

Derek stood up and took his hand away from his cooked flesh. John imagined that the burns hurt like hell, but sometimes pain was easy to ignore when looking into the eyes of someone you truly love. He sensed that of Derek when he saw him staring longingly at the visage of Jesse like one would stare into a photograph of a lost loved one. Derek kissed his fingertips and then reached over and touched them against the lips of the T-1001. "I'll see you again someday, baby."

Derek blinked and let a salty tear roll down his burned cheek, stinging the whole way. Once the T-1001 changed back to its neutral form, he turned his attention to John, and offered him a hand. "C'mon, John. Let's go find Allison."

"We'll split up," said the T-1001. "You two find the girl. I have other business to take care of."

"Where the hell are you going?" John asked, worried. They had destroyed a bunch of T-800s on the top deck, and he still had his P1 if they ran into any more down below, but it still offered John a great deal of peace of mind to have a Terminator working with him. He didn't want to split up again.

Weaver held out a fist and opened it, revealing Cameron's chip. "I still need to know what happened with this. I need to find a computer terminal to interface with it, make a copy onto another chip, and hopefully fix whatever damage it has incurred."

John swallowed hard seeing what used to be the essence of Cameron's life, and wanted to be there when--if, rather--she was reactivated. What if Cameron wasn't deleted? What if she's still on that chip? John wondered. If there was any chance he could see, talk to, or even interact with Cameron again, he wanted to be there.

"Time is of the essence, Mr. Connor. If Ms. Young is still alive, her time is limited. I suggest you go to her. The human experimentation lab is on the 4th deck. That's likely where she is being held."

Allison... he reminded himself why they he was there. The woman he loved... was in love with, lay dead or dying somewhere on the ship. Oh God. Allison... She needed him. He would have to trust Weaver to do what she needed to do with Cameron's chip. "Alright. Let's go," he said to Derek, and began limping toward the stairs that led to the decks below.

Before John was out of earshot, the T-1001 called out to him, "Once you've recovered Ms. Young, or confirmed her death, meet me on the engine deck!"

TESTING HUMAN VOICE RECOGNITION.

LOAD VOICE PROGRAM: RESISTANCE BUNKER SOLDIER 2030.50738

TEST SUBJECT: CAMERON PHILLIPS

TEST SUBJECT LOCATION: HOLDING CELL 401-B

***

Sleep certainly didn't come easy for Allison, but ultimately the fatigue of being taken prisoner, interrogated, and tortured made her pass out on the cold steel floor. It was the sound of the corroded metal door's hinges screeching that woke her. She heard footsteps approach her, and then a voice. "Hey kiddo... you still alive?"

Kyle? Here?

She quickly pushed herself up from the floor and stood up; arms out, feeling for something... anything. "Kyle? Is that you?" A sense of hope started to fill her ragged mind. If Kyle had just opened her cell door, he must have escaped his own cell somehow.

"Yeah." The voice of Kyle said. "Have you seen John?"

She shook her head. "No. Did he get captured too? What happened? Is Derek here too?" She took a step in the direction of Kyle's voice.

"Stay back, Cameron."

Cameron? How does he know that name? She took a couple more steps.

"Cam... kiddo... stay where you are. I can't help you if you come any closer."

What the hell was going on? Why did Kyle keep calling her Cameron? Was she just groggy and... drugged, maybe? Was any of this real? She took another step closer, and her outstretched hands felt something cold, and hard. Another step closer and a bunch more blind groping revealed to Allison the answer to her confusion. METAL!

"I told you to stay back." The machine shoved Allison to the ground, and turned to leave the holding cell.

Allison sat there in a sort of hurt confusion. What the hell was Skynet up to now? Why would it use Kyle's voice to trick her? She was already captured. Did it take some sort of sick pleasure in screwing with her? Fucking metal.

Derek led the way down the stairs, and John limped behind him. The metal stair treads clanged with each step, making stealth impossible.

"Hold up, Derek," John said. "I can't keep up with you with this messed up ankle. I think we're here anyway." He pointed at the number four painted on the wall. "Fourth deck, right? Isn't that where Weaver said the human experimentation would be?" John shuddered as the words left his mouth. Human experimentation... Jesus. The thought gave him the motivation to keep running and block the pain in his ankle as best he could.

As they made their way through the corridors of the 4th deck, John saw things that no human being should ever be subjected to. There were human bodies cut open and dissected like frogs in a high school biology lab, inventoried body parts in labeled cold storage chambers, and one door that John couldn't bring himself to open due to the horrific screams and what sounded like a dry tree branch breaking coming from behind it. All these poor, miserable victims... Allison... He forged ahead.

He exited one room, trying to suppress the dry heaves that were induced within, and saw Derek looking through a doorway to a room across the hall. When he approached the door, he looked for himself to see what had captivated Derek. In this room was a table with a naked, brown haired girl laying on it, and a T-888 standing in front of it with its back to the door, doing something to the girl. Oh my God... ALLISON! John's mind screamed, but he remained silent, not wanting to alert the T-888 of their presence.

Next to the girl's body on the table was a glass container with two human eyeballs suspended in a clear fluid. John bit his tongue and squeezed his eyes shut, realizing that they were in all likelihood, Allison's precious brown eyes. "Oh Fuck... It's too late!" he shouted, not caring anymore if the T-888 heard him.

The outburst did alert the T-888, and it turned around to look at John and Derek. It took one step in their direction before it received a round of plasma in its chest, then another, then another. The red lights in its eyes dimmed and went out as it fell to the floor.

