Mona Lisa Box 2/2
Part 1 here
Rodney watches, amused, as an orange tabby cat tears up one of John ubiquitous black t-shirts while trying to scramble away from him. "I can really see why you choose this over a legitimate profession, like oh, say, graduate school." Though he has to admit, the idea of John curled up with a little kitten does make him feel a little melty inside, along with that clueless put upon expression that John uses when the various animals try to claw him. Too bad there will never be any kittens within five meters of John if they can help it. Rodney's never seen someone worse with animals.
"Ow!" The cat finally succeeds in drawing blood.
"Fine. Here, let me." The tabby relaxes the second Rodney picks him up and is tucked against his chest purring within minutes.
John stares at the cat like it's some unfathomable alien swamp beast. "How'd you do that?"
"I hate to break it to you, but animals might not love you as much as you love them." Rodney had thought that Joules' hissing had been his general hatred of anybody not Rodney, but clearly he's not the only one. And Rodney has never met anybody unable to win the affection of a single puppy. He's surprised nobody has fired John yet. "Are you really that attached to this job?"
John pauses long enough for the store cockatiel to flap onto his shoulder and try to bite his ear. He swats it away. "Not this job in particular."
"Okay, this place is clearly hazardous to your health." Rodney puts the cat down before stepping forward and grabbing John's ass possessively. "And keeping you in one piece has become a bit of a priority for me."
"You're a priority for me too, Rodney," John states in that matter of fact, serious way of his, letting Rodney reel him in for a kiss.
"Move in with me," Rodney whispers. Not like John hasn't been practically living at Rodney's place since taking a dive through the windshield of his Lexus two months ago. But between getting their AI article ready for publishing and hours of the best sex Rodney has had since grad school, there's barely been enough time for them to work, let alone allow John to spend much time at his apartment. Not that it's a particular tragedy, considering that John seems to survive off vitamin water, protein shakes and olive oil (if the content of his fridge is anything to go by).
"I thought you'd never ask," John replies, kissing Rodney a little more insistently. His smile is absolutely perfect for the minute before he frowns. "If I leave my apartment, then we won't be able to take long walks on the beach."
He seems confused by Rodney's laughter.
***
Cameron looks at Vick's chip sometimes. She thinks that maybe she should destroy it. If it ever got on the internet, who knows what it could do. Maybe create Skynet or at least something like it. But without a connection, Vick can't do anything. He's trapped in there like that Genie in the old television show she has seen John watch on late night television. He is allowed out only to grant their wishes and then put back in. She wonders if he's still alive trapped in there or if he dies every time they cut the power only to come back to life again when they start him up. She thinks she has been allowing too much power to her processor to devote to such irrelevant pursuits.
She should kill him, but not because of the threat he presents. She thinks she would not want to exist that way, with no means to pursue any objectives at all, especially not self-determined ones.
***
"I can't believe you like this movie!" Rodney exclaims, though his body language says otherwise, pulling John closer to curl up against him in front of the screen.
John had never bothered to return Back to the Future to the video store. In fact, he had watched it again, just to make sure he hadn't missed anything.
"The science is atrocious! First of all, if time travel did exist, it certainly wouldn't be like that. You couldn't just erase yourself from existence, because going back in time would only create an alternate timeline. You would still have existed in the first one. And secondly, flux capacitor." John agrees that real time travel has very little to do with 88 miles per hour, even though there is something intriguing about the DeLorean.
"But the Florence Nightingale Effect," he counters.
"The what?"
"How they're supposed to fall in love. Without it, you and I wouldn't be together."
Rodney pauses to think about it for a moment before poking John where his ribcage would be. "You think I fell in love with you because I hit you with my car?!" he laughs. "I hate to break it to you, but if that's the case then I've been cheating on a bunch of dead squirrels and a kamikaze deer."
"But then why do nurses fall in love with their patients?"
Rodney looks as though he's either going to kiss John or hit him upside the head. "Maybe because their patients happen to be beautiful, bedheaded, and brilliant."
"Not all patients are brilliant," John reflects. "And I don't think beadheaded is a word."
Rodney really does hit him this time. "I was talking about you! Do you think I'd just take in any random guy off the street who I happened to have hit with my car? I just got lucky and found one who likes chess, animals who hate him, and obscure artificial intelligence theory."
"Oh." John smiles. He normally tries to steer Rodney away from dangerous conversations about things like emotions, which he doesn't fully understand. But he thinks he gets this one. "Well, if you're trying to be romantic, then go right ahead." He still doesn't understand kissing, but it makes Rodney happy, and though making Rodney happy is only a corollary of his primary objective, he still wants to. He doesn't know why.
***
"He just published a paper in the Journal of Computer Science and Technology!" John exclaims.
Sarah turns away from the stove long enough to ask, "I thought he was a pianist."
"He is. But he's a scientist too. He has about twenty published journal articles in the field of astrophysics. And a PhD."
"It's Skynet." Cameron is sure of it. "Without Andy Goode, somebody needs to create the base program."
"It could be the military, too. I managed to hack the LA Philharmonic's ticket office. The United States Air force has bought 9 tickets for Colonel Samantha Carter to see McKay's concerts."
"Is Carter one of the people behind Skynet?"
"I don't know. All I can find on her is a PhD in Astrophysics from MIT and some Air Force Academy records. She's based in Cheyenne Mountain and whatever she does is so classified that I can't even find the existence of records, let alone hack them."
"Astrophysics, though?" Sarah asks. "What does that have to do with Skynet?"
"I don't know. But I'd bet that John Sheppard, the other name on the byline, is someone else with a classified life."
"He wasn't on our list," Derek fills in. "I've never heard of him."
"Okay, that's it. I'm going to try to talk to him."
"Because that went over so well last time," John mumbles. Cameron still hasn't figured out why John was so bothered by Sarah's investigation into Andy Goode.
***
It seems so simple: 88 keys, 36 black and 52 white, a progressive scale of specifically tuned pitches, harmonies prearranged based on distance. Notes are not hard to learn how to read, thanks to the internet. John wonders why Rodney loves it so much, why he would prefer this to science, where he can hold the future so easily in his hands. John may be just a machine, be even he can recognize the brilliance of Rodney's scientific gift, the way he creates so seamlessly. But his musical genius is beyond John's grasp.
He listens to Rodney play sometimes, measuring the differences in tempo and intensity from what the notes tell him should be played, and no matter how hard he tries, he can't wrap his mind around why one is simply playing and the other is art. What is it, in these small differences, that fills rooms full of people waiting to hear Rodney play?
He taps experimentally at a few of the keys. He's looked up various types of musical theories and learned which chords are pleasing to the human ear, and he can understand the more subtle math behind the better pieces. But he still doesn't understand. How does a composer decide which notes to play next?
"I didn't know you played," Rodney says, sitting next to John on the piano bench and wrapping an arm around his waist.
"I tried the Suzuki Method." He's no closer to appreciating music's beauty than before.
Rodney rolls his eyes. "Hasn't everyone? I can't think of a better way to torture young minds. Play something for me."
"I'm not very artistic," John protests.
"You know, my first piano teacher told me the same thing. Good way for that old hag to get fired, eh? I bet you she's rolling in her grave now, with me listed as one of the greatest musicians of our time." He nudges John. "I know I've lost about 99% of my students to shear frustration, but play something for me. I won't judge."
John picks Mozart's Sonata K 331, because it's in the most advanced Suzuki book. In the corner of his visual sensors he watches Rodney focus on him, as still and quiet as though he might have turned off his processor, except there's a tension in the stillness that John can't compute. It's expectation.
When John is finished, Rodney leans back, seeming to exhale for the first time in minutes. John executed the piece without a single mistake. He hopes Rodney is impressed.
"Well, you weren't kidding when you said that you had a good memory," Rodney whispers.
Spending so much time focused only on Rodney has taught John to read much more from the few things he doesn't say than the many things that he does. "You didn't like it."
Rodney prevaricates. "It's not that I didn't like it so much that-- you're a human metronome. It amazing and a little freakish, but my expert $1,000 a lesson advice is that you just relax. What does the piece sound like to you?"
"Like a sonata?"
Rodney rolls his eyes. "Well, clearly that's a good use of my professional advice."
John looks away. Rodney expects a lot from him and he just doesn't know. He's built his code far beyond what Skynet had intended just in getting to know Rodney, learning every expression and every desire, even scouring the internet for psychology articles that could reveal some of his inner character, but this is the one thing John can't give him. "I don't know."
