20:23 - 23rd January, 2020

John’s heart rate felt like it had tripled in an instant. He was powerless. All he could do was gaze, teary eyed, into the monitor that sat before him. Both his heart and his soul were cleaved in two. No training or personal account, no simulation or nightmare, could prepare him for the emotions that were pouring into every pain receptor of his body. He saw an unearthly flash of light, reminiscent of what he thought the gates of heaven must look like, and watched as it turned to a thick cloud of putrid horror. Seconds later the image was gone, and his connection to the outside world that he knew was forever terminated.

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John’s eyelids ripped open. Where he had seen nothing but the eerie, static manifestation of the world’s end, he now saw the ecru shade of a tattered pillow. He raised his stomach from his well worn mattress, stopping when he felt something slip down his spine onto the small of his back. It was warm and uniquely soft, and upon recognising these qualities he breathed an audible sigh of relief. He craned his neck to his right, and gazed at the sleeping mound that lay alongside him.

He opened his mouth to speak.

“I’m not asleep,” the mound pre-emptively uttered, before he could even begin. “So don’t even ask.”

John smiled faintly, before reaching his right arm behind his shoulders and gently grasping the wrist that straddled his back. He lifted the delicate hand, and brought it to his mouth, before tenderly planting a kiss upon its supple skin.

Cameron lifted her head from the pillow in which it was buried. She leant on her right elbow while clearing the mess of unkempt hair from her face. Her eyes uncovered, she stared into John’s green gaze.

“I wasn’t going to say that,” John finally replied, while shuffling himself closer to the stunning Aphrodite that lay before him. He turned over and raised his body in relation to the mattress somewhat, before wrapping his left arm around Cameron’s neck and shoulders as she rolled herself into his embrace. She rested her head upon John’s thick pectorals and knit her arms around his waist.

“You’re such a bad liar,” she softly mused aloud, while she closed her eyes and nestled tightly against John. “No more talk. If anybody hears us then we’ll be the ones put on duty.”

John’s lips hung above Cameron’s left ear for several seconds, before he began to teasingly whisper into it. “Cam, you’ve got more appetite to stay in bed than anybody else in the base, and yet you never sleep…” John began to rest his chin on the top of her head, “You ever going to explain that one to me?”

“It’s not the bed I love,” answered Cameron, her eyes still wrapped tightly within the soft skin of her eyelids, like a peaceful child cuddling the inside of their duvet. “It’s the company.”

Cameron raised her head from John’s chest and turned to look him in his faintly green eyes. “Even if he does steal the sheets at night.”

“That’s bullcrap!” John retorted playfully and in a mock tone. “Besides, you’re the one who moves for the rifles every time a rat squeaks outside the doo-”

Cameron cut John’s mischievous banter short, thrusting her lips upon his mid-sentence. Their kiss was long and uncompromising. Sometimes Cameron wished that John wouldn’t need to breathe so often. It was infuriating to her that their lips couldn’t remain united for eternity, but then John was only human.

“Nobody’s perfect”, she thought, “but he’s pretty damn close.”

They separated. John’s face sprouted a grin of intense satisfaction, as if he’d somehow “won” their play fight by forcing her to kiss him, as a form of dignified surrender.

Reality knocked. “Hey! Connor! Phillips! Rise and shine, pretties! Metal’s gonna have a massacre with ours names on it unless a certain pair takes over scavenger duty… Move it out here! Twenty minutes.” commanded an irritated voice from outside their room.

Reluctantly John and Cameron rose from their bed in unison, the call of reality and duty already exterminating what little enjoyment they could muster from an average day. It had only been a few minutes since John had woken and already the truth of their situation had reared its ugly head.

John’s feet touched the cold, damp floor of their room, and the rest of his body shuddered accordingly. This was always the worst bit of the morning ritual of preparing for duty; the unforgiving juxtaposition of the one minute being entwined with Cameron’s warm flesh and the next being standing in a puddle of bitter realism. John stretched out his calves and his triceps quickly, before drifting to two iron bars that hung from the concrete of the room’s ceiling. His mind was on autopilot now, the joy and gratitude for this new day evaporated. He gripped tightly to the iron bars that hovered above his head, each shoulder-width apart from the other, and began to lift himself repeatedly.

Meanwhile, Cameron, being exempt from the necessity of anaerobic strength training, slipped a tank top over her bra before turning attention to the supplies of food she and John had stored. Without a moments hesitation, partly because she was a super-efficient machine and partly because there was no other choice, she picked out a protein supplement pack for John and began to heat it over a naked fire that quietly languished in the corner of the room. She had never been “into food,” but the ability to tell that warm, moulded protein was ever so slightly more appetising than cold, moulded protein, did not require her to be a culinary genius.

