=SURPRISES=
The Colony was nothing more than Cylon-bio-mechanical-organics allowed to run a muck and grow larger and larger. From an overhead perspective, it looked like an eight pointed star. From the side, it looked like a predatory bird. It was technically a living thing, but it neither fit the criteria of plant nor animal. The hybrids controlled its direct actions, but the Colony itself controlled its passive reactions. The Colony grew from the hull of a 2,000 year old vessel: the Endymion.
...
Over 4,000 years ago, the Thirteenth Tribe of Man left Kobol. They traveled far and made their home on a planet called "Earth" which circled a distant and unknown star. Longing to forget their past, they ended their need for technology, and did away with a loveless continuation of life. In the first 100 years on Earth, the tribe had ended their dependence on resurrection and technology in a hope to end a timeless repetition of annihilation.
For a thousand years it worked. The thirteenth tribe lived primitive lives that continued through generations that were able to procreate sexually. Unfortunately, they had lost their history to the winds of time, and forgot where they came from, and why they were there. Violence began again.
In their second millennium, they were overcome with enlightenment and progressiveness. Technology advanced, and populations exploded. After 1,500 years on the planet, they had grown into a civilization of 10 billion. Everything slowed after that. The worlds resources began to become scarce, and factions began to rise. Violence was no longer neighbor against neighbor, but nation against nation. For 300 years a great war was fought, which resulted in billions dead and paved the way for the deadliest of weapons: the nuclear bomb.
Religious groups seized control of the warring nations, and vowed to only use weapons of mass destruction for deterrence. In an ironic turn of fate, the nuclear bomb brought peace to the world. No one wanted war anymore because everyone would lose. With the planet's population stabilized, the people of Earth turned their goals towards technical achievements like computers, and planetary goals, like space travel. After 1,970 years on Earth, the cycle their ancestors tried to beat, revolved around to their descendants.
Dr. Galen Tyrol chaired both the Olympic University Center's Biology and Engineering departments. In secret he funneled resources into his life long ambitious project of reawakening dormant DNA sequences. His discoveries allowed for fluid translations between the biologic world and the mechanical one, paving the way for prosthetics, biometrics, and very accurate medical tools. He was also directly responsible for the creation of the bio-mechanical life form nodes, or Bimechs.
He had worked all his life to find a way to cheat death. The Bimechs were supposed to serve as a host for the process he dubbed as "Genetic Memory Transfer," by which Tyrol believed memories were saved into genetic code and could be uploaded to a computer based medium. He had failed to achieve his goal, but by trying to perfect a mechanical host body for a human transfer, he had built a brain-like processor capable of supercomputing. Unaware of the implication of his invention, the University took his patent and sold it.
The Bimechs went on to become a slave race of sentient robots. Not all nations agreed with the moral implications of enslaving a self aware creature. This caused a rift in the Earth's fragile peace. Disagreements over it caused all but one nation to go to war.
The enslaved Bimechs were used against their brothers on the front line, and quickly crushed the opposition known as the Sympathetic Revolutionists. After five years of bloody conflict, a stalemate was declared. The ceasefire was mediated by the Northeastern Highlands, a small neutral sovereignty that laid in the ocean between the two factions. After that, Bimechs continued to serve as slaves in the Allied Union of Nations and were free among the Sympathetic Revolutionists.
Depressed by the loss of life and destruction he caused, Dr. Tyrol disappeared from the public eye and privately continued his research in cheating death. His paramount discovery came ten years later when he met a genetic anthropologist, Dr. Ellen Yamaguchi. They met at the first conference he went to since disappearing where he gave a lecture on "the Bimechs and their imitation of a soul."
Inspired by his lecture, Ellen Yamaguchi informed him of her work in mapping the genome as far back as she could. She was unable to get past 2,000 years, but she was most intrigued with her most resent discovery. She was far ahead of her colleagues and had not only figured out that life on Earth actually started somewhere else, but she had mapped the entire genetic sequence, and accurately determined the genetic purpose of specific genes.
Ellen filled in all the holes Tyrol was stuck on. With her, he learned that memories could never be stored genetically. He also realized that an artificial brain was no match for a real one, and every individuals unique biology meant that a complete genetic replica of that persons brain was the only way to copy a "soul." He had to find a way to copy all the neurons in the brain, transfer them out of the body, compress them over a medium, build a perfect genetic clone of the person, upload the copy of their neurons to their clone, and activate them. This was the fundamental bases for his most influential thesis "Resurrection."