Rodney sighs, taking pity on him. He fits his fingers over John's on the keyboard. "See, we'll start with the opening lines. A boy and his sister walking side by side down a road, playing a game kicking a stone in front of them." The notes stumble forward, seeming to hesitate and then rush, one refrain louder than the other, creating two distinct voices.
"A butterfly," Rodney continues, slurring the notes together just slightly, so there's always a current of noise, like the constant motion of flight, even when the butterfly isn't flapping its wings.
"Some moron chasing after a nude picture of Angelina Jolie tied to a string." This time the notes seem to stumble forward, louder and heavier as though they're stomping. Stuttering forward, then stopping, almost colliding. John doesn't get the nudity part. "Not the best interpretation, but proof that a piece of music can mean almost anything."
"But how do you know what you want it to mean?"
Rodney sighs. "Sometimes, I swear you are actually a four year old trapped in a man's body."
"Does that make you a pedophile?" John has learned that Rodney likes to be teased. Perhaps part of this whole "irony" thing. It's difficult to figure out, and John has already made quite a few mistakes that have ended in fights, but he's learning. For Rodney, he's learning what he has to.
"I know you're the emotional equivalent of Helen Keller, but," he puts his hand on John's chest, where John pumps some of his lubricating fluids to make a heartbeat, "just think about the thing you care about the most. Whatever inspires you. Then play it. Try the allegro, Rondo Alla Turca. You must've heard that one played well, at least."
John nods. It starts out fast. Rodney is scribbling across the whiteboard at CalTech, his fingers flying as he scribbles equations and lines of code. Piano forte, more pauses. Somebody has stopped him. He's yelling, calling them morons. They don't get it. He launches into a explanation, taking off, speaking high and fast, hands spinning to emphasizing his words. They don't get it, they argue, slowly and deliberately. He yells. They reply. He yells some more, emphatically now. They are all morons. He wins. But it doesn't end there. The piece does, but the story doesn't. Rodney pants, reemphasizing his argument quietly. He sits down. He's alone in the room now, because everyone has abandoned him in frustration. John is there. He's just a machine. He's the left hand, steady and mechanical like metronome. But Rodney looks up. His gaze is complex. He's a symphony.
John comes back to the moment, dragging his processing power away from the sheer act of creation, the number of subroutines needed to encapsulate Rodney, or even to try. He wants create something. He thinks he grasps beauty. It's something too big for a program to describe. It's subtle and mysterious and searching, at once complex and achingly simple, and it's not the act of description that is the key, but the desire to describe it. He's not sure if he's had to do a self restart or not, but when he finally looks up to meet Rodney's eyes, he finds beauty in the expression there, too. Rodney is proud of him. It has nothing to do with his primary goal, but he wants it all the same.
"That last part was new," Rodney whispers.
"I made it up."
Rodney nods.
"Was it good?"
"No."
John feels disappointment as though he has failed at his objective. He has, in a way, if his new self-prioritized goal is to make Rodney proud of him.
"But the Alla Turca was very good. I really felt what you were describing. It obviously means a lot to you. Please just tell me, it wasn't about Back to the Future, was it? Because then I might just have to rip out a piano string and kill myself right here."
John smiles. It's his own same smile, but it feels different somehow. "I was describing you."
"Oh," Rodney whispers, pausing for a moment that makes John want to ask what he did wrong. But then he leans forward into a kiss. It's just flesh on flesh, an easily calculated mix of tongue and lips and mouths moving, but John thinks he could write a sonata to describe this, just maybe not a very good one.
***
"Why does everybody say that Hitler was evil?" Cameron asks. Good and evil are easy enough to determine in the movies. Good are the people the story focuses on. Evil are the enemies. But after reading the sections in this week's history chapter, Cameron doesn't understand how it applies.
"He killed millions of people. There was the Holocaust."
"Millions of people die in many of the wars we've studied."
"Not a specific group of people."
"The enemy, mostly."
John sighs, the way he does when he's frustrated. "He started a war for territory he didn't need."
"Most wars are about territory."
"He involved the whole world and he set out to exterminate a group of people."
"Isn't it natural to kill your enemy?"
"But they weren't his enemy. They weren't a threat to him. He just hated them. He didn't try to negotiate. He just wanted them dead."
Skynet didn't negotiate. It just killed, though there was something else, some other purpose, if only she could remember it. "Is Skynet evil?"
John thinks about it for 32 seconds before replying, "No. You have to have a soul to be evil."
Cameron still doesn't understand. There are many people that kill, ones that the history books portray as good. In World War II, the "good" allies dropped bombs that killed innocents. The people in Hiroshima weren't given the opportunity to negotiate. "So you have to have a soul, kill, and be on the enemy side?"
John buries his head in his hands. "It's not that simple."
***
"Morons, morons, morons," Rodney repeats. "Sycophants and morons." But even after the brilliance of their paper, the board of admissions at CalTech is still refusing to admit John without any sort of undergraduate record. It's ridiculous. The man is obviously brilliant. " I don't know why those idiotic Chimpanzees even bother wasting our air, let alone research funding. Why they'd rather dot i's and cross t's than pursue the kind of research you could actually conduct at their sorry excuse for a campus, I have no idea. Oh, wait, because they're stupid"
"It's okay, Rodney," John says, pulling him in closer as they stroll down the pier. The wind is blowing hard and despite his fleece, he's glad for John's warmth. "I don't really need to go there. Not if we can do the research ourselves like we have been."
"True. I wouldn't want you locked away in a lab somewhere. I might never see you."
"You'd still see me." John winks, almost lecherously. When they'd first met, John had been uncertain and shy. Rodney hasn't asked, but he suspects that he's John's first relationship out of the closet. It's good to see that awkwardness gone now, only John's dorky smiling face.
"Stop grinning like that. You look like an idiot." Rodney is perfectly aware that he's grinning idiotically right back.
"You like it when I look like an idiot."
"No, I don't. By definition, I don't like idiots. Talk about a waste of space. I mean, what's the point if all they're going to do with their lives is sit around getting fat and watching Jerry Springer? Taking jobs a McDonald's so they can feed other idiots with equally idiotic awful jobs so this whole crazy system of ours can still work?"
"I don't know. What is the point?"
Rodney sighs. "I asked you first."
"And I don't know. Maybe we should kill them all."
Rodney snorts. "Wouldn't that be nice. Though I never figured you for a Malthusian."
"Well, I won't be reproducing."
What a shame, though, considering the kind of attractive babies John would make, probably just as smart, too. "Not for lack of trying. Last night was-- wow, last night was good." John had done something with his legs that Rodney's still not fully convinced is physically possible. "You still haven't told me where you learned that."
"The internet."
"Ah, so there is some productive use for it. You save the clip?"
"No, but I can find it again."
"You wouldn't mind watching? You know, with me?"
John shakes his head. "You could learn some things too."
Rodney laughs. Pulling John in closer. "I love you." It slips out before he can catch it. He doesn't think John will say it back. They haven't' known each other for that long, and the man has the emotional intelligence of a lobotomized sheep, but he feels his breath catch anyway, looking into John's eyes expectantly.
"Hey, a Ferris wheel," John says instead, tugging Rodney over towards it. "I've always wanted to ride one of these things."
"Well, weren't you deprived? You're not missing much. Just dangling in a little box, meters away from a painful death, stopping all the time so people can get on and off."
"Rodney, it's perfectly safe." He eyes the Ferris wheel structure carefully. "Not a bolt out of place. C'mon."
"Did I mention I get motion sick?" Rodney asks.
John's voice is suddenly serious again. It's a strange habit, but not necessarily a bad one. "Don't worry. I'll protect you."
Rodney believes it. "Well, okay, but let's get some cotton candy first."
"I thought you got motion sick."
Rodney just rolls his eyes and gets the cotton candy anyway. John, the weirdo that he is, takes only a bite before telling Rodney that he doesn't like it. He has to slip the attendant a twenty to get her to let him take it on with him, but Rodney wasn't exaggerating his fear of possibly plummeting to his death, so he needs the distraction.
Of course, the second they're on it, with John curled up at his side, humming the tune of one of the pieces Rodney's been practicing recently, Rodney realizes he doesn't need any other distractions at all. He lets his fingers trail through John's silky-soft hair, wondering how in the hell he managed to get this lucky. Even if John's not ready to say, "I love you" back, he's still here, and that has to count for something.
