Fic: The Smaller Life | BSG | 3 & 6 | Rated R
Written for Round 3 (6!) at getyourtoaster , for quasiradiant
Summary & Spoilers: 3 & 6 ponder the nature of physicality, attraction, and love. Set just before the crux of 2.17 - "Downloaded"
Written for Round 3 (6!) at getyourtoaster , for quasiradiant using this prompt: character you want paired with Six: Number Three; up to three things you want to see in the story: a currently unknown Six, caprica after the attack, mocking of/snarking on the Six called "Caprica"
Author’s Note: I don’t think their numerical designations have been clarified yet, but when I refer to a Nine, I mean a Doctor Simon, and a Ten is a Brother Cavil.
++++++
God save us all when you, the seer, the founder, and the prophet, may throw the gold of your immortal treasure back to the God that gave it, and then laugh because a woman has you in her arms … (snipped from Merlin, by Edward Arlington Robinson)
++++++
Months after the victory, Caprican restoration is fully underway. Steel Centurions labor night and day, rebuilding over weeks what their soft masters destroyed in seconds. Sound infrastructure is prioritized over social venues, so public outings are still rare among the Cylon. There is, however, one grand restaurant in Delphi, repaired to pre-war condition, where two are meeting over a late supper.
The restaurant is crowded and offers no privacy. Both desire candid conversation, but find it difficult in this milieu. After dinner, they go to her apartment. To talk, the other says, and she cannot refuse. Truly, she doesn’t want to refuse. In her apartment, she presents the other with dark liquor, soft music, and a sofa to accommodate the necessary chatter - which is comprised mainly of questions. Some of these are incisive, some alarmingly blunt.
She twirls a platinum ringlet around one slim finger. Runs a palm along her thigh, smoothing down imaginary wrinkles on her immaculate skirt. Bites her lip. Smiles, somehow both coy and calculating.
“You’re stalling,” 3 observes, without judgment. She knows her last question was inflammatory, and she is willing to wait a reasonable amount of time for an answer, but the clock of her patience is winding down. She softens her eyes and leans in, speaks confidentially. “Your response need not be perfect; honesty will suffice. I just want to understand, and you are my only point of reference.”
With that sincere assurance, the defensive façade of charm falls away, and 6 gives a docile nod. “The first time, I suppose I felt… a kind of… pull.”
“After they looked at you, or approached you.”
“Yes,” she confirms. “I never initiated physical intimacy. Or even conversation, for that matter.”
“Of course not,” 3 agrees. “Did you consider rebuffing their advances?”
“Yes.” Her answer is too fast, and she instantly fears that 3 does not believe this instinctive lie. But the other woman’s clear blue eyes radiate only acceptance and curiosity, so she finds the courage to answer more truthfully. “Well, actually, no. I didn’t. I just… responded.”
“Naturally?”
6 cocks her head, squints a bit. “That’s not the word I would use.”
3 mirrors her expression. “Why not?”
“Because it isn’t considered natural, is it? God wants us to couple for the purpose of bearing children,” she reasons, somewhat mechanically. “Organic reproduction manifests His will.”
3 looks down, as if disappointed. “Yes. You’re right. But you…”
After a few moments of quiet, 6 chuckles and prompts her guest to continue. “I… what?”
“You…” 3 flushes pink as she asks the evening’s most personal question, “You achieved apogee?”
For the first time in their brief acquaintance, 6 feels as if she has the surer footing and she is elated. A slow, lovely grin blossoms from her confidence. “Oh. Yes. Repeatedly.”
“Then surely it isn’t sacrilege. In each moment of joy, in every rapture, we know God’s love. This is why coupling gives physical pleasure.” 3 releases a heavy breath, shakes her head. “At least, it should give pleasure.”
“You mean you…”
“I… what?”
“You don’t achieve apogee?”
3 shrugs, studies the intricate patterns of the antique Geminese prayer rug underfoot, and is momentarily lost in wondering how this delicate item survived the holocaust in such pristine condition. It is unnecessary, unproductive, and yet someone found it beautiful enough to warrant preservation. “Maybe I haven’t been properly matched,” she says at last.
