The Protagonist System

Not surprisingly, since Sarah Connor was a young and independent woman, she did not want to have me around all the time. She had her college courses, her part time job, and her hobbies taking up a good portion of her week. She also hung out with both her roommate and her college friends, which meant there was not a lot of room in her life left for someone like me.

On the weekends, depending on her mood, there could be a repeat of our first date with dancing and going back to her apartment afterwards. Sometimes it would be just the two of us as a couple and other times it would be a double date with her roommate and her boyfriend or with one of her other friends and their boyfriends.

Thankfully, she didn't sleep around on me or even tried to date anyone else. She liked that I would be there only when she wanted me to be and not hounding her all the time. The little presents and sometimes flowers I would give her, kept her happy as well. I also ate at least once a week at Big Jeff's while she was working.

After a month of our casual relationship, Sarah woke up feeling sick and rushed to the bathroom. I knew what she was going through, so I stayed nearby and gave her both moral support and physical support when she allowed me to. I had also ensured the boy would not be affected by her party girl behavior, either. The last thing anyone needed was to have the baby affected by the alcohol she had consumed.

The look of sadness and resignation on her face when she left the bathroom an hour later, was accompanied by her hand holding a discolored vial of liquid. My eyes went to the vial, then to her face, then to the vial, then back to her face.

“I need to make a doctor's appointment to confirm it.” Sarah said, sadly.

Instead of jumping for joy, which I knew she would be upset by, I carefully took the vial from her, set it on the nightstand, and pulled her into a hug. She burst out crying and clung to me tightly as I held her steady. She mumbled about how her life was going to change and that she was too young to be a mother.

I stayed silent as she got it all out of her system. When she was done feeling sorry for herself and composed herself, she tried to let me go and push me away. I eased my hold on her only enough to have her at arm's length and then I held on.

“No, don't push me away.” I said and her face changed from slight anger to show surprise. “I helped get you into this mess and I'm going to stay and help you get through it.”

“For how long?” Sarah asked. “Do you want me to get rid of...”

“NO!” I gasped and she jerked slightly, then her face went red at asking me that. “No, Sarah. I would never ask you to do that to yourself or our baby. Ever. Not even jokingly.”

“Kyle...” Sarah whispered, still looking embarrassed.

“I'm going to stick around for as long as you need me.” I promised. “You'll want for nothing, have the best medical care, and I won't let you try to handle all of this by yourself. We'll get through this.”

Sarah sighed and stepped back in close and hugged me again.

“I'll take care of everything, don't worry.” I reassured her and she nodded as she sighed again. “You're on early shift again this weekend, so you need to shower and changed. I'll drive you there and will pick you up after your shift.”

“Thanks.” Sarah said and lifted her head from my chest to look into my eyes. She didn't say anything else as she seemed to search my eyes for something. When she didn't find it, she relaxed and smiled, stood on her tippy-toes, and gave me a kiss on the lips. “Join me?”

“Of course.” I said and went into the shower with her.

We only played a little, since she wasn't really in the mood, and we dried off, dressed, and I drove her to work. Sarah hopped out and went to close the door and I held a hand up to stop her.

“Remember, you can call me at any time, Sarah. Any time.” I told her. “Day or night, no matter what, I'll answer. Okay?”

Sarah let out a breath and smiled. “Okay.” She closed the door and walked to the employee entrance, looked back at me to give me a wave, and went inside.

I held in my sigh at her nervousness about being a young mother. Stopping her from being in a life or death situation with being hunted down by a Terminator, hadn't unlocked her determined personality. That wasn't wholly unexpected, either.

It was a decision I had made to protect her from becoming too hard and cold, where she barely showed her son any affection as she taught him how to become a great military leader. She also wouldn't be jumping from man to man over the next few years and bedding them to learn everything she could from them.

It wasn't until I pulled in to work myself that I realized this could become the original timeline. It all played out the first time without any time disruptions and created a future where John Connor rose up to lead the human resistance to smash Skynet to pieces, so sending a Terminator back meant it had already happened.

I smiled and logged in at the security desk, the guard smiling back and giving me a nod. I walked to my assigned section in the mechanical engineering labs to dress in a new pair of overalls. I grabbed the coffee and donuts, refilled of course, and went into the main lab.

My boss was still neck deep in creating one of the very first tracked robots that would become the building block for future terminators. He was doing it all on the fly, since there were no plans for him to follow, which meant he was working it all out as he built the thing and encountering many problems as he did so.

“Having trouble with the bearings again?” I asked as I refilled his thermos.

