Battlstar Galactica (TNS) Fanfic: The Confessions of Gaius Baltar

Disclaimer: Battlestar Galactica (The New Series) characters, names and scenarios are © 2003-05 Universal Television Studios. No infringement is intended or desired. This is a work of fan-fiction and is intended solely to promote fandom of Battlestar Galactica.

Title: 2. The Truth About the Holocaust
Author: SonOfJoxer / misterhook / J.A.Hoekstra
Summary: Baltar records his crimes of passion for posterity.

Dradis.net Length Category: Short Story
Dradis.net Age Apropos Rating: T (some adult situations)
Posting Date: 06/08/06
Word Count: approx. 9306

Main Character(s): Dr. Gaius Baltar
Shipper Category (if any): Baltar/Caprica Six a.k.a. Natasi Ruri
Spoiler Warnings: Fanfic assumes you are caught up to the end of Season 2, Episode 2.20: "Lay Down Your Burdens Part 2."

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Narrative Context: The following texts were examined by the History Preservation Society of the Twelve Colonies and found to be genuine. Document authentication was verified by a mixed panel of Human and Cylon representatives in a controlled and neutral environment. The original texts still reside within the alter stone beneath the Church of St. Baltar on Cylonia Prime. While the History Preservation Society does not vouch for the veracity of the text’s contents, one can say with absolute certainty that the following words were indeed penned by Gaius Baltar shortly before his death in exile on Cylonia in the year 74 C.C.

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The Truth About the Holocaust

If you're still reading this, then I suppose you'd like to know the truth about the Holocaust as well. There are precious few souls left alive who know what actually happened on the day that the Cylons attacked the Twelve Colonies. I remember all too well. I was there. I watched it happen. But more importantly, I know WHY it happened.

I'm not talking about the Cylons' motivations for bombing the Colonies back into the stone age. The Cylons' antipathy towards Human civilization is no secret. They viewed Human history as an aberration, an anomaly, a huge "mistake" in need of correcting. So they decided to wipe the slate clean and restart history anew. To this very day, no self-respecting Cylon will ever apologize for this. If you're looking for a Cylon to show any remorse for their attempted genocide of the Human race, they will simply insist that they judged humanity no more harshly than we judged ourselves. They perceived our optimistic appraisal of our own perpetuity to be some sort of mass self-delusion. To them, we were a doomed race and they were just there to help things along.

No, the real secret of the Holocaust is that I played a vital role in allowing it to happen. Much has been written about my collusion with the Cylon hierarchy and my much lamented surrender to the Cylon forces at New Caprica, but if people knew how deeply involved I really was with the Cylons, I doubt I'd still be alive to write these words. I would have been locked away in a mental institution or summarily executed for my crimes (which is why I went to such extraordinary lengths to hide them, sometimes even from myself).

So now, finally, the Truth:

The truth is that I used to be a relatively carefree person, someone who gave little or no thought to the well-being of anyone other than myself. This was hardly a unique perspective, but my petty little ego was reinforced by years of public affirmation and accumulated material rewards. Most politicians like to boast of their "humble" origins, but my origins were far from humble. I was the only child of a wealthy family with highly esteemed political connections. My father was a successful trade minister for the Caprican Assembly and my mother was the owner of a dance theater. I was sent to all the best schools, tutored in the finest traditions of the liberal arts that Caprican society had to offer. I excelled at mathematics and computer programming at a fairly young age and won several scholarships by simply maintaining a high grade-point average. I graduated with top honors from the Caprica Academy of Science and Industry and even won three Magnate prizes, the youngest Colonial citizen to ever achieve such a feat. At the age of thirty-five I held degrees in microbiology and nanotechnology, but it was my expertise in computer languages which offered me the opportunity to head up the team for the Colonial satellite networking project at the Ministry of Defense.

You would think that a man born into such a world of comfort and privilege would find something more useful to do with his life than fatten his bank account with lucrative Defense Ministry contracts. But the truth is that I was bored. Bored out of my mind. And frustrated. Sometimes people forget the aura of fear and paranoia which had such a strangle-hold on the arts and sciences of that era. The real triumph of the Colonial Defense Network was that I was able to wear down the bureaucracy and the various legal impediments to completing the project.

