Book 4:Chapter 30 “For Resurrection”

The collapse of the Cylon civilization after the civil war 40 years ago was not as clean as the record put together by the historians on New Helios. It was chaotic, and there were a lot of Cylon humanoids that were not able to make it to Earth with Adama’s fleet.

As Cavil led the Cylon military into a suicidal end, the communications systems broke down. When the resurrection hub was destroyed, the command and control system for an enormous empire crashed in a matter of days.

Though three models made it to Earth with Admiral Adama, due to the collapse of Cylon civilization, all human models were stranded without resurrection technology.

Two years after the Galactica flew into the sun, the models officially ended the civil war. Though the remaining model number one was grumpy, they all agreed to a single objective. This was the rebuilding of resurrection technology.

The first plan to obtain the technology was to find the 3 living final five who lived on Earth.  The location of Earth was not known to anyone who had not lived there. 

The Centurions that left at the end of the second war, refused to give up the information. It was a matter of honor, these toasters were interested in the technology. When the stranded skin jobs met the rebel base star, they shared a large database.

The rebel centurions had moved from battlefield to battlefield over the next decade. 90 percent of the technology required was obtained and reverse engineered. 

Several databases of downloads were reconstructed from various resurrection hubs and ships. All attempts to put the downloads back in a body had failed with results that made several people heave.

As was the case before the second war, all attempts at sexual procreation failed. No baby was created and brought to term.

After two decades, simple cloning without trying to install a download was successful. With proper education and indoctrination, the seven surviving models managed to maintain numbers sufficient to continue the search for resurrection.

The working group happened upon some wreckage that included a model one’s extensive notes on the process. It occurred to this group that during a conversation that the final five might have written some documentation themselves.

This was not a simple technology, and it was not easily remembered. It had been programmed into the final five. The decision was made to try and find any kind of written record. There might be enough missing information on paper to restore resurrection technology.

The search for this technology went on for decades. A model six tried to motivate by keeping a poster board.  Some of the other models tried to experiment by creating new technology. There were millions of Cylons that could be put back in a physical body if they could only find out how to install a downloaded Cylon into another body.

Several generations of regular clones were created as the stranded skin jobs aged and died. It took a minimum of 5 years of conventional education to cram enough knowledge in their brains to continue the search.

Tracing down the travels of the final five started at the first Earth and covered a 2000 year trip that was made without the benefit of FTL technology. It was assumed that the ships the five used to make the trip had been destroyed.

The chrome Cylons were actually pretty careful to log all the battles. These ships became known and did not appear in any databases listing destroyed ships.

One day a week ago, as most of the Cylons were making efforts not to be mowed down by the recently returned task force Mercury, one of the search parties did an emergency jump to escape from battlestar artillery.

“You frakking idiot,” Cavil said to the six, who was flying the heavy raider. “We missed that derelict ship by less than 200 meters!”

“Give me a minute, I am running some scans,” the model six ignored the number one and continued flipping through some screens.

“Were you listening to me? You have to be more careful.”

“We found it,” the six said.

“Found what?”

“This registry number of that derelict we nearly hit matches the historical record of the ship that carried the final five from their last residence. This is the FTL free ship they used to come here and talk the Cylons into making the cease fire agreement that ended the first war.”

The ship had a musty smell to it as the 7 Cylons on the search committee forced open an airlock door.

There was no life support on the ship, so they all wore EVA suits. 

“The engines and generators are shot. There is no way to activate the computer systems on this ship without replacing all that hardware,” the five announced.

Ten minutes later, an eight returned to the airlock carrying two back packs.

“Whats in the two back packs?” The number 4 asked.

The model eight gestured with the  back pack in her left hand. “These are the backup data drives from this ship.” With a smooth motion, she pulled the second back pack onto her right shoulder.

“Whats in the other pack?” Cavil asked. He seemed to be getting grumpier every day.

“Technical diaries and scientific notes of every member of the five persons we knew as the final five.”

Now they had a reasonable chance to restore resurrection to the Cylons. 

It was a dark and stormy day, when a Cavil, model number one came across a research file on a computer. The title was:

“Practical application of resurrection technology to unmodified humans from the 12 Colonies. Storing of human downloads for later integration into bodies.”

The model number one, who sometimes thought of  himself by the name ‘John’ , quickly read the file to the end. At the end was a heavily encrypted file.  Being old and feeling exhausted from a day of reading, he set the research facility’s computer resources to work decrypting the file.

The next morning the file was decrypted.

Project Phoenix: Saving human downloads for later use. There was a star chart with a location 700,000 light years from the 12 Colonies,  nuked at the start of the second war.

There was a faster than light communications system to a series of communications satellites encompassing all twelve of the colonies.

A follow up report detailed the network being taken down and repurposed to chase the fleet led by Commander Adama. Then there was a list of monthly operations reports from the storage facility.

Last was a video file, dated 31 years after the destruction of the twelve colonies.

The face was that of a model six.  Her platinum blond hair was faded, her voice, coarse from the three decades. 

“Wish me luck Brother Cavil. Project Colonial Phoenix begins today with two hundred million downloaded souls and about a million possible bodies to upload to. 

“Oh and I have improved the reproductive systems and expect to report successful procreation in about two years. The only obstacle we currently face is computer resources, chips, memory and storage.”

“Phoenix six out.”