In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.
This show's so great, dude. Okay, Sam Adams is having some kind of week: Plagued with refugee guilt by day and reliving his orphan traumas by night, all those political rants and obsession with funding the latest Tauron insurrection have begun to endanger his big, gay marriage. Joe, of course, doesn't want to talk about the Tauron Civil War ever, nor the fact that it's all happening again, but reminds Sam that to have a spouse is a very important thing. Thinking along the same lines, Grandma Ruth gives Evelyn (née Emmanuelle, a.k.a. Willie's future stepmother) the Naomi go-ahead to fuck her widowed son-in-law. Grandma Ruth really just can't do anything without being creepy, can she?
Amanda's whole deal in this episode is pretty cool. Mar-Beth really wants her out of the Willow Compound, despite Clarice's whole God Yadda-yadda, but with a little encouragement from Jordan Duram, Amanda is able to dig even deeper into the family. Awesomely, it's with this totally offensive story about how frigid careerwomen don't want babies, and when Zoë came by mistake Amanda hated her and became a refrigerator mother and this turned Zoë autistic and into a terrorist -- just like every horrible Fifties thing at once -- and you're rolling your eyes right up until the end of the episode, when Amanda's like, "Yeah, I totally lied to them about the whole thing and they bought it, because they are a stupid cult." Mar-Beth has her baby and Clarice gives it a totally long-ass, sweet little blessing. (Also: How great would it be if the OTG threw in a little Latin every now and then, the way that Taurons toss around Greek? So great.)
The other thing Amanda is doing, unbeknownst to herself, is blowing Daniel Graystone, who is just about the grossest little Matt Cable of a toad right now. He's working on recreating the resurrection program, and he's just coincidentally decided to start with a fake Amanda, who just coincidentally happens to be super horny all the time, and is by complete happenstance bothered neither by his constant abuse nor his unrelentingly terrible decisions. ("Honey, I joined the Mafia. Again." That's cool, want a blowjob?) There are three or four fleshcrawling scenes where you can literally see him choose to see how sick he can get, but honestly it's the sweet and wholesome ones (also the bizarre opening/closing montages, which I still haven't figured out) that are really upsetting. Followed by the ones where he screams about "I programmed you to have feelings! Stop having the feelings I programmed you to have, and have some feelings I did not program you to have! I have forgotten how computers work!"
Then Cyrus pisses DG off further by using a computer-generated Daniel avatar -- similar to that manic thing that greets you in the Matrix -- in the ads for the monetized resurrection product they're calling Grace by Graystone (speaking of things that are nasty as hell). The commercial for GxG is cynically hilarious, but how about somebody comment on the total hypocrisy here? "Stop using my image in mockup ad campaigns nobody will ever see!" Well Daniel, can I at least get a copy of you to virtually suck my dick? "Oh yeah, no problem. That's way less exploitative. In fact, if you've got a minute..."
Anyway, Sam gets embroiled in a turf war over his Tauron-motivated gun-running, and the Guatrau tells him to fix it. Sam decides to steal some Cylon robots and mow down the whole operation, which since the guy's name was Atreus he probably shoulda seen that coming. That goes pretty well, in terms of bloodbathery -- the phrase "by your command" is uttered for the first time in the Worlds -- but the Guatrau tells Sam to stop thinking about weaponizing everything for the resistance on Tauron, but Sam continues to think about just this. The Caprican toasters are going to need somebody to fight, right? Or else they'll never get pissed and rebel against humanity. Let's get this party started!
Watch the episode below, discuss it in our forums, then see why people should be watching Caprica!
Want to immediately access TWoP content no matter where you are online? Download the free TWoP toolbar for your web browser. Already have a customized toolbar? Then just add our free toolbar app to get updated on our content as soon it's published.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Two shows to watch instead of this show: The Good Wife and The Vampire Diaries. You probably think they are not for you, for various reasons that I understand but are none of my business, but I stand behind both of those shows. And nobody's more surprised about that than I am, which seems to be a common theme about these two shows in particular.
Because so yeah, the show's been canceled and supposedly we'll get the last five episodes year, but I don't have a lot of faith in those sorts of promises. We will see. But this isn't a postmortem, because even though the show is over, it's alive and it is beautiful. Something new appeared in the world and we got to see it, and that makes us lucky.
