Aftermath: Chapter Thirteen

Murch had accomplished more than he had hoped for in this session. He was headed off to his office.

Cameron: "Mister Ellison thinks I'm a lost cause."

Murch: "He's like that. If someone shows no interest in the Bible, then he stops taking them seriously.
He mentally writes them off." (Murch leaves)

Murch was wrong. Or only half-right. Ellison had been watching everything on closed circuit since
Cameron awoke from her two-week coma.

That nervous breakdown had convinced Ellison that he was dealing with more than a faulty toaster that
burned bread. The Connors had used her up and thrown her away, like Kleenex or toilet tissue; with no
more regard for her needs than a sadist who chains a dog and beats it. The Connors were child abusers
who rationalized their behavior as okay since Cameron was "just a machine." Ellison wanted no part of
any scheme that would exploit this child further. Earlier, he had thought that this was a deprogramming
situation and asked Murch to remove all the Cyberdyne malware in Cameron. "Cyberdyne malware"
was the term Ellison used since Murch knew nothing of Skynet, not being privy to the fact that there was
a war going on. Ellison knew nothing of Tech-Comm or its questionable "scrubbing" and
reprogramming. Sarah had not told him about Tech-Comm because neither Derek nor Cameron had
told her about it.

Meanwhile, Sarah stayed away from the windows on the 27th floor. The news vans were still down
there and even more dangerous prying eyes might be watching.

All Sarah ever knew was bits and pieces. She had gotten in the habit of hoarding these fragments of
information and while she would criticize others for withholding information ("Don't lie to me!"), she
was withholding the little she knew. As a result, the people fighting Skynet never compared notes and
therefore were running blind in a house of razors. Cameron followed her mother's example and
imitated her attitude. Or tried to copy her.

Sarah knew that somebody was supposed to start The Resistance but she had built no organization --
not being a team player and lacking people skills.

Derek and Cameron had been tight-lipped about the future lest they repeat the same mistakes. What's
the point of doing it all over again? They did it wrong the first time. Seven billion died. That war that
Sarah prepared John for? The human race was not barely holding on -- it was going extinct! Better to
shut up and let Young John try some fresh ideas. But time travel sent John to the future prematurely.
There would be no time for ideas, fresh or stale.

Fear of repeating mistakes had made them tongue-tied and caused them to repeat all the worst
mistakes plus a few extras. Derek had died. Cameron had died (several times). And Young John was in
the future and perhaps dead.

Sarah Connor didn't know a lot of things but what she did know she didn't share and it got the people
around her killed. Talking with her family about her abduction by Ed Winston might have caused her a
few moments of embarrassment as they criticized her for going to warehouses alone without backup
(after midnight in one case) but caution would have spared her a bullet wound at Desert Air. And it
would have prompted her family to have her checked for bugs and implants.

What good was paranoia if you couldn't put it to work? She just assumed that lump was cancer. The
implant in Sarah's breast was a tracking device that got Charley Dixon killed, Derek abducted, Cameron
electrocuted, and nearly got John and Sarah killed.

Ellison did not regard Sarah as a reliable source of information. He went back and re-read the police
psychologist's reports and realized that there were two main types of machines, solids and liquids. His
boss had been the liquid kind. Sarah could have told him what he was dealing with and who the players
were -- Skynet Forces with its corporations and military robots and drones and human hit men, so that
he didn't feel like an idiot. And those who opposed Skynet seemed to be a wet-behind-the-ears boy
named John Connor, his lone wolf mother, a teen-aged female cyborg enforcer, a liquid machine with a
hot temper and her solid machine child who was currently in the repeat-everything-adults-say phase.
This rag-tag bunch seemed more a joke or bad Japanese manga than a serious resistance to the deadly
serious military-industrial complex that Skynet commanded. If not for Savannah and his admitted liking
of John-Henry and his cranky mother, Ellison might sit out this war and let Agent Aldridge beat his head
futilely against a wall since Sarah Connor would never cooperate with him. She would rather let this
'Judgment Day' that she obsessed about happen than work with others also fighting Skynet.

Skynet ran an efficient totalitarian system whereas humans would never be able to make a totalitarian
system work. And shouldn't. It was an evil form of government. But this Resistance fighting Skynet was
not a democracy. It was anarchy and not the Libertarian good kind of anarcho-syndicalism either.

Perhaps if Young John survived in whatever future he went to, he was an autocrat who had no
legislative branch or judiciary or media or voters to answer to and if so, he was no better than Skynet.

Ellison did not bother to verify Cameron's story about handing a loaded gun back to John after her
epileptic fugue. Asking Sarah would cause her to ask if he had burned the body and she had not shown
any curiosity about the disposal of her one-time daughter. If she had snuck down to the lab to check on
Cameron, then Sarah was a good actress because she gave no indication.

