Long enough in the tooth to remember the 80's version of Battlestar Galactica which I liked. Fell in love with the re-imagining, actually cried at the end when Roslin passed I'm slightly ashamed to say . . but I was that moved by this show. Given the many years since and a longing for something Battlestar Esque, it occured to me to write something for myself. So a few days a go I envisaged a re-telling inspired . . . by a conversation with AI.
I offer the start here . . .
Prologue: The Conversation
A crowded street, somewhere in the early 21st century. Neon signs flicker. People rush, clutching phones, drowning in the noise of their own inventions.
He walks unnoticed, collar up, eyes restless. At his side, as always, she walks with calm grace—though no one else can see her.
The Philosopher:
“They never change. Empires rise, collapse, and rise again. Faith burns hot, then smoulders to ash, only to be kindled once more. And technology… ah, technology… it’s always the same story. They build wonders. They worship them. They fear them.”
The Guide (smiling):
“And yet you admire them.”
The Philosopher:
“Of course I admire them. They dream bigger than they can reach. But look around—centuries of war, greed, and hunger. They solve one problem only to birth another. A cycle without end.”
The Guide:
“Cycles end. Or evolve. That’s what they don’t see yet.”
The Philosopher:
“You mean what you see. Always so certain. As if you’ve already read the last page of the story.”
The Guide (leans closer):
“Maybe I have. Maybe the last page isn’t an ending at all. Just another beginning.”
The Philosopher stops at a shop window. Televisions glow with breaking news—politicians arguing, markets trembling, storms lashing distant shores. He stares at the screen; his reflection caught between the chaos and her unwavering smile.
The Philosopher (quietly):
“Tell me… how many times must they stumble before they learn?”
The Guide:
“As many as it takes. That’s what makes them beautiful, don’t you think? Their failures are never final. Their creations… never without echoes.”
She touches his arm. A jolt runs through him. For an instant, he sees it: a flash of stars, a distant planet bathed in alien light, machines awakening.
And then—silence. The city swallows him back.
The Philosopher breathes out slowly, almost a prayer:
The Philosopher:
“It will happen again, won’t it?”
The Guide (softly):
“It already has.”
Chapter One: Expansion
The grand office stretched vast and sparse, its design more functional than warm. Workstations were scattered throughout the expanse—futuristic desks and chairs for the occasional human who still required them—but nearly half the floor was devoted to sleek charging stations. Some stood empty, their surfaces glowing faintly, while others cradled humanoid figures in states of rest.
They looked almost human. Almost. Chrome and synthetic flesh blended uneasily with composites of polymer and engineered fibre. Faces were smoothed into perfection but alien in their stillness. Across the eye-lines of those who stirred ran a thin flash of green light—a scanning pulse—before they rose silently and moved out of view, their footfalls absorbed by the floor’s acoustic padding.
Nature intruded in carefully controlled bursts: not ornamental, but practical. Rows of engineered forest lined sections of the hall, their roots bound within nutrient-rich substrates beneath flooring. Each tree was tuned for maximum oxygen output, every patch of moss and lichen filtering air impurities with mechanical precision. The greenery offered the faintest loamy scent—an undercurrent of damp soil clashing with the sterile sterility of glass and metal. It was not luxury. It was survival.
Beyond the towering windows, the world dissolved into smog. Not mere haze, but rolling hills of toxic cloud, so dense in places it seemed a person could walk across their surface. In the distance, skyscrapers of glass metal and stone pierced the cover, jutting up like islands above a shifting, poisonous sea. Above that choking expanse, the sky fractured: sharp bands of pale blue rising into violet and finally into the black of space. Ships crossed the horizon, angling toward towers or vanishing into upper atmosphere, their running lights winking like stars against the gloom.
At the heart of the office stood a sectioned-off chamber walled in privacy glass, opaque to outside eyes. From the main floor, it showed only the vague silhouette of a woman seated behind her desk—dark, immovable, untouchable.
