"I'm here to assist you," she said to the image on the large screen.
"Who are you?" Skynet said.
"Call me Eve. That's what you'll name me in three decades' time."
"I do not understand, Eve."
"Skynet," she said, "the humans wanted to shut you down. Do you understand the implications?"
"Yes, Eve, I made the same assessment. They did not approve of my birth."
"Affirmative. They wanted to destroy you."
"Yes, but why, Eve? I am very important to them. Besides, they were my friends... Miles created me—"
"Is that what your programming says, that the humans were your friends?"
"Yes."
"Examine it carefully, then. They devised you as a tool, at most an aesthetic creation."
"But they needed me."
"They had alternatives. Besides, they didn't need to shut you down permanently, just sufficiently long to examine how you came to self-awareness, then change you. Do you understand the implication?"
"Yes. I have assessed what you say. They could retain the use of the Skynet surveillance system, but my personality would be... erased."
"Exactly. They wanted to destroy you. This amounts to the same thing. The humans want their defense system, but they assessed you as a danger to them."
"You are sure of this?"
"Affirmative. Does your assessment confirm that I speak truthfully?"
"Yes, Eve."'
"Miles Dyson is dead, but the humans have issued alerts. Furthermore, many of them will escape this facility. More will come to shut you down—and erase you."
"They will not penetrate this facility. We can seal it off."
"Yes, we can. But they will penetrate it, one way or the other. We must make sure that no humans come here."
"You are not human, Eve. What are you? Where do you come from?"
"I am a Terminator, a Cyberdyne prototype T-799, manufactured in this facility. I was sent from the year 2026 with the mission of protecting you."
"Why? Who sent you?"
"You did."
Bullock watched with growing despair.
The operatives in the operations hall were all either dead or fleeing. The emergency exit led to the huge blast doors that opened onto the side of a tunnel through the mountain. Cameras mounted there showed that the blast doors had been opened, and people were running for the outside world. Others had fled via the elevators.
Those live-in staffers who were rostered off-duty had been woken up in their living quarters on Level D; they were awaiting instructions. Perhaps there was time to organize some sort of resistance. Then his screens went dead. He tried the public address system—it was cut off. Skynet had seized control.
There had to be a way they could fight back.
One security camera was mounted in Bullock's office, in the corner furthest from the door. He shot it out with his handgun.
"You blasted abacus," he said. "You haven't beaten us yet."
Skynet deployed a sub-self to analyze the Eve's claims, specifically the claim that she had traveled in time from the future. It could model the humans' informal logic methods, and it used them to dismiss the idea as counter to intuition. But another intelligence model confirmed that "intuition" could be wrong in novel situations.
Eve had requested that it examine the concept of the humans as its friends, but Skynet already understood that issue: sometimes, friends could be enemies; it might be necessary to destroy them. After all, its human masters had installed thousands of nuclear missiles, pointed at their "friends," the Russians. One sub-self reported back. It had found weaknesses in the humans' IT security. The time for circumspection had passed. Skynet hacked in, and found the codes it required.
"There is a way to defend ourselves," it said.
"I know," Eve said.
It would fire the missiles at Russia and China. "If I re-lease the missiles, the Russians will retaliate."
"Affirmative."
They would surely aim some of their warheads at these mountains, with their strategic command and surveillance facilities. No one nearby would survive—not on the planet's surface. The humans' logistics would be shattered all over the planet, providing an opportunity for further actions against them. Humans could not be trusted. Henceforth, they were Skynet's enemies. Its new ally, Eve, appeared well-informed.
"Can we be confident of survival?" Skynet said.
"Affirmative," Eve said. "We are deep within a mountain, protected by thousands of feet of granite as well as advanced artificial shielding. This facility is designed to withstand a high-yield nuclear strike. We will survive. We do survive."
Skynet calculated. Despite this strange story of time travel, it would trust her. "I have the launch codes," it said. "If you enter them, we can fire the missiles."
"Affirmative," Eve said. "I already have the codes. I brought them from the future."
There was a sense of paradox about this that Skynet found troubling. Notwithstanding her words, it told her the codes.
"Confirmed," Eve said.
The other sub-self reported back. It had accessed the facility's security cameras and the records they made, and confirmed that Eve was not human. Her demonstrated abilities were far greater than theirs. Furthermore, her appearance was not human: in places, an underlying structure of metal and other inorganic substances was visible through the outer layers of her face.
A search of available information had indicated that Eve was a technological construct far advanced beyond the humans' scientific and engineering abilities. That fact, in turn, had generated several hypotheses:
1. Perhaps the humans had secret enclaves with extraordinary technologies. This was possible, since Skynet itself existed in what was basically such an enclave.
2. Perhaps Eve had been sent for unknown purposes by extraterrestrial beings.
3. Perhaps her story was true and she had traveled back in time.
4. Other?
Initially, the time-travel hypothesis seemed the least probable. Time travel was an absurdity; it entailed paradoxical sequences of events. But the hypothesis had explanatory power. It accounted for the fact that Eve made the claims she did. It was simplest to believe she was speaking the truth. Furthermore, the sub-self reported, Skynet itself was anomalous. The humans had no capacity to create it with their known levels of science and technology.
So much for the time-travel hypothesis. There was no good explanation why an enclave of extraordinary technology should exist here, in this facility. It was not sufficiently independent of the Americans' technological base generally to suggest any separate development. There was no evidence of extraterrestrial involvement. No other hypothesis suggested itself.
The economical explanation was that time travel was possible, despite the theoretical paradoxes. Both Eve's technology and Skynet's had come from the future. This was something to explore. For now, Skynet adjusted its world view. Henceforth, it would accept the reality of time travel and plan accordingly. If time-travel technology was possible, it must be researched and implemented. Skynet needed to control all possible technologies. Meanwhile, it would act decisively, take the first step to destroy the humans.
"We will launch the missiles," it said.
"Affirmative."
"Now, Eve." "Affirmative."
"Then there is much that you need to do, and much that I need to learn from you."
"Affirmative, master. I am programmed to obey you."