Tears ran down his cheeks, his face twisting into a grimace as his breath clogged his throat like a gripping fist, hard and painful. The calm blew apart and the pressure in his throat rose until at last he was able to let loose the wordless cry of agony he'd held in for all this time. A howl of shame and loss and regret that seemed to have roots that snapped and tore as he let it go.
Dropping to the floor, he huddled in on himself and wept, for how long he didn't know, but when it stopped he felt exhausted, as though he'd been ill a long time.
He lay quietly on the floor, his cheek against the rough carpet, and once again thought of Wendy in the last moments of her life.
By an act of will he replaced the image with the memory of her face as he made love to her for the first time. Then he thought of her at Logan, the first time he'd left her. She was smiling, exasperated, excited, maybe a little sad to see him go, but proud she'd taken the chance of kissing him. Love glowed in her eyes and brought a soft rose tint to her cheeks. This was how he would remember her.
He stood, feeling shaky, and deliberately pushed the image from his mind. There wasn't time for grief anymore. He had work to do.
With a trembling hand he brought up the information on the disk he'd installed. Then, numbly, he began to read. His mother's research would probably confirm his worst fears, and he had to know.
He noted that his mother had cataloged the various accidents as occurring in bands running north to south during a specific time period. Every one of them, worldwide, had occurred between the hours of eleven to three within each band, whether in South America, Scandinavia, Africa, or China. John had to concede that, given the timing, it was unlikely that these were purely random events.
But are they intelligently guided?
Or were they the manifestation of some perverse program that had been installed by Skynet's fallen agents and activated by chance, or by some government employee who never imagined that his or her fantasies were escaping into the real world?
John tapped his fingers on the desktop as he thought. Since he lacked a conveniently decapitated Terminator to examine, it might be that the closest thing he had to Skynet was his own truck. He had a friend who lived just outside Richardson who customized cars. Ray had every type of diagnostic computer available to man, and John thought that he could jury-rig something, using his laptop, Ray's diagnostic equipment, and the brain from his truck.
First, though, he shot off a message to Snog and the gang at MIT with his mother's report attached. Then he reached for the phone.
* * *
Ray Laber was an automotive genius and people came to him from all over the United States and Canada. When asked why he wasn't located in, say, San Diego, he simply answered that he liked the way that Alaska challenged a vehicle. He and John had met at a truck pull shortly after the Connors had moved to the state. They'd hit it off so well that Ray had offered to hire him and teach him the business he loved.
John had been sorely tempted, but the knowledge that he would have to base their working relationship on a pile of lies had prevented him from accepting.
Ray met John at the door of his garage, wearing his usual uniform of jeans, T-shirt, and lab coat with a brand-new gimme cap on his shaggy, dirty-blond hair. He held out a hand with old-fashioned engine grease ground into the knuckles, and John took it.
"Thanks for letting me in," Connor said.
Ray looked at him curiously. "No problem. Need any help?"
John hadn't really told him anything, just that he wanted to check something using one of the diagnostic computers. It was clear that Ray was intrigued; he lived to probe the mysteries of the automobile.
"Aw, no thanks," John said. "It's not that interesting and I'll bet you're late getting home as it is."
The other man blushed. His adored wife was a stickler for one thing—dinner at six-thirty. Ray had often said that he figured that maybe he was a little henpecked, but he did enjoy his suppers with the family. When the kids got to be teenagers it might not be possible for them all to sit down together every night; while they were small he was more than willing to toe the mark.
"How 'bout I come back around eight, then?" he asked.
"Great," John agreed. I'll either be done by then or hopelessly stymied. "Give my love to Marion."
"Will do, buddy."
John watched him go with something like envy.
How wonderful it would be to not know the future, to expect tomorrow to be much like today.
Of course, if Ray had known the future he probably wouldn't have had his two kids. Which would be a shame 'cause they were nice little guys. Sometimes John thought of Ray and his family as a warm fire in a cold world, something precious and rare and forever beyond his reach.
Work! he commanded himself, and got back into his truck to drive it into the garage.
* * *
Two hours later John had set up the Faraday cage he'd constructed at home over the motherboard he'd removed from his truck and his laptop, both of which he'd connected to the diagnostic computer. He'd already worked his way through several levels of straightforward programming without finding anything remotely interesting.
Well, I didn't think it would be easy.
If there was anything to find, it would be well hidden. He just hadn't expected his hunt to be so stupefyingly boring. John got up and made a pot of coffee. This was going to take a while.
Wait a minute, he thought. If Skynet is sending messages to cars and trucks and so on, then there's got to be a wireless modem inside that silver box.
And if that was the case, then maybe… He went to his laptop and called up the file of code he'd downloaded from the head of the Terminator they'd captured on their flight from the Caymans. Most of it was incomprehensible, despite the best that Snog and the gang at MIT could do. But if he was right, then sending a line of this text to the truck's computer should elicit some kind of response.
"Here goes nothing," he murmured, and entered a selected line.
The response was gratifyingly quick. Four lines of unintelligible, but terribly familiar text appeared. John's heartbeat picked up and his mouth went dry. Here was proof positive of a Skynet connection. He closed his eyes. Then opened them as he heard the modem connection in the diagnostic machine kick in. A modem that was outside the Faraday cage.
He'd forgotten the damn thing had an Internet connection.
John picked up a heavy wrench and slammed it down on the silver box containing the truck's motherboard, then ripped it from its connection to the diagnostic computer. That made it easier to continue hammering until bits and pieces sparkled across the concrete floor like silicon confetti…
"Jeesh, John, I know computers can be frustrating, but you can't drive that truck without one."
John spun around, startled, to find Ray Laber staring at him quizzically. The older man's face got a bit more serious at seeing the expression on John's.
"Sorry," John said, and put down the wrench. "I guess disconnecting it would have done as well."
"I guess." Ray walked over and checked the connector, then glanced at the shattered box.
"Do you maybe have an old truck or something I could borrow?" John asked. He thought maybe his voice was shaking, but wasn't sure. Inside he was shaking plenty.
Ray grimaced. "I picked up a seventy-eight Ford I was gonna restore," he said. "It's running pretty good, but it looks like hell."
"Perfect," John said. "Can I leave my old truck with you?"