Over the years, Ellen helped him modify his second thesis on "Organic Memory Transfer." Galen and Ellen were inseparable. With his resources, she was able to create genetic tools capable of turning on recessive gene sequences. Significantly, by using her map, she found a dormant gene sequence that appeared constructed too specifically. Once activated, the sequence commanded the DNA to grow cysts all along the spinal column, and up into the brain. The cysts then laid dormant, filled with water, no smaller than a pea.
Through human trials, Galen and Ellen discovered the cysts would actually develop into organs that acted as tiny kidneys. They would filter the blood to extract miniscule amounts of iron. Then each "organ" would store the iron inside it. During the moments preceding death, the cysts would release the iron along the spinal cord. At the instant of death, the body would disperse a charge, energizing the iron spinal cord. Experiments of theirs showed that the spinal cord would irradiate an energy wave, and quickly disperse.
To answer their question of "where the energy wave went?" Galen and Ellen brought in a very bright, and young, astrophysicist, Dr. Samuel Anders. Sam was considered a nut job in the scientific community because he proposed that space was made up of multiple dimensions capable of different rules in governing the speed of light. His idea of "space-time continuum layers" was rejected out of hand, and he had given up on science. Strangely enough, Galen and Ellen found him at a bar one evening playing in the band.
After bringing him up to speed on their discovery, Sam was motivated to help out. However, his theories needed application tools. Galen brought on board his uncle, a theoretical concept engineer, Dr. Saul Tigh. With Galen's resources, and Sam's ideas, Saul was able to build revolutionary instruments that probed deep into the space-time continuum.
Finally, after a decade of work and a marriage later, Galen, Saul and Ellen Tigh, and Sam made their discovery. The iron spinal cord at death acted as an antenna. The final pulse from the body came from another organ designed specifically for bioelectrogenesis. The effect of the pulse on the antenna caused the central nervous system to flash fry all the neurons in the brain. But the instant before the brain's neurons stopped, neutrino-like particles irradiated from the antenna. With Sam's help, the group discovered that the particles existed in normal space for a fraction of a millisecond, then entered subspace. This led Galen and Ellen to believe that humans had probably once before been able to resurrect.
While Sam and Saul worked to build a device to retrieve the neutrino emissions from the death process, Galen and Ellen shifted their work to archeology. They enlisted the help of their last team member, an archeologist from the Northeastern Highlands Institute of Science, Dr. Tory Foster. She was sold on the project instantly and left her position to be Galen's full time assistant. Her special field of study was working to uncover the moment of arrival.
Among the Northeastern Highlands, in the archeological field it was widely accepted that humanity had arrived on Earth from another planet. The evidence was too steep to believe otherwise. Their were no human fossils older than 2,000 years. Historical records stopped around 1,200 years. Everything after that was a collection of myths and stories passed down, and a few paintings on cave walls. Tory knew every story by heart, and her grandfather's connections allowed her to visit archeological sites on all nine continents.
Her knowledge and access led her to discover a section of a metallic structure buried deep underground that consisted of materials built through a fabrication process. Once at the site, the team was able to date the discovery to 2,000 years. Evidence at the site led the team to believe they found a section of the "arrival spacecraft," which was later verified by the discovery of a liquid state hard drive.
While it was heavily damaged, they managed to recover several gigabytes of information. From that they were able to reconstruct a partial star map the arrival craft took from its origin. They also recovered bits and pieces of, what Galen and Ellen considered, resurrection technology. One full medical record was recompiled and gave insight into "arrival human" physiology. Combined with the handful of recovered skeletons, the team was able to say with confidence that humans originally did not reproduce sexually. "Arrival human" transferred his soul into a physical copy of himself. The rest of the information on the liquid drive was either encrypted, damaged, or fragmented, but the team kept trying to figure it out during all the free time they had.
Over the next few years Tory and Galen fell in love, and he trotted the globe with her uncovering small bits of information about resurrection. Ellen shifted her work to rapid maturation cloning, which was not going well. They all came back together when Sam and Saul finished building the neutrino recovery device. The trails were perfect, and the custom built machine was able to draw out the neutrino emission from subspace. The process defied physics and allowed for information to pass faster than the speed of light, which only served to confirm Sam's theory of "space-time continuum layers."
