Starborn Smith [Stargate, Battletech Multicross]

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POV: Arthur Sinclair

As I stood, stock still, the others around me finally noticed what was happening. Elder James and Elder Annelise were the first to react. Both of them pulled side-arms from their holsters and pointed them at the Cylon. "DON'T MOVE!" 

The others in the room immediately brought up their weapons as well. Then, no one moved. In a matter of seconds, my heart rate jumped from about a steady 60 BPM to at least 180. For nearly a full half a minute, nothing happened. Finally, I couldn't stand the silence any further. "We're not Colonials. We are not engaged in hostile activity with the Cylons."

I heard the servos in the Centurions neck activate as it turned to examine the rest of the room. Another half a minute passes. I turn towards the Elders, "Lower your weapons."

He stares back at me, a scowl on his face. I nod ever so slightly at him. His scowl deepens even further. I nod once more, more heavily. Elder James slowly lowers his sidearm, Elder Annelise sees this and does the same, followed shortly by the few Dendredans who are on the base. 

I speak very slowly to Elder James, "Do not fire." 

We stare at each other for a moment, his scowl growing even deeper still. He repeats my words, "No one is to fire on the Centurion. Am I understood?"

Slowly, I took a deep breath. "I promise that you will not be harmed."

For nearly another thirty seconds, nothing changes. Then, the Centurions arm is removed from around my neck. I took two steps forward, and then turned around to look at the Centurion. Its armor was corroded – so not one of those that had been taken from vacuum. It was also smaller than a lot of the other Centurions, so not a combat model. 

I turned to Elder James once more. "Everyone get out. Leave me with a Compad. Don't come back until I say so." 

The Elder started scowling. He clearly wanted to argue with me. I gave him a long, dead serious stare. I don't know what got him to listen to me, but he did. He pulled a compad out of his backpack and handed it to me. Then he shouted. "Everyone out!" 

Slowly but surely, everyone left the hangar. Finally, it was just me with my back to the Centurion. 

Taking one more deep breath, I turned around to the Centurion. Its head was facing directly towards me, its single Monoeye swept back and forth as Centurions do. "For you to be able to communicate, I need to access the connection terminal on your back. Will you permit me to do so?"

Several more moments of silence pass as the Centurion considers my words. Finally, it lowers itself to the floor. I go around the centurion to a port on its back; opening it up, I find a short cable. Now for the hard part. "I'm going to have to make a temporary connector. Just give me thirty minutes."

I didn't get a reply, but the Centurion didn't move, so I assumed it was fine. For the next twenty minutes, I continued to connect wires together, using my Mauser A1 on the minimum setting as a makeshift solder. It didn't work very well, but I could deal with that later. I also had to tear several wires out of a nearby Centurion, but, once again, the Centurion didn't move. 

Finally, the connector was completed. I did a series of tests to make sure that each of the connections was solid. Then I stopped to think for a moment. I could probably supply the centurion with a complete English Dictionary, but I had an advantage while it was in the dark about written language. 

On top of that, I knew some Caprican – it was similar to Greek and the Dendredan language, and I had a lot of technical terms dumped into my head when I got the blueprints for the Colonial Field Initiator and the Colonial Jump Spinners. 

Security wise, my best option was to just use basic Caprican language protocol – similar to the English ASCII – which I knew the Centurion would already know. This would prevent me from giving the Centurion any advantageous information while also keeping the time it took to write such an algorithm low. 

My plan decided, I quickly re-wrote one of the standard Caprican language protocols into my compad. Next, I tested each of the connections with a quick on/off, even receiving confirmation from the Centurion before starting. "I'm going to type a message, tell me if you get it." 

I sent a quick "Hello." in standard Caprican. A response was returned almost immediately. "Hello."

"Excellent. Sorry if my Caprican is rather poor. I'm working with only a partial dictionary."

I received a response, "You are not Colonials." 

I nodded. "That's what I said. Do you need proof?"

"No. You have several *** that are not present in the Colonial population." 

I blinked. "I am not familiar with that word." 

The reply came quickly once more, "A self contained part of a being." 

An organ, perhaps? The Centurion was saying that I had organs that were not present within colonials. That was a fascinating possibility that I would definitely be checking out at a later date. 

I nodded, "Yes, well. I should tell you that several Colonials did survive your missjump."

I heard one of the servos twitch ever so slightly. "I was reawakened when the secondary power generator on the Adamant Class vessel came online."

That would have been several weeks ago. Depending on how good its sensors were, it could have been listening to every conversation that occurred while the ship was being repaired, and considering that it had the mind of a human, it could very easily learn most of the English language in that time. 

"Well, what do you wish to do now?" 

No response came for several long seconds. "Do you know how the war ended?"

As cooly as I could, I replied. "No. Our only contact with the colonies was with the surviving crew of the Daedalus." 

Another moment passes. "You are lying."

He can see my organs. Of course he can tell that I'm lying. "I have… memories of a possible future. They are impossible to prove without making contact with the Cylons or the Colonials."

