Last time we presented the problem created by the birth of Kyle Reese. In brief, when SkyNet goes live in 1997 (the date he gives Sarah Conner when he becomes John's father), then his parents gave birth to him during the war, sometime after judgment day; when SkyNet goes live in 2004, however, they gave birth to him before judgment day. Somehow despite the upheaval caused by a nuclear war, the same boy was born with the same name at the same time, and that quite near a major strike zone. The probability of any person being born in that area during those years under both histories is slim in the extreme; that it would be the one person who matters is pushing improbabilities to Hitchhiker proportions.
Yet the probability can be raised significantly if we allow the possibility that it is not quite the same Kyle Reese.
There are people in the world who know what they are going to name their children long before they are in a position to have any. Their son will be named for their father, or their daughter for their grandmother, or a child for their best friend. It almost does not matter whether their spouse likes the name; that is the name. Thus if Ralph Reese is such a man, or Rhoda Reese is such a woman, it might not matter whether Ralph met Rhoda. Whether before the war or after, if Rhoda is an unwed mother of a boy she will name him Kyle Reese, or if Ralph fathers a son he will name him Kyle Reese. Someone will be born named Kyle Reese. In this case, since Kyle mentions his father but not his mother, we can guess that his father is the connection that matters. As long as the man fathered a boy, we have a Kyle.
There is a question of the survival of this Kyle. After all, we've accepted that he might have a different mother, and thus that he will be a very different person. He might be genetically very different even with the same mother, given the upheaval of the world. Yet he has the same father, the father who taught him to survive, and thus even a somewhat different Kyle has a good chance of surviving.
There is the question of whether John Conner would choose this person to protect his mother. However, that only matters the first time through. John knows that Kyle Reese is his father, and even if he does not see his best warrior in the boy this will be his pick.
There is the question of whether Sarah Conner will fall in love with this Kyle Reese. It seems, though, that Sarah was ready to fall in love with someone (we noted that she must have gotten pregnant right around this time without Kyle's arrival), and any Kyle Reese is going to admire the John Conner, leader of the resistance who risked his life to save an unknown boy (himself), and the mother who prepared that boy for his place in life. Sarah is very likely to fall for her rescuer, whatever changes we make in his DNA, as long as he succeeds in rescuing her.
It is more difficult assessing whether he will succeed and also die; but at this point we are so deep into the nature/nurture debate that we cannot begin to predict the answer. He is Kyle Reese, son of that same man who taught him to survive, trained by John Conner in John's full expectation that this man would save his mother's life and become his father.
It also changes who Sarah Conner's child is, because if Kyle Reese has a different mother, he is a different father, and John a different son; but as long as he is a son (a fifty-one percent chance) he will still be John Conner, trained by Sarah Conner to save the world from SkyNet.
So perhaps the birth of Kyle Reese is not so improbable after all.
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