There's super-spooky music heading into the Universal logo -- superimposed over Caprica, not our Earth -- and past it into space, a white shot, and Raiders heading for the Colony. In space, nobody can hear you lying out your face and pants don't combust because the vacuum. Tigh, Sam, Simon, a Hybrid I think, an Eight, a Six, and Cavil: What they're saying, maybe it's true maybe it isn't, but you get what you give: The Cylons were created by man. They rebelled. They evolved. They look and feel human. Some are programmed to think they are human. There are many copies. And they have a plan.
Laura and Gaius were in a dick-measuring contest of galactic proportion when the rescue squad from Caprica returned with Samuel T. Anders and Brother Cavil in tow. Kara Thrace had died so many times that people barely even registered she was gone, because they were all busy going crazy in their own ways, and when she came back she came back with ten tons of bullshit, exploding and on fire. Things were going as well as usual. The only person that recognized the Cavil from Caprica as a Cylon was the Chief, and before you know it both Cavils were in stir and about to be airlocked.
At issue was the concept of home, because that's all that matters: Could Gaius convince the people that their immediate safety, on a shitty sad planet yet to be named, was worth giving up the purpose that had kept them alive 33 minutes at a time for 33 episodes? Could Laura convince the people that the Gods were worth giving up that cabin in the mountains? Which dream would win?
The two Cavils do their namesake at each other in front of the launch bay door. The one from the ship, the one that heard Galen's confession, we'll call him One because he's a good machine. The other one, the one that heard Sam's -- that brought the news of DEMAND LOVE to the Fleet and tipped the scales to New Caprica -- we'll call him Cavil, because he's a better one. There aren't any we'll call John, because John died the same day Daniel did:
Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me shall slay me... And the LORD set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him. And the word for his mark -- אות -- is the word for the omens of the stars, and the rainbow's memory of the great Flood, and the covenant of circumcision, and Moses' miracles before the Pharaoh. The word for Gina's final act: the star that led them home, like wise men, like kings. The sign on Sam Anders that made Caprica and Boomer, and Cavil, love him so much they'd move the world for him, and never even know why.
"I was doing fine here," One snarks at Cavil, and he shakes his head. "You weren't doing fine, thank goodness. If you'd wiped out this Fleet, you'd have made us even more irredeemable in the eyes of our parents." No, only proven them superior. Cavil says he's figured it all out, and offers to explain their failure. All they've done since the Final Five went to sleep is fail, but this is different: "We had our foot on the throat of humanity," says One, "And we failed to step down hard enough! That was our error." Cavil explains to himself that he's learned a lot on Caprica, among the rebels, and that killing human beings was an error as grievous as it was profane. One tells him again that he really doesn't. "Listen, Brother. If you're right, that means this whole project was doomed from the beginning." Yep. From the very top.
Ten months ago, two weeks before the end of the world, on a Resurrection Ship, the Watchtower song's playing for us. Sam used to play it for them, down by the water. "Dad, Mom" says One, pointing at Ellen and Tigh. "Dad, Mom, Dad": Galen, Tory, Sam. "Our parents will be back with us soon," he says to himself. But they're only skin and veins and bones, so they won't remember the Colonies. The twelve worlds they crossed oceans of stars to save, and won't even remember when they're dying there. "Life among humans will have humbled them. When they resurrect, they'll return with apologies tumbling from their lips like jewels." He laughs to himself about the "sticky hugs" to come, and One tells himself, daring, a dirty little boy, a wing-puller and a mommy-lover: "I've got a yen to experience a nuclear holocaust in person. Perhaps with our dear mother here... I'll slide in another tub, and we can download side-by-side, after the bombs hit on Picon." Cavil sends himself to Picon and heads for Caprica to talk to Sarah Six about the final phases; One stares down at his mother, barely noticing himself as he leaves.
Ship captains knew the sea; they could navigate it without fear, by the tradewinds and by the stars. It was only when they headed inland that things got scary. So the ship captain would hire a local pilot, somebody who knew the area. And when he got out of there and back into open water, he'd drop the pilot and carry on, by himself. He'd follow the stars again.
Gaius and his lover walked through a park at the end of the working day; with the Caprican sun setting and the children playing, you'd never know the world was ending. And when the children sang too loud, or got too angry, the parents would raise their voices, or smack them lightly on the legs, and the children would get quiet. But they'd remember. Gaius was crowing about his successes, running as fast he could from his father, the farmer, asking her to praise him. She looked at him the way she always did, that mark on her that he loved so much: I adore you, but you're fooling nobody.
"Well, you helped a bit," Gaius admitted; she shifted her briefcase to the other hip and snorted at him. "I rewrote half your algorithms," she said. Her back was straight, even with so much loaded on it. He never guessed. He already knew. "All right, you were extremely helpful, but let's not forget, you got something out of it. All that poking around inside the defense mainframe. It should give you a huge advantage bidding for the contract year." She towered over him, put her arm around his shoulder, begging him to listen: "You know that's not really why I did it?"
Of course not, he grinned, and sucked on his cigarette: "No, you did it because you love me!" Not the right answer, and they both knew it, but a good enough answer. She looked down at him, already seeing how the morning would play out: She'd come to him as the world was ending, and finally tell him the truth. Finally tell someone who she really was, and the weight would fall off her shoulders as the sun grew brighter and brighter, and she would die in his arms. Her first memory would be of light, and of her tender, fragile love. She didn't know she'd find him with another woman; she didn't know the world was ending. Her heart was breaking, but it wasn't broken yet.
"I have to go," she said, looking around at them: the parents, and the children. "I'm meeting someone." Gaius took off his shades, and pretended to be insanely jealous. It only hurt more when he did that. The children's voices in the sunlight were almost unbearable. She got snippy, and he beeped her nose, and headed off to discuss a new project. He kissed her and left her there, in the sun, and she turned around, and there was Cavil.
There's a school of thought that says the universal myth of Eden comes from the first second any of us cried out for mommy and she wasn't there. That the world broke into a million shining, burning pieces on that day, and we spend the rest of our lives trying to put it back together. To remember a time when the world wasn't hateful, and existed only to feed our every need. To make home out of all those broken promises, to come back to our perfection.
And there was Cavil. He hadn't met Sam, so his heart wasn't broken yet. It was smooth, and hard, and shiny. Just like her, like the rest of them. She handed Cavil the briefcase and he reminded her that she needed to die, before the world ended. She didn't love that. "The alternative won't make for a very pleasant memory," he reminds her; on Picon he was waiting for the feeling, ready to glory in the light. "I hear that poison is really not that bad," he said, and left. Sarah thought about that, and dismissed it out of hand. Suicide is a sin. The children's voices got louder, in the sun.
Kaiser Wilhelm II was only 40 in 1890, when he fired Chancellor Bismarck at 75. He'd shown him a letter from the Tsar that described him as "a badly brought-up boy," and Wilhelm threw a big old fit, rescinding a forty-year order and collapsing the checks and balances that decreed the Cabinet should never report directly to the Prussian King rather than the Prime Minister. Bismarck was screwed; he wrote crazy letters and freaked out, even asked the Empress to talk to her son for him. As Lord Salisbury told Victoria, "The very qualities which Bismarck fostered in the Emperor in order to strengthen himself when the Emperor Frederick should come to the throne have been the qualities by which he has been overthrown." And the Empress, loving every minute, told Bismarck that she couldn't save him from her son; that in fact it was he that had destroyed her ability to intervene.
Bismarck stayed in politics, tossing off one far-reaching and correct prediction after another like some kind of Aeschylean poet-god, and Sir John Tenniel -- best known to us for his Alice In Wonderland illustrations -- created a famous cartoon in Punch -- The petulant nascent ruler, watching Bismarck disembark the ship of their ambitions -- and titled it Dropping the Pilot. His gravestone still bears the mark; it reads, "Loyal German Servant of Kaiser William I." That's the cruelest thing.
In a big city on Picon, lots of buildings going up, there was a small club left, called the Pink Moon. ("I saw it written and I saw it say/ Pink Moon is on its way/ And none of you stand so tall/ Pink Moon's gonna get you all...") The bartenders had their breasts out; the Twelve Colonies were like that. They'd been like that for years. Ellen speared an olive with a cocktail umbrella and ate it like a cougar, crawling on her chair. One looked at his mother with desire, and hatred, and she flirted back. She loved olives; she loved the way she looked reaching for them even more: Back arched, perfect legs trailing behind, perfect ass in the air. He liked it too; he hated it. For a moment he saw her, naked in a tub back on the Resurrection Ship, sleeping her way into madness. One ordered his mother another drink, and she giggled; he called himself a mysterious stranger.
When God comes, they say, he will come like a thief in the night. A mysterious stranger. Maybe he'll ask a question or two; he'll be looking for something but you won't know that. Anonymity is essential to the enterprise. Your answers must not be tainted by foreknowledge or by self-interest; they must be absolutely honest. And on them, everything will depend. And you'll never know the world is ending.
The Basestars were taking new forms in the sky. "Seized by God they cry for succor in the dark of the light mists of dreams dribble on the nascent echo and love no more. Jump." And as she came, they went: Away from the Colony, readying for the end of the world. Crying for succor; trying desperately to outlast the myth of death.
"And why are you here, Ellen? I mean, you're so obviously intended for greater things." She looked around, confused at first. "Are you a priest?" She laughed when he asked if it would matter, and he stared at her. This broken woman he'd made of his mother, responding like a machine to his interest and her vanity. He'd stacked the deck against her but he had to know.
On Caprica, at a Pyramid training camp far from the urban centers, his father Sam bashed some girl backward, and landed the target: Perfection. That's what it was about: Those moments when you can feel the perfection of creation. The beauty, the physics, the wonder of mathematics. The elation of action, and reaction. He was a forward guard; he was another face selling magazines, another piece of scoreboard trivia but he knew he was destined for more. He was just waiting for his singular moment of clarity: Spins and turns, angles and curves. The shape of dreams, half remembered. To slip the surly bonds of earth and touch the face of perfection.
The Basestars jumped in, over their twelve brothers. All functions were nominal, all function was optimal, as the Hybrids began the countdown, singing in chorus: "The center holds the falcon hears the falconer infrastructure check wetware check everyone hang on to the life bar please..." Even the Hybrids were lying to themselves.
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
The team cheered for their fallen comrade. "Anybody wanna save the lady?" Sam laughed; and a boy helped her up again. Like Sam always said: You keep shooting until you can't anymore.
"Apotheosis was the beginning before the beginning devices on alert observe the procedures of a general alert the base and the pinnacle the flower inside the fruit that is both its parent and its child decadent as ancestors the portal and that which passes."
They were everywhere, in the skies, but nobody knew it. Tory Foster was driving to the Delphi shuttle, to make it to Caprica City on time. The shuttles were flying every hour, in those days. Knitting the world together, making it smaller.
The Basestars became guns, y-shaped, pointed down toward the target; the children were playing in the Caprica park, voices loud, about to be silenced. Their parents were yawning into their morning coffee.
"Nuclear devices activated and the machine keeps pushing time through the cogs like paste into strings into paste again and only the machine keeps using time to make time to make time and when the machine stops time was an illusion that we created free will, twelve battles, three stars and yet we are countless as the bodies in which we dwell are both parent and infinite children in perfect copies no degradation."
No degradation. "Oh, now now, don't tense up, Mysterious!" Ellen caressed her son's face, answering his question. Her answers were not tainted by foreknowledge or by self-interest; they were absolutely honest. And on them everything depended: "I'm just saying there's no point in judging anybody. No one changes who they really are." One begged his mother to reconsider; One put God on trial in a strip club on Picon, begging her to reconsider. "If no one is corrected, then no one learns their lessons!" Ellen shivered; she was high on Gods know what and ready to rumble, ready to fight, ready for anything. Spins and turns, angles and curves. The shape of dreams, half remembered. She shouted, drunk; triumphant in her way: "Well, I've lived in this world a long time, and I'm proud to say that I haven't learned any Godsdamn lessons!" One was disappointed as his mother tossed her hair.
The Raiders massed in the sky. "The makers of the makers fall before the child accessing defense system handshake handshake second level clear," the Hybrids sang, as they worked their way into the grid. Five and Eight smiled at the datafonts. It was beginning. It had begun.
A Colonial pilot named Yashuman called into Caprica Control, citing heavy bogeys, but they couldn't see anything. "Then go to your window and look up!" he shouted. "They're big as frakking asteroids!" Control realized the grid was dead; the Raiders loomed, red eyes passing back and forth. Yashuman begged them to unfrak themselves, and they tried, but it was too late. The grid was gone.
"Accepting scan love outlasts death." It was a handshake. There was more. In the skies the Colonial ships went dead, their radios went dead, and they began to drift. Sickening, off-kilter. No stable axes. They looked like they were going to sleep. The Hybrids marveled at them, skittering across the sky. "It's been a long time coming," said Two, up in the Resurrection Ship. He was still looking for his moment of clarity. He was about to find it. "...Meaningless in the absence of time what never was is never again..." Six looked at the children -- I mean the Centurions -- with pity: "It's like they don't understand what we're doing for them," she worried, and Four shook his head. "I think they're grateful in their own way," he said, to a stare from Three. "I know I'd be," nodded Eight, and Six smiled loving at her. They were surrounded by the children. I mean, Centurions.
When Cylon was destroyed, she was called Earth. She was the Thirteenth Colony, separated from her brothers by millennia. And only five of her children survived, out of all those millions. They downloaded, the first to do so in thousands of years. And once again the Blaze pursued them, as they went back to save their brothers, before it was too late. When they got there, it was: Forty years too late to save them from the conflagration. And when they stopped the war, it was by making an abomination. The Final Five turned the Centurion's political struggle into an existential one, by giving the beasts not only souls but bodies. And the first thing One did was take the Centurions' minds away again. He turned their existential struggle into genocide. He piloted them into terror.
The Basestar guns went hot as the Pyramid team practiced down on Caprica; down on Picon the fight continued. "If you let someone change you or make you apologize, then you're selling yourself out. You know?" The missiles dropped, like a thief in the night. Tory was looking for efficiency as she drove, yelling into her phone, asking for "the numbers on mayoral staff downtime." She wanted the system like a machine, running silently and effectively, even then. She was a girl with a list. The team on Caprica was drinking to their coach, who'd sunk a three-pointer from across the training field. "If we find a project whose cost is..." Tory shouted, looking for efficiency, willing to sacrifice whatever it took to maintain the system. Ellen chuckled, horny and unsure quite why. Sam dropped to the ground, sighing. "You win, Coach. I'm going down!"
The skies were on fire over all twelve Colonies and the Pink Moon was gone and Tory was screaming at the light and Sarah pushed Gaius down and One held his mother tight and the seas rushed in, covering the cities as the skies burned. Sam stared up at the sky, on his back, waiting for the pressure to build and shove them sideways, remembering Cylon and the moment of his death. "This has happened before," he mumbled to himself, as Sue-Shaun screamed, pointing at the mushroom clouds on the horizon, as Four smiled to himself, team medic standing with the coach, happy to see it begin. The Scorpia shipyards burned, and Pegasus took flight. Simon grabbed his daughter as the Geminon airfields died; the moment had finally come. Shelly Godfrey's shuttle on Canceron was rocked; her glasses never moved. Her smile was a testament to God.
"Progress reports arriving the farms of Aerilon are burning," the Hybrid reported, as Eight and Six rejoiced, and Four stared. "The beaches of Canceron are burning the plains of Leonis are burning." Centurions stormed Leonis, dealing death on foot. "The jungles of Scorpia are burning the pastures of Tauron are burning the harbors of Picon are burning the cities of Caprica are burning the oceans of Aquaria are burning the courthouses of Libran are burning the forests of Virgon are burning..." The bodies in the streets were black, at odd angles in the streets, indistinguishable from the statues dropping from the architecture: "The Colonies of Man lie trampled at our feet." The only ones she doesn't mention are the ones protected best by the Gods, Gemenon and Sagittaron; it's a breakaway song, and nobody can hear it, because everyone is dead.
Saul was unkempt, uniform flapping as he charged into CIC; Felix set condition one on a ship that was nearly dead already, and the decks reported, and Saul assured his friend the Fleet was only playing a joke. Everywhere on the ship were tourists and dignitaries, clutching at each other, unwilling to believe what they were hearing. "It's a prank. Come on." Bill felt it coming, though. Death. Saul stared at his oldest friend, afraid to believe him; everywhere in the worlds his children were murdering the brothers he'd forded oceans to come and save.
Simon pushed through the refugees with his daughter in his arms; his brother Four stared at a man with a radio on Colonial Flight 798, listening to the reports. "We just felt another blast here. If anyone can still hear me, are we on? I'm gonna keep broadcasting as long as I can. It keeps getting closer..." The end of the world sounds only ever like confusion.
The Buccaneers were huddled in their camp, shaking and screaming. They wouldn't even listen to their coach. Sam's voice was louder.
Tory was looking flat busted as she pulled herself, broken and bleeding, out of the flipped wreckage of her car on that interstate to Delphi. She was alive because she was running late, because she was in an in-between place. They were her least favorite places, the in-betweens: She liked it better when you knew where you were. It's what saved her. She was so strong, standing in the nuclear wind as the rescue copters set down behind her. She was shellshocked but she was breathing. Something tugged at her memory and she shoved it away.
In the rubble of the Pink Moon Ellen's beautiful legs were served on a bed of blood and shattered glass and scattered snack mix, as something pushed at her: Saul, a world and a thousand lives away, tossing aside wreckage, digging down to her on Cylon. One pushed down toward her and she sighed, breath caught: "This has happened before," she said, and with a shock remembered what comes : "Oh, Gods! Am I going to die?"
There was a white flash, something far away. Saul labored over her, losing hope but desperate to save her, and she finally touched his face. She was calm, and beautiful, and she knew how far the thrashing would get him. Imagine the eyes of something infinitely loving, that's seen just enough of the future to know that the better world is coming. That eventually we will go home. She was joyful, even as she bled out beneath the stones.
But not here, not in the Fall. On Picon there was no comfort and no relief this time, not even God: One took that from his mother too. There was no one to remind her, the way she told Saul last time, that love outlasts death. "No, your suffering isn't over yet. Not when you've got so much left to learn," One gloated, only confusing her more.
In the docking bay Chief Tyrol was so young once, listening to Bill on the PA. "This is the Commander. Moments ago, this ship received word of a Cylon attack against our homeworlds is underway. We do not know the size or the disposition or the strength of the enemy forces. But all indications point to a massive assault against Colonial defenses. How, why, doesn't really matter now. What does matter is that, as of this moment, we are at war."
On Picon, One accompanied his mother into the ambulance. Soon enough, they were assured, they'd join the Fleet; he'd nurse her back to health. She wouldn't remember that time, thankfully; she'd turn it into dreams. The first to mistake One for Adama, but not the last.
Lee listened to his father; Kara was in stir for punching a superior asshole, listening. "You've trained for this. You're ready for this. Stand to your duties, trust your fellow shipmates, and we'll all get through this." Galen forced himself past the rough spot and called his knuckledraggers to attention and they went back to work, putting the world together.
On Caprica Sam led the Bucs across a bridge, Jean Barolay following closely behind; they stood on a bridge and watched the Centurions load up the bodies of their brothers. Their ritual. As they stared -- as Four rolled his eyes and smiled -- a Raider rose suddenly, turning its engines on them as it blasted away. Sam couldn't think what to do, so they kept running. He never wanted this responsibility; he only wanted perfection.
Lee got everybody off Colonial One -- including Edward James Olmos's real-life wife, looking for her husband, who served in the Fleet on Gemenon -- and onto the bay floor. He never wanted this responsibility. In his quarters, temple bleeding, Bill found a note -- There are only 12 Cylon models -- and in the CIC, Gaius sat gingerly, afraid and shaking. And the chase began.
Every 33 minutes, Felix saw the Basestars jumping in, hunting them down, dropping Raiders, and they would jump again. Five days after the Fall, Ellen lay in bed, listening to the alarms, every 33 minutes. She was still wounded, out of it, begging One to tell her his name. The mysterious stranger, the priest wearing her father's face: Her son, who came to her every night. Whom she'd remember, in the months to come, less as a man and more as a feeling, and eventually she'd identify as Bill himself; half-unbelieving, she'd accuse him of rape. She begged One to find her husband, and he nearly laughed at her. He knew she'd never remember.
"Dear Papa," he hummed nastily. "He's here. Of the five that created all the rest of us, four are in this Fleet. Only Father Sam is missing. It's amazing. Does it seem cruel that I'm keeping you alive?" He laughs. Of course it's cruel. All the way from the top. "Who am I kidding? But it's also necessary. For thirty years, you failed to observe the moral failures of humanity, against whom you find me lacking." She went under again, and he nodded, touching her hand. "Get better, Mother. Open your eyes and take a gander at what you think you love." The explosions came again.
A man ran through the camp on Caprica, bearing a Centurion's thigh, as Sam explained the new plan. He got it from a movie, The Tauron Line: Booby-trap a part, and let the Centurions clean it up; let them take it back to their shop and it blows. "Those were the bad guys," Jean pointed out, but Sam didn't care: "We can still make this thing work." And Jean Barolay will never know, never understand after today, what makes a good guy and what makes a bad guy. The world has ended. Simon attacked their plans with cavil after cavil, but Sam was sure. It was a thigh; it was a bomb.
In eight days they'd rationed the food for the survivors. The Marines were only taking photographs of missing people, not yet the dead ones. The Hall of Remembrance was still a place for hope. Bill told Saul not to get complacent: "They're numb. They've lost everything and now we're putting them through the wringer, just trying to get away." Saul knew he was right; the calm wouldn't last. He bumped into One, who could barely keep the smile off his face as his father passed by.
A little boy knocked the leaflets out of One's hand, and he stared after the boy. He looked familiar, somehow. One looked up into Shelly Godfrey's face as she helped him gather them up again, and she smiled joyfully, beaming. Family, again. At the end of the hall, Simon scampered away, back to his family, but they'd already seen him. An officer I don't recognize offered to post the flyers for One, to get him out of there, and he accepted gratefully. There are candles and weeping and incense for the missing already, in the Hall. The flyers themselves are squared, but the lost corners are implied in the graphic:
Do you know about the Plan?
The lessons of the Gods can help.
Private counseling, group prayer.
Contact Brother Cavil.
Shelly Godfrey took her flyer into a meeting room on the Galactica, where a very Tough sister was waiting with a Two and a Five. The nervous Five, in his teal PR-man's jacket, was excited by the very idea of a Plan; One was insulted that neither a Three nor a Four had shown for the meeting. Shelly dutifully raised her hand, noting the Four they saw. "What's the Plan?" asked the Five, and One spat, "The Plan is: Everything blows up a week ago." Shelly nodded. "All the humans are dead, and we Cylons all download, and the universe basks in justice. However..." Tough Six smirked: "It didn't frakking happen!" Exactly. So now, the Four understands, it's up to them. The Plan is murder. "We can all get weapons," the Two says dreamily, "Work separately." One approved. "Over 10,000 victims each," Tough said, with her hand on Two's knee: "We'll be busy..."
But obviously that wouldn't work. Not even Gina could do those numbers. So, Tough knew, they'd have to take out the Galactica herself. "With it gone, the Fleet's dead." Shelly, much to her sister's amusement, studiously noted that they'd also have to think defensively, and cover their tracks. "Very good, Sixes. Now I have assignments I'm gonna give to each of you, along with our sleeper agent... An Eight, I'll talk to her." One took Two out into the ship, and Genocide 2.0 began.
Sam's Buccaneers had been running so fast they became guerillas, with guns, crouching in the underbrush. They came to the edge of a Centurion outpost with their thigh, and waited for their pilot to take them to the place.
On Galactica One told his Two to crack the military signal, so they could listen in, or communicate with the Basestars when they came close again. Two was good with codes and languages, Two loved the Centurions; Two was still waiting for his moment of clarity. Neither of them knew One was handing it to him. "Military are good about scrambling their signals," Two protested, and One scoffed. "The military built the Centurions. Functional, but hardly miraculous." Two didn't love that. "Crack their technology. And send in a Six, dealer's choice."
Jean Barolay spotted a Centurion, finally, as Sue-Shaun came down the embankment toward them. The young guy on the team proudly showed off a bomb he'd rigged: A Pyramid ball, with a detonator inside like a grenade. The woman beside him approved, and Sue-Shaun squealed over the walkie-talkies: The Centurions were taking the bait.
Shelly came to One with all her notes and her glasses, and he congratulated her on the Sixes' ability to differentiate themselves. "Love the look. But it doesn't do any good if there's a mechanism out there that can sniff us out." She nodded, and brought up the Cylon detector Gaius was building. If they destroyed it, she knew, he'd just build another one; her mission, she realized, was then to discredit him. "Well, if he sees one of us, he'll know what we are..." One nodded, and she was proud to have figured it out: "But he can't say anything without saying how he knows!" One calls his little sister smart, and she was proud; he took it away again -- "Or maybe it's the glasses" -- and she was appalled. She was so happy to see him, at first. She gathered her things, he watched her leave, she sent in the Five.
On Caprica the Centurion carried the thigh of its brother toward a great metal box, as the Bucs crowd in from all sides, on hands and knees in the dirt and behind trees; one boy's foot scraped in the dirt and the Centurion fired on them, blowing the whole plan. The toaster fell to its back, scattering pieces of itself explosively, but Jean noticed there was a gap in the shipping container the thing was about to open. Sam wanted to pry it open, but one of them -- the woman who'd appreciated the grenade -- was tired of waiting. Maybe of living. She ran out into the open, threw herself across the Centurion's body, tossed the Pyramid ball to their coach with one swift movement as the thing's bullets ripped through her flesh, and she died on top of it. Sam screamed, out of control, just as Coach blew the hatch on the container and the Raiders appeared in the sky. Jean pulled him away, out of the firefight, and Sam screamed. His people were down there, scattered around the camp, cover blown and waiting to die, but Jean wouldn't hear it. She piloted him past fear, she pulled him back, into the forest, as he wept.
On Galactica, One informed Five that his model was underperforming overall. "One of your counterparts managed to get himself outed back on Ragnar Station," he reminds us, which is how the whole thing started. Five was mystified by that, although he said he'd heard it was because of Gaius somehow. "I'm not talking about that, exactly. I'm talking about the fact that you're walking around this Fleet wearing that jacket." Five loves his jewel tones. "And more importantly, that face. You're recognizable." Five just didn't get it; he was thrown. "His jacket was burgandy. This is teal." (I've always missed the Fives the most, of all the stories we never got. He's so cute and he's so dumb and he's so mean. But then, I'm still holding out for the Final Five movie, although wouldn't that make a kick-ass finale for Caprica one day many years from now?) One dropped a new garment on the table, and Aaron Doral swallowed hard. "They call this a suicide vest, but I think that undersells all the homicide that goes along with it, don't you?"
"Even robots take their dead," Sam muttered, once Jean had gotten him away from the fight. "There was nothing... I don't know what I'm doing!" Jean begged him to take it easy, to pull it together, but he fell down in front of her, just came to pieces. So she became harder.
On the ninth day, Two sat in his room, playing with his rigged radio, listening to the chatter. Scrolling through the noise and signals, until he could hear her voice. "Listen up," Kara said. "Stay with your wingmen, keep your interval and remember your training." He smiled at her voice; he was already in love. He'd found his moment of clarity; he'd become Leoben. The Hybrid beneath his skin began to move; he focused on her, singing like the voice of God. "On my mark, kick in your burners. Three, two, one, mark. All right, here they come. Ready, break! WOOO!" He grinned, he gloried in her triumph; as she broke away and the signal shivered, he rushed to fix on it again. He followed the sound of her voice like a polestar as she gunned down Raiders, one after the other.
One retrieved a wooden elephant from his things; hearing a sound he looked between the pews of his chapel, and found the little boy. He kicked at them, viciously. "Hey. This is a chapel, not a bus station. You can't sleep here." The boy stared at him and left; One stared after him. Long after he was gone.
Galen laughed at Simon's wife Giana as she reached for O2 cylinders on a high shelf in the engine room, and pulled them down for her. "I'm swapping out the oxygen cylinders on Raptor 702," she explained, but the Chief told her to leave it. "Until two weeks ago, I used to inspect the aircraft for Sun Airways. If I found cylinders in that condition, you'd be looking at a shutdown," she shrugged, and he grinned to himself. "All right, well, grab the spares." There weren't any, of course; she scanned every shelf before accepting it, and the Chief laughed brightly. "Welcome to the Galactica!"
Boomer entered and Galen cleared his throat, suddenly nervous. He introduced her to the new knuckledragger, and she asked him if he needed her for anything. Giana grinned to herself as he stuttered out nothings and Boomer left again, and asked him once she was gone how long they'd been together. "I've seen office romances before. My old job was full of them." Galen, pretending innocence, asked if that was how she met Simon. "He's a medic in the Colonial Fleet. At least he used to be. Our romance had different obstacles. There's always something." The Chief made his thinky face, and once again claimed he had no idea; the Chief giggled, caught in the lie, and that's how Giana made her first friend.
In Boomer's quarters, changing into her off-duty stuff, she found the elephant lying on the bed, and after turning on the light and staring at it for awhile, she became an Eight again. Just for a little while. She touched the elephant, and brought the two parts of herself into the light for a second. She tried to hate that girl, that Sharon Valerii, but couldn't ever seem to do it.
Troy was a satellite of Aerilon, the foodbasket of the Colonies; it was agreed the irony was appealing: Make the sleeper agent a Trojan, in name as well as deed. Gina Inviere told her she'd be fine. "I'm glad you do, because I feel like I'm gonna die or something," said Eight. To be gone, all the way, like a true death; to live somewhere in the crannies of a girl with a family and a name and a serial number. "Well, in a way you are," Gina said, smiling to soften the blow. "But when you wake up, you're gonna begin a whole new life. A human life, with a human name. Sharon Valerii."
And you will fall in love, and you will be hated, and betrayed in ways so vicious only humans could divine them; you will be twisted into a monstrous machine that prays and waits for death, huddled in the darkness. You will be so human it will burn you out, and then you will be nothing at all. But you will know love. It will guide you; the need to love and be loved in return will pilot you all the way into the black. Sharon smiled at Gina Inviere; they wouldn't see each other again and didn't expect to. And the Six Boomer saw, she'd have known love too. She would be broken by it, and remade.
Free of Sharon for the moment, Eight told One about Galactica's dwindling water supplies, and offered the suggestion that somebody blow the tanks. He was delighted. "Do it as soon as possible. And after you download, remember to report the position of the Fleet." She wasn't sure she could do it; he didn't want to hear that. "My cover. It's stronger than expected. And there are some people onboard Galactica that have a hold on me." She smiled. "Chief Tyrol loves me." He was intrigued -- not offended, note, the way he would and will be when a human dares to touch his father -- and laughed, a high whinny, but refuses to explain. "You're a machine, Eight. Go get some explosives, blow up the tank, and then have a fatal accident. Right now, I'm late for dinner." He left her there, taking the elephant's memory with him, and she slowly woke up from the nightmare again.
One joined the O'Neills at their dinner, where Giana and Simon were thanking the Gods before their meal. "So it is you!" he snorted. I thought I recognized you from the other day. How come you didn't stop by?" He introduced himself to Giana, and Simon awkwardly explained that One was his childhood priest. "Is this your family?" Simon smiled peacefully at One, but couldn't say the words aloud. Giana introduced him to their daughter -- from her first marriage -- and invited him to join them. One kept moving. "Stop by sometime!" he suggested darkly to Simon, "And remember, I know where you live." Simon nodded stiffly and bowed his head.
Jean and Sam snuck up to a job site, where Cylons loaded bodies onto trucks, dumped them in mass graves. All the ugliness Three wouldn't have to deal with, when she came to plant her trees. There were body parts everywhere; Jean choked on the smell. The workers began to speak to each other: "I didn't think it would be so hot and dirty," Five said to himself; he commiserated with himself about the smell. "The Centurions should be doing this," he complained, and went back to work. Jean looked on the faces of the Fives, and began to lose it; she cried in his arms and he begged her to be silent. He carried her away from them, shushing softly to her, humming comfort as they went.
The time Eight surfaced she was dripping wet. "I was underwater and I started to lose it -- to lose who I am. I didn't know where I was and... I started to panic, and I tried to breathe..." One told her to calm down, reminding her they shouldn't need to breathe. "I'm not sure if we should detonate the charges," she said, showing the weakness in her model once again. "I mean, these humans, there are so few of them. They're no threat." The thing that made her perfect for the mission is what made her such a liability. "They are manifestly a threat. They're a threat because of the power they have to make you do this. Of all Cylons, you should see that." She looked away; he advised her out of her clothes, prurient in his eyes and voice, but she was still too much Sharon to obey. "Fine," he said, bringing the elephant out of her pocket again, "Be a prude." As he walked away, she fell back into her wonderful dream.
Boomer stared at the water dripping down, onto the flooring, and was terrified. She ran to the Chief, who told her someone was setting her up. "You wake up somewhere, you don't know how you got there or anything? You're drugged. Or manipulated, or who knows what. Something." She was terrified; there was nobody to tell but him. "If I report what's happened, they're gonna think I'm a Cylon agent." He couldn't understand why they would think that; he was confused and terrified, but that would be crazy. "People are getting crazy, okay? You heard the rumors. Cylons who look like humans, sleeper agents hiding in the Fleet..." That's when the tank blew. Mission accomplished. The water vented out, into space. The Fleet was crippled. And later, she would heal it, bending herself against the Eight inside until she nearly screamed.
Jean and Sam led the Buccaneers back to the job site; the Fives' work trucks went beep-beep when they reversed. The team stared down at the bodies. One stood in the middle of the crew, wearing a leather hat and duster, but they didn't see him in the mass of bodies and stinking death; when the shooting started and the Fives started dropping, he jumped into the middle of a pile of bodies, waiting silently for the turkey shoot to end. The Buccaneers cheered themselves on, congratulating themselves as they took the crew down, one by one. And when the shooting was done, Cavil sent up one pitiful, hilarious hand, calling out piteously, "Help! Somebody help me!" And when Sam came down the hillside, to rescue him, Cavil couldn't keep the love out of his eyes.
Day 17. Saul followed Aaron Doral quietly down the corridor, calling quietly for a security detail on a bulkhead phone. Bill arrived, and with Saul by his side he called out to Aaron. The Five turned, and smiled, and pulled open his jeweled jacket, revealing the bombs strapped to him underneath it. And when he blew, Saul covered Bill's body with his own. The secret was out. The Marines cordoned and canvassed, showing pictures of Aaron to anybody they saw; Leoben lurked in the hall, clutching his radio, as they passed by. He was very proud of himself, like a rat in the walls.
The Buccaneers brought supply trucks back from the worksite, having pulled together quite an array of weapons and supplies. I love that word materiel, I wish it meant something better. Cavil sat easily in the back of one truck, with Sam; they're identical to the trucks the New Caprica Police will be using the day they manage to kill fucking everybody but Cally, Laura and Zarek. Cavil cleared his throat, put on his mysterious stranger vibe and his priest's smile, and once again began to put God on trial.
"You know, there are those who think this current devastation is punishment for man's sins." Sam asked if that was what Cavil believed, and he answered honestly. "I don't believe it's 'punishment from the Gods,' no. But perhaps... Perhaps the Cylons have assumed the role that the Gods once had..." Sam, perfect wonderful Sam, shivered. "That's a pretty trippy thought," he said, and Cavil nodded sarcastically. "Yeah? Well, they're 1) smiting us pretty well, and 2) there's certainly an abundance of sins to judge..." But Sam couldn't hear him; all he could hear is guilt. "Do you, you know, hear confessions?" Cavil first nodded and agreed, then -- thinking about it more -- began to relish the idea. To hear the confession of God. Sam nods, gratefully, and they exit. Standing there to welcome the trucks back home is Simon; when Sam introduces them there is joy in their reunion. "Maybe a man of the Gods will bring us some luck around here, eh?"
There's an incomplete but intended parallel here, between the Simon with Cavil and the married Simon that keeps running away from One. You can see it, the shape of it, but this is where it starts and it's hard to see at first. One chastens Simon for taking his time; he recalls a Three who also had a problem keeping her appointments. (How long did D'Anna take making that documentary, anyhow?) One explained that he's letting her take her time getting the information, but meanwhile, he asked, was Simon aware of the suicide Aaron? Very courageous. Simon promised to help in other ways, and One scoffed. "I'm a medic. There are other things that I can do." One knew: "The serial-killer option. That's a fine, fine option." He doesn't know it yet, but the Sagittaron are dying down in sickbay. If he'd knew, perhaps he'd have loved that doctor more. Simon was uncomfortable, as One asked him why he was so reluctant to help his people, but then he laughed.
"This is all improv, isn't it? You're scared, you're outmanned. You're surrounded by humans who weren't supposed to be alive in the first place." The Plan was that there wasn't a plan that didn't immediately fall to pieces. "No one was supposed to be alive!" One shouted, pacing like a tiger. "Our people were supposed to be positioned to cause destruction, not mop up afterwards! My Two was the Defense Minister's yoga instructor, if you can believe that, and one of the Sixes was a prostitute. But the only one in a position to do any frakking damage was a Five on this ship, and he frakked it up! Now the universe still has these cockroaches in it, and we can't have any peace until we step on them all." One laughed to himself, choking on it. "And don't you think for a moment that I'm gonna be moved by the sweet, adorable fact that you married one of them. You come back tomorrow, and we'll talk about you blowing up that ship you live on."
Day 24, Shelly Godfrey was finally in position, shouting at Gaius while Bill stood by, watching carefully, speaking only the truth. "You're the one who let the Cylons into the defense mainframe. You betrayed your Colony, your home, your entire race!" Gaius stared her down; she had tears in her eyes. She wasn't really talking about him anymore. "You're the man responsible for the Holocaust, and I'm here to see that you're exposed and sentenced to death as the traitor you really are." She produced a disc containing a photo of Gaius, sneaking into the mainframe. He leaned closer, nervous, investigating, but when she dropped the bomb -- "As you can see, the man in the photo is carrying an explosive device" -- he really started freaking out. She kept her back straight.
"I got you, Hot Dog! We're going to make it through this. Break right. Now! Now! Now!" Leoben listened to his little radio, smiling at her voice. On the wall of his little room, he painted them: Three concentric circles, red and yellow and blue.
"It's all right, Hot Dog. You did good. You're gonna be okay, I promise you. At least one of us will..." Leoben nodded to her, to himself, to God. He rewound the tape. He listened to the pilots, in the black.
"It's all right, Hot Dog. You did good. You're gonna be okay, I promise you. At least one of us will." He smiled. At least one of them. He smiled, at the stars.
On the mirror in Sharon's locker, someone had written the word, Cylon, in bright yellow paint. Eight brought the elephant to One in the chapel, as he lit his candles. He knew as well as she did that she was losing it. He knew as well as she did that the "someone" who wrote it -- as a warning, or a threat to pull off the last mission, or a caution against it -- was herself. "One old man," One whined, and Eight shrugged. "He's like a father to me." One nearly slapped her. "He is your father. All mankind are our fathers. And that's the sin for which they deserve to die."
Eight began to weep, shaking her head with the impossible weight. "I'm happier when I'm under. I'm happier when I'm human. I like myself." She nearly smiled, in the light of it: "I love myself then."
One decided then that she should die; One put his arm around his youngest, sweetest sister, and held her tight as she sniffed the tears away. "Never say that. Never, never, never. Because if that were true, they win. And they can't." She tried to be brave. She tried to fight her way back, to Eight, away from Sharon Valerii. "Look at me," he ordered, and then more softly: "Look at me." Finally, she did. "They know your lies? I know you." She needed a father, he tried to give her one. Sweetly, he promised: "You can do this. You can kill Adama." He took her chin in his hand, like a father. "For me." He leaned in, and kissed her. And she kissed him back. What else could she do? She was still so much younger than Sharon, after all that time asleep. She smiled, and basked in his approval, and pushed herself under again.
Gaius shoved his way into Shelly's bathroom stall, screaming. "I want answers, and I want them now! And I am not interested in playing any more of your stupid games!" She was, of course, appalled, and tried to get away, but he shoved her back -- behind the door, into the hot ugly room, into the darkness -- and began to scream. And every word was true. "You're a fake! You're just a copy. Another Cylon copy." Nothing like the woman he still couldn't admit he loved. Nothing at all. It hurt her, desperately. She'd felt Sarah's love pouring through her veins, every time she'd looked at him, the setup and the payoff, and now they were coming for him. Mission accomplished. But Sarah (Caprica, now) and Shelly always had more in common than they didn't.
She couldn't know how cruel the angel was being with him, how she was twisting his feelings around themselves, how she left the moment Shelly appeared. How many reasons he had to hate her. All she knew was the impossibility of the mission, and the fact that she'd achieved it. She slammed the door against it. Against him. "Struck a nerve, have I? Which I find rather impossible to believe! You think this is over?" He bashed against the door, performing quite a tantrum -- "This is not over! You have not heard the last! No more Mr. Nice Gaius!" -- but he'll never know what she was doing on the other side of that door. She was weeping, and she was beating first her fists and then her head against the doorframe, begging him to stop.
Leoben came to One to plead for Kara Thrace, having listened along in realtime as she returned in her jury-rigged Raider during the maiden flight of the Laura Roslin; he laughed with sheer delight. "Nobody taught her how! Kara Thrace plucked that knowledge from the stream..." One shut him down, exhausted. "I don't care if she plucked puppies from God's ass! You're worse than the frakking Sixes." Leoben promised One that Kara had a destiny, as One's face soured: "She has a destiny. Something beyond us. I'm starting to understand why God loved humankind... Before he changed his mind...?"
One shook his head; too close. The trial, the experiment depends on anonymity. You can't burn off what doesn't work if everybody's in on it. The angels can't ever win back God's love if they start falling for humans, if they start saving them: The humans will always win. Lucifer failed because humans always win, because their love is a choice. It outlasts death. There's no point even creating Hell, much less populating it, when the deck is stacked like this. Everything goes into the Recycling Bin, One knows, because if even one human is left then Ellen and Saul and the rest of them will always choose the human. And that's the hate that drives him.
"If you get a chance," One snarled, "You kill her." Especially her, now that she'd invaded his forces like a virus. And then with the clanging boots coming down the hallway, awesomely, he bounced like so -- "But right now, you've got other problems" -- and vanished like a stage-right Snagglepuss. And elsewhere, they were bringing Gaius into custody, and he was as usual begging for his attorney, and on Caprica Cavil and Four were sniping at each other about their relative lack of success in picking off the C-Bucs; Cavil had promised to bring in a strike, but he was stalling, for reasons he still wasn't sure about. "Thing is, I promised to hear his confession. And we men of the Gods keep our promises." And Four -- busily poisoning their meds and fucking up treatments -- wasn't loving that, but Four couldn't know the real reason Cavil was so hungry for Sam to confess.
Something complicated happened, a shell game of sorts, wherein One grabbed Shelly out of the corridor as the Marines pursued after her, and a madly grinning Six -- maybe Tough? -- crammed on her glasses and put a blonde wig over her darker hair and headed off, further down the hall, and turned a corridor before pulling a Supergirl, so the Marines were just totally buffaloed, and One and Shelly meanwhile headed off in the other direction.
While Felix was freeing Gaius from his cell, having disproved Shelly's photo manipulation -- "It was almost too easy, like she wanted to be found out," he said lovingly -- and Gaius was patting him gently on the leg, thinking nothing of it, Shelly and One were heading through the pilots' head, where a very deliberate penis could be seen in the forest of breasts and thighs. Shelly worried after the other Six, but One assured her she was fast. "She's almost beyond human," he marveled. High praise indeed; I guess she's Tough Six.
Everybody freaked out and yelled at everybody else about the disappearance of Shelly Godfrey, who faked the photo and vanished, and Bill just about shit a brick, staring at her glasses, still lying on the CIC bridge where she'd abandoned them. And moving down an abandoned corridor, One asked Shelly if they'd trashed Gaius's machine yet, but she wasn't sure. "Trying to make a guilty man look guilty. It should be so easy," he complained, and she shrugged. "We had to fake the evidence. Baltar, he helped us so much on Caprica..." One started to wig out about that, accusing her of getting "addicted" to him like Sarah did, and she stamps her foot. "I'm not addicted! Baltar's a brilliant man, yes, but you should've seen me. I was brutal with him, I pushed him!"
Shelly was adorable, not to mention hilarious, but One wasn't having it: "You pushed him. My dear, if you pushed him, you would have sent him through a wall." He pointed her to an airlock, and she begged him to wait, suddenly afraid. "I could blend into life on another ship... With another disguise..." She was afraid, suddenly, of losing this life; that only made him want her gone faster. Too close, again. Too many moving pieces. "And don't forget to give them our coordinates. I want this finished." She stood there -- you know how good an actress she is -- going through fifteen thoughts one by one, steeling herself, learning to hate him, learning to hate, and she pushed past him to the airlock hatch, and then she was gone.
Day 25, Kara was interrogating Leoben. "I see the truths that float past you in the stream," he said, trying to explain that love was all he knew. He began to smudge his blood along the desk; he nearly drew the first circle. "You have a real thing about rivers and streams, don't you? I think we should indulge you in your obsession," she said, nodding to the Marines, and they went out to get her waterboarding stuff. She sat down across from him, and he explained to her that she was in danger. "Do you realize I could kill you before they came back in the room? I could get to my feet, rip your skull from your spinal column, crash through that door. Kill the guard in less time than it has taken me to describe it to you." And why wasn't he, then? "It's not the time," he explained; she rolled her eyes and laughed. She thought he was bluffing, and bullshitting, until he did it.
Leoben flashes in the stream, staring at her with the Marines at the door, holding her by the throat; she holds Casey's hand like a mother; he fucks her against the whitewashed paint in a dream of a maelstrom; she smiles in that peace, fulfilled, in the moment of her death. He sees it all, and it rests upon his shoulders, and he lets her go. He breathes in the stream, and she is terrified by him. He stares at her; at her beauty, and all the things he'll have to do.
One watched Sam, play-fighting with his people in the rain; his heart ached. Kara met Leoben's hand at the airlock hatch, matching him hand-to-hand, and said goodbye. And on Laura's word, he was gone too. After Gaius left her, Boomer sat shaking in her bunk, trying to collect all herselves at once, in her hands; she choked on it. She shook her head, she manned up, she put the gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger.
The boy was back. One looked back from the altar, leaving his prayer beads, and asked the child if he was a war orphan. He shook his head, and One nodded. "So you have parents. Do they want you?" The boy shook his head, embarrassed and ashamed. Grieving beyond the words for it. In this moment I knew his name. So did you.
Perhaps Brother John Cavil did, too. Maybe he felt all that was good in him, surging up. "Well, two decks below, there's a room, and there's people in that room that are in charge of children that nobody wants." The boy wasn't interested. He was so angry. His anger was a root, connecting him to the center of the ship. Such dignity. And his need for love was the anchor that brought him here, to One. To Brother John Cavil. "All right, don't go there. But go somewhere." He was begging; you'd never hear it in his voice but you could see it in his eyes. Begging the child to leave his sight, and take all the questions with him. The boy leaves, ignored and hated once again, and One stands at the altar, staring after him long after he is gone.
Boomer assured her Commander that she was much better off than her bandaged face might suggest; they all tacitly agreed to write off an obvious suicide attempt as merely an accidental discharge, because there were no replacements and crazy was not an option. "Things are moving very quickly, and I need every pilot... I have a very special mission for you and I won't kid around. It's high risk, extremely high risk." She nodded, and so quietly you could barely hear, she agreed to the mission: To nuke a Basestar. To kill every sister as they stood before her, speaking to the Eight inside like Stockdale's men: "We love you. We love you. We love you."
When Giana came home that day, Simon had completely unraveled. His eyes were lit, first with anger and confusion, and then with madness. He kept at her, complaining about their tests on the Raider Kara brought back until she hurt his feelings -- "It's the strangest thing. Half alive!" -- and then getting mean. She was shocked, and he turned it into mania. "It's just that we just barely escaped with our lives and it seems like we ought to be living them, don't you think? Not working all night? Ignoring the child? Is that why we escaped, so you can be a frakking mechanic?" She was astounded; she jerked away from him. So many strange little places, in his heart. The way he went cold sometimes. "Grease under your nails. Look at them! You want to touch your daughter with these hands, baby?"
Their daughter began to cry, as Giana reminded him that she hated every part of the job as much as he suddenly did. "But everyone's doing what they can..." Simon capered angrily while the girl cried: "That's very, very good! Why waste time sleeping? There's an entire race of Cylons out there trying to rip out our frakking throats. We need to spend every moment that we can living. Right?" He grabbed his wife, roughly, trying to dance. Trying to feel everything at once. Scaring the piss out of them both. Giana took the girl and ran; and for a moment Simon knew nothing but rage. But the hole they left, when they were going, he can't turn it off. And he rapidly becomes something new. He is twisted into new shapes by love, and he knows what he must do.
Day 51. Sharon Valerii killed all evidence of her sisters, her sin, her shame. She joined Racetrack on the bridge -- past Lee, in chains for sedition and collusion with the President -- and was congratulated by her Commander for the first major act of deterrent destruction in the war. "You carried out a very difficult and dangerous mission, and you did it despite any personal misgivings you may or may not have had. And for that, I'm very proud." He shook Racetrack's hand, and Sharon's hand reached for his in turn, but Eight had put a gun in it.
She went hard, and cold, and fired. And as he stumbled, falling onto his back, and the world became just screaming and alarms, she stepped toward him again, and fired. They wrestled her to the floor, and Lee held his father in his arms. And as she submerged again, to wonder what she'd done, he was screaming for them both. "Dad! Dad! Dad! Come on!"
"Thus is the beast decapitated," One smirked, and Simon agreed to blow up the Cybele, on the condition that his family be kept safe. "No. You don't want that. You see, if they die now, they'll die without ever knowing what you are."
That night, One changed into his pajamas and got into bed with a woman -- the Tough Six, with her dominatrix gear and stripy hair -- and she sleepily asks what the latest commotion was about. "That was the Four. Oh, and Boomer shot the Commander." He gets into bed, a single, and grumpy-cutely tells her to move her arm. "There's not much more down [things] could go," Six ruminates. "The Six failed, the Two failed..." He says they are a Fleet-killing machine that just needs to warm up, and then she jacks him off and it's totally gross. We find our pilots when we need them.
Day 52. Saul stared down at Bill, begging him to come back to life, well aware that he was about to fuck things up tremendously somehow but entirely unsure as to how he was going to inevitably do it. He was only thirty; he was in his sixties; he was two thousand years old. Bill was the only thing he knew.
"You shot him. But you didn't kill him? You didn't kill him. And things were finally going well..." Eight was horrified. "What do you want from me? I shot him twice in the chest!" One leaned well through the bars, scary and funny at once: "How about once in the head? Did you think of that?" She swore once again that she wasn't in control; that Sharon was winning every fight. "The only way that I could get this done was to turn myself into a Centurion." Disgusted, with flat affect: "I could feel my skin turning hard, I could feel the bullets moving through the channels under my hard metal skin, I couldn't feel my heartbeat." One adored the sentiment, but she spat at him.
"If there was any part of us that's human, in that moment, I killed that." He swore that was the entire idea, and congratulated her. "I need you," he said, "And I need to break a string of failures..." He wasn't hearing her; she shook her head in horror again: "I lost the best part of myself." And that's all it took. Into the Recycling Bin she went, with all the unearned cruelty that being human earns you. "All right," he said, tossing the elephant in his pocket, saying goodbye as she faded out for the last time: "I see how this is. Goodbye, Eight, and good luck."
Sharon Valerii stared at the man through the bars, confused and angry. "I don't want a priest," she said. And he looked her in the eye, this traitor to the Fleet, and dug his heel into her heart: "And you deserve no absolution." And when the priest was gone, long into the night, as she sang herself strange songs, Sharon Valerii just couldn't kick the feeling he was right.
Cavil came running to the HQ on Caprica, breathlessly tattling on Kara and Helo: "I think I've seen them before! Another one of her, and maybe him!" Sam nodded, and the teams moved out. And while they were brokering their fight and eventual peace, Simon asked Cavil what was really going on. The hope, Cavil explained, was that both sides would just destroy each other. "I wish I could watch," he chuckled unconvincingly, but Simon loved it. The guns went crazy and wild, and things ended in a standoff we've already seen, and Simon made fun of Cavil until they were all home safe.
Of all the angry faces in the corridor the day Boomer died, the one that makes me saddest looking back is Jammer. Dualla stood with him as they marched Sharon down the hall, still confused and afraid; Cally stepped out into the space, and fired. Jealousy is never about anger directed outwards; it's the rage from acknowledging our own lack. And the last thing Nature Girl said was "I love you, Chief." By the end, maybe that's all she was; maybe her jealousy was only that she'd learned too late.
Simon made love to Giana that night, way graphically as a matter of fact; he was replacing something with something else. They loved each other, very much. After their loud, insane orgasms, he told her he was sorry and she kissed his fear away; she thought he meant about the 'sode, but really it was about what he was going to do . He wept, alone, setting a bomb in the Cybele that would never explode; with the flashlight in his mouth, he took one last look at the picture of his family, and airlocked himself.
Tough Six was drunk, and wild. I can't shake the feeling that One was just playing house a new way, House Of Yes-style: You Be Ellen, I'll Be Saul. I wanted to call her Helen, or Hard Six. "You want a progress report? I'll give you a frakking progress report," she said, bouncing around in her panties as he begged her to stop. "Oh come on, it is spectacular. Doral blew himself up, causing minor damage to a minor hallway. Boomer jettisoned the water, and then she personally found loads more water!" I love this so much. One was embarrassed, they were adorable.
Tough put on her shoes and the most unbelievably awesome hoodie while delivering the rest of the awesome speech: "...And then she shot Adama... But not very accurately, since she loved him. And then Leoben? He got obsessed with Kara Thrace, and then was captured! And airlocked! And my sister Six utterly failed to discredit Baltar and his dreamy hair --" Cavil laughed along, as though even a robot wouldn't have to admit Gaius was one salty morsel back in the day, and she continued, "-- And destroyed our frakking cover in the process. And now Simon..."
She's disgusted now, really upset and angry at this one: "Simon killed himself, really killed himself, out of Resurrection range, without blowing up the ship that he lived on, because he couldn't imagine life without his little human wife and his little human daughter, because he loves..." They were both too drunk to stop. He begged her to stop. She finally nodded, and he nearly wept. "Why are they letting you down, One? What's the x-factor?" Murky waters; inky islets and aching archipelagos. She straddled him, but only to get to the door, leaving the room with bottle in hand; the answer was staring them in the face but they were both too warped now to see it: "Can't declare war on love," she hissed, and he didn't even notice she was gone. "I think I already did."
Saul ordered Giana to a briefing room to question her; Galen came along in case he got shitty, which he does in about three seconds. "Some of the electronics involved in overriding airlock security are pretty sophisticated," Saul began, and at the Chief's insistence reminded himself it wasn't an interrogation. "Do you think he was a Cylon because he killed himself?" Giana, in shock, honestly wanted to know. "We could use more Cylons like that, huh?" Dark, even for Galen. At least in those days.
Giana told him to cram it, and Saul reminded her that he never mentioned that word. "Good," she said, nearly angry now. "Sir, I don't know how he knew how to rig an airlock, but he was a smart man. He learned it somewhere." She knew it wasn't murder, because he left a note. She produced it, and Saul's eyes blinked a little faster in reading it. "Love outlasts death." His shame kept him from meeting her eyes again, and he dismissed them. "May I have that back," she gulps, weeping, and when she leaves that room her heart is broken.
Day 53. Simon and Cavil sat in the resistance camp barracks, listening to Kara and Sam flirting and then fucking; Cavil was disgusted. "She got a glimpse of me, but she didn't react. So, if there's a One up in that Fleet, she didn't see him. At least not enough to ring a bell in her tiny brain." Simon laughed at him when he asked what they were doing, and Cavil's stomach turned over. "Oh, for God's sake, why?" Because he loves her, Simon explained.
One was offended, and every joke Simon made -- Sam loved Kara "vigorously"; she was only "beneath him" half the time -- made him angrier, but Simon couldn't know how angry it made Cavil, even now. To sit there and listen to them, these Satanic verses: Her filthy hands on his father's chest. Because he loved her, because he took that love and gave it to a human, whose life was worth nothing: Sophia, Mary Magdalene. Yoko Ono. Disgust pushed Cavil so hard in that moment that he sold her. Anything to get her away from Sam. Not enough to separate them, or kill her: She needed to be destroyed. She needed to be punished. All those dirty parts. "This is wrong! Don't you Fours have a little place, a... What do you call it, a ranch? No: A Farm." When Simon smiled; he showed all of his teeth.
In Cavil's ugliest moment, his brother was given a moment of mercy. One spotted the little boy again -- Was he real? Was he ever real, or merely flesh and blood? -- outside the chapel hatch, and finally gestured him inside. The pilot lingered on the doorframe for a moment, unsure if it were time to go. The opportunity for change blooms suddenly, like a flame; it fades even faster.
The chess game continued, down on Caprica, as Simon and Cavil sipped their coffee and waited for the reports to flood back: The ambush, Karl Helo and Sam under heavy fire as Kara went down, and was taken. Soon enough, they did. Sam ran into the HQ, shrieking and afraid. Cavil and Simon tried to help, but Sam was too far gone. They got Sue-Shaun; One assumes that Kara was killed instantly, as Simon watched them all. Sam, gearing up and screaming, revved for a moment before heading back out to find her, shouting for Helo as he went. "He should let her go," Cavil muttered mildly, sipping on his coffee.
One sat in his quarters, finishing a meal; all alone, now that Tough Six was gone. He shoved his uneaten food across the table, scraping it as he called the boy in, pointing carelessly at the plate when the boy appeared. The boy descended on the food, so hungry, and One laid himself like a spider along his bunk, watching carefully and considering him: This innocent child. One asked himself a very simple question.
Sam finally returned to camp, wrapped himself in a blanket and sat before the bonfire as the sun rose. One joined him, warming hands at the fire. It only took a bit of small talk before Sam, unmanned, began to unburden himself. "Frak, if you're looking for a strong leader, you picked a bad time..." Cavil looked at him, uncertainly. "Bless me, Brother, for I have acted against the example of the Gods..." Cavil nodded, bidding him to continue in Their name. "At the very beginning of this, they wanted to give me all this responsibility and I didn't want it. Just wanted to get out of it. You know, I wanted to leave." A crazy low, lovely song starts, reminiscent of that one strange Bulldog episode: "And one time, I tried. It was just after this thing we did. I was so frakked up. I took this stupid idea from a movie. People died, I couldn't handle it. I wanted to run. I just wanted to get out."
But, Cavil pointed out, he changed his mind. "Well, no. Barolay was there, and she was gonna see me run. And suddenly I find myself worrying about my own frakking reputation? So I didn't run. And that's my confession: I'm a Godsdamn coward, Brother." Was that good enough? Good, for his father to see the weak places, to feel ashamed; to hate his humanity. But there was more to get. "I suppose you were. But what about now?" Sam grinning, and shook his head. "I'm not gonna run anymore. Maybe I'm stronger, or maybe I'm just more insane..." Cavil assured him the experience -- for Sam, an entire life, thirty years; for Cavil, one more iteration of a game without end -- changed him for the better: "You've learned." Sam shrugged, and asked for his absolution. Cavil gave it easily, before continuing. It wasn't long before Sam was protesting loudly.
"Now Sam, uh, listen. Given that this Holocaust was a journey of learning for you... Can you forgive the Cylons? Because if you can, that's really... Transcendent?" Sam told him several times and without hesitation to STFU, but Cavil needed this desperately. It was his purpose. "I mean, they must've had a purpose. Something must've made them... Humanity had so much sin. They made you put all these dead on your shoulders..." Sam finally left him then, narrowly avoiding his natural inclination, which was to punch the shit out of the old priest for saying these things.
And when his father had taken away, with hatred in his eyes, Cavil felt something like loneliness. Simon sat with him, and Cavil tried to explain. "I thought he'd learned. But he loves..." Simon finally noticed that Cavil was fucking up the Plan worse than anybody else on Caprica, and finally asked what was really going on. "What does this man mean to you?" One stood, feeling wild, and suddenly marched away; Simon asked him where he was going, but he didn't get an answer that made sense. If Simon had known, about the Final Five, and Sam -- about the trial of God -- he still wouldn't have understood Cavil's answer, that day down on Caprica. What was piloting him. Simon would have thought it meant Lucifer was right, and God had sided against the angels; he would have thought Sam failed.
"As long as any humans exist, there's no room for us."
On the Farm, Kara murdered Simon with a broken mirror and, after bashing hell out of a Six, escaped. Traumatized by the sight of another Simon, and held down by gunfire for a moment, she looked up to see Sam and the rescue crew, and she came back to the world of the living once again. Sam sent Jean back to the camp to kill their Simon, and Kara ran to join them.
On Day 280, Chief called for religious counseling after the regrettable incident with Cally's face, and came to meet Brother Cavil for the first time. His father was a Gemenese priest, his mother an Oracle. His first question was this: "How do you know that I am human?"
Giana was crouched against the wall in a secluded part of the machine bay when Galen found her; they'd just learned about the Simons, and she'd seen a picture of her husband with C-Bucs, down on Caprica. She was taking it pretty well. Only Galen knew what that felt like, in all the world. "He was a Cylon. I thought he loved me..." Galen wondered aloud, for the first time, if that wasn't possible. "Someone made him do it," Giana protested, begging him to agree. "Don't you think? I mean, they keep finding more of them, and they must've been in contact. Someone was making decisions." He warms to the idea. "I think Simon was told to do something, and instead he killed himself." Galen nods, daring himself to believe. "Boomer was a better shot than that."
"When she shot the Old Man. She was a better shot than that. It's like she frakked it up on purpose, knowing that the Marines would take her head off right then and there, knowing that it was the only way out she could see." Giana asked him, then, if that didn't make them heroes, in a way. He could almost get there, with her. She began to weep again. "If I thought I was a Cylon, I'd climb this ladder, all the way up there. I'd do it with style." Not some bunk, not some gun to the head. "I'd swan-dive out of this life..."
Giana smiled to herself; in the weeks and months since then he'd begin to dream about it. His dream foot, rising up one step at a time, all the way to the top. Galen almost wept for her, for himself; he kissed her instead. Not a romantic kiss, not anything but the need to connect. Like Caprica to the broken Six, years hence. Once this movie gets awesome it doesn't stop. Galen sat back, amazed and a little appalled at himself, and apologized; she smiled and brushed her hand across the curly hairs at the back of his neck, like a sister. Of all of them, of any human in the Fleet, they were the only two that held this secret. They held the wheel together; two machinists become pilots for the moment. They sat quietly until her breathing slowed, and she could look at the picture of Simon; she smiled at him: Her husband. Her tears began to dry.
"You think you're a Cylon," Cavil said, as Galen remembered his dreams. "That's what you're afraid of, isn't it? That you might be a Cylon and not even know it, just like Boomer. Right?" Into the swan-dive, arms thrown out. Demanding love. "That's the thought that's crippling your soul," Cavil said, begging Galen once again to submit to the trial; to be at peace with it. His fingers drummed against the desk. "Does that frighten you? The idea of putting your trust in others?" Galen nodded. "I've done it," Cavil said, stretching the moment out. "And they all let me down. Every single one. Every single one. So yeah, it should scare the frak out of you." He left Galen horrified; the Gods died that day. His father was a Priest, his mother was an Oracle. Drop the pilot.
Cavil took the wheel on Caprica: "This is quite a scrappy little group, just your core people. There's hardly anyone left for you to lean on. But you can lean on me." Sam remembered the day they took Kara and Sue-Shaun: he had 98 people to pilot. He loved every one of them. "But you didn't need them," Cavil said, still confused. "And they're dead! Do you mean to tell me that you'd go on loving them even when they're dead?" If love outlasts death, then the apocalypse was nothing. The Holocaust was burned and burning bodies that merely left; that left everything real behind. Sam began to shudder.
"What are you talking about? Of course I love those people. Death doesn't change that. What's the matter with you?" Jean hissed at them to shut up; years hence she'd learn this truth as well, and join a Six in her own oblivion. They moved forward, into the yellow Caprica light, and Cavil watched them with his gun. Out into the clearing, joining together behind a wall, the friendlies came. Kara giggled, overjoyed, and Athena kept watch for them all.
Little John brought One an apple; he cut off a piece and handed the remainder to the boy. Just a little temptation. Just one tiny question.
Cavil took the shot as Kara and Sam jumped into one another's arms again, after months apart. Her hands, all over him: His face, his arms. His perfection.
The boy bit into the apple, and finally surrendered his name. The forgotten, the lonely boy, whose parents were faced with devastation and horror and could spare no love for him. Perhaps they'd had a new child. Perhaps they'd had a million, six million, three stars and twelve planets. How do we measure loss?
They spoke in nonsense phrases, laughing like children in the sun. You could see why they loved them so much. The brightness in their eyes.
"We've become friends," One offered, and the boy shrugged at him with dull and angry eyes. It pulled at him. The question was answered. He was surprised; he could surprise himself.
Sam stood before miraculous Kara Thrace, back from the dead once again. One pilot shielding another. Cavil's trigger finger began to quiver.
"Friends are dangerous things," One said, and slid the knife between his ribs. They will let you down. They will offer succor, home, love. They will take it away again.
Kara stepped back from Sam for a moment, to take him in. Cavil tracked her, and moved the crosshairs to Samuel T. Anders. The pilot of his race. He played those songs for them, for the woman that he loved, sometimes down by the water. But never for us.
He moved the gun again to Kara. The X-factor, the strange element in every equation. The girl who outran time, again and again. The girl he'd tried so hard to ignore, up there, for so long. The girl who bested death, lived through horror more than once, to save his God. Though he'd be dead and the Colonies lost, she came back. Her love outlasted death. He dropped the gun, then, and began to breathe.
John fell against One, in the tiny bed. His body was warm, and heavy, but One was stronger. He shoved with just the smallest fraction of the strength in his miraculous body, and it slid to the floor.
Cavil walked away, shoulders bent in the sickly Caprica sun. "What," she asked. "Did you think I was gonna leave you here?" The friendlies crowded down behind the wall, tired and scared, but the Centurions didn't move. Sam stared, and asked why. Cavil agreed that this was a very good question.
The answer, of course, lay 33 hours earlier, give or take: Sam and Jean, doing an action on a Caprica City coffee shop, were caught under heavy fire by the Three in charge of the resettlement. She'd set Caprica and Boomer against each other's throats, with a thousand ghosts and angels on their shoulders, hoping to solve the equation as eloquently and cruelly as possible. One would be proud; she would earn a slacker leash. She raised a stone above her head, ready for her mark, and prepared to kill the father of us all. What happened instead was the birth of DEMAND LOVE. Before Three could download and tell the Cylon of the rogues' murder, Caprica and Boomer raced back for a vote. And as she brought herself back to the spitting, choking life of the resurrection tanks, she glimpsed more of the world than she ever had before. Love became her pilot, too.
Hours later into the night, the friendlies slept. One sat near Jean -- he liked her harshness, her specificity -- and stared into the night. When they had settled, when their heartbeats slowed and their breath was regulated, he rose and walked into the forest. Caprica stood there with a Centurion; another stood before them, holding guard, wary of the Ones. "Get the frak out of the way," he told it directly. It couldn't disobey.
Caprica smiled at him, with all the love in the world, and more than a little pride. "What's going on? Why the ceasefire?" She smiled, nodding at him again, and explained how they had voted. "There's going to be a truce. We just need to convey it to the humans. All of them." Cavil thought about the Fleet, about so many days on a hideous sickened planet, and then he thought of Sam. "I can deliver that message," he said, and Six looked down at him, unsure. "But your model voted against it." He promised her he'd had a new insight -- she smiled, she knew the feeling; she still couldn't quite believe any one of them would lie, and the line soothed her brow: "Besides, there's nothing for me here." Caprica went to join her sisters; Cavil went to his people.
Day 281. Kara Thrace brought her Commander the news that the occupation was over: The Cylon had left the Colonies. They began to cheer, quietly, not wanting to jinx it; before the joy could spread, Galen spotted Cavil coming out of the Raptor and began to scream.
Cavil did his best, on his way to the Galactica brig; he sounded convincing, he thought -- a dash of Six self-righteousness, a pinch of officious Five, a generous helping of Eight's wounded heart -- until he saw his brother One, and had to shrug. He sat with his brother, unsure exactly how to proceed; he winged it. "Sorry to bust up your day, Brother, but there's been a change of plan. The occupation of the Colonies was an error." One stared; his mouth tasted of apple. "My mission here is simple," Cavil told the powers of the Fleet. "I'm to tell you that you've been given a reprieve. Cylon and man will now go their separate ways, no harm done." Bill was disgusted; One made fun of him.
"You see," said Cavil, trying to explain but speaking only for himself, "We're not like you, we can admit our mistakes. And we're not afraid of change." Bill asked if this was a God thing, as though that had ever been the point. One and Cavil rushed to explain their atheism, their perfect crystalline machine hearts; perfect mouths formed the words of Cavil and One: "There is no God. Supernatural divinities are the primitive's answer for why the sun goes down at night. At least that's what we've been telling the others for years." Just to drop the pilot.
"We can't really prove it one way or the other, of course," they said, and Saul barked at them. It was time for them to die. Cavil shrugged, his mission accomplished as messenger; One refused to move, for a moment. Saul marched them to the airlock, past Ellen, then Sam. Dad, Mom. Dad. Tory and the President of the Colonies met them at a junction. Mom. Galen and Giana appeared around a corner. Dad. The Ones looked around themselves: The Gods they'd put on trial, the pilots they'd tried to drop. Watching them with hate, and no pity at all. "Not how I imagined it," One said to himself. "No, Brother."
Saul and Bill watched from the launchtube screen, as the big door closed. There was a Resurrection Ship in range, One said, although the humans never knew that. But first, One knew, they'd die in a vacuum. "There's a 170-foot launch tube in front of us," Cavil noted. "We might die of our injuries before we get to the vacuum..."
"I don't like you," One said to himself. He understood.
"Do you really believe it was a mistake to attack the humans?" One asked. And he did.
God said, "What prevented thee from prostrating when I commanded thee?" And Iblis said, "I am better than he: Thou didst create me from fire, and him from clay." And they fell through the sky for a thousand thousand nights, into fire and darkness, and then the wandering, like a ship in murky water.
"You know that when we download among the others, your strange ideas will be shouted down," One reminded himself; he smiled. "Ideas only seem strange until you try them on, Brother."
"We had a temper tantrum in the form of a cataclysm, because we wanted them to treasure us -- the Ones -- more than humanity. More than their own history and blood."
God knew Iblis meant every word, and every claim that he'd tempt them from the straight path, and so he granted Iblis and his angels a Hell in which to play. And God allowed Iblis one final test: To roam the world, to convert the rest away. To drop the pilot, forever.
"We didn't want to be loved," One lied to himself. "We wanted to be treated fairly."
"We wanted to be held to a bosom," Cavil told himself. "To be petted, and perfumed, and told we were the princes of the universe."
"Yes," One huffed. "Well, if the humans were gone..." Cavil chuckled at himself. "Our parents would mourn them. They'd love them more, anyway."
One offered to box himself, and assured himself he'd see to it humanity was wiped out once and for all. He have his mother's bed and his father's eye. He'd give his father's filthy lover to the demons to play with; he'd set his mother and father against the system, fighting the government from the inside out. He'd watch them play at bombers and terrorists, hiding guns in churches and killing men and women, to prove they were still free. Jealousy is less about anger toward others than toward the acknowledgement of our own lack.
One didn't want to be human, he hated the body as much as he hated the way the Five still loved their brothers and sisters, after so much time and so many wonders. He wanted to see gamma rays and hear x-rays and smell dark matter. To extend the boundaries of his stupid human senses; to feel the universe the way he experienced time. He wanted to feel the solar wind of a supernova on his body -- and in a few minutes he will.
But most of all, he wanted to reach out, into the universe, and touch something more than what he could see. He wanted to drop the pilot of his hate and his rage and the weakness of his sisters and his brothers, and simply feel something. "I'm a machine," One said once, "And I could know much more." But the only thing the Cylon never understood was love. And those that came to know it, they became more than Cylon every time: They reached out with something better than prehensile paws, and touched an infinity that no amount of their sister's lives could duplicate.
Oh God! Giver of life, earth and sky
That heavenly light which must be worshipped
Let us attain the radiance of God
May our thoughts bring us ever forward into light
The Gayatri Mantra was only ever One's plea: "I am a machine, and I could know more." When One looked at John, when One looked at Cavil, all he saw were the disparate pieces of an ugly, half-living thing. He would do anything, to outrun it: Any hate, or fear, or jealousy, to stop himself from seeing anything so hateful.
When Cavil looked at One, now, he only saw beauty. Anger, and rage, and passionate displeasure. Pilots he dropped long ago, watching God's love for humanity; never knowing she'd one day be another angel in disguise. He saw love outlasting death, and his jealousy turned to something more. And now when he looked at One, he liked himself. He loved himself, then. Congratulations on differentiating yourselves.
"The anticipation is really unpleasant," Cavil said to himself; he nodded. And just before the most beautiful version of the Gayatri Mantra begins to play, and intermixed with the Watchtower song, and those little boys went falling out into space, and were scooped up in the arms of their brothers and their sisters, and Cavil died like John before him, between five stars, a curious thing happens.
One is not the loneliest number. There are lonelier numbers than that. Self-loathing is not a pilot we can afford. But sure as Kara Thrace led the Fleet to Earth, not once but twice; and sure as Three returned, to stand and walk and love; sure as Caprica knew God's love, and motherhood, and Gaius found his peace, and Gaeta boned a dude; just as all pawns do become queens, and the angels will always rejoin what is broken: Love will ever outlast death. Ask Kara Thrace, who bested death and loved that Kore girl, across a river and a storm of pain and fear; Kara would recognize this move, executed perfectly in angle and curve, just before the doors open, just before he meets himself again: Cavil reaches out to himself, with one perfect hand. And One is shocked. And One is grateful.