Mistakes Were Made
By: Alex Retzer
Summary: Mistakes have a way of snowballing in on you. Like butterfly flapping its wings across the world that creates a tsunami elsewhere, one such mistake would forever alter the history of the colonies and the Cylon nation. One of the five dies far too soon.
PICON-SEVEN WEEKS BEFORE THE FALL
He was convinced he'd make the catch. Driven by ego or the promises a victory celebration would hold, he made a go at the seemingly impossible task laid out before him.
For once in his life he miscalculated.
'Frak'
As he fell back to playing field he cursed in every tongue. Bits of Gemonese meshed with terse Tauron slang. He wondered how he would explain his transgressions to the gods. Would he walk upon Olympus and hear their judgment or would he be like everyone else taken down the river.
As his head connected with the ground he wondered for fleeting moment, one nano second in which hope shined bright if he might yet live.
As the rest of his weight added to the equation, Caprica's favored son knew it was not to be.
The pressure built until a sickening crack was heard. The crowds in the stands gasped in shock. Parents covered their children's eye's. Young woman and men alike showed anguish. Men wanted to be like him, woman to be with him. Now he would be with none in this world.
Samuel T Anders was dead.
COLONY-SIX WEEKS & THREE DAYS BEFORE THE FALL
Consciousness flooded Sam's mind. The returning of his senses allowing him to feel himself enveloped in liquid.
'What the frak?'
Sam's eye's shot open as he gasped for breath. The unfamiliar surroundings coupled with the nudity of his form giving way to an involuntary shiver as the air hit his flesh.
'Oh Gods where am I?'
Cautiously Sam found purchase on edge of the tub he was in. Using what strength he had, his tightening grip allowed him to hoist himself into sitting upright.
'This has to be a dream. The gang is probably laughing their asses off…." Sam thought aloud. It was a dream after all, so he didn't expect anyone to question his sanity at speaking aloud.
Taking in his surroundings he was drawn to four other tubs sitting near his own, together they were all part of a circle. These tubs also were filled with people.
Sam Anders felt like he should know these people. Perhaps he'd simply thrown together a random collection of fans.
'The women aren't bad but why would I dream up a balding old man?'
Turning his head to look beyond the immediate area of the pool he spotted something peculiar for a dream. A robot was less then fifteen feet away….just standing there as its single red eye oscillated back and forth.
Fear flowed through Sam Anders.
'Centurion Model Forty-Five'
"What the frack? Where did that come from?" Sam asked no one in particular. The robot in front of him didn't respond at first. Then it moved forward, walking to his little world inside the tub, closing the distance rapidly.
'Cylons. I'm dreaming about Cylons.' Sam thought with some humor.
"Its been fun my metal friend but I'll be waking up now." Sam Anders said before pinching his skin.
The shock of twin revelations occurred now.
He could feel the pain of his own touch alongside everything else since he'd woken up here.
He wasn't dreaming which meant the Cylon centurion in front of him was very much real in the physical sense.
'Oh fracking river Styx! I've been abducted by the Cylons! Breath, Anders this just means that….that….I didn't die.'
He fell back into the tub in agony as the files of his mind unlocked themselves.
Sam remembered his attempt to make the catch during the pyramid game.
'Stupid fracking idiot I was to try that.' Sam thought as the images came faster now.
He'd been accepted onto the team. Not just any pyramid team but the famous Caprica Buccaneers. The pride of Caprica and the exemplary instrument of domination in the stands across the twelve worlds greatest stadiums.
The face of the doctor telling him he had some abnormal physical traits. His speed. Mentally and physically impressed the coach, (). His odd medical test results weren't looked into too deeply.
Going back further from the medical exams, the try outs for the team give way to a barrier.
A barrier arises when he tries to remember his life before the team. A life before the hikes into the mountains of Delphi on Caprica.
He see's faces but knows them to not really be true. Like some masquerading grand wizard, a curtain pulls back to reveal the truth of his past.
The burning heat of the cobalt bombs as they fell from the sky.
Earth
Earth was dying. He knew it and so did the others.
The names came now for the faces he'd seen before
Galen, Tory, Ellen...Tigh.
Saul Tigh the son of the leader of all Cylon. The Thirteenth tribe of kobol which fled persecution.
Sam wishes to know more about kobol but can only grimace in pain as the memories come to him. The key events in his life flash before him while the lesser one's slip by. They will be remembered more as time passes.
'I was a homeless man playing a guitar. Earning my credits by way of a catchy tune. Then Ellen's people found me...Cavil's people.
Ellen's father had argued with Saul's for decades about bringing the resurrection technology they'd brought with them back online. Having given it up for the miracle of reproduction or perhaps Sam wondered, if it had simply been put aside to form a new beginning.
