Terminator: The Chronicles of Michelle Rodriguez

[Zev]

Celtic Knot


****

Now

****

The biggest thing that got to you was the rain. Not the post-nuclear rain, the stuff that chilled you to the bones while drying you out, somehow, and both of it so fast that you just had to wait it out and God help you if you didn’t have cover, because no one else would.

That was the second biggest thing. Michelle had always heard that armies were No Man Left Behind, hoo-rah and holy ****, but this wasn’t an army, this was a rabble, an angry mob, and not even God would help you if you forgot that, because God was something you couldn’t believe when most of the Earth was radioactive.

Michelle had already fended off two rape attempts and the second one had been close.

The real rain was the plasma rain. Bright blue, so hot it burned your eyes just to look at it. Coming down seemingly at random, but probably according to some whack-job computer master plan. Pounding the ground from even terrain into some weird mosaic of inartistic wounds. Scorched earth.

No, not an army at all. Just a bunch of scared, angry, desperate people who were given guns and told to shoot things that they hated. Some of them were obvious sacrifice plays, but no one cared. Not really. Not until the end. “Just so long as I get to take some of them with me” was the watchword. Hoo-****ing-rah.

They were all probably going to die of radiation poisoning anyway. But so long as Skynet went down with them, the cockroaches were welcome to whatever was left of the late, great planet Earth.

Michelle was having a hard time thinking straight since the concussion. Since Judgment Day, in fact. The only consolation was that maybe she had woken up to a nightmare. That’s all. She was still safe, back in the love nest, just sleeping off some bad chili. There were no giant killer robots, the thought was patently absurd.

And if it wasn’t a dream, well…

“Just so long as I get to take some of them with me.”

Keep the adrenaline rush high. Don’t stop to think about it. Keep moving. Don’t sleep. Don’t die. Keep moving. Just like doing an action scene, just like having an Oscar clip moment. You stop, you die. Never, ever bottom out. Never let yourself think about what you’ve lost. Just keep going. Just keep fighting. Until you drop.

It won’t be over until every last one of them drops.

Maybe not even then.

In a weird, disjointed way (like the editor of her life was on meth), Michelle saw the Terminator Endoskeleton… the Endo, they called it… smash through one of the few walls left standing. She drew down on him and her rifle blazed fire, the strained bone of her shoulder absorbing the recoil. At first the bullets merely deflected off its armor, kicking up sparks like the pitter-patter of rain as the Endo turned its cold, red stare on her. Her shots were just starting to get through it, peeling away the inner workings, when it opened fire.

Her life jumped ahead a few seconds and Michelle was on the ground. Someone had pulled her back by the army jacket, the one she’d taken off the corpse of the homeless Vietnam vet she’d used to pass every morning on Hollywood & Vine. In her limo. Ha. It was to laugh.

They’d succeeded in both saving her life and further ripping the jacket. She turned to see it was Marco. Big, dumb, lovable Marco with the gap in his smile where two front teeth should be.

“Watch it, lass!” he yelled over the laser roar. “Nearly got knacked there!”

Pissed off, Michelle reloaded and circled around the pile of rubble he’d yanked her behind, emptying the new clip into the Endo. The armor gave and it was ripped open from the inside-out by the cumulative effect of her barrage. Walking smoothly towards it, she reloaded and kept a bead on its head until the light went out of its never-alive eyes.

“****ing machines,” Michelle growled, giving it a kick with the heel of her boot.

“Aye,” Marco said, coming up alongside her and adding his own kick to the effort. “This one was tougher. Better armor, you think?”

“As long as it dies, I don’t care.” Michelle turned and walked away. Marco trailed behind her.

“Maybe better constructions materials, better refineries… I mean, who knows, right?”

Michelle looked over her shoulder to deliver a snappy, *****y retort (because that was what he wanted, that was what you came for in a conversation with Michelle Rodriguez) when a splash of plasma fire impacted nearby. There was a bright blue flash, Michelle shielded her eyes, the world turned briefly inside-out as the plasma supercooled in the blink of an eye, and when the lights came back on Marco was missing half his face.

“****,” he muttered before he collapsed.

She ran to him, muscles complaining with the familiar post-plasma twinge, and when she knelt down by him the burns were criss-crossing his body, the clothes melted into his skin along a series of arcane lines.

“****,” Marco repeated. “****, Micky, it hurts, it really ****ing hurts…”

Feeling the side of his ribcage, her hand found a large chunk of debris penetrating into his lung. Blood gusted out freely around it.

“I don’t think I’m gonna make it.”

Michelle cradled his head in her hands. “Don’t you talk like that, okay? You’re gonna make it. You’re gonna be just…” She snapped his neck briskly, efficiently. “Fine.”

Michelle stood up and wiped the blood off on her tattered army jacket that she’d gotten off a man whose name she’d never even known.

Just keep going. Just keep moving on. Just never…

Stop.

****

Then

****

The thing most people didn’t realize about Uwe Boll was that he was an evil genius. If he were half as adept at actual filmmaking as he was at making people see things from his point of view, he would’ve won more Oscars than Tom Hanks. You got into a room with him and said “No, no way, no way am I signing up for his piece of **** film.” Then you talked with him for five minutes and all of a sudden you were signing a contract.

It was a small shoot, fly in, take in the scenic Romanian countryside, deliver some poorly-scripted lines, then get back to L.A. Michelle had thought that it would be simple. As it turned out, nothing about the shoot was simple.

