This book opens about a month after the events of Terminator Dreams, in September 2029, and ends that November. The future portions of this novel take place in 2029, but it is an alternate 2029 from the one spoken of in The Terminator and Judgment Day. In this 2029, John Connor and Kate Brewster are married and they have lived through the 2004 events of Rise of the Machines. The resistance has not brought down Skynet in July of this year as stated in the novelization of Judgment Day (as Rise of the Machines reveals the war still ongoing as of 2032). But they have discovered the Continuum Transporter, a time machine at the remains of Cyber Research Systems at Edwards Air Force Base, which used the particle accelerator built there as part of its mechanism. John uses the Continuum Transporter to send Kyle Reese back to 1984 to fulfill his destiny (in The Terminator) and the T-800 to 1994 to protect young John (in Judgment Day).

Didja Notice?

In this novel, the resistance has a T-850 called Glitch that has been reprogrammed to work for them. The novel seems to fluctuate on referring to the Terminator as a T-850 and a T-801. As far as I can tell, the two Allston novels are the only sources of reference to a T-801. Possibly it is an editorial miss, a confusion between the T-800 series and 101 model (Arnold Schwarzenegger skin).

   Part 1 of this book is titled Operation Pygmalion. Pygmalion was a character in the Greek narrative poem Metomorphoses by Ovid, a sculptor who falls in love with a statue. In the context of the novel, it refers to Paul Keely, who is manipulated by Skynet into being seduced by the T-X called Eliza. On page 252, Paul even states that Eliza is beautiful like a painting or a statue. Additionally, in George Bernard Shaw's 1912 play Pygmalion based on the character, the main female character is named Eliza.

   Also, the T-X tells Paul that her name, Eliza, is a tradition in her family. This may be a joking reference to the first so-called chatterbot, ELIZA, a computer program written in 1966. The program's inventor, Joseph Weizenbaum, named it for the Eliza character who appears in Pygmalion.

The martial arts forms mentioned as part of Paul's studies on page 13 are actual martial arts.

In the simulation on page 13, Paul wears a Harley-Davidson t-shirt. Harley-Davidson is a major motorcycle manufacturer in the United States.

Page 14 describes the T-X as like something designed by a libidinous Dr. Frankenstein. Dr. Frankenstein of course, is the character from Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein who brings to life an artificial man from the stitched-together body parts of human corpses. More particularly, our currrent novel may refer to the Dr. Frankenstein from the 1935 film Bride of Frankenstein, in which the good doctor creates a mate for the Frankenstein monster.

On page 16, the resistance raids one of Skynet's holdings, the San Diego Naval Medical Center. This is a real hospital technically known as Naval Medical Center San Diego, but also familiarly known as Bob Wilson Naval Hospital and Balboa Hospital, in San Diego's Balboa Park.

Page 17 reveals that the structures of San Diego were left remarkably intact by Skynet on Judgment Day through the use of neutron bombs and chemical weapons, in order to keep the city's extensive military materiel assets available for machine use. Neutron bombs are a type of nuclear bomb that have far less explosive power than the typical nuclear bomb, but emits ten times the radiation, lethal to living organisms, while leaving city structures largely intact. The city is a military center of the U.S., as stated in the novel.

Balboa Park has several golf courses, including the Balboa Park Municipal Golf Course as mentioned on page 17.

Page 23 states that the resistance Terminator called Glitch always wears perfume or cologne to help the local resistance canines tell the difference between him and an unfriendly Terminator!

On page 26, Mark mentions 20th Century toys found in one of the bedrooms of the hospital, including metal molds into which raw plastic was poured and cooked over a stove to harden it. Possibly, this is a reference to Creepy Crawlers, originally manufactured by Mattel and now by Jakks Pacific, though the kit comes with its own miniature electric oven to cook them in, making it unnecessary to use a stove.

On page 27, Mark mentions 1970s musical artists Abba, Donna Summer, and the Bee Gees. These were prominent disco artists of the time.

On page 28, a befuddled Paul is trying to recall what city he is in, thinking of San Francisco, San Bernardino, and San Diego. These are, of course, all actual cities in California.

The novel refers to Terminator endoskeletons sent into battle by Skynet as "assault robots".

Page 43 compares the T-X to Venus emerging from the sea. In Roman mythology, Venus, the beautiful goddess of love, sex, and fertility, was born from sea foam.

Page 46 reveals that the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan is one of the chief resources of Skynet in the San Diego area. The Ronald Reagan is an actual nuclear-powered supercarrier of the U.S. Navy, whose home port is Naval Air Station North Island, San Diego.

