This is set prior to my Vampire Earth fiction arc.

I draw inspiration for this from the short series Odyssey 5, and Battlestar Galactica (2003). Also has links to another ongoing Scifi program at the minute.

I had woken up early this morning after reading all kinds of Government reports with 'top secret' or national security' stamped all over them, but being Immortal for about 1000 years with a hyper metabolism has its advantages. After the usual morning shower I had what was the most vivid flashback I've ever experienced.

FLASHBACK

It was the year 1850, and I was in Russia. A strange 'thing' had appeared earlier in the week, or so the eye witness accounts had stated. A tetrahedron shape had appeared in the sky. It had glowing lights inside, and it constantly shifting shape and emitted a strange, high-pitched noise. Minutes after it had arrived, it left. I had thought that the situation was over, but I was very very wrong. I later found out that many people who had seen the occurrence had been somehow altered. They were faster & stronger, had increased intelligence and much higher pain threshold. A few days later; I found out that others who had not been witness to the phenomenon had been changed also, and we believed that a 'secondary' infection had taken place, possibly through blood or other bodily fluid.

That was the reason I was in Russia, to sterilise the village consisting of 300 men, women, children, and animals too. Nothing could leave alive. The whole area had been surrounded by the military, and I had insisted that I do any 'dirty work'. Any that tried to escape the military would eliminate, at long range, while minimising the chance of anybody else receiving 'secondary' infection by blood splatter. Being Immortal I was counting on my being immune, hopefully. But my job is rarely safe.

I killed everyone and anything with impunity, everyone and anything, no matter how much they pleaded for their life. I looked at my handiwork with mixture of pride - that humanity would be safe - and complete revulsion at so many dead and not being able to save the children. I wept. I sort of count children as 'sacred' and to protected at all costs.

I looked around again, and saw what appeared to be crystalline or glass 'trees' at the back of a hut, and uttered the magic for 'the fires of hell', and watched it burn leaving no remains whatsoever.

All of a sudden I noticed a man of African-Amercian descent with a bald head in military uniform, I didn't recognise him. He hadn't been in 1850 Russia. What was going on?

"Why do you look so sad, you saved many people this day" he said.

"How? By killing them?"

"You saved them though didn't you"

"The children, as well as whole families had to massacred because some malevolent SOB has no respect for life"

"That is quite often the way, to be able to see the greater good. Besides if you hadn't every essence of their humanity would have been destroyed from inside and they would have terra-formed the planet and bio-formed the populace" Mr Mystery said.

"Who or what are you"

"I am from a species that exists outside of time"

"What, so I'm still in 2004, at home?"

"Well, yes and no"

"I don't understand" said Mark

"It's not important right now, but five astronauts have been sent back five years in time by another. They witnessed earth's fiery destruction while in orbit" replied the Being.

"You can see the future, and how it begins and how it will end"

"Time has neither beginning nor an end my friend. As I was saying, Earth's total destruction. These atronautsfight a difficult battle and are now 'players in the cosmic game', just as you always have been. They need help, allies. They call the enemy the 'sentient's', but they have another name, the Cylons"

I listened while the stranger explained all about the 'twelve colonies of man', and the Cylons, and that they had created synthetic organisms. A small Cylon craft had found Earth completely by accident. The grand Cylon agenda; 'kill all humans'. They worked subtly at increasing their numbers and then managed to infiltrate key positions succeeding in totally destroying the Earth. He told me that I had to see 'Chuck' Taggart, and the other four crew, one of whom was his youngest son.

"But why tell me this"

"Because you have access to resources they don't, and contacts they lack"

"Will we succeed?"

"There are always possibilities", he said.

Suddenly I was back in my kitchen.