"Exactly correct," Jade said.
"Are there no other branches?" Sarah's voice had become almost pleading, wanting to believe, to hang onto something.
"I cannot be sure," Jade said. "There may be many worlds...branches that have nothing to do with Skynet. Some may branch off earlier, some later. Nothing is certain."
"But what about worlds where Skynet won? Is there any end to it? That's what I need to know."
"It is getting too hard to see what is ahead. We can never be totally certain, but I am almost convinced of one thing—and so is Danny. We don't have an infinity of timestreams, Sarah. You can put that fear from your mind."
There was a long silence, then Sarah stood, and walked to Jade. "I see what you mean. It's a manageable job."
"I think it is, Sarah, if we all do our part. If we defeat Skynet in my world, we must still be vigilant in all three worlds...but it can be done. It is not an impossible task."
"There's no other world where Skynet succeeded?" Sarah said persisting.
"I cannot be sure," Jade said. "I cannot rule it out. But I can see only three worlds."
"Yeah, I can count." Sarah held up a hand and smiled—something John rarely saw these days. "That was a joke, Jade. No offense."
"No offense taken. I understood. What I have shown you may be incomplete. Also..."
"Yes?"
"I said we must still be vigilant. No victory is permanent. We do not know what the future brings...in any reality."
"Tell me about it. When John and I go back, there's unfinished business. There are still people who want to build Skynet. I don't trust the government to stop it. Government people come and go."
"All very true. Okay."
"But what you've shown me makes a difference." Sarah breathed a sigh of relief. "It really does."
John followed the discussion closely, trying to understand his mother's thoughts. What she needed was hope: The hope that Skynet would not need to be pursued through world after world forever.
He went through it in his mind:
First In the original reality, Skynet's World, Judgment Day had taken place in 1997. Here they all were. Skynet had finally been defeated. There was an ongoing battle to prevent anything like it ever being created again, but he could leave that task to General Connor, Danny, Juanita and the rest. The struggle might never end, but it was in safe hands. They would have to trust the General and the Resistance. Soon, perhaps in a few months, John and Sarah could leave this world. Their work here was almost done.
Second: In Jade's World, it had turned out differently. Judgment Day had been postponed, thanks to the raid on Skynet in 1994, but Cyberdyne Systems had gone ahead and developed Skynet. In 2021, a new Judgment Day had happened. In 2036, when Jade had traveled back in time, Skynet had been on the verge of victory. That had to be stopped. The Skynet of that world must be destroyed at all costs. That was now the greatest need. It was the next point of struggle.
Third: In August 2001, events had changed again. Cyberdyne had been exposed. In the new world, the U.S. government would never build Skynet, or so it had seemed when John left that reality—his own world. Had they finally created a world without Judgment Day, as Jade and the Specialists had hoped? How could he be sure? In that world, there were still people who wanted to build Skynet. Might they still find a way?
He had to go back, had to fight any new attempts by Cyberdyne. He couldn't leave it up to the government. It was clear to him now.
He had to go to Jade's World, to 2036. But then, he had to return...back to his own reality. That was where he belonged, where the struggle had to go on. Those were his priorities. First, to Jade's World. Then, if he survived, he had to go home.
"Jade?" he said.
"Yes, John."
"Just one question. You can displace us across the timestreams? The same as Rosanna did?"
"There is no doubt about that. We did it before and we will do it again. This device is at least as powerful as the one that Rosanna built. That will not be a problem."
"Then let's do it." He looked to his mother for support.
"There is other work to do first," Jade said.
Sarah smiled gently. "Yes," she said. "Maybe it can be managed."
"You're in?" John said.
"Jade said there's other work to do."
"But you want to be a part of it?" Juanita said.
"Sure I do, assuming I live that long."
The meeting broke up. General Connor and Juanita left together, talking confidentially. Jade and Danny stayed behind.
Sarah took John to one side. "We need to talk."
"Sure, Mom," he said, puzzled.
She steered him away from the others, and they walked among the ectogenetic pods, a strange place to be holding a conversation—these totally alien machines, never designed by humans. Sarah kept her voice down. "I spoke with Jade.. .before this meeting."
That gave John a twinge of jealousy. It seemed at times as if everyone else could speak to Jade more easily than he could. He quelled the crazy thought that she should confide in him above everyone else. What reason did he have to think that? Just that he was more her age? "What about?" he said carefully.
"About her plans."
"Her plans?" Just for a moment he feared that his mom was interfering on his behalf, asking how Jade felt about him—but Sarah wasn't like that. "So, what about them?"
"She wants to reprogram the T-1000s. I don't like it, but I can see that we have to do it. As long as we destroy them when we've finished."
"Just like back in '94," he said. "We destroyed the T-800 once we didn't need it. I didn't want to at the time...but you were right."
"Maybe I was. We have to put a use-by date on these machines."
"I know, that's okay. No need to explain."
"The point is, what Jade wants to do might take months. There's nothing I can do to help. I don't have those kinds of skills—not at that level."
John laughed, remembering how much she'd taught him about computer hacking. She was no slouch in that department. But she was right: neither of them had computer skills at that level. "What do you want to do about it?" he said.
