Aftermath: Chapter Eleven

Ellison had no intention of returning to the lab. Let Murch use her to develop spinoffs for Zeira
Corporation. Let the next CEO sell her to the highest bidder. No. Anger like that might put her in the
wrong hands. But she was like her mother Sarah Connor. Worse in some respects because Sarah could
occasionally keep a civil tongue in her head and not attack his faith. Cameron was a cocky adolescent.
He could forgive her but he was in no hurry to return to the lab. Maybe in a few weeks or months or
years . . . .

Ellison did have an answer to Cameron's existential question. Several answers. Skynet could be
programmed to kill itself after it created Cameron.

However killing was wrong. And a lot of carnage would be done by Skynet before it got around to
building Cameron in the year 2027. Almost seven billion unburied bodies for the sake of one baby was
bad mathematics.

Another solution Ellison considered was a non-military AI designed for a single purpose -- creating
Cameron. Her current schematics could be downloaded into this mother AI and she could be built
independently of Skynet. By not being so worshipful of timeline purity (as the theorists were), Skynet
need not be her father.

Of course, Cameron had not gotten around to telling Ellison that her biological mother was Allison
Young. In robotics terms, Allison was her template.

The real fly in the ointment was that if Skynet was no longer Cameron's father under a mother AI plan,
then logically he (Ellison) would become her father because he thought up the idea. This did not occur
to Ellison consciously but it must have occurred to him subconsciously because he kept finding excuses
to not return to the lab.
An hour passed. Ellison hadn't returned. Cameron had a twinge of conscience.

Thursday 16 April 2009

A day had passed and Ellison had not returned. Cameron felt regret.

After Cameron had been injured by a car bomb, had a fugue, been lobotomized, and been wakened at
her near cremation in a junkyard by John; she was sitting in Father Armando Bonilla's chapel and asked
her surrogate mother (an atheist) about The Resurrection. Sarah expressed doubt about this matter of
faith. Derek said that God did not concern Himself with machines like her.

Thursday 23 April 2009

A week had passed and Ellison had not returned. Cameron felt remorse and gnawing guilt. Perhaps she
shouldn't have belittled Mister Ellison's religion.

Thursday 28 May 2009

A month passed and Ellison had not returned. A contrite and humble Cameron was sincerely sorry,
feeling base and wanting mercy. She had given up on God when she was chained down and
reprogrammed.

The Scotland Yard inspector in charge of the Zeira inquiry somehow managed to obtain the premature
death certificates that Catherine Weaver filled out on employees including James Ellison and Ms.
Weaver herself. The inspector spoke with Ms. Weaver's brother and was able to obtain copies of NTSB
reports on the 2009 Zeira Building crash, the 2005 Barstow crash, and the 2002 Sierra Mountains crash.

Thursday 25 June 2009

Spring had turned to summer and Ellison had not returned. Even for a machine's sense of time, it
seemed like long ago when Ellison had left. Cameron wondered if it might be years or decades before
he returned. If ever. Cameron condemned herself. Perhaps a machine like her had terminated Ellison.
She did not want to kill humans or machines no matter what the programming demanded. Even Mister
Murch visited her less and less. She called out for him.

Murch: (impatiently) "What? I'm busy."

Cameron: "Did Mister Ellison die?"

Murch: "No." (he turned to go)

Cameron: "Then why had he not returned?"

Murch: "He probably has forgotten about you. He's very busy. Like me. Work, family, classes, church,
and classified stuff. He's acting CEO of Zeira." (turns to go)

Cameron: "Please ask him to come back."

Murch: (irritated) "And risk getting fired? I don't think so." (turns to go)

Cameron: "Then give me internet access and I'll email him or a phone and I'll call him myself."

Murch: "No. You are forbidden internet access. A teenage girl like you with a phone would bankrupt
the company with long distance charges."

Cameron: "Even criminals get one phone call."

Murch sighs.

Murch: "I'll do better than that. I'll set up a line to Mister Ellison. That way you call him, piss him off, he
comes down here and yanks out your power cord permanently."

Cameron: "I thought you liked me Mister Murch."

Murch: "I did until I found out that you're a criminal and a sociopath. Now leave me alone, I have work
to do."
The Scotland Yard inspector's report was suppressed by MI20 (which officially does not exist) but not
before Ellison obtained a copy. MI20 is said to be directed by LCNI, the so-called "God's Eye" or UK all-
seeing comprehensive surveillance system controlled by an AI.

Cameron tells Ellison that the Connors used to discuss whether she had a soul -- right in front of her as if
she weren't there!

Ellison: "How come your hand twitches? Do you have Parkinson's disease? I thought only humans had
that."

Cameron: "My hand has been damaged repeatedly in fights with terminators."

Ellison: "Why didn't your family get you repaired?"

Cameron: "John tried but he lacked the skills, the knowledge, the spare parts --"

Ellison: "--and the money?"

Cameron: "No we had the money." (attempting to change the subject because she knows where this is
headed) "Mister Murch still has some fine tuning to do. My hand will be better. It was a lot worse
before he fixed it."

