itstopped | Re-Entry 08: Video/Spam

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Re-Entry 08: Video/Spam

Help!

[The cry goes out while the video is still turning on. The picture, when it appears, is chaotic: Felix Gaeta, ashen grey and soaked with sweat and tears of panic, but only for a second before the shaking camera turns on what looks like an empty Western ghost town, caught from a high vantage point, shingles visible at the bottom of the screen.

Not empty. There are snarls and yowls and a terrifyingly organic sound coming from below.

Felix's voice cuts in again, tight with fear. He's not a hero. He's not a fighter. He's the one at the controls, and for all that he's usually good at staying calm in a crisis, it's a lot frakking easier when there's a console between him and it. He sounds a little hysterical.]

SOS! SOS! I'm pinned down in the-- oh, gods-- [There's another furious roar from below; his voice hitches, the camera shakes.] --the CES. Something attacked us. I think Dean is dead. I--

[There's a scream from underneath, unmistakeably human. The communicator drops against the shingles--] Dean? [--and cuts out.]

[Open Spam for Level Two/Infirmary, Later]

[After it's all over, after they've done what they can with Dean's corpse and patched up whatever needs to be on the survivors, Felix is set adrift into the aftermath. He should get cleaned up and then stay with Dean, he knows, or else he should get back to work and keep something like this from happening again. But he can't seem to make himself go to the latter just yet, not with Dean dead less than an hour, and the former...

He's always known that the death toll exists here, but he's never had to really confront it before, not in a way he couldn't brush off and ignore. The truth is that it scares him more than almost anything else about the Barge, even here, even now. It's not ignorance; it's not that he's never seen anything like it before. It's that he has.

The pull to sit by Dean's side and wait is powerful, but in the end, he winds up haunting the door to the infirmary, still red-eyed and disheveled, constantly peeking inside.]

((Right after/congruent with this, obviously.))

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

He won't be a robot. He'll be himself.

That's not the point. [Although it is, a little. It's occurred to him before that, well, like he said: if Dean was a robot, there would be no way of knowing, just as there's no way of knowing about Ned. Or anyone. Or himself.

But it's not the main point.]

Resurrection is a frakking abomination, that's the point.

[The Piemaker has been quietly debating in his head about whether or not to let Felix in on his secret; that he could raise the dead, that his powers would not work on robots, that he could prove without a doubt that the Dean in the infirmary was the same Dean walking around last week.

But the word abomination hits him hard, and for a second the Piemaker remembers a flood where he had, in fact, let his secret out and all of the terrible things that had come of it.

So instead, he says,]

I don't know if Dean sees it that way.

I know he doesn't. I do. [There's something rather bitter in it. He'd understand Ned's isolation, if nothing else; he's used to being the lone voice in the darkness.]

So....

Let me ask you this.

If there was a, um. A way to stop the Dean in the infirmary from coming back...would you kill him? Even if it meant never seeing him again?

[The question cuts him to the core, even deeper than he might have expected it would. He looks up again, shocked, eyes suddenly stinging and damp again.

Would you kill him?] How can you...

[But it's a fair question, isn't it? That's the natural conclusion here: the only way to say no is to admit that things are different here, or to admit that he'd rather live in a world with resurrection than without it.

He knows what he'd choose for his own world. Dee had died in his hands, and if she had come back... he knows what she would have wanted him to do. He would have asked for the same thing. They both would have rather died than be Cylons.

But here? He wipes his eyes with an almost childish gesture, exhaling shakily.]

If I could turn it off for all of us, I would. [And then he'd be the first one to take it, not Dean.] But barring that... no. No, of course not.

[It's a terrible question to ask, but Felix gives a far better answer than the Piemaker is expecting. He nods, setting his chin down against his folded arms]

I don't know if this will...help you. It helps me, but then, I'm not you.

But what helps me to think about people dying here is that the people who are dead here can't logically die again. If someone came up and stabbed you right now, you're already dead. The Barge is just. It's rewinding your tape back to your last saved point.

