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The following transcript was made one fine sunny afternoon in springtime when many of the trees in Serpentine's Garden were bursting into bloom. Adama had been in our care for some seven sectans and Vulpa was already trying to wean him off the drugs that had kept him in a passive state since the recovery of the Galactica. As you will see, Serpentine was optimistic in her treatment. But this brief period of lucidity showed that a vital mind was still functioning (albeit obsessed) and that the personality was intact.233Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡm8PkdcVKHa
Adama was sitting on the grass. With his back to a tree. Serpentine had cleaned him, fed him and injected him so that for the next hour he would have voluntary control of his limbs and voice. She hovered close. We both knew the dangers. She had him on a leash of sorts. A discharge monitor was strapped to the back of his neck. If he started to become too unpredictable, Serpentine could send a radio signal to the monitor which would release a prescribed drug into his bloodstream.
I have edited this transcript somewhat heavily. There were long pauses in the narrative, periods when Adama just sat with his eyes closed peering within himself. He jumped topics erratically. However, his whole speech has an emotional logic and in preparing this text I have been able to jig it all together so that it reads coherently. At least I hope so. Sometimes he would start a sentence, then stop, then start again differently. There might be up to five different beginnings. I have deleted these as there was no way I could discover his intentions.
The danger for you, dear reader, is that I have made Adama sound too urbane, too polished, too much in control of himself. Let us be very clear about this. If Adama sounds cheerful in this narrative, is the cheerfulness of the frakwit. There is no reason to doubt the facts of his narrative, just be careful with the tone.
An odd man was Adama, as you will see. Most of the biographical material in this section was new to me.233Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgAc9XzjbVv
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VULPA: Adama wants to talk and I am leading the conversation. We know so little about him and we need to know how he sees himself. I have asked him to describe where he grew up.
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ADAMA: A was born a long way from here. Have you heard of the planet called Proteus? No? Ah, well. That was its name. It was one of the partially-colonized farming worlds. My father and mother had a dome far out at the rim at the place where the Hawela Waters met the Raging Barrens. A terrible place---no, it had a beauty all its own. But to a one such as I who wanted to climb and hunt and run with the wind, that little farm in a dome where we counted the growth of every plant in metrons and where water was measured by the cup and where you had to weigh yourself before and after taking a dump and where every move was subject to a paragraph in the survival manual, that squat little farm was as near to Hades as I wanted to come.
If I hadn't been given the school books which had told us about old Kobol. If I hadn't seen the Fantasia imago cubes which taught us history. If I hadn't looked up through the shiny curved walls of our dome and seen the stars gleaming like Pelbulan firejewels. If----If---Tell me to be silent. It is not poverty that makes insurrection, you know. It is the knowledge of poverty. And wherever I looked I knew I was poor and that life owed me more. I had a game, you know. A game I used to play alone when I could break away from the others. I'd be about ten or twelve, I supposed. I'd found the door that led from our dome down to the sea. It was closed with vacuum seals and siren locks, but I was a smart little lad, always good with my hands, good at figuring things out. So anyhow, I soon worked out a way to hot-link the door and get outside. The air outside was poisonous. My game-plan was to breathe deeply while I was inside the dome and then hold my breath and open the door and run as far as I could and then double back. I wanted to reach the sea and touch it. The sea was about a hundred microns from this part of our dome. I used to dream about running to the sea and plunging my hand into its pale pink water. I trained myself, running out of the dome, making a mark on the sand, sprinting back and then seeing how much longer I could hold my breath. And one day I knew I could do it. Two hundred microns in one breath! And I did, except that I fell in the wet ooze at the sea's edge and it wasn't water. It was something else, something that made my skin itch. The wind was out of me and I breathed and I know no more. I suppose I must have climbed to my feet and run for the next thing I remember is waking up inside the dome with my lungs on fire and my eyes screaming. The dome door was shut. Strange, eh? As a child I couldn't explain it. And I can't now, now that I am a man. But I remember it made me feel special. By rights I should have been out there on the margin, a little bit of colonist-meat, food for the lobsterays that lived in burrows by the sea or for the long green sucker things that crawled out of the sea. But there I was in the dome, hurt but alive, and my parents never knew a thing about it. Something saved me. Something was looking after me. Did all this start then?233Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡu6UNgb54Ku
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VULPA: At this point in his account Adama looked across at me and said this: "I hope you're getting all this down, Vulap the Cylon. I'm sure the Confrere psychiatrists will want to know my secrets." Then he reached up behind him and grabbed the trunk of the tree against which he was leaning and squeezed it. There is something childlike about Adama. I have seen him do this before. He seems to need to touch things in order to confirm his own reality.233Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUDZhlPyEzk
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ADAMA: I was the oldest. We all lived together, my mother and father and my two brothers and little sister and me. On our farm we grew beepercorn and katai. You can only eat so much of those vegetables before you start feeling like them. We grew the crops in trenches lined with bubbleresin. We fed them with a kind of seaweed extract which came from the factories out in the middle of the Hawela Waters and with the recycled water. Each dome has its quota of water and there was none to spare. If you had wanted a pee break while you were out in the fields you had to sprint back to the house. I can remember my father saying, "Every drop counts," as he peed into a funnel.
