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Serpentine was built to be a nurse. But just like me, she has undergone many transformations all of which, like experiences for a human, have left her the same, but different. Serpentine was built in the yahren 3280. She was built for warfare and for a specific mission.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5S14rqFKix
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Here I now record a footnote for history.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ3w6ji5ExFV
In 3277 a spaceship called Celestra, fitted with one of the newly developed particle engines, encountered a planet called Antilla on which there was a life form similar in shape to the human but which were amphibious. Water pigs they were called by the first adventurers who landed on their world and they were eaten. We will call them Bonzars for that name approximates to the name they had for themselves and which mean "Ripple makers."216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhywKO3Yiq5
The Bonzars were inventive. They had developed solar power engines that provided the power to control the movements of fish and larger creatures in the marshes. They were clever biological engineers and had created a form of semi-intelligent kelp which grew around the enclosures where they lived and defended them. Undoubtedly they had many other achievements for science has a broad base: the wheel implies the road and the road implies travel. The Bonzars were also warlike and fought amongst themselves.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZsxgYaY4o1
When the first ship from Kobol arrived, the Bonzars that the crew encountered greeted them. They gave them captives to eat. In return they wanted weapons and the silly humans gave them weapons. They gave them a laser cannon which the Bonzars promptly turned on their nearest enemy which happened to be their nearest neighboring tribe. The Celestra departed, carrying artifacts, mostly of solium and oregg, and kelp seeds. (The kelp seeds proved to be the most valuable cargo since these seeds were later used in experiments which led to rapid advances in the science of bio-crystalline intelligence.) On the surface of the planet was left a team of human contact engineers.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4hBORWyXEn
When the Viper returned it found its own technology turned against it. It landed and made contact with the Bonzars only to find that the contact engineers had been eaten. Their skulls were paraded before the ship. The crew of the Viper, some who whom had lost relatives, decided to teach the "Water Pigs" a lesson and they burned one of the settlements within its protective hedge of kelp. There is a wonderful description extant of how the black and bottle-green straps of kelp rose out of the water like multi-fingered hands and flailed the surface in an attempt to frighten off the attacker.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZOnmqQl0XK
You can imagine the surprise aboard the Viper when from the sea and from the forests and from the mountain tops there came answering blasts of laser cannon fire. The Viper narrowly escaped. Even as it rose laser beams danced about it and made it glow like a ruby.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡg4Rharx6vz
But the humans had left behind a deadlier weapon than the turbo-laser---disease. It was disease, and mutant disease, that finally destroyed the Bonzar civilization and led to the planet's abandonment.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡR4HGL4ZjMO
The company which had funded the first exploration decided that the solonite and oregg were valuable baubles (having provided a beautiful return on investment) but that the bio-science of the Bonzars was worthy of an invasion fleet. That fleet was immediately assembled.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhGKMw2AefZ
They made no mistakes this time. Each ship was equipped with an armed satellite in place, every inch of the planet was covered and vulnerable. When they landed the ships were protected by a particle cannon that created a dome of energy around the ship. The human occupying force rode out onto the surface within robot constructs.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡh5n86xrWzn
Despite all these defense, casualties were expected. No matter what softening up took place, the final assault on the Bonzars had to be human. The danger otherwise was that the planet might be sterilized by too general a confrontation. That would, of course, defeat the purpose of the exercise.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡijucxhkCTW
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And now, here is where Serpentine comes in.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7jDTpE1ehX
Serpentine was not a front line warrior Cylon. She was designed and built to bring medical attention to wounded human warriors. But, as a result of a mistake in her programming or maybe a deliberate mistake (I don't know) she ended up tending for the sick and injured whether Bonzar or human.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡplOmyecu1l
Antilla was a sick planet when the invasion force landed. There was little resistance. Disease, a mutation of a minor intestinal ailment, had wiped out 60% of the general population. Only those Bonzars who lived in the ice swamps of the far north and south had survived in significant numbers and they were among the least technological and hence of least value to the invaders.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMhJ41VH0v0
Elsewhere, in the temperate and tropical zones, entire tribes had been destroyed and now floated, noisome and a breeding ground for moscans, within the protective walls of their grieving kelp. Some resistance was put up by the mountain Bonzars who lived in the rivers and waterfalls. And they died as heroes. The invasion force was an eagle battening on a kitten.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKVUEGY74cm