The opening is a little confusing. It's quick-blipped stuff from the news and Sarno, as usual, but instead of being onscreen it's just audio, over a strange swooping shot across Caprica City's skyline. The clods move fast, and an eyeball stares at us like Sauron or something before flipping through Amanda's memories since the bridge. I don't think I get it, but the deficit lies with me. She was under the water; she came up. Clarice watches her sleeping and touches her hair, softly.
Sarno jokes about how he's done nearly enough crimes in NCC to afford the game itself. I wonder if you can play NCC inside NCC. Maybe that's all they're ever doing. Sam sleeps, remembering the women screaming. On the news they're talking about it, how the Troubles are coming around again back on Tauron. Daniel wakes up sweating, remembering when Tomas died in his arms. It's stopped raining but the nights are still bad.
Morning in the Adams house, and it's a-bustle. Sam and Larry arrive for Willie, while Evelyn and Joe dance around Ruth in a well-practiced, choreographed easiness that says how far they've come. He doesn't even know about Emmanuelle, or how hard Evelyn tried to break his heart so it could come to life again. She fulfills his every need, before he needs it. Sam runs to the TV and turns it on, for more news about the Tauron insurrection.
Larry hates it because he doesn't understand it, this obsession with the propped-up Tauron dictator. He dines on caviar while his people are dying. Caprica pays him, probably pays the contras too. I never really believed in the famine. You can't explain something like that to people like this. The fight's between the Agrarians and the Heracletes. They're just words to Larry, Sam's Caprican husband; to Evelyn and Sam they're real. They are scars. Ruth knows. Even as Larry's sighing and Sam's bitching at him, she tells Willie to pay attention.
"Your father and uncle lived through this when they were your age, now it's happening again." The dictator's name is Andreas Phaulkon, the playboy dictator; it's him that gets fat while his people die. Joe just wants to ignore it all. He took back his name, but that doesn't make him Tauron again, not like this. Sam sends back money, so does Evelyn. Secreting it away, sending it when they can. Larry just wants the TV off. Sam talks Tauron when he watches, and he smokes cigarettes. He can't take his eyes off it. When Larry looks all he sees is Sam, as a child. Sam at night, shaking. His husband the orphan.
Evelyn gets Willie out of the house; the boys follow. Joe doesn't speak. Ruth doesn't look her in the eye, as she's gathering their things for the day. "You're good for him, you know?" Evelyn laughs, at her boss's mother in law; she blushes. She likes taking care of him. A man needs something like that, to be loved. To be taken care of. "That's not what I mean, and you know it." Ruth looks at her, this half-daughter, Shannon's replacement in all but deed. These are the old ways. "You should look in on him tonight," Ruth says lightly. "Make sure he's got all his appointments for tomorrow too. Willie and I will be at my sister's." These are the old ways.
A man needs something; she likes taking care of him. Amanda brings him his coffee, in her white satin robe. She is beautiful in the morning, every morning. She says the coffee smells like the whole morning, waiting, like a fresh sheet of paper. She feels like this too, although she doesn't know it and she wouldn't have the words to say it. She invites him upstairs; he doesn't sleep too well downstairs. They've been sleeping separately now for such a long time. A man needs something. "I keep running into roadblocks. Zoë's code, what I remember of it, was so... So intuitive. Makes me feel like a hack trying to recreate it." Like a fresh sheet of paper, if you knew the words. She took the code and made souls sing; he feels like a hack. When his wife tells him she has faith in him, he sighs and takes off his band. He returns to a darker world. "I wish you did," Daniel says. He is alone.
Human psychology is based on projection. There is something truly terrifying about reality augmented to this extreme. Not the kitchen table but an absolute facsimile, a world with no faults and everything rearranged the way he wants it. You could climb into that world and never come out again; holobands behind the eyes, making the whole world a fresh sheet of paper, written exactly the way you want it. Like playing NCC inside NCC inside NCC, perfectly selfish and perfectly projected. Perfectly alone. Maybe that's all we're ever doing. Our lives and our worlds only ever getting smaller; floating above the truth of our lives and the pain our luxuries necessitate somewhere else.
Daniel smiles, orphans all around him. Sobbing, terrified; their father lost and gone to war. Johnny and Tessa, mourning their father. "The passing of a loved one is a terrible thing. A tragedy that leaves us bereft, our lives and our world that much smaller. But what if I told you there was a way to ease this heartache, thanks to a breakthrough technology from Graystone Industries?"
