‘Terminator’ flashback: ‘T2: Rising Storm’ (2002) (Book review)

After “Infiltrator” (2001) rather leisurely explored the John-Sarah relationship, added Dieter to the brotherhood of the brave and chronicled yet another attack on Cyberdyne, “Rising Storm” (2002) raises the stakes. The second book in S.M. Stirling’s “T2” trilogy chronicles the build-up of Skynet to its point of sentience — but, somewhat surprisingly, the novel does not conclude with Judgment Day.

It’s also a coming-of-age story for John, although he does not lose his mother or his father figure, Dieter, in this book; both survive into “The Future War.” The loss that causes John to turn from relatively happy teenager to hardened warrior is that of Wendy, his first girlfriend, who falls victim to the latest I-950 Infiltrator. “Rising Storm,” like most middle chapters of trilogy, is a stage-setter for the final act – even as Skynet gains sentience, John, Sarah and Dieter gain several allies.

CHARACTERS

John Connor: Aging from 17 to 18, John begins to carefully spread the word about the threat of Cyberdyne/Skynet and assemble allies. Stirling seems to be setting up John’s lieutenants for the third book. Contrasting with “Infiltrator,” where he has a great relationship with his mom, a rift forms here, primarily because John gets his first girlfriend.

Sarah Connor: Having essentially repeated the plot of “T2” in “Infiltrator,” Sarah is again institutionalized – this time for her second attack on Cyberdyne (and third overall attack on a computer facility). She escapes with the help of Dr. Silberman, who now believes her story.

Dieter von Rossbach: This retired Sector agent who looks like the Arnold-style T-101 is now even more closely knit with the Connors — as a love interest to Sarah and a father figure to John. His estancia in Paraguay is the good guys’ home base.

Wendy: John’s first girlfriend in this or any “Terminator” timeline up to this point, Wendy – a year older than John — is a brilliant MIT computer coder who joins the fight to stop Skynet’s creation. Kate Brewster, of “T3” (Claire Danes) and “Salvation” (Bryce Dallas Howard), is the most famous of John’s girlfriends, and he also has one in “The Sarah Connor Chronicles.”

Dr. Silberman: In the Malibu Comics sequel to “T2,” he is institutionalized for the same reasons as Sarah – because he believes Terminators are real. In this timeline, he likewise believes Sarah’s claims, but he is still a doctor. He helps Sarah escape from the mental ward, then disappears from the narrative.

TERMINATORS

Clea Bennet: She is an I-950 (an organic/machine hybrid) clone of Serena Burns, the time-traveling I-950 who was killed by the good guys in “Infiltrator.” Clea is the main villain of “Rising Storm,” continuing her parent/sibling’s mission to see to Skynet’s creation and kill the Connors if possible.

Alissa: Yet another clone of Serena, she is Clea’s second-in-command.

Terminators: Clea continues to create (in her makeshift home lab) and dispatch the Arnold-style T-101 units as part of the mission, plus one unit that is shorter and stockier.

CONTINUITY AND CONTRADICTIONS

“Rising Storm” begins “several weeks” after the events of “Infiltrator,” and John ages from 17 to 18, so the story is set in 2001 and 2002 – the year of the book’s publication.

Clea initially sets up her headquarters in the backwoods of Montana. That state was home to Skynet HQ back in the Now comics, and various other Rocky Mountain locations have housed Skynet HQ in other stories.

Sarah starts the book in a mental institution, making this the second time she has been captured and institutionalized by the authorities for an attack on a computer company (out of her three attacks on computer companies). The first attack, never chronicled, happens between “T1” and “T2” and causes her to be locked up when we meet her in “T2.” After the second attack (and first on Cyberdyne), later in that movie, she of course escapes the authorities with John. The third attack (and second on Cyberdyne) is chronicled in “Infiltrator.”