“How were you assigned?” 6 queries.
“Fives, mostly, and a couple of Nines. They were all functional, so I’m sure it wasn’t their fault.” She shrugs again, rolls her eyes. “Perhaps they found me unsuitable.”
6 smiles warmly, touches her shoulder. “Well, I’m pretty sure that isn’t true.” Her hand slips down. “You are as God made you.” Her fingers mold around the supple delineation of upper arm. “And He made you beautiful.” Her thumb strokes a steady arc across smooth skin. “Desirable. For a reason.”
“Humans innately trust physical beauty,” 3 agrees, benignly ignoring the suggestive caress. She glances up sheepishly at her hostess, whose striking visage is the perfect likeness of a Cylon war hero. “Your face, in particular, has served us well.”
“Hmph.” 6 shakes her head, stills her hand. “Caprica.”
3 nods, recalling an earlier conversation. “Ah, yes. You disapprove of her, somehow.”
“No, no. Her assignment was undeniably successful. I just don’t see how she managed to forge a physical - let alone an emotional - connection with that, that - ” Her voice staggers to a halt, and she shudders out a fit of quiet revulsion.
“Obscene, egotistical homunculus?” 3 suggests.
Her hand tightens on 3’s arm, and she rewards the impeccable insult with a winning giggle and a blinding smile. “To be sure, the value of her sacrifices cannot be overstated.”
Their eyes hold to each other, their smiles persist. 6 leans a bit closer.
“She asked for him,” 3 reveals, her voice low and confidential.
Distracted, 6 needs a beat to respond. “What?”
“Caprica. When she woke after the download. Her eyes had barely opened, and she was already looking for him, asking if he survived.”
6 frowns, tenses her forehead, sighs. She is silent, and 3 asks what she is thinking.
“I think she sacrificed more than we know,” 6 explains. “She may have loved him.”
“Loved?” 3 repeats. “Him?” Her expression is sour, baffled. “How? Why?”
“Only God can say. Perhaps she just… responded.”
With a skeptic’s hiked brow, 3 adds the post-script. “Naturally?”
6 widens her eyes and shrugs. “God doesn’t make mistakes. So, if everything is part of His plan, then love is never a mistake, right?”
3 has no response. She looks away, stares off into nothing. 6 touches her cheek with gently urging fingers, brings her back around. She looks deeply into the other’s eyes, offering and seeking reassurance. “Right?”
“I don’t know,” 3 whispers.
“I know,” 6 tells her. She moves in closer, lets her lips touch 3’s ear. Her breath is a slow, warm breeze dusted with pagan music. “God loves all of us. I can prove it.”
Through the stillness of consent, 6 brushes her novitiate’s mouth with a tentative kiss; once accepted, she pulls back, waits for protest. When none comes, she returns in earnest, offering deep, languid worship. She hears a moan from the other, feels a steadying hand at her waist. As she leans in, fingers thread through her hair to pull her closer.
Her skin is warming quickly; a diffuse glow spreads through her blood. Her own hand traces from the other's throat to her chest, pauses, then dips past her neckline to cup a slumbering breast. She clasps the nipple, teases it awake, and smothers it in her hot palm. She feels an answering wash of heat across the other’s skin, and she revels in the responsiveness of their sensual machinery. 6 smiles, secure in the knowledge that she is doing God’s work. This cannot be a mistake.
In her bed, she is His supreme implement, the corporal manifestation of ecstasy. Her attention is absolute; every tremor, every sigh, every raised hair or patch of pebbled flesh is noted, attended, loved. Loved with such fervor and reverence that when the other in her bed cries out from the roaring tumult of apogee, she invokes His name. This cannot be blasphemy, she thinks. It can only consecrate their union.
God is there, with them, between them. Within them. Love is a holy thing, and she knows instinctively how to make it, how to bring it into the world… naturally. It is a gift God gave her, and she wonders if it is hers alone, if this gift makes her not aberrant, but special. She wants to believe this, more than anything, wants to know that her desires are sanctioned, that she has a purpose… that she is not God’s first mistake.
