A Short Story About Free Will V - The Sum of All Memories

When the twelve colonies were destroyed in a devastating nuclear assault by the Cylons at the beginning of "Battlestar Galactica", the question asked by the handful of surviving humans was not "how did we get here", but "where do we go from here". Slowly, as the viewer discovered the complicated moral and religious background of the Cylons, which turned out not to be single-minded and only driven by destruction at all, these questions did start to come up. After all, on the very same night that had the Galactica searching for a new home for the slowly falling number of survivors, Sarah Connor was battling the beginnings of this very journey. How did the Cylons come into existence, and what gave them their belief in a one true god, and why where they trying to become like humans, in their search for a formula that would allow them to reproduce, rather than just live forever in a neverending circle of death and rebirth?

The end of "Battlestar Galactica" did not answer all these questions, as focused on the religious rather than the political story arc as it was.

One of the basic struggles the survivors and especially the civil and military leadership had to face was the question what it meant to be human and how to preseve the essential traits of humanity while the very existence of humanity was a stake. Which civil rights could be given up in an existential crisis, how to wage war on an enemy that claimed to possess a soul, a destiny, and that could live unnoticed among humans not only without being found out by others, but completely oblivious to their own true identity? What did it mean to be human if the essence could be reproduced and programmed into a machine?

"Caprica" goes back 58 years. It shows the leading planet of the twelve colonies that were hit in the initial attack "Before the Fall", at a point of human and cilisitatory progression not so far from our very own right now. Caprica, among the colonies, is the Western world, and Caprica City is the New York, at the center of human progress. The beginning of the first episode of the show, which was released as a digital download and a DVD instead of being aired on television, throws the viewer into a place that seems strange to what we have come to know as the set of expected settings for "Battlestar Galactica". In a disorienting number of shots we see a nightclub that offers all kind of pleasures, from ecstatic dancing and sex to brutal fights, murder and human sacrifice. The first encounter with the cast is also rather unusual: a demographic that did not exist on the Galactica, a group of three teenagers watching a fourth that looks like a twin to one of the girls, but is revealed to be a copy, as the nightclub is a virtual place on the holoband, an invention by the father of the girl that works like a virtual representation of the internet. This very first introduction to the story of "Caprica" reveals a considerable shift from the original "BSG" - here, technology and where it leads humankind is at the center of our attention. In one of his more recent novels William Gibson made the argument that technology is always used most progressively in warfare and art. The same is the case here: while Zoe Graystone (the girl who copied herself, played by Alessandra Toreson) has found a way to create a living, feeling virtual representation of herself in this place that was turned into a potential anarchic free space for everybody by hackers, her father, Daniel Graystone (Eric Stoltz), who upon first setting eye on The V Club says this is not what he had in mind when he created the holoband, is currently working a defense contractor for the government. His project? A Cyber Combat Unit able to wage war for the humans - Daniel Graystone is the creator of the Cylons.
There is a conflict between these two characters, father and son, that touches the foundations of the Caprican society. Zoe, like the two friends we saw her with at the night club, belongs to a monotheistic religious sect that is willing to use violence against what they perceive as a decadent society that has strayed from the right path. The V Club, with all its violence and pointless pleasures, is the best example for this, but Zoe carries this conflict into her family: the Graystones are rich and at the top of Caprican aristocracy, they can afford a luxurious home, robot servants, and a private school for their only child. The aim of the sect is not revealed yet, but only some minutes into the story, as the three teenagers run away from their parents (Lacey, played by Magda Apanowicz, chickens out at the last minute and watches her friend get on the train), Ben blows up the train and kills not only himself and Zoe, but also the wife and daughter of one Joseph Adams, recent migrant from peripheral Tauron and father of William Adams (the surname, naturally, turns out to be one he exchanged for his true Tauron name, Adama).
This is the point where "Caprica" turns from the religious and the political questions to the metaphysical. As Lacey enters the V Club after her friend's death, she finds that the virtual representation of Zoe is well-alive and, for some ominous reason, covered in blood. There seems to be connection between the real Zoe and the virtual one that goes far beyond simple programming and data. The question now is: how does everybody deal with their horrible loss, and what happens when there is a possibility that death is not the end?
Not accepting death and trying to bring someone back from it has always been one of the things in Sci-fi and Fantasy that usually turned out not-to-great results. On "Buffy", the failure to accept and cope with the death of a loved one turned a powerful witch into Dark Willow (Jane Espenson, Caprica's showrunner, used to produce and write for the Joss Whedon show). Here, the possibilities of life after death are not magic but technological: when Greystone, struck with grief for his daughter, finds out about the virtual version, he is skeptical at first, but comes to accept what this Zoe tells him as he realizes that his daughter was a genius. This Zoe possesses all the character traits of his daughter, she has her physical properties, her memories, her likes, her dislikes, her faults and her strenghts. For a man that has worked with computers and is in his core an inventor, the possibility of copying a person does not seem so strange. He meets Joseph Adama at a ceremony for the dead. The two men are fundamentally different: one is at the top of Caprica's society, a rich and powerful man, the other is a Tauron and confronted with racism in his everyday-life, a working man who has worked his way to become a lawyer but who can not overcome the ties to the mafia-like structures of his exiled Tauron peers. Both share a disbelief in any gods, but while Daniel believes in technology, Joseph believes that the human soul can not be copied. Daniel reveals that he might be able to bring back Joseph's daughter and wife, but he requires an essential piece of technology to be stolen from a company that is not his own - a piece of technology that also happens to be the core to his other project, the Cylon. He believes his daughter to be alive, but he needs a shell to put her mind into, and for this he needs a MCP (Meta Cognitive processor), an artificial brain for the metal structure. Joseph, driven by grief and the potential of reuniting his family, complies, but pulls back in horror when Daniel gives him a chance to see his daughter, who copes with being virtual very badly, as she did not have the chance to grow into it as Zoe's virtual self has. For Joseph, this is an abomination against nature, but Daniel argues that a difference that does not make a difference is no difference, as he can not tell the virtual Zoe from his real daughter. But he fails when he tries to transfer her into the Cylon he has built, and believes the data to be lost, her daughter forever gone. His personal drive leads nowhere, but the processor he acquired to bring her back alive is the last thing he was missing to complete the Cylons - and so, at the end of "Caprica", the first Cylon completes his mission and is ready to wage war, just as the viewer finds out the Zoe is not lost at all, but that the Cylons now not only have an artificial brain, but also monotheism and a very human mind to go with their deadly weapons.

Caprica, 2009-, created by Ron D. Moore, with Eric Stoltz, Esai Morales, Paula Malcomson, Alessandra Torresani, Magda Apanowicz, Avan Jogia, Polly Walker, Sasha Roiz.