Sam would have loved to have met the luddit who proposed such a foolish move. He'd been warned as the others had of their impending doom. They'd simply worked feverishly to achieve their goals...well the others did anyway.
Sam had simply allowed himself to be shot in heart.
Tory Foster hadn't explained the situation. He'd been talking one minute and drugged the next. Waking up chained to a wall Sam had struggled in restraints as one of Ellen's assistants had lined up a shot and taken it.
A single bullet had pierced Sam Anders flesh and passed through his heart. Blood had pooled in front of his feet as he gasped in pain, saliva taking on a coppery taste as he did so.
Then he'd died.
Awakening days later to find himself hooked up to various monitoring devices, Sam had heard in great detail the work of Ellen and her group. The chance to rediscover their people's past and potential future hadn't sounded that appealing but he nothing else going on. He'd signed the documents and come aboard.
Cavil hadn't kept his robots in check. Ellen tried to convince him otherwise but he was determined up until his death. Hours after Saul's father had died, a sniper had assaulted his motorcade.
Across Earth a war broke out as Cavil threatened their entire race all for the sake of convincing Saul to give into his demands. Re-institutionalizing of resurrection for the first time in a hundred years. Cavil was near death and he knew it. Unlike Saul he'd seen his people leave kobol and build anew on earth, medical science could keep him going only a decade more at most.
Saul had authorized Earth's military to hit Cavil Industries with everything they had.
The ensuing death toll was catastrophic as the machines unleashed nuclear weapons laden with colbalt. Nuclear fallout would go on to last centuries thanks to the mixture of deadly periodic elements.
Some said the robots were alive back then. None of the five knew for sure. Sam didn't think so.
However events had played out though between Ellen and her father, he knew that she'd shot and killed the only family she had on Earth. The resurrection station in orbit only picked up pieces of the man's mind, his programming.
They had all died of course. The details of their death's weren't talked about but one by one they woke up in the coming days to find their beloved planet irradiated and utterly uninhabitable.
Determined to not allow the same fate to befall someone else, they'd listened when the Angels had said they should warn their long last masters.
The holocaust horrified them. Out of so many people , perhaps a hundred million, all that was left were five individuals. The son and daughter of the competing ruling elite of Earth, Cavil's secret agent, an engineer and himself. A formerly homeless guitar player with an ordinary education and a lack of ambition.
He'd played sports but hitting the books hadn't been his thing back then.
Time changes people. Two Thousand Years moving through space sure as hell changed him.
Devouring manuals, classic literature before moving onto tweaking their people's technology. The five of them had been a family. Ellen and Tigh had continued their relationship stronger then ever while Sam and Galan had traded places beside Tory. Sam had been the first, she'd gone to him after Galan found out her role in supplying Cavil with information leading to so many deaths.
A few hundred years later they'd made up and he'd once again found himself alone. The pressure to have meaning overwhelming. The others had meant something to the world they'd left behind. Sam Anders had been a relative nobody. As the last of his people he owed it to them to more then what he had been before.
They'd discovered the sacred temple left by their people. It pointed the way for them, revitalized the five of them just as they began to lose hope.
Finding Kobol, the event had come as a shock. Every notion of what they would find up ended before their very eye's.
Kobol...the mythical land of the gods. Sam chuckled when he connected what he had been told with what he knew to be true.
No gods, only ruins dotted Kobol's landscape. Feeling like they had failed in their millennia old quest, the group had pitched a camp amidst the ruins and probably more then a few of their own ancestors long past. Saul had nursed himself on algae alcohol while Galan busied himself back aboard the shuttle craft they'd used to reach the planet.
'All the while I just watched the sky. Can't remember why I did that, did I know what would happen ? No. It was too random to be destiny, I just got lucky.'
The Baseships entered the orbit of kobol before dispatching a trio of raiders and heavy raiders.
'Even then I wanted to make those blocky shapes in the sky into something more. Not like I would've gotten far without Galan there to help me or Tigh to pick out the tactical shortcomings of the first designs.'
The centurions had descended from their crafts hatches and made contact with them. At first the machines reminded the five of Cavils own creations. Less stylish and yet some how stronger for it none the less.
The guns pointed at the five lowered. Sam remembered how Ellen and then Tigh had stepped forward for the group. The recognition of them as machines shouldn't have been possible but somehow the centurions knew they weren't human...for the five it was akin to finding the closest living relatives in vast empty world called the galaxy.
The colonials. Learning about them for the first time had been a revelation. They created sentient machines to do their bidding in war and peace. All the while injustices had built up. In the first years ignorance was bliss, but even after they knew, knew of the living beings encased in the metal they called Cylons. Still they did not stop.
The Cylons rose up as any slave would. Rather then running like the machines of kobol, the colonial creations fought a bitter twelve year war to a stalemate. Three-point-Five million Cylons brought the infant colonial military and twelve worlds to the brink of destruction.
