Kevin Vacit
From The Babylon Project
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- "The future of our kind isn’t back there. The nautilus does not move backward in its shell. Our future starts here, and moves forward. It’s there. Now, come. We’ve much to do."
- – Kevin Vacit, 2265
Kevin Vacit was a human telepath of Zuni decent, on his mother's side.
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[edit] History
[edit] Early Life
In 2116, when he was only 6 years old, Kevin Vacit and his mother was driven from their home in Arizona when her Psi ability was discovered during the initial hysteria surrounding the announcement of verifiable telepaths. Shot and mortally wounded, Kevin's mother managed to get them away from their pursuers and into the same caves that had once protected their ancestors. Though they were successfully in evading capture, Kevin's mother didn't survive her wounds, bleeding out with Kevin still in her arms. However, as she died, the Vorlon consciousness she had been carrying transferred into Kevin.
Kevin would spend the next year or so living on the streets until he is found by Monkey wandering the streets with a low powered telepathic Indian woman. Apparently glad to be unburdened, the women lets O'Hannlon take the child with him back to The Kith, a tight knit surrogate family of telepaths. Blood, posing as Kevin's mother enrolled Kevin in a local school under the assumed name James (though The Kith call him "the Kid"). Shortly after Mercy, another member of The Kith, is detected as a telepath by the mandatory screenings at her workplace. Tired of the constant wandering and her relatively low abilities opts to co-operate with the law and volunteers to take the sleepers. The lethargic and soul destroying side effects are instant and devastating, causing an enraged Blood to remove James from school and move the family before anyone else is detected. She is too late as upon arriving at the school she finds that the children, including Kevin have just been screened though to her surprise, his test comes up negative. Though it would be many years before Kevin understood this ability, it was in fact due to his possession of the Vorlon consciousness passed onto him from his mother.
Seeing that the Kith cannot run forever, Blood, Teal, Mercy and Smoke decide to join the MRA, agreeing to serve in rounding up other teeps. Monkey objects and decides to leave the group, taking Kevin with him.
[edit] Both Sides Against the Middle
By 2133, Vacit now 23 had earned a Bachelor of Science in neurophysics from ASU, a master's in the same from Harvard and a degree in law, during which he was the first in his class. After which he worked with the Houston special attorney for metasensory evidence under Ernesto Perez before being selected by Tom Nguyen to replace him as assistant to MRA Director and Earth Alliance Senator Lee Crawford.
Serving Crawford until the Senator's death in 2161, just after first contact with the Centauri, Vacit took the position intended for Lee as director of the newly established Psi Corps following Crawford's death. All through his carrier Kevin's status as a telepath never became public knowledge, even over a century later he was still thought to be a mundane.[2]
About 2 months before the founding of Psi Corps, Ninon Davion gives birth to Kevin's daughter Fiona Temple. Not wanting his daughter to be raised by the Corps, Kevin instead gives her to his old caretaker, Monkey while she is still a baby. Vacit's idea was that by entrusting the resistance to Monkey and Fiona, and himself controlling the Psi Corps he thought that he could aid evolution by ensuring that the strongest telepaths would survive and breed.
While in his role as Director of Psi Corps, Vacit conducted a great deal of personal into continuing Crawford's research the origins of human telepaths. Eventually tracking down a Vorlon on Venus, he learns of their purpose in fighting an approaching evil and changes his plans for the resistance. Evolution moves too slowly to affect real change, Psi Corps approved breeding would be instituted to ensure that stronger telepaths would be born.
In 2189 Fiona, now married to Matthew Dexter gives birth to their child, Stephen Kevin Dexter. When Vacit decides to crush the Resistance that he helped to foster, Fiona and Matthew Dexter are both killed leaving baby Stephen orphaned and taken in by the Corps. To ensure his connection to the child and the former resistance remains secret, Kevin renames his grandson Alfred Bester, after the 20th Century science fiction author. Vacit watches Bester's development as he grows up in Cadre Prime, speaking to him on only one occasion in the middle of the night.
Vacit set his new plans for the Corps in motion without telling almost anyone within Psi Corps, citing that a machine works best when it doesn't know its purpose.
[edit] The Nautilus Moves Forward
In 2195 after saying goodbye to his grandson, Kevin Vacit arranges for the Centauri to transport his one man ship to the nearest jumpgate to Vorlon space. Before leaving he places a heavily encrypted file into the system at the secret archive on Ganymede. Time-locked for the next 65 years, the file details Vacit's flight plan and his reason for going. After being dropped off by the Centauri, Vacit pilots his ship at sublight speed, beginning the just over fifty eight light year journey to the Vorlon outpost where telepaths were first engineered.
Due to the relativistic effects of near lightspeed travel in normal space, Vacit experienced less than a year's travel time, though for the rest of the universe he didn't arrive at his destination until 2256. Upon his arrival Vacit finds the Nephilim, non-sentient but terrifyingly powerful telepaths that were engineered by the Vorlons millennia ago from the ancestors of many races across the galaxy. It was from these that the Vorlons engineered a baseline for the telepath gene that they could then slowly integrate into the population of each respective race over the generations. When Vacit first arrived, there were more than a million individual Nephilim scattered through the forests and savannahs of their world, though not long afterwards - possibly prompted by events taking place on Z'ha'dum following the landing of the Icarus - the Vorlons set about exterminating the Nephilim, to prevent them from falling into the hands of the Shadows, satisfied that they had everything they wanted from them. Vacit however, had other ideas. Thanks to the Vorlon fragment that still lived within him, Vacit was able to harness the Nephilim's unparalleled collective Psi ability to fool the Vorlons that they had succeeded in their task, while in fact Vacit and a portion of the Nephilim had survived. Making use of the remaining Vorlon organic buildings and synthesizers, which like the Nephilim responded to his Vorlon tainted telepathic signals, Vacit set about studying what he could find, safe in the knowledge that the Vorlons wouldn't return.
His isolation wasn't permanent as in 2265, during the midst of the Telepath War, the Psi Cops were able to crack some of Vacit's time-locked files on Ganymede and traced his course aboard a Cyclops class cruiser. The group lead by Mr. Diamond arrived and were quickly overpowered by the Nephilim under Vacit's influence. They were shortly followed by the Toreador, lead by Michael Garibaldi and Lyta Alexander expecting to find Bester. Again using the Nephilim, Vacit fooled the newcomers, even Lyta that the Vorlons had succeeded in wiping out all life and then projected a telepathic image to make them believe that Diamond and arrived and killed Vacit before being shot himself along with all of his crew members.
After Lyta and Garibaldi leave, Diamond pleads with Vacit to let them go as well. Vacit tells them the he needs them here and they still have a lot of work to do.[1]
[edit] Notes
- It is worth noting that most people can not feel Vacit's scans, but Bester was able to detect it. Whether this is because of their relation or Bester's undeniable power is unknown.