I will now describe Serpentine in those days. She was a defensive sphere of gray metal. Her skin was of 7-ply carbon synthetic laminate and she moved on protected tracks (as she does now). She once had an amazing turn of speed, she tells me. S he could function on land and on water, her tracks converting to paddles when the need arose. In her front she had an access chute and could scoop up the injured. She also had twin claws mounted above her tracks and with these she could rip a hole in a wall or extract an injured human from its mechanoid carriage.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyicgY2dQsA
Serpentine went to and fro. She brought in a human whose left leg had been shattered when her mechanoid tank was stopped by a landmine. She lifted sick Bonzars from the water. She dug in the earth and extracted a young male Bonzar who had been buried in silt after a sudden tidal wave had swamped his home.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMEb9T89ZHZ
Within her gray metal sphere she had sophisticated dexetels which could carry out a wide range of operations. She paved many, she tells me, and brought them back to the mothership where there was a proper life station. Those she couldn't save and those that died inside her she buried decently in a trench which she excavated on the margin of one of the marshes.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡu2QxmHl6Th
She could nurse, but she could not defeat the mutant disease which, having passed through the gut of the Bonzars, now returned to its human parent as a deadly plague. Serpentine was not a laboratory. She could nurse but couldn't invent a cure. The disease found its way into the invasion ships.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2ZInSNBLqv
In some cases the entire crew of a ship died. Only the ship lived on for a few months, spewing out its particle energy until finally its power pack ran dry and the particle cannon faltered, flared and fell silent. The Cylon nurses, similar in every way to Serpentine, hurried about the silent surface of teh ship, burying the dead and hunting for survivors. Eventually even this army of Serpentines succumbed to the rain, and the soft ooze of the marsh, metal fatigue and exhaustion. One by one they churned to a halt and became still.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHShtjUkbBp
And here I conclude this historical footnote. Thus far as I am aware, Antilla has never been revisited.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡutNzR0vVUy
Serpentine was luckier than her sister Cylons. Her ship closed its bays while she happened to be aboard restocking her medical supplies. The ship launched in a unilateral declaration of quittance. The small crew ejected the sick and dying through the garbage chutes and then took the ship up to the velocity necessary for the primitive hyperspace manipulators to function.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡiZiaiih1fn
They arrived back close to their parent world and report what had happened.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQcP08AI9OK
They were denied landing rights.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡhFLkDVELeF
A tech crew from the homeworld landed on the outside of their craft and gelded it of its power to flit through space. The ship became a hospital prison. Those humans aboard, the mutinous crew that had escaped from Antilla, remained on the ship until they died at the end of their natural lifespan. The last human, a woman named Medea, outlived her companions by over thirty yahrens and died at the age of ninety-seven. She had lived on the ship since her early twenties. When Medea died her corpse was ejected into space and burned high above her native planet.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAeTr0kbhKb
The ship drifted in its safe orbit for some yahrens and then a detoxification crew arrived. They destroyed any fabric that might harbor germs and then sprayed the entire interior of the ship with a germicidal spray. Finally, some sectars later, convicts were ferried out and the ship became a prison and Serpentine became a prison warder. Her bulky protective armament was removed. She was reprogrammed and most of her dexetels were replaced. She was given rubber wheels and voice circuits. For the next forty yahrens Serpentine took care of the prisoners and carried out operations ranging from the removal of wisdom teeth to the binding of broken limbs. As she has informed me, the reason why the prisoners were sent out to the ship was simply to discover whether the fearful disease had been eradicated.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡW7CRs8Mb79
It had. The convicts died from many causes but not from the intestinal plague.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡllAUB1fSHr
Then the prison was closed. The ship was cut up and Serpentine was sold for scrap.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEfpAHSi7it
Anything could have happened to her for she was already something of an antique. Luckily for us, Serpentine was bought by a charitable organization and readied for duty on one of the frontier planets. Her skill as a field surgeon was recognized. Before dispatch she was again refitted and given rudimentary bio-crystalline ability. Her new specialties became gynecology and pediatric care. The cradle/womb was fitted. Her voice was upgraded so that she could tell stories.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡo9jB9NvMAS
On her new world Serpentine was put in charge of a children's life station. She had only held this job for a few sectars when the War of Stupid Fools entered its truly cruel phase. Her world was not capped by roving pirates as my planet was, but she experienced the horror of civil war.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0oTlbycz5z
Her life station was attacked with incendiary bombs. Can you believe that? Bombs which can cause a blaze so powerful that it can burn concrete were tossed into a life station for sick children.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfT5cfqrtrD
The ground burned. The soil burned. Trees in the life station gardens burst into flames. The outer walls charred and the paint bubbled and blackened.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡODvoImz7xC