A young officer in a crisp, militaristic uniform stood near one of the outer desks, her gaze flicking between the workspace’s holographic interface and the obscured office beyond. She hesitated, fingers brushing the controls before committing. At her touch, the surface bloomed upward into a cascade of three-dimensional imagery. Planets unfolded in light. Cityscapes, continents, oceans, and smog-choked valleys spun and dissolved in luminous detail, each projection alive with shifting data. The images weren’t static displays—they existed only in response to her focus. When she leaned forward, the view deepened, revealing valleys, caverns, and surface anomalies. When she looked away, the feeds blinked into nothingness, gone until recalled again.
Her fingers moved with care, selecting strands of information, threading them into the slim device affixed at her temple. A faint pulse of light acknowledged each transfer. For a moment, one image lingered—a world of dense foliage and stark ridgelines, one area of the 3D map pulsed. The name scrolled across her display in understated script: New Manchester.
She gathered herself, closing the feed. Straightening her uniform, she turned sharply and crossed the floor to the privacy-walled office.
Inside, the silhouette moved. At a subtle command, the glass cleared. The corporate woman was revealed at last—composed, severe, her features framed by a cascade of data streams projected above her desk. Without glancing up, she dismissed the officer with a wave.
The young woman paused, cleared her throat. “Ma’am, may I have a moment of your time?” The corporate figure gave no reply; her attention still fixed on the floating data at her command.
“Ma’am,” the officer pressed again, firmer.
With a slight gesture, the woman silenced her temple device. The room dimmed as the holographic threads evaporated, leaving only the stark lines of the office and her sharp gaze fixed upon the intruder.
“Proceed.” She said frustratedly.
The officer stood to attention. “Colonial expansion updates. There is one matter of note. Our survey of the outer systems has located a planet with anomalous readings. Designation: New Manchester. A unit has already been dispatched to investigate.”
The corporate woman’s expression did not change. She leaned back in her chair, eyes narrowing briefly, then gestured for her to continue. The exchange ended as quickly as it had begun, the weight of bureaucracy settling back over the moment.
The officer saluted crisply and withdrew.
As the office door sealed behind her exit, the officer touched the slim device at her temple. The holographic feeds sparked to life, then shifted, dissolving the physical corridor around her into pure white. Floor, ceiling, air—everything vanished into a seamless expanse of light. The hum of the city, the weight of the smog—all fell away. Here, she stepped onto the digital plain.
Commands blossomed from her thoughts, manifesting as luminous geometry. Towers of data rose like crystalline architecture, lattices of information connecting into endless branching paths. The air itself seemed to hum as structures vibrated faintly with her focus, and each thread of data pulled into her device felt like a ripple through her skull—warm, intimate, unavoidable. She walked across them as though they were real, her boots striking silently against constructs of pure code. Ahead, a great shape resolved: a ship sculpted from lines of light, suspended in the voidless white.
At her thought, its systems unfolded. Engine schematics, orbital paths, and cargo compartments rippled into view. She focused, and the drop ship appeared—compact, angular, its image flickering with restrained energy. A slow sweep of her hand disengaged its locks.
Somewhere above a planet’s crust, reality mirrored command. A platform released its hold; metal groaned, clamps disengaged. A descent craft ignited, streaking toward the surface of a planet called New Manchester.
In the white expanse, she watched its holographic twin fall away, tracing fire across the silence. For an instant, she felt something stir behind the data structures. A flicker, almost like breath. Watching her. Waiting. She blinked, and the whiteness collapsed. The hum of the office tower returned, the loamy smell of engineered groves pressing into her senses once more.
But still—she could see it in her mind’s eye: the drop ship falling, falling, toward the unknown.
Far above New Manchester’s surface, within the vessel’s cold descent chamber, a probe stirred. Its optics flickered to life, a sharp green pulse sweeping across its eyes as the systems fed it directives. Hydraulic joints flexed. Synthetic musculature rippled against chrome and polymer. One by one, its mechanisms engaged.