But Sam couldn't publish any papers because the Sympathetic Revolutionists began an all out war on the Allied Union of Nations. The night the war began, all five team members were visited by messengers. The messengers told them of the impending holocaust and told them they had to finish what they started. Ellen was the only one given an extra piece of information. They told her that the key in rapid maturation was not in the tool, but in the process. With the help of Tory's grandfather, the team moved everything they had done to the Northeastern Highlands, in a last ditch effort to stay out of the fight.
Over the next few months, most of the pieces had fallen into place. Ellen had figured out how to activate their dormant resurrection sequences. Sam had figured out how to recover the neutrino datastream sent out by the resurrection sequence. Saul had built the devices needed to do it. Galen was able to build a bio-neural tank to grow a clone. Tory directly attributed to each persons success with her diligence in the field recovering what she could to help everyone stay correctly focused.
However, there were three problems: maturating a clone, physically uploading the neutrino datastream into the clone, and the forewarned annihilation of Earth. While Ellen worked on the first two problems, the rest of the team worked on the last. Sam and Saul designed the ship that would save them, the Endymion.
With Galen's fortune, and Tory's connections, the Endymion began construction in secret, as to not violate the North-Com War Treaty, which directly forbade any construction of spacecraft not intended for passenger shuttle service between Earth, three Lagrangian stations, and five mining asteroids. The construction kept pace one step behind Sam and Saul designing it. The two main contractors, Foster Electric and Complexi-Sys, began outfitting the ship as it was being built.
Once completed it was a small, five man, interstellar, sleeper ship. In comparison, Endymion was the most advanced space craft ever constructed by the people of Earth. At 43,000 cubic feet of habitable space, it seemed large, but the compartmented sections and cylindrical work areas made it feel much smaller. The space inside reduced more as: Galen began installing resurrection tanks, Saul outfitted the ship for the longest journey he could, Tory installed an entire server farm for the wealth of information provided by the neutrino datastream, and Sam installed navigation hardware to accurately plot their path back to the planet of origin.
After one year of hard work, and the teams collective financial resources depleted, the ship was finished. Ellen had figured out how to activate a select sequence of genes to rush maturation without degradation and she begun to grow their clones inside Endymion. The final problem was simply an activation of the resurrection gene sequence, but at the fetal stage. The result allowed for the clone's brain to grow without neurons.
The Endymion was placed in a geosynchronous orbit above the highlands and the team began their last test of resurrection. They wanted to confirm that the process would complete itself, so they tested the full cycle on Ellen and Tigh's twelve year old son, Daniel. Daniel had been medically suspended because he had been hit in the chest by shrapnel the night the war started. Ellen viewed it as a chance to save him.
Months later they did it, Daniel's death was a success. His iron spinal cord emitted the pulse into subspace and was pulled out again and channeled into a resurrection tank with his twelve year old clone waiting. The clone's spinal cord collected the electrical impulses and the brain seared with electricity as 100 billion neurons grew instantly and simultaneously. The final pulse of neutrinos connected all the neurons in the correct spot. David resurrected flawlessly.
The next morning the Sympathetic Revolutionists launched a first strike on the Allied Union of Nations. The alliance retaliated with mutually assured destruction. Unfortunately, a few of the nations in the alliance were at odds with the highlands and had targeted the neutral sovereignty. All corners of the Earth were set on fire as nuclear bombs covered the surface.
A few hours later, the final five survivors of Earth resurrected inside the Endymion. Ellen and Tigh had planned on putting a tank for Daniel inside the ship, but they were out of resources to do so. The only piece of Daniel they had left was a copy of his DNA and the memory map from his datastream.
After staying in orbit for a few weeks, the final five decided to seek out Kobol from the recovered maps in the liquid drive. They hoped to warn the human race of the dangers of artificial life. With a constant acceleration, the ship was able to reach a massive subluminal speed that had the side effect of slowing time for the ship.
After 54 years inside the Endymion, and a thousand years in the galaxy, they stopped at what they thought was Kobol. It turned out to be a "lightpost" left by the thirteenth tribe thousands of years before. The five studied the Temple of Hopes and after deciphering it they managed to trace the location of Kobol.