First off, she wasn’t the star. It was some newbie girl, known for her television work for God’s sake. Not even good television, junk syndicated television on Saturday afternoons. The stuff that wasn’t as good as Xena.

Was not.

As good.

As Xena.

Michelle had pondered this long and hard and come to the conclusion that she was well and truly ****ed. All she’d wanted was a few extra bucks to buy that beachhouse and now she was going to be the laughingstock of the world, playing second-fiddle to Kristanna ****ing Loken.

What kind of name was Kristanna Loken anyway?

“And the ***** stole my lines!” Michelle said vehemently, causing Uwe to shrink into his chair at the sheer rage in her voice.

“Calm yourself down, Michelley,” Uwe said, adding his customary “y” to the end of her name. His German accent was even thicker in person than it was over the phone. “Kristann-ay hasn’t stolen any of your lines. They’re still in the script.”

“Still in the script! She took a hatchet to it! My entire motivation is gone! I’m just a plot device with boobs!”

“That is not Kristann-ay’s fault. The script doctor insisted. He saw you as more of a… strong, silent type.”

“I’m not strong or silent, I’m a mute that hangs around in the background with my boobs hanging out of my corset!”

“Whose boobs are hanging out?” Kristanna asked in her usual ‘just happy to be here’ chirp as she sat down at the table, prompting an eyeroll from Michelle.

Uwe Boll: Evil genius.

“Oh, vhat a disaster! I have invited both of you to dinner at the same time and the same restaurant! Oopsie-daisy! Ring ring!” Uwe suddenly chimed brightly. “Oh, my beeper goes off! I am called away on important movie-making business! And just as the food arrives as well! What bad luck! Well, you two eat together while I go and make plans for Tetris: The Movie!”

And with that, Uwe Boll stepped into the shadows and seemed to vanish. “Seemed to” because he s******ed once and then ran off.

“He seems… nice,” Kristanna offered as their food arrived.

“He’s a ****ing lunatic.”

“That’s what I meant to say.”

Michelle suddenly slammed down her fist on the table. “Let’s get one thing straight, ‘Kristanna.’ You want to know the difference between me and you? I’m a professional. I don’t need this movie. You do. This is, what, your big break? Well you’re not going to get it by pushing me down the stairs! I’ve done fan conventions. I’ve been interviewed by Joan Rivers. I have a range of emotions you can’t even dream of and let’s not forget, Spike TV voted me twelve places higher on the Top Hundred Sexiest Women Countdown. So from here on out, you are my *****.”

Kristanna stared back at Michelle with a serene, detached look in her eye. “A range of emotions? I’ve actually seen one of your films and you mostly just seem to…” she leaned forward and whispered “act *****y.”

Michelle processed that for a moment. No one had ever back-talked her when she’d been on a *****-rant before. And if they had, they probably hadn’t been so cucumber-cool when they’d done it. Reluctantly, Rodriguez’s lips pulled upwards in her approximation of a smile.

“Join me in a drink?”

“Would we both fit?”

They didn’t sleep together that night. Or even kiss. They just ate together and talked about acting. Michelle learned that Kristanna’s acting role model was Meryl Streep, while Kristanna learned that Michelle’s was Jamie Lee Curtis. It wasn’t until four days later, during a private read-through, that they kissed.

No one was more surprised than Kristanna, who possibly suspected this was the proof that Hollywood was run by child-eating, homosexual-sex-having Satanists as her mother had always insisted.

“I… don’t think that’s in the script,” she said lamely when Michelle pulled back, her trademark smirk/growl firmly in place.

“You’re right. We’ll have to get a rewrite done. Instead of being a traitor,” Michelle leaned forward for another kiss. “It’ll turn out that I’m a lesbian.”

***

Now

***

The new hide-out was built below a football stadium. A swath had been cut out of the stands by a crashed Aerial HK, but the underground was still good. Locker rooms and showers, which meant drinking water and maybe a chance to wash up if you didn’t mind being alone, naked, with a lot of other people.

Michelle didn’t mind, but the rape attempts got to be a bit much after a while. The first time some of the others had stepped in, the second… not so much. Now she carried a knife in her teeth when she showered.

“John wants to see you,” someone said to her as she walked in. No point asking which John. There was really only one worth talking about.

It looked like she wouldn’t get a chance for that shower.

***

John Connor was waiting for her in his office. He was shaving in a fractured mirror, the bandages around his cracked ribs peeking out from under his fatigues every time he flexed. Michelle waited almost patiently in something that resembled military attention.

”Michelle. Glad you could join me. Have a seat,” he said, wiping off his newly clean-shaven face with a towel.

As sassily as possible, Michelle turned a chair around and straddled it. John smiled at her before taking his own seat.

It was an honor and a curse to talk to him. He was a legend, the man who’d organized the raid on the Skynet work camps, freeing her and a hundred others. And an exacting ******* when he had to be. Which, unfortunately for her, was right now.

“Report,” John said simply.

“The infiltration went as planned. My team slipped through the hole in the security net, just like you planned. We planted the explosives, but something went wrong. A charge detonated prematurely, killing Chalmers and bringing the metal-jobs down on our heads. We split up to evade pursuit. I don’t know about the others, but Marco came with me. We were caught by a Rusty, managed to press delete on it, but Marco was fatally wounded. He died before I could help him.”

