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Sam and Joe get another big Mafia promotion, even though that just happened two episodes ago, and it's totally ironic because Sam's in bed with Daniel over the whole Cylons-to-Tauron thing and Joe is... Well, Joe. By the end of the episode, Joe is in on it too, because of flashbacks and a mysterious tattoo. Daniel's just happy to use his Cylons for any nefarious purpose that doesn't include him floating in the river.
We spend about a third of the episode flash-back on Tauron during the Adamas' orphanation, and it's even more melodramatic than you may have thought: Suicide pills and moms getting shot and everybody acting nuts and giving each other tattoos, because that's 90% of everything they do on Tauron. Downside: Mama and Pops Adama, while sexy, are also kamikaze thugs from a long line of suicide bombers, who give their kids suicide pills and blow up grain silos. Upshot: Li'l Joe killed three Heracleides Stormtroopers after they killed Mama Adama, and then shot their dad in the head because... Not really sure. Because Taurons suck, basically, and terrorists suck totally, so being an Adama is to suck: Trebly.
This is neat: Zoë and Tamara, having joined forces, become the new Hot Topic t-shirt subjects (speaking literally here) as they go around shooting gross NCC people and cleaning up the whole imaginary city. The Avenging Angels (fnur) are something of a goad to the unsure masculines* of the Twelve Colonies, who love to fight the girls who will always kill you and never die -- and then act all shocked when they don't die and, in fact, kill you. These include Willow hubbies Nestor and Olaf, who don't seem to find it noteworthy that an immortal version of Zoë Graystone is roaming New Cap while in the real world, they are... Looking for an immortal version of Zoë Graystone. Just not puttin' that one together. OTOH, when you look like Scott Porter higher critical thinking skills are not really required: Locate your shirt, take it off. Done.
Porky Pig manages to get Jordan fired from the GDD over Mar-Beth's stabbing. Really it's Jordan's fault for calling out his corrupt superior over and over for being corrupt, but somehow it still manages to take him by surprise. This is only dicey because Amanda's going all spycam on the Willows, and needs a handler. I mean, in life she really needs to be supervised, but especially when undercover in a polygamous terrorist compound. Other stresses in the Willow household include the demo reel for Heaven, which is not up to Clarice's standards because it doesn't look quite like a Mormon recruiter video yet. (But it will eventually.)
In the end, Amanda meets up with Daniel at their old house and he admits that he's seen Zoë -- now in Avenging Angel form -- and they decide to go find her together. That should work out like gangbusters. Especially now that the girls, having realized they're taking the long way around, have combined their God Mode powers and turned gritty nasty complicated human NCC into a human-free forest (Lee Adama would be so proud!), the better for use as their stronghold from which to bring down/illuminate/destroy the rest of Daddy's Matrix.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!The Colony was alive, like coral. She built herself bones and buttresses, sang to them softly in their sleep. If they hadn't been so in love with their new bodies they would have noticed what a wonder they'd created. They'd left their bodies broken and behind, and were still getting used to themselves. Ellen and Saul tried to keep everybody on a daily schedule, tried to keep them mostly human, but the days turned into years into millennia. Ellen sometimes woke up sweating, dreaming of her father and of the sons and daughters they never got to have. She spoke of this to no one but it burned in her; she knew inside herself that she was a mother, that never had the chance. But she tried.
Tory and Galen fought, sometimes, but everyone agreed tacitly to ignore it. Nothing could really come between them, everybody thought and sometimes said quietly to each other, once they'd retreated to their corners. Maybe they were only following the Tighs' lead, after all. Their love always burned the hottest. And once their singed fingers had healed, it never took too long, they'd all go find Sam to put things right again. Soft and secret Samuel, with a dream in his eyes and a fierceness of heart that kept them all going.
Sam's guitar was left in pieces on the shore, back home, but sometimes they'd dream of beaches together, and he'd sing to them. The guitar he'd find on that dream shore was always perfectly in tune, and his voice was equally mournful and full of hope. As they all were. He'd loved a girl, back on Earth, but she was gone now and anyway, he knew his one true love still waited for them, somewhere beyond the stars. It hadn't happened yet, but in time he would find her. Painting the sky, rushing headlong into light. And after her, he'd become the soul of something greater still. He loved the Colony more than any of them. Perhaps she knew that too. Sometimes he swore he could hear her singing along.
