TJ rubbed his eyebrows and thought about that fantastic tale that really had been one of his mother’s favorites. And how could it not have been? She had made herself into a character in that story as well.
For some reason those stories were always close by in his thoughts. Only a small reminder of his mother and he remembered all the tales she had told him. His father had not liked the stories she had told him, claiming that they were sick, twisted and perverted.
He folded his hand behind his head and let out a deep breath. For years he had been looking into his mother’s past and the more he found out, the less he understood. She seemed to have appeared from out of nowhere. No records of her existence were to be found from before 1989.
Had he set himself out on a mission impossible? It didn’t make sense to him. His mother had been thirty-six when she had died in that car crash. So she had to have been born in 1963. But why couldn’t he find anything about her from before 1989? Twenty-six years were missing from her life. Twenty six hours, days or even months were explainable, but not twenty-six years.
He let out another deep breath and entered ‘John Connor’ as a search query again. The list of links told him nothing. John Connor wasn’t a special name, sooner a rather common name.
He clicked on a familiar link that brought him to the Articles Archive page of the Los Angeles Sun. September 10th, 1999. A few weeks after his mother’s death. He didn’t have to read the article again because he already knew it by heart.
It had been a while since he had last visited this page but each time his attention was drawn to the print of the security camera footage, specifically the woman in her thirties wearing a track jacket, who seemed to keep a close eye on the girl.
It was a Sarah Connor. It was the Sarah Connor wanted by the FBI for numerous crimes. He pulled her stats from the FBI-mainframe.

LAST NAME: Connor FIRST NAME: Sarah Jeanette M.I.

KNOWN ALIASES: Sarah Reese

STATUS: Escaped from Pescadero State Hospital. Whereabouts: Unknown At Large

OCCUPATION: Waitress SEX: Female AGE: 34

PoB: Los Angeles, CA RACE: Caucasian HT.: 5’4” WT.: 110 HAIR: Black EYES: Green

MARKS/TATTOOS: Puncture scarring front and back right shoulder. Multiple combat scars. KNOWN ASSOCIATES: Charley Dixon, ex-fiancé. John Connor, son, 16. Unknown male, approx. 30 FEDERAL WARRANTS: Murder, attempted murder, armed assault & battery, armed robbery, assault & battery, breaking and entering, possession of illegal firearms, domestic terrorism, kidnapping, arson of United States government property and property used in interstate commerce, arson of a building. REMARKS: At large. Armed and dangerous. Approach with extreme caution. Trained in the use of military grade firearms, handguns, edged weapons, explosives, and hand-to-hand combat. If contact is made, utilization of FBI HRT is highly recommended.

Could she be the Sarah Connor his mother had loved telling him about? But that could never be. This Sarah Connor had died along with her son John and the girl in an explosion during the bank heist now eight years ago. How could the hero Devlin ever meet the heroine Connor if she was dead? How could she live in the future when she had died in the past?
His mother had added a time displacement device in some of her stories, but now he felt like his mind was running away from him. It had been all fantastic tales to amuse him, to get him to fall asleep. Nevertheless the fiction of time travel, of a world torn apart by a war between humans and machines had always fascinated him. Could time travel ever be possible? Would there ever be a war between man and machine?
All familiar questions, asked countless times before but never answered. One self-imposed question lead to ten new questions. Ten questions lead to a hundred questions, flooding his mind at a dazzling speed. He was used to it but it could be tiring as well from time to time.
After shaking his head to stop the flood of questions without answers, he returned his attention to his computer. FBI-agent James Ellison, the man who had updated the FBI-file on Sarah Connor last. Charley Dixon, the ex-fiancé and honored EMT. Names to remember.
He closed the hacked status page on Sarah Connor on the second monitor of his computer, restarted the hacking program he had designed and entered a few simple commands. Soon he found himself in the mainframe of Pescadero State Hospital, his program easily surpassing the firewall that should keep unwanted guests out.
He knew about Pescadero State Hospital. His mother had worked there for a couple of months as a nurse’s aid, around the time this Sarah Connor had been locked up in there. Coincidence or planned? Maybe that was where she had gotten more ideas for her fantastic tales about the future and the human champions Devlin and Connor?
‘Input?’ blinked in a small pop-up on the second monitor.
‘Sarah Connor’, he entered.
A list of links and references appeared on the screen and he clicked on the patient file. Just like the newspaper articles about the bank heist, he knew this one by heart. His mother used to laugh at his uncanny ability to remember everything, from reading something once to remembering the smallest detail.
He closed his eyes and remembered how his mother used to run her hand through his hair when he had sat on the floor disassembling some appliance. She would laugh and comment on his desire to know everything. Tears stung in his eyes at the memory. She had always been there for him, unlike his father who would probably never understand him. His mother had taken his father’s unfaithfulness with a weird grace and indifferent attitude, like she had already gotten what she had desired most, her son.
It were strange thought paths like this that lead to more and more questions that would forever remain unanswered.




