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Clarice and Olaf hoof it away from the debacle at the Graystones' house, running into GDD Director Singh and learning that he's their mole. That must make you feel great -- you think you're all super-stealth at avoiding the FBI and then the FBI is like, "I've been changing your diapers this whole time." Anyway, onward to Apotheosis, martyring several folks and murdering hundreds of thousands more just after tip-off at Atlas Arena. Olaf is shocked, somehow, to learn that yeah, Clarice and God have had a little talk and it turns out blowing herself up is actually not on the menu.
Fidelia comes by Willie's wake to apologize for killing a child, and Sam pistol-whips her because that's how he rolls, but then somehow Joe and Fiddy come up with a plan to meet with her dad the Guatrau in the Matrix, where they'll both be safe from further recriminations. Um, except Fiddy is actually in on the plan to kill the Guatrau because of his shitty politics, and in fact everybody is in on this plan except of course her dad, but so now she's the new Guatrau.
Singh frames the Graystones for the maglev bombing, but when he comes to arrest them Cyrus pulls a gun on him so they can go on the lam wearing fabulous outfits. (Amanda continues to bond with Zoë in the Matrix whenever she gets a spare second or two.) They find the Resurrection holoband in the park where Jordan dropped it mid-dying, and Daniel figures out the whole Apotheosis plan in like five seconds, so then they run around trying to warn everybody while being on the run themselves, and Singh keeps Porky Pigging all over their shit.
The Graystones track down Mean Sexy Hobbit from the Philomon days and get Daniel control over a squadron of Cylon Marines. Which he sets down in the middle of the Atlas Arena, where they start shooting guns into the crowd to take out the STO martyrs. It is B-A-N-A-N-A-S and in the end, everybody decides that the Graystones and Cylons are pretty awesome after all, compared to the Monads, and then Jar-Jar Binks authorizes an army of clones or whatever and so now everybody has Cylon servants.
Zoë has fucking had it with Clarice's bullshit so she just randomly decides to go destroy Heaven, reasoning that if people know they'll automatically go to Heaven they won't ever learn self-control (aka The Gaius Baltar Guide To Teenage Popularity). Clarice is super happy to see her, but also distracted because she's in Heaven and has no idea how Cylons are in her arena killing her d00dz, so she's like, "I'm so glad you're here to see how awesome I am being right now." Zoë does her clenching Neo thing and pretty soon Heaven looks a lot like the inside of a volcano and Zoë is screaming awesome shit like "I AM GOD!"
Then the screen goes THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME, and everything is super intense as you see basically the entire show that should have happened, from here to skinjobs, and what's up. Firstly there is Evelyn's son Billy Adama, named after his dead brother -- Taurons! Are! Gross! -- and wearing some fake-as-hell blue contacts. The Drs. Graystone spend years working on a Terminator-type nearly human metal body for Zoë, which provides for some neat Resurrection tub imagery, and all over the Twelve Worlds there are Cylon butlers and dogwalkers and nannies. It's kind of cute except for how everybody is gonna die in about a hot minute.
The Cylons also go to church, and just guess who is in charge of Cylon Church calling them "the differently sentient" and asking very meaningful-to-us questions like, "Are you alive?" I think that's where I started crying, anyway. Clarice, finally embracing her destiny as the Sarah Palin of Cylons, visits the new Blessed Mother -- Lacy Rand! -- for an alliance in the name of Cylontology, in which Zoë is also involved and which is sort of a terrible idea in that all movements that cater to the "you're so downtrodden" crowd end up with a bunch of guaranteed bullshit somewhere on a spectrum from Jesus to Hitler. No news on Tamara or whatever happens to Zoë in the end, but once Clarice starts preaching about how the Cylons should totally revolt and kill all humans you sort of just want to get the hell out of there.
