Ardent Anti-Cybernetic Quorum Delegate Marta Shaw Dies at 56

Ardent Anti-Cybernetic Quorum Delegate Marta Shaw Dies at 56

CAPRICA CITY, CAPRICA -- Marta Shaw, scion of the prestigious Caprican political family, succumbed after her long fight with breast cancer a scant five days before the 40th anniversary of the Armistice.

Shaw, 56, died at Caprica City Memorial Hospital when her cancer worsened and forced her to be hospitalized a week prior. Despite diloxin treatments and radiation therapies, she succumbed to the cancer in the morning hours of Poseidon Day.

The Shaw name is a known fixture in Caprican politics, being one of the early ruling families a full century before the Articles of Colonization was signed nearly 52 years ago. Under her grandfather, Andre Shaw, he and three other influential Caprican political families supported legislation backing the Graystone's creation of the cybernetic-life form node, which would later be known colloquially as the Cylon.

Despite the programming defects within the sentient Cylons, which resulted in a near collapse of our Twelve Colonies of Kobol in the ensuing war that followed, the Shaw family under then-Delegate Blithe Shaw was aptly able to extricate her family's name and legacy from the political fallout.

Blithe Shaw would later pass her political acumen to her daughter, Marta Shaw. Unlike her mother, who helped forge the Armistice in a secure bunker on Caprica's southern polar continent of Arcta, Shaw would later gain notoriety as going against the family's pro-cybernetic legacy.

Elected on a conservative, anti-cybernetic platform, Shaw locked horns with Richard Adar's administration over repeals and rollbacks on the 60-plus-year-old Cybernetic Development laws.

According to Adar, who recently offered his condolences to Shaw's only surviving daughter, Ministry of Defense's Lieutenant Kendra Shaw, the Quorum delegate was "a woman who commanded respect and [she] honestly believed in the righteousness of her cause."

Despite heated words between herself, Adar, and Adar's friend and technology advisor, Gaius Baltar, Adar added this: "Aside from heated words in the past, Shaw represented her constituents best interests well with honesty, integrity, and, yes, even respect. Even at times when it didn't seem like she did."

Some of her own constituents would rally against that point, considering that some of them claim that Marta Shaw is a "SINO": a derogatory acronym for "Shaw in Name Only".

According to Dr. C. Eric Jameson, acclaimed professor of Caprica Political History at University of Caprica City, Berkshire, "[Marta Shaw] is a political 're-imaginist' who believes that she has to reinvent herself for 'The Times'. Perhaps out of shame for her family's backing of the Graystones, she has deliberately sought to destroy everything those before her have created."

Jameson adds that her aforementioned mother did much to save the family name already, and that Shaw's "so-called 're-imagining'" killed her efforts after she was "dead and buried".

The "re-imagining" Jameson refers to are Shaw's various legislations that support the Cybernetic Development laws, which stipulate that no machine will be endowed with full artificial intelligence. Shaw has the support of the Cylon War veteran caucus and various labor unions on Caprica and other colonies, including the Colonial Workers' Union. The CWU's support of the ban is highly derided by pundits like Wesley Boones, who commented that their support is "nothing more than an attempt to cements unnecessary workers who prevent companies from achieving growth and output" and "puts a monkey wrench in the gears of progress".

Before Shaw's public revelation of her battle with breast cancer, she was able to lead the fight to pass legislation cementing the bans against sentient cybernetics technology. "We do not need to create another Cylon. We have more than enough already to contend with. Frankly, we can't even talk to the ones we've already set loose upon the galaxy, so why would we want to create more to swell their ranks?"

Aforementioned Gaius Baltar, currently under contract with the Ministry of Defense, had this to say: "While it is sad that, in some quarters, we still cling to our fear of technology, it is utterly --yes, that's it -- utterly incomprehensible to me why we should not endeavor to make ourselves a more productive people. These laws are the result of incongruent, unethical fear-mongering... and the people who pass this legislation want to dredge up skeletons from the river of our bloody past. I believe that we are better than that."

In a follow-up after Shaw's death, Baltar gave his condolences to Shaw's daughter, but offered his hope that many of her "unfortunate mistakes" will be corrected by future generations, which will "usher in a brighter, intellectual renaissance of technology for all mankind".

Shaw is survived by her only daughter, Kendra Shaw, also of Caprica. It should also be noted that, as of this writing, Kendra Shaw has accepted a position as Admiral Helena Cain's aide on Battlestar Group 62's flagship, Pegasus. It is rumored that this was the last so-called "dying wish" of her mother, who had connections with Admiral Kennedy Corman at Fleet Command.