Under the cover of the evening, Tyler leaned back in the shadows of the trees across the street. It felt weird to be here again. To see the house he grew up in again. He had never really gone back to 7912, Trentington Avenue after that fateful night. Until now.
Looking at now made him feel strangely out of time and place. He knew what was gonna happen. He knew that the other Tyler before him had chosen to go out for weapons and supplies instead of in a way saving his own life. Why was he here? His mission objectives were clear to him, but this wasn’t a mission directive.
Was he here to save himself? From what? From Cromartie or from all the pain that lay ahead of the next Tyler?


The door bell rang and he almost jumped to his feet with a start. A quick glance at his first monitor told him it was a little past ten in the evening. Who could be stopping by at this time?
“Who the hell is it?” He heard his father call angrily from downstairs. “TJ? This better not be one of your friends pulling a prank, or you’ll be grounded, mister!”
He tried to listen to the muffled conversation. Only when he heard his father exclaim “Hey!!!” followed by a loud and unfamiliar bang, he formed an idea of what could be going on.
“Dad?!” He called while he jumped to his feet and stormed out of his room.
Another loud bang. Gun shots? He almost tripped over his own feet as the second shot rang out through the house. A robbery?
“Dad?!” He called again, but no answer came.
He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw an unfamiliar man with a Glock 17 in his hand come up the stairs. Aside from a profound interest in modern technology, his mother had also instilled a deeper interest in handguns in him.
Instinctively he knew that the man was coming for him. He turned back and ran into his room, locking the door in the hopes it would keep the man out. After surveying the room for a few seconds, he decided his best chance at escape was to climb out the window. He opened the window and climbed out onto the sloped roof. Dull thuds followed by a cracking noise told him that the man had forced the door. How much time did he have? Not watching where he was putting his feet, he stumbled and fell to one knee. He needed to keep going. Escape from this man was the only thing on his mind. He ran to where the drain pipe was and climbed down, letting himself drop to the floor when it was safe to let go.
The moment his feet touched the ground he started running in no particular direction. He needed to get away. He had to get away.




Tyler waited patiently for the boy to reach the end of the lawn before emerging from the shadows of the trees. He noticed the boy’s eyes grew wide befor he slipped on the moist grass, falling over backwards, staring up at him.
A loud crack drew his attention back to the house. A man had literally come running through the front door. An infiltrator. He looked like the man who had come to his house twenty years before to kill him. Cromartie.
Light from the street lanterns reflected on the barrel of Cromartie’s gun, as Cromartie took aim at the boy. Tyler looked at Cromartie and Cromartie looked back at him.
He crossed his arms and noticed what could be considered hesitation in human behaviour. In this case it was a simple override of prior mission objectives. A small subprogram, created and installed by Skynet, to assure the completion of its primary mission objectives. He called it survival mode.
Skynet had known about the change. Nanoattrioids, micro-machines, that made him stronger and more dangerous, but just not to only the machines. He had become a liability in the future. The first batch of nanoattrioids shot into his bloodstream had come from an alternate timeline and had not been affected by the shutdown of Skynet. They had recharged the nano’s from this timeline, making his mental instability worse than ever before. He knew it. C had known it.
Cromartie lowered his gun and started to back away slowly. For a moment Tyler considered chasing down Cromartie. He had not been part in the destruction of its chip and destroying it would grant him some satisfaction, a feeling of revenge, but he had already changed the future too much.
“Please? Please, don’t kill me,” the boy begged with a trembling voice.
He cocked his head a little to the right and looked intently at the boy who was scrambling to get to his feet again. Kill him? It was a question that had been playing through his mind ever since he had arrived in this time.
It would save this kid from so much pain, not having to suffer the horrors of the new world. He would not have to lose everyone and everything he had ever cared for or loved. The pain of the past, the present and the future would forever be gone. It would all end here and now.
He reached down and closed his left hand around the scrambling away boy’s throat. Hands closed around his forearm while he dragged the boy to his feet and lifted him a good foot in the air, his hand slowly clenching around the boy’s windpipe.
“Don’t fight it,” he said through gritted teeth while the boy kicked and tried to hit him.

Chapter 12: Window To The Future

Chapter 14: Destiny Is A Matter Of Choice