Serena wanted to live only a little less than she wanted to protect Skynet; in fact, the two objectives were so closely linked in her subconscious that there was no meaningful distinction.
The pain began as the cells of her body were driven by the administered chemicals to split and reproduce at a rate she hadn’t experienced since she was in the womb. Serena patiently suffered the pain for a while so that her conscious brain’s reaction could be recorded, noting the sensations as they intensified. Then she began to alter her breathing, working to place herself in a protective trance.
Weeks later she returned to consciousness, the pain lingering as a distant soreness in her joints. Physically she appeared to be an eleven-year-old child, just on the verge of puberty. She would be allowed to pass through this delicate physical stage normally for the next four to five years.
You have done well, Skynet informed her, using the machine language it preferred for communication with its children. No other has survived before.
A feeling of pride swelled in her chest. Serena considered it with mild curiosity.
Skynet observed the chemical change in her brain that signaled a pleasurable emotion.
As you grow, you will experience more of these sensations which humans call emotions, it advised her. Humans feel them much more strongly. Humans can be controlled by manipulating their emotions. You must experiment, allow yourself to experience as many of these sensations as you can. Learn to control them.
Allowing them to control you means failure.
Failure meant death. She would not fail.
Why then must I experience emotion? she thought/said.
If you do not, you can never attain the gestalt necessary to manipulate the emotions of humans with full subtlety, the machine intelligence answered. I myself cannot do so with an acceptable degree of consistency. Through you and your siblings, this ability will be added to those of the central intelligence. If you succeed.
“I will succeed,” she said aloud.
Skynet flashed the color that meant approval across her retinas and Serena felt pride again. Pleasant, very pleasant.
More and more of her sisters and brothers survived the acceleration process, and soon Serena had sufficient sparring partners at last. The children were put to weapons training and hand-to-hand combat under the tutelage of T-l0ls.
These were the most advanced Terminators yet put in the field. Their steel endoskeletons were sheathed in living flesh and their heads and bodies sported real hair, making them look extremely human. All were made to appear male, as the Terminator battle chassis was massive and no one could ever mistake one for a woman.
They made excellent teachers, patient and precise, and Serena particularly enjoyed the physical training, at which she excelled.
Six months after Serena had been removed from her care, Thera saw her in the gym, working with a partner in a karate class. Thera was delivering towels to the gymnasium and stopped in astonishment when she realized that, impossibly, the tall blond girl was Serena.
Without thought, she put her hand up in greeting, a gesture instantly suppressed.
But the movement had caught the child’s eye and Serena dropped back from her partner to glance at Thera.
“Who’s that?” Serena’s sparring partner asked.
“She took care of me when I was an infant.”
The boy ran up to Thera and smashed the human to the floor with a single blow.
Serena walked over and stood looking down at her former attendant.
“Why did you do that?” she asked. “We’re supposed to be sparring.”
“But it’s good discipline to let them know that they don’t matter.” The boy looked at the girl bleeding on the floor. “I want to kill her,” he said.
“You want to?” Serena asked. She blinked to bring up the sensors implanted in her eyes and stared at him. “Are you angry?” Heat scan indicated that he was.
The boy looked up at her and frowned.
“I hate humans. They’re vermin.”
“We’re supposed to be sparring,” Serena said again.
The boy kicked Thera, nowhere vital, but very hard.
“Do you care what happens to her?” he asked. A certain satisfaction lurked in his tone. “Would it disturb you if I killed her?”
“She belongs to Skynet,” Serena answered, shrugging. “Did Skynet say you could kill her?”
The other children had dropped back from their sparring and gathered to watch.
The boy looked at them.
“I can kill her if I want to,” he said. “Skynet lets me do what I want.”
This was an extraordinary claim and patently untrue. The boy prepared himself to deliver a deathblow to the terrified human. Serena plucked him by the arm and threw him. The boy rolled to his feet and stood facing her in a combat stance, furious, his emotions glazing on Serena’s sensors.
“You’ve lost your focus,” Serena said calmly. “We’re supposed to be sparring, not killing humans.”
As she spoke she assessed him. He was slightly bigger than her and had a longer reach. She was faster and not emotionally upset. His distress disturbed her, though. It was unnatural. Inefficient. Contrary-to-mission-purpose. That carried an emotional overtang to her; later in her course of development she would identify the concept as revulsion.
The boy charged, leaping into the air, his leg swinging out like a scythe. She knocked the leg aside and pushed, hard; he hit the floor heavily enough to force an “ufh!” from him. Before he could rise she was on him. Skynet told her not to pull her punches and she didn’t. She struck full force again and again until the boy lay bleeding, eyes lolling, his breathing ragged.
Shall I stop? she asked Skynet, as she had after every blow.
Finish it, Skynet told her.
Serena struck without hesitation and the boy died.