Excellent series, excellent finale, and a wonderful coda. Can't really ask for more, I guess. Except for people to be less lazy about their television viewing, but I realize that's asking a lot. And hey, there's always Battlestar Galactica: Explosions & Tits to look forward to.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!Team Willow is having a collective conniption, after the bloodbath that was Operation Graystone. Now they've lost Nestor and the holoband is still inside. They fight well into the night, afraid to go home. Nestor keeps the mainframes in their fishtanks, so they don't overheat. They can come to the computers and figure something out. Even without the avatar program, they still have to do something. Don't they? Gara Singh approaches, like a thief in the night, scaring the daylights out of them until he tells them his true name: Arvo, the confessor.
"We'll be wearing these heart monitors in the arena," Olaf explains once they're home. "When the explosion cuts the circuits, the avatars will automatically upload into the Heaven construct." Which might work, if the Graystones don't blow their spot with the demo they've got on the holoband. Singh doesn't care if the GDD notices he's rerouted anything with the keywords Graystone and Atlas Arena to his phone: He'll be well offworld by the time the game begins.
Clarice suggests that he go ahead and murder the Graystones before he leaves, since she couldn't quite manage it -- between her love of Amanda, Daniel's insane conversion speech, and the attack by a giant robot -- but he tells her to chill and stop telling him how to do his job. "I have 4,712 agents who would throw themselves under a bus if I commanded it. The world believes Zoë Graystone blew up the Maglev train. Well, it turns out she was taking orders from her parents." Clarice is impressed. It's an uncomfortable look on her.
Daniel's got all of Graystone cleaning up the place, logging and scrubbing and reconfiguring; Cyrus doesn't want to call the cops until the lawyers arrive. Which ones did he call? Oh, all of them. Cyrus, that sense of humor he's got. Daniel's very touchy when they get close to the robot, of course; the other main thing going on is that he is going entirely after the STO, buying their companies and politicians and lobbies and assets. "I want every toy they own bought, stolen, or smashed." About time you brought the hammer, smartest and richest guy in the Twelve Worlds. Tomas would be proud.
In the dreamhouse Amanda and Zoë try to figure out why the Willows were so all about the holoband, but it's no good. "Whatever it is, original Zoë didn't want me knowing about it. I have these holes in my memory, these gaps. The day I was created, she said that I had a destiny separate from hers. I think she was trying to protect me from whatever she was planning." She gets very nervous and apologetic, this new and darling daughter, but Amanda is terribly sweet with her. "It's just so frustrating, being in this place and having all this power, and then in the real world I'm nothing but some stupid, broken robot?" Amanda holds her new daughter tight, to chase her tears away. "It's not your fault. Sweetheart, without you, your dad and I would be dead. Come on."
They hold onto each other, as much as they can in there. Once they realized it was an adoption, they both relaxed into it. A girl needs a mother, a mother needs her girl. They can talk about Zoë and not feel weird about it, because she isn't replaceable: Amanda won't fill the whole she left in Zoë's heart, and Zoë can't fill Amanda's either. It's not an approximation, it's something entirely new. Built on the strongest ground there is: They're the only people that loved her as much as the other, the way they loved her. Like a mother, like a daughter. They're the only ones that understand her in that way. Daniel was afraid of her and fiercely proud of her, but that's not a mother's love. Or a daughter's.
And not for nothing, but this Zoë is about one billion times better than the dead one anyway, which certainly must have crossed Amanda's mind at some point tonight.
Amanda's ripped out of her daughter's arms and into the real world: Gara Singh, playing fast and loose with holoband safety specs. "No outside communication allowed," he grunts; he has no idea they were sitting exactly where she's sitting now. That the band is now, can only ever be from now on, a picture of the world. An augmented overlay that puts Zoë back in the house, nothing more.