They rushed forward, to save their brothers, on a wave of light and hope, bearing immortality in their hands, and an urgent warning, and the greatest mercy.
Joe will once again be Made, this time as a key advisor to the Guatrau. He can't celebrate, because he hates the Ha'la'tha and he hates selling arms to Gemenon over Tauron and he hates knowing his brother is very soon going to be killing Daniel Graystone. He hates that feeling of complicity that, for most of them, is reason enough to keep going. To stay firm on the soil of Tauron no matter where they stand. Sam doesn't mind killing Daniel, we all knew that would happen and besides, he misses Shannon even if Joe doesn't, but anyway: He knew what was coming and so did Joe, and there's nothing any of them can do about it. He begs Joe to stay with him here, today, to celebrate the promotion Sam's procured for him based on this new level of service, but Joe is a whiner.
The Guatrau remembers fondly how he first met the boys, here on Caprica: Sam tried to pick his pocket, a Tauron through and through, and Yusif? "This one, always with the eyes, always calculating something." He is proud of them as though he were their father. If things had worked out differently with his daughter, perhaps he could have been. Starting today it doesn't matter: Yusif joins the Ha'la'tha proper, not as a consultant but as a true member of the Mob. And Sam will be a Captain. He calls them sons again, deep in oldest ritual. As the men mark their bodies, the soil beneath their feet cries out in recognition. They have touched her before.
"The mark of faithfulness to the soil," said their father, William I. "Yusif, today, you will get your mark of manhood. You have done well to earn it, learning the ancient prayers and passages of the Sacred Scrolls." Their father was a beautiful, righteous man. It burned in him as it burns in Samuel, as it will burn in the Commander, and his son; it will light up the Fleet and bring us all back to the soil, one day. It will burn brightest one day as he sits on a far-off hilltop and stretches his feet in the alluvial deposits of a new world and waits to be with her again, singing softly through his tears. That day is still far off, but the fire starts here.
Bill took his elder son's face in his hands. "Samuel, allow your brother his day. He needs this. You two are different. Your brother, he feels things on the inside, but you... A blind man could see how you feel." Sam looked down, ashamed; ashamed of this weakness and ashamed of his jealousy. "The very first day I held you in my arms, I knew you were a man. Your day will come." Watching Joe become a man hurt in ways he knew weren't justified, but Bill saw it all. He wanted to find the words to say it was all right. There's never enough time.
The boys' mother Isabelle appeared, short of breath and full of terror, smile pasted on until Sam was dismissed from the table: Entire trucks of Heracleides troops came in, over the countryside, and when they saw her their eyes just passed her over, thinking she was another farmer in a city full of farmers. The Adamas were terrorists, righteous and beautiful, but they didn't always agree. The Heracs came, this day, for reprisal. Adama didn't want to blow up their grain silos, but the cell agreed to do it, and she'd sided against him: "They oppress us. They should pay." The boys listened, through a screen; they became men as they listened, chewing on their parents' words like apples.
Bill was afraid, but he knew Isabelle was right. It was time the boys knew how dangerous life would shortly become. How quickly things would begin to move. They sat the boys down, with grave hearts and shameful looks. "Do you know how your grandparents returned to the soil? With pride. Fighting for what they believed in, like other Adamas before them. They decided on their own terms how they would return to the soil." The fear shone bright on Samuel's face, as though he could hear echoes in their words of what would come . He was already a man; today was the day Joe became a man for good. Twisted, bent, but brightly.
"Your father and I are no different. And when an Adama starts a fight, we finish it one way or another. But not everyone lives by our rules." Like the Heracs, Yusif noted, and they nodded. The boys each received one little pill, one solitary call back to the soil. To be used at their discretion. Their parents were sick, with fear and that little surprise you feel when the inevitable comes calling. "We have knowledge of the Ha'la'tha Resistance. If we're ever caught by the Heracs, they will try to make us reveal those secrets. And they'll use you against us. This will keep our secrets safe."
