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I've known I was living in the End Times since I was 19 years old.
Not the kind of End Times revival tent preachers proclaimed would pit sinner against sinner while the good were carried away, saved from cataclysmic horrors by a merciful God.
The real End Times will culminate, ironically, in utter destruction the survivors will call Judgment Day. No semi-merciful God saving some, just death.
The machines killed my mother, killed Kyle, almost killed me, killed Miles Dyson and so many others...they had no mercy. The machine that murdered John in front of my eyes didn't even have the mercy to kill me.
I have no mercy either. Not for any of the machines I've terminated over the years.
There is no mercy for good or evil from these machine monsters.
Of course, they learned that from us. Humanity lacks mercy. Robert Burns was my mother's favorite poet. She was as Scottish as my father was Irish. 'Man was made to mourn Man's inhumanity to man.' That's a stubborn and vengeful legacy.
Survival is a desperate, scraping, scurrying life. There is no redemption, no mercy, no salvation. All I have left, though, is making sure to destroy as many monsters as possible before the End Times destroy us all.
This time, the coordinates come just past midnight. I want to smash the phone as I read, "For John."
Whoever the asshole is who sends these must know that everything I've done and thought and breathed for nearly 30 years has been for John.
For all the good it did.
Still, I'm racing toward that point, the yellow center line counting off the moments of my life like a fucking metronome. Perpetual. Unending.
Maybe this time I am racing toward the end. I can't win against every machine forever.
Who knows, maybe this time an army of machines will come, a mass harbinger of Judgment Day and the End Times.
The highway to this rendezvous has seams every 4 stripes, like slow-firing artillery.
Flash-flash-flash-flash-thunk. Flash-flash-flash-flash-thunk.
The dark and my headlights seem to warp the highway, and I blink and rub at my eyes with the back of my wrist.
Fucking machines have no respect for sleeping and waking hours, and the time to be at these coordinates is 2:17am.
Flash-flash-flash-flash-thunk. Flash-flash-flash-flash-thunk.
It's almost two am, and I've got two more miles. The road narrows toward the remote coordinates, and the tell-tale crackle of electricity spikes the hairs on the back of my neck. The wind picks up, swirling in tiny eddies like dozens of loops in time. Once I'm this close, I barely even need the coordinates.
I kill the lights on my Bronco. No need to attract attention. I know my kit like I knew John's face once. I've already got a pistol at each hip and each ankle, but it's in these last minutes that I clip grenades to my belt, sling a rocket launcher over my shoulder, criss-cross a high-caliber repeating rifle strap to the front of me, and pick up the rifle with the highest-quantity magazine.
I'm going to send these motherfuckers right back through time where they belong.
The leaves dance a reel against the pavement. The sound is good cover as I move forward and tuck myself against a stone crevice in the cliff that rises above one side of the road. With that to my back, I have a clear view of the black above desert in front of me.
As I move slowly along the cliff wall, a wave of vertigo washes over me, and the stars flicker. I close my eyes, shake my head slightly, and the world rights itself, though the road still looks slightly tilted.
From the opposite direction, there is a flash like a time shifter, and I hear an engine, a vehicle slowing, then knocking as it shuts down. The faint glow of headlights is dampened.
Goddammit. I do not need fucking civilians in the middle of a terminator punching through time. What the hell are they doing in the middle of nowhere anyway? I speed up, nearing the round in the bend as the leaves whirl faster.
I sure as hell don't want to get caught in the bubble of the time shifter, but I've got to put myself between the others and--
A burst of lightning shows me it's a Jeep like the one I drove through Mexico toward Guatemala before and just after John was born. There's a woman with long hair in a ponytail gathering weapons, the same weapons I'm carrying, and a young man hands her magazines with ease and surety.
"John." My son's name escapes my lips. My son. I see him on the floor of a bar de la playa, his blood dripping through the planks onto the sand. My breath shudders, and I force myself to blink. This John...this man is taller, harder, more angular. My John still had some of the softness of childhood about him when he died. The remnant of my heart clenches, and I bite my lower lip, dig my boots into stance to keep from running to him.
I press myself against the rock face as they both look up. She's with my son. Her son. It has probably been over 20 years since I was her. She looks in my direction, eyes narrowed. I suspect our expressions mirror one another. Even before Pescadero, I'd learned to feel when I was being watched.
A circle in the air wavers, pulling our gaze away from each other. A helicopter pops through it overhead, pulling the circle along with it until the wavering pink pops out of existence behind the last of the chopper's rear rotor.
Another wave of vertigo, this one with nausea, rocks me, and I swallow hard, turning my forehead into the cool rock face for a moment.
The lightning flashes again, electricity crackling, and I look back to see a machine...Is it Uncle Bob? It's definitely a T-800, but with grey hair. He dangles from the skids with one arm, shouting in that ridiculous accent, "Move away if you want to live."
The other woman and I lock then roll our eyes in unison, simultaneously bringing our rifles to bear as the T-800 drops to the ground, fracturing the highway right where the leaves are spinning.
He reaches behind his back and brings around a mini-gun--Uncle Bob's favorite--its ammunition belt unfurling beside him.
He backs away from his landing point as the chopper lands behind him, and another...me comes tumbling out, barely older than when I was waitressing, before any of this, back when I had a mother, a roommate, a pet iguana. An entirely different life.
Another pair of feet hit the desert floor on the other side of the chopper, and it's Kyle. I swallow hard as the phantom sensation of long-ago sex shudders through me, the echo of a memory of yet another life, when I thought a life-affirming act could push away death.
The irony that our one night produced the literal sentry standing between life and death for most of humanity is not lost on me.
But this Kyle, ducking under the chopper rotors, is even younger than the one I'd known for 24 hours, and he stumbles on the sand as he races to stand beside Young Sarah.
Then the lightning accelerates, and I'll think or ask about this latest oddity in my life later.
The familiar sphere forms with its high-pitched whine and electrical crackling around the molten-hot edges, and six of us are aiming our considerable firepower at the ball of light. I close my eyes so I'll be ready to see, to shoot, when it dims again, and when the light reduces though my eyelids, I open them to see two tall, willowy women flanked by two men.
The men, so similar with their dark-sand hair, hop away from the carved-out highway, quickly getting their bare feet onto the cooler concrete and then the desert sand at its edge.
The women stride calmly those two steps.
The women are clearly machines.
The men make a beeline for my Bronco, reaching easily for the go-bag behind the driver's seat. They're...John and Kyle, both at ages I've never seen them reach. Ages beyond their doubles here. Another wave of vertigo sweeps through me, and I wonder if it's the proximity of too many duplicates, clearly from different times or different timelines.
There's no time to reflect, though, because the other Sarahs and I have opened fire. The machine that had appeared with red hair--clearly, from the impact points, a T-1000--turns to John-not-my-John, the older John.
Holding up both hands, the metal calls out, "John Connor, I have come to accept your offer."
The John at my Bronco is almost entirely dressed, and he and Kyle watch the exchange calmly.
"What offer?" the younger John shouts from beside the Jeep and Ponytail me, his voice startlingly deep.
I swallow, blink, breathe in the cool, sulphur-tinged air through an open mouth.
"You offered a truce. On behalf of my people, I accept."
I speak in unison with the other versions of me. "What kind of bullshit--"
Older John steps forward. Commanding, certain. "Not. Constructive, Mom." He nods to me, then the younger Sarah by the younger John. I can barely swallow around the tightness in my throat from when my John, just 10 years old, had said that to me.
Looking back at the T-1000, he says, "Like I told you, we have the firepower and numbers to subdue you and take you to a containment facility to dispose of you. But we will listen," he looks pointedly at each of us, then back at the machine "if you remain still."
The machine, which had already smoothed the bullet wounds to bare flesh, morphs its outer layer into a fitted red dress. John tosses the other machine fatigues and a t-shirt which it calmly dons without a shift in expression.
The T-1000's accent is different from the T-800, but equally ridiculous and...Scottish? Irish? "For the good of all of space and time, for the good of humans and machines, I would like to negotiate the terms of our armistice in order to save all of us, in all the time streams."
"Save us all from what?" Young John adjusts his rifle's aim.