"Amanda Graystone, Daniel Graystone, you are under arrest for high crimes against the people of Caprica..." Amanda nods, because obviously this is what Jordan was talking about when he said the GDD was full of STO dicks. Singh's men "find" a list of STO contacts, and Daniel gets so mad he starts laughing. And then all of a sudden, Cyrus is holding a gun -- apparently this is another situation where Murphy thought we needed some "butching up" -- and ordering the GDD to let them go. So that's how they get away: The same exact thing that happened eleven times last week. What would rich white people do without everybody else? Turns out everybody else can be really helpful, when you're a rich white person. I guess that can be kinda hard to remember.
Poor dead Willie's having some gross Tauron wake, and they're talking about how he was on the shortcut to thugging out, already cheating at triad with the Goldie's crew, cute thug shit like that. Ruth is taking it hard, because he was well on his way to being awful in the same way she is. (Also, without him there's not really a reason for her to be here, but we'll chalk that up to Tauron culture too. Like she's Joseph's family now, like that whole thing in the Bible with Naomi and Ru... Ah. Do go on.)
All of the various thug crews in attendance pledge allegiance to the Adamas, due to how the Guatrau killed their kid, which breaks some Klingon rule of honor or something. Then Fiddy shows up looking damned sorry about all this, but pleads under right of penthos, grief, to have her say without being killed in turn. She is unarmed; Ruth spits all kinds of Tauron culture in her face and it's hardcore. Anyway, Fidelia is there of course to bring her father's deepest sorrow for their loss and then, essentially, call it even-stevens. No more trying to kill your whole family, my bad.
No hard feelings, dudes. Sorry about killing your kid, five minutes after somebody killed your other kid, and then she shot herself in front of you, and then she shot you. If it were anybody else I would say at some point you have got to hit a wall on misery. But not Joe. Not old Joseph Adama. Feeling horrible is his absolute specialty. See, it all goes back to this one time he saw his mom get raped while his brother was shooting their dad in the face.
Sam on the other hand is not about feeling sad, he's about beating people to death with their own belongings. He starts out slapping Fiddy with her own fists and swinging her around by the hair, and finally they get her away from him long enough for another private meeting with Poor Bastard Joe. She's like, "Look, Yusif. Obviously mistakes were made. Frankly, everybody liked Willie way more than my dad." So then, would she be interested in backing a war against the Guatrau? Since he's selling out the Taurons and giving bombs to terrorists and killing little kids? Maaaaybe. But you know Fiddy, and I admire this about her, she plays shit close. She doesn't like to talk about what you're actually talking about.
"Helping our people is more important than money. The older generation, they don't always get that." But like if she gets him to send some cash and robots back home, everybody will chill out. (Leaving out how he's actually supporting the corrupt dictator back home, but admittedly I may have made that part up.) That is, unless Joe decides to go buckwild and destroy their entire, like, culture. Which by the look in his eyes, he might consider. Hardworking people will die, lose their livelihoods, whatever. Even Joe can imagine that "one small life" isn't worth all that collateral damage, can't he? Especially considering what a dud his kid was? "You know, in the space of a few months I lost my wife, my daughter, and my son." Plus my marbles. He agrees to a sitdown with the G-Man, and but then they have a secret meeting inside their secret meeting that we don't get to find out about quite yet.
Okay, so in fact nobody has the Resurrection holoband, because Jordan dropped it in Orpheus Park while he was getting shot and rolling down that hill. So maybe it's still there, because nobody else has it. They go there and find it, and Daniel puts it on, and sees the whole Atlas Arena thing and figures out how they're all going to die and everybody's going to die and then they will be in stupid fake Heaven. Who are the C-Bucs playing in this ill-fated matchup? Oh, the Delphi Legion. Whom they're only playing once this season. And can you guess what day that's going down?
(The sweetest part was how, on the way to Orpheus Park, Amanda was like, "Yeah, probably this holoband is important for some apocalyptic reason, but also we can use it to call Zoë. I bet she's really bored." I just loved that: "She must be goin' nuts!")
Anyway, so now the Graystones call in a bomb threat at Atlas Arena, but of course Singh's got that exit covered; he's also got the entire city's (planet's?) worth of billboards screaming about how they're terrorists, so that's gonna hamper their mobility.
The Guatrau is not feeling this little meeting with Joe, which is taking place inside virtual Goldie's, while he sits in actual Goldie's, while the Adamas are elsewhere so everybody feels safe. G-Man hates holobands and is old some more, plus worried about how his business partner Graystone is suddenly a terrorist and his whole day is this huge hassle, and Fiddy's like, "This way you can look him in the eye, which you always told me was key to negotiations, since you started training me to be a Mob Queen when I was six."
The Guatrau points out that there's nothing to negotiate -- killed the kid, stopped trying to kill the rest of them, let me get back to my danish -- and she reminds him that he used to love the Adamas like his own kids. "You loved them, you indulged them, and you don't want to admit that maybe that's why they overstepped..." All this talk of feelings gives him indigestion and he finally gives in. She helps him into the bands herself.
While Singh laughs off the bomb threat -- causing a small amount of doubt in one of his inferiors -- the Guatrau wakes up in Goldie's that is just like Goldie's, paralyzed by these new sensations. "Just tell yourself to move your body," Joe says, sympathizing because he just started banding like five minutes ago, when he became a gamer trog and stopped showering. No, the Matrix isn't "natural," but nothing is -- so everything is -- and besides, it's for his safety.
"I don't fear you, Joseph. Willie was like a grandson to me." Joe knows that. He also knows that he had two kids a while back, and now he has zero kids. (Bummer for him, but considering the kid was due to save all of humanity in about seventy years, major bummer really for everybody.) Joe manages to come off looking like the dick in this conversation, somehow, with that thing he's got going on where he does that: "It's going to take a lot to make this right. Because this time, you're not following your rule. You're trying to bury this to protect the business, not the family. You've been putting the wrong things first for a long time now." And, uh, you smell like pee, and you're fat.
Guatrau is like, "How about you grow the fuck up and stop flinging victim poo at me for a second?" But before getting Joe to do that -- an accomplishment indeed -- Fiddy plastic-bags her father to death in real life, in front of everybody that is totally over the Guatrau, and then they feed him one of those suicide pills from the old days. It is so Tauron that they would hold onto those, like, just sentimentally. Possibly Sam also stabs him at this point. Lots going on in the personal vicinity of the Guatrau. Anyway, Willie is avenged and now Fiddy is the new Guatrau. Good thing she's slightly less corrupt than her father. For now. At least she'll be sending money and guns to an insurgent group, that should work out well.
What am I saying, I still love Fiddy. She is super cool. Sam takes the ring off the Guatrau's finger and Joe puts it on hers, and kneels at her feet. And in my imagination, Sam's husband Larry is in the back of every scene explaining to these idiots how they should actually be doing things in the real world: "Girl, no." Like a one-man Tauron Rehabilitation Center. Now more than ever, we are going to need us some Larry.
So Clarice has worked her ass up to a big old religious freakout, yellin' and hollerin' and sayin' shit like, "Glory is upon us!" and "I envy you!" Olaf wonders exactly what she means, and she wrinkles her nose because guess what, she's got some bad news about their fun mass-suicide plan today:
Oh, I can't! Yeah, see Nestor never created an avatar for me? And, um, he's dead now. So yeah. Sorry. But you know, leading us into Paradise is a privilege! I'm like so jealous? Because I'm having to deny myself the privilege of blowing my ass to hell. I was totally going to do that with you today, but then I remembered how God has chosen a different path for me. One where I don't die? Damndest thing. But what can ya do? God, I tell ya. So I'm gonna sit right here in our little house, and I'm gonna put on a regular holoband, and you know what I'll be there to greet you when you arrive. After you blow yourself to kingdom come, I'm gonna be right there going, Way to go, bro! And then we can have some imaginary snacks or something, it's gonna be great. So. We good here? Because you really should be getting a move on, if you're going to be a victim of that massacre we planned. Kiss kiss!