Saved... [He blinks, then laughs again, only because it's been literally five years since he last played a video game and he'd honestly forgotten that term.] Right.

[He thinks of something else, quirks a brow at Ned.] Or like a computer crash.

That's right. But in less...robotic terms.

It's not creating anything new from nothing. It's pulling up the last few moments in time.

They're both software. [The irony has not escaped him, that that's the metaphor Ned himself chose to go with.] And that's the point -- look, you can either think of this like a person or like a machine. [He turns to face Ned again, and he's still upset, but back to stability now for the moment. Talking about ideas, concepts, even if they're ones that scare him, it's easier than dealing with the mental images Ned put into his head a moment ago.]

If it's a machine, then everything resets, and you move on like nothing happened. Maybe you get some kind of new programming, some new protocol that tells you how to avoid what happened before, but that's it. Nothing fundamental changes. And that's allegedly how it's supposed to work here, and that would be fine if we were machines, but we're not.

So how does it work with humans? It's like you said: we learn. And what we learn is how to cope. We have to. I learned how to cope with 50 billion people dying because I had no choice. I learned how to adapt to death. We all did. That's how it works, right? Wouldn't you say? [Gods, but he wishes he could smoke right now without feeling guilty about it.]

I wouldn't say. Per se.

[Deep breath. Count to ten]

We're not machines.

But.

Every human is going to react differently to their own death here on the Barge. Some people are going to react how you'd expect humans to react; they struggle, but they cope.

And...some, who might have more face-to-face experience with death, might treat it like a minor inconvenience with nothing fundamental changing.

It's...up to Dean, how he faces it.

One thing I do know for sure is that the Dean that comes out to face it is the same Dean here a week ago. We just can't predict his reactions. And if he acts a little like a robot because he's seen death before and it holds no consequence, we can't...treat him suspiciously because of it.

Why not? Aren't we supposed to be here to become better? How is it better to learn to stop caring about dying? It should be a fundamental frakking change! I don't just mean Dean. You, me, anyone. We die, and then we die again, and again... how does that do anything but devalue the entire thing?

I mean-- frak. You don't think anyone cared about my leg, do you? Why would they? There wasn't a single one of us who hadn't already seen worse. Do you really think it's okay that this is a place where someone can be ripped the frak apart and the group opinion is--

[It's a thing he's noticed in himself, too. A monstrous, horrible thing, but one he can't bring himself to feel all that guilty about: he just doesn't care about most of the stories he hears here. The only one that's made him sit up and take any notice was Erik Lensherr. The rest? Someone's family died, someone's angry at their father, someone betrayed a friend. Well--]

"Been there, done that."

[Closing his eyes, the Piemaker ran a hand through his hair, actually thinking on Felix's words.]

People care. No one would be here outside this infirmary if death was an inconvenient vacation away from life.

If you die - if you die - someone is going to care.

I'll care.

That's not-- [He grits his teeth, exasperated.] What about when you die? Will you care then?

I'll be dead. And I think, if I had a choice, I wouldn't be coming back.

[Then why are you even arguing with me? he wants to ask, and looks like he wants to ask, but doesn't.] But say you do. You're here.

If I do come back, I'll...try to think of it as a gift and not a curse.

And say it happens again.

Then I'll have to take a hard reexamination of my daily habits and figure out why I'm dying so frequently.

And that would be the major takeaway from your untimely death.

I know I'm one of the lucky few who gets to come back. I'd...make sure that second chance wouldn't be given in vain.

Frak. [He sighs and hides his face in his hands, heavy and exhausted. He should have known this would be the conclusion regardless. Dealing with Ned really is like dealing with himself.] Naturally.

[Hugging the doorframe, the Piemaker looks Felix over, wishing he could do more to help]

Let me feed you.

[It's such an incongruous response that he actually almost laughs, looking up with a quiet little sound of disbelief. He shakes his head after a second and softens, not entirely ungrateful.] I can't... [He amends:] I'd rather not leave.

You stay here. I'll bring food to you.