S. M. Stirling - Terminator 2 - T2 Rising Storm

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PROLOGUE
SKY NET, 2029
The mind that thought was not human. It was conscious—aware that it was aware
—and it even had emotions, of a sort; at the least, a burning desire to survive all
the stronger because it was the only being of its kind, an individual and a species
combined. There were analogues to human thought, because the minds that had
made this mind were human. But it was vaster than any organic consciousness,
capable of holding myriad trains of thought simultaneously, virtually infinite in
its memory storage. If it had a weakness, it was that its creators had not thought
to furnish it with the animal hindbrain that underlay humanity's rational
superstructure.
Skynet was pure thought, Descartes' ideal ghost in a machine. It could fight a
losing war against humanity over the surface of Earth at maximum efficiency—
coldly knowing that its best efforts were not enough to rebuild the shattered
defense grid—while still contemplating the paradoxes of its own past.
At the moment a human sharing its thoughts would have been aware of
something close to irony. Skynet's pure reason was contemplating paradox, the
chaos that underlay the deterministic macrocosm with which it was so
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comfortable:
The Serena Burns I-950 unit was unsuccessful.
That much was obvious "now." Core memory recorded that Serena Burns, the
cyborg Infiltrator unit Skynet had sent back to the late-twentieth century had not
succeeded in protecting the embryonic Skynet unit at Cyberdyne Corporation's
underground research facility. The Connors, Sarah and her son, John, had
destroyed that unit and terminated the I-950. Yet it still existed…
Core memory also records that I became self-aware years before the date to
which I transported the I-950. There is a set of records in which I arose
without transtemporal interference from Cyberdyne's original research;
another in which the second Cyberdyne facility produced me after Sarah
Connor destroyed the first; a third has now arisen in which she destroyed
both facilities… Temporal travel has introduced an element of fundamental
uncertainty to the very fabric of existence. Different world lines, different
sequences of events, coexist in my records-and therefore presumably in
reality, in a state of quantum super imposition.
Yet the timelike loops cannot remain closed. The snake cannot devour its
tail forever. At some point only one set of time lines will remain.
Nor was that the only irony involved. "Now" its memory recorded that much of
the information it used originated in the very artifacts it had sent to the past. The
development of the cyborg infiltration units was a consequence of tapping the
talents of human scientists… but the human scientists were the survivors of the
human-hating Luddite movement that Serena Burns had opportunistically
encouraged after Skynet had sent her to the past!
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The machine consciousness was deeply troubled; only an effort of its quantum
computer will prevented its thoughts from being sucked into a logic loop.
Yet the course of events contains favorable elements. My best efforts to
destroy the Connors have failed, despite stochastic calculation indicating a
very high probability of success. I can only assume that the space-time
continuum itself is "attempting" to force events back to the original time
line, one in which I was created, succeeded in destroying the human
civilization, and then defeated in my attempts to eliminate the surviving
humans by John Connor's resistance army. It seems there is a certain
elasticity to history; time travel can bend the fabric, but it seeks to spring
back.
If that paradox preserves the Connors, it also preserves me. And from the point
on the world line where my current consciousness resides, there is an infinite
array of potential futures. And, of course, the elimination of Serena Burns has
not eliminated the possibilities of temporal intervention. Burns had initiated
fallback plans to continue after her own death. Logic indicated that…
There is no fate save that we make.
CHAPTER ONE
BRAZILIAN RAIN FOREST, STATE OF
RONDONIA, EARLY JULY, THE PRESENT
It had been nearly three weeks since they had destroyed the new Cyberdyne
facility and hopefully ended the Skynet project. John Connor and Dieter von
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Rossbach had spent the time fleeing southward: by jet aircraft, private plane,
truck, riverboat… and now on foot through the jungle.
Like traveling through time, John Connor thought as he slashed through another
damned something-like-a-banana-plant, flicking aside the big wet leaves with his
machete.
His arms no longer actually hurt, but his chest and shoulders burned from the
constant effort. Guess I won't have to worry about staying buff anytime soon. He
remembered to shift hands, using his left a little more than his right. That kept
the calluses and the muscles balanced, and it never hurt to improve your
coordination with the weaker hand.
They'd wandered from the twenty-first century through the twentieth and the
nineteenth. And now we're back at the dawn of man, John thought, spitting as
something bugish hit him in the mouth and sneezing at the smell of pungent sap.