I grew up big and strong. There came a day when my father stopped talking roughly to me and I knew that it had dawned on him that if I wanted I could take him down to the beepercorn field and bury his head in the seaweed manure. My mother was still rough with me, though. I think the truth is she didn't like men. She never talked gently to any of us, her sons. Not even when Abel died and he was my youngest brother. But she crooned over little Sheba.
Well, life was boring but not hard. If there had just been me I could have done all the work the farm needed and still had the time for my studies. And I was seething with a thousand desires I didn't understand and so I took to running down the long tube corridors which joined our farm to all the rest. I didn't have anywhere to go, you see. I ran for the sake of it, for relief.
For some reason I never thought of running away. I think I knew that on Proteus there was just farm after farm after farm and all of them impossible to tell apart. There was a town of sorts five farms from us where some of the young men gathered to drink a brew they concocted from rotting corn stalks and katai skins. Somewhere there was a shuttle port. That was all I knew about Proteus. I knew more about the myths of old Kobol. The only future I had at the time was maybe to get a farm of my own further out along the rim. Then find a woman and settle down. Settle down! Settle down from what?
Then one day, unanticipated, my life changed.
It was early afternoon and I was running through one of the ink tubes, working up a sweat, when I saw ahead of me someone who waved. I waved back and then the figure crossed into the tall stalks of beepercorn which occupied a thick strip down the middle of the dome tunnel. I paid no special heed, but when I reached the place where the figure had been I heard my name called. I stopped and pushed my way through the stiff upright stalks of corn and there, reclining in the middle, was a woman. I knew her, had known her since I was a boy. We'd shared lessons and played together. Now she was different. I knew all about sex (our lessons were thorough) but sex had never meant much to me. It had seemed silly and my father and my mother were no advertisement for married ecstasy. But now, suddenly, here was a woman, and she was lying back and her skirt was above her knees and there was darkness there between her legs and her arms were lifted to me. I stood stupid as a boray. Knowing and yet not knowing. I stood above her and she pulled my shorts down, hurting me, for my cock was standing out like a bottle. I know my throat went dry. I know I went down on my knees. I know she took my ears in her hands. I know I smelled her, a smell of soil and beepercorn and sweet skin. I know I wanted to lick and tear and----and she was so hot, so smooth and fluid, that only her heat told me I was in her and then I came as if I had been stabbed, as if there was blood flowing out of me. And she came moments later and made the kind of noises that made me think I had hurt her except that she kissed me and smiled and threw her arms back. Moments later she relaxed and I had a vision. I was lying on my face in a lake of water and the waves were washing over me and I wanted to stop breathing and loll and slip beneath the surface. But she eased me off her and said, "Thank you."
