Billy knocked on the door. "Madame President? Adelle DeWitt is here to see you."

"Send her in," Laura ordered. Billy nodded and ducked out, and Laura folded her hands on her desk. She had absolutely no idea what this meeting was about. All that DeWitt had told Billy was "a matter that will be crucial for the survival of humanity." Laura didn't appreciate the vagueness, and silently promised that this had better be worth her time, or there would be hell to pay. And not just for DeWitt herself, but for Billy for arranging this meeting.

"This way, Ms. DeWitt," she heard Billy say, and the door opened.

The woman who entered her office was tall, slender, and immaculately groomed, despite the conditions she must have been living under. She had short hair, perfectly filed nails, and wore a strand of pearls. "Madame President," she said, and Laura recognized an accent from Sikyon, halfway around the world on Caprica. "It's so good to finally meet you. Thank you for agreeing to see me."

Laura stood and accepted the proffered hand. "Please have a seat," she said, gesturing to the chair. "Can I get you anything?"

"No. I'm fine." DeWitt sat, crossing her legs gracefully. "Well, I know you are a very busy woman, Madame President, and I realize that my request for this meeting was not overly specific. I'll skip the small talk about the nonexistent weather and our health and get straight to the point, shall I?"

"That sounds like an excellent idea," Laura agreed.

DeWitt flicked a smile. "Back before the Cylon attack, I worked for a company simply called 'The Agency'. I'm quite sure you've never heard of it."

"You might be surprised," Laura said. DeWitt looked mildly surprised and impressed. "But I thought it was an urban legend. I never put any stock in it."

"Not many people do. But we were funded by the Mycele Corporation, and I'm quite sure you've heard of them." Laura nodded. "The Agency is in the business of giving people what they need. We, essentially, offer pure, human, genuine experience."

"You run a brothel," Laura said. "That was what I had heard."

"No, not a brothel. An Agency. I assure you, they are two very different things."

"I find that hard to believe."

"Yes, of course you would." DeWitt flashed a smile again. "If I was in your chair, I would, too."

Laura leaned back, crossing her arms. "What makes The Agency so different from a brothel?"

"Well, to start, our engagements are not exclusively sexual," deWitt answered. "But the true answer- and the reason I am here- lies in our technology."

"Technology?"

"We have the ability to give our clients exactly what they need. When we imprint an active, we don't just give him or her a role to play. They become that person entirely, along with all of their history, all of their weaknesses, and most importantly, all of their skills."

"I'm sorry. I'm afraid you lost me at technology." Laura slid her glasses off. "Are you telling me that you have a technology that can change people's personalities? That it really exists? You can't be…."

DeWitt smiled. "Actually, Madame President, that is exactly what I'm telling you."

***

"So, the active goes into the chair, and we do a little super-secret buzzing of the electronics, bright lights and pretty colors and a ping, and then poof! Instant… whatever you want!" The over-excited, red-haired manchild named Topher Brink was showing Laura what looked like a dentist's chair. He paused with a flourish, grinning like he expected adulation. Laura wasn't so sure she should give it to him.

"So you're saying that once someone sits in this chair, you can reprogram to become anyone else?" She looked around the tiny room on the Persephone with the sneaking suspicion it had once been a broom closet.

"Well, no," Topher said, and then sighed. "Well, yes, but it's not that easy. See, if I sat you down in that chair and tried to upload something onto you- I'm not going to!" he said, holding up his hands as Laura stepped back. "If I tried to upload something on you, it wouldn't work, because your brain's not configured right. It would hurt- don't get me wrong about that- but it wouldn't work. The first thing you do when you're making an Active is upload their original personality to a wedge and then give them the neural architecture."

"And that is…" Laura began, but deWitt cut her off with a graceful wave.

"This is the part where we nod and smile," she told Laura. "I assure you, Topher knows exactly what he is doing. Rest assured, the process of making an Active is a lengthy enough one that it can't just happen at random. And given the amount of energy that this process requires, it is one that would not go unnoticed."

"I see." Laura decided to take deWitt's advice and skip to the next part. "So what happens after the Active architecture is… installed?"

"Well, once the brain is retrofitted with the architecture," Topher clapped his hands together and inhaled, "that's when the fun begins." He gestured to his computer. "I have literally tens of thousands of brain scans that I can form a new imprint from. And I can include everything: memories, muscle memory, skills, talents… some of things that we've been able to do have been absolutely remarkable." There was a spark in his eye that oddly enough reminded Laura of Lieutenant Gaeta when he got excited about computers. "So once that imprint is complete, we put the active in the chair, upload, and like I said-"

"Poof," Laura said dryly. "Instant whatever you want."

"Exactly!"

"And the Actives?"

Topher shrugged. "They don't remember a thing."

"Really." Laura was dry.

DeWitt stepped in. "When they're not imprinted, the Actives retreat to a tabula rosa state- a blank slate, if you will. It's a very childlike, very simple state. They remember nothing. And when we restore the personalities of the Actives at the end of their contracts, they remember nothing about their time with us."

Laura frowned. "You said you had tens of thousands of brain scans," she said. "Where did you get those from?"