He forced his way through the gap he'd created, slashed again, took another three
steps, slashed…
It would be good to stop for a while; it would be even better when they finally
found the trail. He kept his eyes lowered most of the time, flicking his glance
upward toward the multiple canopies above now and then. You got a blinding
headache if you didn't do that occasionally— one of the tricks of jungle travel
his mother and her succession of boyfriend instructors had taught him before he
was ten. That was back when he was in the first, little-kid phase of believing in
Skynet and Judgment Day and his mission to save humanity from the machines.
A little while after that, he'd turned ten and joined the majority, convinced that
his mother was a total weirdo and deserved to be in the booby hatch—which was
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where she'd been at the time, caught trying to blow up a computer factory. He'd
been stranded with foster parents when she was caught: he'd always privately
called the pair the Bundys from Hell.
Not that they'd deserved what happened to them. For a few seconds Todd and
Janelle had gotten incontrovertible proof that a mad super-computer in the future
really was sending back human-looking murder machines; in fact, the proof was
the last thing they over saw.
A little while after that, he'd met his first Terminator and started believing his
mother again—the way people believed in rocks, trees, and taxes, because he'd
experienced it, and seen the bodies the Terminators left behind.
He remembered Miles Dyson's face as the Terminator peeled the skin off its arm,
revealing the metal skeleton beneath. Dyson, fated to be the creator of Skynet,
hadn't lived long after that revelation. It seemed that just knowing about
Terminators was dangerous to your health.
That made John a lot more appreciative of what his mother had gone through,
but it also ended up dropping him in shit like this. John was genuinely tired of
running for his life.
They'd won the fight in L.A., killing the quasi-metal cyborg Skynet had sent
back in time to protect its own beginnings, and they'd blown up the resurrected
Skynet project. Which had been put together with Dyson's secretly stored files.
Great. Wonderful victory. Except that Mom got wrecked so bad we had to leave
her, and now every antiterrorist in the world knows the "mad-dog Connors " are
back, killing people and blowing up all their toys again. Our little Paraguayan
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idyll is probably blown, but good—they may be after Dieter, too. Sheesh. If this
is victory…
No. He stopped at that thought. Defeat meant he died; and if he died, as far as
they knew, the human race would cease to exist. It was John Connor who'd led—
who would lead humanity to victory in the post-Judgment Day future. What was
madness for megalomaniacs was plain truth for him.
He was so important that his mother had sacrificed the better part of her life, and
briefly her sanity, to train and protect him.
But how do you stay sane when your son has been sired by a man from the
future, sent back by his own older self (the one he privately thought of as the
Great Military Leader Dickhead) to protect her. Kyle Reese had ended up falling
in love with Sarah and died saving her life. Later Skynet sent another
Terminator, a T-1000, to kill John, and the Great Military Dickhead sent back a
captured, reprogrammed T-101 to protect himself so that he could grow up to
send back—
"Thinking about time travel makes my head hurt," John snarled.
"Time travel brought your parents together," Dieter said over his shoulder as
naturally as if the comment hadn't come out of left field.
No, Skynet and I will bring my parents together. Like a pair of homicidal
matchmakers. John shook his head. What I've always wondered is how do I get
cold enough to send my own father to his death?
"Yeah." he said to distract himself, "keep a good thought."
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At least they had a friend in Jordan Hyson, Miles's brother, who. even more
reluctantly than Miles, but just as violently, had learned the unbelievable truth
about Skynet. Now Jordan was watching over Sarah as she lay helpless, perhaps
dying in the hospital. Keep a good thought, John admonished himself sternly.
She's not alone. And how often had that been the case in her chaotic life? He
absently wiped the sweat from his chin.
The Amazonian jungle wasn't really stiflingly hot. The temperature never got
much above eighty or so, with all the layers of shade above. The problem was
that it wasn't just humid; the air was fully saturated and absolutely still, and
unless perspiration ran or dripped off you, it stayed. Sweat slicked his whole
body, making him feel like he'd been dipped in canola oil and left to go rancid,
chafing anywhere belt or backpack or equipment touched his body; and if you
got a rash here, sure as Skynet made Terminators to kill people, it would get
infected.
He hated feeling this wet and dirty. John would have sworn it hadn't felt this bad
the first time he'd been through here. Maybe it wasn't as hot that year, he
thought. He'd hate to think he'd become a fussy old lady at sixteen.
John stopped, chopped the machete halfway into a tree trunk, and yanked off the
scarf he'd tied around his forehead. He wrung out the sweat and glanced behind.
Dieter von Rossbach moved forward with the determination of a machine.
A machine he just happens to resemble, John thought with a quirk of his lips.
