After Terminator 2 - What Happens Next?

I’ve been thinking about some post Terminator 2 scenarios. I am well aware it’s a work of fiction, and there are a bunch of crappy sequels to it. But just think about it…

Forget T3, etc. for a moment.  Lets say there was no sequel after T2. Sarah and John just destroyed Arnold and the arm and the chip. The steel plant is a mess.  By now, or certainly earlier, fire trucks and cops would have been all over the plant. As a side note, its rather convenient that by the time they killed the T1000, surely emergency personnel would have been all over that facility. Aside from that, so Sarah and John do what?  They make their way out of there.  Are they confronted by cops?  By an ambulance?  Sarah was, after all, poked through the shoulder and out the other side, and that will require medical attention, or become infected. Lets just say that they are both taken into medical care, either in an ambulance or taken to a  hospital, before being questioned as to why they are even here.  Unless Sarah and John are able to escape “out the back door” of the huge plant without being seen by authorities, I don’t see how they could avoid being arrested or at least in custody.  And I would stand by the fact that her shoulder injury needs attention.

Later - maybe they leave the hospital before the cops can question them. But I would doubt that.  It shouldn’t take too long for authorities to realize that this is the escaped mental patient who, with her big friend, left a trail of death and mayhem from everything to the mall, the flood control channel, the explosion of the Skynet building, foster parents killed (which ought to be a very interesting autopsy, especially on the foster dad stabbed through his milk carton), Miles Dyson’s death (and trauma to his wife and kid), helicopter destroyed and no one knows who stole and flew it, countless other people killed by the T1000 -  and that's another thing.  There is NO record of his existence.  As far as authorities know, Sarah and her big friend basically terrorized LA for a few days for no apparent reason - until they talk to Dyson’s wife and kid.  And what she tells them will surely blow their minds. Will they just think Dyson was in on Sarah’s insanity to blow up things?  This whole thing makes me really sad to think of the moment when someone comes to their door to tell them that her husband (and the kid’s father) died tonight in a massive explosion at his office.  The questions they will have for her...

One of two things can happen now.  Once they find out who Sarah is, she will be taken into custody.  There is no way things can work out OK for her and John.  Would be quite interesting in real life to see what would happen now.  I think the latter is more likely - the latter being she and John have to disappear.  But to where?  Neither one has a penny to their name.  John needs an education, doesn’t he?  Point is, they are basically screwed.  They have no money. She has no job. She’s a wanted prison escapee, for all intents and purposes.  She can’t just go apply for a job somewhere or put John in high school.  No, she would eventually need to tell her story and attempt to clear her name, and maybe even work with Skynet brass and try to make them understand what exactly happened here.  That would surely lead to a massive criminal trial to determine her sanity - and I don’t see it ending well with zero evidence in her favor.  And where is John in all this?  Sadly and ironically, he may well end up like Furlong did in real life - kind of a mess with no future.

I don’t know how on earth Cameron’s deleted ending scene in the park with old Sarah can work - all happy and free with her grandkid.  She’s kind of been a wanted escapee, bomber, felon, you name it.  I guess in a way, the subpar Terminator 3 was on par with her reality - her going into hiding off screen (and dying of leukemia, but I ain't going there).  The monologue at the end… “the unknown future rolls toward us. I face it for the first time with a sense of hope, because if a machine, a Terminator, can learn the value of human life, maybe we can too.”

Her sense of hope for mankind is all well and good, but what does she get out of it?  Nothing good, that I can see.