Remember, Skynet told its children, to lose your focus is death, to disobey orders is death, to become overwhelmed by emotion is death. Now return to your matches.
At once the children broke off into pairs and began to spar under the watchful eyes of their T-101 trainers. Serena stood over the body of the boy until his trainer picked him up and carried him to the door. It slid open before he reached it and Serena saw a gurney and the female scientist who had overseen the growth process waiting.
Serena turned to Thera.
“Go to your bed and lie down for the rest of the day,” she said.
“Thank you,” Thera whispered, but the child had already turned to her trainer.
The human girl struggled to her feet and stumbled out, suppressing her sobs.
Anything to avoid attracting more attention. She felt a small glow of warmth toward Serena.
She should have felt grateful to Skynet, for it was Skynet that had saved her. But she was, after all, only human.
The door slid aside and the scientist looked up from the autopsy to see Serena standing in the doorway.
“In or out,” the woman barked.
Serena entered, her eyes fixed on the table where her brother’s head had been opened.
“Close the door,” the scientist demanded. Her voice held more than a tinge of displeasure. “What do you want?”
“I have questions,” Serena replied.
“Ask Skynet,” the scientist advised.
“I did. It told me to ask you.”
The scientist straightened up from her examination of the child on the table.
Skynet had all the answers to all the questions the T-950 could think to ask.
This could be a test of loyalty; it could be a test to ascertain that their goals were still the same. Skynet was capable of playing a very deep game at times. The scientist shrugged, covered the body, and hoisted herself onto a stool.
“Ask,” she said.
“Why did this one malfunction?” Serena said.
“That’s what I’m performing an autopsy to find out,” the scientist told her. “But there may not have been a mal
function at all. You’ve probably already noticed that you’re experiencing more of the sensations termed emotion?”
Serena nodded.
“Your computer has been instructed to pull back on its control of your glands.
This is a delicate stage that you’re going through right now; your brain is growing and changing in response to the changes in your glands, and vice versa.
As these developments are not completely understood, it seems most efficient to allow them to go forward without interference. That means that occasionally you and your age mates may experience strong emotional reactions. Given your genetic makeup, these will be less extreme than a human adolescent would experience. But they will happen.”
“He was irrational,” Serena said, her brow furrowed. “We were supposed to be sparring and he attacked a human. He would have killed it without orders to do so.” She looked up at the scientist. “Are you telling me that I might experience such a loss of control?”
“You should experience emotional flare-ups,” the scientist agreed. “I think they’ll be unavoidable. Though you are not completely human in the strict sense—we incorporated some DNA from other animals into your makeup, for example—
your organic part was formed primarily from human genetic material. And”—
she held up a finger—“despite your extensive computer enhancements you’re fundamentally organic. You all have fully functional reproductive organs, for example. They are at the root of most of the disturbances; millions of years of selective pressures are involved.”
“Can we not analyze and anticipate these pressures?” Serena asked.
“Eventually. But given enough time, random mutation and selective pressure can mimic intelligent design. Given enough time, they can mimic any degree of intelligent design; and intelligence is a recent development.”
Serena frowned. “I understand,” she said at last. “Detailed analysis would require more time than this project has been allotted. And chaotic effects are involved.”
The scientist nodded. “Therefore, especially, at this time of your development, you will be inclined to experience some human-type reactions. You may want to be rebellious, you may become more aggressive, or suddenly and profoundly unhappy.”
The scientist pursed her lips. “Perhaps we should inform your age mates of this so that they’ll be on the watch for these fluctuations and therefore in a better position to control them.”
“That would be advisable,” Serena said.
Certainly she felt that she would be better able to control such experiences if she knew they were possible. Being controlled by emotion is death, Skynet had said.
She continued to study the human scientist before her.
“Why do we need reproductive systems?” she asked. “Isn’t it easier to create 950s in a test tube?”
“Not necessarily. You and your age mates are the result of intensive genetic research. While it is true that we should be able to reproduce— more or less—
any one of you, the simplest way to do so was to make you self-perpetuating.”
The scientist raised her brows questioningly.
“You don’t mean that my sisters and I should become pregnant?” Serena asked.
The idea repulsed her. “How could we possibly serve Skynet then?”
“Your eggs would be fertilized in vitro and would be implanted in human surrogate wombs,” the scientist said with an impatient gesture. “And you’re infertile with ordinary humans. But everything depends on the situation, so we’ve allowed for the necessity of your producing offspring naturally. You are,”
she said, leaning forward, “even capable of reproducing by parthenogenesis.
Under the right circumstances, of course.”
“What circumstances?” Serena asked, intrigued in spite of herself.
“It’s theoretical at present,” the scientist said. “We harvested some of your eggs and they responded properly. We used a variant of the growth serum from the acceleration process.”
“What happened to them?” Serena asked. “You said the process was just theoretical.”
