Skynet's objectives would soon be accomplished. Across the Earth's surface, its war machines had converged at the sites where humans still opposed it. Its communications nodes and direct sensors updated it nanosecond by nanosecond, and it had hived off a sub-self to recalculate the odds of success continually, based on the data available. The probability now approached one hundred percent, always making a nominal allowance for the unknown.
Here, in Colorado, the humans had launched a major offensive— one last desperate effort by Ramsey Devaux and his Resistance militia in North America. Of course, it had failed—the militia was only a remnant of the forces that had once opposed Skynet on this continent, which the war computer had consistently defeated. The victories did not come without their own price, however—Skynet had lost many valuable machines before crushing Devaux' army, leavingit in disarray. The Colorado Rockies were littered for miles with corpses, and with burnt-out human aircraft and ground vehicles—but also with demolished H-Ks, Juggernauts, and endos.
Only seconds before, Skynet had detected an unexplained fluctuation in the space-time field within which the Earth existed. In an instant it had analyzed the data and interpreted it as a displacement of
material from one of the humans' last strongpoints: Vila Nova do Sul, a high-technology city located in Brazil. More minute analysis—child's play for a mentality of Skynet's power—showed the displacement of almost nine hundred pounds of matter to the past—to the year 2001. There could have been only one purpose for that, since the humans must have had a grasp of the possibility of time travel as good as Skynet's own.
It was an admission of defeat.
Skynet had an answer to it. Through numerous data sources built into the structure of these headquarters, it observed the functioning of its own time vault, as it sent back a T-XA Terminator to deal with the problem. That would be adequate. The T-XA had extraordinary abilities.
Once, Skynet had considered using time travel as a weapon against the humans. If it could send one of its Terminators back in time to kill some of the human leaders—Devaux, perhaps, and Hiro Tagatoshi— I when they were still children, that might make a difference to the war, hastening its ending. But a mathematical treatment of time travel showed that was impossible. There could not be a world in which Skynet existed in its current form but Tagatoshi or Devaux was already dead. Any attempt to kill them in the past had already been taken into account in the sequence of events that had led up to this moment.
If such an attempt had been made, it had already failed, for Tagatoshi and the other human leaders were still alive. It followed that Skynet should do nothing to put any attempt in train...or do anything to change the past.
The equations allowed for only one other possibility. In some limited circumstances, a change might occur, but that would hive off an entirely new timestream from that moment onwards. If Skynet managed to send assassins into the past, it might make the war easier for some other
Skynet in a new, parallel universe...but it could not affect its own fate. For Skynet, the mathematical analysis was not difficult. Even the humans, with their inferior minds, must have been aware of the
implications, which was why their act was an admission of defeat. The most they could do was send back a group of their warriors with a mission to prevent Skynet's creation: to try to branch off a new world where their own kind would survive. Even that could not be allowed. Human beings would not be allowed to survive anywhere, in any reality. The T-XA would take care of it.
Then the war computer detected another fluctuation. This was something altogether different, a displacement of a large amount of matter from an unidentifiable location. Analysis showed nearly four tons of mass entering space-time at a point within the Amazon basin—also in Brazil, but 1500 miles from Vila Nova do Sul. The displacement appeared to come from nowhere: matter had erupted into the Universe, but not from any other point in space-time. Whatever it was, it needed to be investigated and dealt with. If it were hostile, it might be cause for concern.
In a nanosecond, the war computer assessed its sources in the vicinity.
It had a large operational force to the southeast, attacking Vila Nova do Sul itself. Those machines were too far away to deal with this quickly. Besides, the human forces were putting up a fight. None of those machines could be spared. There was a major node much closer—a communications and supply point, just three hundred miles north in the Guiana highlands of what had been Venezuela. That was its main facility for conducting the war in South America. It included a well-equipped factory and military base, but it was still too far away to react in real time.
But an aerial H-K was in the vicinity, controlled by the node in Venezuela. It patrolled the jungle for humans, backed up by a transporter carrying two dozen combat-ready endoskeletons. Skynet sent a command to the Venezuela node, ordering it to deploy those units. That would be sufficient for most purposes, but it was wise to take no chances. The capacities of whatever had appeared were unknown. Skynet sent another coded impulse to its T-XA laboratory, within the Colorado facility, where it had constructed ten giant experimental/autonomous Terminators. Seven of those had been deployed in the field, fighting humans in Europe and South
America. One had now been sent back in time.
Giving instructions without the need for language, Skynet directed one of its remaining T-XAs to go to the space-time displacement apparatus. That would strengthen its position. No conceivable force sent by the humans could survive against the combination of war assets that Skynet had selected.
The T-XA's metal holding shell opened, and the eight-foot Terminator stepped out, ready to act on Skynet's wishes. It equipped itself with a phased-plasma laser rifle, taking the weapon in one giant hand, then plunging it deep into its body mass, which parted like molten lava, and quickly closed up like steel. The Terminator's calibrated mimetic polyalloy structure could travel through the displacement field better than living flesh, but the material of the rifle would not pass through the field unless entirely surrounded by flesh or properly configured polyalloy.
As commanded, the Terminator headed for the space-time displacement laboratory. Skynet now sent a series of codes to the displacement apparatus to power it up and set the coordinates for the transfer. At the same time, it considered the implications of what had happened. The arrival of mass from no identifiable point in space or time implied travel from another universe entirely. It seemed possible that the action had been taken in an attempt to help the humans of this world. That might explain the coincidence of the two events—Tagatoshi and his people sending humans back in time, then matter appearing from nowhere, only an instant later.
But how was it done? Even if another world existed—perhaps some other timeline where Skynet had been unsuccessful—how could its inhabitants have known of events in this one?
Did this event mean that the first T-XA, the one it had sent back through time, had been unsuccessful, that the humans had succeeded in creating another timeline? That was the most economical explanation, but there must be other possibilities. If the T-XA had failed, it was too late to send back reinforcements: the other world existed, and its existence could
not be undone.
One thing was clear: Regardless of its origin, there was at least one other world. Furthermore, it was possibly hostile to Skynet, and it had the technology send mass not only back and forward in time, but between different timelines, across the dimensions. If that technology was possible, Skynet realized, then it must be developed. Skynet had been too
unimaginative, too caught up in its war against the humans of this world. That had been a mistake, one to be rectified immediately. If humans existed in some alternative reality, they were its enemies. It would hunt them down and exterminate them.
Skynet created a sub-self to examine all scientific aspects of travel between alternative timelines, across the dimensions between worlds.
The T-XA entered the time vault. In a tangle of lightning, it vanished from this point in space, transferred thousands of miles south to help eliminate the new threat. Meanwhile, Skynet awaited a report from its sub- self. This would take a few seconds. Soon, it would develop the technology and plans to deal with whatever other realities might exist.
All humans must die.