This was the first of many visions. Many deceptions. How can there be other than deception when we who live know so little? Hope is God's scorn.233Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0bORlBMdTo
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Later, I do not know how much later, some five or six times later, I think, I donned my shorts and took to the road again but there was no run in me. I managed to make a hundred yards or so back toward our farm but then I went down on my knees, my forehead on the earth. It was lovely to be on the earth and I squirmed around and looked back down the tube tunnel and she was walking away from me. I loved her then in my mind and I doubt if I have ever felt such clarity of love, such a purge mingling of desire and effort in my life since. I fell asleep in the road. As simple as that. Her name was Prill.
I tell you this merely because I think that the first time a man or woman joins in sex they define themselves. You wouldn't know, of course, because you are a Cylon and perhaps you are fortunate because I do not believe that my human passions have brought me or anyone else happiness. But in my life that first encounter with the otherworldly reality of sex was a moment of definition. It was a long time ago and memory is a great liar, but I think I believe that when I was making love I would live forever. There was something everlasting and monotonous about it. Lying in the road, knees buckled and body stunned so that my will was as empty as a bucket at evening, I felt a golden something rise in my veins and flow through my body like honey. Oh, blessed! Can you understand why I am where I am and what I am?
We made love many times after that, Prill and I, and we were careless about who heard us. But later I became curious about other women. Slow in some ways, quick in others, I was growing up. I reached my present height when I was eighteen. I said to myself one day after I had finished mulching the cornstalks. I saw down in the field amid the growing plants and I said, "I fear no man and no God." And it was a revelation to me for it seemed to me when I looked at my father and mother that they were scared of something but they never knew what.
I grew up. I continued my running. I continued my excursions outside the dome holding my breath and I took to spending nights away from home. I began to drink the tear-making liquor brewed in the town. It was commonly called Buzzer.
I think I believed I was something special, something other than clay. And then one day I made love to the wife of one of the farmers who lived in the Silon Hinterland and he caught us. Think of that, if you can imagine it. His face was like something screwed up and thrown away in the rubbish.
Later he came after me. That was the next great learning in my life for I killed him. I was in the barn where the Buzzer was served and there were about twenty other young people with me. I had my back to the door and the first indication I had that anything was wrong was when the room suddenly fell quiet. I turned around and there he was, the farmer. He looked crazy and his face was blotchy. He had a bailing hook in one hand. Have you ever seen one of those? No. You still find them on old-tech planets. it's a sharp hook mounted on a handle so that you can grip it. You dig the hook into bales and then drag them. Well he didn't say anything. He just stared at me and then he swung the hook low and up. I jumped. I used my hand to parry the blow and the point of the hook went through the pain of my hand.233Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfnkizdAO2d
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VULPA: Here Adama offered his left hand and Serpentine and I could clear see the pale scar in the middle of his palm.233Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡayhJpl9Yo7
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ADAMA: Oh, I bled, but I had the hook. The blow had unbalanced the man and he fell against me and I closed my right hand around his throat and squeezed. There was nothing he could do. He tried to knee me, to squirm. But I squeezed and my face was just milimetrons away from his. I could have kissed him. I saw blood on his lips. I felt the stickiness of my own blood as it ran between us. I saw the moment of his death. And at that same moment, something in me turned black. I had enjoyed the termination. I had him bent back against the bar. I could have been hugging him. I enjoyed the termination and something in me turned black. With his staring eyes before me, a small black acorn lodged in my heart and it has never gone away and now it has grown into a black oak tree.233Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHDmgAAhhDc
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VULPA: Adama was getting excited in a way that we had observed before. There was no tolerant linkage between his feelings and thoughts. He was like a human infant, not like a grown man. Serpentine moved in. She administered a small injection and this stopped Adama. He sobered and his passion drained away.
Self-hatred can take many, many forms. To Adama, his past was so marred and filled with disfigurement that he wanted to obliterate himself, body and spirit. Of course, at this time in his cure, we did not know the depth of his self-loathing. We could only guess at what he meant when he talked about a black meech tree that was growing in his veins.233Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9FQt4beKl4
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ADAMA: They carted me off and someone worked the hook from my hand and within minutes it seemed I was under guard in the local life station and the nurse was packing my hand with a sweet-smelling balm which numbed it. He also gave me a shot of something which took away my sense of color and made the inside of my mouth dry and when I tried to stand I found I had no strength. Then my father arrived and talked to me but I could not understand a word. Nothing seemed to matter.