“The damn thing keeps picking up burrs from somewhere!” He said and lifted his head just enough to snag a donut and the thermos. He had the donut gone and half the thermos empty in only seconds, which perked him right up. “Ah, that's good Joe! Thanks, Kyle.”

“No problem.” I said and set them aside, slipped on the gloves and goggles, and climbed right in beside him. “What about the o-ring on the swivel mount? If we ground that down a millimetre or so to give the bearing a smoother ride, would that clear up the track the bearing uses?”

“No, I think it's the stoppers we installed to limit the turning arc. Each hit produces some scarring and chipped metal that's getting into the mechanism.” He responded and pulled out one of the metal stoppers. “You see those little indentations? That's what I think is the problem.”

I frowned at it. “We could cover it in a high impact non-Newtonian polymer. We would just have to adjust the spot to stop it from spreading out. Maybe add an overflow channel that loops back on itself to keep it intact?”

He gave me a surprised look and then he laughed. “A Non-Newtonian fluid! That's brilliant!” He said and clapped me on the back. “Grab the socket wrench and move the brackets back for the stoppers about 3 millimetres. That'll give us enough room to allow us to add both the fluid and a grooved channel for it to flow through.”

“You got it.” I said and did exactly that.

We worked until close to lunchtime and managed to fix both the damaged bearings and the impact sites for the swivel on the main body. We couldn't have it be free-flowing, because the wires would become tangled up and possibly be yanked out of the lower half. One full rotation and the robot would make itself useless by gutting itself.

I went to my desk at the end of the hall and inside was still my small 10 foot by 10 foot room. I hit the button for the side panel and stepped into the much expanded full mechanical lab Dragon and I had built together.

“Perfect timing.” Dragon said and pointed her large mechanical hand at the enlarged transistor we were building. “I need your smaller hand to finish adding in the internal components.”

“Why didn't you use a gimble arm?” I asked and put in the parts she needed to add.

“I didn't want to mark up the casings.” Dragon said with a shrug. “If it looks like it was made poorly, your presentation is going to fail before you make it.”

“Ha, good point.” I said and clicked the last piece into place. “How far along are you on redesigning the capacitors?”

“About 75%.” Dragon said and walked over to her main worktable. “The ones you made for Zion were a bit too advanced for the current tech level to produce, so I had to scale it back a bit.”

“Yeah, I had to make them more robust with all the extra electricity the hoverpads produced.” I said and picked up the display model of the new transistor. “I'm sorry we can't just flood the market with this kind of stuff right away.”

Dragon sighed and knelt on one knee to put her mechanical head near mine. “I know. We have to build up the current tech level to the point that we can start producing fully integrated circuit boards and network cards that won't overtax the current computers on the market.”

I braced the model with one hand and reached up and touched Dragon's face with the other. “We're already miles ahead of the competition. With these two innovations out there, we'll make a ton of money and can start redesigning even more.”

Dragon nodded. “I'm already working on reverse engineering one of the microprocessors from Akira's laptop.”

I smiled at her. “Don't get too far ahead of me.”

Dragon chuckled. “I doubt I could go farther than you have, mister replicator.”

I laughed and patted her cheek, then left the hidden lab and carried our creation out of the mechanical engineering section and out into the main building. I had an appointment with the head of the Research and Development department and the woman who hired me was going to be there. Apparently, nothing that happened at Cyberdyne Systems Corporation happened without her knowledge.

I had barely entered the room before I was swarmed by several people, all of whom marvelled at the model I carried. Not surprisingly, all of them recognized it for what it was.

“Brilliant. This is brilliant.” A young black man said as he stared at it.

“Miles?” The woman beside him asked. “Why do you say that? I know it's innovative...”

“It has a 30% increase across the board for efficiency and reliability.” Miles said and pointed at me. “Why didn't you increase it to 50? The increase can be easily handled with replacing one of the parts with a more expensive material.”

“You just answered your own question.” I replied and he looked surprised. “It's both cost effective and reliable. Increase the cost of such a tiny part and your final product will tank in the open market faster than you can blink.”

The woman who hired me had a huge smile on her face when she heard that. “We'll have it patented and licensed by the end of the business day.” She said and nodded at the head of R&D.

“What else are you working on?” The older man asked.

“A capacitor that lasts twice as long and can handle 50% more charge.” I said and everyone perked up, because both innovations would change their own projects significantly. “I might also be working on a new microchip that can outperform Apple's new 32 bit processor.”

Everyone in the room stilled and their eyes stared at me like I was glowing gold. I had to look down at myself to make sure I wasn't, then I looked back at my boss' boss. The smile on her face was predatory.