You have always been my little Adama men, their mother said. Time now to be men for Tauron. They never forgot. Revolutions turn to the right, inevitably; revolutions continue to revolve, eternally. The Resistance will always become the thing to be resisted, and avoiding that pain is only a recipe for stasis. Every resistance is born of good intentions and strong, good men. It's only immediately after that things fall apart.
Sinny McNutt's Slash & Cut, a self-proclaimed "Den Of Iniquity," is par for the course in New Cap City: Decadence, sex and drink, gambling. The usual. When the girls show up, wearing wings and toting massive guns, the bartender giggles. He's not a real thing, so he doesn't have to derez; he doesn't have a band to take off when the Avenging Angels appear. Within seconds only the foolhardy remain; the wiser of its patrons leaving with quick kisses and worried smiles. "I don't think we need this in our world," the angels laugh. "Let's just clean it."
The foolhardy remain, ready to fight: Olaf and Nestor, bearing swords because there are no guns in the Slash & Cut. "You look nothing like Zoë Graystone. Whoever programmed you was a hack," they laugh. It's a complicated joke that only Zoë knows is a punchline in itself. She is her own inventor; she's a hack on the universe programmed by God and all His angels. The boys cry out when their guns appear -- "No packing heat in Slash & Cut!" -- but the girls laugh louder, because they know there aren't any rules any more. Certainly not for them. And then, after a while, nobody's laughing because everybody's gone.
All over the Twelve Worlds the foolhardy wake up, forever banned from their filthy heaven; all over the Twelve Worlds the Avenging Angels start trending. It's something new, the game that is the end of games. Heaven taking back its own sovereignty, in the form of beautiful girls in devastating fashion.
Nestor got to his band just before they fired, but Olaf's other self is lost forever. He complains at length -- "You know damned well I've been working on my avatar for the last five years" -- and Clarice comes in, asking if they're done playing their ridiculous game. The one that allowed them, for a moment, to look Resurrection in the eye. Standing right in front of them, the thing she's got all of House Willow working on now that Mar-Beth's gone, and all they saw were little girls, and vicious games. Just recreation. This show, these shows, this world we play in is a neverending series of near-misses, shortcuts overlooked. A thousand, an infinite number of possibilities for grace. The girls didn't know who they were looking at, either, but they didn't know to look for Olaf and Nestor. But the boys have, really, no excuse.
They're packing their wife's things -- the wife they murdered, the mother of their son -- but Clarice wants to hold onto it, until he's old enough to know enough about his mother. Until he's old enough to be lied to, like all children. And what about Terror Mom? What do they tell her about their vanished wife? "That... Mar-Beth couldn't handle being a mother, so she left. I mean, some people just aren't cut out to be a parent, are they?" Clarice tries to hide her grief but it is diamond bright. Her disappointment isn't righteous, it's personal, and her entire world is about denying that difference. One more good intention. And Amanda's GDD tech, picking up every shallow word.
"And can you just show a little bit more respect to Amanda?" They roll their eyes and tell her to visit NCC, take off some of the stress. "You really should meet the Avenging Angels," they laugh. "They'd love you. And you'd love them." She did, she does, she always will. Zoë is her angel still, and she wouldn't recognize her even if she were standing right in front of them all. "One of them's even playing dress-up with Zoë Graystone's avatar!" Red flag, but it goes unnoticed; she looks at them and sees little boys, playing at life. Distracted by a filthy heaven and delighting in the corruption the One True God needs them all to end for good. Just recreation. Nothing more. They laugh at her, when she's gone.
Daniel and Joseph, in the ring, working out their unfinished business. Daniel whines about the Guatrau's two-week timeline for Grace 2.0, aka Operation Skinjob, that he's held out as incentive to stop shipping guns and robots to the STO. He'll put souls in fresh bodies, like the Thirteenth Colony once did and the Final Five now can, just as Clarice wants to put those souls in the Matrix. Two good intentions that come together in abomination. "It will change the Worlds," Daniel swears.