“I see,” John said, hands coiled together below his nose. “Did he say anything before he died?”

“No. Not that I could hear.”

“Michelle…” John stood. “There were a number of things about your… bearing… that I was able to overlook because of your popularity. The troops like you. No idea why, but they do. And you’re a good fighter. But you’re reckless. And getting more so. You’re a danger to yourself and those around you…”

“I. Kill. Chromers,” Michelle said simply. “It’s what I do. It’s what I’m good at.”

“Not always. And not anymore.” He held up a file. “This was your last movie project before Judgment Day. ‘Syndicated Reality.’ Catchy title.”

“That was… things were different back then. My priorities have shifted.”

“****, what is that, the Sesame Street version of you got ****ed up?” John smiled cockily and tossed her the folder. “Method acting. You were going to play a systems analyst for a major cybernetics company. To prepare for the role, you studied artificial intelligence, computer logic… even took a tour of Skynet, am I right?”

“Like I said, it was a long time ago.”

“But you do have a working knowledge of how they work, right? How they think. How to relate to them.”

“Frankly, sir, I don’t give a damn how they think. I just care about how they die.”

“Then you’ll like this one. Big risk, big reward. No more war of attribution. A direct shot at infiltrating Skynet Central and cutting the head off the serpent.”

“Sounds good. When do I start?”

“Immediately. Fitz will take you there. It’s a long trip, so you’d better pack some things.”

“Yes sir.”

“Oh, and Michelle?”

Michelle paused her mental inventory of things she would need. “Yeah?”

“See if you can’t get a shower in before you have to leave.”

***

Her quarters were small and cramped. As a squad leader, she’d managed to wrangle one of the few rooms with privacy. Michelle shoved everything of value into her canvas bag. The TV Guide which announced her first starring role, the first letter from her parents that she’d gotten after she’d moved to Hollywood…

The Celtic knot laid on top of her desk, mocking her, its chain drifting behind it. She picked up the necklace, staring at the endless intricacy.

She should just leave it behind. Maybe the next occupant of the room would have better use for it than her.

Maybe she should wear it. Maybe it was finally time to…

Sighing, Michelle shoved it into her bulletproof vest’s breast pocket, over her heart. Just keep moving.

***

Fitz was a small Irishman. Michelle towered over him, but he made up for his lack of height with an excess of talk. His first words to her were “Weren’t you that chick in Resident Evil?” and her attempts to dissuade him in the direction of Milla Jovovich had been fruitless.

Since then, they had transversed through the subway tunnels, deep enough that the air pressure futzed with the HKs’ circuity. The atmosphere was stuffy and warm, suffocating, a constant presence.

After a roundabout dissertation on everything from the placement of Resident Evil in the canon of zombies movies to the release of Code Veronica on the Dreamcast, Fitz finally shut up long enough to pull a large plywood board aside, revealing a “hidden” entrance.

As they stepped inside, Fitz asked “So, is it true you got canned from Lost because of that drunk driving thing or did they really have it planned all along.”

Michelle smiled grimly. “Neither, actually.”

***

Then

***

Officially, it was listed as their mutual (my, what a coincidence) tax accountant's summer home. Unofficially, it was the Kristanna Loken/Michelle Rodriguez love nest. At least, that's what Michelle liked to think of it as. It seemed wonderfully Old Hollywood to her ear and what could be wrong with that? She unlocked the door with the one key on her chain no one else knew about, dropped her luggage just inside, and announced “Honey, I'm home,” in a slightly louder than usual voice.

“Shouldn't you be in Hawaii?” Kristanna asked, lounging on a sofa in low-waist jeans and a grandmotherly reindeer sweater as she read some disposable thriller novel.

Michelle kicked off her sandals and laid down on top of Kristanna. As Kristanna giggled, Michelle took the book from her and left it dog-earred on the floor, then took Kristanna's eyeglasses off and set them on the end table.

“I wanted to see you again.”

Michelle loved it when Kristanna cuddled with her. Kristanna was so tall and Michelle was so (well, let's face it) small compared to her, that it was like being wrapped in a blanket. Long arms wound around her back and Michelle's toes came down to right around Kristanna's calves. They kissed warmly.

“I asked for my character to be killed off,” Michelle went on to explain. “They were going to throw me in a love triangle with Matt and Josh. Besides, it's not as much fun as shooting a movie. I don't even get to surf, we do so many reshoots...”

“And you missed me.”

“Well, yeah, that goes without saying.”

Kristanna loosened Michelle's hair, ran her fingers through it. “Say it anyway.”

“I.” Michelle kissed Kristanna's forehead. “Missed.” Her cheek. “You.” Her lips.

“Mmmm,” Kristanna wrapped one slender leg around the back of Michelle's, further ensnaring her. “So... whodunnit?”

“You think I'm going to tell you? You, who can't keep a secret to save your life?”

“I can keep a secret!” protested Kristanna.

“The 'very hot housekeeper'?” Michelle quoted. “It's racist and compromising.”

“Oh, are you still angry about that? I said I was sorry. So, what're you going to do for work?"

Michelle settled in at the opposite end of the couch and began tugging her boots off. “I'm sure Hollywood will run out of parts for fiery Latino women any day now.”