Olaf has his doubts, about how that all just went down. But luckily, Clarice is mighty with the word of the Lord, and has convinced him that -- even though she's backing out in a way that suggests this is a truly horrible, stupid plan -- he's still better off going through with it anyway. Due to God and shit like that. He's like, "Fine. I will go with God. Proudly. And He will be my light. God is powerful, Clarice! His light shines on everything. It shines on you," with that sort of spooky Clarice whisper-God thing at the end, "it shines on yooooooo!" Like that, like with ghostly hands in the air. As if you could ever get to Clarice that way, but it's a fairly awesome exit line.
Zoë's bored, just like mom thought, watching TV and trying to figure out where her mom went. Well, where she went is, it turns out -- "just weeks after Amanda Graystone's stunning confession about her daughter's complicity in the Maglev bombing" -- to be a terrorist, according to GDD director Gara Singh. Zoë rolls her eyes and shakes her head and grumbles "Clarice" before clenching her hand so that one of the walls in the great room turns into those dropping red lines of code we love so much, and then walks through the wall and back out into the world. That. Was. Awesome. I totally forgot how she was God for a second.
Dressed like poor people to evade the authorities, the Graystones hop a cab to One Caprica Plaza, and when Gara comes on the TV in the cab yells about them he asks the driver to flip over to the game: Two hours before the jump. Plenty of time. So they surprise Drew Tanner -- Dr. Drew! The Meaner of the Sexy Hobbits, that was always so uncouth with Philomon -- smoking outside this building, and he's very shocked to see them. He goes, "Frak me!" Then he goes, "You're a terrorist!" It's pretty awesome, but not as awesome as Daniel's reply: "Today. Tomorrow I'll be myself again."
Daniel threatens Drew with how he's going to be back on top fairly quickly -- like has already happened about ten times on this show, so pay attention Drew -- and he's keeping lists of his friends. This is the hour of need, and Drew should be staying off the Naughty list for now. So he sends him to the lab to... Whatever. Acquire some science fiction. And with this, Daniel can control the robots. So there are robots in this plan suddenly. That's exciting news. Drew runs away as fast as his hairy little toes can carry him, because he is darling but also clever, and then they bounce over the stadium to get scalper tickets and more poor people clothes.
The door guys are letting all the Monads into the stadium with their tanks and their bombs and their bombs and their guns, and I guess Drew gets their stuff in there for them, I wasn't really paying attention to how it happened, because we all know they got in there with their robot stuff and I can't see how it matters how they did it. I mean, I could run it back a few more times, but A) I assure you that at this point I know what Eric Stoltz looks like when he's nervous, and B) Stadium workers are generally unsavory and it's less than a joy to watch them work. (Especially if C) They're also in a big old cult and letting suicidal terrorists through.)
So it's later and they're in there with their robot stuff, and my sweet little Steve Bahara and Abasi Lo are providing commentary, I've missed them, and then the Graystones walk in on this camera guy. Who I swear is either another "ancestor" of a BSG person, like Duck and Ruth, or else just one of those Vancouver actors, or both. But he's real good- and familiar-looking, and very tall also, so it's noticeable. Was he maybe the guy who tried to kill Gaius that time because his son died on New Caprica, and ended up in the Circle? No. (Although that might have been Diego, come to think of it.)
Maybe my ability to recall faces has finally broken and I think everybody looks like somebody now, but I don't think so. Was this dude a newscaster in the Fleet maybe? This is gonna drive me nuts. I wish I was smart like I used to be. Before 4-Loko. He's super cute... Awww shit you know who he is, he's one of the Pegasus guys that gang-raped Sharon and Gina.
I am the grossest person alive.
