Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

C.9

T-X waited until a garbage truck lumbered past, then turned into the takeout driveway of an all-night fast-food restaurant.

Twenty minutes ago she had telephoned the home number of Maria Barrera in Reseda, which she had downloaded from the L.A. County welfare database. Her Spanish was perfect, but Mrs. Barrera said that her son wasn't home. He was at work.

"He's a good boy. He's been no trouble. Please."

"Where is he working, Mrs. Barrera?" T-X asked politely.

"Jim's Burgers. It's in North Hollywood. Please, he's a good boy."

There were no cars in line as T-X pulled up to the menu board and speaker, and only a couple of Hispanic kids with their low-riders in the parking lot.

"Welcome to Jim's Burgers, can I take your order?" The voice was of a young, Hispanic male.

"Jose Barrera?" T-X asked.

"Um… yeah."

T-X pulled forward to the order window as Barrera leaned out to see what was going on. He looked to be in his late teens or early twenties. He wore a blue hat and blue shirt with the restaurant's logo.

T-X looked up at the boy and smiled. His name tag read Barrera. Her head-up display showed a match.

She had the Sig-Sauer on her lap. She lifted it and fired two shots into the young man's face, then laid the gun on the passenger seat, drove past the pickup window, around the restaurant, and back out onto the street where she accelerated smoothly into the night.

Her head-up display showed a grid:

ANDERSON, WILLIAM — TERMINATED ANDERSON, ELIZABETH — TERMINATED BARRERA, JOSE — TERMINATED BREWSTER, KATHERINE — OPEN CONNOR, JOHN — OPEN

The Katherine Brewster line was highlighted, and a file came up with photographs as well as home and work addresses and phone numbers.

She entered Katherine Brewster's home number into the cell phone. After five rings it was finally answered by a man.

"Yes?"

"Katherine Brewster?"

"Who's calling? Do you know what time it is?"

"Katherine Brewster, please. This is a veterinary emergency."

"She's not here. She's at the clinic. It's the same thing I told the guy who called five minutes ago." T-X hung up.

Strictly speaking, Terminator was incapable of experiencing human feelings, or of having premonitions. But he could and did constantly evaluate data: old data from his memory banks, and new data that his sensors continuously gathered. From such evaluations he could make predictive forecasts to which he could assign probability values.

He was programmed to know that Skynet was sending or had already sent back a terminator. He was also programmed with the knowledge that it was a T-X assigned to eliminate targets of opportunity, among them John Connor and Katherine Brewster.

Finally, he was programmed, by Connor himself, to understand that in this era Connor was what might be called a loose cannon; no permanent address and only scanty personal records in a few databases.

The T-X would understand this, and would probably view Katherine Brewster as a preliminary target.

Terminator's head-up display assigned an 88.97733451 percent probability to such a scenario.

After he had spoken with the man who answered Katherine Brewster's home telephone, Terminator increased the scenario probability to 94.5365555 percent.

From his database he brought up Katherine's place of employment, Emery Animal Hospital, pinpointed the address on a map of the Los Angeles area, and headed there.

Traffic was light at this hour of the morning, mostly semis. With his onboard electronic emissions detectors (which included radar) he pushed the truck to speeds in excess of one hundred miles per hour.