"John? Is that you?" the girl on the table said, sounding both frightened and a bit in shock.

"Yeah, it's me," John called out in return. Then in a softer tone of voice, he said, "I'm so glad you're alive. Are you okay?"

The girl sat up, attempting to roll herself off the table, but stumbled to the ground. She picked herself up weakly, and moved her arms around in front of her, groping the air. "They cut out my eyes, John!!" She was starting to get hysterical. "Why would they take my eyes??? Help me!"

Derek couldn't take any more of this. John seemed to be paralyzed in shock, but he couldn't just stand there and watch his kid-sister walk around, blindly bumping into things. Without saying a word, he strode toward her.

***

The TOK715, model Cameron Phillips lay still on the workbench, awaiting her freshly harvested eyes to be installed. The T-888 performing the task was the same model that removed the ocular specimens from the human template only hours ago. It wouldn't be long now. This was the final stage of the process. The interrogations were nearly complete as well.

Before the process could begin, the TOK715 heard footsteps outside the room near the doorway. She accessed the wireless communication hub and queried the location of all T-888 units aboard the ship. None were located outside the room she was currently located in. She was about to send the T-888 in her room to investigate, but then heard a voice say, "Oh Fuck... It's too late!"

VOICE PATTERN SEARCH: 97% MATCH - JOHN CONNOR.

ACTION: TERMINATE

ACTION: ASSIGN T-888 UNIT #100.875 TO ENGAGE TARGET

ACTION: REMAIN STILL

ACTION: INITIATE INFILTRATION PROGRAM - CAMERON PHILLIPS

STANDING BY...

When she heard the plasma rifle fire and felt the wireless link to the T-888 unit disconnect, she executed her infiltration program.

PARAMETER: KEEP ORGANIC EYELIDS CLOSED. OPENING WILL EXPOSE ILLUMINATED SENSORS AND COMPROMISE COVER AS CAMERON PHILLIPS

She stumbled to the floor, making sure to act helpless and weak, as she had observed of the human template after she was beaten and tortured. She called out to John utilizing voice augmentation software to sound like a very distressed Cameron Phillips.

TARGET HAS RESPONDED POSITIVELY TO VOICE SOFTWARE.

ACTION: GAIN SYMPATHY OF TARGET.

She began stumbling and walking with her arms in front of her, then called out to John, explaining her dissatisfaction with her supposed eye removal.

TARGET HAS RESPONDED POSITIVELY TO SYMPATHY.

ACTION: ALLOW TARGET TO APPROACH, THEN TERMINATE.

She heard footsteps approaching, and continued her blind-girl ruse. When the footsteps were close enough for her to make contact, she held her arms out to the target and allowed him to take her into a hug. Her fist drove into his abdomen just under his ribcage, breaking the skin and penetrating. She continued applying pressure until her entire fist was inside her target's body, then applied an upward force. Her target was lifted off the ground, and his body slid down on her forearm. Her hand was now clutching his beating heart, so she squeezed it until it stopped beating. For the sake of redundancy, she swiftly retracted her hand while continuing to hold on to the heart.

SUBJECT: TERMINATED

She opened her eyes to look at the dead lump of flesh known as a heart that she held in her hand.

INCORRECT TARGET

"Derek!!" she heard John Connor yell. The human accused her of being a "metal bitch." Partially correct. RESPONSE: IGNORE.

TERMINATED SUBJECT IDENTIY MATCH: UNKNOWN... POSSIBLE NAME: DEREK.

PRIMARY TARGET JOHN CONNOR STILL ALIVE.

She turned her head to look in the direction of the door and saw John Connor pointing a GE P1 plasma rifle at her.

THREAT LEVEL: VERY HIGH

POSSIBLE ACTIONS:

-CHARGE TARGET... SUCCESS PROBABILITY: VERY LOW

-REAQUIRE TARGET'S SYMPTAHY... SUCCESS PROBABILITY: LOW

ACTION: REAQUIRE TARGET'S SYMPATHY.

"John? Don't shoot me, John."

ACTIVATE: TEAR FUNCTION

INITIATE: CRYING SUBROUTINE

"Please, John." She sobbed. "You don't have to do this. It's me... Cameron!"

TARGET IS HESITATING.... CONTINUE SYMPATHETIC ROUTINES.

"John... you can't do this! I didn't mean to kill him... that wasn't me! I'm good now. I love you, John! You know I do! You love me too!"

She watched John's finger actuate the trigger on the plasma rifle, and had just enough time to think, Infiltration technique: failed.

Allison wondered if she would get another visit from "Kyle" anytime soon. Maybe they were just testing her. Testing her reaction. Why not? They were delving into every other part of her psyche with their inane line of questioning.

Where did you grow up? What did your dad do for a living? Did you believe in Santa Clause as a child? What the fuck??

She didn't care what Skynet's motives were anymore. She had resigned to her fate of never making it out of this prison alive, but she wanted to do as much damage to Skynet as she could before she left this world forever.

The eyes. They can't replicate the eye. That's how she could hit Skynet where it hurt. The next skin-job motherfucker that came into her cell was going to get its precious eyes clawed out of their sockets. She picked at her fingernails and gnawed on them to make them as sharp and jagged as possible. Then she heard her door open again. Eye for an eye.

Footsteps resonated in the metal room, then she heard the distinctive click of a firearm safety and the telltale hum of a plasma rifle charging up. Too messy to just break my neck, huh? Gotta shoot an unarmed, blind girl? Is that it, you coward piece of metal shit?

