Standard disclaimers apply: I don't own the rights or title to the characters. Universal and its parents/subsidiaries/lawyers do. I'm simply borrowing them for what is probably nothing more than a barely-readable thought experiment. I'm not going to make any money off it and am too poor to bother suing. Please read and enjoy.
Model Seven
The quintet from Earth delivered on their promises to their Cylon cousins, and developed the genome and templates for twelve biological models of Cylon. Of those twelve, only eight were ultimately deemed "viable" for mass production.
Model One was named "John", at the insistence of leader of the Earth scientists. The DNA structure was modelled upon her own forebear, with the hope that it could display the same strengths and abilities as the template had.
Model Two was named "Elijha", the DNA combining those alleles as recorded in three holy figures from the era directly before the cataclysm that consumed Earth.
Model Three had been named "Rhea", the genetic structure a loose copy of the two Earth women.
Models Four and Five - "Michael" and "Clarke" respectively - were the product of randomized base pairs, their final products remarkable in their organizational and analytic abilities.
Model Six was carefully crafted, the creation of one of the Earther's solitary efforts to reach human female perfection. A combination of brilliance and adaptiveness was the result. "Aphrodite" was the name her line was given, although many quickly cast this aside.
Models Seven and Eight, both female, were meant to be the more general purpose model, able to fulfill either mental or physical tasks with little to know stress. The Eights were called "Sharon".
Model Nine was a combined effort by all five Earthers, and their sole effort to 'create' a native cultural touchstone for their offspring. "Daniel", sadly, would be a victim of his sibling's rivalry.
Model Ten was intended to be the soldiers and defenders of their people. As such, they were given the name "Achilles", which would quickly prove an ironic appellation as the legend would play out in true life.
Models Eleven and Twelve would never see life. Whatever their creator's intended for them was lost amid the Quiet Revolt initiated by "John" and his brothers. But by that time, the Centurions had taken near complete satisfaction from the Earther's efforts, so much so they left themselves collectively vulnerable to their nominal children's intrigues.
The full details of the Quiet Revolt will likely never be known. Precisely who planned it, how it was executed, and all that remain obscure. What little is known is that, somehow, a neural dampener was introduced into the Centurion's designs and was successfully activated at the same moment. This rendered the Centurion models functionally brain-dead, responsive to external commands but capable of no independent operation.
Similar devices were integrated into the newer models of Raiders, which were intended to function autonomously. This autonomy was stunted and stilled, leaving the vessels to fly in unimaginative ways. This was judged a fair enough exchange, as they were never seen as more than cannon fodder.
These moves caused some dissension among the models, Nine and Ten questioning loudest of all if repression of those who came before was necessary or appropriate. It was here that the irony of the Ten's name became so apparent. While Daniel sought, and nearly succeeded, in swaying others by emotive argument and discourse, Achilles planned a revolt of his own and reawaken the Centurions. It was his error to think himself invincible. True, he was the epitome of biological physiological perfection, but therein lay his all-too-human weakness: simple hubris.
It was one thing to be able to hold one's breath for a full hour, or to be naturally resistant to every known pathogen and ailment. But this guaranteed no such protection against a simple bullet to the head, a few well-placed snipers ensuring Achilles would join his namesake in infamy.
Daniel's end was no less sad, the single birthed copy strangled by an assassin and his genome polluted and corrupted by a viral plague specifically designed for him alone. By some small measure of grace, Daniel's final act had been to pass a datachip of his music to the only model he trusted, the only one who refused to take sides in the dispute.
It was the Seventh model who saved the Earthers from their own creations, the first of many acts of mercy and sanity. The Quiet Revolt had ended not merely with the Centurions neutered, but with the five locked into stasis, their fates in the hands of their children. The Ones all wished them flushed away that they could fully embrace their machine heritage, while the Twos were more measured, advising the five be kept for future use. The Fives pointed out that as extensive as their technical expertise was, Resurrection and Downloading were still beyond their capacity to understand, never mind replicate if the need arose. They could possibly learn it if they reverse engineered the whole of the Resurrection Hub, which was such an absurd suggestion it was dismissed entirely. The rest of them could express only ambivalence, uncertain and uncomfortable with either extreme.
Seven (there was only one of them at the time) offered a middle course: convert them into humanform cylons, supplanting their native memories and implanting wholly constructed ones. In this way, should events turn against them all and critical abilities be lost, their creators would still be available to deal with it. She concluded (correctly) that the Earthers had taken precautions against being judged 'superfluous' and not allowed Resurrection to be known to the Models. It was a potent bargaining chip and one they would never surrender. Better to keep them around and be able to pull them back into the fold, should worst come to worst.
She went a step further and advised that knowledge of them be blocked from their own consciousness, so to cut down on the temptation to either kill or awaken them. This measure, too, was readily accepted by all sides. The Ones especially seemed enthusiastic about it, as if such a block excised some unwelcome part of them in the process. Their only proviso was that all five be stuck somewhere 'medicore', somewhere as far from their native skill sets as possible. Seven had anticipated this move, and planned accordingly.