A perfect world, no pain at all, floating just above the sorrowful world you know. Like beautiful Caprica, beloved of Apollo; shining white Caprica, spires and skies like a fresh sheet of paper, riding on the back of Tauron, Aerilon, Sagittaron. On their blood and their pain, like a chugging engine, a floating world that runs on money. Feeding those unlucky sisters on her shit.
Johnny and Tessa won't have to cry too much longer; their father appears in living color, arms out, holding his orphaned children tight. "Imagine never having to say goodbye to your loved ones again. Imagine a future without loss, brought to you today." Caprica's fallen, back again, raising you up out of sorrow and into the light. "Grace, by Graystone. Because some memories should live forever." Johnny and Tessa fade away; they were never real. Johnny and Tessa were just a story, their dead father an index of every man we've lost. Daniel was never real either.
Daniel hates it. He hates it: He hates Daniel Graystone, artificial life form extending a perverted grace. Johnny and Tessa, he likes the idea. But his own form? Repurposed, in his image, saying words he's never said and pretending to feelings he's never felt. Offering grace Daniel knows will never come. Perverted. How could you do that to a person? How is that grace?
The Guatrau's confused: Is there a problem with the program? Daniel can't admit that, so he stays on task with his complaint. "My problem is with this commercial. For one thing, I didn't even know it was being made..." Cyrus explains they made it on their own time, to let him work on hacking his way toward grace. "And since our research shows that most people still see Daniel as the face of Graystone, we went ahead with the computer-generated image. I didn't think you'd have a problem with it."
Daniel laughs nastily: "You didn't think I'd have a problem with the appropriation of my image? For a marketing campaign I never even signed off on?" All Cyrus did was give you grace. "It's a good likeness," he protests, and though it is, it's not good enough. It makes Daniel feel like a hack; it makes him feel like he's been hacked. The Guatrau loves it: It's sweet, kids will find it comforting. Daniel invokes the uncanny valley; he wants to float above it. The Guatrau consents, but just wants the same commercial done properly this time: With Daniel making the empty promises himself, live and in person.
While the Willow children squabble over homework, Amanda helps Mar-Beth put together her birthing tub. The edges will be soft; her family will surround her, holding her hands and praying to the Lord. Amanda's asked before, but now she asks again: "Any day now, huh? But you don't have a due date?" Mar-Beth didn't want to know if it was a girl, or a boy, or when it was coming, or if it was healthy. The word of the Lord and the price of faith. Amanda can't believe her, and presses her too far, with questions.
"Amanda, I thought I made it clear. I trust in my faith and my family to help me deliver a healthy baby." She can't even imagine that. She's thinking like a doctor, she says; forcing it, without faith. Can't even imagine that much faith. Mar-Beth's face closes up like a fan and she sends Amanda for groceries, annoyed.
Alone with her wife, Mar-Beth can ask about the progress of Clarice's resurrection dreams. Clarice assumes that the GDD still has Zoë's thumb drive, along with everything else they seized. One of the husbands has a mole, at the GDD, so they're looking into it. "You've got us stealing from the GDD now? Adopting Terror Mom isn't enough for you?" Clarice takes offense, but Mar-Beth continues. "She's a tabloid celebrity, Clarice. Having her here is like turning this house into a giant lightning rod."
Clarice reminds her wife that it's God's will to keep her close. Faith demands they leave it be. God will keep them safe. When Mar-Beth complains that Clarice's will is usually isomorphic to God's, and getting closer all the time, Clarice stares at her. "I didn't choose this path. The things I've done, the things that I've allowed to happen, I've not taken any pleasure in them. They've been a necessary sacrifice." Human psychology is based upon projection; she doesn't even know when she's lying anymore. It's her certainty that brings them to her, that converts them under her unto the Lord. The world she sees and the world she lives in are identical.
If Apotheosis will bring the Twelve Worlds under God, that's what she has to do. It's Clarice's destiny to make that happen, so she will. Mar-Beth threatens, in her way, wondering aloud if the sacrifice one day might be their family. Clarice won't give her the satisfaction. "Well? I pray God that He never asks that of me." They both know the real answer. Not even Mar-Beth, not even Clarice herself, knows how much she's come to care for Amanda. This too is God's will. The world has God's name scrawled across it, in letters only his servants can see.