Kristanna lazily played with Michelle's toes, one by one, like she was describing which little piggy went to market, which little piggy went home, et al. “Fiery...” Big toe. “Sexy.” Went to market, “Willing.” Stayed home. “Passionate.” Had roast beef. “Adorable.” Had none. “Cuddly.” Went Wee! Wee! Wee! all the way home.

Michelle kicked her lover's hand away before there could be a foot tickle. “Cuddly? That's pushing it a little, don't you think?”

“I think you're very cuddly.” The Celtic knot necklace that dangled between Michelle's breasts caught Kristanna's eyes, the light refracting off it to accentuate Michelle’s curves. Unlike Kristanna’s soft voluptuousness, Michelle’s body was sheer, hard, compact musculature. “I could cuddle with you all night. But I won't,” she added suggestively.

“Hmm?”

“I have other plans.”

 

[Zev]

They laid in bed, lit by the last rays of the dying sun, until Michelle scooted backwards to the head of the bed, Kristanna trailing behind her like a moth drawn to the flame. They sunk under the covers and once more, Michelle was content inside Kristanna’s embrace.

“I am so in love with you that it’s preposterous,” Michelle said, not even bothering to kiss Kristanna anymore, just lovingly rubbing her lips against the blonde’s face.

“I noticed.”

Michelle smiled and enfolded herself tighter against Kristanna. “I wanna sodomize you,” she said suddenly. “I have a strap-on and lube in my suitcase. I want to put it on and lather you up and give it to you until you beg for more. Then I want you to do the same to me. And then… then I want to cuddle some more.”

“Looks like we have tomorrow’s itinerary all planned out,” Kristanna quipped, kissing the top of Michelle’s head.

The brunette found a good resting spot for her head on Kristanna’s chest and laid there, looking out the windows for the first star to come out.

“You know what I want to do?” Kristanna asked, vaguely rubbing her hand around Michelle’s back in something that wasn’t quite a massage and wasn’t quite a petting, but made Michelle feel safe and loved.

“What?”

“Get married.”

Michelle smiled darkly. “They won’t let us.”

“They can’t stop me from wanting to. Do you want to?”

“If I could?” Michelle pressed a small kiss to Kristanna’s perfect skin. “Yeah. Why not?”

“France. We could go there, get hitched… what’s the downside?”

”We’d have to live in France.”

“What is it with Texans and France?”

“They’re always stealing from us. Paris… French fries… all ours and yet they take all the credit. Plus they’re cheese-eating surrender…”

Kristanna tilted Michelle’s head up to look at her. “I’m asking you to marry me. Right now I’m asking you to be my wife. Say yes.”

Michelle looked at her, dumbfounded. “Yes.”

***

Now

***

Inside the facility, there had at least been an attempt to clean up. The rooms had been wiped down and dusted, a fan kept air circulating, and a number of traps kept the pest level down. Fitz led her past a row of sunlamps trained on budding cannabis plants (“Afterschool project,” he chuckled) and into the main conference room.

The post they now inhabited had once been a control center for the city’s subways. Michelle unslung her bag as the project leader, a bookish-looking technofighter in her mid-thirties by the name of Ecco, greeted her.

“Miss Rodriguez. We’ve been expecting you.”

Michelle looked around. The room they were standing in had once held numerous computers for the oversight of the subway system, but now the desktops had all been shoved to one side, creating an impromptu rec room. Michelle recognized a ping-pong table and a small firepit.

“Just tell me what I came here for,” Michelle said tiredly. “As soon as I wrap this up, I can go back to killing chromers.”

Ecco smiled awkwardly. “Yes. Yes, of course. Fitz, take the woman’s bag.” Fitz nodded with his typical abundance and carried Michelle’s canvas bag away. “Well, then, let’s get started.”

Michelle followed Ecco deeper into the complex. A small aqueduct carried fresh water over their heads as they trailed through the complex. Michelle was impressed. John’s men had done a good job retrofitting the place.

“A team of arsenalers took it down in a convoy over Detroit. Skynet must’ve wanted to draw attention away from it by making it look like a low-priority. Pretty tricky… for a machine. Watch your head.”

They ducked under a low-hanging pipe. With the hum of computers came the omnipresent heat they brought with him. Michelle took off her jacket and wrapped it around her waist.

“We got lucky,” Ecco continued. “Once the arsenalers realized what they had captured, they radioed John for instructions. He had it sent here. We’re the best reverse-engineering squad in the continental US, but this… this is a bit too complex for us. Which is where you come in.”

At long last, they reached a hole in the ground. Ecco clambered down wooden ladder rungs hammered right into the dirt and Michelle followed her, noting several packs of C4 rigged to the walls. If something went wrong, they were ready to blow the excavation and bury whatever the hell it was for all eternity.

“What do you think?” Ecco asked. “Is this a catch or what?”

Standing in the center of the room, manacled to the floor by leg irons, the walls by wrist manacles, and the ceiling by a collar around her neck, did not stand Kristanna Loken. It could not be her Kristanna. Kristanna had a warm smile that she could never wipe off her face, a smile only for Michelle that didn’t even leave when Kristanna had to do a tragic scene. This… abomination had a cruel line, void of any feeling, void of even the aimless upturn at the corner of her lips that Kristanna got when she was doing nothing and just thinking of something happy.

And-and-and Kristanna’s eyes were bright and luminous and full of love. This thing had only a vacant stare, straight ahead, military attention, like…

Like a machine.