The eldest male, who had been a programmer of both computers and genes, was made an undocumented worker aboard a tramp freighter in the employ of a legal combine. For irony, the eldest female – who had been a retiring priestess-turned-nanophysicist – was made to be his wife and a woman of loosest morals. The next-eldest male, originally a theoretical physicist and die-hard deist, was made to be the rebellious son of priests who knew only physical labor. The youngest two, both bio-engineers who hated each other every bit as they did any form of violence, were crafted to be an athlete and an office worker respectively.
No specific trigger was included in the constructed memories, mainly because they all couldn't agree on one. Seven again stepped in and inserted one, choosing a random line of Daniel's music to serve as a partial trigger. She pointed out it was statistically unlikely any human musician would reproduce the song precisely the same way as Daniel had written it, thus making the possibility of the five accidentally remembering themselves next to impossible. All sides accepted the logic, and so ended their Quiet Revolt.
The eight Models then turned their attentions towards the Twelve Colonies, the question of whether or not to return there long since decided. The only variable was whether or not they would leave all twelve planets barren, or just a few of them.
Because they were uncertain what awaited them, it was decided infiltrators would take the lay of the land. This fit with Seven's own plans perfectly, and so she readily agreed. No corner of Colonial society was left unchecked or sacrosanct.
The first to enter the Colonies were mainly Twos, Fours and Fives, handfuls of the others coming soon thereafter. It was judged their native skill sets would afford them the maximum opportunity to laid paths for the rest. The Twos fell in with crowds of extremists and scoundrels, while the Fours integrated themselves into government and social bureaucracy, leaving the Fives to toil in science foundations as lowly assistants and janitors. All were cautious to keep attention on them to a minimum, each paving the way for the rest with a host of false histories and identities.
The Ones and Threes came in soon thereafter, the former finding a home amongst priests and 'philosophers' and 'thinkers', the latter loosing herself amongst entertainers and media.
After a decade of this quiet groundwork, the others came in force. Ones became philosophers, priests and even a few colorless academics, it being their nature to question and critique. They were cautious in how they went about it, however, careful to remain on the fringes of the society they quickly came despise. The Sixes and Eights found their own niches throughout the Colonies, fulfilling their functions and inserting themselves wherever and when they could. The Threes lost themselves amongst entertainers and within the media that suffused the twelve worlds. Many who entered the Colonies observed their forebear's creator's descendants with a clinical, passionless eye, finding them wanting and hardening their resolve.
Only one model, Seven, stood apart and held back. She had sensed there was a larger design at work, although its full parameters escaped her intuition. A single copy was prepared to enter the Colonies, ostensibly to take advantage of a small intelligence windfall one of the Sixes had come across. Unlike the others, this copy's development was modified and 'birthed' early. A carefully constructed 'history' was developed for her, one which left no room for ambiguity or questions of legitimacy. Injuries were inflicted upon her body, likewise carefully placed and orchestrated, to reinforce this history. Caution was taken to ensure the trauma did not cause her 'true' memories to surface; the goal was for her to insert herself next to her target wholly naturally and to win their trust.
At an appropriate moment, this Seven was released into the Colonies. Here 'parents' were known and as real as any accepted fiction; records of their presence could be found and were convincing enough. Her natural talents, all of them as hardwired into her genes as the color of her hair and eyes, making her path into the Fleet all the easier to follow. There were infiltrators aplenty already throughout the Colonial military, but this one's particular target was unique. Getting close to William Adama and entering his trust, doing so in ways to ensure there was no suspicion in his mind of her, was expected to take time and care. The Cylons were nothing if not patient and cautious, none moreso than the Sevens.
This Seven however found her task easier, and paradoxically infinitely harder, than they'd projected. True, Adama took an immediate shine to her, but likewise did his sons when she met them. She entered their confidences easily, and therein lay the difficulty. Within such close quarters, there was no way to avoid seeing them at their worst -- and their best. No way to avoid witnessing their glaring flaws, or the demonstrations of nobility and compassion they undertook so easily, so thoughtlessly. She made one, solitary effort against them, targeted against the sons specifically. It was a foolish, impulsive effort that was doomed to fail from the start. Yet it came so incredibly close to success, her very nearly seducing one of the brothers that they would surely turn upon each other, only to be defeated by a glass falling and breaking and – more importantly – her would-be victim proving himself better than his baser instincts. The single handshake between them felt a more intimate connection than any of her other contacts ever had.
In an ugly twist of irony, the younger brother died a short time later, which simultaneously opened the elder Adama to her maneuvers to board his ship, even as it closed all access to the other brother. It didn't matter at that point, word having come to her that the majority of Cylons had decided to begin preparations for their return. The Sevens however were decidedly unenthusiastic at the prospect, the few others of their line having conducted their own accounting of the worlds and found them -- worthy. They weren't fool enough to make this known, but their line's priorities shifted slightly and they sought subtle ways to save what they could from the coming fire.
