"I'm afraid he's regressing," the counselor said, steepled fingers in front of his face. "The medication is not only wearing off, but it seems to be having adverse effects on him."
"But how?" Zacarias' mom asked, slightly trembling. She loved her son more than anything in the whole world. "The doctors said that it would work and he could be normal again."
The counselor looked out the window of his office, obviously collecting his thoughts. The room had a theme geared to put children at ease, but it was having no effect on Catalina, a full grown adult.
"I'm afraid that since the medication has worn off," he started slowly, obviously looking for words that wouldn't alarm her,"that it's been happening again. During the cardamine breaks," it was a public school, therefore it didn't have the funding to buy a cardamine-filtration system," he has been having allergic reactions to the cardamine."
She looked skyward for a second, then asked why this was happening.
"The doctors don't know. We've had him examined by some of the top researchers in the field of cardamine, and they say they've never seen anything like it. They say that there's a few gene sequences that are wrong, which is making his body try to reject the cardamine. The medication was only temporary, apparently, and his body has begun to reject that too."
Catalina didn't want her son to suffer, and she would do anything to shield him from it, but now she realized that he would have to learn to suffer without his mom there to protect him.
Zacarias was something of a loner. He had learned to deal with his allergy to cardamine, but he still needed cardamine just like any other Outcast. Now in the fourth term of school, Zacarias had no friends. He would write down the homework, do it in five minutes during class before the lesson was even given, ace the test, and day-dream the rest of the time. He dreamed of flying a Sabre like his mom, or not being sick, or finally meeting his father (who was always some kind of hero to the Outcasts!). One day-dream took the cake, though. He dreamt of building something that would change the course of human history forever. He didn't know what, but he knew he would.
They called him a child prodigy, and rightly so. An IQ off the charts, yet he couldn't commit to anything. The only things he didn't get good grades on were projects, which he left to the last minute. Yet he got straight 'A's in all of his classes, and was looking at a scholarship to the University of Malta at the age of nine. His mom wanted him to be with kids of his own age, though, so that maybe he would make some friends.
Zacarias was faced with five bullies, the leader of which was intent of turning his face into an omelet. It was after school, two blocks from his house, and nobody around. Usually, Zac could get out of fights by paying off every other kid in all his class with answers to all the homework, classwork, and tests, but obviously this cretin had taken it personal when Zac had said his brain must be run by a hamster in a hamster wheel.
His mother had always made sure he could defend himself. Her words came back to him in a flash.
When faced with several enemies, you take down the leader. If someone else decides to be a hero and elects himself leader, then you take him down too. You go down the line until the rest finally get it in their heads to leave you alone.
The leader of this band of brutish thugs was none other than Carlos, which at five-feet-eight-inches had to be on growth hormones. He even had a mustache. The kid was a mountain compared to Zac's four-feet-eleven-inches. Zacarias also was lean, not muscular yet not fat, where as this kid looked like he benched three-fifty.
Words had been exchanged, and the boy-mountain came at him like a landslide. Zac saw his mother's face and heard her voice; every thing seemed to be going in slow motion.
When the other person is bigger than you, he tends to use his strength against you, instead of any skill. Use your brain, and you can take the biggest beast down.
Carlos threw his huge fist at Zac's face; he ducked and slammed his fist into his gut has hard as he could. Carlos grunted, then his stomach met Zac's knee. Carlos keeled over, grabbing at his gut. Obviously, his six-pack wasn't fully developed yet...
The other fools ran like their lives depended on it; by the look in Zac's eyes, their lives did depend on it.
Zacarias' mom had been called to yet another guidance counselor meeting; this time informed that he had gotten into a fight. She entered the cheerfully decorated room, to see Zacarias sitting there with a look of somber dignity on his face. He was determined that he was in the right, and anyone that thought him wrong could burn for all he cared.
The counselor started without preamble: "Zacarias just sent a poor boy to the hospital, for no apparent reason."
"Is this true, Zac?"
"There was a reason, but he won't care even if I tell him so." Zacarias said, getting an exasperated look on his face. "They always believe the 'victim', even if he's not really the victim."
"So are you saying you're a victim, then? You kicked him so hard in the stomach that he started bleeding internally! Don't you know what that means? Do you feel no sorrow?" The counselor was angry now; he had put up with Zac's eccentricities for a while now, but apparently this had pushed him overboard.