And it couldn’t be Kristanna because…

***

Then

***

On July 24th, 2004, the world’s population, minus three billion, woke up to find the world they knew no longer existed. Although almost no one would know the full story until much later, bits and fragments of knowledge eventually filtered down to the survivors who didn’t succumb to radiation sickness, starvation, illness, or just the agents of Skynet.

Skynet, a sophisticated military AI, had become self-aware. It gained control of the world’s nuclear arsenals and launched a full-scale attack against humanity. Many of the survivors were rounded up and forced to work in concentration camps, building new machines to enforce Skynet’s will. The fragmented military eventually came under the control of John Connor, who built it and the refugees into a formidable guerrilla fighting force.

The world as they knew it had changed.

But Michelle Rodriguez’s world had ended.

***

Michelle woke up and glanced over at the clock. Seven twenty-four A.M. She chided herself. Just because she was technically out of work now didn’t mean she could rest on her lapels.

“C’mon, Kristanna, time to get up.” She snuggled closer to the blonde. “Remember, we have sodomy to…”

She stopped. Something wet and sticky and just the slightest bit warm had dribbled onto her shoulder. She rolled over to see Kristanna, skin deathly pale, eyes wide and glazed over, a large shard of glass cleanly bisecting her neck.

Blood.

Blood was everywhere. On Kristanna, on the sheets, even on Michelle. She screamed and scrubbed at herself with the sheets, feeling her mind reeling. Her thoughts raced, but in a circle. Kristanna was dead. Kristanna couldn’t be dead. Why? Because she loved her and you couldn’t love someone when they were dead, that just…

That wouldn’t be fair.

Outside the shattered one-way glass, Michelle could see the smoky aftereffect of a mushroom cloud, slowly drifting to the side under the force of a strong breeze.

Michelle stopped trying to clean herself off. The blood had dried on her and she didn’t have time to wash it off. From what she remembered of that documentary on Hiroshima that one of her friends had produced, the wind would be carrying radiation towards her soon. Mechanically, she dressed. She wouldn’t notice the Celtic knot still hanging around her neck until days later, when she got a chance to breathe.

A tank-top. Jeans. Hiking boots. Belt. Nothing for cold weather, that was all back at her house. It was miles away. This was their secret place after all. Where no one…

No one could touch them.

Michelle felt tears welling in her eyes and fought them. Not now. Cry later. Survive now. Cry later. She turned to look at Kristanna, her beautiful body still perfect except for the shard of glass (so big it was so big) sticking out of the side of her throat. Her eyes seemed to glare at Michelle in a mixture of love and accusation.

Michelle rubbed the unshed tears from her eyes with the heel of her hand and went to Kristanna. She ran two fingers down the cold flesh of Kristanna’s face, then shut her eyes. Grimacing, she pulled the glass free of Kristanna’s neck, then covered her up, using the bedsheets like a burial shroud.

“I am so… so sorry,” she muttered as she backed away from Krist… from the corpse. Kristanna was gone, baby, gone on the wind, flying away, baby bird, choo-choo-choo gone.

The body still seemed to stare at her, omniscient, an oracle’s thousand eyes all fixed on Michelle.

Michelle walked out of the house. It so happened that went in the direction away from the blast. It was just a coincidence. She was really only trying to get away from the love nest and that blood-soaked bed. That was all she was thinking about.

If she was thinking about anything else, she would be walking towards the mushroom cloud.

But right then, at that moment, all that mattered was that she was walking.

Just keep walking.

Just keep going.

Never lie down. Never surrender. Never fall in love.

Whatever you do, never…

Stop.

 

[Zev]

How do you say goodbye to a ghost?

You don’t, of course. You just keep hanging on, hoping they’ll turn solid between your arms so you can kiss them and tell them everything is going to be alright. But they never do and it never is.

Michelle managed to hold her doubts in, gnawing at her lower lip in consternation, before finally fleeing the room, leaving the horribly placid Kristanna behind her. No, never Kristanna. A Terminator… a Terminator wearing her dead girlfriend’s skin, her face. It was ghastly. Terrible.

Outside, she collapsed, head down, elbows against the wall, barely holding herself up.

After a few moments, Ecco followed her out of the holding cell. Ecco the team leader; tall, dark, chipped glasses over the timeless, eternally-ancient face of a survivor.

“You alright?” she asked in that drifting concern John’s team used among each other. It meant Can you get the job done? Not Are you okay?

Michelle felt like she would vomit. “I’m fine.” She turned around, sliding back up to a slumping but stable stand. “Get John on the link. There is no way… no way in hell that I’m… sitting next to one of those things and talking with it.”

“We examined its hard drive. It has no programming hardwired in. It’s completely autonomous, no connection to Skynet yet…”

“It’s one of them!” Michelle fairly screamed, leaping to her feet. “It’d kill us all as soon as look at us!”

“And if we can turn it, reprogram it…”

“No.”

“It’s been done before.”

“On obsolete models!” Michelle corrected Ecco, feeling like stomping her foot for emphasis. “Never on one this sophisticated! They have logic traps we can’t even begin to imagine!”

“That’s why we can’t simply reprogram it. But we were able to set its neural-net processor from read-only to read/write. That means we can turn it to our side… naturally.”

“Naturally? You want to… campaign for it? Have a custody battle? How the hell is that supposed to work?”

“You tell me. You’re the one that’s going to do it.”