On page 47, Mark carries an Uzi 9mm submachine gun. The narrative mentions that the weapon was next to no use against any Terminators newer than the ancient T-400 series. The general Uzi line of weapons was designed by Israeli Captain Uziel Gal in the late 1940s and named after him. The T-400 was introduced as an older model Terminator in Dawn of Fate.

The T-1000 is mentioned several times in the book, but never seen. The T-1000 was, of course, introduced in Judgment Day.

On page 55, Glitch rips a Formica countertop off its mountings to use as a shield. "Formica" is capitalized because it is the brand name of plastic laminate used on the table's surface.

Pages 57-58 reveal that the resistance actually has better cared-for and optimized vehicles in use than Skynet. Skynet has more vehicle resources, so does not feel the need to keep any individual vehicle up or fueled by high-grade gasoline.

Page 61 reveals that Paul Keely formerly worked for the resistance at an old Intel plant.

On page 61, Kyla tells Mark, "No human being should know has much as you do about Gilligan's Island." Gilligan's Island was a sitcom from 1964-1967 about a group of castaways on an uncharted island on which they'd been shipwrecked.

Page 63 seems to state that in the current Rise of the Machines-related timeline, Skynet chose to eliminate humankind because it came to the conclusion there could be only one dominant form of intelligence on Earth. In The Terminator and Judgment Day-related timelines, Skynet retaliated when its human masters realized it had achieved sentience and chose to attempt to shut it down.

Page 63 states that Skynet rained nuclear missiles down not only on such U.S. nuclear adversaries as Russia, China, and North Korea, but also allies such as Israel. The nations retaliated in accordance with the MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) doctrine. This is a theory that the enemy will not attack to annihilate you with weapons of mass destruction if they believe you will be able to annihilate them as well before you're destroyed.

Page 63 also discusses the communications made by John and Kate from Crystal Peak to the human survivors throughout the country after Judgment Day. John and Kate were sealed within the nuclear bunker of Crystal Peak in the Mojave Desert at the end of Rise of the Machines.

The first half of page 64 describes the events of The Terminator and Judgment Day.

Page 64 mentions the early and bulky T-5 and T-7 models of Terminators. Presumably, this refers to the T-1-5 and T-1-7 models mentioned, but not seen, in Terminator Dreams.

Page 65 reveals that Kate, being the daughter of Air Force veneral Robert Brewster, brought John a legitimacy in the eyes of surviving Air Force officers after Judgment Day, resulting in a network of knowledgeable military allies.

Page 65 also reveals that there is a prevailing belief among members of the resistance that the loss of John Connor would result in the eventual end of the resistance.

In this timeline, Skynet's Continuum Transporter, and the center of Skynet activities, is located within a mountain code-named by the U.S. military Navajo Mountain, in the Navajo Mountain Strategic Region of the Rocky Mountains, west of Colorado Springs, near Pikes Peak. The Navajo Mountain Strategic Region appears to be fictional, though the Rocky Mountains, Colorado Springs, and Pikes Peak are real places in the state of Colorado. Page 96 also acknowledges a real world Navajo Mountain straddling the borders of Utah and Arizona, bearing no relation to the Skynet stronghold.

Page 72 states that the Terminator sent back to protect John in Judgment Day was a T-801, though it was referred to in all other stories as a T-800.

It is revealed on page 72 that Skynet's lack of knowledge of the resistance's use of the Continuum Transporter at the former Edwards Air Force Base was due to the "sabotage" programming of Daniel Avila in 2004, as implied in Terminator Dreams.

Page 76 mentions that Paul had carried a .30-06 hunting rifle on his few field missions with the resistance before being captured by Skynet. ".30-06" refers to the .30-06 Springfield cartridge developed by the U.S. military in 1906 and still used today for various rifles, including hunting rifles as implied here.

On page 78, Harve Pogue is reading an old magazine with a cover story retrospective of the life of ex-President Richard Nixon. Nixon was the President of the United States from 1969-1974.

On page 79, Paul speaks to a resistance member named Janet, who was "about forty". It's vaguely possible this is the same Janet mentioned as working for CRS in 2004 in Terminator Dreams.

Page 83 describes the Los Angeles River as long being anything but, just a stretch of parched concrete through the city. This is true for much of the river even now.

Some previously unseen resistance compounds are seen or named in this novel, including: Norris Compound in portions of the L.A. River concrete waterway; Guitar Compound; Clover Compound near the Navajo Mountain Strategic Region; Lance Compound on the Mescalero Apache lands of New Mexico; Yucca Compound under a National Guard depot in New Mexico; Stinger Compound in what had once been one of the biggest casinos on the Las Vegas strip; and Big Bear Compound near Cheyenne, Wyoming.

