01: Video

[itstopped]

[The screen turns on to show Felix, new to the barge and newly free of the breach. He's standing in the middle of a metal room, the walls honeycombed with bunk beds -- industrial in appearance, but spaced with a certain military precision.

As with the breach, he's missing the lower half of his right leg. But now, he has a clunky-looking metal prosthetic attached, extending down to a black boot, and he leans on a single forearm crutch instead of the awkward things he relied on back in town. He's neat and trimmed and wearing some kind of uniform.

And he looks very, very confused.]

What the frak was that? I thought it was a dream, or maybe even one of those visions everyone keeps having. Some last flash before the end...

...But then, how could I possibly be back on Galactica? There's no way I'm a Cylon, too... if nothing else, I don't think they'd let me resurrect like this. [He taps his crutch against his leg, with a hollow metal sound.]

Comments

[Spam]

[sixthanimorph.livejournal.com]

What's the year where you're from? I don't know how this is possible, humans have barely gotten past manned spaceflight in my time. You're saying there's another world out there with people on it?

[He's a little calmer now - maybe it's Gaeta's sturdier presence, or maybe it's just that he doesn't think the lieutenant's as apt to go off on him now. The cerebral part of his brain's a little freer now to note that pecular word. 'Skinjobs'.] I don't understand any of this. There's one humanity, there's not... I mean, I guess there's sort of tribes, if you count Americans, British, that kinda thing. But they're not on different planets or anything.

[Oh boy. This is gonna be tough to explain.] Yeah. They've got robots, but they're not robots. They're... slugs, I guess. Big ugly slugs that crawl in a person's brain and wrap around it and make them their slave. We call those Controllers.

[Spam]

[itstopped.livejournal.com]

We don't... really measure time the way we used to. It's four years ACH. After Cylon Holocaust. Before that... [He sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose.] I don't know. About the 20th Century post-Colonization for us, too. I don't remember, I honestly don't.

[It upsets him to realize this, something that hadn't struck him until now. He's gotten so used to thinking about things as BCH and ACH -- it was three years Before that he joined Galactica, it was four years After that he died - that he really can't remember what year it was when he still had a home on Picon. He rubs his hands over his face, only half-listening to David's musings.

After he's done, though, muttering words like America that Felix barely remembers from the breach, Felix adds, quite bleakly:]

And no. There are no other worlds with people on them. That's what I've been trying to tell you. There are no more worlds at all.

[His world is dead, and David's has alien slugs. He's not sure what to make of that, honestly. His nose wrinkles in automatic distaste, both at the thing itself and the idea of being invaded, enslaved, in a way even more complete than what the Cylons had done to them.] Gods. That's despicable.

[Spam]

[sixthanimorph.livejournal.com]

[A stunned look falls over David's face as the lieutenant explains how time is measured on his world, and upon hearing that acronym's grim meaning he sits down. Abruptly.] ... You really are from the future... way into the future.

[The more this Lieutenant Gaeta tells David, the less he wants to know. No one would mistake him for a hero of justice, but the wholesale murder of worlds is more mindless destruction than he can accept. And if somehow the future Felix Gaeta described could be traced back to the Yeerks... to his own actions even, he wasn't enough of a monster to accept it as a meaningless sacrifice. His hands clench his knees and tighten. What he can do, he's not yet sure, but he won't just go back home and ignore the invasion if his decision could lead to this kind of slaughter.]

So... everyone's in spaceships now. [There's an urgency in his tone now that wasn't there before - he doesn't just want to understand now, he needs to understand.] And these Cylon things... is there any way there could be a connection between them and the Yeerks? [He wants to hear him say no, but the cold and logical part of his mind knows that even if he did, it wouldn't mean much. The Yeerks always operated by secrecy. If they could invade a planet without anyone knowing they exist, who's to say they couldn't nuke one the same way?]

[Spam]

[itstopped.livejournal.com]

[He's actually from very far in the past, but that was a stupid plot twist isn't something he has any way of knowing! At this point, he's starting to believe, unlike David, that there must be two worlds, at least two, because-- Yeerks? Slugs? Felix may trust the toasters as far as he can punt them with the gimp leg they gave him... but he has to assume they'd have mentioned parasitic brain slugs at some point.

So he considers David's question honestly, but he finds himself shaking his head.]

I don't think so. Skinjobs are made to be as close to human as... we are. [He glances up at David as he says this, a little reluctantly. He's closer to believing David's not a product of murderous robots, but...]

I mean, we've autopsied them extensively, and they're essentially indistinguishable from humans. We even tried to build a Cylon blood detector once, and it failed. So no slugs, no, um, aliens. [Honestly, aliens?] Not unless someone's been hiding something on a massive level, anyway.