Tomas Vergis: the Tauron whose stolen chip made the first Cylon

Tomas Vergis was a Tauron computer scientist, head of the Vergis Corporation, and the creator of the meta-cognitive processor. He was also Daniel Graystone's direct competitor in the year 42, which is the reason the first Cylon ran on his hardware rather than Graystone's.

Who was Tomas Vergis?#

Vergis ran a computer and robotics corporation on Tauron and had built the meta-cognitive processor, the component that made a machine capable of holding a mind.

He was Tauron by birth and loyalty and Caprican by education, and he moved between the two without ever pretending the first did not matter. That distinction runs through everything he did on Caprica afterwards, because the men Graystone used to rob him were Tauron too.

The theft that built the Cylon#

Graystone needed the MCP to bring his dead daughter back inside a robot, so he had Joseph and Sam Adama take it, and the first Cylon was the result.

Two people died for it. They were Vergis employees, close relatives and friends of each other on Tauron, and their killings were part of the operation rather than an accident of it. Vergis never went to court. Rumours and suspicion moved through the Caprican Ministry of Defense anyway, and about six weeks after the bombing he arrived on Caprica in person to tell Graystone exactly what had been done in his name.

The slow revenge#

His opening move looked like a favour. He offered to buy the Caprica Buccaneers, pointing out that Graystone Industries was short of cash and that selling the pyramid team would buy time to fix the U-87 programme.

It was the first step of a campaign to take away everything Graystone cared about, and Vergis said as much: he intended to tear up the man's dream. He did the public relations work too, appearing on Backtalk with Baxter Sarno and telling the audience he was moving to Caprica for good and applying for citizenship. Then he went to see Amanda Graystone and told her about the theft and the deaths, and once she stopped denying it, her marriage and her own stability went with it.

The rest fell into his lap. Colonel Sasha Patel understood that the U-87 depended on stolen technology and that Graystone Industries could not deliver a hundred thousand robots on time, and formally offered Vergis the contract. He became CEO of the company that had robbed him, boasted about the U-87s now rolling off the line, and ordered the ruined prototype destroyed.

How did Tomas Vergis die?#

He put a knife into his own chest with Daniel Graystone's hand on the grip, having asked Graystone to help him die at a time and in a manner he chose himself.

The board had voted him out unanimously, and Vergis recognised the Ha'la'tha behind the blackmail that produced that vote. He knew the syndicate would kill him eventually. He went to Graystone, appeared for a moment to accept an alliance against the Ha'la'tha, and when Daniel relaxed and stepped closer, took his hand, forced it onto the knife and pushed. Daniel had taken his invention, his employees and his company. The last thing left to take was the choice about the ending, and Vergis kept it.