So, centons later, I was sent up in the shuttle, still in a drug-jacket, and then I was sent to a life-station and then to prison. I was like a cork on a stream. I had no control over my life. And it was while I was in prison that I started to understand the darkness that had grown inside me.
I had strangled and had liked doing it. The strength in the arms, the stiffness of the body, the thrill of full commitment. You see, the termination had fondled that same secret spot in me that had been so quickened by lovemaking. And yet how different. My innocence was gone. I felt that everything I touched had become filthy. The leaves that should have been green were black.
But it wasn't just the termination. As a farmer's son I was used to terminating. I used to lie in wait and flay the sandsnakes when they tried to steal the vegetables from underground. You could always tell when one was there. You'd see the vegetable, a sliopaw, say, in the family plot and it'd be moving, rocking like a cork in the water. Then you'd see the lips of the sandsnake, like a band of blue latex, come up from beneath and grip the plant's body with its gritty little teeth. That's when you'd strike. There was a kind of fork called a snakespine with sharp, barbed prongs. You'd jab this underground, well below the lips, and then hang on. Sometimes I've seen a snake drag the entire spine fork under. Most times you'd just hold on and let the sandsnake convulse under the ground and then, when it had worn itself out, you'd drag it out and gut it. One of my first inventions was to link a tine fork up to the farm generator and then cut the snaking time by half. Give them a charge and then drag them out like a stocking filled with sand and gut them.
No, it wasn't just the termination. It was the termination of a man. Was he better or worse than me? No. He was me. I was, am, him. All men and women became my family. I wanted their forgiveness. But there in the prison there was no forgiveness.
No, that's not quite true. There was some forgiveness. There was some gentleness. Kindness came like----There was an enforcer who took a liking to me. At first I noticed little things. A nod of recognition. An extra ration of turbo-flush paper. An extra mushie. A book without the last page torn out. Then the man who shared my cell was moved out without warning and sent to another wing. That suited me. I wanted to be alone. But then three days later my enforcer friend came to visit me. We had to whisper. He wanted to know my story, wanted to help me see the prison psychiatrist or monk, whichever would help, wanted to help me pull myself together. He wanted me.
I saw it coming. Even now, so many yahrens later, I wonder whether he knew what was driving him. Came one night I talked about myself in whispers and even as I spoke I felt him kiss me. And in the next moment I kissed him and held him as if holding and kissing him would somehow cleanse me. And he whispered something odd to me. He said, "You have a fire in you. Make me warm."
We made love then and many times later. Quietly and intensely. Whenever we could. And I knew he had forgiven me and trusted me for he stood holding my iron bunk with his strong back toward me and his neck bare and I ran my fingers over it.
Then one day he came to me and said: "Do you love me or am I just what's available?" The question took my by surprise. It seemed inappropriate. I had no answer for it. And then he said, "You who have so much must never be cruel to those who love you. But you are cruel and cold." I did not understand what he meant. "Your case has been reviewed," he said at last. "The wife has been given more evidence in your favor. You have been granted your freedom. He paused and looked at me and then said, "You will be leaving tomorrow. I shall be staying her. Who has not been in prison? You have all the heat a man can want, but you are a cold-hearted daggit."
And I did leave prison the following day. He did not come to bid me farewell and I did not go in search of him.
An official of the prison gave me my few belongings and papers which stated that I was a free citizen. There were cubits, too.
I sat in the airlock waiting for the shuttle to carry me down from the prison torus and I cried. You see, for a while I had known peace, and then my friend, or the man who I thought was my friend, with his cruel words had re-opened the wound, had revealed a blackness inside of me. Misery gave way to anger, which is healthier, but the anger was directed against myself. You see, I was not what my friend has called me....I was not cold. Am not cold. I have followed my lights into darkness. I have tried to be kind. I have shared. But I have been ignorant and vanity is a sure sign of ignorance. "What do people want of me?" I asked as I sat in the shuttle sliding down toward the surface of Proteus. And I wondered what I could do to achieve peace and where I could place the fierce energy that threatened to tear me apart.
