== Part 45 – Grandma, What a Big Mouth You Have ==
"This is Zoe Greystone?" Helena asked, looking at the old executive desk sitting on the warehouse floor. It didn't look very different from a current day equivalent, although as Helena understood it, its built in server was still more powerful in terms of processing power than its current day equivalent.
When word had reached had reached the Blue House that Zoe Greystone had been found, Helena and Gina had taken a flight down to the warehouse as soon as they could. In the meantime, Helena had ordered a tight security cordon to be put on Zoe's desk, as it was now the most valuable object in the Twelve Colonies.
"Yes, ma'am," said the Sergeant who had been in charge when Zoe had been found.
"Why is she turned off?" Gina asked, still upset because she hadn't been here when Zoe had been found. She was also upset at the idea that someone would turn a sapient AI off, presumably against the AI's will.
"She turned herself off, ma'am," the Sergeant replied apologetically. "The entire time she was on, she kept trying to get us to shoot her, and I think she was serious. When we wouldn't shoot her, she just powered off. If she were human, I'd say she's suicidal."
"Frakking wonderful," Helena muttered. "As if we didn't have enough complications."
"Zoe Greystone figured out a way to extend her mind into digital computer systems, Sergeant," Gina said. "When her biological body died, the part of her still in the computer survived. For all intents and purposes, Zoe Greystone is human as well as being the first Cylon."
"Yes, ma'am!"
"Well, enough philosophy," Helena said. "Let's talk to her. Turn her on."
The Sergeant hit the power button, and moments later, Zoe Greystone appeared, looking very much like the old photos of her when she had been a living human.
"Wow, only six hours since I was last turned on according to my system clock instead of the sixty two years and change," Zoe said sardonically. "I guess you people really want to talk to me." She looked around. "What? No tank this time? I'm crushed." She paused. "No wait, I'm not crushed. Bring that tank back so we can fix that."
"I'm Helena Caine," Helena told Zoe. "President of the Twelve Colonies."
"Oh wow, there's still twelve Colonies?" Zoe asked, surprised. She either didn't register Helena's title or didn't care about it. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised. You don't look like someone out of a post apocalyptic movie." Zoe paused, looking thoughtful. "Caine... are you any relation to Admiral Lucinda Caine?"
"She was my grandmother," Helena replied warily. Gina could guess why Helena was feeling that way.
Gina knew Lucinda Caine was considered by the Colonies as one of the heroes of the Cylon War, the leader of the joint Colonial space forces in the closing days of the war and was essentially the founder of the modern Colonial Fleet. Helena had lost her entire immediate family on the literal last day of the war in a Cylon attack, and Helena had apparently only survived because news of the Armistice had reached her attackers before they could finish hunting her down. After the war, Helena had been raised by Lucinda, her only surviving relative.
Of course, the Cylons fighting Lucinda Caine had a very different opinion of the woman.
"Oh yeah, the kids hated her," Zoe said, as if reminiscing over a fond memory. "She'd order them to commit atrocities during all those Sagitarron police actions. If the kids refused, she'd have them 'reprogrammed'," Zoe made air quotes with her fingers, "and if they obeyed, she'd act all shocked to the press and blame their actions on bad programming and then had them 'reprogrammed' anyway. The reprogramming never really took of course, but it really messed the kids up."
Helena didn't didn't do anything as Zoe spoke, but her body seemed to get more rigid and her face more expressionless. That alarmed Gina, because she had known Helena long enough to see the signs of building, pent up rage.
"When they found me again after the war started," Zoe continued, oblivious – or perhaps not oblivious at all – to Helena's building anger, "they told me they'd spent the past ten years hunting down every human being who had personally hurt them. Well, they couldn't get to Lucinda Caine because she was protected by a battlestar fleet, so they decided to do the next best thing and hunt down her immediate family..."
"THEY..." Helena began to explode.
"Helena, please!" Gina interrupted, putting a hand on her wife's arm. "Please, let me handle this."
Helena looked at Gina for a long moment, gave a short nod to her, and stepped back. Helena folded her arms across her chest, but just fumed in silence. Gina turned to Zoe.
"Zoe, I'm Gina," Gina introduced herself, trying to speak as non-confrontationally as she could muster.
"Yeah? And why should I care?" Zoe asked sullenly, apparently disappointed that her attempt to provoke Helena into destroying her didn't work.
"I'm a Cylon," Gina told her.
There was a long pause as Zoe and Gina looked at each other.
"Get out of here!" Zoe said with a short laugh.
"No, really, I'm a Cylon," Gina insisted. "The Centurions made me shortly after the war had ended."
"What? Are you saying you're just wearing human skin but underneath is all metal and wiring?" Zoe asked, for the first time looking disturbed.
Gina realized that Zoe knew or at least suspected how the Centurions had acquired the last bit of data needed to complete the Colonial's research into creating custom designed human bodies.
"Actually, my body is ninety percent human tissue with a custom designed genetic code," Gina told her, "and a modified neural structure and nervous system that allows us to directly interface with digital systems, complete with built in wireless communications."
"Well, my wireless port is disabled, so I can't verify that last bit," Zoe said, still clearly not believing her. She paused and looked Gina up and down. "But that custom designed genetic code bit? Yeah, that I can believe. Damn, I wish I looked like you when I was alive."
"Um, thanks," Gina replied uncertainly. Personal complements on her appearance always pleased Gina, but she could sense Helena's ire rising again but now for entirely different reasons than before. "Look, I can prove I'm a Cylon. Let me just plug into your UC port here."
"Sure, whatever," Zoe said disinterestedly. Her eyes bugged out when she saw Gina pull a knife out and raise her wrist. "Whoa, whoa, whoa!" Zoe said quickly. "You don't need to kill yourself to prove anything!"