As they labored, the Seven who went aboard Galactica played her chosen role to perfection, at first without even realizing she was doing so. She would drink and smoke and curse and play the wild fool. In a further nod to irony, she would encounter not one but two of the Earthers, along with one of the Eights, who was in 'sleeper' mode. Perhaps it was their collective presence, along with a lingering guilt of her unknowing hand in a family's tragedy, that somehow began undermining her carefully constructed memories. Her nights were soon plagued with 'memories' and 'dreams' that were anything but, images both terrible and mundane competing for dominance. It drove the Seven to borderline recklessness and foolish actions, although few noticed the differences.
There was nothing exceptional to mark the day her mind collapsed in on itself, her thoughts abruptly reshaped and re-ordered. She simply woke that morning and rememberedthe truth of her life, her purpose and careful construction. The Seven did not cry out in horror or joy at this newfound awareness of herself, but rather rode through the confusion and sought her own balance with it. The day, an important one for her ship and her commander, passed by her in a crawl as she remained subdued and unusually quiet. Worried looks were passed her way throughout that time, but she paid them no mind.
A triad game that same day with her fellows (oh, how easy it was to think of them so) provided what she sought. One of the Earthers inserted himself into the game, using a rank he neither deserved nor sat well within to do so. Seven had antagonized and been antagonized by the man from their first meeting, but that day was more inclined to all his insults to pass. She would have overlooked everything he might have hurled, verbally at least. A physical attack she was not expecting, and reacted on instinct against it, sending the older man back with but a single, glancing strike. As punishment, she was sent to the brig, left alone to ponder her folly.
In truth, she used the silence and solitude to reach a decision of where her loyalties and duties lay. It wasn't even a true debate, the choice hardly worth calling it such. A heady sensation, giving her energy and vigor unlike anything she'd known before, suffused her throughout and sent her to exercise pointlessly to burn some of it off lest she attack the bars instead and reveal herself.
She knew she was ginning like a fool as she did push-ups off the bare metal floor. The grin only widened, then cooled when a voice spoke over her. "This looks familiar." A voice she hadn't heard in two years, but which always whispered and echoed in her bones.
The Seven hesitated the whole of five seconds before standing. "Captain Adama, Sir." She considered saluting, but quickly calculated it wouldn't seem -- natural. She needed things to stay natural, routine, normal -- until she was ready to act, that is. "Sorry I wasn't there to greet you with the rest of the squadron. Did they kiss your ass to your satisfaction?"
"Bet you were waiting all day to use that line."
"Most of the afternoon, yeah." He smiled, she smiled. The banter made for an effective barrier between them, keeping both from closing the distance between them.
"What are the charges this time?"
"Striking a superior asshole." He didn't appear amused by the claim, even as she herself had to bite down laughter at the many layers of meaning behind her choice of words. "Have you spoken to your father yet?" Clearly he hadn't, if his now-stormy expression was anything to go by. "We talk about it -- maybe a couple times a year --"
"Don't. Just don't." The conversation went south from there, with tones becoming cold and increasingly hot words passing between them, and her struggling all the while to restrain the urge to tear the bars separating them apart and -- what? Knock some sense into him? Kick his ass through bulkhead? Kill him? Kiss him? All of those in no particular order? None of them at all? Lee Adama had confused her from the first, had always gotten under her skin in ways she neither understood nor wanted to analyze. He might -- was probably single-handedly responsible for her 'programming' to kick in. The day's realizations aside, she'd always known it wasn't safe to be around him, never moreso than that moment.
Ultimately she settled on ending the encounter with a tense "You'd better go. I'm getting the urge to hit another superior asshole." She watched him leave, likely off to do battle with his father, leaving her to herself and her thoughts.
Lieutenant Kara Thrace, pilot in the Colonial Fleet and Cylon Model Seven, let herself slide down the wall of her flimsy cell and settled back to see what the rest of the day would bring. Hopefully, it would be nothing more exciting than her commanding officer's farewell speech. She needed the time and the quiet to plan her next move, all previous plans now voided with her 'activation'.
Despite herself and her now-changed circumstances, Kara grinned and relaxed, feeling so very right with the world for the first time in her life and knowing, now, her life's story was only just beginning.
How did this happen? Well, a few weeks back I was exchanging emails with a certain other writer (who I'll name only if they want me to), who suggests this very interesting question: what if Starbuck turned out to be a skinjob? Actually they had a much more detailed idea, but we'll come to that later. Suffice it to say, the idea stuck in my molars and refused to let go until I wrote the following. Consider this a prelude to something much, much, much bigger that may get written some day...or left to wither on the proverbial vine. All depends on the Muse and whether y'all think its worth pursuing (and yes, that's a shameless plea for reviews!). Hope you enjoyed this as much as I did.