Killing Cameron

[ehowton]

Auspiciously, immediately after my 0225 post about possibly writing some T:SCC fanfic, I dreamed that night of Cameron...

I was in college. My entire dream took place on campus. At first I was attempting to chat her up in the cafeteria, but I was at an awkward age, and mostly she would just stare back at me, with her robot's logic of 'its not necessary to communicate now' which made me feel like I was trying to talk to the popular girl and didn't deserve to do so. She wouldn't even really acknowledge me.

Later that evening I had a foreboding feeling of pending doom, though I couldn't localize it. I tried to keep my eyes on Cameron to ensure her safety, but there was a dorm-wide party in the halls and there were a lot of people milling about. As the crowd eventually thinned, I couldn't find her, and began to panic just a bit, quickly walking the four hallways which made a square on one of the upper floors in our dorm until I found her, laying atop her bed fully clothed on her side, with her back to the door. She was just fine. I closed the door and decided to make another round through the quad.

When I came to the first corner connecting two hallways I was surprised to find a group of workers around a manhole. I heard 'internet' and 'problem' and a red flag went up in my head. I quickened my pace. Even more surprisingly was a second group of workers around the manhole in the second corner of the hallways. I was standing there, staring at them, trying to figure it all out when one pops up from within the manhole and proclaims, "Found the problem!" In his hand was an orange fiber cable. I could tell it has been cut by the white strands of buffer tufting out its ragged edge. A cut fibre meant intent, and the only reason to disallow network access was...Cameron!

I ran now, toward her room, running forward rather than backtracking as this was the second corner on the floor. I was running as fast as I could, but because of the fear it felt like slow motion. I imagined all the horrific things which could've already happened, wondering what I would find while working through possible courses of action for different scenarios I might encounter if I wasn't too late. I burst into her room and saw a man sitting on the edge of her bed near her head with a silver-plated automatic to her temple, and I screamed her name louder than I've ever screamed before. I screamed her name filled with a mixture of terror and grief and its ferocity visibly startled the assassin. In the time it took him to look up, acknowledge and assess, it was too late. Cameron had awoken, and reacted, disabling the would-be assailant without even a change of expression.