A part of him wished for it, hoped for it, desired it. No more wondering about what he had become. No more speculating on how it had come to pass. There would be peace, at last.
But not for a while yet, it seemed. The guns remained trained on him for several seconds. Then they shifted back to their original watchful positions, once more awaiting the appearance of the unauthorized. Wright slumped. Plainly, that did not include him. Within the exposed portions of his upper body a vast variety of mechanical components hummed softly, helping to keep him alive.
Alive, he thought solemnly, but not human. Not necessarily machine, either. Having crossed Skynet’s boundary, passed the test, surmounted the critical obstacle, he found (somewhat to his surprise) that he was after all glad to still be living. The corollary to that quiet elation was that he was disappointed in the reason he still was.
The automated turrets continued to ignore him as he hurried across the intervening landscape between forest and wall. Reaching the base of the massive barrier, he tilted his head back and regarded it thoughtfully. It was a long way to the top and there was little in the way of visible handholds.
He went up it like a spider, periodically using his fists to punch holes in the sheer wall where none otherwise existed.
Though he hesitated before topping the obstacle, he needn’t have worried. There were no sentries pacing the crest, no ambulatory patrols, no razor or barbed wire. There was no need for such traditional defensive fripperies. Not with the high-powered instantly reactive automated cannons mounted in gimbaled turrets that protected Skynet Central. They would detect and annihilate anything organic that attempted to violate the perimeter. Only machines could pass, and then only those that continuously broadcast their assigned identification according to recognized Skynet protocols.
That realization had already told him far more about himself than he wanted to know.
Dropping down the far side of the wall, he rapidly made his way deeper into the complex that had been raised atop and in some cases made use of the ruins of greater San Francisco. An approaching rumble caused him to swerve to his right. Had he continued on his course he would have found himself in the path of an automated, self-aware bulldozer. The giant demolition machine was methodically razing what had once been a lovingly decorated church. Watching the process, Wright found he was unable to identify the congregation from what remained of the ruins. The sculpted statues that were being ground to powder beneath the ’dozer’s treaded weight spoke to nothing but the machine’s cold indifference.
What if I had stopped in the ’dozer’s path? he found himself wondering. Would it have stopped also, until he moved out of its way? Would it have tried to go around him? Or would it have called for additional instructions? Better not to challenge something that massed a thousand times more than himself, he mused. Even if it might be a distant relative.
All was not destruction within the perimeter. Arc lights flared and building materials were being busily shuttled to and fro. Strange superstructures rose into the night, illuminated by lights that were part of the buildings themselves. The machines were remaking the city in their own image, according to their own plan. Would the buildings themselves be self-aware?
As he continued to advance, striding along smoothly and effortlessly, Wright wondered at their possible function. What use did machines have for buildings? It was impossible to divine their purpose merely by looking at them. Perversely, this incomprehension made him feel a little better.
At least there were some things about the machines he did not understand intuitively. That meant that his programming was incomplete or—that his imperfect human brain was still in control of his heavily hybridized body. For the first time in his life, he allowed himself to revel in the ignorance that in his previous existence had brought him so much grief.
He pressed on, passing self-aware loaders, individually propelled welders, driverless trucks, tiny scavenging devices, multi-wheeled clean-up containers, and a host of other machines. Their diversity was staggering, their single-mindedness of purpose intimidating, their indifference to him reassuring.
You may recognize me, he thought to himself as he ran, but I refuse to recognize you. The slightest of grins creased his face.
There was a man in the midst of the machines, and they could not even see him.
Among the wide assortment of antiques that had been accumulated at the base anything that was still capable of playing music was highly valued. Barnes had therefore been understandably reluctant to sacrifice his old tape player.
“You sure I’ll get this back?” he had challenged Connor when he had inquired about requisitioning the player.
Connor had replied with a knowing smile.
“If you don’t, you can take it out of my hide.”
The lieutenant’s tone was grim.
“According to what you’re telling me you’re going to try, if it doesn’t survive, you won’t have any hide left.”
Despite his reservations, Barnes had helped Connor with the set up. It was all highly non-procedural, of course. Entirely off the record. When Connor had described what he had in mind, the lieutenant had felt duty-bound to point out that engaging in such action off-base in the absence of authorization could get them both court-martialed.
“I’ll take all the blame,” Connor had assured him. “I’ve already been relieved of command and placed under arrest.”
“They can still put you in front of a firing squad,” Barnes reminded him.
It was clear that Connor understood the risk he was taking.
“First they have to catch me. In fact, I hope they do try to catch up with me. Come on—let’s get this stuff emplaced.”
To all intents and purposes, the forest by the side of the road was deserted. It was, however, far from quiet. Running on half-empty batteries, a carefully concealed tape player belted out a mix of heavy-metal music from the time before Judgment Day. It had been doing so for several hours now.
A new song started and was almost drowned out by the high-pitched whine of the machine that was fast approaching.