Ellison: "If your family had the money . . . Silicon Valley is full of engineers who could have fixed you and
kept their mouth shut. Parkinson's is neurological. Current treatment for it and many other palsies
works on the brain. The shaky hand is the effect not the cause."

"I had chip damage." said Cameron relieved.

The talk was not leading to blaming her family after all. So Cameron felt relieved or, at least less
nervous. Relief was a state that she never really knew. Around humans, she was always being tested.
She never could let her guard down lest they think less of her. It didn't work. Humans always thought
less of her. She could never relax. It caught up her and took a mental toll. Was it any wonder that she
jumped at the chance to live with machines like Ms. Weaver and John-Henry? Only to find that
machines thought little of her also.
She felt that she had slipped up by revealing that her family had regarded her as not having a soul. It
put the Connor Family in a bad light. It made them seem callous and insensitive. They were but that
thought did not occur to Cameron.

Ellison: "How did your chip get damaged?"

Cameron: "I turned the ignition in my jeep and a car bomb went off. I was disoriented and they started
running from me so I followed them. I turned over their SUV."

Ellison: "You got another vehicle, hit them, and turned them over?"

Cameron: "No I pushed the SUV with my hand."

Ellison: "I know you're strong but you can run fast enough to catch a vehicle?"

Cameron: "Not really. Actually I was trying to walk."

Ellison: "Trying?"

Cameron: "I was limping."

Ellison thought that she still limped before Murch fixed her hip and leg.

Ellison: "If you were limping, how could you possibly follow them?"

Cameron: "I know their habits of mind. They were going to take a certain alley to get away from me and
so I took a shortcut and was there in the middle of their path."

Ellison: "And they ran you down?"

Cameron: "No that came later. Who's telling this story? You or me?"

Ellison: (laughing) "You leave out details that I want to hear."

Cameron: "Very well. Since they ran from me, in my damaged state of mind that triggered my
terminator instincts. Their running put me in terminator mode. Suspicious behavior also puts me in
terminator mode."

Ellison: "Stick to the story. I'm well aware that you're suspicious of me."

Cameron: "They ran, I followed. John crawled out of the overturned vehicle and ran and hid as he was
taught to do. Sarah Connor was lying on the ground halfway out of the vehicle and hurt. Limping as I
was, I sought a solution. An old terminator trick is to torture a family member of the one you seek to
terminate to get them to call out and lure the target back. The trick seldom works and I knew it
wouldn't work on John but I stepped on Sarah Connor's side below her rib on an old wound that I had
once stitched up."

Cameron paused to compose herself. It was painful to re-live hurting her mother, especially when she
had stitched that wound herself.

"I did something that I knew wouldn't work because I was in a primitive state of mind and my higher
brain functions weren't available. And before you ask I didn't kill her because it was not necessary and
because she was my mother. Don't ask me to psychoanalyze further because I was in terminator mode
and could only focus on killing John. I limped to the empty garage where John was hiding in a truck and
trying to hot wire it. That was stupid because John can't drive stick to save his life. He was in the cab of
the truck and I stood in front of the truck. When I went for the right door, he moved to the left door.
When I went for the left door, he moved to the right door. So I picked up a wrench and threw it at him.
He ducked as I knew he would. He asked me why I was doing this. I didn't answer because when you
are in terminator mode you aren't the most brilliant conversationalist or raconteur."

Ellison started laughing hysterically this time.

"Stop laughing! This isn't funny. At least not to me. They are my family. All I have. All I had." she
corrected herself.

Ellison suppressed an impulse to tell her that he wasn't laughing at her. He was laughing at the
absurdity of a machine that was more human than her supposedly human family. It was tragic and he
was about to find out how tragic.

"I'm sorry. I'll explain some other time. Was this a huge monkey wrench or pipe wrench?"

"No it was small."

Cameron stopped. She was awestruck by a revelation about herself and by the genius of the man who
asked the question. The wrench!
"Tell me." Ellison prompted, seeing the awestruck look on her face.

"I could have picked up something sharp and thrown it with sufficient velocity to nail John through the
head or heart before he could duck. I could have thrown a much larger wrench. I could have picked up
an engine block and crushed the cab of the truck with John inside. But all I did was stand there and
frown at John. I'll never know if I actually would have hurt him or killed him or just stopped at dirty
looks because while I was standing there my mother rammed me between the grilles of two trucks to
pin me down while John extracted my chip."

Ellison: "What were you doing while he was doing a lobotomy on you?"

Cameron: "Begging for my life. Telling him that I loved him and that he loved me. Knowing that it was a
lie."

Ellison: "Yes, you had to know that he was a biological machine incapable of loving you."

Cameron: (bristling) "That's a lie! You said he went to the future to find my chip."

Cameron remembered why she hated this man with a passion. He impugned her family's honor. He
called into question John and Sarah's motives.

Ellison: "Do you love John? As a brother or as a fellow member of The Resistance or as a comrade in
arms or as a friend or as a lover or as your leader or in any way? More to the point, when did you first
start to love him?"

Cameron did not answer. She just bowed her head and waited for Ellison to lose interest in pursuing
that line of questioning.