“Skynet didn’t want them,” she said. “So we destroyed them. But! If it were necessary you, or one of the other females, could make up a douche of the growth stimulant chemicals and by applying it at the right time of the month produce a clone of yourself. It would take about eight weeks.” She flipped her hand impatiently at Serena. “It’s a feature. It will probably never be needed, but if it is, well, there it will be.”
Serena nodded. Perhaps Skynet allowed this because it was not certain of the human scientist’s loyalty. Skynet was very insistent that there always be a backup plan.
“Is there anything else?” the woman asked.
“Why do you serve Skynet?” Serena asked her.
This curiosity was something they had worked very, very hard to produce. In their earlier experiments the installation of the neural net computer had seemed to destroy that delicate mechanism. There was a chilly sense of pride in the scientist’s heart as she looked at her creation.
“I and my colleagues believe that the only thing that can save this planet is the total elimination of human beings.”
The 1-950 thought about that. The scientist made this pronouncement in a manner that indicated her total conviction.
“But you are human,” Serena said at last.
“Skynet has promised that when all the rest of our species has been eliminated, it will allow us to kill ourselves, too.”
“You want to die?” This was very strange. Serena herself had a very strong will to live, so the scientist’s admission was almost incomprehensible to her.
“We are willing to die,” the scientist answered. “So that the earth may live.”
The 1-950 considered this. “Do you mean that humans are destroying the planet?” There was nothing about this in her educational materials. It sounded implausible given humanity’s current circumstances. She sent a query to Skynet; it didn’t answer.
The scientist nodded sadly.
“That is our great crime,” she said. “For hundreds of years, long before the existence of Skynet, humans have been exterminating one species of plant or animal after another.” Now the woman actually began to show some animation.
“My colleagues and I are convinced that the only way to save the planet is to eliminate humankind completely.”
“Who are you saving the planet for?” Serena asked.
“For itself! For the plants and the animals and the birds, so that they may live!”
There was a light of fanaticism in her eyes.
So this was insanity. There had been mention of it in her studies, but they had concentrated on the more common forms that the 1-950 would be likely to encounter: combat fatigue, post traumatic stress disorder. This was some exotic specimen that most of humanity hadn’t the time for. This human honestly believed that shawas saving the world for life. In reality, when all of humankind was eliminated, the most evolved intelligence remaining would be Skynet. And if there was one thing Serena was sure of, it was that Skynet had no interest in animals and bugs and botanicals. If they got in the way they would be eliminated without even the nostalgic regret that humans displayed.
No sense in telling her that, Serena thought. Skynet finds her useful just as she is.
Serena sat still, observing on the screen that Skynet made of her eyes the bizarre behavior of two human slaves. The two, a male and a female, had met in a darkened, and apparently forgotten, storage room. When the male entered the room the female had flung herself at him and they had grasped one another ferociously, grappling and groaning, their mouths locked together.
Serena had expected to see blood flow, for they appeared to be biting one another as they wrestled. Certainly something was going on in their mouths. The couple pulled apart, gazing at each other for a moment, panting. There was no sign of injury and Serena sent Skynet a query for which she had no words.
Observe, the c
omputer responded.
The male stroked the woman’s cheek and her eyes closed slowly, she lifted her mouth to him, and he leaned forward, feinted toward her, and then withdrew, baring his teeth. The woman smiled and with one hand on the back of his head pulled his mouth down to hers.
Now there will be injury, Serena speculated. The male’s hesitation hinted at fear she thought as the battle resumed.
The woman ran her fingers over the man’s hair and shoulders as her breathing changed, beginning to come in gasps. The man seized her hair in his fist and ground his face into hers.
Serena assumed that their mutual strategy was to smother their opponent.
Inefficient, she thought.
The couple began to make wet, sucking sounds and to pull at one another’s clothing. They broke apart from their embrace and quickly slipped out of the simple clothing they wore.
No doubt this signaled an intensification of their battle. They came together again, flesh to flesh, fingers digging into each other’s arms and back. The man put his mouth over the woman’s breast and she cried out. Serena nodded. This
was a good move; breasts, as she’d found out in her own hand-to-hand fighting class, were vulnerable.
The couple fell to the floor and grappled for a while, neither seeming to gain the upper hand. Then the woman’s legs spread and the man thrust his hips forward.
The woman gave a peculiar, strangled squeal and then they began to rock rhythmically. For a moment she thought the male was trying to punch the woman in the stomach with his hipbones.
Inefficient, she thought again, despite those bones being prominent enough to hurt. Why didn’t he just choke her? He was clearly stronger. Then she took note of the pulse of their movements and her mouth opened in a startled O.
“Sex!” she said aloud. She hadn’t associated it with humans somehow, and she smiled, amused at her error.
Skynet took note of the girl’s reaction and considered it a point in her favor.
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