The other’s voice calls her number, calls her away from pondering after the die is cast, after she has decided to place her faith in her maker, and in herself. She rubs her cheek against the hollow of hip and belly, raises her head. She smiles and says, “Lara. My name is Lara.”
The other is quiet, her face a mask of blank stillness. After a few nervous moments, she cracks a smile, tucks one arm behind her head, under the pillows. “Come here,” she says.
With a delighted shimmy of her shoulders, the summoned lover obeys, sliding slowly upward to bring their every length in contact. They kiss, and she feels arms go round her back, embracing her. Thumbs caress the length of her blushing spine. She feels a connection, wants to keep it, to strengthen it. “What would you like me to call you?” she asks.
“I… I don’t know. I’ve never thought of myself as anything other than a Three.” After a careful pause, “When did you begin to think of yourself as Lara?”
“Lara Webster was my first cover identity, for an engineering surveillance assignment on Picon. After a few months of constantly hearing that name instead of a Six designate, it just… stuck.” She smirks, shakes her head. “I didn’t mind, really. I could have drawn a far worse appellation. A woman I worked with - a human woman - was named Dodecahedron Jones.”
At this recollection, laughter bubbles cautiously up her throat until the other responds in kind, and then they giggle and snort until practically breathless. She feels a hand slide across her bottom, and then a sharp pinch. She yelps and pulls back; her face is a shocked question mark.
“I’m sorry,” the other says, and she does appear authentically remorseful.
“Don’t worry about it. I just wasn’t expecting a pinch… although you are something of a biter, aren’t you?”
“I’m just another Three.”
“No. I don't think you are. You look like Athena,” she says, her voice soft and rather sleepy. “In the human religious texts, they wrote that she was the loyal daughter of their high god, that she sprang forth fully-formed from his head and… carried out his will with ruthless… efficiency.” Her head falls against the other’s chest. From the corner of her blurring eye, she sees a glint of metal in the other’s hand - an empty syringe.
The pinch…
Understanding and panic come too late. She is dizzy, falling slowly, helplessly away from consciousness. Into her ear slips a whisper, gentle, yet brutal in its clarity and finality.
“I am a Three. You are a Six. All contrary belief is delusion, brought about by illness. We believe you were contaminated through anomalous human contact. Your body is now dying and your consciousness will be isolated until we can repair your dysfunction. This must be done, for the good of the Cylon. I am… sorry.”
She hears the bedroom door open and manages to coax her eyes sideways. A Ten enters the room, accompanied by a Nine. 3 rolls her onto her back, slides out of bed and pulls the sheet up to her neck, covering her paralyzed, supine nudity.
The Nine sits on the bed, checks her pupils and pulse. “It won’t be long, now,” he says.
“Why would you do that?” the Ten inquires of 3.
“Do what?” she asks.
He waves a scanner carefully over the length and breadth of 3’s naked body, as she stands still and calm in their midst, completely immodest. “Cover her,” he specifies. “Did you intend to shield the vulnerable maid from our lustful eyes?”
In a blur of violence, she grabs his shirtfront and yanks him nearly out of his shoes. “If I were human, I’d probably tell you to go frak yourself.”
“Good thing you’re not human,” he squeaks into her angry face.
“Did the scans indicate any abnormalities? Am I clean?”
He smiles in his model’s sickeningly smug fashion. “Do you feel clean, Number Three?”
Her scowl melts and she releases her grip, smooths down the wrinkles on his rumpled garment. “Actually, I do. Therefore, I can only conclude that predisposition to human imprinting corruption is inherent to the Six model, and perhaps the Eight as well. Further inquiry is warranted.”
“The war heroes,” the Ten groans. “You’ll have to be very careful. They’re probably rather cagey.”
She replies with a simple nod and turns to leave the room. On her way out, she spares a quick glance toward the bed. The Nine is holding Lara’s wrist as her pulse fades. He inserts a transfer probe in the port concealed behind her left ear, and connects it to the storage module.
“Direct download minimizes the risk of network corruption,” he explains to 3, who hadn’t intended to stop, hadn’t realized…
“Of course,” she says. This is the reality of boxing - there really is a literal box, labeled and coded with security indicators. The Nine is downloading Lara into a black storage drive emblazoned with a biohazard symbol centered in a fuschia triangle. “Is there any pain?” she asks.