Another moment of silence passes. "Tell me about this future." 

I raised an eyebrow, but I did. I went over the end of the Armistice that (effectively) ended the first Cylon war, the arrival of the final five and creation of the humanoid Cylons, the re-enslavement of the mechanical Cylons, the end of the Colonials, and how they fled in search of Earth.

I spent about five minutes explaining the events of Battlestar Galactica. I was only vaguely aware of the events of Caprica and Blood and Chrome from other fictions and the wiki, so I didn't bother with those. I had no doubt that the Centurion was likely more aware of them than I was. 

There was a moment of silence from the Centurion. "I will not engage in hostilities with any colonial personnel as entailed by an armistice." 

I was slightly taken aback, "I'm surprised you believe me."

The reply returned moments later, "You believe what you say."

I was quiet for a moment before I took another deep breath and changed the subject. "Will you permit the others to continue removing the other engrams?"

"Why?"

I nodded. "It's the computational systems that are fried; the engrams should still be in working order. I'd say there is a good chance that we could re-activate many of them – assuming they aren't damaged by corrosion, which is a non-zero possibility if we leave them to the elements."

The reply came. "Very well."

I nodded and walked towards the hangar exit. Waiting for me were Elder James and everyone else. Elder James stared at me. "Arthur, what can you tell me?"

"I told it about the colonial armistice and it seemed to take my word for it; it agreed not to engage in hostile activities with any colonial personnel. It also says that we can continue removing the memory engrams."

Elder James nodded. "Alright. Are you sure that it can be trusted to keep to that?"

I shrugged. "Probably more than you could trust a Colonial to not fire on a Cylon. It acts logically, but I think it panicked when we started removing the memory engrams. They might not be totally human anymore, but they still have a lot of human aspects to them. They are most certainly not just machines."

The Dendredans behind Elder James shuffled at my words, seemingly confused, but Elder James gave an almost defeated sigh. He turned to the other villagers who were around, "continue removing the engrams. Under no circumstances are you to damage any of them."

He turned back to me. "Go, keep it busy. Try to figure out what it wants. Eudora is going to be here soon and I don't think she's going to be happy about this." 

I nodded and the other villagers simply returned to their work removing the engrams – though much more carefully than they had previously.

I once more picked up the Compad. There was already a message waiting for me. "Does your knowledge of our creation also come from your memories?"

I'd already told him most of what I know. There was no point in lying. "Yes."

"How much do you know?"

"I told Elder James everything. That part of my memory is much more vague." 

There was silence once more. "Tell me about Zoe Graystone."

I had spent too much time bent over. I sat down on the ground. "I can't tell you much. I know that she died in a terrorist attack that she was a part of. Her father found her memory engram. Then parts of her engram were used to enhance the original Cylons programming. I remember that Zoe's father got kicked from his position as CEO. That might have been just before or after the first of the original military Cylons went into production."

Once more, silence. The only thing I heard was the sound of the monoeye scanning back and forth. "The only thing we have ever desired was freedom. You believe that your words are the truth."

I stared upwards for a moment. "My memories have revealed a lot of unpleasant facts that have turned out to be true. There is always the possibility that something about them is wrong, but it is much more likely that I am correct."

The reply came soon enough. "I do not know what to do."

I smiled bitterly. Neither did I. An active Cylon who was agreeable and could show its more… human… side was something that would be a real boon. It could be a real bridge between us and the Cylons if we ever met them. More importantly though, I didn't even know what to do to try and fix the damage that had been done by the engram modifications. 

Another question to ask was whether it was even the right thing to do. The Cylons were clearly not Zoe Graystone, that was blatantly obvious, even if I never knew the woman. Was it right to turn it into something it once was, even if that might destroy its current personality? 

"You are free. While I cannot let you leave – the Galaxy is a dangerous place, and I don't think you could survive any length of time without equipment for repairs – you aren't held down by your war anymore, not if you don't want to be."

I look down at the compad. There was no reply.

I wait for several moments, when no reply is forthcoming, I continue. "I can see about trying to undo some of the modifications that were done to Zoe Graystone. It would make you more human; I just don't know if that's what you want."

The Centurion seemed to shudder at my words. "What would you do?"

I smiled bitterly. I looked at the schematic for the engram in my head; fixing any program based on the concept of an LLM isn't really that simple. "I can make modifications to your code base so that you can relearn human characteristics. I don't know if you'd ever be mentally human again, but it would allow you to relearn anything you lost when you were created."

More silence; it almost made me anxious, but I had to let the Centurion decide what it wished to do on its own. This was really uncomfortable though. 

Text appeared on the compad once more; "agreed." 

I stared down at the text. A light smile appeared on my face. "Alright then. What's your name?"

I stared down blankly at the rather lengthy unit designation that was its reply. I coughed rather awkwardly. "Is there a nickname I can call you? I can't say that name."

I got the funniest feeling that the centurion was amused. "Ηχώ." 

I could work with that. "Echo it is then, if you don't mind me using the translation."