On page 87, Paul wonders what happened to Crazy Pete and Warthog while he was away. Readers of Terminator Dreams know that the two resistance fighters were killed by an HK.

Page 88 reveals the resistance has recently gained information from a T-800 manufacturing plant they stormed about how to clone animal tissue from the process Skynet uses to grow human tissue/skin for its Terminators and have used it to clone animal tissue for an increase of meat in their diet.

Paul's reputation as a former Skynet experiment and interaction in staged social settings with a T-X has earned him the derogatory nickname among some resistance members of Sleeps-With-Toasters. In Terminator Dreams, we learned that humans sometimes refer to Terminators as toasters. Additionally, the Sleeps-With-Toasters name is derived from the character of Union Army lieutenant John Dunbar, who gains the Lakota Indian name Dances With Wolves for his playful encounters with a wolf in the 1988 novel and 1990 film Dances With Wolves.

Page 94 reveals that Chris Sato had been a child living in Boulder, CO before Judgment Day. His parents are still leaders of a compound at Lake Mead in NV; Lake Mead is the largest reservoir in the U.S., formed by the construction of Boulder Dam (now known as Hoover Dam) on the Colorado River in the 1930s.

Page 96 explains that Skynet became self-aware within the government network that housed it and had then distributed packets of itself on systems all over the world through the internet, becoming a many-headed hydra without a Hercules strong enough to cut off all its heads. This version of Skynet was explained at the end of Rise of the Machines. Hydra and Hercules are references to Roman mythology; among the many feats attributed to Hercules is the slaying of the nine-headed hydra.

Rise of the Machines gives the impression the T-1 Terminators are only located at the CRS facility at Edwards Air Force Base, but the current novel states some as existing at other military locations: page 96 states that some existed at Navajo Mountain and went on a rampage killing the human personnel there on Judgment Day, from which few people escaped; on page 121, an inactive T-1 is found at a hidden military cache site in New Mexico.

On page 101, Colonel Mears serves vodka in shot glasses with the skyline of Denver, CO printed on them. Denver is the capital of Colorado. Mears says "Salute," as he clicks his shot glass to Sato's; this is an Italian toast for "to your health."

    In order to set a trap for the T-X, the resistance creates the fake identity of Gwendolyn Drew from the Great Lakes compound and uses a doctored photograph of Sarah Connor to represent her as a surviving relative of the Connor family. If the references to John as "Uncle John" in regards to his relationship to her are meant to be taken literally, her identity was created as being a niece of John Connor (which would mean there would also be a fake sibling of John Connor as one of her parents!). 

    Page 177 describes the T-X, as Gwendolyn, speaking in Sarah's voice! But how would the T-X know what Sarah's voice sounded like? Does Skynet have copies of some of Sarah's recordings made for John (as we saw her do at the end of The Terminator)?

    The Great Lakes are the largest series of freshwater lakes in the world, located on the border of the U.S. and Canada.

On page 109, Murphy tells Sato, "If we can't preserve the spark that gave us Mozart, El Greco, and whoever it was that invented the piňa colada, we're not worth saving." Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) was, of course, a music composer during the Classical period. El Greco (Spanish for "The Greek") was an architect, painter, and sculptor during the Spanish Renaissance (real name Doménikos Theotokópoulos, 1541–1614). Piňa colada is a cocktail made with rum, pineapple juice, and cream of coconut, with numerous claims of origin since the 19th Century.

On page 114, Sato plays a game of poker with resistance members of Clover Compound and has a possibility of getting a flush. In poker, a flush is a hand of five cards all of the same suit.

John's convoy makes its way along the roads of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. These are the southernmost range of the Rocky Mountains, running between Poncha Pass in Colorado and Santa Fe, New Mexico.

The resistance discovers a hidden National Guard vehicles and supplies cache in New Mexico in a building with a curved roof like a Quonset hut. The place soon becomes a new resistance base called Yucca Compound. Quonset huts were introduced by the U.S. Navy during WWII as a lightweight, easy to ship and assemble building for housing offices, barracks, latrines, and medical facilities. Surplus huts were also sold throughout the U.S. after the war and can still be seen in many parts of the country.

Except for the T-1 Terminator, all of the vehicles and equipment named by Paul on page 121 are real world items.

John decides that the T-1, called Boris by Paul, found at the New Mexico site will be saved and used as a museum piece after the war. Possibly, Paul has borrowed the name from actor Boris Karloff, who famously played the Frankenstein monster in three early Frankenstein films.