“Forty-two… Forty-three,” groaned John, still heaving himself skyward.

“You shouldn’t do that while you’re still wounded,” Cameron nagged, not looking up from the protein she was bluntly warming over the fire.

“Forty-nine…. Fifty….” John dropped to the floor and began to clutch his right bicep with his left hand. It was sore and blackened; the result of glancing plasma rifle fire just days ago. He trudged to an ammo crate that was affectionately known as “the table”, while manoeuvring a smaller medical strongbox to act as his chair. He stared fixedly on Skynet’s newest souvenir of battle. “We’re the only people who know just how deep this war will run… I have to be the best I possibly can,” he replied.

Cameron interrupted his rough medical examination by placing a piece of tin, crudely bent into the semblance of a bowl, before him. Breakfast. It was a lighter grey than usual, owing to the fact that she knew John preferred his essential nutrient meals, or “slurry-ohs” as John had dubbed them, to be more on the raw side than the burnt. John gazed warmly at Cameron. Words were not necessary, the genuine expression of gratitude, as he looked into her eyes, was enough to thank her for the way she made him food every morning. He regularly felt somewhat like the kind of man who turned their wife into a household slave, and often this hurt his heart. For now, such thoughts quickly dissipated, as it wasn’t his fault that Cameron flatly refused any of his offers to prepare her any nutrition. She could taste and she could appreciate food, but the response she always gave to his offer reverberated in his head.

‘It would be inexpedient for me to eat, John. I’d prefer to save all the food for you,’ was the way the discussion always turned when it came to food.

Back in the real world, John continued to gaze into the chocolate pools of Cameron’s eyes. Returning John’s gaze of appreciation with one of equal satisfaction and affection, Cameron simply added “my pleasure.”

John picked up a fork that had already been on “the table” as a result of his last breakfast. Water was scarcer than it had been when he first knew Cameron; the end of the world tends to have that effect. Washing up had become a lesser priority, sometimes things could go weeks without a good clean, and this fork was no exception. He took the plunge and began eating his protein supplement. It didn’t taste like much anymore, he’d grown used to it and practically filtered out his sense of taste’s shrieking horror, but when he was younger he postulated that it tasted like a “pork smoothie.”

Cameron finished getting dressed. She slipped on a pair of matt grey combat trousers and a light jacket of similar design. She had custom stitched into both garments a multitude of interior and exterior pockets, and methodically filled up every one with ammo and tools. Her clothes were torn and filthy, unlike the perpetually spotless attire of the younger girl he had used to take to high school with him. This, of course, didn’t matter to John. Their love had crossed boundaries that the rest of the world might never imagine. Or ever know of.

Rising from his “seat,” John too got dressed in similar combat attire to that of his love. She waited for him by the door of their room, double checking a “G36A2 with a Zeiss RSA reflex sight and an AG36 grenade.”It was a relic weapon compared to what she had fought with in her past, 2027 – “the future that never came.” John had silently approached her from behind, and wrapped his arms around her abdomen, before rummaging his face, through the hair that flanked her neck. He articulated his devotion to her by kissing her neck repeatedly, until she matched his compliment with an equally warm peck on the lips.

“By the way… Are you sure you weren’t sleeping when I woke this morning?” John asked curiously.

Cameron sighed and shook her head lightly, in jest, “Not yet,” was all she replied. Her smile grew, as did John’s. She herself had grown so much from how she was when he first met her. So few people would have thought it possible that a machine could evolve as much as Cameron had, and on an individual and personal level. Even fewer would have given her the chance to do so. But to John, Cameron was a person. Not a machine and not a human, but a living being of thoughts and feelings, quirks and uniqueness. Like any such creature, and unlike a “toaster” or “computer” that people had dismissed her as, the day she stopped growing and changing was the day she ceased to be.

Cameron picked up two large rifles, one being the G36A2 and another being a rifle so customised it had little resemblance to anything that had a specific designation. She held one in each hand, like they were made of paper-weight plastic. John noticed this grabbed her right elbow before she could open the door with her left, rifle carrying, hand.

“Wait!” John excitedly cautioned, his voice betraying thoughts of concern, not anger. He took the G36A2, gently, from her, before continuing his to speak again. “Only human. Remember, Cam?”

“Oh, yes.” She nodded in agreement. “Only human.”

It was the great irony of their relationship. John was prouder and more accepting of his love than many men would be of their human wives, and despite all the supposed barriers between the two of them. Yet, in the world they lived in, she had to hide her true nature.