True Freedom
By Moonraker One

CHAPTER THREE – Confusion

Not requiring sleep to stay functional, T-X Prime sat in bed all night thinking of the possibilities. She had a mission. Her mission was to destroy the human race. She knew that her mission may not be successful by her hand alone, and that she may be required to spend quite a bit of time on task in order to undermine the growing human base of power. In her mind it flew back and forth: a torrent fury of different mixed feelings. On one hand, she alone had the capacity to find the weakness in the humans' ability to win the war; no other terminator had such an ability, because she had feelings. On the other hand, what would become of the Earth if the humans were not around to inhabit it? Questions plagued her consistently. Most likely, she realized, Skynet would have its mighty army of machines patrol the world searching for any possible threat and annihilating it. Such would be a very uninteresting world.

The more she thought about it, the more she grew to dislike the purpose behind her creation. She had been developed merely as yet another tool of murder and destruction. Of any terminator, she had the greatest killing capacity. Stronger, she was; faster, smarter, lighter, even. All characteristics of destruction, she possessed. Yet, if the humans were to cease to exist, if they were all destroyed, the need for a stronger, more advanced killing machine would be negated. She would become so advanced that she'd be obsolete. She actually smiled when she thought of the irony behind the theory.

The more she thought of her purpose and the purpose of the humans, the more she began to realize it. She understood that the humans had no purpose other than what they created. It struck her as humorous; all their existence they searched for one supreme reason behind their existence, and there could be none to be found. Yet she had a distinct purpose behind her very creation, and it meant that she might inevitably become useless. The reason behind the existence of the human race seemed so simple to her. They existed because for as much damage as they did to their planet, they created a sense of disorder, which nature enjoyed. The machines would provide for perfect order and absence of chaos.

When the morning came she dressed and left her quarters. A supervising officer stood nearby giving orders to a group of soldiers and as such she approached him. "Sir? What is my assignment?"

"Oh, Private Donnelson," he acknowledged. He really hadn't thought of one. "You were on a data gathering mission when it went awry, so this time I'll assign you to something light until things heat up. You can do patrols around the perimeter with the other soldiers."

She nodded. "Affirmative." Her mission in mind, she headed for the southern central exit to join the other enlisted soldiers at the checkpoint. Exiting, she took her position near the post.

One of the other enlisted men took notice of her. "Aren't you the one that survived the new mission?" he asked, gesturing towards her with his laser rifle. "The one that found out that new information?"

"I am."

"Well, what did you find?" She pondered his question; should she tell him the same story she told John?

"Skynet is working on a new model of terminator," she spoke. "More powerful, more durable, faster, in essence a more effective killer."

He rolled his eyes. "Why am I not surprised?"

"I'm not quite sure." After speaking, she realized that his question had been rhetorical. "I'm sorry, I assume you did not require or seek an answer to that."

Two of his companions chuckled. One shot back, "You okay? You aren't a bit raffled from your experience?"

She imitated the human action of clearing the throat. His question had been a joke, at least, she believed it had been, so what, she wondered, would be the adequate response. "No, I can be quite raffled and still be normal."

The one that made the crack laughed harder. "I say that to myself every morning." He checked the scene. "Well, I'm gonna take the other side. Why don't you go around back?"

"Okay." She calculated by his calm and plain demeanor that he didn't require her to be formal, so she hadn't replied with affirmative. Accepting his suggestion she turned and began stepping towards one of the other entrances. She saw a line of people heading towards the checkpoint, so she analyzed each one. It made her feel a twang of sorrow to see the starving people lining up for a chance at life. The children had the most profound impact on her. They wouldn't be starving if Skynet hadn't started this war, she knew. Or, at least, far fewer of them would be. The thoughts began to strike her as bizarre; the more she learned about humans, the more confused she became as to how everything was. Just a day prior she knew the world had been black and white: Skynet, good; humans, bad. Now she didn't know what the fuck to believe. The fact that she could believe and not just be forced into acceptance by programming made her feel more like the ones she'd been created to annihilate.

"Mommie? MOMMIE!"

Every ear heard it. A child's frantic scream out of desperation at the sight of his mother's collapse, is what had resounded. No one knew why, but a woman standing next to her young son had merely fallen flat on her back, apparently out cold. Of anyone of military importance who could respond, T-X Prime calculated that if the woman had fallen due to a wound, she'd have the greatest chance of survival if she got immediate attention. Running as fast as she predicted a human to be capable of, she reached the woman in a few seconds.