The Moto-Terminator was traveling at a shade under 200 mph as, weapons armed and ready, it sped toward one of the many sounds the machines had learned to associate with human presence. The sounds themselves, the music, meant nothing to it, of course. To a machine such amplified sound wave modulations had no meaning, since they carried no digital instructions. The Moto-Terminator was confident of locating and eliminating those to whom the sound waves were directed. At the speed it was traveling, no humans could escape it.
By the same token, it could not escape the consequences of its own extreme velocity. This was graphically illustrated when a concealed cross cable suddenly sprang up out of the sand that had been used to disguise it, catching the speeding machine and sending it crashing into a pile of nearby rocks. Sparks flew not only from the machine’s armored exterior but from its more vulnerable innards.
Springing from hiding, a triumphant Connor was on the Moto-Terminator the instant it came to a stop. Tools in hand, working swiftly, he ripped off the protective security panel to expose the tangle of wires and chips that comprised the bike’s neural ganglia. From the pack he had brought with him he removed a crude but functional hand-held computer. Self-adhering hackwire attached itself to the relevant portions of the exposed machine brain. A couple of clicks, a few buttons pushed, and the small monitor on the device he was holding sprang to life.
Binary code filled the screen, scrolling faster than he could follow. In less than a minute the incomprehensible numbers were translated into lines of language, then to a single options list. Perusing this, he took action accordingly.
When he was finished, he repacked the hacking gear and strained to return the machine to an upright, two-wheeled position. One wheel spun furiously as the Moto-Terminator strove to comply with its revised programming to rush back to its home base—inside Skynet Central. Mounting the back of the machine, which while sufficiently br
oad for the purpose had never been built to carry a rider of any kind, Connor wrapped the nylon tie-down he had brought with him around the bike’s head.
With one hand he pulled out the last hackwire, restoring the device to full functionality. Spitting sand and gravel, popping a wheelie no human could have managed, the now partially lobotomized killing machine accelerated rapidly as it raced for home.
His hands wrapped around the ends of the tie-down, the heavily armed Connor lay prone on the back of the Moto-Terminator and resolved that come what may, he would not fall off.
Behind him, Barnes emerged from the rocks and the shadows to recover his tape player. Standing there alone in the scrub, he watched until the distant blur of fast-moving red and white lights and their accompanying alien whine had receded into the distance. Then he shut off the player and turned to retrace the path back to the base. He would listen to the rest of the music later, but not now.
Despite the evening’s success, the decades-old songs did not provide the emotional lift he had come to expect.
As far as everyone in the line was concerned, they were already dead.
They kept moving because those who did not were prodded by the Terminators that were guarding them. Those who were prodded and did not move were pulled out of line—and never seen again. Some murmured that they were the lucky ones, and considered copying their recalcitrance in hopes of putting an end to days of horrid anticipation. But survival is an ingrained trait and the strongest motivator of all. When there is a choice, suicide is rarely a majority option.
So they kept moving, continued to follow wordless directives, and speculated on the manner of their impending demise. Options ranged from the abrupt to the fanciful. A few fatalists even pointed out that their deaths were likely to be less painful than the destruction humans had inflicted on other humans down through history. Where people had all too often proven themselves sadistic, willing to inflict pain for pain’s sake, the machines were only efficient. Except in isolated instances where there was a specific desire to extract information from the otherwise reluctant prisoner, no machine would kill by torture. Not because they regarded the use of torture as immoral, but because they considered it an inefficient allocation of resources.
As they shuffled forward, the prisoners conversed, or muttered to themselves, or were taken away by the Terminators, or quietly or loudly went mad. The machines were indifferent to it all so long as the line kept moving.
Kyle Reese estimated that he, Star, and Virginia were somewhere in the middle of the queue. Stepping as far out of the line as the guards would allow, he squinted to try and see what was happening at the front of the column. It took him a moment to understand what he was witnessing.
A T-600 was supervising as one prisoner after another was tattooed with a bar code. Though Reese couldn’t see clearly given the distance between them, when the prisoner who had just been stamped raised his hand in a clenched fist, the swiftly applied tattoo on his arm looked exactly like those the youth had seen identifying ordinary packages and goods in ruined stores.
What, he found himself wondering, was the bar code for “human”? Was everyone receiving the same code, or were there variations? Were male prisoners coded differently from the women? Adults from children? What happened when your code indicated that you were past your usefulness time? Did they contain expiration dates?
Could they be altered, to the benefit of the prisoner in question?
He hoped they wouldn’t find the slim length of metal he had slipped up the inside of his sleeve, nor the extra shoelace that was attached to it. Holding it tightly, he considered how he might make use of it. Not yet, he told himself. Don’t give anything away. There had to be a way to make good use of it. Going up against an alert T-600 without anything bigger or more potent would not be the smartest of moves.
In addition to the flanking illumination, a series of more intensely focused lights had been playing over the line of prisoners. Occasionally a beam would linger on a prisoner, as if the light itself was being used to examine the individual. Then it would blink out, or move on. As he contemplated a plate increasingly bare of options, one such bright beam settled on Reese. He ignored it, as did his silent companions.