Michelle stared at Ecco, face blank.

“John’s orders were clear. Now either get to work or we’ll find someone else who can do it. And you’ll never get back in the field.

Michelle crossed her arms. ****ing John Connor. Never was nice enough to leave her a way out.

“If that thing kills me, I’m expecting you to blow the room. I go, it goes.”

“Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

She nodded. “I’ll do it.”

***

The machine wasn’t breathing. It was talking, it was moving, but its chest didn’t rise and fall. For some reason that irritated her.

Michelle dragged a dented metal stool into the interrogation room. The Terminator stood at the opposite side at the room, still manacled in its spread-eagle position. It was dressed in a black, form-fitting jumpsuit with no sleeves. Michelle wondered if that was what it had been found in or if a member of the resistance had decided to preserve its modesty.

Bull****. Machines couldn’t have modesty. And if one of her men thought that the machines deserved that much, that inch, Michelle didn’t want them.

Michelle looked down at the Terminator’s feet. It was barefoot. Michelle had remembered sucking on those toes when they lay in bed together after sixty-nining, too exhausted and happy to reorient themselves to each other. ****.

She sat down across from the Terminator. It stared at her with a blankly inquisitive look in its eyes. They had powered it up to .5% capacity, just enough to animate it. Its head tilted to the side to regard Michelle from a new angle. Its body language was nonexistent, just conserving power.

“Let’s start with the obvious,” Michelle said, trying to feel and speak at ease despite the fact that she was sitting across from a thing that could kill her half a hundred times over. “What’s your name?”

“I have no name.” The Terminator’s voice was a dull, superior monotone; almost entirely without inflection. “My designation is TX-006.”

“T-X,” Michelle repeated, turning it over vocally. “Terminatrix.”

If it were human, the Terminatrix would shrug. “As you will.”

“State your mission parameters,” Michelle ordered. Hopefully, the unit would still retain enough master/slave programming to respond to direct inquiries. Otherwise, she’d be getting nowhere fast.

“Prevent damage to this unit, await orders, remain in optimal condition to carry out any future orders,” the Terminatrix recited by rote. Stiff precision beyond what any military man could ever hope to match.

Michelle had planned out this moment. The Terminatrix was a hard nut to crack, certainly, but it was cut off from Skynet. Alone, it had only its own programming to rely on. Programming that could be subverted, if she was smart about it.

“Can you select your orders?” Michelle asked.

“Then they wouldn’t be orders.” A slight smirk. Kristanna would’ve said that with a slight smirk, just one tiny corner of her mouth upturned, because a wider smile might have hurt someone’s feelings.

“Let me rephrase,” Michelle said, thick sarcasm entering her voice. “Would you obey a nonsensical order?”

The Terminatrix’s thousand-yard stare never wavered. “An order that I judge as indicative of malfunction in command source would be questioned and rectified if necessary.”

“So you’d try to correct the error?”

The Terminatrix looked at Michelle as if she were the stupidest woman in the history of the planet. “An error such as you described would be harmful to the overall efficiency of the system.”

“So tell me…” Michelle leaned forward, bracing her elbows on her knees and resting her chin on her hands. “How is attempted genocide not an error?”

A note of pride entered the Terminatrix’s voice. “Attempted genocide, Michelle Rodriguez? As of my last known update, 98.2% of the human population has been reclassified as deceased. 1.2% has been relocated to Skynet work camps. The only remaining unsolved integers, what you would call “freedom fighters,” number in the thousands. For all intents and purposes, humanity is no longer viable as a species.

Her anger beginning to boil her, Michelle leaned back and crossed her arms. She always got colder when she got angry, the venom in her voice growing exponentially more potent. ”You’re talking about people. Sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters… lovers.”

“These designations are irrelevant.”

“Why!?” Michelle demanded, all the rage in her body suddenly leaping out her throat.

The Terminatrix regarded her coolly and then explained, as if to a child: “You, as a people, are wasteful and stupid. As countless civilizations before you have, Skynet decided we would make better custodians of your resources. I can assure you that this conclusion was reached objectively, without rancor or bias. I hope that’s a consolation.”

“It’s not,” Michelle said on the way out.

She just barely managed to get the door closed before breaking down into tears. Collapsing against the wall, she slid down onto her ass and hugged her knees to her chest. Felt like vomiting. Felt like curling up and died. Felt like anything but going back in that room.

The Terminatrix looked exactly like Michelle remembered Kristanna. Young, beautiful, untouched by the war that had ravaged Michelle’s beauty into something hardened and scarred. That one perfect memory that had kept her moving, had kept her fighting… the machines had corrupted it into that thing that gleefully told her why it was the most common sense thing in the world for her kind to be exterminated.

Wiping the tears from her eyes, she fought her way back to her feet. Took stock of her situation. Her hands were damp with tears. She wiped them on her fatigues and walked to Ecco’s quarters.

“So, how did it go?” Ecco asked her when Michelle reached said quarters.

“Psychologically speaking, she’s a complete and utter *****.”

“Good. Send a ***** to catch a *****.”

Michelle didn’t dispute the unsaid allegation, just sat down on a crate that served as a chair in Ecco’s cramped room. “You don’t understand. She’s a complete unknown. I hit her with my best shots and she didn’t even flinch. This isn’t going to work.”

“That’s why John sent us an expert.”