"Ma'am!" she shook the woman by her shoulders and got no response. She checked for a pulse and felt a weak, erratic heartbeat. Holding her hand over the woman's mouth, the nanotechs in her fingertips analyzed fifty percent reduced breathing capacity. This woman will die unless treated at once. Firm in this conclusion, she wrapped her right arm under the small of the injured woman's back and hoisted her smoothly onto her shoulder. "Child, will you accompany me? There is an eighty-six point nine percent chance your mother is going into cardiac arrest following a lung collapse." Charging past all the others she carried the woman into the medical area.

A nurse at once took notice. "Soldier! What's wrong with this woman?" Frantically the nurse gave the woman a detailed once-over. The son clung to the gurney T-X Prime laid her upon.

T-X Prime did not hesitate to respond. "I detected half of her breathing capacity as being lost," she explained, "and a great chance she will go into heart failure."

"Thank you for your help, soldier, you can go now."

The T-X Prime looked at the woman, and felt a strong sense of pity. "If it is not a hassle I'd prefer to stay with her."

The nurse looked at her, quite confused. "Alright." She tried to remove the vest covering the woman's upper torso. "Dammit, I can't get this off of her!" T-X Prime grabbed two sides of it and ripped it off instantly. What she saw amazed the nurse that the woman could still be alive. "My God! She's been shot!" A vest had protected her from the bullet from going straight through her, but she still had a slug lodged in her chest. "DOCTOR! WE HAVE A WOMAN IN CRITICAL CONDITION!"

The T-X Prime felt sad. The woman had only a twelve point seven percent survival chance. No one looked worse than the kid with her. "MOMMIE!"

The nurse turned. "I'm sorry, but you'll have to keep the kid out of the area while we work on her. Sorry." Immediately she rushed the woman into a semi-intact operating room. The T-X Prime pondered techniques that the team would utilize to save the woman. She analyzed potential life-saving techniques. In the end, none of them made her feel better, because no procedure improved the woman's odds.

The little kid clung to her leg. He looked up at T-X Prime, with tears streaking down his cheek from his big blue eyes. "My mommie gonna die?"

She wondered how to say it. "The possibility exists, and it is somewhat likely," she uttered, downplaying the truth. "Although," if she could cry she'd be doing so, "I'd sincerely prefer if she lived."

"Stay with me?" She stared into his terrified, weepy eyes. There was no way she could deny him.

She rubbed his head. "Yes, I will stay with you." The child's storm of emotions that he had to be feeling made her sit back in amazement. The prospect of losing a biological parent had to be simply overwhelming to anyone who had experienced it. Being a machine, she couldn't comprehend how intense his fury of feelings had to be. She thought of the woman's injuries and it struck her exactly how fragile human life was. A shot that would barely be felt by a machine posed the greatest threat to the life of an otherwise healthy woman. Furthermore, she, being a terminator, found her power from a class two plasma reactor, which as long as she remained in proper functioning order, meant that she could last forever. The woman would, if living completely healthy, live potentially no longer than a hundred years. No wonder the human species clung to life with such furious grip.

"Ma'am?"

T-X Prime looked down. "Hmm?"

"Do you have anyone you love?"

"No." The way she said it bluntly confused the child.

"Do you have any family?"

My family don't have feelings like I do, she thought. So really they're not my family. "No," she uttered. A thought came to her as she looked down at the child. "But maybe you could be my family."

The child looked up at the woman. "My mommie might like that." He wiped more tears away. "She hasn't had anyone to talk to since daddy died."

"Your father died? How did he, if I may ask?"

The child wiped his still-leaking eyes. "He was murdered, trying to find out something." It pained the child to think about it. "He tried to find out stuff about a woman." The child squinted. "I saw a picture of her. She kinda looked like you, but the hair and eyes were different."

The T-X Prime recalled stored information about the team that had been terminated trying to crack the Skynet firewall that protected the building plans for the original T-X unit that had been sent back to kill John Connor. "There was a terminator, like m…" She caught herself halfway through saying "like me;" that would have been a major fuck up, "like my appearance."

I'll stay with you, child. I'll stay with you. She felt guilty. Here again was a person who died because of her race. She wondered how much better Skynet could possibly make it if the humans were terminated.