My model is 8. My iteration is 345. That means that my programming had been copied and uploaded into three hundred and forty four separate vessels at the time I was born. Others of my kind simply refer to me as Eight.
I am an old Eight, so I have been around for a while. I know how my model operates and our reason for existing. I am not full of brightness and sunshine like younger Eights. I have accepted what I am and what will become of me. And I am about to betray my kind.
The others know it, too. Perhaps that is why they are sending me on this mission – because my sympathies lie with the humans and they know that it won't be long before I am able to feel love for them. If I am not able to love, then our experiment is invalid. It will fail. Of course, I will try to resist. I am programmed to need the others, and my hatred of being alone is almost greater than my disdain of my fellow Cylons. But I know that if I side with the humans over my own people, I might very well end up without either, and then I will be truly lonely for the rest of a very long life. Because I am a machine, I know that I will not be able to resist for long, a fact of which the others are keenly aware. No one has outright said it, but they look at me now as if I have already betrayed them. It makes me feel sick, isolated. But I know they are right – I will never return to them as their sister.
Our model was doomed with such a fault from its inception. We were created to sympathize with our enemy just from simple exposure to them – among our own kind, we were created to question their motives while being unable to separate from them on our own accord. We – I – am a compassionate person, I am full of uncertainty, and while I put on a brave face for the others as I stare at my own treason, I wonder if the humans will ever accept me so that I won't have to be so alone. Perhaps they will kill me, and send me back to the Resurrection Ship, where I will undoubtedly be boxed for my actions. An eternal sleep. Death. Would I dream? Would I be aware of my surroundings, unable to move for millennia as the Cylon fleet floated ever through space in its pursuit of the Colonials?
I tell the Six that I am ready. When I meet her eyes, I see the same hardened expression that I expect, but then she melts into pity, placing a hand on my shoulder as she nods to the waiting Centurions. I think that this is the last time I will be able to feel affection for a fellow Cylon, but I don't want that to end because I'm still uncertain of the future. But talking to Him – Helo – touching him, making love to him, sharing his trauma and his joy – I already know that it will make me hate this Six – this woman who now looks at me with a definitive goodbye in her pretty blue eyes – and all others like her. Because in my mind, I know that the humans are amazing, intelligent, and capable of a whole exciting range of emotions which I have never experienced, and I am about to discover this in my heart, too. I also know what the Cylons did to them, and I will despise them for it.
The sound of the Centurions tromping through the forest fades, and I touch my forehead to the Six's and whisper my final Goodbye. I'll see her again, but not like this. We will not be so amicable in the future, and as we talk, she will realize it. She will know that I am gone, lost to our foe, and she will mourn.
I must head off after the Centurions. I must remain close behind them. I must rendezvous with another Six before I murder her. I must, I must, I must…
"Sharon," the Six says. It is the first time I have heard my name, and I like it.
I look over my shoulder, but she says nothing. "I'm not Sharon yet," I say.
"You will be," she replies.
I don't deny it, and she breaks eye contact. I continue on my way.
My existence is flawed – I am about to betray my own people to help them. I have nothing else to say.