Resistance
Furious at Cameron for not telling them this sooner, and terrified for her son, Sarah nonetheless couldn’t see any resolution to this circular argument and she very nearly snarled them all into silence. Had it been only Derek who opposed her, or had she not harbored her own secret doubts about keeping the terminator around, that would have been the end of it.
But uncertainty robbed Sarah of her usual fierce assumption of authority. She had spent too long with only herself to rely on to keep John safe and too long with no one else to count on to have her back in a fight. She needed Cameron’s fighting skills, her unshakable focus and single-minded determination to protect John, but as much as it galled her to admit it, she needed Derek’s experience and position as a role model for John too…and Derek loved Jessie…and clearly her son wasn’t prepared to give up Riley…so somehow she needed a solution that everyone could live with, that didn’t end in future mutiny for the resistance.
It all kept coming back around to Cameron’s unpredictability. To what lengths would the terminator go to achieve her goals? She had already come very close to killing Riley once, who would be next if John tried to distance himself from the terminator?
It was Riley who finally found an answer, her voice shaking a little as she turned wary blue eyes on the subject of their verbal melee, who was still sitting perfectly still in her chair. “Can’t we just reprogram her?”
John threw up his hands, clearly beyond frustrated. “I don’t know how, and we don’t have that kind of technology anyway. I could barely read Vicks chip let alone-” he began, but Cameron interrupted him.
“Yes. That may be feasible. I have a verbal override system keyed to John’s voice that should allow him to authorize minor alterations to my secondary and tertiary directives. It is a failsafe that Future John put in place.” She appeared to be taken a little aback, but nodded approvingly at Riley. “That was a very good idea. My programming did not permit me to suggest it, much as I cannot attempt self termination, but I am apparently allowed to explain the process.”
And that more or less ended it. If Cameron’s threat to John as a barrier between him and the rest of the world could be neutralized without compromising her ability to protect him, then there was no reason to deactivate her, and every reason to keep her around.
Derek and Jessie were poor losers, and there was a great deal of grumbling from that quarter, but Sarah suspected that it was mostly for show. Jessie was clearly relieved that she had not completely failed in her mission, and Derek seemed almost pathetically grateful that he hadn’t been forced to choose between his loyalty to John, and supporting his lovers concerns for the future. While neither of them was happy about the terminator remaining part of the team, they accepted it with only as much ill will as they felt was absolutely necessary to save their pride.
While John conferred with Cameron on the step by step process of accessing her directive fail-safes, and Derek took a rifle outside to cool down and make himself useful covering Cameron’s patrol for her, Jessie sat down with Riley on the couch.
Brewing a fresh pot of coffee in the kitchen, Sarah couldn’t hear what the women were saying to each other, but it seemed to be civil enough so she hoped the Aussie was apologizing. How exactly someone apologized for setting you up to be murdered in order to save mankind, she had no idea, but she hoped for Riley’s sake that it would give the girl some closure.
As for Sarah…despite her outward calm she was still reeling from what Riley and Jessie had revealed about John’s future. How could her son lose touch with humanity so completely that his own resistance began to doubt him? Despite Cameron’s admission Sarah couldn’t rest the entirety of the blame of those thin metal shoulders…much as she would have liked to. No. Some of the fault must be her own. She looked back over the last 16 and a half years…every time John had formed an attachment to a place, she had been forced to move them again.
Countless burgeoning friendships had been left behind because Sarah was afraid to let anyone get too close to them. Even Charley, the first man, excluding the T888 that she had lowered into boiling slag, that John had really begun to look at as a father figure, had been sent away to keep him safe.
No, Sarah couldn’t blame it all on the terminator, or Future John’s understandable wish for a friendship that wouldn’t end in blood and death. Not when it was her fault that he had been so alone. No wonder he had sent himself a friend back from the future…one made out of metal, that didn’t die, and would not endanger them. No wonder he’d instructed that machine to jump them over his mother’s death…he had no one else.
“Sarah” Cameron’s voice, coming from right behind her where she stood brooding over the gurgling coffee pot, made the older woman jump.
“Damnit girlie, we need to hang a bell on you. Make some noise next time.” Sarah turned, swiping a hand across her face quickly to make sure that the slight burning in her eyes hadn’t resolved into tears.