Cameron was awake twenty-four seven and would have noticed a visitor like Sarah. Ellison had
removed the closed circuit feeds so that Cameron could not access the internet or even building
security. She could not access the cameras on the twenty-seventh floor. Cameron had not shown any
interest in what happened to her one-time mother.

Ellison still allowed for the possibility that perhaps Sarah had come down to the basement one night and
Cameron and Sarah agreed to escape the Zeira Building together. No problem. That was Sarah's choice
and Cameron's choice but as long as they seemed to assume that the other had skipped town or died
(but not in enemy hands) then Ellison was going to enable Sarah to skip town and enable Cameron to
get away from a mother who clearly did not care about her welfare.

Besides, Ellison figured that if his analysis of the situation was wrong and if Sarah's approach to fighting
Skynet was the effective one, then he wanted physical and legal distance from Sarah when she blew up
another building. As a former FBI agent, he did not want to be in cahoots with a terrorist. His academy
training had taught him respect for the rule of law. Even in war, there are rules like the Geneva
Conventions. You start torturing and acting like an animal and behaving like the enemy and you defeat
yourself. Ellison was prepared to fight any enemy and any criminal, even Skynet, but on HIS terms not
on Skynet's terms. Let Sarah go her way when the news vans left. Or even before.

Ellison: "I think the last news van will be gone in another day. I have a contact at their network. I cannot
vouch for Defense Intelligence or any other eyes watching this building. Frankly, I am afraid to ask the
agencies who have traipsed through after the 'drone ramming.' That's what a few agency reports say
instead of using words like 'attack' or '4/11' like the press does even though it happened on April Tenth
not Eleventh. Ms. Weaver was supposed to have VIP visitors the next day so I suppose that's the tabloid
angle, to connect it to 9/11. Which you never heard of."

"We time traveled over those years. That's what the bank vault was. A time machine. That's why the
FBI found no fatalities and no bodies despite the lies the media reported. I'm not a terrorist."

"How did you know what the FBI found? Only I and few others were allowed to read the report."

"I was there. Why are you afraid to ask your contacts at these agencies about when they will wrap up
their investigations?"

"If they have left town, they might turn around and come back because the question itself will make
them curious. Goodnight Ms. Connor."

"Goodnight Agent."

"Former agent." he corrected and left.

The smile on Sarah's face faded. She didn't like Ellison. But then she didn't like anyone.

On his way out of the building, he turned his thoughts back to Savannah and Cameron and other
children. Ellison had to think about the children. Someone had to.

next day

Deprogramming Cameron from the "Cyberdyne malware" was complete. Murch mentioned the parallel
experience that John-Henry had and Murch's observation that malware wasn't the biggest problem.
Both John-Henry and Cameron functioned despite it. A feat that PC's could not match. The biggest
problem was the psychological trauma. Dying in John-Henry's case, with a supercomputer's perception
of time to drag out an already unpleasant experience. Being on a lab table, in Cameron's case.

Catherine, John-Henry and Cameron were all machines and yet they had distinct personalities. Ms.
Weaver and John-Henry were mother and son but they were like night and day otherwise. Liquid versus
solid. Hot temper versus cool head. Adult versus child.

Ellison stopped. He wrote a note to himself. Murch had hit every item on the list but forgot to mention
one.

Ellison was meticulous about details. He had gone home at lunch one day and changed to a plaid tie
when told by the mostly Scottish Zeira employees that the day commemorated Lachlan Weaver's
passing. As a Scottish lass, Ms. Weaver had noticed.

Mr. Ellison had no idea that the US State Department class in protocol and respect for foreign customs a
decade ago (to get him through an assignment on Embassy Row) had made certain things second nature
to him and made him that much more interesting to his boss. But it irked her that, as security chief, he
felt that he had to protect her. Him, a mere human, when she had walked through a dynamite
explosion. Even the old T-1000's could survive an explosion only if it was no larger than a grenade or an
exploding petrol lorry [a tanker, a tractor-trailer truck hauling gasoline and other fuel]. Ms. Weaver had
blown up a factory with enough high explosives to irreparably rip an old T-1000 apart and walked out of
it unharmed. It was more correct to call her a T-1001.

Ellison learned from personal experience that machines are beings and individuals. Sarah had lived with
two machines; Uncle Bob for a few hours and then for two years with Cameron and learned nothing.

Ellison concluded that if he was going to help Cameron that religious models like cult deprogramming
and exorcising demons and political models like brainwashing did not fit this situation. Cameron was
impressionable and needed education not re-education.