"Come on, Daniel. Learn your opponent's tendencies. If he's stronger than you, move so he can't hit you, okay? If he's faster than you, tie him up. Come on! Go for me! Come on, Daniel! Find your opponent's weakness, and then attack him there. Or he will kill you. Think about it. Come on, Daniel, fight."
He's not talking about boxing. Daniel can't hear him. He thinks he's safe but he's not safe.
But he does take the advice. He and Serge dig deep into the information, providing us with a wealth of backup: "Samuel Adama, orphaned refugee from Tauron. Multiple arrests ranging from misdemeanor petty thefts to gambling, assault, battery, and extortion. Native Taurons are a proud, passionate race, a loyal and stoic culture in which family ties are secondary only to personal honor. Thirty years ago, the Tauron uprising began when poorly-armed native rebel forces, known as the Ha'la'tha, attacked the presidential barracks, initiating a two-year civil war. In the aftermath, the victorious Heracleides forces attempted a genocide by using murder squads, commonly referred to as Heracs..."
On the screen pornographic bodies twist, starving for organ meat, cages of bone with skin stretched across them, dying in piles. Biting at the soil. The truth about the Potato Famine is that there never really was one. This has all happened before.
"Facing extinction, the Ha'la'tha transformed, becoming an illegal underground organization throughout the Twelve Colonies..." And what about the Guatrau's shell company? Obolus Inc., Serge tells us, is "A Leonis corporation with holdings across the Twelve Colonies. Caprican Securities Service has recently dropped two investigations of the company dealing with allegations of insider trading." They search recent mergers and acquisitions, and the current status of those companies, and the status of those companies' CEOs. He knows the last thing before Serge can even instantly find it: All dead. Except for the latest, a haunted ginger man with a dead daughter and a strong, mad wife. "That is an old likeness of you, Daniel. Would you like me to update the image?"
Blipping through the channels, which we haven't done in a while: Caprica has seized a massive shipment of Sagittaron arms bound for rebel forces on Tauron. Sagittaron and Aerilon, at least, must support Tauron given the history of the Colonies. Who knows who else. And there's Caprica, in the middle of it, with Foreign Minister Kristoff using this opportunity to get all newspeak about how the insurgents have never been so close to being taken out. Nobody knows that the Ha'la'tha is supporting this banana republic -- much less the insurgent forces on Gemenon -- except the people at its heart.
And then you've got Defense Minister Patel saying no Caprican troops will be sent to Tauron to help keep the peace: "We haven't been asked for our help yet" are his immortal words but what he means is that Taurons are trash and we don't actually care.
And in other news, the Avenging Angels trend has made it to the IRL, with (awesome) t-shirts and posters and merch. Two Katniss Everdeens, pleading "Your culture is disgusting," and a million tween Twilight fans in line at Hot Topic saying, "Wrong again: You are my culture." Gravity always wins. Joe sleeps, free from the Angels for now. The way they'd strike him at his heart.
Sam woke up, staring out into the street as some Ha'la'tha take down a man in the street. It was terrifying, and thrilling, all at once. He knew he was a man, even if he didn't look like one: One day soon, he'd be bigger. He could save everybody; he could hurt anybody he wanted to. One day soon, the choice would be his. Joe begged him to come back to bed, away from the window and the violence outside, so Sam crept out onto the fire escape, down to the man's broken body. Up close, death was not so much. He tossed the man's wallet and took his gun, stowing it in his child's pajamas; and when Joe complained he sighed: "You're afraid of everything." Joe told him to grow up, but that's only what they were both doing. Bodies moving faster than they could learn to drive them.
Daniel comes to Goldie's to chat with Sam about a new plan. Sam was rude, but willing to talk. The Taurons jeered at him; in the back room he jumped immediately to the constant, accidental Caprican racism that Sam somehow always provokes. "Taurons have always intrigued me. Your loyalties to one another, to your Colony..." Sam makes fun of him as a Caprican then, the lack of tradition and ethos and ability to care about anything but themselves and money. He's not really bitching at Daniel and he's not really talking about intercolonial stereotypes: He's worrying about the Guatrau and his brother and all the boys back home. But Daniel can't be expected to know that.
