...6:48 PM...

..The Resistance Cafeteria...

"Tonight we celebrate the fall of Skynet!" John said, standing up holding a glass of wine. "To the Resistance and everyone who put their lives out there!""

"To the Resistance!" Everyone else said.

Our perspective changes from the cafeteria to the Barracks.

Castle sat on a bunk bed with his hands together feeling home sick.

"Hey," Came a young man's voice.

Castle looks up to see the man take off his fez.

"Uh...Hey?" Castle said, cautiously.

"The name's T-11," T-11 introduces himself sitting on the opposite bed. "I hear you are from another time."

"Yeah," Castle said. "I am."

A glint of hope goes off in T-11's eyes.

"What year are you from?" T-11 asks.

"2015," Castle said.

"What's it like without Terminators?" T-11 asks.

Castle stares at T-11.

"You are a Terminator," Castle said. "You should be able to be picture everyone without needing to be in a war zone."

"Yeah," T-11 said. "But I want the possibility that I am human in one of those timelines not a machine."

"You are the only one of your kind," Castle said.

"Coming out of a human and genetically altered?" T-11 asks, then lowers his head and shakes it lightly in a sad kind of way. "I beg to differ."

"Huh?" Castle said.

"I may be a Terminator but that does not define who I am," T-11 said. "Or what I am."

"What are you?" Castle asks.

T-11 smiles.

"You may call me a hybrid or a cyborg," T-11 said. "I call myself neither to be honest."

Castle blinks, gaping, as he mentally guesses.

"A human-cyborg?" Castle said.

"Yes," T-11 said.

"You are hybrid!" Castle said, gasping.

T-11 chuckles with a nod.

"That you are correct," T-11 said, snapping his fingers. "But like a machine I can be taken apart and be put back together."

"How does it feel to be taken apart and reassembled?" Castle asks.

T-11 laughs.

"It feels so strange at first and unnatural, and then it feels natural the more it happens," T-11 admits, in a way acting more human than a Terminator towards Castle. "You can call me Tyler Eleven if you'll like."

"So you are more like an android with the whole being unassembled, Tyler," Castle said.

T-11 nods.

"Correct," T-11 said.

"And you don't say 'affirmative'," Castle said.

T-11 leans forwards putting his hands together.

"Mr Castle, I was raised by humans in most of my previous life," T-11 said. "Then I was taken and my life became screwed up. I don't really have an idea who I was before but I am glad to be here fighting on the good side."

"I understand," Castle said. "I thought...I thought you were a Terminator concealing John's worst enemy."

"People didn't trust me at first," T-11 said. "I can't blame you."

"No," Castle said. "You were evil in one of the movies."

The look on T-11's face falters.

"I don't exist," T-11 said, in a low voice.

"Your actor does," Castle said.

T-11 sighs as the sad look is changed to a hopeful one.

"Sure glad the kid who became me never will go through this," T-11 said.

"Kid?" Castle asks, alarmed.

"Bones age in storage, Mr Castle," T-11 said. "I was stored for a long time until nothing but bone was left. I...I have no idea how the kid died but maybe in your timeline his bones will turn into dust and he will never ever go through what I did."

"Hey," Castle said. "You will exist."

"I don't think so," T-11 said, getting up. "Now excuse me, I have a karaoke to do."

Castle has a bitter sweet smile seeing T-11 walk away putting on the fez.

"Hey, you don't wear hats in buildings!" Castle shouts.

"Fez's are cool!" T-11 protests.

Castle couldn't help but doubt if T-11 really told the truth. The bones of his next novel began surfacing featuring Nikki Heat and two future dwellers fighting off alien machines that involved going back into the past in the 1970's to kill off another important figure and solve a murder set in the future in the sanest way possible. One of these future dwellers told the truth and the other was a shady kind of guy being a part of what the two are fighting against.

Nikki Heat and the Future Dwellers.