Machines. Robots from the future. Skynet. Judgment Day.

To someone unfamiliar to such ideals, it would’ve sounded ludicrous. But obviously Jason, or whoever he was before forgetting, was quite comfortable with these notions as, even with acute amnesia; he had no trouble believing it all. Being informed of a war between artificially intelligent machines and the scrappy remnants of the once mighty human race had no more of an effect on Jason than if you’d just told him it was raining outside.

His apparent familiarity with this coming apocalypse allowed him and the others to determine whom he was; a Resistance fighter. Or at least, that’s what they assumed. Jason wasn’t entirely convinced. Though he would never tell them this; but Jason was as unfamiliar with the idea of him being a soldier than he was familiar with the idea of burning continents.

But he knew that only time would tell him who he was… is. Not even the scary robot had the answers he needed, and she had displayed more knowledge about his self than he did. She knew his name, but either refused to share her data or was suffering some memory problems of her own, which, as Jason had observed over the past three days, was highly probable.

Jason had been told that Cameron was the victim of a car-bombing, which apparently turned her into a murderous adolescent, something Derek joked was true of many girls her age. She managed to get her head back on straight though, but after watching her mistake a Desert Eagle for a hair drier this morning, Jason couldn’t help but wonder if she still had a few marbles left to find.

“Uh, you do know that you’re about to blow your head off, right?”

Cameron blinked at her reflection and seemed to shudder slightly before lowering the gun and picking up the drier instead.

“Thank you for explaining.”

Jason discreetly took the gun and left her to her girly pursuits, reassured that she won’t be blowing chunks out of her flesh covering any time soon. That was another thing that gave Jason pause; even after discovering Cameron’s true nature, his perspective of her had not changed. Maybe they knew each other in the future, if so it would answer a lot of questions. But until he received what he hoped would be an inevitable revelation, Jason had to content himself with watching the lives of those who lived in this household.

Aside from the twitchy cyborg; there was John, who was apparently going to save all their skins in the future. Well, minus the 2 billion who would be wiped out in a nuclear holocaust, but nobody’s perfect. Jason approached the “messiah’s” bedroom and knocked on the door. A few seconds later he emerged, his recently cut hair sticking up in odd places.

“Huh? Jason, wha-?”

Jason held up the gun and put it in John’s hands. He just looked at it for a moment before frowning at Jason questioningly.

“I took it from Cameron. She’s having trouble distinguishing between weaponry and cosmetics.”

Though, being a cyborg, they’d probably go well together, he thought.

“Thanks, I’ll um; I’ll have a word with her later.”

“Cool.”

John examined the weapon closely as he closed the door, leaving Jason to wonder what it’s like to have your very own robotic guardian arrive from the future every time your life is in danger. Though it wasn’t exactly a mail order service, he reminded himself.

Proceeding to the stairs, Jason found his route blocked by Sarah and Derek who, as usual, were arguing about some trivial thing or another. If Jason didn’t know any better, he’d say they shared all the qualities of a married couple. The subject of this latest bout was focused around Derek’s lack of sense regarding privacy.

“I swear to God, if you ever come barging into my room again without knocking first I’ll smash your head over that damn trunk! What the hell do you need a gun this early in the morning for anyway?”

“How was I supposed to know you were in there? You’re usually up and about at this time. How was I supposed to know that you were in the middle of get-“

“SHUT UP! And go!”

Derek raised his hands in mock surrender and proceeded downstairs, leaving Sarah to shake her head and sigh heavily, not noticing Jason standing a few feet away as she returned to her room, slamming the door behind her. Jason just smirked and followed Derek downstairs while Cameron popped her head out of the bathroom to investigate the commotion, her hair slightly blackened due to modifications she’d made to the drier.

In the kitchen sat the “Kid”, who was helping himself to some toast, visibly pleased that Cameron was too distracted to make him breakfast this morning. Jason initially thought it odd that everyone kept calling this boy everything but his actual name, but this was later explained to him by Sarah, who told him that it was for the Kid’s own good that no one knows his name. Only her self and Cameron knew, and it was to stay that way, to keep him safe.

Derek opened the fridge and took a slice of left-over pizza before disappearing into the living room with the newspaper. Jason took an orange from the fruit bowl and sat down opposite the Kid, who was now applying a disproportionate amount of marmalade to his toast.

“Hungry?” “Very… You?”

Jason glanced down at the orange and dug his nails into the thick skin and began peeling it free with expert precision. Maybe I’m the residential peeler of the Resistance, he mused.

“Not really, no. I’m not much of an eater, it seems. You, on the other hand…”

The Kid glared back defensively and jabbed his blunt knife in Jason’s direction.

“Hey, I’ve had nothing but stale corn flakes for I don’t know how long. I think I deserve a change, don’t you?”

