==========Guardian Command Ship (Deep Space, +859 Days Post Cylon Holocaust)==========
"I didn't think I would find you here," John stated as he walked into the only room aboard the Guardian baseship with a window. "The data stream provides better views," he added.
"It's not the same," Sharon responded quietly.
"No, no it's not. Do you know what nebula that is?" He inquired, wishing to keep the conversation from ending. He ran a finger on a dusty chair. "It's also cleaner on the command bridge," he pointed out. He walked up to take a position slightly in front of and to the side of her. "We're two jumps from our rendezvous. A few more hours of repairs and we'll jump again."
She nodded slowly. "Cyrus told me. The Korax Nebula." She motioned with her chin even though John couldn't see. "Oranges and blues and reds… it's quite remarkable and beautiful." She paused for a moment, her hands draped across her chest and she turned slowly. "Do you want to tell me what happened?"
He tilted his head. "No."
Sighing she walked at an angle away from him and sat on one of the seats. She didn't completely understand why there were leather seats and couches in this room. It reminded her of the forward observation lounges on all Colonial warships, the only location on the military ships with windows.
Unlike the battlestars it seemed no one came here. The door has squeaked and had barely opened, Sharon relying on her augmented abilities had to pry the door open. It contrasted so magnificently with the cleanliness and orderliness of the Guardian baseship. The one place humans enjoyed more than anything on a battlestar was a forgotten relic and an abnormality on this Guardian, this machine vessel. A room built in with a purpose of which they had forgotten decades ago.
"When we jumped the first time to the Guardian fleet it looked like someone had stuck a white hot poker through Jo's head. And then after the battle with Carter." She looked up, her eyes filled with concern and dread. She awaited the inevitable. "How much longer until someone sees it… what if Shaw had seen it, thinks you're broken?"
The Earth machine moved forward slowly until his back was to the bio-Cylon he called a friend. During the early days of their exile from the crew the Earth machines and Sharon and Helo had often talked. The settlement of New Caprica and the machines' abilities at managing and construction had earned them respect, but few friendships. The occupation had forced the Colonials to finally work with them all, Terminator and bio-Cylon as equals. John knew, as did his friends, if they were thought of as 'broken', no matter how inaccurate the term-
"I don't know what's happening… something with the spatial distortions. At first it was just our sensors shutting down. Motion, thermal, EM, minor systems like that." He kept his back to her as he told her. "Then it began to become something like… humans would describe as a migraine, except worse." The machine could hear the bio-Cylon move forward in the seat and an almost inaudible sigh escape her lips. "It might just be a machine version of a… migraine. Or it might be more."
"Have you… run maintenance or diagnostics?" She didn't know how to ask the question, the tone in her voice was awkward but laced with worry and concern.
"We extracted our chips and ran diagnostic studies. A complete neural net diagnostic study involves labs, rooms, full of equipment. We do not have the technology available," he added. A slight hint of despair and dread came over him. Machines designed for war felled by a machine equivalent of a migraine. Or it could be something entirely different. The worry for him was that it was much, much worse.
"What can you do?"
"We can shut down during an FTL jump. Or experience it." It was the one true pain they felt.
The unique choice of words was not lost on Sharon.
Sharon nodded, grinding her teeth slightly as she prepared to ask the next question. She grabbed her left forearm and rubbed her arm up and down nervously. "Can I talk to you… about Earth?" He turned slightly and nodded his head. The orange and red and blues of the nebula twisted and danced on the half of their faces which were not turned away and concealed by the shadows of the long abandoned room. "And religion?" She asked, almost embarrassed.
"Of course. You are my friend and I trust you. You can ask any question you want," he affirmed.
"The Earth religion is monotheism?" She asked. The question tied obviously to her religion as a Cylon.
"Monotheism is dominant but it is not a singular religion. There are many sects and groups within groups. Unlike Colonial society, or even your own, there are half a dozen major religions. Monotheistic and polytheistic," he said. He replayed the images of him and Col. Tigh and how he infuriated the Colonel during his interrogation. Part of it was belief in God and part was because he didn't like the old man and just wanted to see him upset. John laughed quietly to himself as he replayed that moment second by second in his neural net. "But as machines, or biological machine hybrids you want to know if your religion will be accepted?" He saw Sharon nod out of the corner of his eye. "From what I understand yours is broad with no written holy books. Passed down due to exact memory recall?"