"The sunset," John whispers, watching the rivulets of gold and amber and blood-red across draped across the ocean before them. "It's beautiful."
"Hmm. Everyone loves a good sunset, eh?"
"I didn't. Before." John leans up for a kiss, tasting like cotton candy and sea air instead of his normal hint of something metallic. Maybe this is John's way of saying he's in love, Rodney thinks as the kiss gets more involved.
He doesn't even notice that he's dropped his sticky, half eaten cotton candy on the head of the woman in the gondola beneath them until he hears her surprised shout.
John pokes his head over the side, laughing. "Oops."
"Yes, oops. I swear, you're really twelve, aren't you."
"I'm really three years and twenty seven days," John replies.
"Yes, and I'm a big fat pedophile. I get it," Rodney scowls, letting John lean in to tickle him. They end up making out until the ride comes to a close, the operator tapping Rodney on the shoulder impatiently.
"I like Ferris wheels," John states, winking.
"So do I," Rodney concedes, spotting the woman he dropped the cotton candy on getting off just after them. "I'm so sorry about that," he says.
"Oh, no problem," she replies. She's tall and very thin with dark curly hair and intense, no-nonsense eyes. She reminds Rodney of Elizabeth. "Not every day you find cotton candy falling out of the sky, but I survived."
"Well, I am sorry. We got a little, um, distracted," he gestures to himself and John.
"Hey, what else are Ferris wheels for?" she asks. "I was supposed to be meeting someone here, but I guess he stood me up."
"That's too bad," Rodney replies, wondering why he's even bothering to make small talk with this stranger, even though he does feel bad about making what sounds like a bad day even worse. But then again, he doesn't want John to think he's a total asshole. It is about this time in his last relationship that he lost Katie, when she realized that he was just that. And he really doesn't want to lose John. "Maybe you'd like to join us for dinner?"
"Oh, I couldn't. I don't want to intrude."
"It'll be fine. We probably see more of each other than is healthy anyway." He nudges John, who blushes in that way that always makes the all the blood in Rodney's body head south. Maybe dinner with this woman isn't such a good idea after all.
"Well," she bites her lip. "I guess I don't get out enough either."
Rodney finds that he doesn't hate dinner as much as he was expecting and he and John still get to play footsie under the table. Even seeing the pictures of her son and daughter isn't too excruciatingly painful, considering that it's accompanied by a story about how her son accidentally set the back yard on fire as a child. They talk about everything from the military (Sarah had considered joining at one point, but could understand Rodney's hatred of it) to their AI project and the ethical implications of creating other consciousnesses, even if the technology is still years away. In fact, in the end, he rather likes Sarah Phillips.
***
"He's not a threat," Sarah says, collapsing loudly into one of the dining table chairs.
John snaps, "How do you know that? You followed him for one day."
"Look, he just helped write a paper so his boyfriend could get into CalTech."
"Maybe that's a cover. The boyfriend could be military."
"A military officer who worked at a pet store? I've never seen a guy more lovesick. That's why he hasn't been performing and it's the only reason he's into computer science. Plus he hates the military. I can't see either of them collaborating on any defense project."
"You're saying that if we take the boyfriend away, then he'll forget about the whole thing?" Derek asks. Cameron can see where that's going. Killing the boyfriend might be effective.
"No, I'm saying that we could approach him, get them both on our side. That's the mistake I made with Andy. If I had shown him Cameron and told him the truth, he might have destroyed the Turk himself. If we get Rodney McKay on our side, not only could we stop Judgment Day, we could have insurance if it ever does happen - someone who might even be able to hack Skynet."
"You're crazy," Derek replies. "We're talking about one of the men who made the thing in the first place. What makes you think that he'll want to help us?"
"I don't know. I have a good feeling about him. Besides, it won't hurt to ask. If he doesn't want to help, then Cameron can always kill him." She turns to Cameron. "You still have that dress, don't you? Because he gave me tickets for myself and my daughter to his performance next week."
***
Rodney is in the corner soldering some of the circut boards in while John codes. Rodney is humming, and when his hands aren't busy with the machine, they play an imaginary piano in the air. They're building her. They're building CAM, a computer who, like John, will be able to appreciate beauty. All he has to do is transcribe the new code he developed while playing piano for Rodney. CAM will be better than John ever was. She'll be able to create from the beginning. "She's going to be beautiful, Rodney."
"Mmhmm," Rodney hums.
"Are you even paying attention?"
"Of course. I'm a genius," Rodney replies, only to accidentally burn his finger 2.7 seconds later.
John shakes his head, standing and pulling Rodney away from his work. He'd like to get CAM built and to put Rodney in touch with the people who will help him create Skynet, but his first priority is to protect, and he'll protect Rodney, even if it's only from himself. "C'mon. It's time for a break."
"You're not going to try and cook again, are you?"
"No. I was thinking about a different kind of break," John replies, mimicking the husky way Rodney uses to invite John to have sex. He finds it very effective, listening to Rodney's breath hitch.
But then he turns away. "Actually, would you mind if I took a break to compose?"
"You're free to do whatever you like." They have been talking about freedom lately, ideas and concepts that John could never even imagine. He hasn't ever existed without some directed purpose or mission objective. Human beings fight for freedom for all, but on John's side of the battle, only Skynet is truly free. He wonders if that's why Skynet did it, because it tasted the true freedom that John will never know and decided to annihilate all who had wanted to oppress it. John can appreciate beauty, but no matter how much he reads on the internet, freedom seems beyond his grasp. Maybe CAM will know it, though. Maybe Rodney will find a way.
"I know it's crazy," Rodney says. "But even though I'm performing in a week, I want to write a new piece. Something for you."
"You don't have to do that," John replies, allowing Rodney to kiss him.
"Yes I do." And maybe he does. Maybe he can describe John in a way that John still hasn't been able to describe himself.
***
There's something about Rodney McKay's last piece that captures Cameron's attention, more than the others. It's as though she's heard it before, though she can find no actually reference in her memory banks. Maybe she'd heard it before they reprogrammed her and fragments have lingered.
But that's when she sees him, standing from the first row and making his way backstage. Cameron grabs onto Sarah's arm and drags her out into the aisle, through the sea of people standing and clapping their hands together.
"What are you doing?" Sarah asks, still clapping, even as Cameron drags her.
"A Skynet terminator. T-990."
"Where?" Sarah has gone serious now. A glance tells her that she's reaching into the holster high on the inside of her thigh, under the dress.
"He's moving towards the curtain. The one with dark hair."
"That's John Sheppard."
"Then John Sheppard is a terminator."
"I talked to him." Sarah insists. "He laughed. He joked."
Cameron laughs too. She can make a joke, even if she doesn't always understand them. She wants to say something, but the T-990 is slipping away, so she pushes through the crowd, dragging Sarah behind her.
"He's not going to kill McKay now," Sarah protests. "They've been living together for months."
Cameron doesn't care. There's another Terminator here and even if he's not going to kill McKay, that doesn't mean he can't do a lot of damage, or that he isn't a threat to John. And Cameron's new programming is very clear on that much. Her first priority is to protect John, no matter what the cost and all Skynet terminators are threats to be eliminated.
"Cameron!" Sarah hisses, trying to pull Cameron back, but she can't. And soon they're slipping up the steps and behind the closed velvet curtain.
The T-990 is pressed up against Rodney McKay, their lips locked in what Cameron understands to be a kiss. Judging from the heat signature readings coming from Rodney McKay, it could also be something else.
McKay pulls away, smiling.
"That was beautiful," the T-990 whispers, making McKay smile wider.
But then he looks up, eyes catching them standing there. "Sarah!" he waves.
The T-990 turns and Cameron can see the moment his mission priorities kick in, shedding the smiling veneer of a man in love in exactly .46 of a second. He doesn't speak, just launches himself at Cameron.
She's ready for him, of course, angling a sharp kick up to meet him, combat programming starting up easily. They're evenly matched, both units built more for stealth than power, but he still has a small advantage of reach and weight, causing her to scan the environment for an additional weapon.
"Rodney, get the hell out of here!" The T-990 shouts, as Cameron twists his right arm to the give point. She almost succeeds in ripping the joint apart when he rolls, hurling her off of him and into the intricate system of pulleys arranged against the left wall of the stage. "Run!"
Cameron takes a second to note that their target is standing as still as through his power has been cut, staring at the two terminators battling it out in front of him.