"Mycele has been collecting them for years," deWitt explained. "You'd be amazed what people are willing to do if they think it benefits medical science, and failing that, what they'll do for a few hundred cubits."

"I see. Did it harm them?"

"Not at all. In fact, there are scans of both of us."

"What about the Actives?" Laura asked. "How do you come across them?"

"The same way. Money."

"A lot of money," Topher said with a cynical laugh.

Laura glared at him, but deWitt did not. "Of course," she said, "being an Active is a job, just as anything else is. And it happens to be one that pays exceptionally well. And there are people who have things they would like to forget. A normal contract with The Agency is five years."

"Five years where they can be made to do anything."

"Yes."

Laura became aware of their surroundings again; a tiny little room with bare walls and no amenities except for a very good latch on the door. "Why is this technology even here?" she asked.

"We were en route to Virgon from Caprica when the Cylons attacked."

"The two of you and the chair?"

"And two Actives."

Laura raised her eyebrows. "I want to meet them."

"Of course. Topher, I believe we're done here." DeWitt shot a questioning glance at Laura, but when Laura didn't contradict her, she nodded, and Topher began to shut down the equipment. "We're not monsters, Madame President."

"Forgive me if I find that a bit hard to believe," Laura said stiffly.

DeWitt's smile was rueful. "But I suspect you are still focused on the sexual side of our business. You're not considering what technology like this could do for humanity."

"Enlighten me," Laura ordered her as they stepped out of the small room.

"With this technology, a single person can be a skilled surgeon, an expert mechanic, a brilliant computer programmer, a ruthless torturer, an experimental chemist, or a legendary Viper pilot. Or they could be far more mundane, but know how to manufacture paper, how to spin thread from flax, or secrets of farming. There are forty thousand people left in humanity, Madame President. Surely there are gaps in our collective skills sets that could use filling."

Laura shook her head. "Admiral Cain had many flaws, but she brought us the libraries of the Colonies. We are not so lacking in knowledge."

"There's a huge difference between knowledge and skill," deWitt said smoothly. "Now I'll take you to meet Victor and Sierra. I think you are going to be pleasantly surprised."

***

"So what were they like?" Billy asked with dark fascination. "Victor and Sierra, I mean?"

"They seemed normal enough," Laura admitted, taking a deep drink of the whiskey Billy poured for her. "It didn't seem like they were torturing them. I suppose they could be lying, but-"

"They aren't," Billy said. His face was troubled.

"Billy?"

"I remember hearing about something… whispers…" Billy said. "And worse than that… I think I had one of those brain scans."

"You're joking."

"I'm not," he said, and he looked very nervous. "I was… I was having a little trouble in college. I didn't have quite enough money- the truth is I didn't budget very well- and I didn't want to tell my parents. Lots of kids made money selling plasma."

"Of course." Laura wasn't going to admit to having done the same once or twice.

"Anyway, in the plasma collection center, they had a sign up about the brain scans, and well… like DeWitt said, it was several hundred cubits. They said it was something about sleep study or something like that. I don't remember because I really didn't care. But I had it done."

"Did it hurt?"

Billy shook his head. "Not at all, actually. I just laid in… in a chair," he realized. "Like a dentist's chair. And they did the scans, and I had my money. It was easy money."

Laura frowned. "Were there others there?"

"Yeah. I mean, the whole place was very clinical, very clean. I really thought it was medical research. And I guess they'd put fliers up at all the universities, and at the Academy. There were a couple of military guys there, too." His brow furrowed. "Of course, I'm not sure what all they'd be getting out of college kids and military recruits. You'd think they'd want people with more knowledge and experience."

"That doesn't mean they didn't get it. And Topher told me he could splice together bits and pieces of people's personalities to make a new imprint."

"I see." He took a deep breath. "What are you going to do?"

Laura rubbed her forehead. "I don't want this technology out there," she said. "Everything in my being is repulsed by it. It's disgusting."

"But?" Billy prompted with a wry smile. Laura returned it.

"But," she agreed. "Destroying it…. Are we costing lives? DeWitt is right about our population and our skill set."

"I have a suggestion," Billy said. "But you're not going to like it."

"What is it?"

"We've got convicts. Not the ones originally from the Astral Queen, but we've had cases of rape and theft and murder. If we-"

"No." Laura snapped. "Just because someone commits a crime does not deny them their right to free will, nor does it make them expendable. It would take a very extreme circumstance to make me even consider such a thing.

"And an apocalypse isn't an extreme circumstance?" Billy asked. Laura glared. "All right." Billy spread his hands in surrender. "It was just a suggestion." He took a sip of his drink. "So you're going to order it destroyed, then?"

"I should," Laura admitted, "but I can't. What I am going to do is order the power supplies of that section of the ship reduced."

"They'll move."

"Not without my permission."

Billy nodded. "You really think you can keep it all under wraps, and keep them under control?"

"I do."

"I hate to bring this up, but what if you're no longer President? There's an election coming up, and I'm sure Zarek will run."

"DeWitt said there was a reason it took her so long to come to me," Laura said. "She's not going to bring this forward to just anyone."

"And you believe her?" Billy said. "You'd bet someone's life on it?"

Laura nodded. "I would."

Billy shrugged. "Guess that's all we can do, then," he said.

"Guess so."