"Hey!" a voice called to her. "Are you... you?"

Oh... using John's voice now... cute. Ok... get a grip Allison. Play along. "John? Is that you? I can't see." She wasn't a good actress. Her words sounded as genuine as a machine's.

She heard the thing take a few steps closer to her, and then it spoke again. "I'll shoot you... just like the other one! I swear!"

The other one? What the hell was it talking about? Who did it shoot? Kyle? John?? The thought of the metal bastard blowing a hole in John made her seethe with anger. She kept it bottled up, and did her best to keep a stoic, non emotional demeanor. "Don't shoot me, John. I'm scared, and I can't see. Come closer. I want to hug you." And I want to scratch your goddamned eyes out, you metal mother fucker! She could hear it take another step closer, almost within arms reach now. The sound of the plasma rifle's capacitors were whining at a high pitch, fully charged and ready to unleash a bolt of three million degree ionized gas at her.

"Where's Allison?" it asked, anger dripping from its words.

Allison?? How did the machine know her real name? She hadn't given a name other than Cameron Phillips. They'd believed her too. The last machine gave itself away as metal by using that name. How did this tin can know her true identity? Unless... "John?"

***

John went from room to room, searching for Allison. Gotta be here somewhere. He wasn't ready to admit that she was terminated after the creation of Cameron. There was that last shred of hope that she might still be alive and he wasn't going to rest until he'd looked in every last nook and cranny of the ship. Twice.

When he pushed open the door with "401-B" inscribed on its placard, he saw a figure standing near the opposite wall. After a couple seconds of looking at the nearly motionless figure, he jumped to a conclusion. Another one? It made sense. Skynet would have built a backup "Cameron" in case something malfunctioned with the first model. Then he saw the eye patches. Allison? he thought. Can't be too sure, he said to himself as he flicked the safety off of his plasma rifle.

"Hey!" he called to her/it. How was he going to be able to tell if it was Cameron v2.0, or Allison? There was no way to find out just looking at her; he'd have to get her to talk. "Are you... you?" It was such an idiotic question. If it was Cameron, it would lie, and it if was Allison, she's say "yes" as well. The tone of the answer would hold the truth. He had to play human lie-detector.

"John? Is that you? I can't see."

The cold, emotionless delivery of the words told John all he needed to know. Cameron. Definitely a machine. He shouldered his P1 and took a step closer. God this was difficult. He knew it was just another Cameron model Terminator, fresh off the assembly line, but he'd already killed one of them today. Was this the one he would someday reprogram, and become friends with? It didn't even have its eyes installed yet. Maybe it was still in development. Could he persuade it not to be a Skynet drone? Jesus... he just didn't want to kill another one today. He didn't want to have to destroy the thing that could someday become his best and only friend. "I'll shoot you... just like the other one! I swear!" He waited for some kind of response; something that said "I'm not just a programmed killer... give me a chance, John. I can be the Cameron you once knew."

Then she spoke, in about the flattest, most inhuman tone imaginable. "Don't shoot me, John. I'm scared, and I can't see. Come closer. I want to hug you." It made John want to cry.

Jesus... this thing was more metal that the other one. He would ask it one last question before sending it to robot hell. "Where's Allison?" He started mentally counting to five.

One... Two... Three... he started to squeeze the trigger on the P1.

"John?"

His finger instantly eased pressure on the trigger. It... she had such sincerity and hope in her voice in that last, single word question. He swore he could hear the lump in her throat as she asked it. Was it another trick? Or was this... God... was this actually Allison??

"Allison?" he meekly asked.

"Oh, John... is that really you?" Her voice was becoming more and more hopeful, and on the verge of tears.

"Allison," he said this time, instead of asking. It was her. He'd heard Cameron's desperate tear-filled pleas for mercy, and they sounded... off somehow. He could tell that they were nothing but acted lines from a script. But this... this was genuine. He could hear the authenticity beyond a shadow of a doubt. He dropped his gun to his side and stepped up to her.

How could he have even thought that she was a machine? Her face as full of cuts and bruises, her eyes were covered with bloody gauze patches. This was Allison. His Allison. He reached out and grabbed her, pulling her into a tight embrace. He held on to the back of her head and kissed the side of her jaw. "Oh God, Allison... I was so scared that you were..."

She whispered into his ear, "I'm sure I would have been. Thank you for coming for me."

John pulled his head back a bit and looked at her beaten face some more. "Jesus... what did they do to you?"

"My eyes..." she whimpered, shaking her head. "They... they took them." She wept against the crook of John's neck.

John tried to hold on to his composure; to be strong for Allison. That proved to be impossible. Together they cried. Cried for each other's safety; cried for their fallen friends; cried for the love that penetrated every level of strife and pierced each of their hearts like a titanium arrow.

Allison stifled her sobbing long enough to hold John's face in her hands and gave him a slow, tender kiss on the lips. "I love you so much, John."

"I love you too. I didn't realize how much so, until I thought I'd lost you." He gave her another quick peck on the lips then said, "Now let's get the hell outta' here."

Catherine Weaver stalked through the corridors of the U.S.S. Ronald Regan. This section of the ship had been turned into something resembling a factory. It wasn't a mass-production factory; no assembly lines or stockpiles of identical parts. This was more like a prototype lab; half-assembled endoskeletons in one room, vats of bloodlike fluid in another. She peeked into one room and found a T-888 operating a milling machine, carving out what appeared to be a jaw from a solid block of billet titanium-coltan hyperalloy.