"No, I don't fell sorry. Him and his goons tried to bash my brains in, and I gave him his comeuppances for thinking he could try and hurt me. If he's too stupid to try and hurt me, then he got what he deserved."
The counselor was spluttering, but Zac's mom jumped in to the rescue. "If you're trying to say the person that attacked is the victim, then I don't care what you say, at all. If you're that incompetent, you shouldn't have this job. I think I'm going to file a complaint."
The counselor, after much talking to, finally relented and exonerated Zacarias from blame, but this wasn't the last time there would be a situation like this.
As they left the office, Catalina hugged Zacarias with one arm, and offered to buy him an ice cream. He had just made her very proud.
An unsteady hand held a syringe, while the arm that the needle was to go into was shaking. It took several attempts, but the needle finally harpooned a vein. The vein swelled to twice its normal size, and Zacarias grunted. So much pain, yet... the pain was quickly replaced with a pleasure that made him shudder. At the tender age of fourteen, he had finally figured out to deal with his allergy to cardamine. First, he had tried liquefying and drinking it; the taste was unbearably bitter. Then he had tried something he had seen only in replicas of the record from the Hispania sleeper-ship; the using of a needle to inject drugs. He had used the same liquefied cardamine, and the results had been promising. Initially extremely painful, it offered a high after a few moments. Nowadays, Outcasts no longer got highs from cardamine; it was the same as food, water, or air. But this method gave a high, and if the user could tolerate the pain, it was worth it.
Zacarias no longer had to deal with his unusual ailment, but he would be haunted with why he was singled out for it for many years to come.
He graduated from high school with perfect grades. He could do anything he wanted to. He chose to fly a Sabre like his mom did.
The day after graduation, his mother waited in the spartan dining room. Zacarias would be moving out, going off to buy a ship with some money he saved. It wouldn't be much, but it'd be a start. His mother, however, had different plans.
"Dear, I need you to sign this," she said, sliding a pad across the table.
"Why, what is it?" Zacarias asked, picking it up, curious.
"It's a document that says you accept the transfer of two and a half million credits to your account from my savings."
"What? We've never had that kind of money, I can't take that from you!" Zacarias said, dropping the pad as if it were a poisonous snake.
"No dear, you have to take it. I've been saving it for you for a long time, knowing that whatever you decided to do, I would support you in it as much I could. I see you've wanted to follow in my footsteps, and it should be enough to buy and outfit a Sabre. Now sign it so you can get out of here and get your ship."
Zacarias, still wide-eyed, picked up the pad and signed it. He handed it delicately back to his mom. He had never imagined that this would happen. Another shock came soon, though.
"Now dear, I have something to tell you, something you have a right to know." All of the sudden, she looked pale. She closed her eyes, looked down, up and around, as if arguing with herself. Then, her eyes opened, as if she had reached a decision. "It's about your father."
Zacarias dropped into the chair that had initially been for him, shocked. It had always just been him and his mom, and that was all he had ever needed. She had stayed decidedly mum about his dad for eighteen years; she hadn't told anyone, not even the doctors, when they insisted she tell. He had never really wondered until he turned fourteen, and then he just figured that even his mom didn't know who his dad was. That she would bring it up now was important, but at the time he couldn't figure out why. He didn't have to wait long for an answer.
"I made some... mistakes, in my younger years. You see, I was a cardamine smuggler. My primary destination was Yanagi, where it was then distributed to most of Rheinland. That's where I met your father. He was......" She paused, took a deep breath, and rushed on as if a threshold had been passed, and there was no going back. "He was the best man I've ever met, and even now it sickens me to admit it. He was a Corsair artifact smuggler, heading to Yanagi as well. We met, talked briefly, and had... well, let's just call it a very brief relationship. He has no idea that you exist, as, trust me, we took every precaution to make sure you wouldn't."
Zacarias was stunned. He had used to day dream that his dad was a hero to the Outcasts, and now it turns out that he was actually one of their most hated enemies! He stood up, and without another word, left the house. His mother called after him to stop, to understand, to at least accept, but he was too angry and too caught up in his own thoughts to pay her any mind. He went to the docks and bought his first Sabre.
It was a routine run down to Cali to pick up some supplies that had just been raided off a BMM depot. Zacarias wasn't doing it for the profit of trading; he was given the supplies for free and would drop them off for free. It was a personal favor to a certain Don, and he was being rewarded not only with the Don's good will (which any Outcast would tell you is worth way more than mere credits) but an Armor Upgrade VIII.
