Battlstar Galactica (TNS) Fanfic: Love Sprites Made Simple
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: The Baltar/Six Connection in Plain Technobabble
Author: SonOfJoxer / misterhook / J.A.Hoekstra
Summary: Wherein SoJ puts forth his theory as to how and why Baltar and Caprica Six are able to experience vivid hallucinations of each other.
Dradis.net Length Category: Short Story
Dradis.net Age Apropos Rating: K+
Posting Date: 06/08/06
Word Count: approx. 7154
Main Character(s): Dr. Gaius Baltar/Caprica Six
Shipper Category (if any): Baltar/Caprica Six
Spoiler Warnings: Fanfic assumes you are caught up to Episode 2.18: "Downloaded."
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LOVE SPRITES MADE SIMPLE
Or: The Baltar/Six Connection in Plain Technobabble:
I really do think a "spiritual" connection is sufficient to explain the Harvey-Six/Harvey-Gaius exchange program we witnessed in "Downloaded" (BSG, Season 2, Episode,18) but for those of you who think there just HAS to be a technobabble explanation for everything (you know who you are), I humbly submit the following:
NANOBOTS
Yes, nanobots - robots so small they can slice and dice on a molecular level. If you had enough nanobots all working in tandem, sending electronic impulses to each other over a nanotube network (Baltar uses the word "nanotube" while he's trying to explain his Cylon detection method to Adama), you might end up with a silica based thinking machine which vaguely resembles the human brain. After all, what more is the human brain than a connector and distributor of electrical impulses? We give the this intricate network of neurons cool names like "synapses" and "neurotransmitters," but they're basically just carefully regulated electric currents running through our brains, right?
Maybe the Cylons use a complex system of nanobots to perfectly mimic the synaptic junctions of the human brain. This would help explain how the Cylons can have living brains which are virtually indistinguishable from human brains, but also allows them to do wacky stuff like transmit copies of their brain patterns over vast distances and download them into other bodies with genetically identical brain tissue. This would mean that they could only download their consciousness into identical bodies, and even then, the new bodies would take some getting used to as the nanobots struggle to re-arrange the memory patterns and accumulated sensory experiences into a pattern which resembles their former homes. Sort of like redecorating the insides of your brain to match the tastes of the previous owner.
They would still have to use something like neutrino transmissions as a carrier wave to get the nanobots to travel faster than light between star systems, but this would also explain why the Cylon's resurrection beams have a limited range (the more distance the signal travels, the greater the opportunity for signal degradation). Maybe each individual Cylon's built-in resurrection signal transmitter converts the nanobots into carefully sequenced neutrinos and then broadcasts them in every direction, hoping that the signal will eventually be intercepted by an identical, dormant Cylon brain on the other end.
What does this have to do with Love Sprites? I'm glad you asked:
NEURAL CLONES
The upshot of having space-faring nanobots is that you could transmit neural clones of yourself to any pre-prepared host bodies which happened to be in range of the signal. So when the Cylon's "download" what they're really downloading is a neural clone of their former selves. Remember in Farscape when Scorpius implanted a chip in John Chrighton's head and John went to great lengths to have it removed? Even after the "chip" was long gone, Harvey-Scorpius still cropped up in the theater of John's imagination every now and then. How is this possible? Nanobots. Nanobots reconstructing the neural clone of Scorpius's brain patterns inside John's previously invaded brain space.
Inquiring minds want to know: How is it that Baltar and Six are able to have vivid hallucinations of each other which even seem to have at least some fleeting control over motor functions (like when Six slammed Baltar's head into the mirror). Obviously, Baltar has a neural clone of Six in his head struggling for control of his nervous system at various times. It's not going to show up on MRI or X-rays. The nanobots are WAY too small to be detected, and even if they were, they would just appear to be normal brain cells doing what they're supposed to do. The question then becomes: how did Six's neural clone get there, and whether or not this means Baltar is a Cylon.
I think we can safely rule out Baltar being a Cylon, because if he were, why would Six need to seduce him to gain access codes to the Colonial Defense nets? If Baltar's brain were already capable of receiving Cylon commands, then there is no need for Six to even be in the story at all. So, how did Six's neural clone mange to worm it's way into Baltar's head, and how did he manage to return the favor?
LOVE SPRITES
What is the one pivotal event that caused the neural clone transfer in the first place? At the beginning of the miniseries, Baltar doesn't have any hallucinations of Six in his head, it's only after Six shields him from the blast wave of a nuclear device (thereby losing her life and initiating a nanobot download in the process) that things really start to get interesting. I think the real culprit here is the Electromagnetic Pulse wave proceeding the nuclear blast. Somehow, the EMP blast from the nuke scrambled Six's nanobot brain patterns to the extent that some of them spilled over into Baltar's brain. These stray nanobots panicked and tried to latch on to the nearest life source. This is how a goodly portion of them managed to seep directly into Baltar's brain.
Basically, the EMP wave serendipitously converted some of Six's nanbots into Love Sprites who desperately wanted a good home. Some of them passed through Baltar's brain and decided to stay awhile. Others suddenly realized that this wasn't the brain they were looking for and fled back to whence they came. But by then it was too late, the Love Sprites had already adapted themselves to Baltar's neural template. So by the time all the Love Sprites settled down, they had unintentionally downloaded partial neural clones to each of the two love birds involved. It was an accident. But it was what Bob Ross would call a "happy" accident.
The EMP neural clone exchange was probably a freak occurrence which cannot be duplicated. Seriously, who would be willing to recreate the precise circumstances? So Baltar and Six's Love Sprite colonies are probably the only two such entities in the entire universe. Some people are just lucky, I guess.
DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME
No, I don't mean trying to generate your own Love Sprites, although that would probably be a bad idea too. I mean don't try explaining this Love Sprite theory to your friends and family, especially those uninitiated in the fine arts of technobabble. Their eyes will glaze over by the time you get to the paragraph on Neural Clones. So the next time they ask you: "How is it that Baltar can see and hear Six but no one else can?" just say something like: "They're haunted by each other's ghosts." Then pause to give them enough time to roll their eyes and say "Well why didn't you just say so in the first place?" Then life will go on and everyone can get to bed at a reasonable time. Except for you, because you'll be staying up to watch the second BSG broadcast of the evening just in case you missed something. You weirdo.
My take on the whole Harvey exchange program is that Harvey-Six and Harvey-Gauis are both angelic beings trying to encourage Cylons and Humans to make love, not war. I'd say they've been doing a bang up job so far!