“No, not at all,” he assures her. “It’s like sleep. She’ll simply drift in an endless, peaceful sleep.”
“Not endless,” 3 corrects. “You can fix her.”
“Eventually, maybe.”
“No. You will find a way to fix this.”
The Ten and Nine both look at her strangely. She defiantly tips up her chin. “We can’t afford to scrap two entire model lines, especially when they’ve repeatedly proven their worth in battle conditions - which is more than can be said of any Tens or Nines.”
“Touché,” says the Ten.
The Nine glowers and flips the switch on the storage drive to begin the download. Lara’s body arcs up sharply, then slowly relaxes. Her eyes finally close. 3 grimaces, but exits the bedroom without another word.
She returns to the living room and retrieves her discarded clothes. As she dresses, she assures herself that she is safe, has not been contaminated, is merely doing God’s work by eliminating glitches in the system… but that line of thought requires admitting that there are flaws - mistakes - in His perfect order.
Lara is a mistake. No, you must stop thinking of her as such. There is no Lara, only a broken Six. I’m doing His will.
She thinks again of the war heroes, the one who is called “Caprica” and the one who calls herself “Sharon” and wonders if they are broken in the same fashion as this Six, just bent in a different, more acceptable direction. At least conception could result from their deranged affections, their smiling confinement to the smaller life of the body.
She will meet with one or both of them soon, perhaps tomorrow at the open-air café on the square, and pursue her suspicions until she has found the truth.
The weather is still cool, and will be for many, many years to come. In anticipation of the chill, she picks up the lovely scarf Lara wore to dinner and wraps it snugly about her neck. As she walks out of the apartment, she snorts and shakes her head as she catches herself doing it again. In a firm voice, she tells herself what she needs to believe is an absolute truth.
“There is no Lara, only a broken Six…”
++++++
Formless, floating, screaming in the icy echo chamber of an empty box, she is still Lara. She is aware and awake, sane in the agony of isolation. And will be for many, many years to come.
END
Summary & Spoilers: 3 & 6 ponder the nature of physicality, attraction, and love. Set just before the crux of 2.17 - "Downloaded"
Written for Round 3 (6!) at getyourtoaster , for quasiradiant using this prompt: character you want paired with Six: Number Three; up to three things you want to see in the story: a currently unknown Six, caprica after the attack, mocking of/snarking on the Six called "Caprica"
Author’s Note: I don’t think their numerical designations have been clarified yet, but when I refer to a Nine, I mean a Doctor Simon, and a Ten is a Brother Cavil.
++++++
God save us all when you, the seer, the founder, and the prophet, may throw the gold of your immortal treasure back to the God that gave it, and then laugh because a woman has you in her arms … (snipped from Merlin, by Edward Arlington Robinson)
++++++
Months after the victory, Caprican restoration is fully underway. Steel Centurions labor night and day, rebuilding over weeks what their soft masters destroyed in seconds. Sound infrastructure is prioritized over social venues, so public outings are still rare among the Cylon. There is, however, one grand restaurant in Delphi, repaired to pre-war condition, where two are meeting over a late supper.
The restaurant is crowded and offers no privacy. Both desire candid conversation, but find it difficult in this milieu. After dinner, they go to her apartment. To talk, the other says, and she cannot refuse. Truly, she doesn’t want to refuse. In her apartment, she presents the other with dark liquor, soft music, and a sofa to accommodate the necessary chatter - which is comprised mainly of questions. Some of these are incisive, some alarmingly blunt.
She twirls a platinum ringlet around one slim finger. Runs a palm along her thigh, smoothing down imaginary wrinkles on her immaculate skirt. Bites her lip. Smiles, somehow both coy and calculating.
“You’re stalling,” 3 observes, without judgment. She knows her last question was inflammatory, and she is willing to wait a reasonable amount of time for an answer, but the clock of her patience is winding down. She softens her eyes and leans in, speaks confidentially. “Your response need not be perfect; honesty will suffice. I just want to understand, and you are my only point of reference.”
