Installed on her bed for an afternoon of 'soaps' is the
wrong Sarah Connor.  Electrode pads exercise her doughy
thighs as the 35 year old divorcee watches General
Hospital.

"What's wrong, Mom?" she calls out distractedly.
The door bangs open and she stares in dumb amazement as
the good-looking, intense-eyed man in the ill-fitting
clothes raises a pistol and aims it at her face.

It all seems less real than General Hospital in that
half-second before he fires.

Downstairs, her mother is fumbling with the telephone when
she hears the shots.  She shrieks with renewed terror as
the ceiling above her erupts with five exit holes in rapid
succession, followed by a dribble of blood.

In the bedroom, seen in a low angle shot, Terminator
stands with the .45 aimed down at the dead woman out of
frame below.  He unhurriedly drops the clip, reloads the
weapon and replaces it under his jacket.

Then, crouching down, he removes a plastic-handled razor-
knife from his pocket and extends the five inch blade
slowly with his thumb.  It is the type with numerous
break-off sections for renewing the point, and it extends
with a quietly ominous clicking.

In the foyer the old woman stands paralyzed as Terminator
reappears on the landing and walks down toward her, knife
in hand.

He wipes the bloody blade clean on her apron, clicks it
shut and goes out the door.
She sags to the floor in a faint.

An unmarked car with a clamp-on light flashing and siren
blaring screeches to the curb behind three black-and-
whites in front of a Venice apartment building. LIEUTENANT
ED VUKOVICK, Homicide Division, strides through the crowd
gathered patiently for their ten-second glimpse of
something under a sheet, and wends his way up to the
scene, a third floor apartment.

On the floor is the crumpled body of a young woman, her
blue jeans and sweater bloodsoaked.  Two bags of groceries
lie split open on the floor in front of her.  Detectives
and photographers bustle about, taking evidence.

Vukovick is quickly briefed by DETECTIVE SGT. BUCKMAN: The
woman was shot repeatedly at close range.  Large caliber
weapon.  Got her just inside the door, so killer was
probably waiting in the apartment.  One witness saw a guy
holding a pistol walk out like he was walking a poodle for
a piss in the park... his words.  He's making a statement.
The deceased's name is Sarah Louise Connor...

Vukovick stops the report.  Did he hear correctly?  Two
homicides in one day with the same name?

"That's not all that's the same," Buckman says, lifting
one of the girl's pant-legs which has been slit up past
the knee.  Also slit, from ankle to knee, is the skin and
muscle of her calf, peeled back like a hotdog bun to
expose the shin-bone.

Vukovick scowls.  The same mutilation as the Encino
housewife, left leg only.  Too fucking weird.  The news
guys'll have a field day with this... the first one-day
pattern killer.

Vukovick's lamentations are justified when he returns to
division headquarters and finds himself running a gauntlet
of reporters and minicam crews to get to his office.  It
hasn't taken them long to figure out that the killings
took place in the same order in which they are listed in
the phone book, and they want to know if he can offer
anything beside the idea that a maniac is working his way
through the L.A. directory starting with the C's.

Sarah enters the apartment, alone, and trudges to the
refrigerator, taking out a pint of ice-cream.  She sits
down beside Pugsley, lets him out and plunges the spoon
into the ice-cream.
"Rum raisin," she sighs, "It ain't love but nine out of
ten doctors surveyed recommend it as a substitute for
orgasm."

She begins massaging the muscle of her left calf and we
see that a long-healed surgery scar runs downward across
her shin from just below the knee.
"Old war wound acting up," she confides to Pugsley, who is
draped comfortably across her shoulders.

Ginger is returning to the bedroom with a plate of celery
stalks and a glass of milk.  As she approaches the closed
door a shape smashes through it in an explosion of
splinters right in front of her... Matt's lacerated body
propelled halfway through the door by enormous force.

Ginger screams hysterically as the door is wrenched open
and Terminator steps through with that massive .45 drawn.
She makes it down the hall before the bullet punches into
her back, pitching her on her face just outside the open
bathroom door.
In low wide-angle Ginger crawls forward, gasping,
drowning.  The implacable figure looms behind her.
Her expression is agony and reeling, nauseating terror and
incomprehension rolled together.
Why am I suddenly dying?  Her eyes roll, showing the
whites, like a horse tethered in a burning stable.

She scrabbles for a grip, pulling herself pathetically
into the bathroom, clutching the rim of the toilet.
Pan up as Terminator stands over her, takes aim, and
empties the clip.

In the silence that follows, the ring of the phone seems
deafening.  Terminator ignores the girl's recorded message
as he calmly inserts a new blade into the razor knife and
bends down.  However his head snaps around when he hears
the incoming call:

"Ginger, this is Sarah.  I'm in this sleazy bar called
Stokers on Olympic but I'm too scared to leave.  I'm
really scared, kiddo... I think somebody's after me and I
sure hope you play this soon 'cause I need you and Matt to
come pick me up.  The police keep transferring me around
but I'm going to try them again."

Silberman is fascinated.
According to Reese, due to loss of records during the
nuclear devastation, little information about the mother
of John Connor was available to the computer: only her
name, age, and the city in which she lived up until 1982,
after which she was known to have gone into hiding.
There was only one piece of information which would have
allowed the cyborg to identify her positively.
In Reese's future, Sarah Connor is known to have died in a
raid at the age of 36 and been routinely autopsied by the
disposal machines.  This revealed to the computer the two
steel screws set in her tibia for a compound fracture
suffered in a figure skating accident in her teens.

Silberman nods, noting that this would explain the curious
mutilation of the previous victims.
But he questions why neither Reese nor the other fellow
are using anything but present-day weapons, when
presumably they would have advanced weaponry and other
items of future technology at their disposal.

"Most records were damaged or lost in the war," Reese said. "Skynet knew almost
nothing about Connor's mother, because her file was incomplete. It knew here name and 
where she lived--just the city, not the address. Terminator was being systematic."
"What about the incisions in their legs?"
"It was the only physical identification left in her records. Sarah had a metal pin
surgically implanted in her leg. What Skynet didn't know,
 what Terminator doesn't know, is that she doesn't have it yet. That's supposed to
 happen later."
"How do you know?"
"John told me."
"John Connor?" Silberman asked.
"Yes."

She sat up and screamed. Pain shot through her leg, and she reached blindly for 
it. It as twisted beneath her, the calf punctured, oozing thick blood. Something
had buried itself in her leg. She dragged the limp appendage out from under herself 
and saw that it was a sharp piece of Terminator that had been blown directly into her
calf muscle about halfway between ankle and knee. Even in death the cyborg had tried
to kill her. It was in her now, invading her flesh, in a kind of cold rape. She wanted
it out and pulled. That hurt worse, but she doubled the pressure, and in a sudden
sucking pop, the chunk of steel came free. She dropped it and gasped. 
When the pain began to subside a little, she opened her eyes and saw Reese.