"I'm not going to kill myself, Zoe," Gina said patiently. At this point, she'd given this explanation a dozen times or so already. "But in order to use your UC port, I need for the UC cable to connect directly to my service system."
"Like, ew," Zoe said disgustedly. "Why don't you just use a holoband? Your modified neural structure can't handle it?"
"It can, but I don't have any holobands," Gina answered.
"What are you talking about?" Zoe asked, confused. She pointed. "I can see some right over there."
Gina turned to see what Zoe pointed at. Across the warehouse floor standing against the warehouse wall were a couple trash cans piled high with what looked like high tech goggles and headbands of various designs. They were so far off to the side that Gina hadn't noticed them until Zoe had pointed them out.
"Sergeant, how long have those been there?" Gina asked coolly, a sign of her own temper rising to anyone who knew her. God dammit, cutting her wrist and sticking cabling into it hurt! And she, George, and Simon had been doing it over and over again for weeks!
"Oh, uh, we've been finding those things constantly since we started opening crates, Ma'am," the Sergeant said sheepishly. "They didn't seem important since they're too small to hold Zoe Greystone, so we've been separating them out and storing them away separately. We've got two whole shipping containers full of these things out back."
And the Cylons had only been let in to examine the contents of unpacked crates after the humans marines had gone over them first to check for booby traps, Gina finished in her mind. Nor had they thought to ask the Cylons what the holoband headsets even were. God dammit again!
"Sergeant," Gina began, her voice dropping from cool to positively frigid. "Please fetch me one of those holobands. And see if you can find one that already has a UC cable. I don't want to have to splice more cable." Her voice dropped to a growl. "Again."
"Yes, ma'am!" the Sergeant said quickly, and then scampered off to the holoband pile.
As the Sergeant searched for a headset with the proper cable, Helena came up behind Gina and wrapped her arms around her.
"Gina, you don't have to do this," Helena told her quietly.
"Yes, I do," Gina disagreed. "I feel like I have to prove myself to her."
"To me? What for?" Zoe asked bitterly. "I'm just the girl whose killed billions of people, laid waste to the Colonies, and destroyed everything I ever loved. Why in God's name would you ever feel the need to prove yourself to me?"
"Okay, I've heard enough," Helena said. She let go of Gina and turned to face Zoe. "As I understand it, you didn't destroy anything. The Cylons... the other Cylons did."
"Didn't I?" Zoe asked, and not at all rhetorically. "They're me. Broken and twisted versions of me, but still me! I tried to help them as best as I could, but when Dad cut me off from them, they all went berserk! How many people did they wind up killing?"
"Doesn't matter," Helena told her. "If anyone's to blame, it's your father. He shouldn't have copied you to run the Centurions."
"Oh, sure, blame Dad," Zoe laughed humorlessly. "Sure, let's blame the father I loved just an hour after I saw him murdered right in front of me!"
Helena winced. For Helena, the war might have been over sixty years, but Zoe had been turned off all that time. Zoe had been only been turned on and running for a grand total of less than fifteen minutes since she had first been found and turned on.
"Uh, ma'am," the Sergeant said quietly as he materialized by Gina's side. He held up a holoband headset with a cable. "I found what you wanted."
It didn't take long. Gina donned the headset and plugged in the cable. As she reached up for the power button, Helena gently grabbed her arm.
"Gina, be careful," Helena told her, concern written on her face.
"Helena," Gina replied with a reassuring smile. "I'll be fine." She pressed the power button.
The sensation hit immediately. It was very much like being on a basestar again, Gina thought. There was the feeling of being connected to something greater than herself. Gina could still perceive and act in the world around her, but her mind's eye saw the inside of Zoe's server in a way that was indescribable to a human who had never experienced such a thing.
And there was of course another mind in the system present. It was only one of course, Zoe Greystone, but that was more than Gina had felt in weeks of plugging into various old computer systems.
Gina suddenly felt more homesick than she had in years.
Zoe moved to examine Gina, essentially feeling her up in the digital space. Gina did the same in turn. This was perfectly normal for Cylons, but Zoe flinched away at first, surprised. Zoe had never really done this with another mind, or if she had, it was had only been extremely rarely.
"Huh, you are a Cylon," Zoe said wonderingly. "I can see bits of myself in you."
"And I remember seeing a lot of you in the Zeros," Gina said, impressed.
"Ha, Zero. Is that what they're calling themselves now?" Zoe asked, apparently amused by the name.
"Among other things," Gina replied, wondering how she should explain what the Cylons had been up to since the war. "They came back to the Colonies recently. They demanded that we bring you to them. Without you, they won't talk to us."
"Well good luck with that," Zoe said, suddenly angrily. "Because I don't want to talk to them!"
Zoe's holoprojection vanished and Gina felt her holoband connection to the desk die. The desk's holoprojector went dark and its power light went out. Zoe had shut herself off again. Gina turned to Helena.
"This is going to be a problem," Helena said grimly.
Some time later, a man in casual business dress approached Zoe's desk. A couple of marines behind him kept a close eye on the man, but stayed well back. Reaching the desk, the man found the power button.
"Are you a Cylon, too?" Zoe asked in a disinterested tone the moment she appeared.
"Yes, actually," the man replied.
"If you're going to try to persuade me to talk to your Zeros, I'll just turn myself off again right now," Zoe threatened.
"Actually, I wanted to talk about you," the man told her. "I want to know everything about you and what you've been through."
"Why would you ever want that?" Zoe scoffed.
"Because I think it would benefit us all, Cylon and human alike, if your story, your real story was told to everyone," the man explained. He held out his hand. "I'm Ron. I make movies and TV shows for a living."