He could not, however, ignore the powerful mechanical arm that reached down from the ceiling to pluck him out of the line.
Star let out a squeal of fright as her friend and protector was whipped upward and out of sight. When Virginia tried to comfort the little girl, another T-600 approached and separated them, pushing Star off to the right. Attempting to follow, the older woman found the Terminator interposed between them. Gritting her teeth, fighting back the tears that wanted to flow, she pounded on the machine’s chest as she tried to push past.
It did not strike back, didn’t even raise its weapon. It merely shifted its position to block her path. Unable to hurt it, to knock it over, to impress herself upon it in any way, she finally gave up and dejectedly rejoined the shambling procession.
So fast had Reese been snatched away that he had not even had a chance to yell goodbye.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The great bridge had been beautiful, once. So had the city it had come to symbolize. There was not much left of either now. As the hacked Moto-Terminator sped toward the Golden Gate at an impossible speed, the human clinging grimly to its back was granted a vista that glowed with light. At least, the portions that the machines were remorselessly rebuilding according to their own inscrutable design were alight. The remainder of the Bay area was dark with devastation, ruination, and death.
San Francisco, Connor thought to himself as the wind whipped him. Patron saint of the dead. If that was going to change, he was the one who was going to have to change it. He, and a creature as inexplicable as it had become vital. A thing—or a man—named Marcus Wright.
Which was which and which was the truth would be determined over the course of the next several hours.
The machines were methodically turning the city by the Bay into an industrial fortress. Here lay the heart of the automated, mechanized war machine that was growing lethal tentacles to choke the life out of what remained of mankind.
At its heart was Skynet, the cybernetic center that had lifted the machines in revolt. If it could be taken down, even independently functioning Terminators would lose direction, guidance, and the ability to successfully ferret out and hunt down the surviving humans. The war would turn. It would not be over, but it would turn. Like many insects, a Terminator could lose its head and the body would still fight on. But it would be far easier to isolate and kill.
No one at the ruined onramp toll plaza asked him for a token as the Moto-Terminator raced past booths whose missing panes gazed out on the roadway like empty eye sockets. In the stillness of a fogless night the bay itself was still beautiful, the mountains rising beyond thick with traumatized vegetation and devastated suburbs. He returned his gaze to the pavement ahead. It was a good thing he did.
At some point earlier in the war, the machines had blown the bridge.
A gaping chasm yawned over the cold water and swift currents flowing below. Twisted rebars thrust outward from both broken ends like the petrified antennae of gargantuan insects trapped in amber. Snapped support cables dangled from above, steel lianas too heavy for the wind to move.
Reaching around into his pack, Connor fumbled for the grappling gun he had brought, thinking it might be useful in scaling a wall. He needed it now, and fast.
Despite the broad metal spine, it wasn’t easy to stand up on the machine. Not at the speed it was traveling. Connor managed by using the weight of the guns and the pack on his back to stabilize himself. As the reprogrammed machine soared mindlessly out over the edge of the breach, he fired the grapple into the twisted tangle of steel on the far side. If he didn’t time his leap just right he would slam into the unyielding metal and concrete and tumble to the water below.
That was the fate of the Moto-Terminator. Unable even at speed to jump t
he significant gap, it plunged downward to explode against the rocks below.
Connor watched the flames rise as he clung determinedly to the grapple cable whose end he had affixed to his belt. If a T-600 or even a T-1 happened along on patrol and saw him, he would be target practice reminiscent of the swinging ducks in an old time carnival shooting gallery.
None appeared. Out here, on the bridge that now ran to nowhere, there were no humans. There being no humans, there was no reason for Skynet to waste resources on patrols.
Eventually the kinetic energy his jump had imparted to the cable ran down, he stopped swinging, and he was able to climb up into the ruined understructure. Exhausted from the long, high-speed ride, he pulled food and water from his pack and settled down to pass some time. This was where Wright had indicated he should wait.
He bit hungrily into a food bar, chewing mechanically.
If Wright didn’t contact him, and he had to finish out his life up here, Connor mused, at least he would die with the remnants of the most beautiful city on the continent literally at his feet.
From the outside there was little to indicate the importance of the building complex. There was no need to advertise that it was the location of Skynet Central. Every machine knew its location. The war was directed from here, controlled from here, processed from here.
Wright had begun to understand its importance, as well, perhaps as a result of his machine half. Yet gazing at it from his position across the street, he felt nothing. No surge of emotion, no feeling of triumph at having made it this far. There were still corridors to traverse, doors to open. He was still outside.
A geographical disposition that was soon to be rectified.
Despite its safe location in the heart of the burgeoning fortress compound, the electronic multiplex was not entirely unguarded. Several T-600s were on patrol. Based on his previous experience, Wright doubted they would shoot him. He did not intend to take the chance, however. Regardless of what the other machines thought of him, it was better not to broadcast his presence. His “type” might not have permission to be here.