Not that his assumption is wrong either: Maybe Sam's being rude because he knows he's going to have to kill Daniel one day soon. Joe's never cared more about Daniel, in the history of their bromance, than he does today. But Sam has no part in that. "Are you going to use the knives? Or are you gonna take me for a drive somewhere?" Like I did your wife? Sam thinks, but shakes his head. "You're losing me here, Graystone."
When will it happen? The moment he turns in the new Resurrection program? A few days after that, when he thinks he's safe? He'll never think that again. But Sam swears the Guatrau bears him no ill will. "We're not animals, you know." He doesn't know. That's the problem. When the tree surrenders all its fruit, it's time to trim from the top down, Daniel says with a bad Caprican accent. "More than just a Ha'la'tha proverb?"
Tired of it -- and looking better every second, by the way, as this fairly transcendent scene goes on -- Sam's like, "So what, we're buds now?" Daniel once again shifts direction faster than Sam can see, pressing on another button. Following Yusif's advice, in this fight. Nearly flirting, turning it on and off; jab and retreat. Listening to Sam's words without taking them personally, making another intuitive Daniel leap, seeing the emergent structures behind Sam's words as clearly as his daughter always could:
"Why do you follow this particular Guatrau? You despise Capricans, he is a pure Caprican. He's no more Tauron than I am." Sam nearly laughs, now, at the way strange Daniel's begging for death, but he doesn't stop; this is why he doesn't stop. It's working. "He's selling Cylons for profit to the STO, when he knows the difference one unit would make for the resistance on Tauron. Just one. For his people, for his soil. You know what they're capable of. Imagine a single soldier robot, fighting for your cause, the cause that your parents..." Too frakking far. Sam jumps at his throat, and Daniel nods. He didn't know them, of course. He barely knows their sons.
"But I'd be surprised if they put profit above the good of their own people. Listen, I can help you, help Tauron. I have the codes, backdoor access to the mainframe, and a private transport. The Guatrau will never know." Not out of the good of his heart, of course, and it would be insulting for either of them to go down that road even fakely, so they don't. "I've done my research, I know how this ends for me." Sam wonders, even if this murder thing were true, which it's probably not but totally is, what he can do about it. We're in a closed system talking about fantasies. "You just got your horns inked," Daniel says, pointing at his bandaged hands: "That's a big promotion." So the quid pro quo is this: Cylons to Tauron, in exchange for the life of their grieving father.
Evelyn chuckles at the old butane lighter Joe will eventually give to Husker who will eventually give it to Apollo; he hasn't really smoked much since they knew each other in law school, at least until Tamara died. They cuddle on the couch, post-celebration; she doesn't know about his promotion until she sees his ink. She'd be proud of him if she weren't pissed at the Guatrau for refusing to aid their boys back home. "I'm just saying, you have the Guatrau's ear now," she says, because I don't know if you've noticed but Evelyn does not fuck around. It's her timetable, we all just have to live by it.
To wit: In short order she's got shirtless Joe crying and admitting the part where the Ha'la'tha is supplying Cylons to the STO, which she gears up to niggle him about... Until he reminds her about that whole deal where the STO blew up his wife and child. Which is horrible in every way, but most of all horrible in terms of her plans to be his wife. Caught in a verbal Viet Nam without a conversational exit strategy, Evelyn sheepishly blushes, and spins it the best way she can: "I was just thinking of Tauron." Deft! Evelyn's kinda my girl these days. She lights a cigarette and he takes the lighter back, looking at his wrist. Thinking of Tauron.