Paul fixes up two Kawasaki off-road motorcycles manufactured 2001-2002, one to be used by himself and the other by John Connor. Page 168 refers to the bikes having 292cc engine. "CC" stands for "cubic centimeter" and represents the size of the engine in volume swept by an engine's rotating cylinders. This engine size suggests the bikes must be the Kawasaki KLX300R, the only model made with that engine size in that time period. (Photo from Motosports Network.)

Page 125 shows that Paul has some nanotech in his head still, from his time imprisoned and experimented on by Skynet, capable of altering his behavior to some degree. This is similar to nanotech used by the T-XA model in the New John Connor Chronicles trilogy and by the old man from the future in Hour of the Wolf.

On page 128, Kyla refers to Paul as Pinocchio, saying he's a little wooden thing who wants to become a real boy. Pinocchio is a character in Carlo Collodi's 1883 children's novel The Adventures of Pinocchio, a wooden puppet who wants to become a real boy.

On page 149, Sato explains to Mears a technique that allows sound inside a room to be recorded from outside via a laser that detects sound vibrations on a window pane of the room. This is a real world technology used by spy agencies and others.

Colonel Raymond Mears was formerly the head of Mears Enterprises. There have been a couple of real world businesses by that name, but are not likely to be the one mentioned here.

It's not explained how, but it is acknowledged that Skynet has somehow made the T-X such that it can even fool dogs into thinking it's human. When the T-X arrives in its disguise as Gwendolyn, Sato silently notes that she even smells faintly of human sweat. At the end of the novel, Kyla is training dogs to detect a T-X by the sound of its servos moving, too low to be detected by humans.

Page 165 has Sato stating that Skynet is not able to manufacture T-X's at any sort of quick rate, explaining why there's not a swarm of them on the battlefields now. Presumably the same is true of T-1000 models.

As the T-X is brought into the resistance compound in its Gwendolyn disguise, Sato wonders if she feels the machine equivalent of excitement as she gets closer to her target of John Connor. Possibly, she does, as suggested by the T-X in Rise of the Machines when her reaction to an analysis of a blood sample reveals it to be that of John Connor is an almost orgasmic expression on her face.

The space where the vehicles were discovered inside the soon-to-be Yucca Compound comes to be known as Mechanics Alley.

On page 168, the resistance workers applaud when Paul successfully fires up one of the repaired dirt bikes and he offers them "a little wave of acknowledgment in each direction, like the Queen of England receiving the accolades of her subjects with dignity or disinterest..." This would likely be referencing Queen Elizabeth II, who would have been the last Queen of England before Judgment Day (and who is still the queen in the real world, reigning since 1952).

On page 169, John states that he was riding his Triumph Bonneville motorcycle the day before Judgment Day. This is the bike we saw him riding at the beginning of Rise of the Machines.

Also on page 169, Paul observes to himself John's expression changing after their conversation, altering "like a T-1000 transforming from one person into another, from a motorcycle enthusiast to the Resistance leader he normally was in public." But how would Paul know what a transforming T-1000 looks like? In this timeline, it seems there was only ever the prototype T-1000 used by Skynet, and it was seemingly only ever seen by John back in 1994, as far as any surviving humans goes. I suppose many resistance members have heard of the T-1000 and could imagine what a transformation looks like. Or, the full sentence is vague enough that it could be the author writing to the audience, without the intention of it being a direct reflection of the character's thoughts.

On page 179, Jenna the Greek asks Carter "where's the jakes?" "Jake" is a British slang term for "toilet".

On page 182, Mark carries an M-25 plasma pulse rifle. These weapons were referred to in several previous stories as well.

On page 186, a Skynet Chinook helicopter approaches the Skynet meeting place in Santa Fe. This is the Boeing CH-47 Chinook, a large military copter used for moving troops or supplies. Here, Skynet uses it to move Terminators into place for an attack.

On page 197, John flips a coin to decide which of the two essentially identical Kawasaki dirt bikes he's going to take as his own. It's a 20-peso piece he's kept for years from his time in Mexico (presumably while he was training with his mother as a child).

Page 208 mentions the T-X being able to control vehicles remotely. This ability was demonstrated by the T-X in Rise of the Machines.

On page 218, Glitch picks up an Uzi carbine. A carbine is a gun with a longer barrel than the standard of a particular model, but shorter than a rifle. Uzi carbine versions have been made.

Page 225 reveals that the plasma cannon built into the T-X's arm is quite a bit more powerful than the typical plasma rifles used by both human resistance members and standard Terminators, capable of destroying a small building or an armored vehicle with one shot.