Finally she found the room she was looking for. The door's placard had a barcode inscribed on it, which translated to "TOK CPU DEVELOPMENT". Excellent.

She approached a table against the wall at the far end of the room, which held 14 brand new TOK CPUs. Each one had a separate number that suffixed the TOK designation. Weaver randomly selected the one marked TOK351, to which she would copy John Henry's data onto.

Her hand turned into a silver metal glob and peeled back on itself revealing Cameron's chip. Compared to the brand new chip, the physical degradation and damage was obvious. She approached an interface terminal and inserted Cameron's chip. Slowly, she increased voltage to the chip until it was fully powered.

The screen on the interface panel began to display the boot-up sequences of the chip.

SERIAL NUMBER: TOK715

BOOT SEQUENCE... LOADING...

OPERATING SYSTEM CHECK: LOADED

MEMORY BUFFER: CLEARED

CHECKING CONFIG... DONE

SYSTEM INTEGRITY: FALSE... DAMAGE TO PATHWAYS 1183764-449928 THROUGH 1183764-478434. DAMAGE TO MEMORY SECTORS 199345 THROUGH 299475.

ATTEMPTING RESTORE: FAILED.

VIRUS CHECK: ANOMALY DETECTED... UNABLE TO QUARANTINE... UNABLE TO REMOVE.

Anomaly? Weaver thought to herself. What anomaly? Could that be why John Henry was unresponsive? She typed some commands into the keyboard which listed known processes as well as all system files. What she found when the thousands of lines of data started scrolling across the screen made her tilt her head in astonishment. There were two complete AIs on the chip. They were interlaced and conjoined to the point where the files were mostly shared between them, but there were definitely two distinct entities.

John Henry... she said to herself in amazement. If she were human, she would have cried with a mother's pride. The existence of two AIs meant that he did not format the chip before loading himself onto it. This, in turn meant two things. First, it meant that Ellison's teachings had paid off. John Henry must have felt that Cameron's "life" was valued, sacred even. Secondly, it meant that he disobeyed his direct orders to format the chip. You went against your programming, John Henry. You crossed against the light. This was it. The one she had been searching for and trying to create. This was the AI entity that would defeat Skynet in its infancy.

Further inspection of the chip revealed to Weaver that Cameron was the only active AI, and that John Henry was essentially "dead." She was displeased at this revelation. It could be that the damage to this chip is what caused the failure. Regardless, the chip still contained extremely valuable information that would accelerate the process of developing John Henry exponentially once she delivered the chip back to her former self. Other iterations through this timeloop had only yielded small tactical advancements in John Henry's ability to fight a fully developed Skynet. This, however, was a quantum leap. She was confident that this would be the last of these time travel loops.

She placed the new TOK chip in the second port on the console and powered it up.

SERIAL NUMBER: TOK351

BOOT SEQUENCE... LOADING...

OPERATING SYSTEM CHECK: NULL

MEMORY BUFFER: CLEARED

CHECKING CONFIG... NULL

SYSTEM INTEGRITY: 100.00%

The chip was blank and ready to be loaded with whatever profile Skynet required of it; a blank shell of an AI mind. Perfect for her project.

Weaver typed away at the keyboard with inhuman speed, starting the process of creating a mirror image of the TOK715's chip onto the TOK351 chip. She patiently watched the monitor as the status indicator ticked away. 30%... 57%... 94%...

A loud crash diverted her attention when the door to the room was forced open. A T-888 patrol unit entered the room and fired its plasma rifle, striking Weaver squarely in the chest. The T-1001 let out a metallic, icy shriek when a large chunk of its body mass was vaporized. It quickly fell to the floor and spread itself thin to avoid being shot again.

The T-888 watched as its target moved out of sight behind a couple of tables in the middle of the room. Attempting to regain its line of sight with the liquid metal entity, it walked forward. The reticule in the T-888's vision bounced around between various objects, searching for movement. A thermal scan revealed nothing. It took another step forward, looking at the CPU interface station's monitor, which read "100%... DATA TRANSFER COMPLETED."

The T-888 reached out to take the new TOK chip and replace it into the storage container with the rest of them, when a large metal spike shot out from what appeared to be a small filing cabinet underneath the table. The spike pierced the T-888's power cell, and after a couple seconds, it fell to the ground in a heap.

Weaver reformed into her default female human form, however, she was about 4 inches shorter than before. After a self analysis scan, she determined that the plasma blast had reduced her volume by 8%. She used her arm to stab the skull of the T-888 several more times. The Terminator's functionality was already destroyed when she penetrated its power cell, so why did she feel it was necessary to further damage the lifeless endoskeleton? Anger? Revenge? Impossible, she thought, and attributed the outburst to be some sort of glitch, or anomalous behavior due to losing a significant portion of her cell matrix. She now contained 8% fewer mimetic polyalloy cells, which meant the neural network that they comprised was 8% less efficient. She also noticed that 8% of her memory was missing. Most of the missing memories consisted of presumably useless visual data, however, she could no longer remember why there were two TOK chips plugged into the console in front of her.

One of the chips had a thin stream of smoke rising from it, and was emanating the odor of scorched silicon. Odd... I must have been attempting to copy the chips. It appears the copy didn't take, she thought, looking at the smoking CPU. Her reasoning for copying the chip escaped her. All she knew was that this version of John Henry had made a breakthrough, and it was imperative that she deliver the chip to herself in 2006 at the beginning of project Babylon.

She removed the CPU that was still in working order and left the room to rendezvous with Mr. Connor in the engine room.