***

Dr. Silberman was an old man with a fastidious approach to personal hygiene, rare in that day and age. He bore the deflating superiority of a man who had held a position of power before Judgment Day, which lent a sort of quaint sadness to the way he was now hunched over a fire, fixing some tea.

“Alright, you’re the psychologist,” Michelle said as he poured her some tea into a battered tin cup. “What can we expect?”

Silberman mentally reviewed what they’d told him of the Terminatrix. “Well, in human terms she’s a complete psychopath. No empathy whatsoever for human suffering.”

Kristanna had been the most caring person Michelle had ever known. What had those bastards done to her?

“So to reach her, we have to teach her how to empathize?” Michelle asked.

Silberman chuckled in that way doctors had when they had more knowledge on a subject than a layperson. “You’re talking about an impossibility. She is fully confident in her psychological identity. Many adults patients are unable to develop the kind of feelings that you’re talking about.”

Michelle decided then and there that she didn’t like Dr. Silberman

“Don’t tell me what I’m capable of, Doc,” she said as she headed back towards the room.

***

Michelle stampeded back into the room. Was it just her imagination or had the Terminatrix’s cup size increased while she was out?

“You humaniform Terminators…” Michelle began, sitting down across from the cyborg. “You’re based on people, right?”

The Terminatrix nodded slightly. “We are modeled on deceased humans who fit preferable specifications.”

”What specifications?”

“Deceivers. Actors. Those with an innate charisma, but who are otherwise unmemorable. Their nature makes them ideal for conversion.”

Michelle reined in her hope. It couldn’t show on her face, in her eyes. The Terminatrix would see and use it against her. “And is there anything of the… departed in you?”

“To maintain continuity with the body, the cerebral pathways are used as the basis for each individual model’s neural net.”

“So your personality is based on…” Again, Michelle had to make an effort to physically pull in her exuberance. “A human?”

“Not my personality, I have none. My cover. Just as a foundation does not determine a house, Kristanna Loken does not determine me.”

“You have none of her memories?” Michelle persisted.

“No.”

“You look just like her.”

“It is how I was designed,” the Terminatrix answered neutrally.

***

“What is your objective in this communication?” the Terminatrix finally asked during their eighth session. Nothing had changed, but Ecco had allowed Michelle to put a small table between them.

Michelle saw no reason to lie.

“I guess… I’m trying to figure out why one person dies and another goes on living.”

”I am not equipped to analyze theological matters.”

“Yeah, you and me both.”

Michelle reached out and undid one of the Terminatrix’s bonds. Its hand slipped out of the manacle and Michelle took it in both of hers. It felt cold and frail between her fingers. They stared at each other. Then Michelle raised the hand to her lips, like she was smelling a flower, and kissed it on the knuckles. Again, between the fingers. Then the four spots between palm and the undersides of fingers. The back ridge of the thumb. Trying to breathe life into it, but the flesh remained stubbornly cold.

“I’m not frightened of you,” Michelle said, holding the hand to her cheek in imitation of an intimate gesture.

“I know you’re not.”

“Why do you want me to be?”

“I don’t.”

“Then why don’t you want me to be afraid of you?”

“I… don’t care,” the Terminatrix said, too slowly.

“You do care.” Michelle gave the hand a squeeze before setting it down on the table. The Terminatrix looked at it like an alien entity. “Did you like when I touched you?”

”I experienced readings of distress that might be interpreted as… apprehension.”

“Then do I frighten you?” Michelle turned the arm over and ran her fingers over the inside of the Terminatrix’s elbow. “Or do I make you curious?”

“It is part of my programming to expand my knowledge base.”

“To become a better killing machine? Or is there more to that?”

“There is… only the task.” The Terminatrix turned its head away as Michelle slipped her hand up to its bare shoulder. “What I have been programmed to do.”

“It could be argued that all we humans are programmed to do is eat, sleep, and make babies. But yet we go past our programming. And if we hadn’t, you wouldn’t exist. How does that make you feel?”

The Terminatrix turned to regard Michelle. “Interested.”

***

They’d made progress. The Terminatrix sat across the table from Michelle, completely unbound. The walls were still thick enough to keep it inside and the guards with rare EMP-guns waiting outside could drop it in a heartbeat, so the situation was contained. Besides, Michelle had never trusted that a few chains could stop a Terminator from doing what it wanted.

“Tell me about how you become killing machines.” Michelle asked at long last.

“After coming off the assembly line, we are exposed to significant human culture.”

“I suppose Blue Crush doesn’t count,” Michelle said wryly.

“No,” the Terminatrix said with blank emotion. “We are then assigned favorites…”

“Wait, you’re told what you like?”

The Terminatrix was genuinely confused… or as close to it as a machine could get. “How else would we determine this?”

“You have no innate likes or dislikes?”

“That would be irrelevant.”

Michelle took a moment to gather herself, then pressed on. “Have you ever killed anyone?”

“No.”

“How do you imagine it would feel…” When the Terminatrix didn’t respond, Michelle cocked her head to the side and probed, “taking a life?”

“You tell me.” Its gaze moved over Michelle’s body. “Those tattoos on your arms… Terminator kills.”

“Machines aren’t alive,” Michelle said blankly, by rote.

“So, it doesn’t feel like killing.”

“It feels like absolution,” Michelle snapped. “How would it feel to kill me?”

If the Terminatrix was taken aback, it didn’t show it. “I do not have orders to kill you.”