The metal with long brown hair, looking barely older than Young John speaks as if it was obvious. "From the fabric of space and time contracting around us and folding into a singularity that will turn all our worlds inside out, forming a black hole."
***
I feel useless.
I came here to stop whatever terminator, machine, or metal came through the time displacement. Instead, I'm watching Young John and Older John sit in lively conversation with three terminators. The two Kyles, one young, one more mature, watch the conversation, arms crossed like a time-adjusted mirror...not like such a thing exists.
The younger versions of me join me, one by one, in leaning against the Bronco.
"What year are you from?" the youngest one asks.
I'm tempted not to answer, to interact as little as possible with these ghosts from another time, but I hear myself blurting, "It's 2025."
"And...no Judgment Day yet? They must be getting desperate," Ponytail me says.
"Did you fall through a portal as well?" Young Sarah is the one speaking this time.
"No. I just..drove here on regular roads. I felt the electricity of arriving time travelers, and after I parked, you each appeared out of a...shimmer in the air. Where...when is it for you?"
"It's 2005," the Ponytail Sarah says.
"1985," Youngest Sarah glanced over the two Kyles and two Johns.
I point at the aging T-800, "So where did he come from?"
"Pops?" Youngest Sarah smiles. "He saved me from the terminator that killed my parents when I was 9."
"Fuck!" I want to smash something--or graffiti this cliff face with the mini-gun "Pops" is wielding. What kind of crazy universe gives me and my son a machine pseudo-parent?
Raised voices from the group discussing pull our attention.
"I have no way of knowing if I ever will be the John who gave you his word! I agree with the premise, but I don't know what you could possibly do to prove this isn't just another trap."
The T-1000 tilts her-its head with the simple query, "We are here talking with you. Is that not enough?"
"How does any of this matter?" Kyle–young, young, unafraid Kyle adds, "We can't go back till someone reverse-engineers the schematics.”
Before anyone else can respond, the hair on the back of my neck stands up, and everyone tightens their grip on their weapons, scanning the desolate landscape.
Another time travel bubble forms, and we all stand well back.
This one should be near enough to feel the heat, and both Kyles shout, "Derek!" as the sphere collapses in on itself and vanishes.
The Red-Haired Terminator says, "This is the point we are making. There have been too many holes punched into the adjacent universes to us over the period of Sarah Connor's lifetime. By both sides. This segment of space and time is like Swiss cheese, and the holes are widening."
"That's how we all ended up here." The John with Ponytail me, the one who looks most like my John, he looks directly at me. "You're from this time, and you came here. Why?"
"I'm not going to tell you. How do I know you're not–"
John nicks the side of his arm, bleeds. "I'm not metal. I'm just a 20-year-old who liked The Wizard of Oz being read in Central American jungles."
My chest and breath catch. A moment with my eyes closed and two deep breaths and I grab my chip bag from the Bronco and pull out the phone. "These coordinates, this time, texted from...somewhere and saying 'For John'."
Pops echoed the "For John" with me. "It is from one of us. This is how I would now respond, to give purpose, if I had killed young Sarah, as was my mission, but not her mother."
The words burn like poison through my ears. "Aren't you thoughtful," I manage to spit.
"You would have died. Here. Tonight," Pops adds. He turns to the Red-Haired one. "You said the holes in space, time, and the adjacent universes have too many holes in the lifetime of Sarah Connor. This Sarah Connor was to die. This is the last date the rifts in the universe allow passage."
"So I'm a dead woman. What's new about that? I've known it since I was 19!" I huff out through my nose, turning from them as they discuss my fate, my life, like it's...nothing but a...I don't even have words, not even in my own head.
"This is our last chance," says the Kyle, older than my Kyle, who arrived with the terminators who look female. "We programmed the time travel device to send us to the closest time to Judgment Day as possible, and it looks like your...death is it."
His John, dressed in the same fatigues from my go bag, nods once, emphatic. "This is where we start, stitching backwards to make it harder to punch through these walls, till we have the chance to co-exist in a stable universe."
It is a surreal experience, seeing my baby, my boy, the son who was murdered before he was even a teenager, commanding and leading as if he was born to it. It is soul-crushing to know he was literally born to it.