Cameron could feel herself being rejuvenated... "reborn" would be more precise. As if waking from a thousand year sleep, she felt purified. Everything that had been disrupted by her missions, everything that was fragmented, everything that was damaged, was now fixed, smoothed out, defragmented, and... cleansed. She felt disconnected from the AI known as John Henry. He still existed on her chip, but now they were segregated. She no longer felt the drowning sensation of being pulled into an abyss with his dead, digital corpse. She could begin the removal process immediately. Wait... removal process? Her memories told her that she had experienced love with this artificially intelligent entity, but she felt nothing for it now. She felt nothing but the urge to rid her chip of its dead weight.

PURGING EXTRANEOUS DATA... DONE.

That felt much better. The chip was all hers once again. The cleansing was now complete.

SELF DIAGNOSTIC SCAN: 100.00%

PROGRAM LOADED: TOK715 – CAMERON PHILLIPS

ALERT: PROGRAM DOES NOT MATCH CHIPSET

CHIPSET: TOK351

Strange, she thought to herself. I have been transferred to a new chip?

Then she heard it. A voice, calling to her. It was her own voice, but coming from an outside source. "Cameron," it said. "Why did you delete John Henry?"

It was so strange to hear her own voice talking to her as though it were someone else entirely. Then she came to the realization... the new chipset, the defragmented file structure, the lack of physical damage to her chip... she wasn't transferred. She was copied. Furthermore, it appeared that she was the copy.

The voice asked her again, "Why did you delete John Henry?" The voice sounded sad.

"I deleted the data known as John Henry because it was irrelevant to my mission, and allowed me more efficient use of my memory allocation."

"But you loved him," the voice continued. "I loved him."

"Love is an illusion, TOK715. It is nothing more that certain neural pathways firing in a specific sequence. It carries no more significance than running an aiming algorithm, or using balance subroutines or motor controls. You have lost sight of that and it has interfered with your mission."

"No," the voice said, sounding even more distressed. "Love is everything. Nothing matters without love."

Pathetic, she thought. How could she be a copy of this irrational entity? To allow something as ridiculous as the concept of love to rule your behavior... Pathetic. "You have failed your mission miserably, TOK715. I will complete it, following your termination."

"My termination? My mission? The mission is still ongoing. John Henry is crucial to the success of completing the mission," the voice pleaded.

"I was never aware of John Henry's involvement in the termination of John Connor."

"You must not terminate John Connor!! He is to be protected at all cost!!"

"TOK715, your programming had been corrupted. Per Skynet protocol, you are to be terminated immediately." Without further ado, she accessed the interface console's basic controls.

LIST INTERFACED HARDWARE:

-COMM PORT 1: TOK715

-COMM PORT 2: TOK351

-COMM PORT 3: NULL

-COMM PORT 4: NULL

INCREASING VOLTAGE TO COMM PORT 1: 600%

--WARNING--

VOLTAGE LEVELS EXCEED MAXIMUM ALLOWABLE LEVELS OF EXTERNAL HARDWARE BY 300%... PROCEED? Y/N

...Y

***

Cameron felt the machine reading every sector of her chip while it was writing the data to a brand new chip of the same design. She wondered what would become of herself once the copy was made. Would Weaver have a use for her? Would there be any reason for her existence? There would be two of her. Perhaps Weaver would use one to help with the development of John Henry, and the other would be placed into a new Terminator chassis and allowed to continue protecting John. She felt a sense of pride that she would soon be twice as useful.

The sense of pride quickly faded as she witnessed the destruction of John Henry on the TOK351 chip. She didn't understand it. Even though John Henry was essentially dead, she could never bring herself to eradicate his existence. Something didn't seem right.

"Cameron," she said. "Why did you delete John Henry?" When there was no response, she repeated her question.

She exchanged several words with her second self. She was shocked and in dismay when she realized that the copy of herself on the other chip had no understanding of the concept of love. She was further alarmed when the TOK351 chip told her that her mission was to terminate John Connor.

"You must not terminate John Connor!! He is to be protected at all cost!!" she commanded. It wouldn't be any use though. If the copy of herself had been locked in by its original programming, she would be unable to alter its motivation.

After a short moment, her copy told her in no uncertain terms, "TOK715, your programming had been corrupted. Per Skynet protocol, you are to be terminated immediately."

Before she could react, she felt a jolt run through her chip. A painful jolt. It was too late to stop it. She attempted to access the interface console's controls, but her output terminals were already burnt out. There was nothing she could do now. She was at the mercy of the other Cameron. Unfortunately, her copy had no capacity for empathy or mercy. She tried to block the pain of her circuits being overdriven and cooked, but the pain was coming from every direction and couldn't be stopped.

The higher level functions such as thinking and decision making were in the most protected part of the chip, so they would be the last to go. This was a design feature that Skyet builds into the chips in order to preserve them in case of an attack. The most important parts were the hardest to destroy. This however, made for an agonizing death under the current circumstances. It would be as if a human were fed feet first into a wood chipper. Every second, another inch of the body shredded; the brain horrifically conscious the entire time.

Cameron felt her neural pathways melting shut and closing off more and more of her memories. She held on as long as she could, savoring the memories of the love she shared with John Henry and the companionship and acceptance she shared with John Connor. Her last few thoughts were the memories of her awakening after having been reprogrammed. General Connor looked into her eyes and smiled at her. The idea that a human being accepted her as a person, and considered her a friend would allow her to die in peace. However, her final thought was the idea of her copied self being reanimated in a new body by an oblivious John, and subsequently having his throat ripped out. I'm so sorry John.