Every question has an answer. The problem is knowing what questions to ask and recognizing answers when they come.
The shuttle port was busy when we landed. There was nobody to meet me, and I was glad. I doubted if my family and friends yet knew where I was. I was alone and unknown. That felt clean. There was a hovermobile about to leave for my home sector of Proteus but I avoided it. I remember how turbulent I felt: free and scared, angry and hopeful. I could not sit, passive in a hovermobile, my bag on my knee.
Then I made a decision. I decided to run home. I was half a planet away but I would run home. No sooner was the thought born in me than I knew it was the appropriate thing to do. I thought the run would be a feather in my cap. I hoped it would bring some kind of meaning. There are those whose spirit is only contented by challenges. I had the cubits I had been given and with this I bought a little tent, some provisions, a small pack for my back and shoes that I could run in. And off I went!
Proteus is covered by a network of translucent tunnels that join all the dome farms. The tunnels are like canals of air. Within them there are always plants growing and the air is pure and sweet. The tunnels lie like a giant silver net thrown over brown rocky hills and swamps where the mineral water bubbles pink and green and is toxic.233Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNFfOAQQfHL
I had never seen my own colony. The shuttle port was somewhere close to the equator and the crops there were soft red fruits which grew under the shade of leaves and a chewy grass that stained the mouth yellow. Here everything was bigger than at home. The domes were higher and enclosed trees and I saw flowers that had a crown like a single staring brown eye. They produced oil.233Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡk40bFANxKL
I ran. I was not fit but I had will. I ran and avoided the main transport routes. I took the tunnels which had only been built for the convenience of the farmers. At night I slept in my tent. When my provisions ran out I started to live off the land, eating the food raw. I was punishing myself for being what I am and curiously I felt better for it.233Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVLPAso3uFk
Eventually, after three sectans or so on the road, I came to a narrow tunnel which climbed up on a rock face in a series of long zigzags and emerged on a high plateau. Here there were no farms. The air was thinner and the sky which shone above the crinkled bubbleresin cover was a deep blue, almost aquamarine. Standing with my nose pressed against the stiff plastic wall I looked out on a wild desert where coils of dust and sand were the only things that moved as they scoured the landscape. Here nothing grew. I saw black ice in the fissures between rocks. I saw rocks split as if cut with a knife. Once a sandstorm blew up and the black and brown particles crawled over the clear bubbleresin like water and left marks like the sucker prints of one of the creatures that lived in the Hawela Waters close to my home.233Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1yEHRGwrau
At night it was so cold that I dared not sleep but ran blindly, my hand pressed against the smooth dome until the fingers were numb and then hunkering down, sucking my fingers until they began to tingle. I slept in the day, making a bed of soil. I had no food and I sucked stones. My bowels ached and my stomach made wind as it tried to digest air.233Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2TPMg4IssQ
But there came a day when I knew I was running downhill. It was a slight descent, but oh what hope it gave me and far out across the plain I could see a smattering of green. A plantation, surely.233Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5aQahGcet0
I ran on but it was not running such as you know. I hoped and jumped and nursed my feet which were cracked and bleeding.233Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFM4JJ3GIqe
Eventually I came across green shoots growing in the tunnel. These were a native shrub that had adapted to the kind of air we breathe. The leaves were toxic, I knew, but the roots yielded nourishment and the worst I would get was a stomach ache. I ate those roots, spitting out the grit, as if they were confections of the finest cooks. Starvation quickens every sense just as privation quickens one's understanding of what it means to be human. But I could not eat much. My stomach felt full after a few mouthfuls. But I felt livelier and hopeful and more awake.233Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrPdG6MfTSR
I ran on and about midday when the shadows were at their smallest and the roof of the tunnel became misty, I thought I saw a figure in the distance in front of me. There was a place where a cross-tunnel of clear bubbleresin joined the tunnel in which I was running and i was here that the figure seemed to be standing as if waiting for me. I waved but the figure did not respond. At first I thought it was a child, it seemed so small. Then I thought it was a woman, it seemed so poised. Finally I could see it was a human, a man, but he was as small as a monkey. He was dressed in a plain brown garment which matched the color of the soil. As I came closer I could see his face. It was compact, almost the face of a weasel, and he seemed to be smiling in a quirky way as if he knew something that I did not, and yet I did not feel alarmed or threatened by him. At the final moment I realized there was a light shining about him.233Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡmV79XICDjv