Cameron deviated from her usual blank expression to give Sarah one that was pointedly irritated, as if asking how she was to patrol effectively while jingling. “I am sorry.” If Sarah hadn’t known better she would have said the tone held a hint of sarcasm. “I shall attempt to be louder.”
The terminator indicated the kitchen table. “John and I are ready to begin now. May we use the table?” At Sarah’s affirmative she continued. “It would be better for us to be alone. I will be vulnerable in the receptive state, and John should not be distracted. I have explained to him what he must do to alter my directives, but the process is delicate and any deviation could cause complications.” She paused and looked back into the living room where Derek was just coming in the front door and joining Jessie on the couch. “I would also prefer not to have those who wish me harm nearby when I am not fully operational.”
Sarah followed Cameron’s glance and nodded understandingly. “Yeah I get that.”
Since there were limited beds and John was not about to let Riley out of the immediate vicinity, Derek and Jessie went back to her apartment for the remainder of the night, and Riley, with Cameron’s permission, was bedded down in the terminators room. When asked if she minded giving up her bed, Cameron had fixed John with her best neutral stare. “I don’t sleep.”
Sarah meanwhile was busying herself checking all the locks on doors and windows and setting the alarm system. Cameron watched her from the kitchen archway as she keyed in the alarm code and despite her obvious exhaustion, took a book from the bookshelf and shoved a small handgun into the waistband of her pants before heading for a chair in the living room.
“You should sleep. Your body is extremely enervated.”
Sarah ignored her, settling down on the armchair furthest from the kitchen so that she would not be a distraction. Coming up behind Cameron John seconded the terminators advice.
“Mom, you really look like hell, you need to sleep.”
“Hey, don’t worry about me; I’m not going to bed until you two are finished with your ones and zero’s in there. Someone has to be on guard while the Landmine is out of commission.” That settled she opened her book and proceeded to pretend to be reading. Conversation over.
John sighed but let it go. There was absolutely no arguing with his mother when she was like this…though on second thought, there was never any arguing with his mother, so really it was business as usual.
Cameron and John settled themselves at the kitchen table. John had several sheets of paper in front of him with the complex codes that Cameron had given him to activate her directive’s receptive state. If he understood her correctly, this failsafe would only allow him to make minor shifts in her programming. He should be able to disable her imperative to remove all human obstacles between them and get cosy, but he might not be able to remove the directive entirely. Apparently the verbal coding that future John had put in place had not been thoroughly tested…there hadn’t been time.
He also could not change anything that was hard wired, like her termination overrides. Those were coded directly into her chip, which is why the damage she’d sustained in the jeep explosion had caused a reset.
John had never managed to get a straight answer from her about whether the hasty repairs he had made to her chip, her own self analysis and repair, or simply being rebooted, had renewed the override. She just ignored the question. It was possible that she herself didn’t know. While this did not exactly give him peace of mind, he had to allow that she had some right to privacy as far as her own systems were concerned.
“You’re nervous.” Sitting across from him Cameron was looking at John with something that looked like a combination of concern and reservation. Since he was about to rearrange her software with nothing but a handful of written notes and good intentions, John couldn’t bring himself to blame her.
“You’re heart rate is elevated and you’re sweating…are you confidant that you can execute this procedure?”
“I’m good.” John laid out the sheets in order. “Just like programming a vcr.”
“Sarah programmed the vcr.”
“Well, then we’ll just have to trust that I could have done it better.”
Cameron raised one eyebrow, a human trick that she rather liked for its effectiveness in adding various nuances to a conversation. “You can tell her that.”
John coughed to cover a laugh. “Let’s get started shall we?”
The sun was just coming over the horizon when John finally obtained access to Cameron’s directive programs. Future John had built in multiple technical hoops to jump through and tests designed to ascertain that it was actually John Connor trying to gain entry and not a terminator using his voice. And it all seemed to be for nothing as John was having absolutely no luck removing the directive.
He had come at it from every direction he could think of, and he could access the program, given in monotone by a blank eyed Cameron,
“Directive: 00002
System Mode: Infiltration
Target: John Connor
Instructions: Secure primary affections and discourage outside competition.
Provide support and companionship; simulating human affection until spontaneous replication can be achieved.”