“You're working on these in your spare time, aren't you?” She asked me.

“I'm allowed to do my own thing at lunch and for an hour at the end of my shift.” I said, a little guardedly. “I didn't want my tinkering to interfere with my work.”

That had all of the R&D department people whispering.

She walked over to me and put a hand on my shoulder, almost possessively. “You can keep working at your own pace, Kyle. None of us want you to stop.” She turned her head and glared at the other people in the room. “Isn't that right?”

“Yes!” “Of course!” “He can do me right now if he wants!” “Yes, ma'am!”

Everyone turned to look at the only other woman in the room.

“What? He's handsome and smart. He's also about to become stinking rich with his share of the patents.” She defended herself. “Only an idiot would say no to that!”

The woman who hired me took her hand back and had a slight blush on her face. “As soon as you have the capacitor modelled, bring it right to me. I'll ensure it's processed immediately.”

“Thank you.” I said and put the transistor model onto the table. “I'll go work on it right now.”

She nodded and I left the meeting before things became even more awkward.

*

Sarah Conner had never felt so embarrassed in her life. She had a constant blush on her face all day from the teasing she had from her coworkers about being pregnant. It was relentless and endless and she was sick of it. She made one mistake that wasn't easily fixed and they were all over her case about it.

Even her boss had ripped at her with a good one about not using proper protection and paying for it with the rest of her life. Not surprisingly, it had spread to the customers in no time and she received more than a few sad looks about getting knocked up and a few offers to keep the good times rolling, since she was obviously irresponsible and wasn't careful about how she handled things in bed.

By the end of her shift, she was sure that half of Los Angeles knew about it and had shared their opinion about it. When the clock struck seven and finally brought an end to her very long double shift, Sarah took off her apron, handed her notepad to Jinette without a word, and went into the back room.

She grabbed her timecard and slipped it into the machine to end her shift officially. Instead of putting it on the side for the office to take at the end of the night, she brought it into the office and gave it to the secretary.

“I would have grabbed this later.” She said and quickly copied out the timestamps and filled in the hours she worked into the restaurant's ledger.

“I'm not coming back.” Sarah said.

“That's not a problem. Jinette can cover your shift tomorrow.” The secretary said.

“No, I don't mean just for tomorrow. I mean ever.” Sarah said firmly. “After how I was treated today, I'm done with you all.”

The secretary's face went red, since she had given her own opinion of how stupid it was to get pregnant from a casual relationship.

“Sarah.” Jinette said from behind her.

“No.” Sarah said and turned around to glare at her friend. “I expected a few jabs about it, especially from you.”

Jinette's face went red and matched the secretary's.

“But that wasn't enough for you, was it? You had to keep harping on and on and told everyone about it!” Sarah almost shouted and glared at her as her bubbling anger escaped. “Even the goddamn customers were giving me their unwanted opinions!”

“Sarah, I... I'm sorry.” Jinette whispered. “I was only trying to make light of it...”

Sarah lost the glare. “You did too good a job, then. I'm the laughing stock of half the city!”

“That's not true!” Jinette tried to defend herself.

“The last customer I had asked if I was the flirty one or the pregnant one, Jinette!” Sarah spat at her and her friend winced. “I'm not taking this shit anymore. I quit.”

“You're supposed to give two weeks notice to train up a replacement.” The secretary said. By the look on her face, she didn't want to say it and gain Sarah's attention.

Sarrah had the perfect response, though. She turned around and placed her finger on her timecard where it said part-time worker. “No, I don't.”

“The severance pay...” The secretary started to say.

“I don't get one, remember? I only have this last one at the normal pay period ending tomorrow.” Sarah said. “You can't penalize me for it, either. I'm quitting for medical reasons, after all. There's too much stress from my coworkers and the customers giving me grief, and that's bad for the baby.”

That really made both Jinette and the secretary feel bad.

“Take me off the call list and the employee list. I don't want the morning shift calling me to come in for breakfast.” Sarah said and the secretary did that, and she left a note to end Sarah's rotation in the schedule, too. “Thanks.”

“You'll have your last check by Thursday.” The secretary said and closed the ledger.

Sarah nodded and left the office to head to the locker room. Jinette walked after her, only she didn't say anything as Sarah changed back into her normal clothes and hung the uniform up. Sarah spent a few moments gathering up her things, shoved them into a plastic bag, and hung her purse over her arm.

“Sarah...” Jinette said and then sighed. “I really am sorry.”

“I'm sorry, too.” Sarah said and left the restaurant for the last time.