He was stretching his legs while docked. The usual bustle of most pirate space stations was there; the regular recycled air, the sound of forklifts moving large cranes, only amplified about a hundredfold by the confined spaces. Then he saw the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
He nudged the man standing next to him, Jorge Valdez, by name, and pointed her out. He smiled to himself and shook his head.
"Friend, you'd have better luck if you asked a Don's wife out. She's a loner; no friends, no wingmen, no family as far as anyone knows."
Zacarias thought for a moment, and then asked a hypothetical question: "Would two loners make a good couple?"
His resolve was stronger than it had ever been, and he walked over to ask her out. He dodged a few forklifts, walking tall and confident. The two years he had been flying had given him a newfound backbone. He had used to slouch, now his back was straight. His eyes used to shift, constantly observing everything. His eyes still observed everything, but they no longer appeared to do so. He was a different man than the man that had left his home those two years ago, and the knowledge of his father's identity had proven to be a strengthening aid to him. It proved that, while pure Outcast in spirit and heart, he would forever be an outcast among the Outcasts. His motto since that day has been,"A man alone is stronger than any known force in the universe."
He got within four feet of the woman, when she said, over her shoulder, "No."
That gave him pause, but he took the few more steps and stopped. Let it be known that Zacarias has always had a way with women. Even as a loner in school, with no friends, he had. For whatever odd reason, women found his silence charming and intriguing. He had never had to ask a girl out, they always seemed to ask him out. He wasn't exactly sure what to do, but she repeated herself.
"No."
"No what?"
"No whatever you want. You've walked over here, like some sort of undersized rooster, heading for me the entire time. Whatever you want, I say no."
"What if I wanted to leave you alone?"
She glanced up from what she was doing--it appeared to be inventorying something--and the faintest form of a smile appeared.
"In all the years of me saying 'no' right off the bat, no one has ever said that."
The corners of his mouth turned upwards with the start of a smile, and she invited him back to her place for dinner.
Zacarias spent eight glorious months with Esperanza, as he learned her name was, on Cali. What started out as infatuation turned into the beginnings of love, and they spent more and more time together. She was fascinated with his method of using cardamine, and even tried it herself a few times.
However, despite the happiness, they were not meant to be. As mentioned earlier, Zacarias has commitment issues. So does Esperanza. Both afraid of the commitment a long term relationship would bring, they decided it would be best to go their separate ways. Zacarias holds her in his heart, as he knows she does, yet he walks a different road.
Zacarias' mind became lonely without her. The long trips that used to be engaging now turned dull and ordinary. His mind wandered to her face, the feel of her skin, her taste. He was addicted to her as he was addicted to cardamine. He set his intellect to the matter, and instead of coming up with the normal response of returning to her, he hatched a bolder plan. He made haste to Mactan, where he met an elderly man named Joshua Abrams. Joshua was one of the oldest Lane Hackers alive, and knew more about computers than most people in Sirius.
Zacarias laid out his plan to Joshua. He told him of his goal; to make an Artificial Intelligence the likes of which Sirius has never seen. It would not only know and feel, it would reason, lust, hate like humans. Not like humans; it would be human. Initially quite impressed with Zacarias' initiative and drive (one of two times he has shown something even remotely like drive), he indulged Zacarias. He taught him everything he knew, and soon the student surpassed the master. Zacarias began design on what would become his greatest work and gift to humanity.... as well as a curse.
Zacarias was almost done with what he coined the Superior Artificial Intelligence, named Carina. He was so close, yet so far. He was missing one integral part (to describe it would be like describing some indescribable, such as the human thought process), and he knew he would get nowhere unless he had some inspiration, something to guide him. Joshua Abrams had been exhausted long ago; Zacarias was far and beyond him.
Then first contact was made with the Cylons.
Zacarias knew the moment he saw one that this was the break he needed. Robots that were almost human. Almost. So he decided to capture one, which was not an easy task. After a long and arduous process, he managed to lure and capture one, using an advanced form of an EMPDL (Electromagnetic Pulse Discharge Laser) to disable it. He brought it to his lab on Malta, and unlocked the secrets of it's brain.
"Eureka!" he shouted. He had found it: the lost code, the one part missing from Carina. He was finally able to finish his work.
After erasing the memory of the Cylon and releasing it back where he found it, he returned to finish what he had started.