Clea begins trying to create the poly-alloy that will allow her to build a T-1000 (page 83 of the paperback). She can’t perfect it yet, but she names it “intellimetal.”

A T-101 crosses the ocean and climbs aboard a yacht to attack Dieter (p. 130). Fairly consistently in the “Terminator” mythos, Terminators can’t swim. So most likely, this T-101 walks across the ocean bottom like the female unit in Dark Horse’s “Secondary Objectives.”

One of Dieter’s friends, Doc, is in the Sector with Dieter (p. 167) at the time the Terminator (who looks exactly like Dieter) is caught on video in 1984 and 1995, which is why Doc doesn’t suspect Dieter in those events. This is somewhat of a plot hole because it seems Dieter was never a suspect in those events, never had to have his whereabouts corroborated by someone like Doc, and was allowed to retire and go about his business even though you’d think a government agency would match the faces and consider Dieter a person of interest.

Although Judgment Day doesn’t happen in “Rising Storm,” Skynet is given sentience (p. 488, 497 and 516) – accidentally — when John mistakenly hits “enter” on the keyboard during a complex fight scene where Wendy loses her voice and can’t communicate that he’s doing it wrong. Wendy intends to program Skynet to reject sentience, but only the program for sentience gets downloaded. Clea destroys the disk containing the program that would kill Skynet’s sentience. This is the first specific chronicle of Skynet gaining sentience in the “Terminator” lore, although the T-800 in “T2” pinpoints a date (Aug. 27, 1997) on which Skynet becomes self-aware on the previous timeline. Also, Clea believes a Cyberdyne coder named Kurt Viemeister made Skynet sentient on a previous timeline and will do so again on this one. She’s wrong on the latter point, but Skynet still becomes sentient in an example of events “snapping back” into place even if the specifics change.

Also on the “building up Skynet” front, the U.S. government steals munitions technology from Cyberdyne (p. 300) and sets up factories across the globe. These will no doubt be crucial for Skynet in building the J-Day nukes, along with H-Ks and Terminators for the Future War.

John receives his famous facial scars (p. 449) in a fight with a seal programmed by Clea in Antarctica. The scars are featured on almost all future versions of John Connor, from his first appearance in “T2” through Jason Clarke’s portrayal in the upcoming “Genisys.” But compared to the other timelines, this is the youngest point at which John receives the scars.

TIME TRAVEL AND TIMELINES

There is no time travel in “Rising Storm,” but Stirling does pontificate about the nature of timelines, consistently with “Infiltrator”:

In the prologue, the computer brain of Skynet in 2029 thinks of “quantum superimposition,” where multiple timelines can exist simultaneously, but only for a short period of (meta-)time. But, Skynet thinks: “At some point only one set of time lines will remain.” Skynet also mentions a quality of “elasticity” to time, noting that it tends to “spring back” into place. John thinks about having to someday send his father back through time (p. 6): “How do I get cold enough to send my own father to his death?” Clea notes that the phrase “in the first place” is meaningless when dealing with a “closed timeloop” (p. 368). Cyberdyne’s government liaison Tricker asks Dieter (p.488): “Does it bother you that … John will disappear (if you succeed in destroying Skynet)?”

Stirling, through all his characters, is subscribing to the closed-loop timeline theory, which is consistent with Dark Horse’s “Endgame” and “Robocop vs. The Terminator,” in which Skynet knows about multiple timelines and characters are able to experience the change of a timeline before their very eyes as it “springs back.” But “Endgame” also incorporates the alternate timeline principle when Sarah gives birth to Jane – a timeline that wasn’t explored after that. And indeed, the fact that Stirling’s trilogy is one of many post-“T2” stories (to say nothing of the alternate post-“T1” timeline from Dark Horse) indicates that there are multiple timelines. Then again, those multiple timelines could “spring back” into the “true” timeline if we imagine the timelines as extremely stretchy rubber bands; picture John morphing into Jane – and then back into John – during an instance of “springing back.”