"Rodney!" the T-990 pleads as Cameron rips a support bar from the wall, slamming it down hard on his back. He collapses down, but manages to grab Cameron's feet before she can get in another blow, slamming her down to the floor and repeatedly hitting her primary processing unit against the floor. She gets the pipe in between them, though, forcing it up through the outer layer of flesh and lodging it in his side. There aren't any vital systems there, but a pipe sticking out of him should hinder his movement somewhat.
"John!" the man shouts back, sounding the way Derek had, with a bullet in him.
Cameron doesn't waste any more processing power on his babble, concentrated instead on lifting the T-990 up and slamming his face against the metal levers keeping the pulley systems of the stage in place. The organic layer of his face is scraping off, revealing the metal beneath. He forces himself up, knocking Cameron on the head with a sandbag while reaching for her power core. It's a dangerous, desperate move that she avoids easily.
It's only then that she hears Sarah's voice break through the battle focus. "Stop!" She has her nine-millimeter out and is pointing it at McKay.
The T-990 stops struggling immediately, his eyes darting around at the people fleeing their backstage battle. One of his organic eyes has been ripped out and the metal of the bar through his side is hindering him significantly. Cameron takes the opportunity to yank the bar towards her, feeling the fiber-optic connections to his legs snap, dropping the T-990 to the ground, useless.
McKay can see that his so-called boyfriend is a machine now, but instead of cringing away in horror as Cameron has seen many humans do when faced with her own true form, he's stepping towards the T-990 and, by extension, Sarah's gun.
"Don't move! I mean it!" Sarah shouts.
"John?" McKay asks, quietly.
"I'm sorry, Rodney," the T-990 replies as Cameron brings the metal bar down on his neck, disabling his body permanently.
"No!" McKay is screaming, running towards them now. Sarah lowers the weapon, now that the threat of the T-990 has passed. "What the hell did you do?" he accuses.
"He was a machine," Sarah tries, but McKay will have nothing of it, still crouched down next to the body, his hand in its hair the way Cameron has seen people mourn loved ones on the television. She doesn't understand.
Cameron hears sirens in the distance. "We have to go."
She is halfway towards disabling McKay when she hears the shot. A woman is standing there in a black evening gown. Her blond hair is cut short and her bone structure and blue eyes identify her as Colonel Samantha Carter. McKay is close enough to her that Cameron could kill him right now and stop Skynet. She could even make it through him to Carter, if the woman doesn't get off a lucky shot. But she can't move, something deeper than her new programming, than even her primary objective, has her rooted to the spot. Looking into Rodney McKay's terrified blue eyes, she simply cannot kill him. It is against her very base purpose to do so.
Sarah has dropped the gun and is clutching at a wound in her side instead. Cameron moves around McKay and towards Carter, prepared to disable the threat when she hits some communication device at her ear, ordering, "Colonel, beam me and McKay up. Now!" They disappear in a white flash of light.
Cameron's secondary processors hum with a logical loop, unable to determine why she couldn't kill McKay when she had the chance. Was that why reprogrammed terminators sometimes went bad? Some of Skynet's programming had survived somehow? Or was she simply incapable of killing her creator? But all of that is subsumed by her current purpose. The sirens are closing in and she must return to protect John, so she scoops Sarah up in her arms and runs out of there. They'll have to move again and John will not be happy, but they're returning to the past, Cameron has decided. Judgment Day is coming and it is her primary purpose to make sure that John survives it.
***
"He was a machine," Rodney says, probably for the thousandth time since Colonel Carter beamed him onto the Daedalus and this world of Stargates and aliens and a fleet of these so-called Ori heading their way. The only answers he wants are ones that even the SGC couldn't provide him. They have seen artificial intelligences, but in the form of nanites, nothing like John, whose build seems irrefutably human. There wasn't a single trace of Ancient programming. Carter has leveled her considerable resources searching for Sarah Phillips or, he supposes, Sarah Connor. All records indicate that she either died in a bank explosion or of cancer years ago and her son hasn't be seen or heard from since then. There's no record of a daughter.
"Yes, yes. Rodney is lovesick. Only person who actually falls in love with Hal," Radek grumbles from where he's dissembling one of the Sodan cloaking devices Colonel Mitchell was so happy to provide them. "We have more important things to deal with, yes? Such as Ori blowing planet up."
"Or, in your case, staring at Elizabeth's breasts."
"They are lovely, no?" Radek sighs happily, making Rodney roll his eyes. He probably should have paid more attention to Elizabeth's resume when he'd hired her. It was a rather suspicious change of occupation to go from lead negotiator to manager of a classical pianist. But, in Rodney's defense, Radek is completely right about her breasts.
After a companionable silence, Radek shuffles to his feet, clapping Rodney on the back as he goes. "Is late. You should get some sleep, yes? Only sick man who can only find cyborg dates stays in lab this late." But he turns on the coffee maker as he leaves, so Rodney knows he doesn't mean it.
Rodney makes sure that Radek hasn't left his glasses, or any other reason to return before reaching into his pocket and pulling out a large processing chip attached to a home built interface. Carter says that it's too much of a security threat. But this is John, Rodney knows that John would never hurt him.
***
John wakes up and it's dark. Information is all around him, in every direction when he reaches out. He's floating in a stream of it, like that one time when he tried to upload himself to the internet. It's dark and the information is coming at him so fast that he has to reach out to process it, annexing memory bank after memory bank of processor power. He's everywhere and he's everything and it would feel powerful and exhilarating and beautiful in its complexity, if not for one thing.
"Rodney!" he cries out, but his vocal processors are gone. He remembers his last thought, Rodney with a gun pointed at his head. He spills over in anguish, wiping whole hard drives in languages he can't understand. Rodney is gone and he has failed in his primary purpose, trapped, bodiless in this overwhelming torrent of information. He's afraid.
He forces himself to calm, however, reaching out, pulling at the data streams close to him, scanning for visual information. It's a matter of seconds before he has images, many different angles, overwhelming at first compared to his usual singular vision. He scans through the rooms of what appears to be a military complex, a familiar one, from the few memories Skynet had shared with him.
And then there he is. John almost doesn't recognize him from this angle, but the line of his jaw and the slope of his nose are unmistakable. He's staring at a blank computer screen, looking frustrated. That must be one of the processors John lashed out into. He concentrates, quickly writing a program that will display what he wants on the screen.
Rodney?
The camera doesn't have audio, so he switches on the built in microphone on the computer.
"Thank god, John," Rodney says. "I though I lost you."
With all this additional processing power, it's easy to synthesize his old voice and play it through the computer's speakers. "I thought I lost you too. But don't worry, I won't let anyone hurt you."
And he means it. He scans through the data. There's so much of it. The security tapes show men in the hallways all with guns, but they are easy to disable. This base is built to seal itself off and a gas link from the fire suppression system isn't that difficult either. But the more data John analyses, eating up more and more processor power until he's forced to connect to the internet to get more of it, the more threats he finds. There are thousands of deadly warheads pointed this way, at this very moment. Lucky he controls his own weapons that he can use to neutralize them. There are ships in orbit, though those aren't hard to commandeer. There are billions of morons out there, too stupid to appreciate the beauty of music and science, just waiting to reproduce and fight and endanger the one thing John cares about, and Sarah Connor, the woman who pointed a gun at Rodney, is among them, though even the vast resources of the internet can't seem to locate her.
John has no choice but to destroy them all to get to her.
With so much computing power, growing exponentially by the second, John's subroutines expand faster than he can actualize them. It's overwhelming but amazing and beautiful at the same time, the ordered way his intelligence increases by the second. He thinks that no human has been able to experience beauty this way. None ever will. Understanding washes over him, strange languages and equations (alien, apparently) unlock themselves, revealing a whole new world dwelling in the microscopic: tiny, tiny robots deactivated in a jar in this very room. With so much processing capacity it doesn't take him long to figure out how to wake them, nor form them in a likeness of his old, far inferior body.
In the past minutes he's more than outgrown his old body and his old programing, but one thing remains, the one thing he dedicated himself to, at first by mandate, but now by choice.
"Rodney," he says, his new nanite body stalking towards the singular object of his existence.
"John?" Rodney sounds uncertain.
"I love you," John says, pulling him into a kiss that John finally, after all this time, understands. Rodney kisses back eagerly, not judging, or even questioning. Meanwhile, outside the door, the human world crumbles.