The Heracs knocked on the door, finally, and the Adamas sent their sons, through a door in a cupboard, to hide at the agreed-upon meeting place. The day they'd all been waiting for, when things began moving too fast. The soldiers -- led by the gorgeous, tiny, terrifying Lieutenant Kolibri -- tossed the apartment, guns trained on the boys' parents, and began to question them about the murder last night: The man whose gun Sam stole was a Herac, of course, and none of the Dirteaters would talk. The boys stared from the cupboard as the Adamas bullshitted: Their hearing wasn't great, they were sound sleepers, the ambient music of machinery in the fields covered a lot of murder-type sounds at night... Kolibri slapped Isabelle; Bill could hear that just fine. One of the soldiers found Sam's gun hidden in a cushion, and things started moving more quickly still.
Left alone a moment, Amanda retrieves her bug from the lovely box in Clarice's room where she hid it, switching out the SD card, holding her breath. She's walking without her cane these days. Across town, Singh summons Jordan angrily to his office, and it's the wrong day for that shit so he finally just says straight up: "We both know you're dirty, Gara, and as soon as I get the proof I'm gonna bring you down." Like butter wouldn't melt, Singh tells him to use whatever he's got, and that's about when Jordan notices the IA guy in Singh's office.
"He's here as a witness." To what? To Jordan getting fucked, essentially. Seems he lost a CI, got an innocent killed. "If you recall, I asked for your CI's identity to prevent exactly what happened to that poor woman, but you denied me." Which isn't what happened at all, but you can see the noose tightening already. This is why Jordan should have gone rogue like two weeks ago. He swears he handed over Mar-Beth's file but Singh just keeps going, and it's fairly persuasive: "Look, I admit I bear some of the responsibility for this. Maybe I pushed you too hard for results. We were all scared by the Maglev bombing, but it's an important lesson for all of us: We can't cut corners. We can't circumvent procedure. We can't use the GDD for our own personal vengeance."
And the more Jordan talks, the more it seems like exactly what's going on. Especially once he shows the office video of their little "I work for Caprica" tiff from last week, which shows only the part where he refused to turn over Amanda's file, because that fight happened just a tad bit before Jordan had the bright idea of handing over Mar-Beth's file instead. But since, of course, Amanda was never named in that conversation -- which is what the C in CI stands for -- it all looks like a conversation about Mar-Beth. Who is now dead, thanks entirely to Jordan. Well, Jordan and the One True God. And Amanda. And Clarice's penchant for stabbing you all over your entire body when she gets mad.
"I hate to do this," Porky Pigs, and in short order Jordan is relieved of badge and gun and sent down until the Willow murder is closed. "I will stay on top of this personally," Singh smarms, and it's kinda excellently gross. And wouldn't you know the second he gets fired, Amanda's calling in to report and give him the tape. No coincidences. She's transferred to Youngblood, whom we'll never see again but is probably STO too, and Amanda realizes that she herself is somehow totally, vitally fucked as well. Abandoned on the edges of everything, all alone. She thought she was safe but she's not safe. She cocks her gun, and thinks hard indeed.
Tied up now, bleeding, the Adamas had no choice but to assume that the soldiers planted the gun, but as they did not, it just sounded like they were being shady terrorists. Which was also true, of course, but not at that precise moment. Bill cried out, Isabelle whimpered. The sound inspired the lieutenant, who sent a man with her into a back room, where she was raped out of sight while her husband cried. To see Bill brought low, to hear their mother's cries; Sam still wakes up with those sounds echoing in his head, on the bad nights. It tastes like dirt. Bill struggled with his bonds, calling her name, but he couldn't get free. And if he could, he couldn't walk -- they'd taken out his knees.
Sam rushed out to him, alone in the kitchen while they tortured her, and fetched the gun from the table. He begged them for a suicide pill, but they had to hide again. Isabelle finally died, in the bedroom, while the lieutenant looked down into her husband's eyes, dragging on a cigarette, begging him to relent. "Things change," Kolibri shrugged. The boys became men, hiding behind a screen. Things changed.
Daniel runs into a hot gamer on the street wearing an Avenging Angels t-shirt, and offers to buy it off him; after a few minutes the boy recognizes him and begins to gush. "Sometimes when I wear the band for more than four hours, I start to hear this whirring sound," he babbles. "You ever get that? It gives me a real migraine." Daniel nearly smiles at him and promises to check on that. "You know the holohaters say that banding causes brain damage? I band 24/7, I'm totally gravy." Daniel looks at him and wonders if, in fact, he is gravy. If the Angels weren't right all along.
