The Tinkerer Chronicles: Dale Against the Universe

Part Four

It was rather tense in Dale's hotel room with Al-Lee sitting there among us. As she recapped the story of how she escaped from the stasis pod, I kept glancing over at Neas to see how he was taking all of this. Let's just say that whatever trust he had in Al-Lee was dashed after discovering she was a Terminator. He gripped his plasma rifle as it rested on his lap, covertly aimed at her.

She told us of how she awoke in the stasis pod, confused as to why she was there in the first place. After she broke out of it, at the risk of stepping on glass shards (cutting the soles of her feet), she discovered the lab notes that I kept of her "situation," detailing her Terminator biology and programming, which included her mission to terminate Neas.

The guilt on her face as she reflected on discovering the truth of herself seemed genuine and even made me feel quite a bit of pity for her. Neas, on the other hand, refused to believe it, probably thinking it was part of her programming.

"I didn't want to hurt any of you, so I left," Al-Lee told us. "I wandered the streets of this city, until I received a transmission from Skynet: 'Aznavorian the Tinkerer's location has been detected in the present dimension'. Except the visual that was transmitted to me was of this guy." She pointed directly towards Dale.

I balked at this palpable error. "Dale?! Seriously?!"

"What's wrong with that?" Dale asked me, seeming a little offended.

"I think I'd remember ever being...well...you," I tried to rationalize for him in a respectable way.

"Maybe 'Dale Sydney' has been a human disguise all along?" Neas took this info with more serious consideration. "Do you carry any fob watches around, Dale?"

"What's a fob watch?" Dale asked, unintentionally debunking Neas's theory.

"Well, regardless, this mistake has put Dale's life on the line," I said. "There's a Terminator that wants to kill him, as long as it believes Dale is the Tinkerer."

"From the way you're talking, Pop, it sounds like you've got a plan."

Neas knew me so well. I did actually have a plan.

Whether or not it was a good plan depended on our success.

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Using a direct line to Skynet that was only achievable (and safe) through a burner phone, we arranged a meeting at the Los Angeles power plant. My plan was for Dale to pretend to be me while I was his "assistant" (a term that the Doctor once used to describe his companions). Meanwhile, Neas would wait along a distant ridge with Al-Lee and Craig, waiting for the moment to destroy the Terminator with the sniper function of his plasma rifle.

"What if this doesn't work?" Dale asked me as we waited. "It's my ass that's on the line here, not yours."

Much as I didn't want to admit it, he was right.

I was taking a huge gamble on the life of a man who did nothing other than take care of the woman I love, while I was off journeying across the multiverse with different faces and genders. "It'll be alright, Dale," I reassured him. "Just know that Neas is an expert marksman. All I have to do is give the signal, and this Terminator will be terminated."

It was almost dawn by the time that the Terminator arrived.

But he didn't come alone.