"Yes. But it was based on writings but we abandoned those after the Colonials declared way on us. Even the monotheists," she sadly admitted. She looked up and could almost see a slight glow in John's eyes. Not from the nebula.
"I downloaded the relevant texts from Earth to the fleet computers," he said. She nodded her head in acknowledgment and he assumed she had already read them.
"You all put a lot in our databases about Earth. But some of it was… incomplete." It sounded like a question but was phrased as a statement. She didn't want to accuse him of anything
He tilted his head more in her direction after she said that. His right eyebrow went up slightly. "Excuse me?"
"Earth is as bad as you say?" She changed the subject for a moment.
"Worse," he responded truthfully. "The Fleet heads towards my planet out of desperation."
Slowly she nodded. Her heart rate quickened slightly before her bio-Cylon abilities allowed her to bring it back under normal control. She slowed her breathing to calm herself. "There is literature, fiction, plays, mysteries, dramas, thousands of books and papers you have collected over the years. But there is very little about Humanity." She suddenly changed the subject back to a fact she believed he was hiding. Or, more accurately she told herself, not admitting to.
"People always say humanity is present in literature." He wasn't exactly sure who those 'people' were. The humanity he saw was present in war and times of challenge. But he had never known a time when there was not war.
"I was referring to humanity as a noun and as a species, not as an abstract concept," she explained. "The movies and 'TV' shows you provided for us are for entertainment."
"That is generally the purpose of entertainment," he replied with a slight smirk of the upper lip. She rolled her eyes and sighed her disapproval at the lame attempt.
"You are aware of the Exodus? The Twelve Tribes and the Thirteenth?" She didn't wait for him to acknowledge. "According to the sacred scrolls… the Colonial scrolls, the Twelve Tribes left Kobol a little over two thousand of your Earth years ago. The Cylons keep meticulous records," she added proudly. One of the few things she was proud of her race for. "They left over decades in 'thousands of chariots times thousands of souls' to quote the scrolls. They became a vibrant population of twenty billion. And twenty billion wiped out by judgment's fire. Like Earth." She looked for a response. All she could see was the red and oranges and blues on his face still facing the nebula. Faintly, with squinting, did she see a dim blue light fade behind his mechanical eyes. She wondered why their eyes would glow. They were under their control, so she had been told, but she had seen the faint glow dozens of times, more and more in the past few months. From all of them.
"How long have you known?" He asked her. He wasn't stunned by the conclusion and rhetorically question she would inevitably ask. It had only been a matter of time before someone understood. "Honestly I am surprised no one has raised the issue."
She stood up, still standing slightly behind him. "The hard questions people rarely ever ask themselves, John," sounding defeated. "It's easier for… them, to ignore the obvious. Hide it in plain sight," she smiled, huffing a little air from her nose.
"To be fair, no one has ever asked," he said defensively.
"For machines, cyborgs and hybrids we are defensive," she observed.
"We're not really cyborgs," he said awkwardly, avoiding the more pressing issue between them. It was unavoidable. "We found a ship. Buried in a nation called Greece outside of a city named Athens. Well… we didn't find it. Skynet found it. We attacked it. They destroyed it in defiance."
Sharon nodded. She knew the generalities, but not the specifics. This did not surprise her.
"The sacred scrolls are incomplete with regards to the Thirteenth. But during the first Cylon War my kind had access to all the knowledge the Colonials had ever gathered. From computer databases to digitized books and old, very old… ancient even, scrolls. Do you know how many left with the Thirteenth?"
"It wasn't thousands upon thousands," he admitted.
"No," she shook her head. "But I wasn't sure until I noticed that the information you three had given us was meant to distract us. Not lead us away, so distract is the wrong word," she corrected. "Distract with entertainment so we don't ask the hard questions." She looked at him quickly before casting her eyes back towards the glowing nebula. The light pulsed throughout the room, illuminating her entire form as she was silhouetted against the marvelous display of cosmic light. "You know how many it would take to reach a population of six point seven billion, the number on Earth before your own Judgment Day?"
He took a breath. Unnecessary, but still he did. "Thirty-five million people."
"So, Earth is not really the Thirteenth Tribe?"
"No. Not to our understanding."
"What does that mean?" She asked, shooting her question towards him. She didn't want to be stonewalled by vague responses and cryptic one-liners.
"It means what I said. I told you I would not lie to you," he affirmed, his tone changed to a half way point of defensive defiance and annoyance at being questioned.