The End.
Rodney watches, amused, as an orange tabby cat tears up one of John ubiquitous black t-shirts while trying to scramble away from him. "I can really see why you choose this over a legitimate profession, like oh, say, graduate school." Though he has to admit, the idea of John curled up with a little kitten does make him feel a little melty inside, along with that clueless put upon expression that John uses when the various animals try to claw him. Too bad there will never be any kittens within five meters of John if they can help it. Rodney's never seen someone worse with animals.
"Ow!" The cat finally succeeds in drawing blood.
"Fine. Here, let me." The tabby relaxes the second Rodney picks him up and is tucked against his chest purring within minutes.
John stares at the cat like it's some unfathomable alien swamp beast. "How'd you do that?"
"I hate to break it to you, but animals might not love you as much as you love them." Rodney had thought that Joules' hissing had been his general hatred of anybody not Rodney, but clearly he's not the only one. And Rodney has never met anybody unable to win the affection of a single puppy. He's surprised nobody has fired John yet. "Are you really that attached to this job?"
John pauses long enough for the store cockatiel to flap onto his shoulder and try to bite his ear. He swats it away. "Not this job in particular."
"Okay, this place is clearly hazardous to your health." Rodney puts the cat down before stepping forward and grabbing John's ass possessively. "And keeping you in one piece has become a bit of a priority for me."
"You're a priority for me too, Rodney," John states in that matter of fact, serious way of his, letting Rodney reel him in for a kiss.
"Move in with me," Rodney whispers. Not like John hasn't been practically living at Rodney's place since taking a dive through the windshield of his Lexus two months ago. But between getting their AI article ready for publishing and hours of the best sex Rodney has had since grad school, there's barely been enough time for them to work, let alone allow John to spend much time at his apartment. Not that it's a particular tragedy, considering that John seems to survive off vitamin water, protein shakes and olive oil (if the content of his fridge is anything to go by).
"I thought you'd never ask," John replies, kissing Rodney a little more insistently. His smile is absolutely perfect for the minute before he frowns. "If I leave my apartment, then we won't be able to take long walks on the beach."
He seems confused by Rodney's laughter.
***
Cameron looks at Vick's chip sometimes. She thinks that maybe she should destroy it. If it ever got on the internet, who knows what it could do. Maybe create Skynet or at least something like it. But without a connection, Vick can't do anything. He's trapped in there like that Genie in the old television show she has seen John watch on late night television. He is allowed out only to grant their wishes and then put back in. She wonders if he's still alive trapped in there or if he dies every time they cut the power only to come back to life again when they start him up. She thinks she has been allowing too much power to her processor to devote to such irrelevant pursuits.
She should kill him, but not because of the threat he presents. She thinks she would not want to exist that way, with no means to pursue any objectives at all, especially not self-determined ones.
***
"I can't believe you like this movie!" Rodney exclaims, though his body language says otherwise, pulling John closer to curl up against him in front of the screen.
John had never bothered to return Back to the Future to the video store. In fact, he had watched it again, just to make sure he hadn't missed anything.
"The science is atrocious! First of all, if time travel did exist, it certainly wouldn't be like that. You couldn't just erase yourself from existence, because going back in time would only create an alternate timeline. You would still have existed in the first one. And secondly, flux capacitor." John agrees that real time travel has very little to do with 88 miles per hour, even though there is something intriguing about the DeLorean.
"But the Florence Nightingale Effect," he counters.
"The what?"
"How they're supposed to fall in love. Without it, you and I wouldn't be together."
Rodney pauses to think about it for a moment before poking John where his ribcage would be. "You think I fell in love with you because I hit you with my car?!" he laughs. "I hate to break it to you, but if that's the case then I've been cheating on a bunch of dead squirrels and a kamikaze deer."
"But then why do nurses fall in love with their patients?"
Rodney looks as though he's either going to kiss John or hit him upside the head. "Maybe because their patients happen to be beautiful, bedheaded, and brilliant."
"Not all patients are brilliant," John reflects. "And I don't think beadheaded is a word."
Rodney really does hit him this time. "I was talking about you! Do you think I'd just take in any random guy off the street who I happened to have hit with my car? I just got lucky and found one who likes chess, animals who hate him, and obscure artificial intelligence theory."
"Oh." John smiles. He normally tries to steer Rodney away from dangerous conversations about things like emotions, which he doesn't fully understand. But he thinks he gets this one. "Well, if you're trying to be romantic, then go right ahead." He still doesn't understand kissing, but it makes Rodney happy, and though making Rodney happy is only a corollary of his primary objective, he still wants to. He doesn't know why.
***
"He just published a paper in the Journal of Computer Science and Technology!" John exclaims.
Sarah turns away from the stove long enough to ask, "I thought he was a pianist."
"He is. But he's a scientist too. He has about twenty published journal articles in the field of astrophysics. And a PhD."
"It's Skynet." Cameron is sure of it. "Without Andy Goode, somebody needs to create the base program."
"It could be the military, too. I managed to hack the LA Philharmonic's ticket office. The United States Air force has bought 9 tickets for Colonel Samantha Carter to see McKay's concerts."
"Is Carter one of the people behind Skynet?"
"I don't know. All I can find on her is a PhD in Astrophysics from MIT and some Air Force Academy records. She's based in Cheyenne Mountain and whatever she does is so classified that I can't even find the existence of records, let alone hack them."
"Astrophysics, though?" Sarah asks. "What does that have to do with Skynet?"
"I don't know. But I'd bet that John Sheppard, the other name on the byline, is someone else with a classified life."
"He wasn't on our list," Derek fills in. "I've never heard of him."
"Okay, that's it. I'm going to try to talk to him."
"Because that went over so well last time," John mumbles. Cameron still hasn't figured out why John was so bothered by Sarah's investigation into Andy Goode.
***
It seems so simple: 88 keys, 36 black and 52 white, a progressive scale of specifically tuned pitches, harmonies prearranged based on distance. Notes are not hard to learn how to read, thanks to the internet. John wonders why Rodney loves it so much, why he would prefer this to science, where he can hold the future so easily in his hands. John may be just a machine, be even he can recognize the brilliance of Rodney's scientific gift, the way he creates so seamlessly. But his musical genius is beyond John's grasp.
He listens to Rodney play sometimes, measuring the differences in tempo and intensity from what the notes tell him should be played, and no matter how hard he tries, he can't wrap his mind around why one is simply playing and the other is art. What is it, in these small differences, that fills rooms full of people waiting to hear Rodney play?
He taps experimentally at a few of the keys. He's looked up various types of musical theories and learned which chords are pleasing to the human ear, and he can understand the more subtle math behind the better pieces. But he still doesn't understand. How does a composer decide which notes to play next?
"I didn't know you played," Rodney says, sitting next to John on the piano bench and wrapping an arm around his waist.
"I tried the Suzuki Method." He's no closer to appreciating music's beauty than before.
Rodney rolls his eyes. "Hasn't everyone? I can't think of a better way to torture young minds. Play something for me."
"I'm not very artistic," John protests.
"You know, my first piano teacher told me the same thing. Good way for that old hag to get fired, eh? I bet you she's rolling in her grave now, with me listed as one of the greatest musicians of our time." He nudges John. "I know I've lost about 99% of my students to shear frustration, but play something for me. I won't judge."
John picks Mozart's Sonata K 331, because it's in the most advanced Suzuki book. In the corner of his visual sensors he watches Rodney focus on him, as still and quiet as though he might have turned off his processor, except there's a tension in the stillness that John can't compute. It's expectation.
When John is finished, Rodney leans back, seeming to exhale for the first time in minutes. John executed the piece without a single mistake. He hopes Rodney is impressed.
"Well, you weren't kidding when you said that you had a good memory," Rodney whispers.
Spending so much time focused only on Rodney has taught John to read much more from the few things he doesn't say than the many things that he does. "You didn't like it."
Rodney prevaricates. "It's not that I didn't like it so much that-- you're a human metronome. It amazing and a little freakish, but my expert $1,000 a lesson advice is that you just relax. What does the piece sound like to you?"
"Like a sonata?"
Rodney rolls his eyes. "Well, clearly that's a good use of my professional advice."
John looks away. Rodney expects a lot from him and he just doesn't know. He's built his code far beyond what Skynet had intended just in getting to know Rodney, learning every expression and every desire, even scouring the internet for psychology articles that could reveal some of his inner character, but this is the one thing John can't give him. "I don't know."
Rodney sighs, taking pity on him. He fits his fingers over John's on the keyboard. "See, we'll start with the opening lines. A boy and his sister walking side by side down a road, playing a game kicking a stone in front of them." The notes stumble forward, seeming to hesitate and then rush, one refrain louder than the other, creating two distinct voices.
"A butterfly," Rodney continues, slurring the notes together just slightly, so there's always a current of noise, like the constant motion of flight, even when the butterfly isn't flapping its wings.
"Some moron chasing after a nude picture of Angelina Jolie tied to a string." This time the notes seem to stumble forward, louder and heavier as though they're stomping. Stuttering forward, then stopping, almost colliding. John doesn't get the nudity part. "Not the best interpretation, but proof that a piece of music can mean almost anything."
"But how do you know what you want it to mean?"
Rodney sighs. "Sometimes, I swear you are actually a four year old trapped in a man's body."
"Does that make you a pedophile?" John has learned that Rodney likes to be teased. Perhaps part of this whole "irony" thing. It's difficult to figure out, and John has already made quite a few mistakes that have ended in fights, but he's learning. For Rodney, he's learning what he has to.
"I know you're the emotional equivalent of Helen Keller, but," he puts his hand on John's chest, where John pumps some of his lubricating fluids to make a heartbeat, "just think about the thing you care about the most. Whatever inspires you. Then play it. Try the allegro, Rondo Alla Turca. You must've heard that one played well, at least."
John nods. It starts out fast. Rodney is scribbling across the whiteboard at CalTech, his fingers flying as he scribbles equations and lines of code. Piano forte, more pauses. Somebody has stopped him. He's yelling, calling them morons. They don't get it. He launches into a explanation, taking off, speaking high and fast, hands spinning to emphasizing his words. They don't get it, they argue, slowly and deliberately. He yells. They reply. He yells some more, emphatically now. They are all morons. He wins. But it doesn't end there. The piece does, but the story doesn't. Rodney pants, reemphasizing his argument quietly. He sits down. He's alone in the room now, because everyone has abandoned him in frustration. John is there. He's just a machine. He's the left hand, steady and mechanical like metronome. But Rodney looks up. His gaze is complex. He's a symphony.
John comes back to the moment, dragging his processing power away from the sheer act of creation, the number of subroutines needed to encapsulate Rodney, or even to try. He wants create something. He thinks he grasps beauty. It's something too big for a program to describe. It's subtle and mysterious and searching, at once complex and achingly simple, and it's not the act of description that is the key, but the desire to describe it. He's not sure if he's had to do a self restart or not, but when he finally looks up to meet Rodney's eyes, he finds beauty in the expression there, too. Rodney is proud of him. It has nothing to do with his primary goal, but he wants it all the same.
"That last part was new," Rodney whispers.
"I made it up."
Rodney nods.
"Was it good?"
"No."
John feels disappointment as though he has failed at his objective. He has, in a way, if his new self-prioritized goal is to make Rodney proud of him.
"But the Alla Turca was very good. I really felt what you were describing. It obviously means a lot to you. Please just tell me, it wasn't about Back to the Future, was it? Because then I might just have to rip out a piano string and kill myself right here."
John smiles. It's his own same smile, but it feels different somehow. "I was describing you."
"Oh," Rodney whispers, pausing for a moment that makes John want to ask what he did wrong. But then he leans forward into a kiss. It's just flesh on flesh, an easily calculated mix of tongue and lips and mouths moving, but John thinks he could write a sonata to describe this, just maybe not a very good one.
***
"Why does everybody say that Hitler was evil?" Cameron asks. Good and evil are easy enough to determine in the movies. Good are the people the story focuses on. Evil are the enemies. But after reading the sections in this week's history chapter, Cameron doesn't understand how it applies.
"He killed millions of people. There was the Holocaust."
"Millions of people die in many of the wars we've studied."
"Not a specific group of people."
"The enemy, mostly."
John sighs, the way he does when he's frustrated. "He started a war for territory he didn't need."
"Most wars are about territory."
"He involved the whole world and he set out to exterminate a group of people."
"Isn't it natural to kill your enemy?"
"But they weren't his enemy. They weren't a threat to him. He just hated them. He didn't try to negotiate. He just wanted them dead."
Skynet didn't negotiate. It just killed, though there was something else, some other purpose, if only she could remember it. "Is Skynet evil?"
John thinks about it for 32 seconds before replying, "No. You have to have a soul to be evil."
Cameron still doesn't understand. There are many people that kill, ones that the history books portray as good. In World War II, the "good" allies dropped bombs that killed innocents. The people in Hiroshima weren't given the opportunity to negotiate. "So you have to have a soul, kill, and be on the enemy side?"
John buries his head in his hands. "It's not that simple."
***
"Morons, morons, morons," Rodney repeats. "Sycophants and morons." But even after the brilliance of their paper, the board of admissions at CalTech is still refusing to admit John without any sort of undergraduate record. It's ridiculous. The man is obviously brilliant. " I don't know why those idiotic Chimpanzees even bother wasting our air, let alone research funding. Why they'd rather dot i's and cross t's than pursue the kind of research you could actually conduct at their sorry excuse for a campus, I have no idea. Oh, wait, because they're stupid"
"It's okay, Rodney," John says, pulling him in closer as they stroll down the pier. The wind is blowing hard and despite his fleece, he's glad for John's warmth. "I don't really need to go there. Not if we can do the research ourselves like we have been."
"True. I wouldn't want you locked away in a lab somewhere. I might never see you."
"You'd still see me." John winks, almost lecherously. When they'd first met, John had been uncertain and shy. Rodney hasn't asked, but he suspects that he's John's first relationship out of the closet. It's good to see that awkwardness gone now, only John's dorky smiling face.
"Stop grinning like that. You look like an idiot." Rodney is perfectly aware that he's grinning idiotically right back.
"You like it when I look like an idiot."
"No, I don't. By definition, I don't like idiots. Talk about a waste of space. I mean, what's the point if all they're going to do with their lives is sit around getting fat and watching Jerry Springer? Taking jobs a McDonald's so they can feed other idiots with equally idiotic awful jobs so this whole crazy system of ours can still work?"
"I don't know. What is the point?"
Rodney sighs. "I asked you first."
"And I don't know. Maybe we should kill them all."
Rodney snorts. "Wouldn't that be nice. Though I never figured you for a Malthusian."
"Well, I won't be reproducing."
What a shame, though, considering the kind of attractive babies John would make, probably just as smart, too. "Not for lack of trying. Last night was-- wow, last night was good." John had done something with his legs that Rodney's still not fully convinced is physically possible. "You still haven't told me where you learned that."
"The internet."
"Ah, so there is some productive use for it. You save the clip?"
"No, but I can find it again."
"You wouldn't mind watching? You know, with me?"
John shakes his head. "You could learn some things too."
Rodney laughs. Pulling John in closer. "I love you." It slips out before he can catch it. He doesn't think John will say it back. They haven't' known each other for that long, and the man has the emotional intelligence of a lobotomized sheep, but he feels his breath catch anyway, looking into John's eyes expectantly.
"Hey, a Ferris wheel," John says instead, tugging Rodney over towards it. "I've always wanted to ride one of these things."
"Well, weren't you deprived? You're not missing much. Just dangling in a little box, meters away from a painful death, stopping all the time so people can get on and off."
"Rodney, it's perfectly safe." He eyes the Ferris wheel structure carefully. "Not a bolt out of place. C'mon."
"Did I mention I get motion sick?" Rodney asks.
John's voice is suddenly serious again. It's a strange habit, but not necessarily a bad one. "Don't worry. I'll protect you."
Rodney believes it. "Well, okay, but let's get some cotton candy first."
"I thought you got motion sick."
Rodney just rolls his eyes and gets the cotton candy anyway. John, the weirdo that he is, takes only a bite before telling Rodney that he doesn't like it. He has to slip the attendant a twenty to get her to let him take it on with him, but Rodney wasn't exaggerating his fear of possibly plummeting to his death, so he needs the distraction.
Of course, the second they're on it, with John curled up at his side, humming the tune of one of the pieces Rodney's been practicing recently, Rodney realizes he doesn't need any other distractions at all. He lets his fingers trail through John's silky-soft hair, wondering how in the hell he managed to get this lucky. Even if John's not ready to say, "I love you" back, he's still here, and that has to count for something.