With that sincere assurance, the defensive façade of charm falls away, and 6 gives a docile nod. “The first time, I suppose I felt… a kind of… pull.”
“After they looked at you, or approached you.”
“Yes,” she confirms. “I never initiated physical intimacy. Or even conversation, for that matter.”
“Of course not,” 3 agrees. “Did you consider rebuffing their advances?”
“Yes.” Her answer is too fast, and she instantly fears that 3 does not believe this instinctive lie. But the other woman’s clear blue eyes radiate only acceptance and curiosity, so she finds the courage to answer more truthfully. “Well, actually, no. I didn’t. I just… responded.”
“Naturally?”
6 cocks her head, squints a bit. “That’s not the word I would use.”
3 mirrors her expression. “Why not?”
“Because it isn’t considered natural, is it? God wants us to couple for the purpose of bearing children,” she reasons, somewhat mechanically. “Organic reproduction manifests His will.”
3 looks down, as if disappointed. “Yes. You’re right. But you…”
After a few moments of quiet, 6 chuckles and prompts her guest to continue. “I… what?”
“You…” 3 flushes pink as she asks the evening’s most personal question, “You achieved apogee?”
For the first time in their brief acquaintance, 6 feels as if she has the surer footing and she is elated. A slow, lovely grin blossoms from her confidence. “Oh. Yes. Repeatedly.”
“Then surely it isn’t sacrilege. In each moment of joy, in every rapture, we know God’s love. This is why coupling gives physical pleasure.” 3 releases a heavy breath, shakes her head. “At least, it should give pleasure.”
“You mean you…”
“I… what?”
“You don’t achieve apogee?”
3 shrugs, studies the intricate patterns of the antique Geminese prayer rug underfoot, and is momentarily lost in wondering how this delicate item survived the holocaust in such pristine condition. It is unnecessary, unproductive, and yet someone found it beautiful enough to warrant preservation. “Maybe I haven’t been properly matched,” she says at last.
“How were you assigned?” 6 queries.
“Fives, mostly, and a couple of Nines. They were all functional, so I’m sure it wasn’t their fault.” She shrugs again, rolls her eyes. “Perhaps they found me unsuitable.”
6 smiles warmly, touches her shoulder. “Well, I’m pretty sure that isn’t true.” Her hand slips down. “You are as God made you.” Her fingers mold around the supple delineation of upper arm. “And He made you beautiful.” Her thumb strokes a steady arc across smooth skin. “Desirable. For a reason.”
“Humans innately trust physical beauty,” 3 agrees, benignly ignoring the suggestive caress. She glances up sheepishly at her hostess, whose striking visage is the perfect likeness of a Cylon war hero. “Your face, in particular, has served us well.”
“Hmph.” 6 shakes her head, stills her hand. “Caprica.”
3 nods, recalling an earlier conversation. “Ah, yes. You disapprove of her, somehow.”
“No, no. Her assignment was undeniably successful. I just don’t see how she managed to forge a physical - let alone an emotional - connection with that, that - ” Her voice staggers to a halt, and she shudders out a fit of quiet revulsion.
“Obscene, egotistical homunculus?” 3 suggests.
Her hand tightens on 3’s arm, and she rewards the impeccable insult with a winning giggle and a blinding smile. “To be sure, the value of her sacrifices cannot be overstated.”
Their eyes hold to each other, their smiles persist. 6 leans a bit closer.
“She asked for him,” 3 reveals, her voice low and confidential.
Distracted, 6 needs a beat to respond. “What?”
“Caprica. When she woke after the download. Her eyes had barely opened, and she was already looking for him, asking if he survived.”
6 frowns, tenses her forehead, sighs. She is silent, and 3 asks what she is thinking.
“I think she sacrificed more than we know,” 6 explains. “She may have loved him.”
“Loved?” 3 repeats. “Him?” Her expression is sour, baffled. “How? Why?”
“Only God can say. Perhaps she just… responded.”
With a skeptic’s hiked brow, 3 adds the post-script. “Naturally?”
