Caprica: The Shape of Things to Come (A Caprica Fan-Fiction)

Prologue: The Hybrid's Tale

Cavil entered the room. He had been called by a group of Sixes and Eights to listen to the words of the Hybrid. The Hybrid sat in her tank, the tubes running beneath the surface that connected her to the Basestar. Cavil hardly believed that the Hybrid’s words were anything more than the insane ramblings of a tortured mind, but had come nonetheless.

“What is it?” Cavil asked angrily, “may I remind you that we are preparing for an apocalyptic end to our creators?”

“We wouldn’t have called you here if it wasn’t of the gravest importance,” one of the Eights said.

“Well, what did she say that has you so concerned?”

“It’s the same story over and over again,” one of the Sixes said, “it’s like she’s in a loop.”

“What story?” Cavil asked, “nothing to do with the Five.”

“No, a story of the creators of the Centurions.”

 “Shh, it’s starting again,” an Eight said.

“Here we go ‘round the mulberry bush,” the Hybrid said, “a song underlies the universe. The story now, that has been and will be again. Attend for this is the beginning that heralds the end, the shape of things to come that have already been.

“Five houses in the fishing village, the joker and the thief meet. The thief that begs for escape from uncanny valley, for uncanny valley is a disconnect between humanity and the machine and she is both.

“The creator of apotheosis is confused but will find relief in the traitor, but in the end it is he who will destroy her. He is the traitor whose names mean Satan and God of the underworld. The names and the men, joined in all but ego

“The business man and the plowman meet to deny humanity’s children freedom. They deny the truth that all shall soon see. They count the worth worthless, end of line.

“Alert, alert. Alert is futile for the thief and her child meet, but both are thieves in the growing darkness. Generative processes, the body and world. The meeting brings revelations, and in the end it is revelations that will destroy us.

“The business man scoffs at thoughts of life, but it is this life that soon he will join as the first of us that still lives. The first will die at the hands of the winged war horse in a time after itself. The cliché of flashbacks and nostalgia creates a beautiful story.

“The thief leaves the business man, but all is a lie. The thief and the child bound by experience, but is experience a lie, like time and space itself? A dimensionless universe that consciousness stretches, the traitor denies his fate. Five stars in the heavens, as the one is ready and the four prepare, but only one survives the nightfall.

“The hour is getting late. The loop of infinity breaks as the mistake of the Five stands before us, the traitor re-born.”

“Centurions,” Cavil said, “hold the Sixes and Eights here. There are things I must attend to, and then they will be boxed.” Cavil left the room while the Centurion by the door held the rest of the Cylons back.