After another 27 years inside the Endymion, they found the ruins of Kobol and learned of the great exodus of the tribes of man. The five spent 15 years on the planet trying to find where the tribes could of went. When they left, their final journey took 25 years inside the Endymion. Their total relativistic flight time was 106 years, with an absolute real time of about 2,000 years. They resurrected twice during the journey and spent most of the century studying every aspect about resurrection.
Three years out from the Cyrannus System, Endymion began her breaking maneuvers. They were also able to access the holoband emissions from the Cyrannus System through the subspace emissions collector used for resurrection. Through that, they found out of the creation of the Cylons by Graystone Industries, and contacted Zoe-A. Through virtual teamwork between the Graystones and the final five, they were able to construct a humanoid robotic body for her. The final five had hopes to keep the Cylon's from uprising, and Zoe-A was the key to controlling them.
Unfortunately, they were unaware that Zoe-A's avatar was imprinted on all the Cylon's meta-cognitive processors. Graystone Industries kept the key to Cylon technology secret because each Cylon's datastream was reconstruction from dead colonial humans. Using Zoe-A as a road map, receptive candidates were selected by their submissive tendencies and laid out over the Zoe-A imprint.
The catalyst in the uprising was the religious extremest organization, Soldiers of the One. They swayed the submissive Cylons into believing in a cause for freedom. A few select Cylons were able to tap into the Zoe-A construct and change their datastreams accordingly.
The final five watched from a distance as the war began. After three years of decelerating, 12 years went by in normal space. The final five made contact with the Cylon Central Core, which comprised of three sentient artificial intelligences that hid throughout the holoband datastream and controlled all Cylon commands. The final five negotiated with the Cylons and secured peace.
In exchange for peace, the final five gave the Cylons human bodies capable of resurrection. To do that, the Cylons devoted all their resources aiding the final five. The Endymion was outfitted with a jump drive and hidden from the Colonials. The Cylons saw the Endymion as a space born mecca and began to build onto it.
Over the years the ship grew into a superstructure that was always jumping around. To increase its physical strength and size, pre-programmed organic resin was allowed to grow all over the ship. After years of growth, the Endymion began to serve as an artificial colony for the Cylons, and was even referred to as "the Colony".
Directly underneath the original Endymion, was a space dock that rivaled FTB station. Its main purpose was to build the massive resurrection hub needed to pull all the datastream emissions from subspace. After the completion of the hub, the ship detached from the Colony, and the void that was left comprised the present day space dock.
...
The heavy raider docked inside the Colony's massive space dock. Cavil and Boomer walked out through the port side hatch and were met by another One.
"Why didn't the Centurion detain him?" asked Cavil to the other One as they walked.
"The Centurion went off the grid," responded Boomer. "The hybrid isn't detecting its data-stream anymore."
The Cavil's stopped and quickly looked at each other. "That's what the five were doing," said the other One.
They walked quickly towards the birthing chamber that was locked away in the seventh spire.
"Lock down that entire area!" yelled Cavil. "The Centurions are the only ones allowed in that section. They are not allowed to wirelessly connect with anyone in there. It would seem our baby brother is capable of rewriting Centurion coding."
...
I looked down at the woman. She was so far out of it. I wasn't going to take her with me and I couldn't ask her anymore questions. The Centurion motioned for me to follow him. If I didn't know better, I would of thought he was anxious to leave.
I looked at her one last time then followed the Centurion out of the room.
...
"How do I get off this ship?" I asked him. The Centurion ignored me and kept walking. We turned down long abandoned corridors. I could only assume we were in a section of a ship that was deserted. "Hey, where are we going?" The Centurion continued to ignore me.
We both heard a loud locking mechanism echo through the corridor. The Centurion picked up the pace and I thought it best to follow. I could sense danger.
The corridors kept turning and banking. At one point I swore I damn near had to make a sixty degree downward incline to continue walking. The mentally disorienting moment of stepping off a cliff was made even more weird by the cliff wall behind my feet pulling on it. What my mind thought of as a very long fall was overcome by the sudden gravity shift in the section.
When both my feet made contact with the vertical hallway, the nauseating moment caused me to stumble. I fell face first into the hard cold deck plating.
"Always tripping over your own feet," said the familiar female voice.
Two hands grabbed my waist and helped me to stand. I looked at the woman who helped me and stared with disbelief. "What's wrong Roller?" asked the flightsuited Viper pilot.
"Starbuck?" I asked. She was real, and standing right beside me.