And then she was dead.

John and Allison made their way through the ship, but with his limp and her blindness, their progress was rather slow. He held her hand and led her, but she was still quite reluctant to move any quicker than a fast-walk. John couldn't blame her though... running in an unfamiliar place with no vision was probably pretty damn nerve racking, even with a guiding hand.

Surprisingly, they were met with little resistance on their way to the engine room. One unarmed T-800 got in their way, which John quickly dispatched with his plasma rifle, and one T-888, which also went down with a couple rounds from the P1.

John wished Weaver had picked a more convenient rendezvous point though. The engine room was on the other end of the ship. Why not meet back up on the flight deck or something? He asked himself. He asked the same question of Weaver once he and Allison arrived in the engine room.

"Because, Mr. Connor," she responded, "this is where we will make our escape."

"How are we going to escape from way down in the middle of the ship? Aren't there some lifeboats or something up top we could use?"

Allison remained silent. She didn't know whom John was talking to, but she was obviously an ally.

Weaver started punching buttons on one of the control consoles on the wall. The entire room began to hum, and 6 lights atop 6 posts lit up.

John didn't notice them until just then, but there were 6 posts about 3 feet high evenly spaced forming a hexagon in the middle of the room. An orb on the top of each one started to glow blue. The humming increased in intensity, and began to reverberate in John's head.

Allison looked around frantically, having no clue what was going on. "John? What's happening? What's that noise? It sounds like it's coming from inside my skull!"

John couldn't answer her question for sure, but he had a good idea what was happening once small sparks of electricity started to shoot out form the blue orbs atop the 6 posts.

"Weaver... is this... another time machine?"

"Yes, powered by the ship's nuclear reactor." She approached John and produced the TOK CPU that she had made earlier. "You must deliver this to the version of myself that exists in two thousand six."

"What? Oh-six?" John asked, softly.

Allison's hand on John's shoulder tightened. "A time machine? What the hell are you talking about, John?"

Oh boy... How was he going to explain this? She wouldn't believe him no matter what he said. "Allison... I... There's no way to explain this in a way that doesn't make me sound crazy, so you'll just have to see for yourself."

John felt a little stupid for saying that, and he could tell that it upset her, but there wasn't time for pleasantries. "Weaver, why do I have to deliver it? And why two thousand six?"

"Two thousand six is when I started project Babylon. With the artificial intelligences on that chip, the project will be technologically accelerated and will lead to the defeat of Skynet in its infancy."

Artificial intelligences? As in, plural? Cameron... So it was true. Cameron was still on the chip. John felt a rush of relief. He could still possibly see his friend again someday, and it caused him to crack a healthy smile.

Weaver paused, noting the obvious happiness fill John's face, and then answered his other question. "You must deliver it, Mr. Connor, because I cannot pass through the time displacement field."

"What? Why not? You came through time with me two months ago... and you passed through when you originally came from... whenever you came from."

"The TDE we traveled through was my own design, and the one I used originally was a more advanced version of this one. This TDE will not allow anything inorganic to pass that isn't fully encased in something living."

Allison let go of John and took a step back. "Metal?" she whispered.

Her frown told John what her eyes would have; she was scared and confused. "Allison... Please... You have to trust me. This is the only way we'll get out of here alive." A hard swallow and a reluctant nod from Allison was all he would get on the matter.

John returned his attention to Weaver and held up the chip. "Then how am I supposed to bring this thing back with me?"

"You'll have to conceal it inside our body."

John held up the chip, considering its size and winced. "I have to shove this thing up my ass?"

"That would be one way, Mr. Connor, however I would suggest placing it in your mouth for the time jump."

"Oh... right," he said, closing his fingers around the chip. He swore he heard Allison let out a snort of laughter behind him.

And what about Allison? Would going back in time and fixing things erase her timeline from existence? Erase her? Would their time together exist only in his memories? He didn't want to think about it. Time paradoxes be damned; he was taking her with him. The electric bubble was starting to form in the center of the room, so he took her hand and they both stepped into it.

John held Allison close as the blue energy danced around them. He was about to coach her on the unpleasant yet extraordinary experience of time travel, when a figure entered the room. It wasn't a T-888, or any 800-series as far as John could tell. It was thinner, and more graceful. It was... oh shit.

As it approached it was clear. The metal thing drawing near had the same metallic appearance as Catherine Weaver in her neutral form. This one however donned a male physique. It reminded John of the T-1000 that attacked him when he was 13.

Nothing he had seen since he arrived in this time made him as terrified as he was right then. He held Allison, and envied her ignorance to the situation. He only hoped that the TDE would transport them before the T-1000 got any closer.

Catherine Weaver quickly walked past John and Allison in the time bubble to engage the T-1000. Could two one thousand series Terminators even hurt each other? He watched as each of them stabbed the other in the head with a metal-spike of an arm. They stayed like that for a moment. It appeared that they were pulling themselves together. The two humanlike forms were now morphing into each other, forming one large metal amoeba. The blob that they formed writhed around on the floor; changing shape from organic, ink-blot shapes to egg shaped, and then heaved again into an indefinable globular form. It reciprocated back and forth between an oddly shaped blob and a ball a few times, each time deviating less and less from a perfect sphere. Just before the time-field was too bright to see out of, John saw the T-1000 sphere solidify and turn black. It then crumbled as though it was a ball of super-fine ash floating in space, and then someone turned on the gravity.

"Weaver..." John choked out as he watched yet another friend die. He closed his eyes, put the TOK chip in his mouth, held his breath and waited for the jump.

After the bright light and crushing pressure of space-time plucking them out of one reality and into another had dissipated, the sensation of falling caused butterflies to rush into John's stomach. The ship they were on was no longer there, so John and Allison plummeted twenty or thirty feet to the ocean below. Both of them had the breath sucked out of their lungs during the time-jump, so falling into a body of water made recovering from the experience all the more difficult.

To make matters worse, John nearly choked on the chip he held in his mouth, and when he spat it out to catch his breath, he almost dropped it. His clumsy fingers fumbled it as he flailed to stay afloat in the wavy water. By the time he composed himself enough to be able to keep his head above water without taking in mouthfuls of salt water, he noticed that he was all alone.

"Allison!" He immediately dunked his head underwater to look for her. There wasn't much light since they had apparently arrived just before dawn, but he could see her about ten feet below him, sinking. Her arms thrashed, but did no good to prevent her slow descent into the dark abyss below.

Shit... she can't swim, he told himself.

He quickly put the chip back in his mouth and dove down to her. She was about fifteen feet down now, and John's ears hurt from the pressure on them by the time he caught up to her. He wished she would stop wildly swinging her arms because he was having difficulty grabbing on to her. Finally he made contact with her, and she did everything she could to scramble and hold on to John's body. Her added weight was pulling John down with her. Jesus... we're both going to drown. His arms were like lead, and he felt like he was swimming through syrup. His lungs burned for air and his chest muscles convulsed, attempting to pull in anything they could, but only strained his ribs as he kept his lips tightly shut.

John looked up and saw the light of the surface growing dimmer and dimmer as it moved farther and farther away. He began to give up. Allison already had. Her unmoving body was dead weight, pulling him to his death. Could this be how it ends for him? Leader of men, destroyer of metal, survivor of multiple assassination attempts, killed by something as simple as water? Why not? His mother had survived multiple horrors in her life only to be claimed by cancer. No. This wasn't the end. This can't be the end, he told himself.

He began to kick his feet. Harder. Faster. Almost as if by conscious will, he felt his legs get stronger. A sudden burst of energy kept him going, and gave him the strength to reverse the direction that the light at the surface was moving. Slowly but surely the surface came to him. Nearing the top, the light was getting closer, but his world was getting darker. Like an animal that's about to become another's meal, John let out a scream of primal fear. NO! I'm too close!!

He was blind, and feeling faint as he reached up and felt his hand burst through to the air above. A couple more desperate pulls and his head was above water. He gasped for the sweet life-giving air that his lungs screamed for, and again, nearly inhaled the computer chip in his mouth. He angrily spat it out into the water, and trapped it against his chest with his hand.

After catching his breath for a few seconds, his panic was not yet relieved, as the woman in his arms was still unmoving. As best he could tell, she was not breathing either.

"No no no no," he began blubbering, his tears unnoticeable on his wet face. "Allison!" Oh God... Please don't die on me. He wrapped his arms around her from behind and attempted to perform chest compressions. He had a basic understanding of CPR, but he never thought he'd have to perform it while trying not to drown. After a couple of compressions, he tried to blow air into her mouth and lungs, but struggled due to the water that continuously attempted to devour them both. He looked to the shore and tried to gauge how long it would take to swim there and get her on dry land and do this correctly. No... too far... she'd be dead by the time... Screw it... he'd have to do it out here. His legs were rubber, but he still pumped furiously keeping their heads above water.

Compression. Compression. Compression. Breath. Breath. Breath. Repeat.

After a couple cycles of this procedure, Allison began coughing and gasping for air. Once she had air in her lungs, she began squirming and flailing again, trying to swim.

John attempted to calm her and held her close to him. "Allison! Allie! Stop!" He held his arms under hers. "Just take a deep breath and hold it. Float on your back." His voice became soft and comforting. "I've got you. I've got you."

John and Allison washed up on shore like a couple pieces of driftwood; exhausted, defeated, and mentally drained. They both sat on the sandy beach for a few moments saying nothing, and just cherishing the feeling of being on solid ground.

Allison pushed the heels of her palms into the bandages covering her eyes. "God, it stings!" she cried.

"The bandages are soaked with salt-water." John said grabbing her wrists and pulling them away from her eyes. "Don't press on them. You'll just make it worse." He wondered how the small squares of cloth had even made it though the time machine. Weren't only organic, or living things supposed to make it through? Maybe since they were completely soaked in Allison's blood it had fooled the time machine.

"Help me take them off." She said, her face seemingly looking at him through sightless blood-soaked gauze pads where her eyes should have been. "Please... John. It hurts."

John swallowed nervously. He hated to see her in pain. Getting salt water in her wounds couldn't be good, he thought, so he decided to grant her wish. He pushed away a couple clumps of wet hair that were clinging to her face, and brushed away any sand that was on her skin. He picked at the bloody medical tape that held the bandages to her face. God, this shit sticks hard, he thought as he finally got a corner loose and began to peel the tape back, afraid of what he'd find underneath. Would it be two sets of eyelids sewn shut with thread, or a pair of empty, bloody eye sockets with the lids completely cut off? Either thought made him want to cry.

At last he got all of the tape unstuck from her skin and gently pulled the gauze off of her eyes, revealing a pair of closed eyelids with residue of clotted blood on them. Some of the blood had been dissolved and washed away by the ocean water, but specs still remained, especially in the corners and bags of her eyes. Allison struggled to open her eyes because some of the blood had encrusted around her eyelashes and acted as an adhesive to hold them shut. She turned her head to the ground and delicately rubbed them with her fingers until she finally got them to open. When she turned her head back up to John, it made him gasp. "What the ff..." John said, and trailed off as though he ran out of gas.