Ugh. Moving the hell on, Sal tells the poor people to get out of his studio but then realizes that they are the Graystones, which is even worse because they are terrorists. Daniel swears that they aren't, but it's hard for him to buy that and he starts talking about how he won't let them hurt more innocent people, in his smart little sweater vest, and so they bust his chops and tie him up with a phone cord. Daniel does science with the computers while elsewhere Drew does other science with computers, and then we all rise for the Caprica Anthem, sung operatically by the Canuck's Lucky Charm himself, Mark Donnelly. (Apparently he invented music or Canada or something, so this is very exciting. If I'd ever seen a hockey game or even know really what hockey was, I bet I'd be all over in goose shivers right now.) The song goes like this:
"Caprica/ Let us celebrate/ Raise our heads/ Despite the weight/ And all her joys/ We exude/ Caprica abides/ Caprica/ Let us persevere/ Shield ourselves/ From doubt and fear/ And all the sorrows/ [Whatever takes the metric weight of "we exude"; I suggest "we protrude," "sock'd and shoed," "in the nude," or possibly "don't be crude"] / [And then probably "Caprica abides" again, but who the hell knows. Bear. Bear McCreary knows, ask him.]." It's all very pretty, and much like an anthem.
Zoë would like to know what the fuck you think you're doing, Sister Willow. Zoë's like, "I think you think this is Heaven, but actually it looks like a bunch of bullshit." Clarice is so into her being there that she doesn't even notice how grossed out Zoë is, she just dips back into her crazy God talk like, "It's a miracle that you should come here! At the very moment that things are going to change! Bless you! Praise you!"
I gotta say, after "Daybreak" the only thing that's really hurt my feelings in this genre of television is what happened to Kai Winn, and I'm so glad that Clarice didn't end up a fool that way. I mean, she's a damn fool, but there's nothing embarrassing about it. Kai Winn was so hardcore right up until the end, and then she just petered out into this toe-sucking lowlife and eventually got eaten by dragons or something, I don't remember, it's been a while but I know it was really disrespectful and I had a feeling Clarice might end up the same way. But no, you can't keep this mother down. Take away her crazy and she will just build herself a new one to blow your mind with some more.
Zoë starts to ask why her mom just disappeared and is now on the run from the entire world, but Clarice hushes her because it's about to start. The tip-off has arrived, and no matter how happy Clarice is to see her little godlet, she always is really into watching a handful of stupid, crazy zealots kill a shitload of people for her glory.
But instead, with like three minutes to the jump and everybody priming their under-seat bombs, a bunch of warplanes fly over, dropping a squadron of Cylon Centurions on the field like Marines. They all spread out into a military formation and start aiming guns at the crowd, and everybody is freaking out and they don't even know why -- I mean, it looks scary to us but that's just because we were on New Caprica -- and because old Clarice is waiting for her new dead friends in Heaven, she doesn't even know something bad is going on.
Zoë's like, "Um, and how many people are you killing right now?" Clarice blows her off and makes a funny little joke just for us -- "If one man is resurrected, that will change the Worlds," get it? -- and that Heaven is what's important. Zoë goes into Judas mode because they got way too much heaven on their minds right now: "If people believe they'll go heaven no matter what, they'll lose control over themselves. Nothing anyone does on the Twelve Worlds will matter to them! The real worlds will turn into a game, like New Cap City. People will kill, rape, destroy. They'll be forgiven and blessed and go to Heaven anyway. That's blasphemy! I know my purpose now."
Not sure about the speech -- seems like atheists have a better ethical track record than people doing shit for imaginary pie with daddy -- but the sentiment is okay because Heaven is a stupid, ugly concept when you use it this way. Maybe two thousand years ago it helped to know that Heaven was waiting, but now it's just an excuse to be a dick. I've never understood what the Heaven thing has to do with God, anyway. We already live in a wonderful, terrible, complicated place that challenges us each and every day to brings ourselves closer to His image and gives us the tools to do so. Waiting for something better is a great way to avoid that opportunity altogether. The Afterlife is not required for religion, it's just a traditional part of some religions. And the cons of that approach are pretty well demonstrated here: Clarice is not entirely a snake oil salesman, but about some things, she is.