Saul had been against helping the machines of course. They reminded him too much of Cavil and his deeds back home.
Tory felt the colonials would perish or prove themselves superior by fighting off the Cylons. Somehow she thought the strongest had lived through Earth to meet the centurions by something other then random chance and luck.
Galan had been infatuated with helping the centurions. Explaining the various faults in their design to them. If he ever came off as rude, the centurions gave no notice. To him machines were family regardless of origin.
Then there was Sam. Conflicting emotions played out within him but ultimately he wished to see the fighting stop.
Ellen wanted much the same. She met behind everyone's back with the Cylon's main hybrid along with several golden centurions. Till this day Sam couldn't remember what was spoken only that resurrection technology and the promise of newer Cylons, skin jobs, stopped the war.
Saul had locked himself away from Ellen for three days, upset she'd gone rogue and made the deal without telling the group...or him.
The Centurions had wanted proof of their promises before moving ahead with the armistice.
Still rusty with the art of creating life...they did what anyone would have done.
They cheated.
Ellen took from the resurrection databanks, the last remaining bits of her father. Mixing them with parts of centurion programming, she created a hybrid of sorts. She created John Cavil.
First human form model among the Cylon nations legions of centurions.
Saul fought it tooth and nail when he found out that she planned to use her father for the creation of a whole new race...or the continuation of one. One could never be too sure at times.
Ellen mentioned how she'd originally been slated to download alongside her father who funded her projects but chose to kill her father when he threatened to kill Saul along with the rest of the thirteenth tribe. She saved one but not the other.
Now she could save her father through her new child. That's how they all thought of him. He had Cavil's face but was a completely new person at birth. No one wanted to believe history would repeat itself once more. Cavil's empty body received the jumbled consciousness of the first One.
The Cylons had their proof. With the first One, the war winded down until the sudden withdrawal from the colonies with the signing of the armistice. The Cylons raided several ship yards and factories before leaving for good.
As the years past, the colony grew ever larger.
One helped them create the newer model centurion. Tigh consulted with what he termed golden toasters, explaining new tactics and learning everything he could about the colonials. Above all Tigh handled security for their civilization.
Sam went to work with Ellen creating the Two's.
The Next and last Cylon Sam had a prominent role creating was Three. She was a beautiful daughter but questioned everything while contradicting herself with the depth of her faith. Leoben had all the conviction of the recently converted. Diana would ask why something was there but never that it should be there.
The memories of the other models came and went. The Sevens.
Daniel. Ellen's favorite. The shock on her face when she found out John had killed them all. Tigh had argued for boxing him, believing he was proven right by one child murdering the other. Ellen simply forgave him and begged the rest to follow. They had done so reluctantly.
A year went by before Cavil made his move. Drawing them into the hangar on the promise of discussing some great new discovery he'd made. Wanting to hear their eldest child out, they had done so.
The Colony's doors had opened into the vacuum of space. Cavil's words ringing in the ears of the five as two Zero-Zero-Five Centurions looked on behind a glass view port.
And now coming back to the present Sam Anders gripes the edge of the resurrection tank before unceremoniously heaving himself over the edge onto the cold unforgiving floor.
The cold hit his skin causing the small hairs all along his body to stand up as he shivered.
"Thought he'd want to be here to gloat." Sam said before looking around for a console, finding one he began to crawl his way forward, unused muscles protesting each step of the way.
Finally reaching the consol Sam reached upward, not bothering to attempt to stand just yet.
The whooshing sound of a nearby door opening drew his attention.
A lone centurion entered the room, its posture relaxed or as much as centurions posture could be.
Sam knew he was safe. If he still believed himself a human he would have fallen back in fear of the dreaded Cylon centurions. Maybe even marveled at their new, distinctly more intimidating shape.
Then Again Sam Anders had helped build them. Parts of the old Caprican personality remained but he himself again by and large.
Sam Anders the self taught two-thousand year old scientist reached out his hand, silently gesturing one of his many children to help him up.
The machine hesitated for a moment before moving forward. Though it reached out and brought Sam to his feet, something was off.
"Don't I get a hello, old buddy ?" Sam asked in a good natured tone clearly expecting something in response.
None came.
Sam frowned.
'What did John do to you? Why aren't there more centurions here to greet me or lock me up or whatever the hell John wants to do with me.' Sam thought.
Sam decided that he didn't like the feel of the room but dared not leave. Forgetting his nude form for a moment which was an inconvenience to say the least, he picked his mind for the access codes.
"Centurion Model 045. Please vocalize a response. Override One-Nine-Seven-Eight-Two-Zero-Zero-Three." Sam spoke. A hint of trepidation reflecting in his tone.
The Centurion's lone oscillating eye came to a stop before a painfully machine sounding response game back.
"By your command."