I was born about five years after the first Cylon Armistice, hence I was rather impatient with those who still remembered how their own technology had been used against them during the First Cylon War. Technological "regression" was the cultural trend of the times, but was having none of that. It was so clear to me then that the Cylon rebellion was itself an anomaly, a mistake, an unintended consequence of work done by artificial intelligence architects who were far less skilled than myself. No one had had any contact with the Cylons in over 40 years, and I thought is was high time Colonial society plucked its head out of the sand and tried to reclaim technological innovation as its birthright. I was eager to get back in the game and the government kept trying to take away my toys.

And that's what life was to me - a game. I was a player. I played the game well. I had my choice of women and wine and I was living in a taste-tester's paradise. If any particular motto could be attached to my outlook on life in those days, it would be this: "Life is short, play hard." Much to my delight, I even managed to find a playmate!

Her name was Natasi Ruri, and despite my resistance to permanent social attachments at the time, I fell in love with her. She was everything you could possibly look for in a woman. Beautiful, intelligent, and a hell-cat in bed. Her unabashed religious temperament was a bit of a turn-off for me, but it was a burden I was more than willing to bear in light of her...other attributes. She advertised herself as an agent for a defense contractor who was looking for a leg-up on the competition, and I was more than happy to keep that luscious leg straddled around me, personally.

We met at an educational conference, of all places, where she asked for my autograph shortly after a lecture I had given on the virtues of satellite surveillance networks. It's not every day you meet a drop-dead-gorgeous blond woman who expresses an avid interest in satellite networks. I must admit I was quite taken with the idea that I had finally found someone who could hold up her end of a dinner conversation without boring me to tears with the inanities of politics or religion.

She was quite up-front about her intentions (or so it seemed to me at the time). She wanted access to the Defense Ministry mainframe computers to do "market research." It was a blatant attempt to anticipate what sort of computer components would needed to maintain the Colonial satellite defense system so that she might outbid her corporate rivals at a later date. I was so caught up in our extracurricular activities that I didn't really pay much attention to her time spent at the state department. She even proved useful in rewriting some of the algorithms used in our ships' navigational computers. On the day of the attacks, the navigational relay system which updated the jump coordinates throughout the entire fleet was operating at 95% efficiency. Nothing to be proud of, as it turns out.

Natasi used my security codes to access the defense mainframe. Lending her my security clearance was a felony on several counts which could have landed me in jail for several decades if she had been caught. But she never got caught. I suppose some of you may be mortified by the cavalier attitude I harbored toward national security in those days, but in all honesty, I thought the whole Colonial Defense Network was a joke. It was an obsolete holdover from the First Cylon War, an unnecessary and costly bit of preemptive preparation for an attack that would probably never actually happen.

It never occurred to me that the woman I loved was a Cylon, or that allowing her to access the defense mainframe would endanger the Human race in any way. No one knew then that the Cylons had evolved, that they wore frames of flesh and blood almost indistinguishable from our own. But that doesn't change the fact that it was my entirely my fault that the Cylons were able to switch off our defense satellites on the day of the attacks.

The planetary satellite early warning systems failed to alert any neighboring ships that a full scale nuclear attack on the Colonies was underway. The Cylons broadcast a computer virus using our own navigational update programs to disable engines, weapons, and fleet-wide communications. The Cylons had humanoid agents dispersed throughout the fleet to ensure that critical systems would fail at crucial moments. It was all over in a matter of hours. And it was all my fault. I was the weak link, the one chink in the armor that allowed the Cylons to deliver their carefully aimed death blow. I have the blood of billions on my hands and there is nothing in this universe that can wash that blood away.

So there you have it - the story of how one man's weakness brought down an entire civilization. Are you any happier now that you know the truth? Perhaps you believe that a braver, nobler soul could have resisted the temptations which this man faced. But then, you weren't really there, and you certainly weren't living in his shoes, so how will you ever know for sure? Let's face it: if the welfare of Human civilization really did hang by the thread of one man's ability to resist the charms of a beautiful and sexually provocative woman, then the Cylons are entirely correct in their assessment that we are a doomed species. Doomed without a prayer.

This is the part where I'm supposed to impart the moral of the story, the lesson learned. A wise man would tell you to resist the temptations of the flesh. A holy man would encourage you to seek divine intervention. I am neither holy, nor wise, so I'll leave you this bit of advice instead:

"Life is short. Pray harder."


Gaius Baltar
Former President of the Twelve Colonies.

TO BE CONTINUED...