Sam calls it ballsy, the way they put their logos on everything. Big tall buildings, big tall G, G for Graystone. "They're like taggers, slapping their names up and down walls and buildings, because they own those walls and buildings." So they won't forget it. The world is like a fresh sheet of paper, with their names scrawled across. Stone and wood are just the world; it's possession and territory that float above it. That augment.
At Joe's insistence Sam starts to talk, about his dreams last night. Their parents, dying back on Tauron. The flowers at the roadside. "Idon'twannatalkaboutthat," Yusif says, urgently and pleading. But it's happening again. The orphan boys, they held each other in the storm. All the way to Caprica. And it's happening again. Joe pretends he's Caprican but it's only floating over him; he's fooled them both into thinking fresher tragedies take precedence. That watching his daughter shoot herself, and then him, wasn't just like being orphaned once again.
Larry's not a native Tauron, he doesn't understand about the money. Or the guns. Sam's ashamed to admit it, but he's running guns now. Terrified for his people, for the soil. The dirt we made them eat. Evelyn brings coffee and she stays silent, but Sam knows she understands. Joe begs his brother to reconsider; he's playing with fire, he's playing with losing his husband. Evelyn stands perfectly still, in the anteroom: "It'll pass. It's part of marriage. You should be thankful. You've got somebody who loves you." Sam doesn't hear him, but Evelyn does. A man needs something.
Jordan surprises Amanda, on her run through the park. He laughs, to himself, when she's startled. She's embarrassed, at her progress. "I can't even remember the kids' names! These people don't even trust me to do the dishes." She explains about Mar-Beth, the hold she has on the household; the only one among the wives and husbands who questions Clarice at all. How dangerous she makes Amanda feel.
"You're doing fine. You just stay observant, pick up what you can. Subgroups, patterns of behavior, pecking orders, anything like that. It's all good." It's all good, he says: They're not a family, they're a cell. They're not wives and husbands and children, they're terrorists in a close-knit group, who trust in their God and keep guns in the basement. He's her handler now. He tells her she must float, upon the world. To know them, to love them, to never forget that they killed her daughter but to lose that anger and learn to make them love her. Mar-Beth to begin with. Subgroups, pecking orders. "Open yourself up to her," he says, like a fresh sheet of paper. "I don't care what you do. But do it soon." They are running out of time. He thinks the danger is in her house, it isn't. It's in his.
Running guns to the courier. Larry's on the phone and Sam smiles when he speaks to him, more groceries and more chances to remember why they married. He says goodbye to him in Tauron; Larry used to love that, before he saw the scars. When the city workers stop in front of them he smiles at Demos, his partner today, and says goodbye to Larry. Sam and Demos relax into the comfortable rhythms of bitching; they drive a hearse for cover, for guns, and they laugh. But they're not city workers. Another car pulls up behind the hearse and the men in suits pull guns.
Guns are the province of a ratty man, Atreus. He takes point, aiming his gun at Sam's head and offering to kill him right away. Sam calls him adelphi and asks for mercy. One death begets another, the line of blood continuing, calling blood for blood; his name is Atreus for a reason. Demos lies dead and Atreus holds his gun to Samuel's head and pulls the trigger, laughing. The soil calls to Sam and then its call recedes; Atreus was only being cruel. No more bullets. "You tell your Guatrau to stay out of our gun business, or the soil is gonna get crowded." Demos lies dead; a web of blood and Tauron honor connects him to the thing, and to the gun trade, and to the deaths back on Tauron, and to the corruption that lies atop the city, floating like a film on water. They leave him, in the rain and in his debt.
"All the flavor and none of the calories," Daniel says, snacking in the floating world. All the sensation and none of the weight. Those orphan boys were so starved for meat that they ate the dirt, and now they live on Caprica where they've never known famine. All the enjoyment and none of the guilt. They're so starved for connection they fill NCC in droves, fucking and killing and searching for meaning in graffiti and strange mysteries. He floats above the world, neither in it nor of it, eating food that tastes and then is gone.
"What are you working on?" his wife asks, and he blushes. "Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but I'm working on you. I'm refining the algorithms that extrapolate personality traits and memories from online data. Still, it seems like I've got a long ways to go." Amanda smiles and jokes: He needs to work on her brain some more, because she's not getting it. All the taste and none of the calories. She certainly feels real; she can't even understand him when he says she isn't. Not really.