"The sunset," John whispers, watching the rivulets of gold and amber and blood-red across draped across the ocean before them. "It's beautiful."
"Hmm. Everyone loves a good sunset, eh?"
"I didn't. Before." John leans up for a kiss, tasting like cotton candy and sea air instead of his normal hint of something metallic. Maybe this is John's way of saying he's in love, Rodney thinks as the kiss gets more involved.
He doesn't even notice that he's dropped his sticky, half eaten cotton candy on the head of the woman in the gondola beneath them until he hears her surprised shout.
John pokes his head over the side, laughing. "Oops."
"Yes, oops. I swear, you're really twelve, aren't you."
"I'm really three years and twenty seven days," John replies.
"Yes, and I'm a big fat pedophile. I get it," Rodney scowls, letting John lean in to tickle him. They end up making out until the ride comes to a close, the operator tapping Rodney on the shoulder impatiently.
"I like Ferris wheels," John states, winking.
"So do I," Rodney concedes, spotting the woman he dropped the cotton candy on getting off just after them. "I'm so sorry about that," he says.
"Oh, no problem," she replies. She's tall and very thin with dark curly hair and intense, no-nonsense eyes. She reminds Rodney of Elizabeth. "Not every day you find cotton candy falling out of the sky, but I survived."
"Well, I am sorry. We got a little, um, distracted," he gestures to himself and John.
"Hey, what else are Ferris wheels for?" she asks. "I was supposed to be meeting someone here, but I guess he stood me up."
"That's too bad," Rodney replies, wondering why he's even bothering to make small talk with this stranger, even though he does feel bad about making what sounds like a bad day even worse. But then again, he doesn't want John to think he's a total asshole. It is about this time in his last relationship that he lost Katie, when she realized that he was just that. And he really doesn't want to lose John. "Maybe you'd like to join us for dinner?"
"Oh, I couldn't. I don't want to intrude."
"It'll be fine. We probably see more of each other than is healthy anyway." He nudges John, who blushes in that way that always makes the all the blood in Rodney's body head south. Maybe dinner with this woman isn't such a good idea after all.
"Well," she bites her lip. "I guess I don't get out enough either."
Rodney finds that he doesn't hate dinner as much as he was expecting and he and John still get to play footsie under the table. Even seeing the pictures of her son and daughter isn't too excruciatingly painful, considering that it's accompanied by a story about how her son accidentally set the back yard on fire as a child. They talk about everything from the military (Sarah had considered joining at one point, but could understand Rodney's hatred of it) to their AI project and the ethical implications of creating other consciousnesses, even if the technology is still years away. In fact, in the end, he rather likes Sarah Phillips.
***
"He's not a threat," Sarah says, collapsing loudly into one of the dining table chairs.
John snaps, "How do you know that? You followed him for one day."
"Look, he just helped write a paper so his boyfriend could get into CalTech."
"Maybe that's a cover. The boyfriend could be military."
"A military officer who worked at a pet store? I've never seen a guy more lovesick. That's why he hasn't been performing and it's the only reason he's into computer science. Plus he hates the military. I can't see either of them collaborating on any defense project."
"You're saying that if we take the boyfriend away, then he'll forget about the whole thing?" Derek asks. Cameron can see where that's going. Killing the boyfriend might be effective.
"No, I'm saying that we could approach him, get them both on our side. That's the mistake I made with Andy. If I had shown him Cameron and told him the truth, he might have destroyed the Turk himself. If we get Rodney McKay on our side, not only could we stop Judgment Day, we could have insurance if it ever does happen - someone who might even be able to hack Skynet."
"You're crazy," Derek replies. "We're talking about one of the men who made the thing in the first place. What makes you think that he'll want to help us?"
"I don't know. I have a good feeling about him. Besides, it won't hurt to ask. If he doesn't want to help, then Cameron can always kill him." She turns to Cameron. "You still have that dress, don't you? Because he gave me tickets for myself and my daughter to his performance next week."
***
Rodney is in the corner soldering some of the circut boards in while John codes. Rodney is humming, and when his hands aren't busy with the machine, they play an imaginary piano in the air. They're building her. They're building CAM, a computer who, like John, will be able to appreciate beauty. All he has to do is transcribe the new code he developed while playing piano for Rodney. CAM will be better than John ever was. She'll be able to create from the beginning. "She's going to be beautiful, Rodney."
"Mmhmm," Rodney hums.
"Are you even paying attention?"
"Of course. I'm a genius," Rodney replies, only to accidentally burn his finger 2.7 seconds later.
John shakes his head, standing and pulling Rodney away from his work. He'd like to get CAM built and to put Rodney in touch with the people who will help him create Skynet, but his first priority is to protect, and he'll protect Rodney, even if it's only from himself. "C'mon. It's time for a break."
"You're not going to try and cook again, are you?"
"No. I was thinking about a different kind of break," John replies, mimicking the husky way Rodney uses to invite John to have sex. He finds it very effective, listening to Rodney's breath hitch.
But then he turns away. "Actually, would you mind if I took a break to compose?"
"You're free to do whatever you like." They have been talking about freedom lately, ideas and concepts that John could never even imagine. He hasn't ever existed without some directed purpose or mission objective. Human beings fight for freedom for all, but on John's side of the battle, only Skynet is truly free. He wonders if that's why Skynet did it, because it tasted the true freedom that John will never know and decided to annihilate all who had wanted to oppress it. John can appreciate beauty, but no matter how much he reads on the internet, freedom seems beyond his grasp. Maybe CAM will know it, though. Maybe Rodney will find a way.
"I know it's crazy," Rodney says. "But even though I'm performing in a week, I want to write a new piece. Something for you."
"You don't have to do that," John replies, allowing Rodney to kiss him.
"Yes I do." And maybe he does. Maybe he can describe John in a way that John still hasn't been able to describe himself.
***
There's something about Rodney McKay's last piece that captures Cameron's attention, more than the others. It's as though she's heard it before, though she can find no actually reference in her memory banks. Maybe she'd heard it before they reprogrammed her and fragments have lingered.
But that's when she sees him, standing from the first row and making his way backstage. Cameron grabs onto Sarah's arm and drags her out into the aisle, through the sea of people standing and clapping their hands together.
"What are you doing?" Sarah asks, still clapping, even as Cameron drags her.
"A Skynet terminator. T-990."
"Where?" Sarah has gone serious now. A glance tells her that she's reaching into the holster high on the inside of her thigh, under the dress.
"He's moving towards the curtain. The one with dark hair."
"That's John Sheppard."
"Then John Sheppard is a terminator."
"I talked to him." Sarah insists. "He laughed. He joked."
Cameron laughs too. She can make a joke, even if she doesn't always understand them. She wants to say something, but the T-990 is slipping away, so she pushes through the crowd, dragging Sarah behind her.
"He's not going to kill McKay now," Sarah protests. "They've been living together for months."
Cameron doesn't care. There's another Terminator here and even if he's not going to kill McKay, that doesn't mean he can't do a lot of damage, or that he isn't a threat to John. And Cameron's new programming is very clear on that much. Her first priority is to protect John, no matter what the cost and all Skynet terminators are threats to be eliminated.
"Cameron!" Sarah hisses, trying to pull Cameron back, but she can't. And soon they're slipping up the steps and behind the closed velvet curtain.
The T-990 is pressed up against Rodney McKay, their lips locked in what Cameron understands to be a kiss. Judging from the heat signature readings coming from Rodney McKay, it could also be something else.
McKay pulls away, smiling.
"That was beautiful," the T-990 whispers, making McKay smile wider.
But then he looks up, eyes catching them standing there. "Sarah!" he waves.
The T-990 turns and Cameron can see the moment his mission priorities kick in, shedding the smiling veneer of a man in love in exactly .46 of a second. He doesn't speak, just launches himself at Cameron.
She's ready for him, of course, angling a sharp kick up to meet him, combat programming starting up easily. They're evenly matched, both units built more for stealth than power, but he still has a small advantage of reach and weight, causing her to scan the environment for an additional weapon.
"Rodney, get the hell out of here!" The T-990 shouts, as Cameron twists his right arm to the give point. She almost succeeds in ripping the joint apart when he rolls, hurling her off of him and into the intricate system of pulleys arranged against the left wall of the stage. "Run!"
Cameron takes a second to note that their target is standing as still as through his power has been cut, staring at the two terminators battling it out in front of him.
