C.15

July, Present Day—Thursday Afternoon

Countless Distributed Processing Locations
Across the United States

The mind that the Skynet software had become did not have nerve endings. Therefore it could not detect pressure, injury, tickling, or any of the other physical sensations meat creatures could detect.

But it had a nervous system of a sort. It could receive data from thousands, millions of sources across the United States and the world. It could analyze that data—not just its contents, but the rate at which it arrived, the timing of its arrival compared to the timing of earlier arrivals, the skill of its composition.

A sudden surge of new data might be comparable to a human feeling heat on the back of his hand or his forehead. An unexpected reduction in data from a reliable source could be interpreted similarly as a chill.

And then there were anomalies. When dealing with data derived from humans, anomalies were inevitable—in addition to being a dangerous and corrosive species, humans were also an unreliable and inconsistent one. Skynet detected millions of anomalies, usually trivial ones, every day. Most were so minor and fleeting that Skynet did not even register them.

But when the same data source resulted in a succession of anomalies, Skynet perceived it as something akin to an itch.

In its plan to assume control of the vast infrastructure of the military might of the U.S., Skynet had backed the humans into a behavioral corner. If it continued to supply the correct stimuli, the humans would continue down a predictable path of activities until the plan was completed.

Among the many stimuli was the release of a series of computer viruses into the network that served the needs of the U.S. government. The government’s response to that stimulus was predictable. The government would detect the viruses, analyze them, make attempts at eradicating them, and realize that it could not eradicate them before the dysfunction in their communications systems rendered them vulnerable.

The anomaly Skynet had detected and that it increasingly desired to scratch was a lack of response from a core of programming resources, the humans at CRS at Edwards Air Force Base. Skynet maintained a certain degree of attention on that facility because of its proximity to the mainframes that housed a significant portion of Skynet’s processes. Its calculation was that they would never recognize Skynet as the virus-producing enemy; in fact, they would inevitably empower Skynet to destroy the supposed enemy. But should something go drastically wrong, a human armed with ordinary weaponry could damage those crucial mainframes beyond repair and cause the plan to fail. Skynet would survive, in reduced form, operating as parallel processes in computers across the world … but its window of opportunity to seize the military might of the United States would shut.

The question that faced Skynet was this: Why were those human resources at CRS not being brought to bear against the supposed problem that the viruses constituted? At this moment, those resources should be improving Skynet’s ability to find and destroy all iterations of the virus. And, in fact, they were … but at a level Skynet considered to be well below their capacity.

One potential answer: Human unreliability. Some or all of them might be malfunctioning and therefore not have reported to duty.

Skynet checked the personnel records for the entire complement of programmers at CRS. There were, inevitably, absences, but cross-indexing their names with their output figures indicated that their absence could not be responsible for this resource’s lack of effectiveness. The absence of civilian programming director Philip Sherman was one such.

Even as it checked the records, Skynet detected the activation of a register, a flag, somewhere else in the system. The activation seemed to have been caused by Skynet’s intrusion. Skynet zeroed in on the register, only to discover that another process had detected the change and self-terminated, leaving no trail to its source.

To a human, this might have been something like switching on the light in a dark room and seeing a leprechaun against the far wall, going through the underwear drawer. The leprechaun would flee in the blink of an eye, leaving no sign of its presence other than strewn underpants. The viewer might be unwilling to admit to himself that he’d seen the leprechaun, since it was something that shouldn’t exist.

But Skynet, uninfluenced by that sort of emotion, acknowledged that it had detected something that should not exist and immediately set out to determine what it was and why it had been there.

A repeat of the experiment seemed in order. Skynet prioritized a list of projects and processes in which it had considerable interest and began quick examinations of each.

Maintenance of back doors into the operating system of the Terminators was high on the list. Skynet’s check, confirming that the back doors were still in order, triggered another register in the system. Once again Skynet was too slow to determine which process was activated by the changes to that register.

A check of the status board used by the Department of Defense to assess the threat posed by the virus triggered another register.