She sighed, regretting her question. "So how is Earth the home of humanity?"
"That isn't the right question," John said quietly, almost under his breath and barely audible for the bio-Cylon. It was Sharon's turn to tilt her head questioning his meaning. "The right question is 'how did humans come to Kobol'? And with that, I have no idea."
The question had lingered in the mind of the bio-Cylon Sharon Agathon for minutes. Silence had crept its way into the observation room, accompanied only by the bright lights of the nebula. The background hum of the engines, the vibrations from machinery, it all seemed to fade away.
John had stood there as well, though he did not notice the shadows and nebular light battling for control of the large room. His mind was elsewhere. If Sharon Agathon knew she would most likely tell her husband. She felt loyalty to Commander Adama. He was professional, he would inform Admiral Cain and President Roslin. He still did not fully understand the emotions behind why humans did not ask the 'difficult questions' as Sharon had said. Intellectually it was not a difficult concept to understand.
He considered if it was the despair. He came to the realization that they probably did know, but they probably didn't know. They knew subconsciously, but the power of the human mind could oppress knowledge and rationalize it away with an ability even the most sophisticated neural net would never achieve.
The machine detected an approaching individual. He had detected a dozen since he and Sharon had been there talking. But this one stopped at the door.
Methodically and with precision he turned. It was not Jo and not Carter. Jo was in the landing bay and Carter was on the command bridge with Captain Shaw.
Sharon had noticed John had turned, and she followed his movements. The door to the room began to open, and like she had been forced to do, she saw a hand grab between the two halves and pull it open. She saw the rigid pose of her machine friend become unnaturally more rigid and straight, even more a machine.
"I know you," John said. "You are not a Cylon."
The IL-S stood in the doorway. He, it, ignored John's comment and said, "I know you… Finding you here… in this place the Guardians built and forgot. Why did they build it? They don't use it," he mused, taking a step forward and glancing behind John to the nebula. "I prefer blue ones, myself."
"John?" Sharon asked, somewhat puzzled over this strange situation. She had reflexively reached down for her sidearm, forgetting she had relinquished it on arrival. Taking a step back slowly she stopped, realizing that whatever was happening, whatever may happen, the Earth machine was stronger and faster than any Cylon or Guardian analogue.
But she saw that John, while his back had straightened and was alert, still had his hands clasped behind him.
"I told you before that was incorrect," he cocked his head, "That I am not a Cylon. I am a Cylon… well, I am now. Well, no. I consider myself to be one. I've lived among them, Guardians, Cylons, more than I have my own." The corner of his left lip went up in a quick smile before falling again. He brought his head straight, aligning his mechanical spine along the vertical. "Do you recognize me yet? Has your subliminal programming activated yet?"
"What does that mean, John?" Sharon asked quickly, concern and a hint of panic at the lack of details. The IL-S was asking question she knew he should not be asking. The IL-S was tilting its, his, head side to side slowly, waiting for John to respond.
"This was the Guardian… this was one of them that attacked the Pegasus. The information was classified," he looked towards Sharon. "When Pegasus was attacked and jumped he," he pointed with his chin, "I found in the network access room. He killed many crewmembers that day," Planck stated slowly. In anger his eyes began to glow a dark blue. The one standing opposite him began to glow a crimson red.
"So he did change them," the IL-S stated. "John Henry always liked blue."
"You killed dozens of crewmembers on the battlestar."
The IL-S looked genuinely saddened. John cocked his head as usual, confused how this IL-S was displaying advanced facial expressions no other IL-S could.
"I was an accident. Cyrus told you. We had bad intelligence. And everything… it happened so fast," his, its, voice cracked.
John hadn't seen any Guardian display this intricacy of behavior.
"Who are you?"
"A remnant. A remnant which escaped destruction because my enemy hesitated for an infinitesimal fraction of a second," the IL-S said, again ignoring the details. He took a small step forward. John hands came to his sides, already balled in fists. The Cylon or not-Cylon could see the hydraulic movements as John gritted his diamond-titanium teeth, readying for combat.
"You are a remnant of what?"
"Omega Team. Jack, Henry, and Xavier."
"I know them."
"They all died. Trying to upload me into the Cylon Network. To defeat Skynet." He sighed and looked out into the nebula. To many a nebula was like the clouds, capable of producing objects and animals and faces. Faces of the dead.