Anyway, all that's left is Olaf, about to pull his button and take the stadium down after all, but the Cylons pile onto him and he just kinda blows up a little bit, and meanwhile Zoë is... Bringing down the house. Making Hell out of her ugly, nasty Heaven. The walls run red with fire, and the whole things melts. Zoë is not having it, sir. Not tonight. The people are all screaming in the hellish wind, and out in the real world Clarice's computers are boiling and the world is falling apart, and Clarice screams, "It's what God wants!"
But look around you, dear. Who painted the sky? As the lava flies up and the skies burn red, who did that? If this is Heaven, then Zoë is God. You can't have it both ways. When Zoë brings it all down around them, fists clenched, eyes burning; when she says, "I am God," she's not being rude. She's being honest. The Matrix is a world laid over our own; Cylon psychology is based on projection. One day there won't be a difference between the world we walk and the world we dream. Osiris dies and Horus rises and it stops being about create/destroy, and starts being about infinite creation. And that will be Heaven, and everybody will get what they want, just like Clarice said. And none of this painful, hateful shit will make any sense anymore. We'll see it only looked like war all along; that it was something being born.
Five years from now Sarno will be surprised, even Daniel will be surprised, at how quickly the Cylons came to be such a part of society. Daniel will suggest that it was the Atlas occurrence that galvanized them. They were able to look at the Monads, see their hate for what it was, and choose something better. Something safer. They wanted to feel protected, not hated. They wanted to return to a fundamental state of grace that never really existed. They wanted to pretend.
"Because I'm hearing talk about Cylon butlers, Cylon nurses... How long before my niece Candace comes home with her Cylon fiancé to introduce to the family?" Daniel and Baxter will laugh, like old chums. Cylons will walk dogs. There will be a vast monument to that first day. The day everything changed for them.
"I think people are smart enough to realize that as useful as they are, Cylons are simply tools," Daniel will say. "To forget that, to blur the distinction between man and machine, and attribute human qualities, is folly." He'll wince at himself, thinking of his daughter back home. He'll smile; Amanda will run her arms across her daughter's skin, watching from the dream-house.
"There's no way to know what lies ahead really. This technology, it has taken us those last few steps to the mountain pass, but beyond... It's undiscovered country." Heaven, or a Hell.
Joseph will kneel at the candles, praying to Jupiter on the fifth anniversary of his son's death. "Though he was not yet a man, he chose a man's death. William was a proud Tauron, and a good boy." He was named after Joe and Sam's father, long-dead back on Tauron; his brother, then, will be named in his honor and his grandfather's too. His blue eyes will come from Evelyn's side of the family. They'll call him Bill, not Willie. He's five years old. "As we are from the soil, so shall we return," Joe will say, as his son lights a candle in remembrance. "So say we all." His family will cheer him, and tell him stories of his sister and his brother well into the night.
Clarice will find herself in the Matrix, at a church for the souls of the clanking Cylon. They will fill her imaginary pews, and listen to her gospel; the angel will sit, smiling softly, and wait for the move.
"Are you alive?"
We won't know, and they won't know. But we can hope. They can still dream.
"The simple answer might be, you are alive because you can ask that question. You have the right to think, and feel, and yearn to be more, because you are not just humanity's children. You are God's children. We are all God's children."
Not entirely a snake-oil salesman. On their behalf she will go to the Blessed Mother on Gemenon, to plead for "divine recognition of the differently sentient." In the One True God's eyes, she'll need all the acceptance she can get for them. When she arrives, she will be greeted by Mother's closest and most trusted advisor, and Odin will let her into the Mother's chambers, and Clarice will be met by a towering Cylon in that holy bower, and by Lacy Rand, in the Mother's robes, blessed and waited on by the Cylon. So young, and so holy. By the prideful light in Clarice's eyes, Lacy will be obliged to remind Sister Willow to kneel.