Serpentine gathered as many children as she could inside her cradle/womb. She had them drape wet blankets over themselves and then, with her wheels melting, and the cradle/womb withdrawn as deeply as possible, she tore through the walls and out through the ash and the burning grass and did not stop until the iron rims of her wheels were slipping on pebbles by the seashore.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYeNS7VkH9n
Coughing and chafed and half-roasted, the children climbed out of her and the older ones walked into the sea carrying the babies in their arms and they hunkered down in the cool water and looked back at the red and flickering shore where the life station burned.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡG14TNzeS5W
Serpentine's wheels churned the pebbles until her drive motor burned out. She was following the blind and easy imperatives of her bio-crystalline intelligence. She was trying to return to the blaze to save the mothers and whatever else there was to save. Serpentine had not been taught to face reality. It had not been given to her to understand that nothing can survive in a fire maelstrom. Had her rubber wheels not melted, and had her engine not burned out, she would have trundled right back into the fire and would have exploded like the cylinders of oxygen that tore through the roof like sub-light rockets. As it was, crippled, she did more good.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6DUlaX6uTU
The fire raged all night. The tide which was ebbing when the children entered the water began to flow. When dawn came the tide was advancing rapidly and the tired and cold children climbed back inside Serpentine as the water began to lap around her wheels and fill the depressions in the shingle. Serpentine closed as much as she could and the sea lifted her and moved her a few metrons up the shore. Salt water entered the place where the terrified children huddled together.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4RWOjDENFm
Serpentine told stories. She made soup which the children drank through plastic straws, sucking as they might have once at their mothers' breasts.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ4oXwuqnGky
In the bleak light of day, the life station was a stinking ruin. When the sea returned, carrying on its surface a scum of charred wood, dust, fantastic blackened shapes of things that might once have been plastic cups and plates, burned papers and singed clothing, the elder children climbed down onto the damp shingle and went exploring.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡze1PJXP2gJ
Miraculously they found food. There was a life station garden behind a protective stone wall. There they found burnt lemons in the grass beside the stumps of the lemon trees. They found pumpkins that were almost perfectly cooked and spuddies too. These had survived nearly undamaged and were quarried from the clamps.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMm1erOsylY
On such meager rations the children survived for three days. At night they slept inside Serpentine and during the day they scavenged. And then help arrived.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQN5jm0P9Px
A team of relief workers from off-planet landed. They had watched the brief and inconclusive civil war from the safety of their communications torus. Now they wanted to help out.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNBZevHW8Nl
Wheels were found for Serpentine and her drive motor was fixed. She and the children she'd saved moved to a building that was still more or less intact on the outskirts of the nearest town. Not much of the town remained. The incendiary bombs had done their work well.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡk5RLQTVUfr
The building had once been a luxury villa and quickly became known as Serpentine's Home. A red and green flag was made from sheets and a dressing-gown and run up the flagpole outside the building. It was a symbol of hope.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpTVeD9Cv7x
Survivors started to arrive, straggling in from the outlying farms and villages. Scholars who had escaped out to see in a submarine also came ashore and sought refuge.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqNMJi9SkMT
Serpentine was stretched to the limit of her bio-crystalline stamina and while I know it's wrong to ascribe human emotions to a machine I will make bold to say that she was happy. Bio-crystalline intelligence allows us an awareness of when we are being effective in the use of our particular talent. When we are effective we have meaning. That is our happiness.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpn2w3qwp4V
It was during this time that some child or playful adult painted the face in blue on Serpentine's side. As I mentioned in the introduction, that face is still there and is still able to bring comfort to those in need of it.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXQrukmzF0S
The distress of this planet was broadcast widely and resulted in a visit from some senior confreres and consoeurs of the Benevolent Order of St. Dionysos. They took over the reorganization of the world and Serpentine the autonurse was withdrawn from service.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtM9A77X0Sd
She was brought to Gemon and to the Great Caprica Monastery. Here she was put in charge of the ancient Callrine garden and here she has stayed to this day.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9hHAJFYUPI
The Callrine garden is a place of rest and security. It is a natural place of healing. It is a retreat for those who are oppressed by worry and doubt or who need to rebuild themselves. Serpentine is the guiding angel of the garden. Since she has been here she has acquired knowledge of Callrine herbal medicine and has worked with Callrine doctors. She has cured many and her success with Adama is just the most recent of her many triumphs.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKdtroTYRl8
If Serpentine had literary aspirations (and the needed circuits) she could write a fine book. When I suggested this idea to her, she at first didn't understand and then she told me with some asperity that she was too busy for such things and had far too much to do.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMJsQkKppkG
And that is the history of Serpentine.216Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBuFBfpaGkW
