Author: Hello again! Basically, while writing The Path of the Savior, I decided to spend thirty minutes of my time starting a little project where Cameron defeats Cromartie before meeting up with John. In essence, she gets closer to him, making a normal pairing possible! This usage of her pilot-ep personality does not preclude seeing her develop as a person, though. She gets more and more awkward as she spends time around John, but since they're both weird kids, and since she's so damn pretty regardless, it's all right with him. In order not to tip him or Sarah off, she tries to act more normal.
The computer-industry stuff is just for fun. I do not see the Sandy Bridge microarchitecture really evolving into a Terminator CPU.
The title of the story? Well, it refers to a rather predictable twist/truth about the story. That's all you need to know.
This is multi-chapter! :D
Disclaimer: I do not own TSCC. I do not own Intel. I do not own Microsoft. And I shall destroy Microsoft personally if they do some shit like DirectGL.
I Could Have Been More
In the little high school's locker room, the girl stood over the scary-looking guy's motionless body, and presently she scraped at the top of his skull with a large knife, revealing a shiny section of silvery metal. As soon as a circular groove came into view, she slipped the blade into the black line and popped an air seal. Tossing the knife away as soon as the little disc was off, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a pair of needlenose pliers. Clamping the nose onto a raised tab beneath the seal, she made a strong counterclockwise twist with her wrist, and the whirring death of some capacitors signified the end of her job. She pulled out a superconducting die which was built on a 1.5-nanometer Intel fabrication process, was probably derived from the Sandy Bridge architecture, and included such features as an integrated micro-SSD with nearly null access times, and distributed onboard memory controllers. It also carried an LGA-57 horizontal CPU interface with contacts made of the same superconducting material as the die. Such a thing was to be praised for the intricacies of its design, but the girl seemed not to care what such things were capable of, and in a most unceremonious fashion, crushed the CPU beneath her foot.
The girl got her massive bag, stripped naked, and entered the showers. She extracted a loofah, soap, and some shampoo from the very large bag, and cleaned herself of blood and dirt. It didn't take much effort; she kept herself mostly pristine through her little adventure with the CPU man.
After the deed was done, she went to a nearby janitor's closet and, from the depths of her bag, removed a roll of thermite-derived film and a blasting cap-like assembly. She dragged the body over when no one was in sight, tossed it in, and locked the door behind her. Wrapping the thing in the film, and connecting the cap charge to it and attaching its corresponding electrical trigger, she walked a few meters away, and then set off the charge, resulting in a beautiful, white illumination of the high-temperature persuasion. The body's skeleton melted into a blackish, twisted hulk, while its skin charred into carbon ash.
When all had cooled, a bucket of white paint turned the still-humanoid disassembly into a prime exemplar of modern art, and she hoisted the heavy thing up, leaning it against a wall and hanging a sign on it, reading "Millennium Art: 1999's Venus de Milo."
It was a good job altogether, and she had not stained her clothes with white paint. She still had a Chemistry class to go to, after all.
It was a good job altogether indeed. Someone commented on how good the art was, but that didn't really concern her. Rather, the matter at hand was the boy whose attention she'd called.
"What's your name?" she asked, trying to keep her voice down.
"John," the boy answered.
"Cameron," she responded with a smile.
"No talking while I'm talking," the teacher, Mr. Ferguson said. She must've been way too loud, or he must have had superlatively good hearing; she'd note that down for later reference. Anyway, she didn't attempt any further contact, since the snickers that followed probably spelled a lot of embarrassment for the guy, and she didn't want to alienate him.
"John?" she asked as she caught up with him right after the class.
"Hey," came his response.
"I haven't seen you around here before. Did you just move here?" They were walking to his locker now.
"Yeah."
She laughed. "Sucks for you." Thinking of something to say, she asked something personal. "My dad sells tractors. What about yours?" It was quite upfront, really, but it was okay.
"Insurance," John replied.
"Really? What kind?"
"The boring kind."
She laughed again. "That's the kind of tractors my dad sells. What about your mom?" He seemed responsive to this sort of stuff, so she tried again, but that didn't work that well. He seemed to be quiet, and averted his gaze from hers. "My mom just stays home."
"You know, I've really got to get to the next class, so…" His voice trailed off.
"So…" she continued for him. "Maybe I'll see you later?" She added a tiny bit of hope to her voice.
"Sure, yeah." His response seemed concessive rather than excited.
"Okay. Bye." She smiled back at him, and walked away. It was to be expected, really. The kid John Connor would thus have been trained by his mom not to trust just anyone he met. Oh well, at least now that the 'substitute teacher' was out of commission, maybe she'd get into his life more deeply as time went on. This iteration of the timeline that did not include Cromartie interrupting her time with John, it could lead to many things. Maybe that specialized humanistic infiltration program of hers (which had lots of smiles) could be kept up for a little longer now.
:SkyBIOS 41.3 build TOK-715…loading higher-level CPU functions…
:Memtest? 99641 random quads tested for integrity. 100 percent functionality.
:S.M.A.R.T. active on physical drives C: (memory), D: (objectives), E: (advanced programming), F: (learning mode cache), G: (parity disk for RAID array). All drives test positive. RAID 4 is active.
:Loading primary machine consciousness…done!
:Using human-readable registry output. Adding legacy "choice" buffer for reference purposes only. /COMMENT: If no choice buffer appears, contact Cyber Research Systems OR Skynet Automated Help Desk for tech support./
:Localversion does not match latest.
:No wireless IPX networks detected. No 802.11b/g/n/x networks detected. No 2.4 GHz radio BlueTWOth networks detected. No micro-HDMI plugged into output. No USB 4.1 ports active. No USB mass storage devices active. All PCIe 4.0 buses are in use.
:Loading display: © 2011 nVIDIA Corporation. GeForce™, nView ™, nHUD™ and other trademarks are property of nVIDIA Corporation.
:Loading display: DirectGL™ is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation.
:Display objectives? y/n y
--PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: Protect John Connor.--
--SECONDARY OBJECTIVE 1: Meet Sarah Connor
--SECONDARY OBJECTIVE 2: Acquire Sarah Connor's approval
--SECONDARY OBJECTIVE 3: Date John Connor.
:Explain SECONDARY OBJECTIVE 3
--Date John Connor. Purpose? Dating John Connor will allow unit to get closer to him, facilitating primary objective "Protect John Connor."
Oh, she'll definitely fulfill Secondary Objective 3.