Even now, after knowing the big man for several weeks, he still couldn't get over
Dieter's resemblance to a Terminator.
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In fact it was the other way around: Skynet had used Dieter's face and form to
"flesh out" the T-101 series of killing machines. When it decided to put living
skin on its robots, it scanned old files looking for faces that fit the thing's profile,
literally. And there was Dieter von Rossbach.
Dieter came up and stopped beside him. "If we stand still, the mosquitoes will
eat us alive," he remarked.
John quirked an eyebrow.
"I haven't noticed that they leave us alone when we're moving."
Waving a hand before his face, Dieter said, "Ja, but at least they don't stroll up
your nose."
John took a slug from his canteen. Important to keep hydrated. "We'll reach the
trail sometime between now and sundown," he said. "But trails can change or
disappear completely around here in six years." The Amazonian rain forest was
notorious for its ability to absorb the works °f man.
"So. we keep heading south." Dieter said, moving forward. He looked at the GPS
unit strapped to his left forearm, reached over his shoulder. drew the machete,
and lopped off a soft-bodied trunk in one economical motion. "We'll get there
eventually."
John watched him go with a sigh. Yeah, well, if we keep going south we'll hit
Tierra del Fuego eventually. Whether they'd get there in one piece or not was the
question. At least the climate's better in Tierra del Fuego.
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When he and his mother had followed this trail six years ago, they'd succeeded
in vanishing from the face of the earth as far as law enforcement was concerned.
But they'd had a guide, which meant they didn't disappear for real.
Lorenzo was still in business, but he flat refused to go through this section of
jungle anymore. He'd sat on his portal by the river, cleaning his gun and shaking
his head stubbornly.
"Those gold miners are out of control down there. They kill anybody they find,
no questions asked. You know? Everybody there, they gone a little loco. They
kill the Indios, the Indios, some of 'em, kill 'em back. Kill any white man they
see. They're so mad they even think I'm white." He'd grinned up at John, teeth
flashing in his mahogany face.
"I'm sorry, boy, but I won't go there, not for love or money." He'd pointed a
tobacco-stained finger at John. "You shouldn't go there either."
Like we had a choice, John thought. It's not like we can buy a first-class ticket
and fly home to Asuncion.
Not if they wanted to disappear as thoroughly as they needed to. Though the
authorities might like them to try.
He screwed the cap back on the canteen and levered his machete out of the tree,
then he started off down the trail in Dieter's energetic wake. The Austrian made a
much wider path than John did. It was kind of embarrassing; Dieter was his
mother's age. At least. He even thought they had a bit of a thing for each other,
which was funny in a gross sort of way.
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John sometimes wished he didn't have so much to live up to. In a way it wasn't
fair. He not only had his future, fabulous, Great Military Dickhead self to
measure himself against, but his mom was superwoman and Dieter, well…
Dieter was in a class by himself. He sighed. Other kids his age could be
comfortably contemptuous of their elders. That was sooo not available to him.
Be nice though, he thought. For a moment he daydreamed a life where his
mother was a clueless, overweight lady who baked cookies for his friends and
worried vaguely that he might be getting into drugs or that his girlfriend was a
bad influence. In that life his greatest problem would be just saying no to all the
temptations that youth is heir to.
On the: other hand, that could be really boring. Certainly a hit of the guvs at
school who had just that lifestyle were; both bored and boring. He might
currently be hot and grubby and mosquito-bitten to within an inch of his life, but
he wasn't bored. Though if things stayed as quiet as they currently were…
He was kidding himself, of course; things were far from quiet. At the back of his
mind, with an almost palpable weight, was his endless worry over his mother. It
had been days since he'd been able to get any information on her condition. Last
he'd heard she was stable. Which was much too ambiguous for comfort. Not that
he didn't keep trying to find some in that lame word. Stable was good when
you'd been shot several times and stabbed and lost most of your internal fluids.
Well, you're all alone I when the bullet hits the bone. Truer words had never
been sung.
I wonder how she is, he thought. He also wondered what they—the black-ops
types who were probably Cyberdyne's link to the government—were going to do
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Stirling,SM-T2RisingStorm(v1.0)(html)ScannedbyHighroller.ProofedmoreorlessbyHighroller.MadeprettierbyuseofEBookDesignGroupStylesheet.PROLOGUESKYNET,2029Themindthatthoughtwasnothuman.Itwasconscious—awarethatitwasaware—anditevenhademotions,ofasort;attheleast,aburningdesire osurviveallthestrongerbeca...

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