John tried removing the directive all together, only to be informed that he lacked authorization to deactivate active directives. He tried inserting “do not” into the code…and got
“That modification would contradict the Primary Directive.”
He tried removing key words to try and disarm the effectiveness of the program, but no matter what he tried, Cameron’s inflectionless voice found a way around it. Eventually he was issued a warning that further attempts to undermine the integrity of this directive would result in a 24 hour lock out.
Almost pulling his hair out in frustration John got up from the table and paced, trying to figure out some way to change the wording in the code that would maintain its integrity as beneficial to him, John Connor, but not force Cameron to throw Riley, and anyone else he happened to like, out a window. Not to mention giving Derek ample ammunition to insist on her deactivation
Walking past the doorway to the living room for the fifth time, John’s attention was caught by his mother…she had fallen asleep over the book. The weak sunlight filtering in through the blinds was just enough to illuminate the dark circles under eyes, and the worry lines etched into the skin around her mouth and between her eyebrows. Even asleep she looked beleaguered.
John fleetingly wished that there was someone strong enough to take better care of his mother. He had people looking out for him…he glanced back at Cameron’s rigid figure…too many in fact, but she had no one. He was also painfully aware of the fact that his mother would never let him put her welfare before his own, and it wouldn’t occur to Derek to try. There had been Charley…but after his wife’s death he no longer wanted anything to do with them…
Reluctantly returning to the table, John looked down at the vacant terminator and got the barest hint of an idea. His mother would kill him if she found out…but she didn’t ever need to know. Cameron herself had admitted that she may be unaware of the specifics of minor changes to her lesser directives unless he told her about them. Future John had been very upfront about what he was asking her to do, but this John knew the benefits of a covert operation. He sat down with a grin…all he needed to do was a little substitution.
“Cameron. Reset directive 0002. Change target to Sarah Connor.” Cameron blinked and John held his breath, waiting to be told he was locked out.
"Affirmative. Reset and replacement is acceptable. Directive has been modified."
There….with the smug assurance known only to teenagers, thoroughly convinced of their superior understanding of life, John congratulated himself on devising a solution that would be good for everyone. That would teach them to assume he couldn’t think for himself, and it wasn’t like a hard bitten warrior like Sarah Connor was ever going to be susceptible to the wiles of a petite 16 year old girl anyhow, terminator or not.
.
But uncertainty robbed Sarah of her usual fierce assumption of authority. She had spent too long with only herself to rely on to keep John safe and too long with no one else to count on to have her back in a fight. She needed Cameron’s fighting skills, her unshakable focus and single-minded determination to protect John, but as much as it galled her to admit it, she needed Derek’s experience and position as a role model for John too…and Derek loved Jessie…and clearly her son wasn’t prepared to give up Riley…so somehow she needed a solution that everyone could live with, that didn’t end in future mutiny for the resistance.
It all kept coming back around to Cameron’s unpredictability. To what lengths would the terminator go to achieve her goals? She had already come very close to killing Riley once, who would be next if John tried to distance himself from the terminator?
It was Riley who finally found an answer, her voice shaking a little as she turned wary blue eyes on the subject of their verbal melee, who was still sitting perfectly still in her chair. “Can’t we just reprogram her?”
John threw up his hands, clearly beyond frustrated. “I don’t know how, and we don’t have that kind of technology anyway. I could barely read Vicks chip let alone-” he began, but Cameron interrupted him.
“Yes. That may be feasible. I have a verbal override system keyed to John’s voice that should allow him to authorize minor alterations to my secondary and tertiary directives. It is a failsafe that Future John put in place.” She appeared to be taken a little aback, but nodded approvingly at Riley. “That was a very good idea. My programming did not permit me to suggest it, much as I cannot attempt self termination, but I am apparently allowed to explain the process.”
And that more or less ended it. If Cameron’s threat to John as a barrier between him and the rest of the world could be neutralized without compromising her ability to protect him, then there was no reason to deactivate her, and every reason to keep her around.
Derek and Jessie were poor losers, and there was a great deal of grumbling from that quarter, but Sarah suspected that it was mostly for show. Jessie was clearly relieved that she had not completely failed in her mission, and Derek seemed almost pathetically grateful that he hadn’t been forced to choose between his loyalty to John, and supporting his lovers concerns for the future. While neither of them was happy about the terminator remaining part of the team, they accepted it with only as much ill will as they felt was absolutely necessary to save their pride.
