Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | 1 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT Agnus Dei
By Jacob Clifton | Season 2 | Episode 22 | Aired on 01.25.2001
The cold storage vault is so, so big. Echoey and full of corpses. Remember when you didn't even know what stem cells were? John's got his hands cuffed, in front, and his legs are manacled. "How many bodies did he say were in here?" asks John, and Aeryn -- surprising him with her tone, which is only slightly lower in temperature than the ambient -- says, "I believe he said 'frelling millions'." Dragging chains toward her, he asks what he's done wrong, "other than caving in the side of your head," and she wows at him. "Do you not remember?" That's not the question: the question he's asking is, how can she afford to remember it? The most painful part of that scene was that it made her look stupid. Declaring love and hope while Harvey watched, and smiled, at her expense. Declaring love like a stupid girl, kissing the devil, while Harvey watched and thought her weak. Not even Chiana could shame herself so badly. Watching her get fooled; watching the gift of vulnerability -- the only gift she could give that means anything, her absolute trust, so much further down, and further in, every time like the first, so much further away from where she started, so much more, and so effortlessly -- made a mockery and a joke and a perversion; that's the worst part.
Thankfully, Grunchlk and Zhaan enter, Grunchlk claiming he's found a biological match for John -- "splendid news," he says. Human? No, Interion (Jool! Fuck yeah!): "Bipedal. Central spine. Organs internal...single heart circulation and a small head." There are three Interions in storage. "Over 5,000 different species frozen here," says Zhaan from her high horse; for once I don't mind. "This is an abomination against nature." Grunchlk calls Blue "luv" and points out they're not really suffering. Aeryn points out that they're dead, so there's no problem because the afterlife is for jerkfaces, and Zhaan corrects her: "No, Aeryn, they're still alive." Which Grunchlk would call a technicality: "All accident victims and the like. Hey, I mean we freeze 'em a microt before their death, 'cause the parts last longer that way." John is troubled by this totally creepy fact, and Zhaan speaks out on behalf of the course of nature. For Zhaan, and for Stark, the laying to rest of the dead is a sacred act; a demonstration of love and respect that extends beyond our bodies. It's a demonstration of respect for the Goddess, for the fact that everything dies and everything ends. And Zhaan will bend the rules, again and again, because what she's called upon to sacrifice is nothing but her own righteousness, her faith in the will of the Goddess. Grunchlk says the Doc's policy for "donors" is that none of them would survive restoration. "Probably a species offshoot from the same stock," says Grunchlk, and John wonders if that means they're close to earth. He's forgotten himself and the doghouse that his crazy has earned him; Aeryn reminds him simply and coldly: "I don't know." John wants the chip out, and Grunchlk is pleased: "If it don't work, we get to keep your body."
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