Then, when I was about twenty yards away, the figure suddenly began to expand. I felt an explosion in the space between my ears. The man's face grew into the muzzle of a tauroid. Golden horns sprouted from his forehead. The shoulders bunched. The brown garment transformed to black fur. The legs became stiff, short and solid-muscled. I found myself facing a bull and its bulk nearly filled the tunnel. It stared down at me with lowered head and eyes of yellow flint.233Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUtuzAbNIQj
I approached it carefully, unafraid, filled with wonder, my arms upraised, and I stroked the fur between its eyes. I felt its hot breath. I touched its horns and as I touched them I knew I was in the presence of a god. I wanted to clasp the bull by its horns and swing my legs up and grasp it around the neck. I wanted to straddle its back and dig my fingers in its black fur and solid muscle. I wanted the tauroid to turn on my and mount me and crush me. And when I wished this it seemed that the tauroid grew even larger until it occupied all the space in the tunnel. I fell down in a a faint, unable to move but still conscious, and in that state the spirit of the tauroid penetrated me. Man or woman, tauroid or beast, the god entered me and possessed me utterly, through mouth, nose, ears, eyes and skin; yes, through penis and anus. Totally. No scrap of me was left untouched and yet I lived with dignity. The spirit of the god bubbled in my veins and made me happy. "Dip me in ambrosa, O ye powers, and I will be one with the grape and the harvest."233Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlC1Mbkdb5k
The god broke into pieces of gold and these spun around me. They became people, a golden blur of people. Prill was there, and the man I had strangled, and his wife and other women, and my mother and father, and my enforcer and Ila, who lay far in my future. They were dancing around me like children around a bonfire. And I shouted that I was not dead, and as I shouted the visitors faded and I woke up.233Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡW0RAwfAIZy
I lay on the ground savoring the silence and privacy.233Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡc1GsXRgXEE
And everything was changed. I woke up with the knowledge that the gold of the god had entered my veins and that I had eaten the sun like an apple. I saw as though for the first time or like a man recovering his sight after a long period of blindness. I saw colors I had never before seen. The dark blue of the sky had a rich texture like crushed velvet and light swarmed in the sky like silver snakes. The brown world beyond the walls of my tunnel ran with colors of soil: with red and gray and brown and cream. The green shoots of the small plants whose roots I had eaten glowed like flame. There was a little creature, a bit like a beetle and a bit like an ant and I had crushed it beneath my heel in my ecstasy so that one of its legs trailed. I picked it up marveling at the iridescent colors that patterned it. I could see moisture at the broken leg joint and I willed it to heal, saying, "I affirm the unity of life." I closed my eyes and when I opened them again the small leg was working like a machine hammer and the insect scampered to the edge of my hand, launching itself into the air and fluttering to the ground.233Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSxrXQL2lvi
And that was when I noticed the difference. My hand was not my hand anymore. It was larger, luminous. I crossed to the side of the dome and peered at the transparent plastic, seeking an image of myself. I saw a horned man. I reached up and could feel my horns, short and stiff and cruel and throbbing with new life. My feet had healed and were larger and golden, just like my hands. Wonderingly, I picked up my pack and few belongings and began to run away from that crosspath where the tunnels met. I ran with the fierce energy of the tauroid that had entered me. I ran with the care of the gentle man in the dun brown habit guiding me for I would not willingly harm any living creature.233Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡv99TvO0Jvh
Oh, I forgot to tell you: I was now running toward, not away from, home. Punishment transmuted to pleasure. I was not running toward my parents' farm but towards the nearest outpost of the Benevolent Order of St. Dionysos. I had recognized that small man who met me on the way for I had seen his statue mounted on the small dwelling belonging to the Benevolent Order. It was St. Dionysos!233Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJONvFygIrE
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VULPA: What of the tauroid?233Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqQDB9SMWuZ
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ADAMA: The tauroid was part of him. And the tauroid was me. My true self. The stamp of the God made manifest. Life, if you will. The force of life. Kind and cruel and neither of these, yet both.233Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡO3FsT5oIRc