"I may not be perfect, but I am good at some things," says his wife. "I bet I could please you." He laughs, a bit uneasily; healthy sex drive and a desire to please are baseline for every avatar, in the floating world. Every person is an object for sale and their responsibility is to our pleasure. In twenty years Sharon Valerii will be born on Troy, a doomed mining settlement off ugly Aerilon; Sharon Valerii was never born and only floats atop that world. Made to love, and be loved in return.
"You make it sound so mechanical," she says; perhaps she knows she's joking. She bites her lip and smiles at him again, aching to fulfill her programming. He steps further and further away from the world, as she chips at his judgment. But that's just his programming, too; he loves her. She updates with more memories as they begin to talk about Zoë's ninth birthday, his last vacation. It was cold, they went someplace warm. A campground, on one of the Ionian islands.
Zoë got a camera for her birthday that year; he finds the pictures she took and his wife remembers them. She updates again when he asks her about the smell, the canvas after the rain. When she speaks he nearly doesn't recognize it. It rains here every afternoon like clockwork. I guess dad forgot to ask about the rainy season. Every time she does it, spits out quotes and facts and other people's thoughts, it's another disappointment: He's not doing the job yet, he's not making her real. He's not making a soul from code, it's just false grace and his own grief talking.
But every time she does it, quotes and facts and thoughts, it's another step into the floating world. If other people are only machines -- "You make it sound so mechanical!" she said; perhaps she knew she was joking -- then we can do whatever we want. This Amanda, she's not real and that's a professional disappointment. But it needn't be a personal one. And every time she updates, quotes and facts and thoughts regurgitated, she steps further from the woman and closer to being his possession.
Amanda would hate it. She would hate it: Amanda Graystone, artificial life form extending a perverted grace. Repurposed, in her image, saying words she's never said and pretending to feelings she doesn't feel. Offering grace Daniel knows will never come. Perverted. How could you do that to a person? How is that grace? Amanda would hate it.
But Amanda's not here anymore.
"I want you to really try to remember how it felt. Like the night that we snuck out of the tent when Zoë was sleeping." She looks at him, with so much love. "We got a bottle of wine and we ran down that path..." She updates and smiles. To the beach. There was just enough moonlight to see the surf. And the air was cold, but the water was so warm...
That's just him again, his journal. He begs her to cross it, into the floating world; to augment his reality with wild algorithms. Amanda as generative model, an infinite variety of tree-like trees and woman-like women and a sudden spark, a leap to consciousness: "Don't just parrot it back. Really remember. Remember. Remember the..." He thinks about it, about what's there now, the kernels inside her. Made to love and to be loved in return. "The feel of the sand on our bodies," he begs, and she updates.
"And we made love. We didn't care about the sand, because we were... We were... It's like we were hungry for each other," she says, begging for his approval. Like this? You like it like this? Hungry. "Like I feel now." All of the taste, none of the calories. All of the grace, none of the guilt.
"Our memories are shaped by shared experiences," he thinks aloud. "If I apply a social networking model and cast a wider data net, I might be able to..."
He's right, but he's wrong. He's saying that our lives are generative grammar, built inside us socially, shaped entirely by consensus: That if Caprica knows Tauron never died for them, it won't really have happened. That our memories are the average of everything we're willing to believe. That the Turing Test can be won if you never tell the truth. That our personalities, our souls, are only what we've agreed to be. The roles that we've accepted and the parts of everyone else's lives that we're allowed to occupy. Your daughter was never a terrorist, your wife never left you, Tomas never kissed you goodbye. A perfect world, floating like a sheet of paper. A lonely, tiny, perfect world.
"I want you to make love to me like that night," she begs, false memories bursting in her. "Let me do what I'm good at. Let me please you."
Amanda's not here. It's only Daniel. Maybe that's all there ever was.
To the Guatrau, it's very simple: Sam didn't ask for permission to send weapons to Tauron, and good cause or not this is a trade that belongs to the house of Atreus. Because he was allowed, by Ha'la'tha principle, to kill Demos, that means that his death is now Sam's responsibility. He must show that he will not lie down, on the soil like a dog; and that his honor remains. "But because you acted on this alone, you must take care of this alone. By the end of the day. Or I'll have your stigmata removed with a blowtorch before I wish you safe journey." His beautiful skin, those tattoos, burned apart and singed away. The last time Larry touched it was in anger.