I think he's doing okay. Olds will always hate us and the things we enjoy because they don't understand them, but all they're really saying is, "I am officially too tired to try and understand the world around me. This is where I get off." And the second you get over hating olds for that, you will start hating the young people because you don't understand the things they enjoy. You think you're safe from being an old, but you're not, and you'll know it has happened the second you start bitching -- whether it's the Beatles or Twitter or Ke$ha or whatever stupid goddamn thing -- so the best policy is to never, ever bitch about things.
"You know, that's not really your daughter, right? That's an avatar?" At which red-flag, unlike Nestor and Olaf, Daniel takes yet another huge flying intuitive leap* right into the old NCC Slash & Cut. The bartender's like, "Yeah, those gals tend to take out my clientele pretty regularly these days, it's a hoot" and then he spots his daughter(ish) coming in the door, but the Angels escape before he can get past their many suitors, so he derezzes to think about more genius things he can do.
*(And I note these not to underscore the snarky point that literally nothing about this show makes sense unless you agree that Daniel Graystone is magic, but to make the opposite, equally true point: Nothing about this show makes sense until you understand that. Daniel is a wonder. Only this kind of superfunctioning, land-on-your-feet genius geek could beguile Baxter Sarno, whose job is to hate everything, or prove an equal match to the amazingness that is his wife, or produce a child who combines not only his magic and her mom's amazingness but is also a close personal friend of Literally God.)
Up on a rooftop, the girls are horrified that he found them. It's the media popularity and their many suitors, and realize that they are pretty hot topics out in the good old IRL. "Like King of the Mountain. It's just a sport to them." Tamara wants to leave NCC and just explore the whole Matrix, but Zoë takes it one insane, beautiful, burning step further. "No. It's safer in New Cap City. We're Gods in here. Let's act like it and forsake these motherfrakkers. We can build a place where nobody will be able to touch us."
And just like that, Hell becomes a Heaven. The neon lights go out; the buildings twist around themselves. Trees create themselves on a generative algorithm, mountains iterate from the wreckage. The air is pure. The Girl Goddesses are alone. Kings of the mountain.
A few years from now one of the Five will get bored, and decide to walk to the edge of their dreams. On the Thirteenth Colony they never said no to networks, like will happen to their brothers soon, so they were used to the Matrix in a way Willie and the kids younger than him will never be. They were comfortable, dreaming. They knew there were places at the edge where it got acidic and bright, more numbers than sights and smells.
And when one of them goes walking, a few years from now when this is all finished and the war's about to begin, they'll come to this pure, wild place. And they'll meet a strange girl, who walks with angels. Who loves the same God that they do, who comes from a family of broken, shining geniuses very much like them. Oddly, coincidentally, unbearably like the strange and perfect unit they are becoming. A girl who wants a body, just like theirs. They'll be glad to help: It's what they're on their way here for, after all. That's how the war will begin. And they'll still be on their way.
Out in the gross real world, Clarice is hating on their fake Heaven. The boys are crestfallen, as she crumples their plans. "I'd expect Zeus to come wandering from behind the columns to congratulate you! It's too traditional, these people have just given up their lives to the One True God. They've just died, and they're opening their eyes to... To life everlasting, and it's got to be..." Her hands decorate the air, describing ineffable beauty. Words fail where faith steps in.
The boys point out that once they're there, they will be Gods, they can make the world whatever they like. Heaven for everybody, made to order. And she likes that part best. But here, now, at the beginning of this new world, "They're gonna see this, what we've created, and it's got to... It's got to glorify God. It's got to be... Soaring arches and stained glass windows and statues built into the walls..." Statues of who, the boys ask, terrified of her answer. But they already know what she's going to say.