While John conferred with Cameron on the step by step process of accessing her directive fail-safes, and Derek took a rifle outside to cool down and make himself useful covering Cameron’s patrol for her, Jessie sat down with Riley on the couch.
Brewing a fresh pot of coffee in the kitchen, Sarah couldn’t hear what the women were saying to each other, but it seemed to be civil enough so she hoped the Aussie was apologizing. How exactly someone apologized for setting you up to be murdered in order to save mankind, she had no idea, but she hoped for Riley’s sake that it would give the girl some closure.
As for Sarah…despite her outward calm she was still reeling from what Riley and Jessie had revealed about John’s future. How could her son lose touch with humanity so completely that his own resistance began to doubt him? Despite Cameron’s admission Sarah couldn’t rest the entirety of the blame of those thin metal shoulders…much as she would have liked to. No. Some of the fault must be her own. She looked back over the last 16 and a half years…every time John had formed an attachment to a place, she had been forced to move them again.
Countless burgeoning friendships had been left behind because Sarah was afraid to let anyone get too close to them. Even Charley, the first man, excluding the T888 that she had lowered into boiling slag, that John had really begun to look at as a father figure, had been sent away to keep him safe.
No, Sarah couldn’t blame it all on the terminator, or Future John’s understandable wish for a friendship that wouldn’t end in blood and death. Not when it was her fault that he had been so alone. No wonder he had sent himself a friend back from the future…one made out of metal, that didn’t die, and would not endanger them. No wonder he’d instructed that machine to jump them over his mother’s death…he had no one else.
“Sarah” Cameron’s voice, coming from right behind her where she stood brooding over the gurgling coffee pot, made the older woman jump.
“Damnit girlie, we need to hang a bell on you. Make some noise next time.” Sarah turned, swiping a hand across her face quickly to make sure that the slight burning in her eyes hadn’t resolved into tears.
Cameron deviated from her usual blank expression to give Sarah one that was pointedly irritated, as if asking how she was to patrol effectively while jingling. “I am sorry.” If Sarah hadn’t known better she would have said the tone held a hint of sarcasm. “I shall attempt to be louder.”
The terminator indicated the kitchen table. “John and I are ready to begin now. May we use the table?” At Sarah’s affirmative she continued. “It would be better for us to be alone. I will be vulnerable in the receptive state, and John should not be distracted. I have explained to him what he must do to alter my directives, but the process is delicate and any deviation could cause complications.” She paused and looked back into the living room where Derek was just coming in the front door and joining Jessie on the couch. “I would also prefer not to have those who wish me harm nearby when I am not fully operational.”
Sarah followed Cameron’s glance and nodded understandingly. “Yeah I get that.”
Since there were limited beds and John was not about to let Riley out of the immediate vicinity, Derek and Jessie went back to her apartment for the remainder of the night, and Riley, with Cameron’s permission, was bedded down in the terminators room. When asked if she minded giving up her bed, Cameron had fixed John with her best neutral stare. “I don’t sleep.”
Sarah meanwhile was busying herself checking all the locks on doors and windows and setting the alarm system. Cameron watched her from the kitchen archway as she keyed in the alarm code and despite her obvious exhaustion, took a book from the bookshelf and shoved a small handgun into the waistband of her pants before heading for a chair in the living room.
“You should sleep. Your body is extremely enervated.”
Sarah ignored her, settling down on the armchair furthest from the kitchen so that she would not be a distraction. Coming up behind Cameron John seconded the terminators advice.
“Mom, you really look like hell, you need to sleep.”
“Hey, don’t worry about me; I’m not going to bed until you two are finished with your ones and zero’s in there. Someone has to be on guard while the Landmine is out of commission.” That settled she opened her book and proceeded to pretend to be reading. Conversation over.
John sighed but let it go. There was absolutely no arguing with his mother when she was like this…though on second thought, there was never any arguing with his mother, so really it was business as usual.
Cameron and John settled themselves at the kitchen table. John had several sheets of paper in front of him with the complex codes that Cameron had given him to activate her directive’s receptive state. If he understood her correctly, this failsafe would only allow him to make minor shifts in her programming. He should be able to disable her imperative to remove all human obstacles between them and get cosy, but he might not be able to remove the directive entirely. Apparently the verbal coding that future John had put in place had not been thoroughly tested…there hadn’t been time.