Jason gave a non-committal shrug and removed the last peel before chucking it in the open bin on the other side of the kitchen, earning him a small applause from the Kid. He took a slice of orange and put it in his mouth and was instantly bombarded with information. He suddenly knew exactly what the fruit contained, how much sugar it held, and its nutritional value. And he enjoyed the taste, of course, but the information always caught his attention at first.

Jason swept this frequent anomaly aside and decided not to think on it too hard. The light tapping of shoes alerted Jason to Cameron’s presence and he turned in his seat to see her staring at the Kid, her lips parting slightly in a gesture that he’d come to recognize as something akin to surprise. The Kid quelled under her look and slipped off his chair, taking the toast with him as he shuffled past her awkwardly.

Cameron watched him join Derek in the living room, her eyes narrowing slightly, before cherry-picking a grape from the fruit bowl and sitting in the Kid’s now vacant chair. Jason couldn’t help but take note of her charcoaled hair and rolled his eyes at the thought of whatever might’ve caused that.

“So… How’s it going today? Are thing’s all in their right place up there?”

Jason pointed at her head but she seemed not to have heard him, or she was purposely ignoring him. Cameron held the grape level with her eyes and concentrated on it with such intensity that Jason expected it to explode at any moment.

“Yes, Cameron, it is a grape… Cameron?”

She blinked once more and suddenly put the fruit in her mouth before fixing Jason with a stare of undeterminable meaning.

“John told me he was afraid that I might spend hours staring at a carton of orange because it said concentrate. I was trying to understand what he meant by that.”

“Fair enough, but you did notice that that was a grape you were ogling and not an orange, right?”

Cameron sat back in the chair, her shoulders lowering slightly in what Jason might’ve mistaken as comfort.

“Fruit is fruit.”

Jason chuckled and placed another slice of orange in his mouth, this time ignoring the flashes of information and focusing on the taste.

“Tell that to the tomato.”

Cameron’s face fell slightly and her eyes misted over as obvious confusion settled in.

“On second thought; forget I said anything.”

But it was too late, Cameron’s brow knitted together in deep thought.

“Fruit… or vegetable? Who can really tell…?”

“Uh, Cameron…”

Cameron held up both her hands, her palms open as if she were holding an invisible tomato in each.

“Because, if you think about it; a tomato shares many qualities with a vegetable.”

“Cameron-“

“Oh, but then it also has certain characteristics that can only be found in fruit…”

“Cameron, it’s a-“

She held up her hand to silence him and tilted her head slightly.

“Shhh! I think I’m on to something here…”

“It’s a fruit, Cameron. Fruits have seeds, a tomato has seeds. Ergo: fruit.”

Cameron glared at him and placed her hands back on the table with a thud.

“I know that. Do you take me for an idiot?”

Jason just stared back for a long moment before sliding his chair back and getting to his feet.

“Okaaay, I’ll just leave you and…”

He opened a cupboard and took out a tomato, placing it in Cameron’s hands and giving her a tap on the head.

“…Mr. Tomato to yourselves.”

With that, he left the kitchen, leaving Cameron to stare at the fruit in her hands.

“Not a vegetable.”

--

The afternoon soon came around, bringing with it another wave of intense heat, even Cameron appeared to be bothered by it. Everyone vacated the house and moved out into the back garden to escape the suffocating atmosphere of the indoors. Sarah and Cameron were stretched out on loungers, absorbing the sun, the latter in a bikini. John and Derek were shirtless and had taken to playing a game of catch, but John’s attention kept being drawn to Cameron’s exposed form.

Jason leaned against the house with one of Derek’s beers and watched as John almost dropped the ball for the fourth time already.

“C’mon, what good is a leader of armies if he can’t catch a ball? Pay attention.”

John raised a hand over his eyes and squinted at Derek between his fingers.

“Yeah, but I bet we don’t fight in the burning sun, now do we?”

“True, but the machines have floodlights that’ll leave spots in your eyes for hours, so you gotta be able to chuck a grenade in those conditions.”

John threw the ball back to Derek, who caught it without fault. Sarah pulled up her sunglasses and took a sip of her ice tea, enjoying this rare moment of peace, and only once glanced at the shotgun concealed in the rose bush. Looking to her right, Sarah frowned at Cameron, who appeared to be studying the sun without blinking.

“Hey, Tin-Miss. Has nobody told you that staring at the sun will make you blind?”

Cameron blinked once to re-moisten her eyes before turning her head to face Sarah.

“I was running a full system test. Checking for faults and eliminating them before they manifest.”

“And how many did you find?”

“Forty-seven detectable irregularities.”

Sarah pulled down her sunglasses and leaned her head back again.

“I’ll have to remember to stop by the local tech and pick you up an anti-virus patch or something.”

Jason smirked and took a sip of the ice cold beer. Sarah: a cautionary tale about the dangers of discarding contraceptives. Sleep with a guy and get ladled with the biggest responsibility in all of history. The more he observed this woman, the more Jason came to realise that she just wasn’t exactly parent material. Her parenting for John was nothing short of primal. Protect him. Keep him safe. But then, Jason thought, isn’t that what a mother does?