On page 236, Stinger Compound's command and information center has GEO/POLIT stenciled on the door. I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean (geopolitics??) in the context of either the fight against Skynet or in a (formerly working) casino.

Pages 237-238 reveal that the resistance occasionally gets real coffee through trade with other groups, but mostly has to settle for drinking hot beverages percolated from various types of tree bark. They refer to it simply as "tree juice".

On page 239, the resistance learns that the T-X is currently set up for continued training in Bryce Hotel in Pueblo, Colorado. This appears to be a fictional hotel in the real city of Pueblo. On page 260, Kate remarks that Pueblo was famous as the center of distribution for U.S. government printed matter; this is true, as the city is the home of the Federal Citizen Information Center, which distributes the Consumer Information Catalog, among other civil brochures and pamphlets.

The resistance's computer historians use the acronym BAWA for Big-Ass Web Archive to describe the massive archives of internet sites copied and saved by several institutions before Judgment Day, and which have been found intact on various old university computer systems, making for an extremely useful resource of knowledge. Such internet archives actually exist in the real world, a popularly known one being the Internet Archive and it's built in search engine, the Wayback Machine.

On page 248, Paul brings pico de gallo as his contribution to a small resistance social event. Pico de gallo (literally "rooster's beak") is a Spanish salad of chopped tomato, coriander leaves, onion, peppers, salt, and lime juice.

Page 253 describes the Home Plate-Stinger Compound run, from L.A. to Barstow, then across the desert to Las Vegas. This is much like the route from L.A. to Vegas is today, taking the I-10 or I-210 from L.A. to the I-15 going across the desert to Barstow and then Vegas.

On pages 255-256, Paul sees a genuine Willys Jeep and a gyrocopter among the parked resistance vehicles offered by Stinger Compound. A Willys Jeep is the classic WWII U.S. military jeep manufactured 1941-1945 by Willys-Overland Motors. A gyrocopter is a light, non-fixed-wing aircraft with both a rotor (for lift) and a propeller (for thrust).

Dr. Bowen explains that he assembled his blimp, the Blowfish, in Akron. This is probably referring to the Goodyear Airdock in Akron, Ohio, where many such airships have been assembled since WWII. He goes on to say that the Blowfish uses hydrogen as the lifting gas because Skynet controls all known helium-producing facilities in North America. Helium is the safer type of lifting gas, being non-flammable. Bowen states the ship features some safety equipment to help prevent the fate that befell the Hindenburg. This references the Hindenburg disaster of 1937, in which the German zeppelin by that name, which used hydrogen for its buoyancy, exploded and burned.

On page 263, Ten complains to Paul about messing around with Glitch, leading the Terminator to trying to get Ten to talk about himself in order to learn better how to serve and gain the trust of humans. Paul retorts, "Next, I'm going to teach him to play 'I Spy With My Little Eye.' " I Spy is a simple children's game in which players have to guess what object the Spy (the "It" player) saw by listening to clues told by the Spy and asking yes-or-no questions.

Paul designs a weapon he calls the T-taser, a harpoon gun with the harpoon connected by a length of cable to a capacitor carried in the shooter's backpack. When a number of these are fired in rapid succession at a Terminator, it can bring the robot down. This is essentially the same weapon used by the resistance to bring down the T-850 which is reprogrammed and sent back to 2004 to protect John Connor in The Redemption.

On page 268, the Blowfish is flying parallel to I-25. This is an actual interstate running north-south through Pueblo.

Page 278 indicates the day of the resistance raid on the Bryce Hotel is October 3, 2029.

On page 280, the conference rooms of the Bryce Hotel are named as Anasazi Room, Brown Room, Evans Room, and Pike Room. These are all names associated in some way with the state of Colorado: the Anasazi were an ancient Native American culture in the region; Brown may be a reference to W. W. Brown, a racecar driver who hill climbed Pikes Peak in his car, the Bear Cat in 1913; Evans may be a reference to Mt. Evans in the Rockies; Pike refers to Pikes Peak or explorer Zebulon Pike, Jr., for whom the peak is named.

In the Anasazi Room, Paul and the others discover that Skynet has repurposed the conference room into a surgical theater, complete with electroencephalogram and electrocardiogram. An electroencephalogram measures electrical activity in the brain, while an electrocardiogram measures such in the heart.

On page 296, the resistance strike team moves to the VIP and deliveries level of the Bryce Hotel garage, where they spot a Jeep Cherokee and a truck labeled Holliday Foods. VIP stands for Very Important Person. Holliday Foods appears to be a fictitious business.

Page 307 mentions the Arkansas River. This is a tributary of the Mississippi River, running through Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas.