This Is Not A Love Story

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I feel like a game controller that just got all its buttons pushed at once so I'm a little scattered, to say the least. What's better than A+? I give this episode three Shirtless Helos and a Starbuck's Haircut.

From the top: Helo, looking incredibly hot, and the Twinset Eight that was Natalie's backup manage to unite the Cylon and Colonial air groups to take out the Resurrection Hub, but the Sharon finally admits that she dabbled in Athena's memories and has now managed to fall in love with him. He is weirded out trying to do the math on whether that is majorly or just minorly creepy, but he's nice about it.

Three wakes up as frisky as ever, and manages to murder Cavil and decimate Boomer's self-esteem even further with a single word. Helo and Twinset Sharon rescue her off the exploding Hub, but Helo follows Laura's crappy double-dealing order to take the Three back to Laura alone. Of course, this suits Three fine, because she isn't telling anybody jack until she's sure she's safe -- and would have told the Cylons the same thing, even if she weren't now mortal. She tells Laura she's one of the Final Five, and then laughs her ass off because it's a total lie. Even Laura has to admit that was funny.

In addition to the hilarity and tenderness, which are abundant, there's also some of the best acting of the series: Helo, Laura, Gaius and Bill all turn in Emmy performances. Whatever star-magnitude of awesome Mary McDonnell's acting is usually at, go to nova. I guess they weren't kidding about offering this one For Your Consideration. I Consider it the Bomb Diggity.

Laura and Gaius face off in a hilarious Propheting Bee, both screaming at the Hybrid and trying to be the Anointed One. He eventually takes his ball and leaves to go minister the word of the Lord to a bemused Centurion -- but when the Rebel Basestar takes hits, things go from funny to very awful indeed. Laura plays Cottle, tending Gaius's serious (and ever so Longinus-adjacent!) wound...

Right up until Gaius, high as a kite on morpha, finally confirms her suspicions that he was implicated in the original attacks. I would imagine that there is a way to confess this that wouldn't move a person to full-on murder you in cold blood, but it's Gaius, so instead he tries to witness to her about all his God shit and how he's been redeemed. This causes Laura, of course, to totally kill his ass.

Except what's been going on the whole two days of the episode, every time the Hybrid jumps -- which it turns out is actually related to Natalie's death, which pissed her off as much as us -- Laura goes into a slipstream universe in the future, where the Twins and Bill are mourning her death. Her guide, Elosha, points out that she shouldn't even be touched by their presence at her deathbed, considering she's long ago left things like human feeling behind in her quest to become the scariest President ever. Only the sight of Bill weeping over her dead body, and putting his wedding ring on her finger, gets through to her, and she realizes that her job isn't to earn humanity's survival, but her own.

She wakes up from this last vision -- and seemingly brings along Chip Elosha to hang out with from now on -- and saves Gaius in the nick of time. She and Three negotiate over the fragile frakkin' body of Gaius Baltar, and they start the long ride home. Bill's sitting there when the Basestar jumps back, and very intense about docking. And when they meet, she tells him she loves him, and he tells her it's about time.

And then they fuck like rabbits.

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THE BODY OF EACH TRIBE'S LEADER

Two days ago, Laura and Helo and Gaius and a contingent of Marines boarded the rebel Basestar, because it had to stop. The Cylon God got too real, too many people knew about the visions; the place Laura was standing on got smaller and smaller and she had to share it with too many people. It had to stop. The Hybrid lay in water and blood, staring vacantly. Laura knelt, and Natalie's Eight plugged her in, and Gaius murmured a quiet prayer; Laura told him to shut up. And the first thing she said was Jump.

The Hybrid is the Ego, the soul, the CPU, the prefrontal cortex and the corpus callosum of the Basestar. She cares, and she monitors, and she jumps and she breathes and she sings, unceasingly. And the greatest of these is the jump. When you jump, you are everywhere and nowhere. You knit yourself into the fabric of everything that is, and was, and ever will be. You move beyond sight, or projection, or fate, or history, and into the everything. This has all happened before, and it will happen again, but in the moment of the jump it's all happening at once. You are at one with the universe, in a very real way; your body is experiencing what the Hybrid sees all the time, and tries to tell us in her song. We are the ant, and the universe is the cloth; the jump is the wrinkle in time, the fold in space.

Maybe for a moment you can see it all, and the way it goes around and around. This is certainly more than we've ever talked about it, even during the 33 minutes that started this, it was just another thing that could go wrong. But it's a miracle: like any miracle, we take it for granted. And like any miracle, we forget it when it's done. Most of the time. You wanna talk about miracles?

(Jump.

Laura stands alone in a Galactica corridor, and muses to herself. She's never seen what the Hybrid sees, or remembered it if she did. I mean to say she's never stepped out of her universe and taken a good hard look at it: that sublime elevation, looking down at everything else, looking back at herself. You and I work with three dimensions, until we grow up enough to work with four. Laura's strength, and her tragedy, has always been taking it down, looking at the thing in front of her, clearly and dispassionately. How many times, this season alone, has she rung out her common prayer? "Here's what's going on." She always knows what's going on.

Laura looks around, and suddenly behind her is Elosha. The Price in Blood. Her guide, in life. The woman who told her she wasn't crazy. Elosha never held back, the glory or the pain, but she told Laura she wasn't crazy. She had facts and figures, scriptures and scrolls. Her belief kept Laura alive. Laura embraces her without a thought.

Jump.)

"Filters... Filters... the sublime elevation of the..."

"Why did it jump? Where are we?" Twinset Eight's more interested in why the Hybrid seems to be jumping random. She's never jumping random: listen. "Control... Filters..." The most important, the most fearful, the most beautiful and the hardest woman in the universe is Laura Roslin. Control, filters. Nobody makes more sense than Laura Roslin, and nobody deserves our love more than Laura Roslin. And she has made that, I'm sorry, a total bitch since New Caprica. Human psychology is based on projection, and we are all orphans: Of all the sins of Gaius Baltar, the thing I have the hardest time forgiving is how he took her away from me.

"Why don't I talk to the Hybrid? Find out why..." Because he's the star here, isn't he? He's been told by Six, by Jeanne and Tracey and hot little Paulla a million times he's the star here. He knows God is in this room, even if Laura can't get there yet. That's one door open to him: why not walk through? All he ever wanted was your admiration. Make sense of the Hybrid, you're doing Leoben one better, even. And no matter how effed up Leoben is, which is muchly, at least you know he's got a hotline to God. That's all Gaius wants. He didn't even know it, before the angel and the holocaust, but that's all he wants. A personal audience; to tell an omnipotent and infinitely forgiving sentience the story he already knows. To look into those eyes and demand forgiveness anyway, just to be sure. It colors everything: his redemption has no audience. It's a treat balanced on his snout. Filters, control. "She can just... do that? She can just...?" Helo's amazed, but we'll never hear the end.

(Jump.

Guide Elosha asks her to walk through the halls of an empty Battlestar. Empty because they are home? Empty because they are all dead? I don't care; I just don't ever want to go through this again. I don't want to watch her body on the altar again. I wish this was the future and I hope it is, because I can't watch her die again. Fuck story logic; half of Lost is shit like this, and that has no emotional content at all. I need Laura Roslin. She's dressed professionally, swinging hair and clicking heels. I mean, she's always dressed professionally, but... you know what I mean. This is her, aiua-Laura, click-clacking hand in hand with God down an empty hall. "Galactica, it... What's going on? It's empty." Elosha nod, as they walk. "It is. Feels bigger this way, doesn't it?"

Usually it's the opposite, isn't it? Home seems smaller when you go back; a thousand (Baby) Boomer reunion movies and our own experience tell us that. But what makes it big, what makes it echo, is the loneliness. The emptiness. A Battlestar is not a home, so to speak, without the people in it. I hope they're okay. This episode is so... final. It could have served. God knows it's good enough to be a series finale for any show at all. You could clearly show this and then be like, "And that's how I met your mother, okay?." It gives me finale feelings; it makes me be honest.

Of all the thoughts I've had about the real live end of this show, the scariest is going back to Bill, all alone in the sky, making his way through empty Galactica like before the Second Exodus, lights flickering. She must die in fire. We shouldn't have to watch her lights going out, one by one. I don't think that's how it happens; I think it happens in blinding light. We'll see. "It's so quiet. It's strange," Laura breathes, conversational. "A lot of things are strange," Elosha says, in a voice that isn't conversational at all. And here's why. Before the credits, before 39,673 souls in the Fleet, before Laura chokes on it: Laura Roslin, in her deathbed, all alone in a sickbay all alone in an aircraft carrier, dying in her last and her true and her final home. Choking out her dying breath, all alone.

Jump.)

"Wingbeats of a dove drown out the heartbeats of those who follow. The Six is back in the stream..."

Even Twinset Eight is weirded out by the second jump; she doesn't know that this episode is all jumps, all glimpses, anymore than we knew last week that this episode would fulfill the lacuna promise and jump us back two days, before Pike was dead. Laura wonders what it means. I have to admit I didn't really think the Hybrid's freakout was related to Natalie's murder. I mean, I know she knows everything that's going on, but (in this episode alone) we have plenty of evidence that the Cylon aren't great at sublimation: freeze them, they stay frozen until they come back. Three comes back on fire with revelation, Athena's soul appears still disgusted by Laura and Bill. She made a jump face when she got unplugged, she jumped when they plugged her back in.

"Look, it knows me. It trusts me." Laura's not interested. "I think... I think it even likes me, because I... I spent some time at the foot of this... tub..." Gaius says, performing a little show for nobody interested, because human psychology is based on projection and Gaius has always needed the idea of an audience more than the audience itself. Even after Galen took his hand, he's like this.

Laura, fascinated: "You're getting information from this liquid?" Twinset nods. "The Hybrid is disorganized, it's panicking. I don't know why." And as they ignore him, Gaius kneels, and treats her like a person. Focuses on her entirely. The triumph and the tragedy of Gaius Baltar is that he's not an obstinate tin soldier: he's pliant, for good or ill. He loves completely when he loves, and forgets it when he doesn't. He is a fuckup, to be sure, but he's closer to opening the door than anybody else, because he got his doors blown out. And they weren't locked too securely to begin with. (But have you met my friends Kara and Leoben? They're closer to the Hybrid than anybody else, and...) "Um, tell me. Why are you jumping the ship?"

"The Six. The Six who went among the makers is no longer: End of line. Back in the stream that feeds the ocean that feeds the stream..."

Twinset explains that Natalie, thus, is hurt or killed, and that's the source of the Hybrid's panic. Laura's all Laura: "So she's upset. Okay, fine. Can you... Calm her down? Can you tell her to jump back?" Twinset Eight's kind of impatient, because part of a hive culture is that each part does its thing: "It doesn't work like that. She makes her own decisions." No aspiration, plenty of voice. Especially today. The prophets aboard stare; they don't like that. If God starts talking, we won't need prophets. Might as well produce a Vulgate Bible, leave the indulgences and Latin behind. Might as well break that golden arrow into 39,673 pieces. This is all that's being asked of the Cylon, after all: stop thinking that God is something you can buy, or sell, or make, or have. Stop pretending God is the last thing you earn, and not the first. Step right up and take your piece, and fly.

If the Anointed One and the Dying Leader have to stand by and watch the Hybrid make her own decisions, well, fuck that. We'll kneel and yell and be adorable, but we won't ever be pliant enough to admit that 1-800 hotlines are something anybody can call. And if you don't get it, Hybrid just got Roslin on your ass: "And we can't unplug her, because now she's wired herself into life support." Nice! Aspiration and breath together. Finally the Hybrid gets it going, tells them something we've known all along. When you're scared, that's the amygdala taking over, shouting at you to change something, you're in terrible danger, keep moving. But there's also the prefrontal cortex, saying, "You're safe. It's okay. It's going to be all right." It's hard to be both at once.

"Alright then, why don't we give this a go?" Gaius -- and as much as this is a flipbook tour through the horrors and the wonders of Gaius Baltar, it's also the funniest fucking thing in the world (imagine Gaius was taking smooth-pimp lessons from Alexander Lavelle Harris and you're half there) -- decides the most apposite activity would be to... fall on his knees, making a supplicant gesture Garth and Wayne might have invented, fanning the Hybrid with palm fronds of hope and the absurd; somehow comforting, condescending, hilarious and sad all at once, on his knees, desperate to win. "Shh! Hey. Hey, stop jumping the ship, all right? Calm your mind..." He looks ridiculous. We all look ridiculous on our knees; that's the point of being on your knees. I'm not very funny so I don't know how to say this funny, but it's super funny. If he brrrrppppppt his lips a little bit, or zoomed an airplane of baby food toward her oracular mouth, it would not be out of place.

On this show of all shows, with this writer of all writers, you watch out for the funny. The funny will fuck you up so bad, like Farscape bad, like where you don't even know when you stopped laughing and started crying. At this point we're still laughing. That'll just make it worse. So he fans her and fake-prays and shushes, on his knees. And she speaks. Because he's not open, he hasn't opened the doors, but he's unlocked them. He is ajar. And that's more than Laura could say, and Laura would be proud of that. She isn't ajar yet. She is proud of that.

"Cease countdown, cease countdown. Circulation, ventilation, control... filters... filters... the sublime elevation..." Gaius is, of course, disgustingly proud; Twinset's like, I Don't Even Know. "Did you see that? I just opened myself up to it on a spiritual level..."

(Jump. Of course.

Doc Cottle tends to the Dying Leader, as the Twins and Bill stare down, afraid and sad. Elosha only speaks to the body. In this episode we are concerned with the body: yours, mine, theirs. Laura's, and Gaius's, but also theirs-theirs. Half of all academic writing in the soft sciences, in the last centuries, is about the female body. What is it, what constitutes it? What does it want? How do we get more? What will it do? Are we buying or selling? Are we harming or loving? We're talking about a factory that makes bodies. Bodies that are Other, specifically/mostly female bodies that are Other. That's the Hub. (There are a lot of Hubs in this story, just as the Fleet has many hearts; we're talking about a body factory.) There are still people who think of Six as a whore; there are still people that think of Eight as a little girl. Three's (everybody's) bisexuality presents as a problem. Cylons are scary because women are scary; and occasionally sometimes (Simon and Leoben) because rapists are scary, but only if the female body is the territory. Always already other: to be defended, to be duplicated, to be feared, to be reclaimed. And while Leoben is sexualized by the show in some yucky ways, actual commodification of the body is, as usual, the province of the female: Who's Tory going to fuck ? How useful is her body now? Where is Three, Six, Eight's new body coming from? But on the other hand, they are the only Cylon with continually differentiating personae: Who will she be? They're the best characters; it's a give and take. But -- like Buffy, frankly -- the endgame is to remove the commodification of the female body altogether. To connect the body -- Laura, Gaius, Eight, Six -- back to the Hub directly, no vulgate or male gaze involved.

Laura looks down at the fragile frakking body of Laura Roslin. I am glad I told the good story of that body last week, about the Mama Bear and staring at death, because that's what it is. If the world defined and limned and delineated a symbol of your personal death, if you flipped the Death card and saw your own face -- not some change-of-pace royal-blue-haired girl on a pale horse, not some Goth hottie with an ankh, not the beautiful and ravaged face of Emily Kowalski -- wouldn't you take it seriously? Death is kind of a bully because God is kind of a bully, because Laura Roslin is kind of a bully.

Laura's Ego, the thing that makes her Laura, is the Presidential Suit. And what it's been subverting is the Id, which is love. The Teacher. And all Elosha's trying to do is crack open the President Suit by destroying its sine qua non at the root, so Teacher Woman Laura can come out and play, and Laura can combine the two. Because nobody makes more sense than Laura Roslin, but if that's all you are, you're fucking it up for everybody. Presidents don't build families; women do. Without that, you're just the product of a Lie that never ended, trying desperately to understand that somebody, somewhere, sometime, loves you. You the woman, not the dying shell around it or the sick strongwoman ruling by fiat; not the vicious aberration or the bitter disappointment, but the girl you forgot. There's a reason Elosha only speaks to her dead body, as her beautiful soul stands watching.

"Don't you just hate these people?" The dying leader croaks it out -- as Laura is forced to watch; separated horribly from that future wreckage, that unassailable façade, like a widow from her lover, like a bride divorced of God -- "No." But how much of death is theatre? "Oh, but you don't love them either. The people in this room are the closest thing you've got to family, and you... You've been their President. " And the tone, the disgust, the loving way Elosha is appalled, it could fell even her. Their President. The President of her people. Her people. And she shows them this face.

Lee holds Kara. The Twins fall apart, together. A mother who stopped hitting; a mother's cancer. Bill shakes. A lover who let down the walls and lived, for a moment, on a dead and filthy heaven, once upon a time; who lay upon his bed and laughed, and is now dying. It's a funeral for a woman who already died; who dies alone, with her family all around her. Who never let them be her home. It's a funeral for a woman who died alone, without a family or a home, by her hand and by her choice. Not a razor, but not unlike a blade. A woman who, given infinite time, given a lifetime just like us all, couldn't find the time to love, when the unassailable façade came calling. After a thousand reprieves, after a thousand Gods leaned down to hear the lament, she still managed to fuck herself out of time for living, because she was too busy killing trees to save the forest, and burning off what didn't help.

I'm not going to write you a love song, no matter now much love there is, because this isn't a story about love. (Every story is a story about love.) If it were a story about love, we could have ended this the second Athena started running, down on Caprica. (Frankly, we could have stopped the second Caprica Six said, "Get down.") It would be the easiest thing in the world to say, "William and Laura finally kissed and nobody worried about the civil and martial," or "Helo and Athena had a preposterous child," or "Gaius and Caprica are living in each other's heads," or "Kara and Leoben or Sam or Lee or some creepy combination thereof," and we'd be done. I'd be happy, because these are all the Shape of Things, but it's not the point, yet: This isn't a love story.

It's a hate story. And it must end. The first word of the Iliad is "rage." Follow Cassandra (as usual) to see how far that blood goes. Rape becomes murder becomes plague becomes infanticide, becomes sacrifice becomes anger becomes more war becomes murder becomes rape... I swear you could weave all those old tales -- the ones that still drive us, don't be mistaken -- into one cloth and all you'd see is this: This has all happened before, and it will all happen again. Hang Saddam, shave Aslan, kill Boomer or Natalie, you just hand the blood over to the asshole. We're now. Elosha knows, because even when she was alive she knew most everything and now she knows it all. And if Laura could see like the Cylon see, much less the Hybrid -- if she could see the stream that feeds the ocean that feeds the stream -- she'd know it was true already. That the loneliness of her death earns her nothing.

"Watch them try to comfort each other. At least you haven't taken that away from them... Yet." Elosha is a bully. "You didn't rob them of their empathy. Yet." But I mean, that's the goal, right? Nobody sentimental, nobody afraid, nobody doing the things that Laura hates most about herself. Draw the line. Be the strongest, because you face the darkness. "You just don't make room for people anymore." Laura watches Laura die, sadly; she takes no notice of the family all around her. She's too focused on her own death, what it means. She always was.

At the end of the journey, they're going to open that box, and the Fleet will either be dead or it will be alive, and if it survives it must be worthy of survival. The President looks into the stinking mess and madness of humanity, and loves it anyway, as fiercely as a beast. You pick your side, and you stick with it, because they are your people. They're everywhere and nowhere. Her heart is torn into 39,673 pieces, less than forty thousand trees: she can't see a single one.

Roslin starts choking. Laura mourns her. How do we measure loss? 47,972 on the day she took office. The least, or the most, of her humanity, and every single one of them written on her heart. How do we measure loss?

"You don't love people. Is that clear enough? Practical enough for you, Madam President?"

Jump.)

ANCIENT GRUDGE TO NEW MUTINY

Twinset grins, in the Hybrid Chamber. "I think we're going towards the Resurrection Hub. I think the mission is still on." Laura's glad. I don't even know that they're wrong. It's not hugely different from a genocidal virus, really. "We already fucked you over with Gaius Baltar six times, sex and morality and individuality and love and magical mystery babies. Why not take of this fruit, and eat?" Absent the whole, you know, genocide and holocaust and work camp thing, we've pretty much been Prime Directiving all over their faces since day one. This is why I like Diane Duane so much. Have you read High Wizardry? I'm convinced I would not have survived past third grade without that book because I'm such a meddler. That's how you deal with some robot motherfuckers.

Helo sits alone with Twinset Eight on that Command & Control bridge they always show when it's culturally significant, when there's voting or screaming or threesomes to be dealt with. They talk about how who knows when this ends; the Hub jumps and thus the Hybrid jumps, "Sometimes... six hours after it's moved on, sometimes like six minutes," because she makes her own decisions. (You know Cavil's like, "I did this with Captain Quantum like a bajillion times and every jump might be the jump home and guess what, it's not.") But so easy, after a season on Caprica with Athena and years in the air commanding the Fleet over NC, Helo slips in. Easy as a fish in a stream. He's getting better at this, less and less we need it.

"And one time it'll be within one jump-length and we'll catch it." Yeah, but we don't know when. "They're gonna read our heat signatures the second we fire up the first Viper," he figures. "Hell, they'll read our electronics." She nods, like his teammate. Like his first teammate, his only girl. Like Kara in Delphi, doubled, like Sharon in the wind and the rain, she speaks his other thoughts. There are people, you know, that slip right in. You are a team, faster than you've met and learned each other's names. She doesn't even have a name, this Twinset Eight, this copy. And he's slipping in from the first second, now that Natalie's gone, now that Twinset's the only one who knows what's going on, now that it's her birthday. He slips right in.

"Yeah," she sighs, swimming in the stream, "If we could only mask that." He looks at her; this is how it is. Her tactical and secretive logic, abutting his intuition, his hope. Their expertise, Raptor pilot and ECO, wife and husband, mother and father. This is how they operate. He's homesick. "...Go in cold! No electronics at all." She nods, like Sharon. Like a Sharon. "Send the Vipers out dead? Towed by Cylon birds, they'll never see it coming." Vipers pulled along by Heavy Raiders; Colonials pulling and pulled by the Cylon, that's his life. "Take out the Hub's jump drive, then settle in for the long fight. Yeah, good, okay, okay." Just like a marriage. This isn't a love story: He's homesick. "But you and me, we've got to get onto the Hub in the middle of that mess and try to find D'Anna." She is worried, he is worried; his worry makes her steel. It's what Sharon would do.

"We can do this." Karl pulls back, unsure. If you look at his track record, come on. Karl advises one person, two to four people, excellent. If he tried to tell half an air wing, or half an air wing and their complement of Cylon pilots, you're getting into Helo-fucks-up territory. He's not wrong. He's half a CAG but only ever half. That's not his mission, it's not when he's beautiful. "It's crazy, isn't it? We're putting ourselves right where the action is. It's not a great plan... There's no time..." He feels it. In his face and hands and feet and back, his back is stiff and afraid. He is the CAG of this wing, this ugly hybrid schizoid squadron. He is the guy, on point for a mission to rescue an enemy from the enemy in concert with the enemy and to him the enemy, to bring the enemy back to the enemy, so that his wife can begin to die. He's not better than anybody, he's just good. The body he loves best stops being one thing and becomes another. This is not a love story.

Twinset massages his shoulders, caringly, sweetly, wonderfully. He looks back at her, after a moment -- How long? How do we measure loss? -- and she is immediately hands-off. I mean, fucking A. You already know. Every time they kill Boomer, it feels worse. And I just last week remembered why Athena is awesome, after years of trying to love her and finding her boring as fuck. And now you're tossing me this new, adorable, perfectly balanced Eight, who looks at the menu and doesn't take a bite, who loves and fears Natalie like Sixes must be loved and feared, who doesn't even have a name, and subjecting her to the most shameful, embarrassing, yucky instance of cultural mistranslation we've seen on this show, which is like a Not To Do List of cultural directives. On the wish list for the second half: A big-ass meeting among Sharons where they agree to cut it out and stop doing this shit and start acting like actual people.

Karl stands up and looks at her; she backs off. He doesn't want to say it, the thing. It would embarrass him and ruin her. But he must, so he does. "Athena, my wife, she learned to do that. She never did that when I met her." Twinset won't meet his eyes. She's such a Scorpio it's ridiculous, but also: how do you explain something so big? How do you explain culture?

So Helo's like, "Eff culture, what are you up to?" The same way he would his wife. And Twinset explains, ashamed and afraid. "I got curious about Athena. About her and Hera, and you. So I accessed her... Her memories from her last download." She's sad because this is weird, and even though he is the best among us, this is a legit cultural fuckup, on a level with New Caprica Six from a few weeks ago. I got curious. I fucked it up. I brought something to the table we all kinda agreed not to deal with until this was all settled.

"You have her memories..." Well, sort of. Kind of. More like Cylons aren't humans and honestly if you pretend they are you'll end up back in a hate story so fast. Because the conflict we've been engaged in for the last let's say five years is also a biology issue. When you look at two Eights and can't tell them apart, are you a racist or are you not hardwired to tell them apart? When you look at Six's native language and think it looks crazy, is that a cultural oversight or a natural response to the Other? When you love, you love everything. You give yourself time to figure out the weirdness.

But this is weirdness on such a fundamental level that it's hard, if not impossible, to do so. Try listening to Japanese music after a day full of Top Forty. Adjust your brain. Not impossible. I still don't get most anime I have seen, but I am stuck in my personal place: I don't know if it's because I'm American, gay, or socially adaptive. It could literally be any of those, and no matter what I choose, I'm cutting off a foot or a hand in order to not understand. But is it because I hold individuality so high and the East is robots bowing to each other, or because boobs are boring and straight people are robots, or because I actually prefer to have sex with other people and don't get the mediating factor of giant robot suits or alien tentacles? Nobody will ever know.

So we have two discussions here, and they are diametrically opposed. Either Eights have a right to drink of the stream that feeds the ocean that feeds the stream, or they don't. Or we have tainted their society such that they don't have that right anymore: the rate at which Twelve or Seven or Nine inches toward Infinity is the rate at which that sharing stops being okay. Or it's okay most of the time -- unless it's Sixes or Eights with human allegiances -- but the rest of the model is okay to share with. Or you can only dip into your own model -- with or without those exceptions -- but the other ones are now off-limits... These are new questions that have nothing to do with immortality. They'll still be aliens.

The stream Twinset's drinking from, that was Athena's last download: her husband had just shot and killed her, to save their child, after being lied to by every single human, and still holding on with both fists and everything she had. She is a Hub. Twinset opened that box like Pandora, and the person she is, is only trust and only love. "I will get home, I will protect my child, our child, I will earn my allegiance." But Twinset's shame here is one indication of where we're at; on the other hand, it didn't stop her. These are new rules and new ceremonies, under an uncertain sun.

Twinset tries: "They're mine now too. They're as real as my own. I know this must feel like a violation of trust or something, but I..." He looks away. No matter how nice she tries to be, no matter how much she tries to cross that cultural salt, it's impossible. You try to explain the automatic and it slips through your hands, like telling a dream. "I don't want it to be strange, okay?" She reaches out; he doesn't take her hand. Eights need touch, they know what it means. He doesn't take her hand, but he tells her it's fine, and he bounces. And she knows she fucked it up, but she doesn't know how bad.

It's not that she broke a show rule; it's not that she infected herself with love. This isn't a love story. It's that they're expected to be human. The Cylon are meant to earn -- to be worthy of -- survival. We must fight for our own deaths, clamp down on our strangeness, stop sharing with our sisters, layer t-shirts over bras, sweaters on top; we must cover up our shame. Filters. Control. We must stop sharing, stop being more than one place at one time, stop being more than one person at a time, stop loving and stretching out; start fearing, and drawing in. The place we are in must stop being more than one place, too: no more projection. We must be only one person at one time, with no sisters and no promises: nothing but the ground beneath our feet, and the salt around them. The scariest thing in the world. And then they will accept us. We will be human -- we will be okay -- once we stop doing that which makes us most beautiful. Because nobody told us something better.

Laura sits in Pike's Raptor, with Searider Falcon in her lap. The last vestige of him. She can't live without him, and she's dozing. Helo wakes her softly, and she puts on her glasses, tossing the book onto the panel. It's the last time she'll see that book; things will stop moving in anything but a blur. She drops him carelessly onto a panel so she can whisper hate and deception, and she will lose him. He'll find the book, on the other side of anything, and he will wait. But this is where she lets it go. He was the dove and she was the hawk; she puts their cabin aside. This is not a love story.

"Thank you for the use of your Raptor, I needed some familiar surroundings." What's more familiar than an alien home? A tank, built for war. "Don't worry. I'll give it back to Lt. Pike the second you need it." Helo nods: that's the point. She is the point, the mama bear, the thing without which, who needs to be a little less frisky when the civil war comes to them. But she's better at this than he: "If there's even a chance that we can go in and blow up that Hub and end Cylon resurrection for all Cylons forever, we must take it. I cannot back away from that." (It's their God who gave her peace with death; she's just looking to return the favor.) Your commander speaks: None of this Helo shit. Even when he knows, and she knows, he's going to end up correct.

"If and when D'Anna comes back from the dead, bring her to me." She smiles, because it's what she does, but also because she knows what comes . The line between the Helo and the Suit is hard to draw; you can usually tell because he's both right and it counts. "I think the Cylons think that she'll be interrogated by both groups together..." No doubt; there's no reason they'd think otherwise. However. Helo will bring the prisoner to Laura. And it makes sense, how could it not? She can play anybody, even Karl Agathon, now. She's good at this; so good she's bad. "She knows the identities of the five Cylons in our Fleet. It is a matter now of human security, and I will not let the Cylons have audience to that discussion. I want to talk to her alone." Helo accedes and leaves, she watches him go. He is good. Is he too good? We'll see.

Before a paragraph or two ago, he might have fucked this up for her, but now he knows: it's not that they'll betray us, it's that they are too weird to deal with. There are lines of neither salt nor sugar, lines of language and the basic rules and ways and means that are too hard to cross. She is not Boomer, not Athena; she drinks of them both. She is real. She loved Natalie, and she knows this must be done. She loves Athena, and Hera. And Karl Agathon. Those seem to be the facts. But somewhere in the cracks between those facts, there's something awful, because the Other is awful. En masse, not your babymama and not your compatriot, but all at once, there's something impossible. He can't swim in that stream. And so he will do what Athena would recommend; the thing he must do. You pick your side, and you stick with it. Or else you have nothing.

OUR TOIL SHALL STRIVE TO MEND

Three awakes, alone in the universe, attended by a puppet and a miraculous engine in the shape of a man. She gasps, horrified. Her last memory is one of being killed, possibly forever, by the same brother and priest that considers her now. Boomer is a dark acolyte to a man with a mission. She awakes still bathed in joy; in delight, for the truth and the light that is to come. One look around takes all that away, and the wiliness takes over. Three is anybody you want, if that's who is required. In this room, she is the trickster.

"You told me I'd never have to go through this again." No ceremonies are necessary. Live as if you've never lived before. She is a single, a solitary soul in the universe. The only body that contains a Three, or will. They decided; she fell apart. She will, no doubt, adapt. I was so fascinated by a frisky Laura that I didn't think about the fucking destruction a frisky Three could cause with one pinkie finger. "I lied," he says. Third mistake right there -- the first was fucking with her, the second was bringing her back. I don't like many things as much as I like her.

Three puts them together, the facts on the ground; easy. "You thought you were putting me away forever. So what changed?" War. "A genuine Cylon civil war. Ones and Fours and Fives, against the Twos and Sixes and Eights that objected to your retirement. Now your supporters are working with humans against all the rest of us. All in your name." She thinks that's awesome. Of course she does. It is. She struggles up, getting stronger before your eyes; turns her eyes to poor fucked-up Boomer. "Boomer's an Eight, shouldn't she be on the other side?" Cavil explains as only a gross old robot man can that Boomer's his "pet Eight," who's seen the light of reason. (I keep going on and on about how Tory's lying to herself all the time, how you have to be careful who you pretend to be because that's what you are, but what about nasty old Cavil? He says he's a robot all the time, but he's also the horniest old goat in the universe. Since Heinlein died, anyway.) "And an Eight can make a passionate ally." Three's breezy and mean, as usual: "Oh, until she sees something shiny." Boomer's angry. At herself, too. Mostly. Three rests easily. "Why'd you bring me back, anyway?" He doesn't move; he's most ceremonial. "I brought you to heal us, sister, and end this shameful war."

BOTH ALIKE IN DIGNITY

Twinset and Helo speak to a gathered party of Viper pilots, Sixes and Eights. It's a comforting image: Karl and Sharon. Two halves of an air wing, fitting together all wrong. The Colonials are wearing the uniform, like always. The sisters are wearing them too. They wear the uniform, like they're human, or at least something more: they are the first to say yes.

"Since Cylon pilots don't use call signs, we're gonna be painting unique identifiers on all their birds." Seelix is relieved, because they all look alike, because blah blah she's dead meat. Helo's tone is half-ameliorating, half-irritating, all paternalistic, like they're idiots. Which, to be fair, is how they're acting. "You address them, use that number, okay?" Hotdog and Pike whine, in the front row, about how they never should have gone on this mission in the first place. My question is: how many times does Kara Thrace have to ask you to do something impossibly dangerous and weird before you start thinking that before the mission is underway? They both should know better, frankly. (And not for nothing, but I mean who would know better about being drawn by a Heavy Raider you don't trust and can't control -- into a whirling Hub -- to erase the boundaries between life and death, and change the game for both sides of the conflict forever? Hmmmm? What if they all come back sane?)

Helo calls them to attention, and explains how these Heavy Raiders are special turkeys that don't think on their own, and are piloted by the lovely ladies standing to their right. "Oh, and are there tiny pilots inside of them?" I think that probably that is the funniest thing I've ever heard on this show. Good one, Seelix. A Six steps up, not getting the total humor there, and tries to explain one more time that she's a trained pilot, just like them. Hotdog's wingman, Redwing, fronts on her and says that he's killed twenty-odd of her, so how good can she be, and Helo finally interrupts his unblinking time-filling BS enough to get him to back up off her, and continues with the brief.

"Now, let's talk about the surprise element. First wave of Vipers are gonna ride in engines cold. Dradis and comm off, 'mmmkay?" Towed by cables from the turkeys. Pike, for once not trying to be insubordinate, points out that when you're kissing a turkey's gashole ("so to speak") and they tap on the brakes, what happens is that you break your face en route to jamming it up said gashole. So to speak. Because Pike still doesn't get that the Cylons are robots, and incapable of fucking that part up. "They won't. It'll work, you guys. Really. When you're close enough, the cable's gonna disconnect. We're mounting small explosive charges to cut it." Which is dependent on the Colonials, right? The guys in back, that won't even be able to accelerate out of anything, they're the ones that decide when to cut and fly around them. Right? Nope: "Cylon pilots cut the cable. Then you sling out of their birds and you turn your power on. You're gonna be gunning directly at the Hub's FTL. Then it's an all-out fight until we can get in there with the nukes." Pike, still not trying to start shit, repeats the question: "Yeah, so if the Cylons don't lift up, then we're toast, right...?" There are murmurs and the deck's alive with the sound of mutiny and whatever, and Pike's like, "Seriously, this is a concern I have. I am not making a spectacle of myself. For once."

Twinset steps up; speaking of Athena. Speaking like Athena: "Hey. Hey! Pilots! You've flown with Cylons. You've flown with Athena, you put your life in her hands, and she hasn't betrayed you. Well, I am the same as her." Helo is... not loving that. "Now all of these Cylons here, all of these people? They're pilots like you, and they're gonna be out in the soup with you, taking out other Cylons, just like Athena does every time she's asked to." They're turning their skins inside out, and nobody knows what they'll look like. They are teaching their people, with blunt force, the last lesson Natalie ever learned, and the first one Sharon did. This isn't a love story. They're expected to be human. Filters. Control. We will be human -- we will be okay -- once we stop doing that which makes us most beautiful. Because nobody told us something better.

"And when that Hub is taken out, all of their lives will be at risk." A scared Eight; a scared Six. Hotdog gets it. Seelix and Pike, predictably less so. "Just like yours. So you might want to think about how you're gonna work together, because we're all dead if you don't." They chill out and Helo momma-dogs them some more. "Moving on..."

AUM BHOOR BHUVA SWAHAH

This is good too. If you ever wondered what ecclesiastical debate looks like to the rest of us; if you ever wondered why wars happen... "Just go and ask it already," Gaius sniffs, and Roslin tries, speaking to the Hybrid like a constituent, or a dull child with a secret. "I've been told that you said something about an Opera House, and I..." she interrupts herself, looking at Gaius: "-- Because it seems pointless." The acting in this scene is so fucking awesome and hilarious, it's the best. Gaius tries, speaking slightly louder and more intensely: "Look, there was an Opera House. An Opera House. Are you listening to me? Apparently I was in the Opera House..." Not to be outdone, Laura interrupts like a kid with a report card: "I had a vision! I was chasing after a little girl, I came to a door, I saw Dr. Baltar and the Six take the child."

The Hybrid cares just about this much. ...Close the doors... Laura shrugs, her eyes still wild. "She's not listening." ...protect the child... "Protect the child! She said 'protect the child,' that's what Caprica said!" Gaius doesn't listen. Nobody's listening to anybody. They need to let some shit caress their associative minds or something.

"You told me I was the one holding the child, so obviously I was the one protecting the child, wasn't I? In the Opera House..." Laura shakes her head: ain't no motherfucker gonna tell her vision, or interpret it. Least of all her: "No, no, no. It wasn't at all clear what you were doing. Let me listen." Nobody's stopping you from listening; nobody ever was. But the intention is solid: ...booting up, booting up... These marginal prophets, right here on the prophecy margin, looking God in the face and watching Her boot up, and they're arguing semantics and fighting like the Twins. This is the best episode since just ever.

Sometimes humor can show you a thing. This is a fight, a squabble, a jaunty little folie à deux between these two brilliant fuckers, that's been playing out since Season Two. The stakes have always been this high, and that's scary and sad, but the irony quotient -- the gutbusting stupidity of it all -- has always been exactly this high as well. They toss each other into cells and offer each other small comforts and try to get each other killed and try to boss each other around and now they're trying to be in charge of God. And the thing, Laura, about getting into a battle of wills with a toddler? Is that you lose, a priori, the second I write the period at the end of the sentence.

"I mean, obviously you've done this a thousand times before..." he bitches, and she coughs, exasperated. "Well, I'm just doing the same thing you're doing," every bit as petulantly. What in the fuck is holy about crawling around in the dirt with a mean little kid like Gaius? Where did you go? "No, you're not actually, no you're not, because if you'll watch what I'm doing, what I'm doing is I'm actually focusing on her, all right?" This works for one second before he starts shrieking again. "Now tell us what happened in the Opera House now, all right?!" Laura shakes her head, having gotten exactly half the point: "Oh, the only thing you're doing is yelling." ...such a format will close the doors... I couldn't have said it better myself. We got some obstinate tin soldiers up in this piece, and all she wants them to do is stop being assholes for like five seconds so she can reveal the secrets of the universe, but no. They cannot do it. It's like getting weird and speeding up in front of somebody, so you can reach the stoplight faster. We're all going to the same freaking place.

"'Close the door'... No, no, open the door. Open the door. I want to open the door!" Gaius makes fun of her, muttering, but Laura is now yelling at the Hybrid like some kind of slot machine. It's funny but it's gross. Maybe it's funny because it's gross. "Do it again, do it again, do it again!" Gaius, knowing that he can't very well face off against Laura Roslin in terms of taking over the room with pure gravitas, gives in, in the most Gaius Baltar way you can imagine: by taking his toys and leaving. "I'm going for a walk. Love to see you do any better." Laura shakes her head: Oh, you will. "All right, I'll do it. Open the door!" she screams. It's not the Hybrid that needs to do that. All she is, is an open door.

Three! The Three is online... "The Three is online, the Three is online... The Three is D'Anna," Laura remembers. ...Three is online...processing data... "The Three is D'Anna..." ...loading data... "D'Anna is online... Oh, D'Anna's in a body! D'anna's back in a body..." And that's all it takes: just a little crack in the door; just a step from the nation called Laura to a nation called Everything, just a tiny ride in those Hybrid moccasins: ...booting up... Jump! And just it's funny for five whole seconds more, as Laura continues to repeat her Hybrid talk: "Ju...? Oh," she says wryly, and rolls her eyes a little bit as they go.

(Jump.

Laura heads to Sickbay on her own this time, Elosha following. "Why are we doing this again? I don't want to see this again." Elosha explains the Fisher King, how the ancients used to say "a people is only as strong as the body of its leader." Laura wonders if that's why Galactica is empty: "If I follow that thought... Are you saying that humanity died because I died? If you're my subconscious, I've gotta say you're a little full of myself." Classic. Elosha is charmed: "Humanity didn't die because you did. [That was Kara.] The ancients, they got a lot of things wrong: the body of a people is not the same as the body of its leader. But the soul and the spirit might be." Elosha talks very damn fast, which is a shame because she only says very dense things now that she is dead, and is also a shame because it makes Laura talk very damn fast too. "Oh I see, so you're only laying morality at my feet. Well, that's okay," Laura giggles ruefully. Of course it fucking is. "I can take that. I mean, there are a lot of people who have sins far greater than mine." They both laugh, for different reasons. "You're thinking of Gaius Baltar," Elosha says.

Me too. Because one thing that seems really hard to understand, in this forgiveness game, is the absence of a relative morality. It's key to the Iliad, so it's not like this new concept I invented in order to hate Seelix or something, but it goes like this: if there's no relativity to the apocalypse, if Laura's allowed to be afraid about her cancer on the same day the Colonies are destroyed, then it stands to follow that the opposite is true: that there's no relativity to guilt any more than there is to grief. If I slap you, that's a bad thing. If you slap me back, that is... also a bad thing. You are still a person who slapped somebody. There is not anybody keeping score for you: there's just you, giving yourself a pass for being a slapper, because somebody else exists who is a slapper. (Don't call me a slapper.)

It doesn't make it hurt less where I slapped you, even if you slap me a million times it won't sting you less. This is the main area of our blindness, and Seelix's, and the Great Turkey Shoot, and guns in the Temple, and suicide bombs, and everything the Colonials ever did that was cruel and stupid. That's playground logic, right in line with Laura and Gaius above. So again: if Laura's soul is dying in her breast, if her cancer has moved into her heart like Bill always said it would, it does not matter how much of an asshole Gaius Baltar is. She is still a person who is dying inside; she's still a person using someone else's sins for her excuse.

Bill sits at the bedside of the woman he loves, as she lays dying. She is a Hub. He reads to her a book written by nobody, or by Laura, or by God. "...Then I dug into the stump and pulled rocks from the ground until my fingers bled. I collected seeds from the few fruits the island offered, and planted them in long, straight furrows, like the ranks of soldiers. When I finished, I looked at what I had done. I did not see a garden. I saw a scar." Dying Laura shakes her head, saddened: that's what she's done. Turned the garden of her heart into a scar, with a million names sliced and burnt across it. Made her home a succession of jail cells, no matter where she was. Or who she was with. "This island had saved my life, and I had done it no service."

Jump.)

THE PATH MARKED BY GRAVESTONES

Gaius runs into a Centurion in the corridor, and -- because as long as he's been trying to impress Laura Roslin, he's been starting revolutions, because it's just what he does now, because whenever he opened his mouth on a Basestar he moved heaven and earth, and took that habit back to the Fleet with him; because he ministers to the lesser and the aimless and the downtrodden and there are two reasons for that, like an angel on one shoulder and something else on the other, and those two reasons haven't stopped fighting, like cats -- he decides to have a chat. It's straight out of My Triumphs, My Mistakes; he's not even trying. "I can see a real hierarchy around here. And I have to tell you, you're on the lower end of the scale, my friend. Yes you are. Which is odd, when you think about the Cylon God..." Disingenuously: "...They told you about God, didn't they?"

Roslin sits in her makeshift office on the Basestar with Helo. "I'm not even really sure if the Hybrid was referring to D'Anna, but if it's true..." Then, Helo points out, they won't have to fuss -- in the middle of a nuclear battle, inside the beautiful monster they'll be nuking -- with getting Three into a body and the whole resurrection rigmarole; they can just grab her and go. But that's not all he's thinking, how he says it: "Wouldn't have to find a... Find a body." We're talking about a factory for making women. The last thing he wants to see is how it's done.

"Yeah, good. Okay. Go get her and bring her here." Laura rises, coughs, and must sit back down again. He offers assistance, ignored, but there's something else. "It's just ... Once you have what she knows, I can't help feeling like you could try to keep Earth for Humans Only, and I just... Madam President, that doesn't seem..." She indulges him -- this is what you fucking get for bringing his Boy Scout ass in the first place, Madam President -- and he nods: "Honest. You're supposed to be conducting a fair deal here, and instead you're taking D'Anna off by yourself. Taking what she knows." She's really sick and weak, Laura; she's getting weaker as we speak, and you know what that means. Hardcore. Airlock hardcore. Maybe LVAD-crazy hardcore. I know that was the last episode of a show that freaked me out this bad.

"Slow down, Captain. At best, D'Anna knows the identities of the Cylons in our Fleet. And at best, they know a way to Earth." Which, Helo points out, is not a denial that she wants to keep Earth to herself. "I'm not saying that's true. I will say that if the Cylons had the option, that's exactly -- exactly -- what they would do." And I mean, who knows what the hell the Cylons are going to do at any point, really? Certainly not the Cylons, that's for sure. Helo says that at the least "the Sharons," the Eights, would do no such thing. Now, that I believe. She scoffs in his giant awesome face. "Captain. You are not married to the entire production line." Or but is he? "I cannot afford to be sentimental right now, and I cannot afford you to be sentimental either. If you can't do this job, find me someone who can." There are alarms of arrival.

TAT SAVITUR VARENYAM

While Three continues to lounge in her birthing tub like some kind of Club Med cougar, Boomer notes the random rebel Baseship approaching, and Cavil continues to harangue Three about corralling the 268s. She's like, "Nope!" That's one chip she knows she has. She asks him why he's not asking about the Final Five, and he gives his usual answer; that's another chip: "Well, I'll tell you! I will tell you, I'll start shouting out their names! Why do you risk it?" Cavil actually calms her down by asking if she's going to actually do anything or if she's just going to act cagey. Actually, what he says is, "...or are you useless?" Because what Cylons are, buster, are machines. And don't you forget it. Boomer reads about twenty-five Heavy Raiders coming toward them from the Baseship. At least, they look like Heavy Raiders. Really, what they are is a jury-rigged Shape of Things to Come; they are Frankenstein's Monsters of ingenuity, sprung from the forehead of somebody who may or may not be Athena.

Seelix, a person who appreciates having control, especially in her bird, is getting claustrophobic as the turkeys tow them in. "Come on, let's get this carpool started." She's getting afraid, jerked along like this, with toasters in control. Inside her Viper is a little pilot named Diana and inside that pilot are two littler pilots, named Amygdala and Prefrontal Cortex, and they're screaming at each other. "Now! Cut the frakkin' cable now, you frakkin' bastard!" And they do. The towing lines release. The Vipers soar as the Heavy Raiders dance out of their way, beautifully, born to this. Open the door. Half an air wing heads for the Hub and the other for Cavil's Baseship.

Three sighs happily. "Oh, the inhibition's been lifted... Oh, I sense it." Boomer figures out what's going on: "I think they're gonna attack. They're gonna blow the Hub." For Cavil, that's just the best and latest argument in the fight that he's too logical to understand Three is not having with him. "That would be mass murder. Death would be permanent for all of us. They've gone insane...!" (Do you see now? Do you see how right I am? Wouldn't it suck to be, oh, I don't know, permanently put into cold storage along with your entire line? Because that would really suck!) "Permanent death?" Three smiles easily. Nap time's over either way. "Well, that makes this all the more meaningful." She bashes his head against the side of the tub, killing him in one fluid movement, then settles back down into her bath, to consider her assets. Boomer runs off. Three is totally awesome.

The battle begins; the music is soaring and beautiful. Pike takes the FTL out, and Redwing calls it in. Helo and Twinset take their Raptor down, and head for the Hub.

AND THE BLAZE PURSUED THEM

"Well, He's your God as well. And God doesn't want any of His creations to be..." Gaius considers. "Slaves." The Centurion is not feeling this; Gaius pushes it. "Not that you're a slave... Exactly..."

The battle is serene, and lovely. What's the opposite of genocide? Once you've determined that immortality is not life, once you've chosen brief savagery over unending savagery, once you've punished Eve for that first bite and tossed everybody out of the Garden, is that when life begins? Is this majesty?

The Hub begins to die, groaning. Helo and Twinset make their way down, working together like a well-oiled machine; like they practiced this for a year, on Caprica, in the rain. They locate Three, where she's finally deigned to get out of the bath, and has put on her bathrobe. Everybody stares at everybody, and Twinset finally points out that the Hub is about to blow. They grab Three and head out. She has this great, sexy/hapless ready-for-anything floaty vibe, this sanguine, sardonic kind of humor about everything. "Yeah, I'll go with you. You guys got like some Vegemite? Or Corn-Nuts? I could murder some Corn-Nuts."

(OMG what if Gaius turns into Dr. Baltar Dr. Baltar and the Centurions all start going "By Your Command" and... I can think of some ways that would be cool, and other ways that would be even sadder than Gaius usually, even. King of the tin soldiers. Plus he'd have to get a cape, and he already looks so gay so much of the time.) The Centurion looks down at him -- one of the posters on the forums suggested that maybe the chromejobs will fuck up religion just as bad as everybody else and start walking on all fours with food on their noses going, "I don't know why, just do it" -- and he nods, patronizing and over-identifying at once. "I know. Pathetic. Pathetic, isn't it?"

He looks around, at the sudden sounds of violence; outside, the Vipers and Heavy Raiders take Cavil's Basestar out (after Boomer, I am sure, finally got her shit together and grabbed the bus outta there), and they head home. Home, to a Cylon Baseship, so they can regain the Fleet, having saved maybe the scariest of all the Cylons, and the most singular. This season fucks around not even a little bit. Did you see the preview for tomorrow? How bad is this going to get?

Explosion. The Centurion and Gaius are blown across the hall; they fall to the floor. He rolls onto his back and tries to sit up. He feels the wound before he looks, and his eyes go wide. He can't look. He looks: he's bleeding, badly, from his side. The tears well up. He is terrified. Have you ever been so scared you cried? That is scared. The fragile frakkin' body of Gaius Baltar. It's all about bodies, about the meat and the pilots inside it: yours, mine. Laura's, Gaius's. Theirs. Ours.

The Marines bring him to Laura in her squat, her little home, and she rushes to his assistance. She steps from his side for a moment to grab a medkit, and he yowls; she rushes to him again, without thinking, Teacher Laura coming to the fore; she apologizes. I swear she says, "Easy, Slim. Easy." She sends the Marine to find out about what's bringing the ruckus and bandages Gaius's body. "Thank you, thank you." She ignores him, focused and firm, like a school nurse; he goes on thanking her. She finally grabs a needle of morpha and sticks him with it; he yelps and she apologizes again.

She can't help but come home again. This is what humanity's capable of at its highest moments: faith and mercy, beyond anger or fear. That's what strength looks like, and it's how we're going to win. She's so charming when she's at a loss, when she's forgotten to be angry or manipulative; there's a disarming kind of rawness and humor behind everything she does, when she's forgetting to be Madam Airlock for a second. "Okay. Sorry. You have this, uh... You have this big hole in your hide, as Cottle would say. Okay. All right. I'm gonna do this again..." He can't believe her; as he slips into the morpha he's amazed by her. "It's the least I can do. I think you're gonna live. As usual." Heh. "You know something?" he says drowsily, as she continues to work. "You're very pretty." Duh. She snorts and keeps working on him. "Man, that morpha worked fast." Thy drugs are quick.

BHARGO DEVASAYA DHIMAHI

"Still," Gaius says, grinning, climbing higher and higher. "Do you know why I'm so serene right now?" Laura, indulging and funny: "You're doped out of your mind?" No, of course not. He's a crazy cult leader! It's gotta be because... Yep. "Because I know God. You need God, Laura. Really, you'd be a different woman." Word. "I know God, therefore I know myself. Truth is I was harboring the most awful, desperate guilt."

Laura freezes.

"A heavy, dark... Unimaginable, soul-breaking guilt." Their hands over his wound, holding him together. The fragile bodies of us all. He looks at her face. "Now it's gone. Now it's gone, it's been transformed. Into... I have been transformed."

She's angry at him for doing this; nothing moves. There is no movement. Her tone is questioning, light, as she asks. "What was your guilt about?"

Gaius smiles. "I have no guilt."

"What was your guilt about?" Begging him to say it, begging him not to say it. Begging it not to be true. Because if she finds herself, as the body politic, standing over that, if she finds out that his innocence, far from simply dubious, is covered in more blood than she could ever contemplate, if she is standing above the man to blame not only for New Caprica but for the Exodus, if these things are true, then another part of the world falls down. Maybe an integral part. Maybe the essential part.

Gaius Baltar sat up there in Colonial One and didn't save her people. Twenty-four hours a day, the only thing we know for sure is that he didn't save them. It's the one thing he did constantly for more than a year. He shoved her in a box, just to prove he could; he signed away her life, and took the child, and walked away from 8,000 dead. How do we measure loss? 8,000 names, scrawled across her heart. And how many people in the Colonies, if he tells her this? How many millions, children and students and lovers and friends? Seven million in Caprica City alone. He is a Hub. And now he's on his back, bleeding out, and he's not begging. He's high as a kite and he thinks she's pretty, and he needs to confess.

"I gave the access codes to the Cylons. They wiped out most of humanity."

Her eyes roll back; she nearly faints. Her eyes go glossy. This isn't his trial. It never was.

"Of course, I didn't know that's what I was doing at the time, exactly, but that's what I did. And when I realized what I had done, the magnitude..."

He is back there for a moment, he lives the story. The magnitude. Down in the water, when she tortured him, and his million burnt and burning children kissed him. Up in the head, when he finally understood how Kevin Connor could be seven years old, and nine, at once. As Jeanne's boy lay gasping in the arms of his family, in the presence of God. The magnitude. Try to explain it, it slips through your fingers like Hybrid speech. Try to share your salvation with a woman you've hurt this deeply, and it turns into riya. Because there is no relativity to sin, nor to guilt, or to redemption: you throw your salvation in her face, the one thing she can't have. Because even if your sins are washed away, those are still her people, still written on her heart, and her guilt is here to stay. Your salvation is cruelty:

"In that moment, I was saved. I was loved. By God. Looking back... I think I was rewarded."

"Rewarded," she says. So scary.

Well, a sober Gaius would probably have fucked this up even more, but yeah: rewarded. To reclaim your soul from your own self-hatred, to touch that divinity for even a moment: rewarded. For laying down the burdens of your own guilt performance for five seconds and realizing that you are loved. For hearing your master's command and snapping at that treat, finally, after thirty years; the sweet taste, and how it fades so quickly? Rewarded. But this isn't a love story; all she hears is hate.

"Pythia talks about the Flood that wiped out most of humanity. Nobody blames the Flood, a Flood is a force of nature. Through the Flood, mankind is rejuvenated, born again. I was another Flood, you see." Which is indefensible bullshit, putting himself as a non-metaphor, into a metaphorical space, to salve his own conscience. That's gross. We are not Floods, we are people. But part of the trip -- to Heaven, or Faerie, or wherever you go -- is that you don't bring it back with you. That's what Kara's been wrestling with all season. And more bullshit still -- Just go to sleep, Gaius! Stop talking! -- "I blamed myself. I blamed myself. But God made the man who made that choice. God made us all perfect. And in that thought, all my guilt flies away... Flies away, like a bird." ...wingbeats of a dove drown out the heartbeats of those who follow... "I can give you that peace, Laura, that freedom. Pray with me. Pray with me."

"Okay," she says, not talking to him. He thanks her, again. "Okay." She sits down near him, and thinks. She sits near him and thinks about nothing at all. She is a garden, she is a scar. It doesn't matter what Gaius says, because this is her trial, and he's stoned. In morpha veritas, yeah, but not intelligible veritas. Not worthwhile truth; if he'd left off the bit about guilt, would she have let it go? His sins are so much larger than hers; it feels good. Because by comparison, if we follow that thought, what is the magnitude of her own sins? She's dishonored herself and her people a million times; she cuts down trees to save a forest. But she did this for the right reasons, and she burns with guilt, and that means by comparison that she's doing a fine job. Lay morality at her feet, she can handle it.

Only can she? Blood drips, drips, down the fragile arms of Gaius Baltar, dropping to the floor in two puddles; his fragile hands thrown out cruciform, a hole in his hide. ("See my hands... Stop doubting and believe.") Things get unbelievably scary. She makes her way to him, and pulls his bandage away, tenderly; she shushes him and comforts as she works. He asks what she is doing, as he starts to white out.

"It's all right. You're fine. Shh! You're fine," she says, quietly. Almost lovingly.

He begs her to stop. Nobody could blame her. She is a force of nature.

It pours out in a flood.

CIVIL BLOOD MAKES CIVIL HANDS UNCLEAN

A Raider dies, all alone in space, for the last time. Helo, reports on the wireless as they come home: "We have D'Anna onboard. We are clear of the Hub. Commence nuclear strike. Repeat, nuclear strike is a go." They form up, they fire; the Hub is gone, a garden of flame. A scar. The music is mournful, and triumphant. Twinset doesn't take her eyes off it; the horrible majesty.

"And with a whimper, every Cylon in the universe begins to die," Three smirks. (The "frakkin' serves 'em right" is silent; she's a free agent now, a singular player. Like Kara.) Helo knows what it means: every Cylon in the universe. Beginning to die. His wife, the love of his life is a clock, ticking for the first time in a thousand lives. "Yes," Twinset nods, "That's right. And it's a good thing, D'Anna, because now there's no difference." Three laughs silently, to be getting any kind of information from a fucking Eight: of course it's this optimistic love crap. "We can all start trusting each other!" Twinset looks at him, but he's still tingling from the pain. He looks... amazing. Is his hair different? Is the flight suit? The flight suit always throws me off.

"Don't do this to me, don't... Don't do this to me. Don't do this to me, please. Please."

Laura Roslin kneels in prayer, to the Lords of Kobol, and they lean down. She is deaf to his pleading, but the Gods can hear it all. His blood stains her, everywhere; his blood is on her hands. She mutters supplication to the Gods. I hope it turns to ashes in her mouth.

The only word she says is no.

(Jump.

Elosha leans against the foot of the Dying Leader's bed, talking more quickly than ever. She doesn't have much time, before the heart gives out. Before it stops in her chest.

"I'm not saying Baltar's done more good than harm in the universe. He hasn't. The thing is... The harder it is, to recognize someone's right to draw breath, the more crucial it is." Crucial?

Maybe for a moment you can see it all, and the way it goes around and around. This is certainly more than we've ever talked about it. But it's a miracle: like any miracle, we take it for granted. You could grow to hate it, simply for stubbornly continuing to exist. And like any miracle, we forget it when it's done. Most of the time.

Once there was a little boy, soft. Brilliant. Unsuited to his environment, on a poor agricultural world. A whole world of people, living and dying every day, without even the capacity to understand what he was. He could have been an architect, or an artist, but he had a serious turn of mind; he loved computers, and physics. He lived on a dairy farm outside of a dirt town called Cuffle's Breath Wash, on Aerelon. He was like a dog, with its food balanced on its nose. One day, he'd have to snap that treat out of the air; he knew that if he didn't catch it, if he didn't get it right the first time, the chance would be gone forever. He was an alien among his people; he was alien to himself. So he watched, and he waited, and he learned to survive. He was charismatic, because he had to be.

His name was Gaius. He practiced, for hours. Do you have any idea how hard it is for a ten-year-old boy to change the way he speaks? To unlearn everything he ever learned, in the middle of the Wash, waiting for that one day? For that small ray of hope about the future? He was hardwired for self-hatred; he nurtured his own self-deception, because it kept him alive. He lived in a world of his own creation, and protected it with his fragile hands. Oh, to be Caprican! In the Wash the men liked to work with their hands, grab a pint down the pub, finish off the evening with a good old-fashioned fight. The things they said, behind his back. In front of him. Do you have any idea how hard it is for a ten-year-old boy to change the way he speaks?

Gaius Baltar is a miracle. You want to talk about miracles? On the very same day that a very pale doctor informed Laura Roslin that she had terminal cancer, most of humanity was annihilated. And of all sadness, this was sad: a woman's arms, shielding the head of a sleeping boy from the jaws of the final beast. Gaius survived, by some mathematical absurdity; some probabilistic madness brought him and an angel to the remnants of humanity, trading places on Caprica with the father of his child. And -- wheels within wheels -- he somehow became President. Because he was charismatic. Because he had to be.