Jason knew he couldn’t answer his own question with any personal experience. He couldn’t recall his mother. For all he knew she was dead, this being very likely given what the future was said to be like. Though the thought didn’t really bother him that much, just opened up more questions about his past, questions he wanted answered.

With a sigh, Jason watched as John spent a few moments staring at Cameron, resulting in the ball catching him between the legs, dropping him painfully to his knees. Jason couldn’t help but laugh at the irony and was tempted to get the hose and blast the lovesick teen with cold water, but suppressed the urge to do so when Derek helped John into a chair next to Cameron’s lounger.

“Now imagine if that had been a grenade, you’d have more than a bruise down there, I can tell you.”

“Yeah, thanks.”

Sarah chuckled and glanced at the rose bush once more, as was her custom. Derek sat down in a deck chair and started flipping the ball in the air, catching it at the last second. Cameron leaned forward a little, watching him with mild interest. This, Jason noticed, allowed John to gaze at Cameron’s bare back without fear of her knowing. Jason wondered what John was thinking and concentrated on the boy, spotting his cheeks as they slowly reddened.

Suddenly, all the colours of the world around him began to merge and change into bright oranges and blues. John, Sarah, and Derek’s bodies glowed pure white with red outlines. Cameron, on the other hand, was a dull grey. Jason let out a small gasp as he looked down at his own hands, seeing that same whiteness. And then his vision shifted completely; everything becoming greyscale. The only colour he could see came from John, Sarah, and Derek, whose bodies had become semi-transparent, allowing him to see the red pulses of their hearts.

Jason glanced at Cameron and saw for the first time the machine underneath. A pulse ran through her body, but at a constant rate, making her endoskeleton glow with blue light. Jason once again looked down at his hands and was surprised to see his own skeletal structure. It seemed perfectly normal, except his fingers on both hands looked somewhat deformed compared to those of John and the others.

They had many more, smaller, gaps in them and they extended up his lower arms, ending an inch or two away from his elbow. All ten digits were hugging his forearms tightly, which explained why they didn’t show on the outside. This baffled Jason, especially when he noticed that the tip of all ten fingers were razor sharp. He cautiously flicked his wrist a few times, discovering that the extensions were very flexible.

“What am I?”

He hadn’t meant to say it out aloud, but that could hardly be helped, considering the circumstances.

“What?”

Jason looked up to see three transparent skeletons and one machine staring at him, their expressions impossible to determine, which frightened him more than anything. Jason closed his eyes and wished for this waking nightmare to end and when he opened his eyes he had to close them again as the full blaze of the sun hit him. Tentatively, Jason opened his eyes, squinting against the sun glare. The world had been restored to its natural hue and he could no longer see the inner workings of all those present.

“Jason? You okay?”

Jason blinked repeatedly before turning to John, who regarded him with a look of bewilderment.

“Do you… Can you remember…? Do you know who you are?”

“I uh…”

The truth was; he was no closer to understanding who or what he was than the day he first arrived here.

“…No. No, I just… It must be the heat… I’m gonna go lie down for a while.”

He staggered back into the scorching house, leaving three very confused humans and one twigging cyborg in the afternoon sun. Once inside, Jason took an ice pack out of the fridge and rested it against his head, letting out a sigh as the coolness began its wondrously soothing work. After a few minutes, the Kid appeared in a pair of swimming trunks, his entire body dripping wet.

“I take it you’ve been making use of the cold water tap.”

The Kid looked himself up and down before nodding and taking a can of cola from the fridge. As he popped the top and took a deep swig, the boy frowned at Jason.

“Your plaster has come loose.”

“Huh?”

Jason removed the ice pack, only for the plaster to come clean off. Instinctively, he touched the place where it had been but felt nothing but smooth skin. The boy’s eyes widened as he stared at Jason’s forehead.

“Whoa!”

Jason dashed for the cutlery draw and picked up the biggest spoon he could find and held it close to his head. What he saw in the reflection made his heart skip a beat; the bullet wound had healed without leaving so much as a scar. The Kid approached him from behind and stared with awe.

“When they brought you home, you had a big hole and I could see your bones and everything. But it’s all healed up look. The only person I know who can do that is Cameron, and I thought she was the only one. Wait, does that mean you’re a robot too.”

Jason looked down at the curious kid and felt his body shiver at the thought. His eyes flicked up to see Derek and John resume their game of catch in the garden, a thousand different possibilities forming in his mind.

“I wish I knew.”

--

Deep within the metropolis that is Los Angeles, a large man with a blank face suddenly froze in mid stride and remained rooted to the spot as his eyes took on an ominous red glow.

>Subject located…
>Mission: Terminate

The T-900 acknowledged his new instructions and turned on his heel, marching back down that long road to whatever destination his quarry decided upon.


To be continued…


Next: Chapter Four: Glitches
Previous: Chapter Two: Shadows