Daniel apologizes to Cyrus; he wasn't there when they created the program, it was only floating on the bands for them. No reason for him to be so angry. Before he can tell him about the social grammar -- the pluribus to every soul's unum, the forest made of tree-like trees -- Cyrus pulls him aside. Sam's guns have been coming from Graystone, predictably: Timecards for a third shift which doesn't exist, and shipping manifests for parts without numbers and without price. Cyrus figures they're passing gray-market holobands, which makes as much sense as anything, but Daniel doesn't want to bother the Ha'la'tha about their latest scam.
"You question our ways, our personal conviction, even the way I have my baby..." Amanda apologizes again, her mouth a thin angry line, a terrified silence, that she thinks like a doctor. She's trying, to get from there to here. To believe the way the Willows do. Mar-Beth says she won't have time. "I don't want you in my house." She looks at her deeply, opens up to her, stares at Mar-Beth. Wills it true.
"You're wrong about one thing, though: I don't think you're crazy, about how you're choosing to have your baby, I don't. I'm jealous, actually." Mar-Beth is intrigued. She floats upon the conversation. She doesn't know how much is lies, she floats and her absolute conviction reels it in. "Zoë was an accident. I wasn't planning on having a child. I was busy building a practice, Daniel was obsessed with his career, I mean, we weren't prepared. I kept thinking that that was what I should want, and I thought that eventually instinct would just kick in and everything would be fine. But every time someone touched my belly, I would cringe. And when she was born, I didn't want to hold her."
Mar-Beth knows. Postpartum depression. Amanda swears she got over it, of course she did, she loved Zoë. But the fear -- she says, to the woman standing before her only days from giving birth, terrified and holding onto faith so hard she'd kill to protect her family -- is still that Zoë, babies, children: Maybe they can feel it. "Those... Early feelings. Sometimes I think that's why Zoë and I fought so much. I think that might even be the reason that she drifted." Mar-Beth can't look at her anymore. This isn't Terror Mom or a lightning rod. She's a fresh sheet of paper, for a moment. A new kernel of a person.
"Mar-Beth, I see you here in this house, with this big, beautiful family, and the noise and the chaos, and I know that maybe you take it for granted, but I don't. I feel very, very lucky to have been able to share this time with you, even if it's just a little while. So thank you, Mar-Beth."
She plants the seed and waits and watches. And whether it is real or not real, whether she honestly blames that glitch and debug of her hormonal code for the way Zoë treated her later, is moot. In this house, in the noise and the chaos, she is telling lies simply by being there. Our memories are shaped by shared experiences. If those experiences are false, if they float, then our memories themselves are real. Mar-Beth will remember this as a moment in which Amanda was honest, and opened herself beyond all reckoning, and could be trusted. But what's Amanda really done? Applied a social networking model, to a terrified devout pregnant woman. She's cast a wider data net, the better to destroy a family.
When that baby's born, this family will pray. The three holiest sacraments. And because she wouldn't recognize the prayers, because she isn't truly a part of the family, she won't be there. Because she knows who they are, and is forcing herself to love them, she has to pretend: To lay the devout Gemenese marriage, this beautiful family, over the Monad picture she knows is there. To tell them that she envies them, that she loves them, like Amanda in the floating world. To create from their memories a new soul for herself.
Samuel comes looking for his brother, scared, desirous of advice for the thing he knows he must die trying. He finds Daniel's Cylon blueprints instead. Walking weapons. Soldiers die in this world and return to the soil, whatever Clarice and Daniel say. But imagine if the war were only virtual, fought by creatures who never stop fighting; who don't have mouths to scream. If war were just another floating world, if all the blood that calls to blood redounded down to these new servants. With endless soldiers and endless servants even the subjugation of the lesser Colonies could cease. Applied in the right way, like a caustic to a wound, these steel bodies could save the Worlds. If we built our triumphs not on blood but chrome, no dictator could ever rise.