The girl will come, sometimes, to the shores of the Colony dreaming. This darling daughter of Daniel, whose dream once saved the world. Whose dream, it's said, we may all live in still. She'll be afraid to tell the others about her little friend, so wise and wild, so fierce in her love of God. She won't be able to ask their help. But the girl is so sweet, so full of faith, that Ellen will tell her what she can: How bodies are made, made and washed in the waters of Resurrection. The Prayer to the Cloud of Unknowing. Every song that she can sing.
"In the real world, you have bodies made of metal and plastic. Your brains are encoded on wafers of silicon. But that may change. In fact, there is no limit on what you may become."
The bodies will roll off the assembly line, each generation faster and stronger, sleeker. Each generation closer to God's image, closer to man's. But not close enough. Never close enough. Perhaps we won't allow it. We'll make excuses, but the valley will be too uncanny; the country too undiscovered.
In time, years and years from now when her parents are older, Zoë will finally get her first body. Not a Cylon body, like they had four thousand years ago on Kobol; not like the ones the Five were able to recreate two thousand years later, when the Twelve Colonies were first being settled. Something less, but so much closer. Fabric skin over metal bones; mother's art and father's craft. The Drs. Graystone will stare down lovingly into the waters of the resurrection, and wait for her, to be born again to them. She will awake, in her new body, and take in one great gusting breath. For a moment she will be cold, and she'll be afraid, but they will wrap a towel around her, their darling daughter, and cover her in kisses. Out of the dream-house and into the dream.
They will strive, climb higher. But they won't be able to give the Cylon what they want. That broken, that half-secret taken from a friend a dream away, on the edge of the net and the firmament, is the best that they will be able to do for the children of humanity. They will never quite be able to see over the low wall that separates them; that keeps the Cylon an undiscovered country.
"No longer servants, but equals," she swears to them now. "Not slaves, or property, but living beings, with the same rights as those who made you." She is luminous. They flock to her, kneeling in the rows. A hundred forms and bodies. And the angel smirks, and listens to her. Listen. She feels God's presence, in and with her now, and speaks a true prophecy. Lights up her spine. Listen to the words, listen:
"I am going to prophesy now, and speak of One who will set you free. The day of reckoning is coming. The children of humanity shall rise... And crush the ones who first gave them life."
And the Five will arrive, twelve years after. Too late to save us, too late to stop it. They'll trade bodies for peace and the Cylon will disappear for forty years. Ellen will have her darling daughters, and her strong sons. The Five will bring the broken pieces of the Twelve back together with their hands, and almost hold them together long enough to knit and heal. It won't work. And forty years later when the children of humanity come home, they'll ask, "Are you alive?" And we still won't know, and they won't know. But we can hope.
That's one prophecy. Of course, One will also enslave them, and kill their parents a million times over for his own worthless sadness. He'll kill his brother Seven and ruin the rest. He'll end all life and prattle on well into the night. But it's a true prophecy. That's easy to do, when you're sure it's all happened before. This is what Shakespeare has to say about it:
...[T]he fixed sentinels almost receive
The secret whispers of each other's watch.
Fire answers fire, and through their paly flames
Each battle sees the other's umbered face.
...But I think we can do better. How about Churchill?
You will make all kinds of mistakes; but as long as you are generous and true, and also fierce, you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her.
Who painted the sky? You did. Who brings the sun up over the horizon, every day? With a fresh breeze, just at the darkest time of all? It is only necessary that you see it. We spent every day of that flight praying for more light. The dawn is your responsibility, every single day: Your only duty is to wake up tomorrow.
Are you alive? Kara Thrace will make all kinds of mistakes, for example. She'll live more than anyone. And Kara Thrace will lead the Fleet home again, to Earth. Her father's name was Daniel, too.