the last voyages // 4. video. no filter except for t-x.

[to_be_caprican]

Some corners of my culture happen to take religion literally.

[ Gaius is using video, and sitting in his cabin. The lights are currently playing up, as they're wont to do, reflecting off all the glass and chrome of his replicated expensive apartment. He has a cigarette, a cup of tea, and little better to do but seek some conversation to defeat

Comments

[no_fastolfe]

...'Earther?' Are you from a Spacer world?

[Another Spacer aboard? COULD IT BE? No, Vas. Chill.]

[to_be_caprican]

Spacer? [ Takes a second to think. ] No, not a term I've heard on any colony, I don't think. So sorry.

I take it you're an alien like I am.

[no_fastolfe]

[Her nose tilts into the air a solid twenty degrees.]

I am human, no-one has as yet tried to tell me otherwise. But I am a Spacer; an Auroran. Born on the oldest of the fifty colonized Spacer worlds. And we are quite different from Earthers.

[Ugh. Now she's remembering Sherlock's words about racism and that's something she so deeply doesn't want to address.]

Physiologically and culturally. [There. That's specific and not a slur!]

[to_be_caprican]

I'll believe it. You being human. I mean, so am I.

Fifty's-- a frakking lot of worlds, I can't imagine the politics. My home's only got twelve. I don't know about Spacers, but I'm a... Colonial, I guess, from the Twelve Colonies of Kobol. Thus far, can't see much different between us and--

You call them Earthers, too? I sort've just made it up for lack of anything else.

[no_fastolfe]

We are largely independent entities; we have rarely found it useful to collude, except in the case of the war with Earth.

[She looks puzzled]

They have been Earthers since-- well, I would think nearly since the colonizations began nearly two thousand years ago. Those who preferred the 'mother' planet to worlds built to be friendly to human habitation.

[to_be_caprican]

Well, you see--

Where I'm from, Earth is a myth. A bit of superstition, the mystical lost tribe of Kobol. So we've not got any terms of anyone that inhabits it, except for "lost tribe" and I assumed that would just get confusing.

You're of the belief that the human race starts on Earth, then, as well?

[no_fastolfe]

It is fact, sir. Only some of us have advanced beyond needing that long-outgrown cradle. I have never been there, but history is clear; it is the origin of the species.

[to_be_caprican]

[ His facetious conversationalness dims a little as this hypothesis is put so plainly and with such certainty. This isn't the first space cadet who's said the same thing. ]

And how did Earth begin, in this history? Or Earthers, rather. Natural evolution, I suppose.

[no_fastolfe]

Yes, from one of the primate species of that world. The fossil record is quite complete.

[to_be_caprican]

I see.

You seem to be a reasonably informed, forward thinking young lady. What do you reckon the chances are of two human races, identical in almost every way except for some minor cultural quirks, coming to be, completely independent of one another?

[no_fastolfe]

I have twenty-nine decades, sir. [Brow LIFT] However, I am a roboticist, not a biologist, so take that qualification in mind when I tell you that the possibility is so remote as to be nearly impossible. Convergent evolution is possible, of course, but not to an identical point.

[to_be_caprican]

Oh.

Roboticist?

[no_fastolfe]

We are physiologically different from Earthers.

And yes, a roboticist. A senior researcher of the Auroran Institute of Robotics. Not that the robotic and artificial intelligences aboard are of the same principle as Ascenion robots.

[to_be_caprican]

No. And I wouldn't reckon your robots are anything like ours, either.

I hope not, anyway.

Does the word 'Cylon' ring any bells?

[no_fastolfe]

[A long pause, a headshake.]

It means nothing. Does the name 'Susan Calvin' mean anything to you?

[to_be_caprican]

Not remotely.

Good, wonderful. I mean, generally, I'm quite enthusiastic about robotics and artificial intelligence. It was outlawed, back where I come from, and I often advocated for the ban to be lifted. But I guess some robots aren't to be frakked with.