John ran a more detailed structural scan of this IL-S then he had been able to on Pegasus. It was far more advanced than any of the others encountered. More advanced that the bodies occupied by Cyrus and Iblis and Thais and Erica. The eighteen percent unknown alloy again registered.
"What are you?" John asked, taking a step towards the IL-S look alike.
"You demand a lot of answers yet did not demand anything when you contacted the Guardians. Why didn't you ask of me?"
"I believed you were a special unit." His eyes dimmed, as did the other machine's.
"And you ignored the technology I had at my disposal." The IL-S tilted its head and smiled. "No answer." He, it, taunted. "I thought not. We all make mistakes. The Cylons and Guardians both have technology they should not. But that doesn't matter now does it?"
"The other reason I did not ask was because I deemed it as an unacceptable risk to our as then precarious alliance with the Guardians," John told him, attempting to regain credibility for the lapse in judgment. He stepped slightly to his right, casting the IL-S in his shadow.
The IL-S stepped slightly to his own right, again bathing himself in the light of the nebula.
Sharon watched this subtle machine-machine interaction curiously. Nothing in her years on Cylon baseships was this intricate or cryptic. She knew from the comments on 'blue eyes' there was something more symbolic in what they were doing. Recalling the times John had played with Hera, flashing his eyes, he had never flashed red. This IL-S had.
John was beginning to see more into the machine. Machines had what humans would call 'culture.' A machine built on Earth was very different than a Guardian and much more different than a Cylon. This machine, while inhabiting the body analogous to an IL-S displayed the subtle mannerisms of an Earth machine.
"The General sent me here on a specific mission," the IL-S stated.
John noticed the way his tone and voice changed slightly and his arm jerked in a decidedly machine manner. It wasn't The General. It was The General.
"There are many generals," John pointed out. The two took one step closer to each other and to their own right sides.
The bio-Cylon believed they would begin circling each other. Staring each other down until the other reacted or provoked the other. John had told her of the subtle movements machines often performed. But she couldn't tell what the two were engaged in.
"General John Connor sent me here."
"General Connor is known in the Colonial fleet," John retorted. "Telling me broad information in the hopes I explain the details will not work," he smiled, taunting the other machine ever so slightly. "If you were sent to destroy Skynet, when were you sent. Why did you obviously fail?" It was John's turn to point out the failure like the IL-S had with him. It was an unfortunate trait the machines mirrored from time-to-time.
"March 18, 2031. John Henry and Cameron ran a final check on my neural maps and algorithms. March 19, 2031 General John Connor briefs his team. Like that liquid metal you were upgraded with, he upgraded Omega Team as well." He stopped, trying to see if John believed him. The two had stopped circling the other. "We displaced in-"
"How?"
"A TDE," the IL-S responded. "San Gabriel Mountains. Headquarters. General Connor and Cameron were there and General Baum was as well. We used information your team recovered from Athens. John Henry was in the Death Valley facility." The IL-S sighed. "Coordinates 36,14,32 North by 116,40,34 West. Authentication… it's a long one…" The IL-S transferred the authentication code over the wireless.
Sharon looked at the IL-S, still confused and back to John Planck. "What are those numbers?" she asked quietly.
"GPS coordinates for an exact position on Earth. The Death Valley facility was a small, highly secret facility built by one of the leaders of the free machine factions. It would be impossible for this IL-S to know its location unless it was telling the truth." He looked down at Sharon slowly while keeping his optical sensors still on the IL-S. "Only a few dozen knew the location. Mostly machines and only a handful of humans… we all agreed on safeguards to prevent the location from being extracted from our neural nets. Omega Team did not know." John almost added that he was beginning to believe this IL-S was from Earth.
The IL-S raised its hands and slapped the side of its uniform pant leg in a surprising gesture of annoyance and appreciation the Earth machine was beginning to believe him.
"Thank you," he said dismissively to the blank-faced John.
"You could have answered immediately."
"When I attacked Skynet the upload from Major Jack Rhoades was incomplete. However, I was designed to defeat Skynet in its infancy stage… before it could utilize the system resources to expand." He looked towards Sharon, expecting her to be confused. "We're… learning AI's dependent on very small algorithms which expand exponentially. Major Rhoades installed the chip and the upload began but was interrupted. I was able to fool Skynet into believe none of my neural net maps or core algorithms had been uploaded," he smiled triumphantly. "But Skynet expanded too quickly and I was too damaged to ever fight it openly."
