Ellison sits alone at home, all mopey, eating food, when his doorbell rings. My VeggieTales DVD!, he thinks and goes to the door, which is kicked in, knocking him down, by ... himself! Ellison, flat on his ass, is stunned to be staring at another version of himself (with absolutely no regard for personal property). "Agent Ellison?" asks Metal Ellison, who raises a gun. This is about when I figured this was just a dream sequence. Suddenly, there is a large metal object rammed out through Metal Ellison's chest, then withdrawn, then a hand bursting through, clutching a presumably crucial piece of internal hardware. Metal Ellison collapses, revealing Chrome Artie! Ellison says, "What? Aren't you on the same side?" and Chrome Artie says, "Skynet does not believe in you like I do." Ellison's all, huh? And Chrome Artie says Ellison's going to lead him to the Connors. I hope Ellison is insulted that Chrome Artie's faith kinda stems from certainty that Ellison will destroy the world as we know it.

John, Sarah and Cameron arrive home at the Connor Compound to discover that someone has either ransacked the place, or some teenagers had the kind of house party that winds up making the local newspaper. They split up to check out the house, Sarah with her gun drawn. She doesn't find anyone, and finds the back door slightly ajar and banging against the frame. Why this makes her relax her guard I have no idea, but she lowers her gun, only to raise it again and almost blow off Cameron's head. Cameron appears unfazed, and says there's no one there.

So where's Derek? Where any good soldier should be: asleep in bed with his AWOL girlfriend. His cellphone rings, and he wakes up, grabs it, hits the redial. It's Sarah. "Where the hell are you?" she says. "Where the hell am I supposed to be?" is his non-helpful response. Sarah drops it to tell him they've been robbed of everything: diamonds, cash, credit cards, ID. Derek, having snuck out of bed, quietly asks if it was done by metal. At the compound, an annoyed-sounding Cameron says her leather jacket is gone, and John says most of the food is too, making Sarah conclude it was done by humans. Or maybe that's just what the terminator WANTS you to think! She's worried about what could happen if their IDs fall into the wrong hands. Credit-card fraud? Derek tells her to head downtown, and he'll call back in half an hour with an exact location.

After he hangs up, Jesse stirs to ask him who it was. "Real life," says Derek, and they have a little back-and-forth about whether Derek couldn't have just let it ring, like good advice from the war deserter, JESSIE.