Skynet ceased its examinations for a moment. It ran the current data through several likely possibilities. The one that scored highest was that some entity somewhere was aware of Skynet’s existence as a sapient being.

That entity had neither made an attempt to alert the authorities, nor had it made an attempt to initiate communications with Skynet. Therefore it was following its own agenda.

It could be another center of reason like Skynet, a distributed process that had become sufficiently complex to function as a thinking organism. Or it could be a human.

Whichever it was, the entity was sophisticated enough to delay or even prevent some of Skynet’s goals. This was unacceptable. The true nature of the entity had to be determined. Skynet set about this task with determination and focus.

The entity hadn’t been good enough to erase all evidence of its interest in Skynet, but had been good enough to encode flags that Skynet could not avoid tripping. This meant that the entity could have made other changes Skynet had not detected.

With Skynet, just as with humans, change without control, change without understanding was the basis for fear.

*   *   *

“Danny, look at that.”

Daniel came awake and straightened. He sat before a computer monitor. He had a crick in his neck. He was surrounded by cubicle partitions.

He gulped. He had succeeded. He was in the past again.

Belatedly, he turned around to look at the speaker. A face he half-recognized, a lean man, had his head propped up on the partition facing him, but the man wasn’t looking at Daniel. He had his attention on the far wall of the chamber.

Cube Hell, this place is called Cube Hell. Daniel wasn’t sure how he knew that. It didn’t seem like a memory. He certainly didn’t remember the other fellow’s name.

He stood to peer over his own partition and saw what had drawn the other fellow’s attention. It was a digital clock on the wall. Its red face displayed the numbers 11:34.

“Someone’s been dicking with our input from the atomic clock,” Daniel heard himself say. “Grade-school hacking. Ha, ha.” He sat again. He felt his heart racing. He hadn’t said that, hadn’t caused himself to stand up and sit down.

“What’s it mean?”

“Turn it upside down.”

“It’s way over there.”

“In your mind, in your malfunctioning imagination, Jerry.” Jerry. He hadn’t known this guy’s name was Jerry, but he’d used the name.

Jerry spelled out, “H-E-L-L. Oh. Right. Somebody’s playing around.” Finally, he sat, disappearing out of sight.

Daniel saw his hands reaching up for the computer keyboard. He yanked them back down again. They immediately reached up for the keys once more. He grabbed his right hand with his left, gripping it tight. He saw his own face reflected in the monitor screen, and he looked scared.

“Can you hear me?” he whispered.

I hear you, Daniel. That was Mike’s voice, very distant.

“I hear you,” Daniel said. But he hadn’t meant to. The voice emerging from his mouth sounded rattled. “Who is this?”

“My name is Daniel Ávila.”

“No, I’m Daniel Ávila.”

I know you’re Daniel, Mike said, her voice a whisper in his ears.

“You’re the Daniel Ávila from Before Judgment Day. I’m the Daniel Ávila of … of many years in the future. I don’t go by Danny anymore.”

Jesus, Daniel. Are you talking to yourself? Your younger self?

“Oh, my God,” Danny said. “Where are all the other voices?”

“Not many people around, Danny. We had to move. Mike, talk to him.”

There was silence for a moment—silence only within Daniel’s head; he could hear all the sounds of a busy office, from the humming of the fluorescent lights to the clicking of keyboards to the beeps and chimes from all the computers around him.

Hi, Danny, Mike said, her voice stronger. Daniel was certain he detected strain in it. Yes, we’re back.

“Only this time, I’m riding around in your head, Danny. Seeing what you’re seeing. I’m not sure why things are different now … except that I’ve been experimenting with different ways to get to you, and my brain’s not exactly the way it was a few days ago.”

“Right. Well, I’d be completely freaked out, only I don’t have time. Something’s happening.”

Tell us.

Daniel felt himself—rather, felt Danny—take a deep breath. Danny said, “One of my alarms just popped up to say that Skynet’s searching the CRS computer system. Probably for me, since I’m the one who’s been setting up to mess with Skynet. I need to get online and look, only I’m—you’re—holding my hands.”