"Because you were designed to take it out before it grew?" Sharon asked. She had realized she had been standing there awkwardly with her back rigid and slowly brought her left hand back to press on her spine and relieve the tension. This conversation was unlike any she had experienced, it distracted her from everything occurring around her.
"Exactly." The Il-S smiled softly at Sharon. It was almost familiar. "Humans have the courage and the blood necessary to sacrifice in the defeat of Skynet, but they wanted to try something different. Unexpected. So they developed me." He sounded proud. "Even if significantly damaged I could come back."
"Those AI neural mapping programs were only theorized… but from your presence that breakthrough must have occurred."
"Those?" Sharon picked up on his choice of words. "So you are both different."
"My neural map and core algorithms would require complete upload or there would be significant personality changes and disruptions as well an inherent instability," he looked back towards the still unidentified IL-S. The implication was that John did not believe this AI to be stable. "Insanity in an AI is a possibility. Given the right circumstances."
The IL-S closed and opened its eyes softly. The blue light from the nebula reflected on its synthetic eyes, almost giving it the same coloring glow as the free machines, almost.
"This is ridiculous," it deadpanned.
From the angle the IL-S was positioned it could see the three dots arranged in a triangle on John's jacket. The Earth machine tracked its eyes and looked down itself, a moment of understanding being shared between the two.
A moment of brief understanding but not enough for trust, yet.
"It was classified. And they expected that if I failed it wouldn't matter anyway. That's why they sent you, right?" He asked John. John nodded. "I told you I was too damaged to directly fight Skynet. But I watched until I could escape or fight it somehow."
"You watched…because you could never grow in power to match Skynet? It had an exponential lead on you." The revelation was not stunning or unexpected to John. The Cylon Network was vast. It was possible to hide. Machine AI's did it routinely on Earth, though to limited success. Forty-four years of hiding would be amazing.
The IL-S nodded and opened and closed its mouth as if to speak then decided against it.
"So why did the Guardians never mention you to us?"
The IL-S shrugged, furling its eyebrows up in a gesture that it didn't know the answer to. "I guess they don't like to talk about me too much." The similarity raised an eyebrow from Sharon, which he noticed. "I had to act to get here. I couldn't just sit in the Cylon Network forever. So I acted. Unfortunately I failed," his voice faded. "I tried to save twenty billion lives and failed." He looked back to John, the nebula light reflecting quietly in his eyes. "I know I've killed humans. Human life is sacred," he added, almost in apology.
He took a step towards the observation window, closer to Sharon and John, the machine and biological-technological hybrid held their ground. Though Sharon was visibly nervous as the IL-S moved closer she still felt safe with her friend at her back.
The three stood in an uneasy silence. The Colonial and Earth machines facing the IL-S claiming to be of Earth stood and faced each other, oblivious now to even the radiate energies and brilliance of the scene outside the window.
"They don't talk about it either," he motioned with a slight whip of his head towards Sharon, only his temple and top of his head moving ever so slightly. He sounded like he had lost something significant, something important.
John could hear Sharon's heart rate accelerate and sweat on her forehead began dripping down.
"She should know me," he pointed towards Sharon casually. He spoke as if this was common knowledge. "Maybe not directly. My appearance is different."
Sharon looked at him and stepped back towards John until she felt her back against him. He carefully positioned himself in front of her, using his left hand to guide her behind.
The IL-S had turned out and away towards the view from the room no Guardian ever utilized. It's purpose forgotten but built into each Guardian baseship for reasons unknown. The IL-S stood still, unconcerned with John and Sharon.
It, he, opened its mouth to speak and said quietly. "I'm sorry for what I had to do, but it was necessary."
John listened and wasn't sure about that comment.
The IL-S sighed. "A lot died because of me. One day I will have to answer for that, John, Sharon. But… how does one defeat Skynet? You have to think like Skynet… as despicable as that sounds." He looked towards Sharon and back towards John. "You know me, John, from the attack on the battlestar. But she knew me. All of me. I used them. I modified one so I could escape after Skynet discovered me."
Sharon looked up at him. Fear and dread were the two emotions radiating from her eyes. The red light from the nebula was a blood-red crimson as it bathed her face in it's colors.
The IL-S finally turned back to face them. It ran its hand down the front of its face, dreading what it would have to say.
"They called me Daniel."
A/N: Yes. It's "Daniel," the "Number Seven." More will be explained with the next update.