"I want to fight, John. I can help fight the warlords and the war machines. John—I mean the General—needs all the help he can get. Cecilia Tejada and the others have a huge job, down in South America. I want to join them."
"You're going to ask General Connor?"
"I've already raised it with him."
John felt confused. His mom kept dropping bombshells. She was putting herself in danger's way, when she didn't have to prove a thing. No one would expect it of her. He wondered how she'd go...whether she would even survive the battles she was talking about. Anton's death had underlined an important point in his mind, that none of them were immortal, any of them could be killed. Then he wondered, would she want him to go with her? If she did, what should he think about it? It might not be such a bad idea. There was little he could do to help Jade. Only Danny, Juanita, and the General himself had that kind of knowledge. When he thought about it, he wasn't really scared. He'd faced the worst that Skynet could throw at him, and the warlords were only human. What worried him more than the danger was being away from Jade...but then there was his mom. He didn't want to be away from her if she was in danger.
Sarah watched him almost with amusement, like she could read his mind. "It's okay." She put her hands on both his shoulders. "This is something that I have to do.. .for me. I helped to make this world the way it is...I feel some responsibility for it. I don't expect you to join me. In fact, I don't want you to. Work with Jade and the others; learn everything you can. When we go home, we just might need it."
"If we make it back."
"When we go back, soldier. We're gonna be positive about this."
"Yeah.. .soldier," he said with a grin. "If you say so. Yeah, that's fine. When we go back."
"That's what I wanted to hear."
SEPTEMBER 30, 2029
Six of them entered the time vault this time. Four were Terminators—the best possible soldiers, at least when it came to fighting, but not precious human beings. One of the fighters who'd been working as a guard went with them as a volunteer, a black man called Fiedler. And then there was John's mom.
Gabriela had returned to L.A. to coordinate the destruction of the war machines. Sarah was going to South America to meet up with Cecilia, joining the leadership team in the campaign against the warlords. That left a core group to work closely with General Connor: John, Jade, Danny, Juanita. They'd kept a few others here—just a few dozen—to maintain and defend the place. Outside, it was growing even colder, and John felt it here in the middle of the mountain.
The heavy metal door slammed shut, and Danny powered up the vault. As John watched the screens, artificial lightning twisted and curled. Soon, the two humans and four Terminators were gone. Bye, Mom. He turned to the others as Danny powered down the time vault.
"She'll do a good job," the General said.
"I know," John said. "Yeah, she's the best."
COLORADO/ARGENTINA
Bright white light. Pain. Then more pain, heat on her skin, the feeling of having been twisted inside-out.
Sarah found herself sprawled, still naked, in the dust that was once rich pastureland. For a moment, nothing existed but her body, with its screaming agony, and the dusty ground beneath. Though she'd been through this twice before, nothing could prepare you for how it felt. Hell must be like this, she thought. This kind of pain, but going on and on—forever.
But then it ebbed away, and she found her feet, unsteadily at first. It was cold here, and her teeth were soon chattering, but help was on the way. A single vehicle, a five-ton military truck, drove toward her over the plain, raising a plume of dust. Cecilia was coming for them, or had sent someone to pick them up.
Sarah had spent years living and working on the Tejada estancia, back in the 1990s in her own world. To think it had been reduced to this dry wasteland by Judgment Day, the fallout and climate change created by nuclear blasts hundreds or thousands of miles away. In the distance, she saw the ruins of its buildings. People who'd been decent to her had once lived there.
She turned to Fiedler, who stood even more unsteadily, perhaps more shaken, since this was his first trip through the time vault. "We'll be okay," Sarah said.
1 know."
The Terminators were silent, inscrutable, but she knew they would obey. This was a job to look forward to. The truck pulled up and two figures stepped out: Cecilia, who'd been driving, and a heavily armed T-800. "How are you feeling?" Cecilia said.
"That's an easy one," Sarah answered, unfazed by the cold or the lingering pain. "I feel like kicking some warlord butt."
INTERLUDE II
JADE'S WORLD COLORADO JUNE 12, 2036
Skynet's objectives would soon be accomplished. Across the Earth's surface, its war machines had converged at the sites where humans still opposed it. Its communications nodes and direct sensors updated it nanosecond by nanosecond, and it had hived off a sub-self to recalculate the odds of success continually, based on the data available. The probability now approached one hundred percent, always making a nominal allowance for the unknown.
Here, in Colorado, the humans had launched a major offensive—one last desperate effort by Ramsey Devaux and his Resistance militia in North America. Of course, it had failed—the militia was only a remnant of the forces that had once opposed Skynet on this continent, which the war computer had consistently defeated. The victories did not come without their own price, however—Skynet had lost many valuable machines before crushing Devaux' army, leaving it in disarray. The Colorado Rockies were littered for miles with corpses, and with burnt-out human aircraft and ground vehicles—but also with demolished H-Ks, Juggernauts, and endos.