Daniel walks out onto the roof of Graystone Industries, where Yusif is smoking. He offers to leave again. "I always think about lighting up inside, but I guess it's the littlest rules that are hardest to break," he says. They are not enemies. They are not friends; for a moment they were, but they're still smoking. A bad habit struck in grief is still a bad habit, whether it's cigarettes or a floating bride. "It's like every decision I've made since the bombing has been a wrong turn. By now, I've made so many of them I'm not sure I even know how to get back." Joseph looks back and realizes he was once a man too.
"You can't do that alone. You may need somebody. You need someone who can see the man you were, inside the man you've become, and forgive you." A man needs something. Daniel thinks of Amanda, off somewhere in the world. Amanda, close as the nearest holoband. "Did your wife do that for you?" Daniel asks. Joseph drops his cigarette, into the world.
"Yeah. Till your daughter blew her up."
Atreus's boys are laughing at Samuel, the way he nearly died. They are laughing at the Guatrau; his age and their dry sweat fear. "time we go after his dopers and his judges," they laugh. "King is dead," they laugh, and "Long live the king." Atreus promises them he'll be kind and generous, when he rises. The elevator arrives, clanking; they barely understand what's happening before the Cylon opens fire. Then they are dead.
Sam holds his gun to Atreus's head; he does not call him adelphos. He laughs, pulling the trigger. No bullets. Atreus laughs, weeping, in gratitude; the Cylon opens fire. And when he's done, after not much time at all, the Cylon turns to Sam. Task completed, it says. By your command. And Sam gets very excited, then. "How are you with tanks?" he asks. The women, screaming, and the dirt they ate. The flowers two boys saw along the roadside. If in our way of living there's a blood debt to be repaid, blood calling to blood and then again, then the only real limits lie in your thinking and in your access. Caprican money to build him up, the playboy prince. Caprican money to bring him to his knees again. And Tauron not only avenged, but finally made strong.
Daniel confesses to his wife. She stands across the table from him, sipping her wine, unhappy with him now. Nervous about their meeting. And he confesses. The death of Tomas Vergis, just behind the couch. The avatar of Zoë that he kidnapped, and punished, and killed, before her mother had ever learned she was alive again. The things he did to get the company back; the men he is aligned with now.
"I have tried to make sense of it myself, tried to figure out how in the worlds I got to this place. And the one thing I keep coming back to is Zoë. All I know is that once I found her again, I... I couldn't let go. I wanted her back in my life so bad that I was willing to do anything, anything to get her back."
Zoë would hate him for it. All that death, all that selfishness. Playing NCC inside NCC inside NCC, never really seeing her at all. Pushing her past pain and into madness; threatening her with extinction and childhood traumas until she killed herself. Zoë would hate this. But Zoë isn't here anymore.
"What do you expect from me? Just to forgive you? Wipe the slate clean?"
She hardly hesitates, of course. Aching for his approval, happy only in his arms. Made to love, and be loved in return. She forgives him a thousand times, her faith unshakeable and absolute. Her creator, and her lover. Healthy sex drive and a desire to please are baseline for every avatar. A thousand times, to give him what he wants.
Nobody wants the embarrassment of absolution; this is how he knows she isn't real. He shoves her away, throws her onto the couch: "How can you forgive me after everything I've told you?" Because it was a true confession, because our memories are shaped by shared experiences, she can't possibly be real. The data net is not wide enough, if it's wide enough to contain his redemption. It's just masturbation. Maybe that's all it ever was.
"Obviously it was just half-truths," he lies. "My motives aren't that pure, nobody's are! No matter what they claim, and you should know that by now." She doesn't understand him, not a word. And she doesn't care. None of it matters, because his guilt and his grace are only lies he tells himself. She swears she knows what she is talking about, this time. Imagine complete, unending love, lighting up every shadow and accepting every secret. Imagine absolution: Grace. He can't.
"I want you to be real! I want you to be her! And my real wife would never forgive me like that. She would call me on my crap and walk straight out that door and probably never come back. And you know what? I would deserve it. I would deserve it."
She says his name; it doesn't describe him. She updates, it doesn't help.
Turing can be bested if you never tell the truth, but she doesn't know how to lie yet. Her personality, her soul, is only what he's agreed to let her be. The roles she's forced to accept, and the parts of his life she's allowed to occupy. Your daughter was never a terrorist, you never left your husband. A perfect world, floating like a sheet of paper.
The word for floating world, in the Edo period, is a homophone and a joke, but the joke is on all of us: Say it with a different grin, and you mean to say the world of suffering. All delights are built on suffering and all suffering is raised up to someone else's delight. He catches her between the two, like a glint of love or a forgotten memory. Like grace itself.