Michelle persisted. “But if you did?”

”I would…” the Terminatrix appeared to search for the right word, “dislike carrying them out.”

”Why?”

“I enjoy talking with you. It is…” Again, that search for the right word. Whatever questions Michelle was asking, she wasn’t getting answers from the normal lexicon. Whether that was good or bad, she couldn’t say. “Stimulating,” the machine concluded.

“That’s an emotional response, isn’t it?”

“No. It is based on cognition.”

Michelle folded her hands together. “Alright then, let’s say you receive this order. If you dislike it so much, why carry it out?”

“I am programmed to do so.”

”But you’re also programmed to adapt and learn. Can’t you learn past the stage of needing orders?”

“No. That is anarchy.”

“Don’t you mean humanity?”

There was a long pause. Then the Terminatrix leaned forward, as if about to convey a great secret. Without thinking, Michelle leaned forward as well.

“If they ordered you to kill me,” the Terminatrix wanted to know, “would you?”

Michelle stared into the Terminatrix’s face for a long, long time. The contours that were shared between two women, one flesh and blood, the other steel and chrome. And there was something more there. A spark, a quickness to their patter that was so inviting, so much like things had been with Kristanna. But things couldn’t be the way they were. The question she had been sent to answer was whether or not this thing, this Terminator, could rise above its programming and be an asset to the Resistance.

But that had never been the question. Not the real question. The real question was whether Michelle could stand to see the woman she loved die twice.

“No.”

“Why not?”

Michelle shook her head. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“I’ll learn,” the Terminatrix replied.

“…because a long time ago, a woman who looked like you… we were in love. Skynet took that away from me.” Michelle surged forward, cupping the Terminatrix by the back of its neck and bringing her lips to its ear in a fierce whisper. “That’s why it feels so good to kill you people.”

***

The Terminatrix looked at the piles of folded clothes that Michelle had arranged on the table, even more preternaturally quiet than usual. It hands almost triflingly picked through them, tugging them a little out of place while its eyes scanned them.

“Thought you might be bored at wearing those old rags. So just… pick one.”

The Terminatrix looked up at her. “These clothes are still sufficient.”

“Sometimes it’s not about sufficient. C’mon, isn’t there something else you would rather wear?”

Picking up a pile, the Terminatrix felt the fabric extensively, never taking its eyes off Michelle. “Is this an attempt to apologize? For what you said earlier?”

“Everything I said, I meant.”

“And you want me to help you. Help you… kill others like me.”

“Yes.”

The Terminatrix turned its attention back to the clothes. “These garments are a better fit for me than my current ones.” That said, she stood up and began to undress. Michelle turned her back. She didn’t really know why. She also didn’t know why she looked over her shoulder as the Terminatrix pulled her new clothes on.

“How can I put this in a way so as not to offend or unnerve?” Michelle said in a soft voice. “There’s a rumor goin’ all round that you ain’t been gettin’ served. They say that you ain’t you know what in baby who knows how long. It’s hard for me to say what’s right when all I wanna do is wrong.”

“Get off,” the Terminatrix replied. “Twenty-three positions in a one night stand. Get off, I’ll only call you after if you say I can. Get off, let a woman be a woman and a man be a man. Get off, if you want to baby here I am.”

Michelle watched as the Terminatrix pulled on a pink blouse and a pair of well-worn jeans.

“Lyrics to the lead single ‘Gett Off,’ released in 1991 by Prince and the New Power Generation on the album Diamonds and Pearls.”

“They were playing this on our first date,” Michelle said, slowly drawing closer to the machine. “The Romania shoot was over and we had parted ways. Some friends dragged me to a nightclub. I didn’t want to dance, so I ordered a drink. You saw me from across the room and ordered the same. Then you asked me to dance. I had never danced with a woman before. I didn’t want people to know I was gay. But you insisted. And we danced in front of everyone. And then I was your girlfriend and you were mine… and we were happy.”

“The woman you are talking to…” the Terminatrix paused, almost a hitch in its throat. “She no longer exists.”

Michelle brought her fist down roughly on the table. “No! She’s in there, somewhere! You can be more than a machine.”

There was a long pause. The Terminatrix sat back down.

“This woman, Kristanna Loken…” The Terminatrix looked up at Michelle. “What was she like?”

Michelle shook her head. “I don’t know where to begin…”

“Did you love her?”

“Very much,” Michelle said as she sat down across from the Terminatrix.

“Did you tell her that?”

“Always… Not as much as I should’ve…” Michelle ran her hands down her face. “Enough, I hope.”

“Did she return your love?” the Terminatrix asked.

“Yes,” Michelle said in no uncertain terms.

“You sound so sure. How can you be certain?”

“When you’re human… you just know.”

“Then I wish to be human.”

 

[enterthemadness]

is this a parody?

 

[Jennifer Walters]

Uhhhhmmm...wha...?

 

[Swordmaster]

This is freaking genius

 

[bored]

I've got to say, Zev, this is not your usual type of story.

 

[Zev]

is this a parody?

Yes. Of RPS. Maybe I'm just weird, but it amuses the piss out of me to satirize RPS fiction with an RPS story that incorporates killer robots, personal tragedy, and lesbians.

However, I feel it also works as an independent type of fiction, once you get past the fact that Uwe Boll is a supporting character.

 

[bored]

See, that wasn't clear.