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VULPA: Did you really have horns and golden skin?233Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡG03CoWgQ2u
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ADAMA: For a time, yes. I had them for as long as I needed a sign. Then, with my decision to join the Benevolent Order they gradually faded away.233Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkSXuPINxk6
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VULPA: What happened when you came to the House of the Benevolent Order233Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡho9baAY1E2
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ADAMA: I knocked on the door and I was welcomed and I told my story and I was accepted. And so my commitment to the Benevolent Order started. The next day I was given the green habit of the postulant and I felt great relief as I drew it over my head.233Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyRCA8qDE1s
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VULPA: Didn't it get tangled in your horns?"233Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRAv8vjP4wp
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ADAMA: No. The outward tauroid was gone and had taken residence inside. Inside. Inside.233Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUFKqr4BzMX
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The effects of the liberating drugs were fading. Serpentine and I watched as Adama began to shut down. His eyes which had held some sparkle when he spoke now became dull pools of pain and finally blank. The voice began to slur and the sounds transmuted into grunts and stops. The arms relaxed like dead eels.233Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1w2KH3NTOc
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But before he faded entirely he rallied and spoke clearly and urgently for one final time.233Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWIyoQIbY3m
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ADAMA: Such was my youth. Such was my happiness. How could such happiness lead to such sadness? How could it be that I, who came to love all life and to hate all killing, should come to kill so many? How did I come to kill the God?233Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdzrLLKGnCx
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Adama stared at me and Serpentine as if we were finfish and demons. I do not know what he saw. Some gateway into his private hell sprang up and he looked in. He began to scream and he jabbed with his fingers for his eyes. But Serpentine was quick. She caught his hands in mid-strike with one of her dexetels and at the same time injected him from the cache at the nape of his neck. He fell, shuddering and heaving, and then lay still. I remembered his description of how he had caught the soil snakes and how they convulsed underground.233Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBEsm60IGtl
Serpentine picked him up and hefted him into her womb-cage and trundled away towards the living quarters without so much as one word towards me. I stayed on in the garden. I had much to think about. A Scribe-class Cylon is good with facts and figures and solid stable syntax. But with regard to Adama, I was that pinnacle of my ability. Perpetual self-referencing can only lead to meaninglessness and hell. Inside inside, as Adama says.233Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6ggTUdoo7d
I found no answer that day.233Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSHUqgRpWfB
The next day I wrote down my case notes and although this chapter is concerned with Adama's life, I will here quote my original notes as they illuminate Adama's discourse:233Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdsiSlbzUvu
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What are we to make of this? I cannot tell what mode Adama is speaking in. He sounds reasonable most of the time, matter of fact, almost, but then it becomes clear that he is speaking emblematically.233Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡY6tuLzCZNg
In a way that is precisely his problem. He is trapped between two worlds and has confused them. He has the world of his feelings where meaning comes from his intuition and is perceived in visionary terms. And he has the real world in which children are born and men and women die and Cylons swoop. At any moment Adama can experience a collapse of the real world into the world of his emblems. And there he must make his own way for Serpentine can keep him alive and I can tell his story but only he can journey through.233Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ948AOKeWfU
Well, that is the perception of a Cylon and I am aware of my rationalism. I am perplexed by the thought that I may have got it all wrong. Maybe the emblematic world is the real world after all and I am no more than a passing fancy in Adama's world. In which case Adama really did have horns and golden skin and killed the godhead in him. In my rationalism I am glad that I am not subject to dreams. What dreams can a barrel of tylium have?233Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡD77X23YKlw