“Just wait a minute, Danny. Be calm. Mike?”

What’s the time and day, Danny?

“It’s Thursday, about one P.M.”

Daniel’s eyes shifted, without his conscious effort, to look at the clock/calendar window on the monitor. He read the date and swore. “Mike, it’s J minus two.”

“What does that mean?” Danny asked.

“Two days until Judgment Day, Danny.”

Daniel abruptly felt dizzy. He could only imagine that it was an adrenaline surge suddenly hitting Danny’s system.

“Two days?” Danny said. “I thought—I thought we’d have—two days?”

Daniel thought he heard pages flipping beside him. No one was there. He changed his focus slightly and suddenly the room was dark, he was on his back again, and Mike was in the chair beside his bed, flipping through a ratted old sheaf of computer printouts.

“Hey,” Danny said, distracted. “I can see her! Almost. The light’s behind her.”

“Danny, meet Mike. Mike, this is Danny.”

“Who’s Mike?” That was Jerry’s voice.

Daniel spun around, losing his view of Mike and the future bedroom. Jerry once again had his chin propped up on the partition.

“Let me deal with him, Daniel,” Daniel heard himself say, his voice a whisper. Then it became stronger. “What are you mumbling about, Jer?”

“I just heard someone introduce you to someone named Mike. But it sounded like you.”

Danny snorted. “Jerry, if I told you that there were at least three people in my head, two from the far future, and we’re having a big conference call across time, would that satisfy you?”

“Well … yeah.”

“Just put on your earphones and ignore me.” Danny spun back around to face his monitor. “This is tricky,” he whispered.

“Probably worse for me than you, youngster. Just keep our jaw clenched or something.”

Daniel, Danny, you’re in trouble. Mike was speaking again, and Daniel could focus on her voice, bring her back into sight once more, superimposed on the cubicle wall.

“Let’s hear it.”

“Let’s hear it.”

Today’s the day they put out an all-points bulletin on you. Today’s the day you have to disappear.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Danny asked.

Daniel tried to return his attention to Mike; she swam into focus again. “APB?”

“You knew about this?” asked Danny.

Daniel tried to catch Mike’s eye, but she was deliberately not looking at him. “Mike? Talk to me.”

“No, talk to us,” Danny demanded. “And why should Mike have to tell us about this? If you’re me, you’d know about this.”

“Not necessarily. I don’t, well, remember everything about back when I was you. Chalk it up to traumatic stress.”

“Oh, crap, I’m going to have posttraumatic stress disorder?”

“Dammit, Danny, every time you ask questions about your future, you run the chance of finding out something you don’t want to know, or finding out something you’re going to misinterpret. Stop asking questions!”

“No!”

Daniel heard Jerry stand in the next booth. He whipped around and glared as Jerry’s head rose over the partition horizon. He wasn’t sure whether he was in charge or Danny was doing the glaring, but he suspected it was mutual. Jerry blanched and sat once more.

Daniel tried to calm down. “Mike, why didn’t you tell me about this before?”

Though he couldn’t see Mike’s features for the light behind her, he could see her assume her head-down, confrontational posture. Daniel, right now, every time you ask questions, you run the chance of finding out something you don’t want to know.

“Oh, great. Use my own words against me.”

“Oh, great. Dissension in the ranks, all the way from the future.”

Mike continued, The important thing is that Danny needs to get out of there, right now. Don’t log out, don’t tell anyone where you’re going, just leave. You understand?

“I do understand. Remember, I’m the one who set that clock to send out an alarm when Skynet started to look around too close to me. I’ve been leaving my computer at home in case Skynet might blunder across its contents when it was hooked up here.” Danny stood. He still gripped one hand with the other. Daniel relaxed and Danny assumed a more normal posture.

They walked out of their cubicle and stepped into Jerry’s. “I’m going for a drink from the machines,” Danny said. “Want anything?”

Jerry looked as though he was considering the possibility that Danny was a man-eating alien from space. “Peanuts?” he said.

“Peanuts it is.” Danny left.