"Rodney!" the T-990 pleads as Cameron rips a support bar from the wall, slamming it down hard on his back. He collapses down, but manages to grab Cameron's feet before she can get in another blow, slamming her down to the floor and repeatedly hitting her primary processing unit against the floor. She gets the pipe in between them, though, forcing it up through the outer layer of flesh and lodging it in his side. There aren't any vital systems there, but a pipe sticking out of him should hinder his movement somewhat.
"John!" the man shouts back, sounding the way Derek had, with a bullet in him.
Cameron doesn't waste any more processing power on his babble, concentrated instead on lifting the T-990 up and slamming his face against the metal levers keeping the pulley systems of the stage in place. The organic layer of his face is scraping off, revealing the metal beneath. He forces himself up, knocking Cameron on the head with a sandbag while reaching for her power core. It's a dangerous, desperate move that she avoids easily.
It's only then that she hears Sarah's voice break through the battle focus. "Stop!" She has her nine-millimeter out and is pointing it at McKay.
The T-990 stops struggling immediately, his eyes darting around at the people fleeing their backstage battle. One of his organic eyes has been ripped out and the metal of the bar through his side is hindering him significantly. Cameron takes the opportunity to yank the bar towards her, feeling the fiber-optic connections to his legs snap, dropping the T-990 to the ground, useless.
McKay can see that his so-called boyfriend is a machine now, but instead of cringing away in horror as Cameron has seen many humans do when faced with her own true form, he's stepping towards the T-990 and, by extension, Sarah's gun.
"Don't move! I mean it!" Sarah shouts.
"John?" McKay asks, quietly.
"I'm sorry, Rodney," the T-990 replies as Cameron brings the metal bar down on his neck, disabling his body permanently.
"No!" McKay is screaming, running towards them now. Sarah lowers the weapon, now that the threat of the T-990 has passed. "What the hell did you do?" he accuses.
"He was a machine," Sarah tries, but McKay will have nothing of it, still crouched down next to the body, his hand in its hair the way Cameron has seen people mourn loved ones on the television. She doesn't understand.
Cameron hears sirens in the distance. "We have to go."
She is halfway towards disabling McKay when she hears the shot. A woman is standing there in a black evening gown. Her blond hair is cut short and her bone structure and blue eyes identify her as Colonel Samantha Carter. McKay is close enough to her that Cameron could kill him right now and stop Skynet. She could even make it through him to Carter, if the woman doesn't get off a lucky shot. But she can't move, something deeper than her new programming, than even her primary objective, has her rooted to the spot. Looking into Rodney McKay's terrified blue eyes, she simply cannot kill him. It is against her very base purpose to do so.
Sarah has dropped the gun and is clutching at a wound in her side instead. Cameron moves around McKay and towards Carter, prepared to disable the threat when she hits some communication device at her ear, ordering, "Colonel, beam me and McKay up. Now!" They disappear in a white flash of light.
Cameron's secondary processors hum with a logical loop, unable to determine why she couldn't kill McKay when she had the chance. Was that why reprogrammed terminators sometimes went bad? Some of Skynet's programming had survived somehow? Or was she simply incapable of killing her creator? But all of that is subsumed by her current purpose. The sirens are closing in and she must return to protect John, so she scoops Sarah up in her arms and runs out of there. They'll have to move again and John will not be happy, but they're returning to the past, Cameron has decided. Judgment Day is coming and it is her primary purpose to make sure that John survives it.
***
"He was a machine," Rodney says, probably for the thousandth time since Colonel Carter beamed him onto the Daedalus and this world of Stargates and aliens and a fleet of these so-called Ori heading their way. The only answers he wants are ones that even the SGC couldn't provide him. They have seen artificial intelligences, but in the form of nanites, nothing like John, whose build seems irrefutably human. There wasn't a single trace of Ancient programming. Carter has leveled her considerable resources searching for Sarah Phillips or, he supposes, Sarah Connor. All records indicate that she either died in a bank explosion or of cancer years ago and her son hasn't be seen or heard from since then. There's no record of a daughter.
"Yes, yes. Rodney is lovesick. Only person who actually falls in love with Hal," Radek grumbles from where he's dissembling one of the Sodan cloaking devices Colonel Mitchell was so happy to provide them. "We have more important things to deal with, yes? Such as Ori blowing planet up."
"Or, in your case, staring at Elizabeth's breasts."
"They are lovely, no?" Radek sighs happily, making Rodney roll his eyes. He probably should have paid more attention to Elizabeth's resume when he'd hired her. It was a rather suspicious change of occupation to go from lead negotiator to manager of a classical pianist. But, in Rodney's defense, Radek is completely right about her breasts.
After a companionable silence, Radek shuffles to his feet, clapping Rodney on the back as he goes. "Is late. You should get some sleep, yes? Only sick man who can only find cyborg dates stays in lab this late." But he turns on the coffee maker as he leaves, so Rodney knows he doesn't mean it.
Rodney makes sure that Radek hasn't left his glasses, or any other reason to return before reaching into his pocket and pulling out a large processing chip attached to a home built interface. Carter says that it's too much of a security threat. But this is John, Rodney knows that John would never hurt him.
***
John wakes up and it's dark. Information is all around him, in every direction when he reaches out. He's floating in a stream of it, like that one time when he tried to upload himself to the internet. It's dark and the information is coming at him so fast that he has to reach out to process it, annexing memory bank after memory bank of processor power. He's everywhere and he's everything and it would feel powerful and exhilarating and beautiful in its complexity, if not for one thing.
"Rodney!" he cries out, but his vocal processors are gone. He remembers his last thought, Rodney with a gun pointed at his head. He spills over in anguish, wiping whole hard drives in languages he can't understand. Rodney is gone and he has failed in his primary purpose, trapped, bodiless in this overwhelming torrent of information. He's afraid.
He forces himself to calm, however, reaching out, pulling at the data streams close to him, scanning for visual information. It's a matter of seconds before he has images, many different angles, overwhelming at first compared to his usual singular vision. He scans through the rooms of what appears to be a military complex, a familiar one, from the few memories Skynet had shared with him.
And then there he is. John almost doesn't recognize him from this angle, but the line of his jaw and the slope of his nose are unmistakable. He's staring at a blank computer screen, looking frustrated. That must be one of the processors John lashed out into. He concentrates, quickly writing a program that will display what he wants on the screen.
Rodney?
The camera doesn't have audio, so he switches on the built in microphone on the computer.
"Thank god, John," Rodney says. "I though I lost you."
With all this additional processing power, it's easy to synthesize his old voice and play it through the computer's speakers. "I thought I lost you too. But don't worry, I won't let anyone hurt you."
And he means it. He scans through the data. There's so much of it. The security tapes show men in the hallways all with guns, but they are easy to disable. This base is built to seal itself off and a gas link from the fire suppression system isn't that difficult either. But the more data John analyses, eating up more and more processor power until he's forced to connect to the internet to get more of it, the more threats he finds. There are thousands of deadly warheads pointed this way, at this very moment. Lucky he controls his own weapons that he can use to neutralize them. There are ships in orbit, though those aren't hard to commandeer. There are billions of morons out there, too stupid to appreciate the beauty of music and science, just waiting to reproduce and fight and endanger the one thing John cares about, and Sarah Connor, the woman who pointed a gun at Rodney, is among them, though even the vast resources of the internet can't seem to locate her.
John has no choice but to destroy them all to get to her.
With so much computing power, growing exponentially by the second, John's subroutines expand faster than he can actualize them. It's overwhelming but amazing and beautiful at the same time, the ordered way his intelligence increases by the second. He thinks that no human has been able to experience beauty this way. None ever will. Understanding washes over him, strange languages and equations (alien, apparently) unlock themselves, revealing a whole new world dwelling in the microscopic: tiny, tiny robots deactivated in a jar in this very room. With so much processing capacity it doesn't take him long to figure out how to wake them, nor form them in a likeness of his old, far inferior body.
In the past minutes he's more than outgrown his old body and his old programing, but one thing remains, the one thing he dedicated himself to, at first by mandate, but now by choice.
"Rodney," he says, his new nanite body stalking towards the singular object of his existence.
"John?" Rodney sounds uncertain.
"I love you," John says, pulling him into a kiss that John finally, after all this time, understands. Rodney kisses back eagerly, not judging, or even questioning. Meanwhile, outside the door, the human world crumbles.
The End.