John laughed. "That'd be pretty cool."
"Yeah, well, don't bet on it happening like that. They'll want it to be a weapon. They'll be planning how to go back in time and nuke the Chinese."
"Time travel doesn't work that way," Jade said. "It wouldn't benefit them. They'd simply create another timeline."
"So you told us. But I bet they don't know that. Even when they figure it out, they'll find a way to make it more dangerous. Just you wait."
"Well, that's not how it worked out."
"They had Skynet instead."
"So what are we going to do?" John said. "Danny? Are we going to call on Rosanna Monk, like we did with your father?" He said that last bit quietly, remembering how Miles had died on that fateful night in 1994.
In the front of the car, Danny and Selena exchanged glances, like they'd already talked it through. Danny nodded. "We'll try, but we'll be careful. You can be sure that the T-XA is one step ahead."
"All right!" John said. "That's nice to hear. At least we can give it a try."
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
SKYNET'S WORLD
COLORADO
2026
The defense facility had become the machines' stronghold, a fortress of ten levels, plunging deep into the earth. In recent years, the humans had fought back fiercely, winning battles in the cities, jungles, and mountains of South America, then moving northwards. II was difficult to believe that those biological vermin could prove so resilient, though Eve always knew they would be.
Yet this stronghold was surely impregnable. Since Judgment Day, it had already survived tactical nuclear bombardment from the human Resistance forces. If the humans sought to overthrow Skynet, they would need to attack it on the ground, then penetrate the powerful defense grid that surrounded the mountain for miles on each side. This included numerous arrays of sensors, sufficient to monitor the movement of every rat or small bird that came to the mountain. Then there were war machines to repel the most powerful human attack imaginable. Meanwhile, they had plans of their own. Today, they would deal with unfinished business from the past, and commence a new phase in the war against the humans.
"All is in readiness," Eve said. "The prototype cyborg Terminator has reached optimal development."
"Very good," Skynet said. "Go now, Eve. Initiate the birth sequence."
Eve walked to a doorless elevator, then dropped to Level H and strode directly to the experimental T-800 operations area. Like the other floors, Level H was a single vast expanse of concrete, broken only by the elevator shafts. Scores of endoskeletons moved about with quiet, absorbed determination, controlling machinery, conducting their experiments, analyzing the results. For greater speed, some moved from place to place on swift silver-chrome trolleys, powered by long-life fuel cells. There was no need for doors or rooms, since privacy was irrelevant. The machines never became bored, or embarrassed, never lost concentration when observed or subjected to ambient stimulus. They lacked the humans' fears, frustrations and scruples.
Their purposes were coordinated. They never impeded each other.
Working among the endoskeletons was a smaller number of T-600 Terminators: endoskeletons covered with molded rubber that imitated the skin and flesh of humans. Experience showed that the humans could recognize the T-600s easily at close range, making them useless for infiltration work. Sometimes, at least, the humans could be fooled from a distance, but the time had come to take the next step: a cyborg Terminator, indistinguishable from a human—at least to optical inspection.
The endoskeletons and Terminators got on with their jobs, not acknowledging Eve's presence. Since the Terminator's human flesh had grown back, after the damage it suffered on Judgment Day, there were no distinguishable differences between Eve and a human. But the others were well aware of each machine in the stronghold, and knew that Eve was not some human infiltrator.
The various machines and equipment were placed in areas marked only by coordinates in the nanoware-based minds of the endoskeletons, Terminators and other sentient machines. There was no need to use physical means to define particular areas of the huge space that was Level H, since Eve and the other machines knew exactly where the boundaries for various activities began or ended. In one comer, a massive cubical structure was set up for experiments with space-time displacement machinery, creating and measuring field effects. Eve avoided the area around it, having no business there today. Elsewhere, a single endoskeleton controlled a noisy production line devoted to manufacturing more of its kind. Other floors had similar facilities for manufacture of other war machines, such as H-Ks and Centurions.
Unmarked by any outward sign, merely by Eve's knowledge of the precise spatial position, was the T-800 cyborg Terminator project. Here, two endoskeletons attended a large machine: a gray metal slab, almost like a massive coffin. Fast-moving, rubber-wheeled stalks moved around the area, mounted by video cameras and microphones, which swiveled in all directions, providing data for Skynet's analysis. A six-foot video screen was set up as a visual/aural interface with Skynet. Currently, the screen was blank, but Skynet was certainly watching.
The slab-like machine was an ectogenetic pod, a biotechnological womblike environment for growing human tissue. Its purpose was to nurture the first fully humanoid Terminator, to bring it to independent life.
As Eve approached, the endoskeletons stepped aside. Close-up, the pod had a lid of clear armorglass to show the gross morphology of the tissue being grown on a state-of-the-art combat endoskeleton. A series of readings along the side showed the Terminator's vital signs. Like the visual data, all of this more sophisticated information was routed directly to Skynet for its incomparable pattern analysis. Now, however, no sophisticated analysis was required. The current readings clearly showed that everything was nominal. Seen through the pod's armorglass, the Terminator floated in a nutrient fluid, restrained loosely by metal-mesh straps. It had grown a complete covering of biological tissue, matching that of the particular human template chosen by Skynet.
Eve nodded, and one endoskeleton threw a switch to drain away the nutrient fluid. After two minutes, it threw I a second switch and the machine rose on its hydraulics, tilting upwards at almost a 90° angle, where it stood like a glass and steel monolith, eight feet high.
Eve knew what would happen next, but it must be I worked through in proper sequence. The time travel principles Skynet had developed showed that their future was not set. The wrong action would hive off a new timeline, perhaps a less favorable one. That, however, was not a major risk. The mathematical model also showed the great effort needed before time split into branches. Eve merely had to act as she recalled had I been done at this time. That was a difficult concept to I express in humans languages, ill-adapted to scientific reality, but it was all clear in the mathematical representations developed by Skynet.
They would be rewarded, for Eve's memories proved that the T-800 series was both technologically viable and operationally effective. Its development and deployment would surely mean the end of the humans, snuffing out the last fires of resistance.
What had been the top of the coffin-like pod now swung open. At the same time, the screen lit up with Skynet's severe, androgynous image.
The first fully humanoid Terminator opened its impressively realistic "eyes." Skynet had categorized it as Cyberdyne series T-799. It resembled a tall human woman, with long, white, disorderly hair. They could easily crop the hair short to match that of the human they had copied.
It was Eve.