6 widens her eyes and shrugs. “God doesn’t make mistakes. So, if everything is part of His plan, then love is never a mistake, right?”
3 has no response. She looks away, stares off into nothing. 6 touches her cheek with gently urging fingers, brings her back around. She looks deeply into the other’s eyes, offering and seeking reassurance. “Right?”
“I don’t know,” 3 whispers.
“I know,” 6 tells her. She moves in closer, lets her lips touch 3’s ear. Her breath is a slow, warm breeze dusted with pagan music. “God loves all of us. I can prove it.”
Through the stillness of consent, 6 brushes her novitiate’s mouth with a tentative kiss; once accepted, she pulls back, waits for protest. When none comes, she returns in earnest, offering deep, languid worship. She hears a moan from the other, feels a steadying hand at her waist. As she leans in, fingers thread through her hair to pull her closer.
Her skin is warming quickly; a diffuse glow spreads through her blood. Her own hand traces from the other's throat to her chest, pauses, then dips past her neckline to cup a slumbering breast. She clasps the nipple, teases it awake, and smothers it in her hot palm. She feels an answering wash of heat across the other’s skin, and she revels in the responsiveness of their sensual machinery. 6 smiles, secure in the knowledge that she is doing God’s work. This cannot be a mistake.
In her bed, she is His supreme implement, the corporal manifestation of ecstasy. Her attention is absolute; every tremor, every sigh, every raised hair or patch of pebbled flesh is noted, attended, loved. Loved with such fervor and reverence that when the other in her bed cries out from the roaring tumult of apogee, she invokes His name. This cannot be blasphemy, she thinks. It can only consecrate their union.
God is there, with them, between them. Within them. Love is a holy thing, and she knows instinctively how to make it, how to bring it into the world… naturally. It is a gift God gave her, and she wonders if it is hers alone, if this gift makes her not aberrant, but special. She wants to believe this, more than anything, wants to know that her desires are sanctioned, that she has a purpose… that she is not God’s first mistake.
The other’s voice calls her number, calls her away from pondering after the die is cast, after she has decided to place her faith in her maker, and in herself. She rubs her cheek against the hollow of hip and belly, raises her head. She smiles and says, “Lara. My name is Lara.”
The other is quiet, her face a mask of blank stillness. After a few nervous moments, she cracks a smile, tucks one arm behind her head, under the pillows. “Come here,” she says.
With a delighted shimmy of her shoulders, the summoned lover obeys, sliding slowly upward to bring their every length in contact. They kiss, and she feels arms go round her back, embracing her. Thumbs caress the length of her blushing spine. She feels a connection, wants to keep it, to strengthen it. “What would you like me to call you?” she asks.
“I… I don’t know. I’ve never thought of myself as anything other than a Three.” After a careful pause, “When did you begin to think of yourself as Lara?”
“Lara Webster was my first cover identity, for an engineering surveillance assignment on Picon. After a few months of constantly hearing that name instead of a Six designate, it just… stuck.” She smirks, shakes her head. “I didn’t mind, really. I could have drawn a far worse appellation. A woman I worked with - a human woman - was named Dodecahedron Jones.”
At this recollection, laughter bubbles cautiously up her throat until the other responds in kind, and then they giggle and snort until practically breathless. She feels a hand slide across her bottom, and then a sharp pinch. She yelps and pulls back; her face is a shocked question mark.
“I’m sorry,” the other says, and she does appear authentically remorseful.
“Don’t worry about it. I just wasn’t expecting a pinch… although you are something of a biter, aren’t you?”
“I’m just another Three.”
“No. I don't think you are. You look like Athena,” she says, her voice soft and rather sleepy. “In the human religious texts, they wrote that she was the loyal daughter of their high god, that she sprang forth fully-formed from his head and… carried out his will with ruthless… efficiency.” Her head falls against the other’s chest. From the corner of her blurring eye, she sees a glint of metal in the other’s hand - an empty syringe.
The pinch…
Understanding and panic come too late. She is dizzy, falling slowly, helplessly away from consciousness. Into her ear slips a whisper, gentle, yet brutal in its clarity and finality.