"If humanity is going to prove itself worthy of surviving, it can't do it on a case-by-case basis," Elosha says.

What nobody really talks about is that the President of the Twelve Colonies stands between her people and darkness. Every second of the day and all through the night, like a mother bear, growling, snapping, hissing, bleeding for them. Shouting into the darkness. Shining in it. You either love them or you don't, but if you love them, you love all of them, because you're the woman that stands in the dark.

Laura joins Elosha, finally, and looks down at this woman, the Dying Leader; the President of the Twelve Colonies. A woman who was rarely satisfied; who was convinced that the Gods Themselves were leading her toward destiny. And she believed it. Even after the diloxin and the radiation failed to stop her cancer. She was a teacher, she was something to behold. In the head of a classroom; standing before the Quorum, holding onto strength she never knew she had. Shining in the night. And her people, her students: they loved her. They'd walk through fire for her.

And now, Laura, look at her. This woman who seemed so eternal, withering away. And Bill having to change her diaper because she can't even... And at the moment she dies, there will be no gleaming fields of Elysium stretched out before her. There will be a dark, black abyss. And she will be terrified. She will be so scared. Afraid to die alone, afraid she's not the Dying Leader she thought she was, or that her death might prove as meaningless as everyone else's.

"A bad man feels his death just as keenly as a good man," Elosha says quietly. Or a good woman. Or a young race, still learning its limits, striving to be better.

"What do you want from me here?" says Laura, defiant, searching. Still searching.

Bill says her name, softly. She is still beautiful. To him, she will always be beautiful.

"Just love someone."

This is a love story.

THOSE WHO LIFT EACH OTHER

"Love. Huh."

Laura watches the President flatline; her eyes jump to Bill's face, as he stares at the screen. He leans over slowly, and kisses her lips, so tenderly, and falls by her side.

"You go. You go. You go to your rest now. I'm not gonna be selfish anymore. You go. Rest."

She is so beautiful.

Bill removes his wedding band from a shaking hand, and puts it on her finger. The right hand, for a widow.

Laura stares. Something inside her stirs, and begins to move.

Jump.)

Laura wakes with a start. How much time has passed? An eternity. A split-second jump. A lacuna on the barge. A bandage lies on the floor, in a pool of blood. She puts on her glasses.

Panicking, Laura rushes to his side, takes his pulse, begs him to stay.

"Please, no. Stop bleeding. More bandages... Stop the bleeding, stop the bleeding... OH!" she chokes, as he stirs. "Okay, good. Don't go..."

"All right," says Twinset. "We've got get D'Anna to the control room..." Helo shakes his head; he knew this part was coming. "That's not the plan." Eight's confused: what plan? Three fairly giggles. Of course there's a lie.

"Please don't go, Gaius. Please. I don't know how..." Laura sets up a saline drip for Gaius, talking herself through it, shaking. Standing against the darkness. "All right, put it in..."

"I have to take her directly to the President. No one else." Eight protests: that wasn't the deal. "I'm just doing what she told me to do, okay?" For once. Three smirks. "Double-dealing. It's very human. You never got that, Eight." Her lip curls. There's nothing nihilistic in your comedy, when you've looked upon the face of God. It's funny because it's funny; like rubber bugs, jumping.

"No more. No more, don't go. Please don't... die. Live. Please, live. Don't go."

You want to talk about miracles? Laura Roslin falls upon his chest, her head to his heart, holding down the bandage. Holding him together with her hands. If you love them you love all of them, because you're the woman that stands in the dark: but you have to start with one. She already loves them, she gets that part: "Them," she gets. The forest she's protecting when she cuts down the trees one by one. Right here, right in front of her, in his little shirt and his hair: a man whose pain is very real. The singular entity that is Gaius Baltar, who is in trouble.

Open the door. Love someone.

SOME SHALL BE PARDONED

"I'm not saying I agree. I'm saying it's my orders."

Twinset is ashamed. "So I pretty much just made a prize fool of myself, didn't I? Trust." She backs away, disgusted. Helo feels crappy -- who is this girl to him? -- and Three peeks at him: "Can we go find the President now?" He takes her hand, and they run.

Laura Roslin is lying in a rack, looking at Gaius. Planting a tree. Loving someone. She sits when they enter; Three runs to Gaius. Laura watches her tend to him; he smiles dimly up at her. "Gaius, it's me..."

"The Hub's been destroyed," Helo reports. "Good," she says. "Don't let anyone in here. Whatever it takes." He nods, without hesitating; she thanks him and he leaves.

"He's injured, but I think he's going to survive." Laura considers Three; this strange woman. "I think it's gonna be a long time jumping back." Laura nods, and smiles to herself. "I've got time." She does.

"Is that right? Well, you went to a lot of trouble to bring me here. Deceiving your so-called allies. I suppose you've got some questions for me." Three takes her place behind the desk; Laura speaks to her like a person. "Yes, I do. I'd like to talk about the five Cylons in my Fleet." Three looks at her, measuring out her words. "So you know about the Final Five." They're supposed to know the way to Earth. "But you don't know that you're one of them?" Laura is shocked. She thinks, considers that. She doesn't feel different; she doesn't feel disgusting, or evil, or anything she should be feeling...

Three laughs uproariously at her, and Laura rolls her eyes, perturbed.

"Your face! Oh, it's ridiculous! No, look, I'm not giving you any names." Laura nods, conceding that, given the circumstances and the generally heightened air, that was kind of a good burn. "Not until I feel like I'm safe, because information is all I got, sweetie. I'm mortal now. In fact, I'm the only Three in the whole darn universe. So I gotta worry about protecting myself. I'll tell you who the Final Five are when you take me back to your Fleet." Laura nods. That makes sense. "Oh, and by the way, Laura? I would've said the same thing if you'd met me with a whole lot of Cylons, because I don't trust anyone right now. So all this deception? Complete waste of time."

Laura nods, and smiles wisely. It usually is.

DHIYO YO NAH PRACHODAYAT

Laura sits in the Hybrid Chamber, knees up to her chest like a girl, staring down at the beautiful creature in the water, listening to her whisper music. This strange, lovely world. ...to remove the pump with the attached hose and wiring simultaneously release the three tangs while pulling the pump out of the retainer along with the line and wiring...

They jump, out and back in. In the jump we are all forest, for a moment; we turn back into trees. But she can do both now, she's mastered the art of remembering the miracle, and no longer needs the protection of the lacuna; she turns her scars into new gardens. This is the trial and the Maelstrom of the President, Laura Roslin, who shines in the dark.

"You lied to me," she says, wry, to Elosha, who followed her out of the jump. "Did I?" Roslin speaks softly, like a woman in love. "I thought I was earning humanity's right to survive." Elosha laughs at her. "Oh! It's not a vending machine, Laura. You don't save a life, and then... 'Cue the celestial trumpets, here's the way to Earth!'"

Which is to say: the Gods are not a factory for making Gods, or luck, or answering anything. You can't earn their love, because you can't earn anything freely given. These are duties to yourself. Roslin grins at her. "-- I know." "Jump!"

"Disorienting, isn't it? All these little limping steps back."

From the altar to the temple: every day, a little bit closer to home. Holding them in balance: Laura smiles. "I like it. I'm used to it. Every jump brings us a little bit closer to home. Galactica. ...My home." Elosha smiles. That's part of it.

"Maybe there's something there for me..." she muses, wondering if these visions were true. Daring to hope this is a love story.

"Maybe even closer," Elosha says. Laura smiles at her, and casts her eyes around the Baseship; she doesn't know it's literal. She is so beautiful. Then she considers the Hybrid, alone.

Bill sits alone, in a Raptor, in the black. He reads Searider Falcon; his fingers on its pages, its scent in his nose. It keeps her close. On the wall behind his head there's the flash of a jump, and the proximity alarms go off. Louder than they've ever gone before.

Bill heads to the cockpit, refusing to blink, younger than ever -- is it the flightsuit? -- and scans the sky for more. It's just that one. Just her. He refuses to take his eyes off her, as he straps in for the approach.

The hatch opens, on a Baseship deck as alien as anything, and as close as home. He makes his way toward her without pomp, with a fair amount of grace, like a boy. She tries to speak, twice. This is his show.

"Missed you." He is the bravest boy in the universe.

"Me too," she says, and he puts his hungry, tired arms around her. She rests in them, with tears in her eyes. Finally home.

"I love you," she says. The bravest girl.

He savors it, and pulls back, to see her smiling at him: gotcha!

"About time," he smiles. She hums with pleasure. Her body hums with it. This is a love story. He kisses her right eye, and she makes that sound she makes, and throws herself into his arms. They are strong; they weep with relief. He holds her tightly.

Finally, home.

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