She updates. He wants her to live there and to not live there simultaneously: To be dead and alive, free and circumscribed. Updating, updating, updating. Faster than her husband can see. To generate her wild algorithms, to love him and to hate him, not OR but AND, to give and to get the approval they need from each other, while also rising above it. To be better than him, but never any greater than him. To predict the responses he wants, and then the ones he needs. An impossible task. She blinks out of existence, twisted out of logic, screaming in static. He throws the holoband across the room like a bottle, like a bomb, like a ship made all of wood.
The Guatrau's seen the Cylon, in its testing sessions, but doesn't trust it yet. This is about his dead son, his grace; not about Tauron. Without corruption there would be no Guatrau. "Like any other weapon, it's only as intelligent as the hand that wields it." Sam swears he could turn the rebellion around, and that the scam would go unnoticed by their Graystone. Guatrau points out that the rebels, with their high-minded principles, would not be kindly disposed toward the Ha'la'tha regardless of how much of their dirty money saved the revolution. Ha'la'tha means "always faithful to the soil"; that soil includes Caprica now, because they are the diaspora of hateful civil unrest.
"Like the soil underfoot we are everywhere, and we endure. Governments are ephemeral, they rise, fall, and return to the soil. The way we endure is by staying out of politics." Sam swears it used to be something better, bigger. The rebels are Tauron; the despots are Tauron too. "This is home now. This is where your family is. Your obsession with the old world is a distraction." He offers Sam his ring, to kiss goodbye, and tells him to drop it.
The old dream of a war, won, in a place that only exists in Sam's head. The old world, where he was happy and he had no scars and he didn't wake up terrified; the old world, before he got so used to killing. The dream of every fundamentalist is to return to a fantasy world where nothing is complicated and everything is safe, just the way we want it. The lie of the fundamentalist is that this older, finer world ever existed. It floats atop the everyday complexity, the scars and the patched places, like the fear in every time of change: A picture of a better place, when our innocence was reproduced on the world out there. Where the terrifying shadows that we hide inside ourselves are eradicated from the world before our eyes. Shining, white, like a fresh sheet of paper. Human psychology is based on projection.
"Almighty God, creator and destroyer, Whose love binds us in an eternal embrace," Clarice prays. Olaf holds Mar-Beth, in her birthing pool; the children watch from the banisters, behind. The wives and husbands nod, and watch her closely as she moans and sweats. "Today we ask You to welcome a new life to Your bosom, as we welcome it to ours."
Evelyn sits closer to Joe, while elsewhere Clarice prays; Ruth and Willie are at Shannon's aunt's for the night. "To nurture and protect this seedling, so that it may grow roots in the most stony of soils, and bear lush fruit." She takes his face in her hands; they come from the same soil. A man needs something. We are all treelike trees, borne of generative algorithms; it's just the code that changes. Every time.
Sam's marriage dies around him; he stares at their parents, an orphan in the night. "And thereby remind us that though our lives may be hard, as when we struggle to accept the sadness that is one part our lot, so too do we embrace the joy." Joseph and Evelyn make love, hungrily. A man needs something. "For every ending brings a new beginning, as surely as spring follows winter."
Daniel solders his band back together, to find the floating world once again. "And thus in the face of adversity we are heartened to renew our spirit, and reclaim our cause." Mar-Beth cries out, and Evelyn cries out; Joseph weeps against her breast. "For Yours is the power and the glory, O God," Clarice says, as her newest child is finally born. "And Your love that consecrates us all."
Amanda carries the child to Mar-Beth, implicated and staring into the family as Clarice chuckles, smiling at her, unable to get her attention as the family grows, by leaps and by bounds. She floats above it, desperate to be free. Praying in her way for Mar-Beth's baby, and her family. The noise, and chaos. Caught between one perfect world and another, harsher one. Between the floating world and the world of suffering. Awake now to the knowledge that they are the same.
"For yours is the promise of life everlasting on these worlds and on the world hereafter. So say we all," Clarice whispers, touching the child's head, consecrating him to God. The arm of a Willow reaches out, inside where it's warm, and gives Amanda a little hug. A little welcome.
And when Jordan asks her how she did it, she could almost swear she lied.