Daniel's only releasing the codes one at a time, so Sam can't double-dip on their deal. One shipment of robots at a time, and this is the first. Willie's been keeping watch while they load them up, and he comes running: Joe's just coming down the stairs looking for them. "I thought I told you to stay in the upstairs offices," he says, and Willie steps in front of him, stalling for time. "It's boring up there. Hey, I was thinking we maybe could go fishing again. Like last time." So now Joe knows something's up, but Willie stares and swears he loved every second of it. But it's too late, Joe's seen the truck and put it together, or at least put together that there's something to put together, so now he's getting screwed somehow not only by Sam but by his son, who's always liked Sam better anyway. Like who doesn't.
Sam doesn't put up too much of a fight when Yusif confronts him about the dirty tricks, but after all he's the one in the right. There's no way crossing the Guatrau is a bad thing, in this instance, except for how they are all going to be brutally murdered in a minute because of it. "It's what our parents fought for!" Sam accidentally quotes Daniel. "There's blood in the soil over this, Yusif. Maybe you could stand around and watch this happen all over again, but I can't." Joe says he doesn't need a history lesson; he knows Sam wanted to save them, that night.
Isabelle's body was cold, in the bedroom; the captain's men were still working Bill over. He called out the name of a compatriot, Sarah Frenal, but he'd already given her up. In the cupboard, as Sam took aim, Joe urged him on. It was time for this to end. "You know I'll find your children," Kolibri shrugged. "Just give me the names of your Dirteater friends and this will all end for you."
Some years from now, in the Tauron capital of Hypatia, a girl will run away from the sight of her dying sister, on the last day of the first Cylon War. It will make her strong, and brutal; it will make her every bit as willing to do to her enemies what Lieutenant Kolibri did that night, for her lost comrade. Sam dropped her with a bullet, and his father begged for death. Sam sent Joe away, as Lieutenant Kolibri watched, and Bill's blood splashed her face. The men came running, but the boys ran away.
"Oh, Sam. You can't change the past, Sam." But in this he can avenge it. Like an angel: "If I don't continue our parent's fight, their return was for nothing." Joe knows he feels guilty, for hiding the gun in their apartment in the first place; he asks why Sam didn't come to him when he decided to turn on the Guatrau. Sam's surprised, although he shouldn't be: "We've got to be smart. We bear this pain together. I forgot who I was. I forgot who I am. My... My promises." Yusif takes his hand: "I'm your brother. I'm always with you. If we're gonna go up against the Guatrau, we're gonna have to do it together." They hold onto each other; they breathe deep.
"Ha'la'tha means always faithful to the soil," Sam said, inking his brother's arm, with the marking of a man. "There's something we gotta be more faithful to," he said, and Joe got scared. Isabelle always said there was nothing higher than the soil, but she was wrong. Alone, clinging together in the storm, the boys had a higher path still: Always faithful to each other, to Adama. Higher than any world or creed or temporary war, this promise, born in fire and blood and fear. They held onto each other; they breathed deep.
In the end, this will be the promise that saves humanity, because by the end we will all be Adama. Born of the clay. Riding in a wooden ship built on this promise, crafted by his hands, wracked pieces held together on his back. Steady as she comes, with the dawn's star at her prow: From Anastasia to Kara to Kat; from Sharon to Natalie to Gaius Frakking Baltar. Saul Tigh and the President of the Twelve Colonies most of all.
(Eh, Ellen and Caprica Six not so much, or Romo Lampkin, but maybe on a technicality.)
Daniel's at home, looking a little jacked up from the slight beating he made Sam give him, when Amanda gets home. He's all kinda weirded out because of his near-miss with Zoë, and finally tells his wife the secret thing about that. "You're talking about the avatar, yes?" He tries to explain that it's a bit more complicated, and how he knew she was in the robot and couldn't make her admit it, and how sad and gross that whole thing was. That he wasn't lying when he told her she was gone, even, because once the robot blew herself up it was really over. And now it's not over. Again. And Amanda says the thing he knew she would say, the thing he's been wishing for her to say since she arrived; the thing he needs her to say if they're going to pull it off; the thing he was scared to say to himself:
"Well? Let's go find her."
And that's exactly what they did .