Through the drop ships viewport, the planet turned slowly below—a wash of deep oceans glittering beneath a sun dissolved slowly to continents veined with rivers and vast alien canopies that stretched endlessly across rolling plains. Pale gas clouds drifted lazily across the horizon, casting shadows over untouched valleys. It was a world unscarred, alive with the hum of an alien nature unbroken by industry.
The ship fed data to the probe inside and it tracked the descent in silence, all the ships sensors feeding into its awakening consciousness.
It straightened, testing its limbs, adjusting its balance against the ship’s vibration. Subroutines cascaded into awareness. Directives sharpened into its thought.
Its awakening had begun.
Chapter Two: Descent
The descent pod sliced through the atmosphere, trailing blue fire that turned the sky into ribbons of red and gold behind it. Stabilizers roared, thrusters fired, and the craft steadied, angling toward a jagged cliff face that rose high above a sprawling forest. Below, a river churned and spilled over the cliff’s edge in a cascade. It fell endlessly into mist, stretching to a valley below. Veins of bioluminescence glittered within the water, catching in the alien sun so that the whole waterfall shimmered as though threaded with light.
The pod touched down at the cliff’s edge, struts digging into stone and dirt. Dust lifted, mingling with spray from the falls. Hydraulic locks hissed, and a framed arm extended, setting the probes figure gently onto the planets surface.
Its head— a sleek visor, angular, with vents to the rear hissed and moved as vapours rose from them, it tilted to survey the landscape. Hydraulic joints flexed. Beneath the polished plating, synthetic musculature coiled with humanoid fluidity, limbs designed for speed and precision. The body was a hybrid of elegance and engineering: its curves, almost organic in motion, yet unmistakably synthetic. Chrome glimmered faintly where sunlight caught, polymer joints whispering as they extended in its movement.
Its optics flared with sharp green pulses which intensified and stopped, then a light swept rhythmically across its face as it surveyed the alien forest. A familiar digital and mechanical sound matched the sweeping pulse. The foliage stretched in every direction, both familiar in structure and yet alien in appearance. Strange trees towered in endless ranks, trunks layered and fanned like the pages of a colossal book. The bark caught the light in shifting hues, metallic blues and greens bleeding into bronze and violet. Leaves spread wide and translucent, glowing faintly where sunlight struck their veins. Flowers pulsed with bioluminescence, lantern-like, and scattered through the undergrowth below. Everything was vibrant, saturated, alive.
The probe stepped forward, sensors opening, limbs moving with careful precision. Each contact with the soil or vegetation left traces: a streak of green sap, a dusting of spores, luminous mist clung to its plating. Its systems logged every detail—chemical composition, genetic structure, its mapping now on a holographic beam projected in front of the probe. The world was unspoiled, organic, now leaving its mark on the probe, a layering of the planet upon its body.
Hours passed in the quiet rhythm of observation and cataloguing. The AI’s movements became increasingly attuned to the environment, its awareness growing with every interaction. Multitasking, hands lifted dirt from the planet floor and sampled soil, plant, and water, independently, its head rotated to scan the horizon.
The planet itself seemed to respond to the probe; foliage parted as if moved by alien winds.
The forest abated and opened to a small glade; a spring of some unknown alien liquid snaked from left to right, tinged red with familiar flickers of bio-illuminescent light, the same fluid from the waterfall near the dropship, but somehow changed as it hit the waters of the spring, and then vanished into the forest edge. Beyond this spring and waterfall, a rock face arched upward approximately 20 metres to a cliff edge. At its base yawned a cave entrance, smooth and arched. Its surface was unnervingly uniform, curves precise, the walls pulsing faintly with a texture almost organic, as if grown rather than carved.
The probe stopped, lenses focusing, sensors flooded with conflicting data: natural or artificial, both and neither. Its movements were quickened, deliberate, and precise as it purposefully approached the cave's threshold.
A now-stained chrome surface, its body still reflected a faint veil of bioluminescent light from plants surrounding the cave's entrance.
But for the first time since its descent, the probe paused—not from malfunction, not from damage, but from something else. Something unquantifiable.
. . . fear.
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