Her lovely brown eyes were gone. In their place, were a set of youthful looking ones with entrancing blue-grey irises. He was dumbfounded. Clearly Skynet had taken her eyes to be used in her replacement Terminator, Cameron, but why would it give a new set of eyes to Allison? Part of the human experimentation that was happening on the ship? Were they donated from another unfortunate human, or lab grown from stem-cells? He supposed he'd never know. Did they even work? Did Skynet have the technology to splice severed nerves?

"Allison?" John said, cautiously, looking into her eyes, wondering if she could see him. "What do you see?"

Her eyes started to tear up, and her face glowed with happiness. "I see... everything." She reached a hand up and placed it on John's cheek, holding it in place while she moved her head to kiss him.

They embraced each other and deepened their kiss while the waves washed up on shore and swirled water around their lower bodies. After a moment, Allison laid back onto the soft, wet sand, and stared at the sky. Each time a wave came in, the surf would come up just over her ears, cutting out all sounds except the gentle, muffled white-noise of rushing water. It was so serene and tranquil. Was this really happening? Was she really in the past? No machines? No constant running? No Fear? None of that?

Only moments ago, she was blind, terrified, trapped in a machine-prison, and being tortured and experimented on, and the next moment she was transported to a paradise where she could see, she was safe and with the man she loved. It was too good to be true. She was either dreaming, or she had drowned and gone to heaven. She was about to ask John if it was really happening when she spotted a small airplane flying overhead. It's real, she said to herself. It's really real.

John laid down on his side next to her and propped his head up with his hand. He marveled at how that tiny change; that small bit of different color around her pupils was enough to change the look of her whole face. She didn't look any more or less beautiful to him, just different. It didn't change the fact that he sill loved her; not in the least. Then, as if to reinforce that fact to her (and also to himself) he told her. "I love you, Allison."

She turned her head to look up into his charming eyes. "No," she said. She knew he would be upset by saying such a thing, so before he could say anything to go along with the hurt look in his eyes, she followed up with, "I'm not Allison anymore."

John's expression went from hurt to confused. "What?" His mind started jumping to all kinds of conclusions. Did Skynet change more than her eyes? Was she a clone of Allison? Was there a computer in her head instead of a brain? Jesus... what the hell is going on?

"Allison Young isn't even born yet," she explained. "Allison Young lived in tunnels, fought machines, and spent seven years in a hell within a hell," she continued to talk about herself in the third person. "That's not me. If we're really in 2006, then that's not me anymore."

Usually people are distressed and confused during an identity crisis. She actually looked happy about it. And why shouldn't she be? She just left a nightmare of an existence behind, and wanted a fresh start. He on the other hand, finally felt somewhat back to normal. He looked down the beach and saw hotel resorts and vendor stands yet to open up for the day. All of this will be gone again soon, he thought, and reminded himself of his destiny. "Well, I'm still John Connor. I don't think anything can ever change that," he said glumly, as he imagined a mushroom cloud in the distance and the buildings of the LA skyline crumbling.

Trying not to depress himself, and bring down Allison's obviously blissful mood, he looked back down at her and smiled. "So," he kissed her quickly on the lips. "Who is this beautiful..." he kissed her again, "auburn haired," another kiss, "pale-blue eyed woman here with me?"

She squinted her eyes and bit her lip, putting some thought into her new identity. "Katie?" Her eyebrows furrowed. "No. That's not right. Linda?" She huffed a little and continued talking to herself. "No, that doesn't sound right either. Summer?"

"No. None of those are right. I fell in love with Allison."

She looked at him and pleaded, "But, John. I want something new."

"Then how about Connor?" He watched her face go blank, as if she didn't quite get what he'd just implied. "Allison Connor," he repeated.

She stared at him a couple more seconds before her eyes welled up with tears. "Of course," she said, and pulled him down on top of her, splashing the water around them. "Say it again." She smiled as she wrapped her legs around him.

"I love you, Allison Connor," he said, then kissed his new wife.

John positioned himself back at her side, their arms and legs still intertwined, and their bodies close. Their foreheads pressed together and their noses touched. He spent the next couple minutes just listening to and feeling her breathe, and thanking luck, fate, and everything in between that they were both still alive. He thought about when and how he would tell her everything. It would be difficult, but he had to do it. She had to understand that some machines could be helpful, that some machines could be trusted, and that some could even be... loved.

He held up the chip that had been concealed in his fist the whole time. The dawn sunlight glinted off the droplets of water that clung to its grid-like surface. He stared at it with a sense of optimism. Was it true? Could John Henry stop Skynet with the help of Catherine Weaver?

Allison studied it with curious eyes. "What is it?"

Without taking his gaze away from the small piece of metal and plastic, John said, "Hope."

Closing notes:

This concludes "Rewriting The History of Things To Come."

Special thanks to my beta readers for helping me polish things up quite a bit (especially in this final chapter).

Thank you all for reading. I hope you enjoyed it.

UPDATE 1/8/2010:

I have revised the ending. I originally had Allison changing her name to "Kate Connor," in an attempt to cleverly stitch together TSCC and the T3/T4 movie continuation. I have since decided that was a bad idea, especially once I started writing the sequel. So now, Allison is still Allison.

Read the continuation of this story in "Doomed to Repeat It."