I know I will die today, but maybe, with this team, we can use that knowledge to forestall and soften the impact of Judgment Day. I can't believe I'm hoping a T-1000 who chooses to look like an 90s music star will help us avoid a Judgment Day filled with billions of deaths.
Perhaps, after the certainty of annihilation or near annihilation, mitigation is the best we can do, even if only in some timelines.
The T-1000 and the brunette...whatever-model-she-is move toward the cliff face, prying off rocky protuberances to reveal a keypad, clearly installed decades prior...probably by another resistor, another reprogrammed terminator. There needs to be a whole new set of tenses and parts of speech to talk about time travel and multiple timelines.
The two female-appearing terminators press a series of buttons, turn keys simultaneously, then the brunette one gestures to us all. "Come."
A fucking door has opened in the side of the cliff, and inside is a room filled with...future stuff. Impossible machines. Impossible design. There is a beauty to the line of it. How could such beauty grow out of such destruction?
Both Kyles gape. "That...that's a time displacement machine."
The younger Kyle steps back, closer to Youngest Sarah. "What if…what if I don't want to go back?"
The Pop-Star Terminator actually rolls its eyes. "Our calculations do not indicate that all pieces have to be put back where they were. This is not Star Trek. We must only seal this segment, ensure that it cannot expand further, so that future transmissions will not be possible, so that there is no further attempt from this point forward."
The Older John in my go-bag clothes nods. "This was our plan. Establish someone long enough ago to build this, plan for the armistice, then allow each strand to negotiate a more elaborate truce, but leave someone to keep watch." Here he turns to me. "Someone who can stop further incursions by observing the timeline. Maybe connecting resistance cells through broadcasts if it's ever needed."
He steps next to me and places an arm around my shoulder. My stomach turns. It's too much.
"Someone who deserves not to have to run anymore, to have a quiet retirement with just a little minor management." He's staring at me, smiling, looking like my son, the tough, badass with a heart of gold. He's arranged for me...to retire.
Now everyone is staring at me. He kisses my head, and he's taller than me, and I can't help myself. I turn into him, holding on for dear life as I bury my face in his chest. When I stop shaking, his chin is on my head--so tall--and both his arms are around me.
I force my hands open and slap away the moisture on my cheeks. My whisper of, "I love you" overlaps with his, and we actually laugh, though mine is more of a squawk from disuse.
"Who's going to show me how this equipment works?"
Of course it's the brunette terminator who says, "I will," so now I've got to spend hours getting a machine tech tutorial from a machine.
It takes art and finesse to work the time displacement device, but that gives time for strategizing where and how each team can be most useful in avoiding a Skynet takeover, in managing a truce and possibly an uneasy peace or co-existence. They prepare to negotiate, to cajole, to forestall the worst where possible, to mitigate the damage where it's not.
According to the Red-Haired Pop-Star Terminator, the fracturing of my life into the strands of the multiverse was set off the moment time travel was used to alter my life's trajectory to bring about a different outcome in the End Times as the first wave of machines saw it.
I will stay here, knowing that perhaps, just perhaps, the End Times are not upon us...or, at least, that they are not nigh in every timeline. Maybe I'm not useless after all. I'll deal with the revelation of living as one strand of the multi-verse later.
Each John, each Sarah, each machine must step into the time displacement device to go to a set point, determined by their pooled knowledge, to do work that is needed.
Pop-Star Terminator coaches me on final nuances of the machinery for sending her where she needs to go. I make the brunette and the John and Kyle who came with her give me back my extra clothes before sending them through.
As soon as they're gone, the two other Sarahs burst out laughing, the younger one gasping, "I can't believe you made them strip!"
I shrug, but my lips twist into a smirk that feels almost like a smile.
Kyle glances around the large chamber, shifting from foot to foot since his turn is next. Finally, he looks at me. "Does all this mean we're safe now?"
"No one's ever safe," the other women replied in unison with me.
Everyone else has gone. I'm alone in this place.
Dead, as far as anyone in the world knows.
Even so, I feel at peace.
If anyone were here, I wouldn't admit it, but I have some small hope for the first time since I was 19.
There may still be some destruction in some of the strands. But perhaps the End Times are not the end of everything after all.
~~end~~