Only seconds before, Skynet had detected an unexplained fluctuation in the space-time field within which the Earth existed. In an instant it had analyzed the data and interpreted it as a displacement of material from one of the humans' last strongpoints: Vila Nova do Sul, a high-technology city located in Brazil. More minute analysis—child's play for a mentality of Skynet's power—showed the displacement of almost nine hundred pounds of matter to the past—to the year 2001. There could have been only one purpose for that, since the humans must have had a grasp of the possibility of time travel as good as Skynet's own.
It was an admission of defeat.
Skynet had an answer to it. Through numerous data sources built into the structure of these headquarters, it observed the functioning of its own time vault, as it sent back a T-XA Terminator to deal with the problem. That would be adequate. The T-XA had extraordinary abilities.
Once, Skynet had considered using time travel as a weapon against the humans. If it could send one of its Terminators back in time to kill some of the human leaders—Devaux, perhaps, and Hiro Tagatoshi— I when they were still children, that might make a difference to the war, hastening its ending. But a mathematical treatment of time travel showed that was impossible. There could not be a world in which Skynet existed in its current form but Tagatoshi or Devaux was already dead. Any attempt to kill them in the past had already been taken into account in the sequence of events that had led up to this moment.
If such an attempt had been made, it had already failed, for Tagatoshi and the other human leaders were still alive. It followed that Skynet should do nothing to put any attempt in train...or do anything to change the past.
The equations allowed for only one other possibility. In some limited circumstances, a change might occur, but that would hive off an entirely new timestream from that moment onwards. If Skynet managed to send assassins into the past, it might make the war easier for some other Skynet in a new, parallel universe...but it could not affect its own fate.
For Skynet, the mathematical analysis was not difficult. Even the humans, with their inferior minds, must have been aware of the implications, which was why their act was an admission of defeat. The most they could do was send back a group of their warriors with a mission to prevent Skynet's creation: to try to branch off a new world where their own kind would survive. Even that could not be allowed. Human beings would not be allowed to survive anywhere, in any reality. The T-XA would take care of it.
Then the war computer detected another fluctuation. This was something altogether different, a displacement of a large amount of matter from an unidentifiable location. Analysis showed nearly four tons of mass entering space-time at a point within the Amazon basin—also in Brazil, but 1500 miles from Vila Nova do Sul. The displacement appeared to come from nowhere: matter had erupted into the Universe, but not from any other point in space-time. Whatever it was, it needed to be investigated and dealt with. If it were hostile, it might be cause for concern.
In a nanosecond, the war computer assessed its sources in the vicinity.
It had a large operational force to the southeast, attacking Vila Nova do Sul itself. Those machines were too far away to deal with this quickly. Besides, the human forces were putting up a fight. None of those machines could be spared. There was a major node much closer—a communications and supply point, just three hundred miles north in the Guiana highlands of what had been Venezuela. That was its main facility for conducting the war in South America. It included a well-equipped factory and military base, but it was still too far away to react in real time.
But an aerial H-K was in the vicinity, controlled by the node in Venezuela. It patrolled the jungle for humans, backed up by a transporter carrying two dozen combat-ready endoskeletons. Skynet sent a command to the Venezuela node, ordering it to deploy those units. That would be sufficient for most purposes, but it was wise to take no chances. The capacities of whatever had appeared were unknown. Skynet sent another coded impulse to its T-XA laboratory, within the Colorado facility, where it had constructed ten giant experimental/autonomous Terminators. Seven of those had been deployed in the field, fighting humans in Europe and South Amer
ica. One had now been sent back in time.
Giving instructions without the need for language, Skynet directed one of its remaining T-XAs to go to the space-time displacement apparatus. That would strengthen its position. No conceivable force sent by the humans could survive against the combination of war assets that Skynet had selected.
The T-XA's metal holding shell opened, and the eight-foot Terminator stepped out, ready to act on Skynet's wishes. It equipped itself with a phased-plasma laser rifle, taking the weapon in one giant hand, then plunging it deep into its body mass, which parted like molten lava, and quickly closed up like steel. The Terminator's calibrated mimetic polyalloy structure could travel through the displacement field better than living flesh, but the material of the rifle would not pass through the field unless entirely surrounded by flesh or properly configured polyalloy.
As commanded, the Terminator headed for the space-time displacement laboratory. Skynet now sent a series of codes to the displacement apparatus to power it up and set the coordinates for the transfer. At the same time, it considered the implications of what had happened. The arrival of mass from no identifiable point in space or time implied travel from another universe entirely. It seemed possible that the action had been taken in an attempt to help the humans of this world. That might explain the coincidence of the two events—Tagatoshi and his people sending humans back in time, then matter appearing from nowhere, only an instant later.
But how was it done? Even if another world existed—perhaps some other timeline where Skynet had been unsuccessful—how could its inhabitants have known of events in this one?
Did this event mean that the first T-XA, the one it had sent back through time, had been unsuccessful, that the humans had succeeded in creating another timeline? That was the most economical explanation, but there must be other possibilities. If the T-XA had failed, it was too late to send back reinforcements: the other world existed, and its existence could not be undone.
T2 - 03 - The New John Connor Chronicles - Times of Trouble Page 18
