Archaeology isn't a word, for lorrainemarker
Title: Archaeology isn’t a word.
author: rodlox
Summary: You never see the slippery slope. Especially when you think you have nonskid feet.
Characters: Eight (Athena), Helo (offscreen)
Pairings: Athena/Helo
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: A small measure of rationalization.
Title, Author, and URL of original story: Apotheosis by Lorrainemarker.
***
Prior to cleansing the Colonies - an incomplete act, a failure to achieve a set goal - there were no empty cities.
Humans lived in the same settlements with other humans as they had since their benighted creation. They might move from one colony to another, but there were no settlements empty of mankind.
Until now. This is what God wants, Eight knew: a new situation, the need for new words.
*
Helo depended on her and thought their interdependence was mutual. I am a cylon; death is a bodily phenomenon, a door for the mind to take a new position elsewhere in the universe.
Unlike cylons, humans sought to escape death, creating false religions, temples and rituals to make them feel good, and niceties to tell each other: “in a better place.”
Cylons knew better - they knew God, who gave them a talent in sidestepping death. Cylons had no reason or need to personalize death.
*
Eight’s eyes took in every detail of the emptiness around her as she made her way to the rendezvous site. The dead - a scattering of cylons among the host of humans - had been food for the beasts of the woods and birds of the air. No corpses left. Even animal urine didn’t linger long, leaving Eight’s nostrils alone with the scent of rust and industrial decay.
Empty. She knew that if she died, she would arise in the body of another Eight.
Yet there was still a lingering feeling, an alien sensation tailing her like a shadow’s shadow. I could tell Helo that analogy, if I had claimed a different colony as my birthplace. Almost as unsettling as the shadow’s shadow of fear, was how her insides felt when her strategizing brain noted that.
Don’t fall, Eight commanded herself.
*
Love was an outgrowth of fear. While not Doctrine, it was Accepted.
Humans feared death and half a million other things. Their fear drove them to huddle together for protection, and drove them to fear betrayals within their huddled group. To avoid betrayals, they convinced themselves and each other that there was a thing called love -- which drove others to betray for love.
Cylons don’t fear death. We don’t need to. We feel pain and brotherhood, but have no betrayals. Was there any doubt which was God’s finest Creation?
*
There was one detail which, collectively, communally, the cylons did not grasp: that if you do something often enough, even if it is a lie, it becomes real to you.
And cylons were excellent actors.
*
There were other types of cylons, other descendants of the basal model, who left the company of humans. Some, such as Eight’s kin, approximated humans; others chose to develop in other directions.
And Helo lived in blissful ignorance of them all. All humans lived like that.
*
Eight watched him sleep, and was struck with the weight of the ruins as she realized what it was she felt for him. Genuinely felt.
***
THE END.
author: rodlox
Summary: You never see the slippery slope. Especially when you think you have nonskid feet.
Characters: Eight (Athena), Helo (offscreen)
Pairings: Athena/Helo
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: A small measure of rationalization.
Title, Author, and URL of original story: Apotheosis by Lorrainemarker.
***
Prior to cleansing the Colonies - an incomplete act, a failure to achieve a set goal - there were no empty cities.
Humans lived in the same settlements with other humans as they had since their benighted creation. They might move from one colony to another, but there were no settlements empty of mankind.
Until now. This is what God wants, Eight knew: a new situation, the need for new words.
*
Helo depended on her and thought their interdependence was mutual. I am a cylon; death is a bodily phenomenon, a door for the mind to take a new position elsewhere in the universe.
Unlike cylons, humans sought to escape death, creating false religions, temples and rituals to make them feel good, and niceties to tell each other: “in a better place.”
Cylons knew better - they knew God, who gave them a talent in sidestepping death. Cylons had no reason or need to personalize death.
*
Eight’s eyes took in every detail of the emptiness around her as she made her way to the rendezvous site. The dead - a scattering of cylons among the host of humans - had been food for the beasts of the woods and birds of the air. No corpses left. Even animal urine didn’t linger long, leaving Eight’s nostrils alone with the scent of rust and industrial decay.
Empty. She knew that if she died, she would arise in the body of another Eight.
Yet there was still a lingering feeling, an alien sensation tailing her like a shadow’s shadow. I could tell Helo that analogy, if I had claimed a different colony as my birthplace. Almost as unsettling as the shadow’s shadow of fear, was how her insides felt when her strategizing brain noted that.
Don’t fall, Eight commanded herself.
*
Love was an outgrowth of fear. While not Doctrine, it was Accepted.
Humans feared death and half a million other things. Their fear drove them to huddle together for protection, and drove them to fear betrayals within their huddled group. To avoid betrayals, they convinced themselves and each other that there was a thing called love -- which drove others to betray for love.
Cylons don’t fear death. We don’t need to. We feel pain and brotherhood, but have no betrayals. Was there any doubt which was God’s finest Creation?
*
There was one detail which, collectively, communally, the cylons did not grasp: that if you do something often enough, even if it is a lie, it becomes real to you.
And cylons were excellent actors.
*
There were other types of cylons, other descendants of the basal model, who left the company of humans. Some, such as Eight’s kin, approximated humans; others chose to develop in other directions.
And Helo lived in blissful ignorance of them all. All humans lived like that.
*
Eight watched him sleep, and was struck with the weight of the ruins as she realized what it was she felt for him. Genuinely felt.
***
THE END.