“I am a Three. You are a Six. All contrary belief is delusion, brought about by illness. We believe you were contaminated through anomalous human contact. Your body is now dying and your consciousness will be isolated until we can repair your dysfunction. This must be done, for the good of the Cylon. I am… sorry.”
She hears the bedroom door open and manages to coax her eyes sideways. A Ten enters the room, accompanied by a Nine. 3 rolls her onto her back, slides out of bed and pulls the sheet up to her neck, covering her paralyzed, supine nudity.
The Nine sits on the bed, checks her pupils and pulse. “It won’t be long, now,” he says.
“Why would you do that?” the Ten inquires of 3.
“Do what?” she asks.
He waves a scanner carefully over the length and breadth of 3’s naked body, as she stands still and calm in their midst, completely immodest. “Cover her,” he specifies. “Did you intend to shield the vulnerable maid from our lustful eyes?”
In a blur of violence, she grabs his shirtfront and yanks him nearly out of his shoes. “If I were human, I’d probably tell you to go frak yourself.”
“Good thing you’re not human,” he squeaks into her angry face.
“Did the scans indicate any abnormalities? Am I clean?”
He smiles in his model’s sickeningly smug fashion. “Do you feel clean, Number Three?”
Her scowl melts and she releases her grip, smooths down the wrinkles on his rumpled garment. “Actually, I do. Therefore, I can only conclude that predisposition to human imprinting corruption is inherent to the Six model, and perhaps the Eight as well. Further inquiry is warranted.”
“The war heroes,” the Ten groans. “You’ll have to be very careful. They’re probably rather cagey.”
She replies with a simple nod and turns to leave the room. On her way out, she spares a quick glance toward the bed. The Nine is holding Lara’s wrist as her pulse fades. He inserts a transfer probe in the port concealed behind her left ear, and connects it to the storage module.
“Direct download minimizes the risk of network corruption,” he explains to 3, who hadn’t intended to stop, hadn’t realized…
“Of course,” she says. This is the reality of boxing - there really is a literal box, labeled and coded with security indicators. The Nine is downloading Lara into a black storage drive emblazoned with a biohazard symbol centered in a fuschia triangle. “Is there any pain?” she asks.
“No, not at all,” he assures her. “It’s like sleep. She’ll simply drift in an endless, peaceful sleep.”
“Not endless,” 3 corrects. “You can fix her.”
“Eventually, maybe.”
“No. You will find a way to fix this.”
The Ten and Nine both look at her strangely. She defiantly tips up her chin. “We can’t afford to scrap two entire model lines, especially when they’ve repeatedly proven their worth in battle conditions - which is more than can be said of any Tens or Nines.”
“Touché,” says the Ten.
The Nine glowers and flips the switch on the storage drive to begin the download. Lara’s body arcs up sharply, then slowly relaxes. Her eyes finally close. 3 grimaces, but exits the bedroom without another word.
She returns to the living room and retrieves her discarded clothes. As she dresses, she assures herself that she is safe, has not been contaminated, is merely doing God’s work by eliminating glitches in the system… but that line of thought requires admitting that there are flaws - mistakes - in His perfect order.
Lara is a mistake. No, you must stop thinking of her as such. There is no Lara, only a broken Six. I’m doing His will.
She thinks again of the war heroes, the one who is called “Caprica” and the one who calls herself “Sharon” and wonders if they are broken in the same fashion as this Six, just bent in a different, more acceptable direction. At least conception could result from their deranged affections, their smiling confinement to the smaller life of the body.
She will meet with one or both of them soon, perhaps tomorrow at the open-air café on the square, and pursue her suspicions until she has found the truth.
The weather is still cool, and will be for many, many years to come. In anticipation of the chill, she picks up the lovely scarf Lara wore to dinner and wraps it snugly about her neck. As she walks out of the apartment, she snorts and shakes her head as she catches herself doing it again. In a firm voice, she tells herself what she needs to believe is an absolute truth.
“There is no Lara, only a broken Six…”
++++++
Formless, floating, screaming in the icy echo chamber of an empty box, she is still Lara. She is aware and awake, sane in the agony of isolation. And will be for many, many years to come.
END