He also could not change anything that was hard wired, like her termination overrides. Those were coded directly into her chip, which is why the damage she’d sustained in the jeep explosion had caused a reset.
John had never managed to get a straight answer from her about whether the hasty repairs he had made to her chip, her own self analysis and repair, or simply being rebooted, had renewed the override. She just ignored the question. It was possible that she herself didn’t know. While this did not exactly give him peace of mind, he had to allow that she had some right to privacy as far as her own systems were concerned.
“You’re nervous.” Sitting across from him Cameron was looking at John with something that looked like a combination of concern and reservation. Since he was about to rearrange her software with nothing but a handful of written notes and good intentions, John couldn’t bring himself to blame her.
“You’re heart rate is elevated and you’re sweating…are you confidant that you can execute this procedure?”
“I’m good.” John laid out the sheets in order. “Just like programming a vcr.”
“Sarah programmed the vcr.”
“Well, then we’ll just have to trust that I could have done it better.”
Cameron raised one eyebrow, a human trick that she rather liked for its effectiveness in adding various nuances to a conversation. “You can tell her that.”
John coughed to cover a laugh. “Let’s get started shall we?”
The sun was just coming over the horizon when John finally obtained access to Cameron’s directive programs. Future John had built in multiple technical hoops to jump through and tests designed to ascertain that it was actually John Connor trying to gain entry and not a terminator using his voice. And it all seemed to be for nothing as John was having absolutely no luck removing the directive.
He had come at it from every direction he could think of, and he could access the program, given in monotone by a blank eyed Cameron,
“Directive: 00002
System Mode: Infiltration
Target: John Connor
Instructions: Secure primary affections and discourage outside competition.
Provide support and companionship; simulating human affection until spontaneous replication can be achieved.”
John tried removing the directive all together, only to be informed that he lacked authorization to deactivate active directives. He tried inserting “do not” into the code…and got
“That modification would contradict the Primary Directive.”
He tried removing key words to try and disarm the effectiveness of the program, but no matter what he tried, Cameron’s inflectionless voice found a way around it. Eventually he was issued a warning that further attempts to undermine the integrity of this directive would result in a 24 hour lock out.
Almost pulling his hair out in frustration John got up from the table and paced, trying to figure out some way to change the wording in the code that would maintain its integrity as beneficial to him, John Connor, but not force Cameron to throw Riley, and anyone else he happened to like, out a window. Not to mention giving Derek ample ammunition to insist on her deactivation
Walking past the doorway to the living room for the fifth time, John’s attention was caught by his mother…she had fallen asleep over the book. The weak sunlight filtering in through the blinds was just enough to illuminate the dark circles under eyes, and the worry lines etched into the skin around her mouth and between her eyebrows. Even asleep she looked beleaguered.
John fleetingly wished that there was someone strong enough to take better care of his mother. He had people looking out for him…he glanced back at Cameron’s rigid figure…too many in fact, but she had no one. He was also painfully aware of the fact that his mother would never let him put her welfare before his own, and it wouldn’t occur to Derek to try. There had been Charley…but after his wife’s death he no longer wanted anything to do with them…
Reluctantly returning to the table, John looked down at the vacant terminator and got the barest hint of an idea. His mother would kill him if she found out…but she didn’t ever need to know. Cameron herself had admitted that she may be unaware of the specifics of minor changes to her lesser directives unless he told her about them. Future John had been very upfront about what he was asking her to do, but this John knew the benefits of a covert operation. He sat down with a grin…all he needed to do was a little substitution.
“Cameron. Reset directive 0002. Change target to Sarah Connor.” Cameron blinked and John held his breath, waiting to be told he was locked out.
"Affirmative. Reset and replacement is acceptable. Directive has been modified."
There….with the smug assurance known only to teenagers, thoroughly convinced of their superior understanding of life, John congratulated himself on devising a solution that would be good for everyone. That would teach them to assume he couldn’t think for himself, and it wasn’t like a hard bitten warrior like Sarah Connor was ever going to be susceptible to the wiles of a petite 16 year old girl anyhow, terminator or not.
.