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VULPANOTE:197Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwJeVUsSRs3
Serpentine does not usually make reports but I have managed to persuade her that this one at least is necessary. I have helped with the writing but the style is her own. Will you please forgive some slight repetition? Serpentine is uncompromising as a new author with a treasured manuscript and will hardly allow me to cut a word.
We have pieced the report together during the long hours while Adama is sleeping. It covers the first few days of his time with us.197Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlaw51I5j0l
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I, Serpentine the nurse cylon, have brought many thousands of babies into this world. I have stood in the smoke, protecting children in my iron womb, while the bombs fell and the hospital burned around me. Those which war left without parents I have raised. I have watched the children learn to love my nipple, knowing no better.197Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwKTgvDB83k
I have watched over them as they learned to crawl and climb. I have tended them while they became sturdy and rough and bade them farewell when, at a certain age, they have been taken away from me.197Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJZvdslndPz
Let it also be said that for many humans, I have crossed their hands over their chests and closed their eyes for the final time after they have returned to my garden to die. I have heard the final confidences of many sad humans as well as the words that are spoken and sung before their bodies are destroyed.197Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdQVHsdjN2T
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I am Serpentine the nurse cylon, the defender of life, the giver----and now you have brought me this sorry man, Adama, whom I tended in his pride and vigor, and you have asked me to make him whole again.197Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCZi800XN1v
But can I succeed in that task? I have examined him while he shakes in his dreams. Physical ailments I can cope with. I can suspend life. I can take the place of the heart, lungs and liver. I can hunt out the forces that distress the body. I can excise tumors like rotten onions. But the mind---ah, the mind is its own place---and I see my limits like the rim of a ceramic bowl. I cannot invade the mind. The mind is a threshold that separates the humblest moral from the greatest of machine nurses and I am not the greatest, but I am the oldest.197Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQXmgrVZAK4
May I make this judgment on Adama? Sleep brings him no relief. He wanders in terror and nightmare. The physical symptoms he exibits, the shaking, the knuckle-biting, the ulceration of his stomach lining and bowels, the sores around his mouth and anus, all are the symptoms of his terrified spirit. I have seen this before, though not ever as extreme. The consequence of self-hatred is the abuse of the body.197Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9hK1WBUNkd
In regard to his mind, Adama must be his own doctor and Vulpa, who likes the patterns that words do make, will no doubt be happy to assist. If Adama survives it will be because he wants to. I can be more than a constant and caring companion; I can offer time and my Garden of Delight.197Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtAmCdAHJz2
Vulpa tells me that Adama is wandering in the valley of the shadow of death. Into this ravine the sun never penetrates and the human spirit is alone as it follows a stony path between tumbling rapids and thorn bushes. Well, when he returns, if he returns, I shall be waiting with broth and flowers and crisp, clean sheets.197Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsWT2AXm6g6
At this present time while I record these things and Vulpa stares at me with his sullen red eye, Adama sleeps. The drugs that held him unconscious when he was brought in wore off during that first night. I was curious to see how he would react. Awaking, he would not know where he was. He might even think he was dead. He would hear the gentle patter of rain on the leaves beyond the window and smell the moist earth.197Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgAMRagHbF4
He woke up and lay in my open womb, his fingers playing about his lips and his eyes wandering. His brain registered those rhythms which are associated with delight: rhythms of calm ecstasy, passionate meditation. Such are the mind's contradictions. Adama was suspended in that no-man's-land between memory and dream. Those brief moments are the only healing time he has at present between nightmare and consciousness. He was for that brief space as simple as a shellfish that registers the tides and filters the ooze for food.197Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡE2Z3jpTYDj
Then consciousness came to him. A blade entering the shell. He still did not know where he was, but now he did not care. He knew who he was. His face screwed up like a ball of crushed red paper and his tongue came from between his lips and began to flap like the tail of a fish. I feared he would bite and so I shut him down.197Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRv1yCyg2WG
I shut him down with gas, considering that to be gentler than the drugs administered to him since his rescue. I secured his tonue and placed it so that he could not swallow it. I massaged his gums. I brought his knees up to his chest and let his bowels and bladder void. Afterward I cleaned him and made him comfortable. I am aware that that act of release can carry the sleeping human back to the time before birth and can clear and settle the mind. No child feels guilty in the womb, for all pleasure is innocent there.197Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSqJmmxhPyY
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Adama has awakened and slept several times since he was returned to my care. Whenever possible, I have made sure that he has awoken in my garden. I have had plenty of time to observe him.197Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡqeEvx2Yr89
I like his hands. The hands can tell so much. When I was in military service hundreds of yahrens ago I spent many centons holding the hands of the dying. I became so sensitive to the life signals that are transmitted through the hand that I was able to predict those who would live and those who would die. I was not always right. My awareness of those that were failing meant that I was able to take action in time to save them. Sometimes, those whom I thought were safe, would suddenly withdraw from the world and pass away in their sleep. For one who is dedicated to the saving of life I have seen so much of death that....197Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCQhp2AMvbv
Adama's hands give me cause for hope. His grip is strong----strong but not aggressive. His hands are square-palmed and the fingers maintain a nice proportion. There is great practicality in his hand. He gripped my grace and feather dexetels once when I was stroking his palm and scratching gently along the line of his life, and his grip had a desperate power. He was asleep, and I wanted him to squeeze, hoping that I would see a dream of bitterness resolve itself through tension. But he relaxed as if afraid to crush me and the nightmare carried him away. Ha! He will have to learn some cruelty before he improves. One day, with luck, I may be able to slap him into anger and his dignity will assert itself.197Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡzdcL9QY8WF
Adama has well-spread shoulders and strong limbs. I once cared for a wrestler who had broken his neck in a fall. Adama reminds me of him, except for his temperament. We must be thankful for the sturdiness of his physique. Had he not been solidly built, there is no way that he could have survived the strain of living on the high-gravity planet where he was marooned.197Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡyQvEr7fHlu
His face. The tranquilizing drugs have made him into an idiot. I doubt if his mother would recognize him. The muscles of his face have no tone and this is another reason why I have chosen to control him through gas. If he ever comes to himself and looks at himself in the mirror he will expect to see a face he recognizes. Dignity, you see. Health and dignity. These are different names for the same thing. For one who despises himself, an imbecilic face could seem a just punishment and would be relished. If he starts to recover and if I have the chance, I will operate on his face for one cheekbone is depressed and the nasal cartilage is deformed. I doubt there is much I can do to eradicate the patterning on his skin. He has been torn by high gravity and now his face is covered in stretch marks. I will massage him and exercise his muscles. But you know, those who have been in high gravity invariably grow to love their silver lines. In one such as Adama whose skin is naturally dark, the effect could be striking, handsome even, I presume, like silver tattooing. When he comes to health he may even enjoy his skin as a record of his ordeal. But for the time being, guilt has deformed his understanding, and he is nowhere near health.197Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡgKeVmrVB3h
How can I speak of guilt?197Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1tc4ic7kB8
I can read it in him. I have studied the words he spoke when he was first rescued. They are the words that describe his inner landscape. He talks of the Galactica having blood streaming past its windows and that he caused the blood to flow. He talks of the screaming that drove the sensitive bio-crystalline brains aboard the Galactica into frenzy before he stopped them. He talked about a sea that moved like molten lead and with drops of blood on it.197Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlJ8X51jP8d
This I, Serpentine the nurse cylon, affirm, that Adama committed an act aboard the Galactica that he cannot now face. Though unable to face his action, he is aware of his guilt. He is his own harshest judge and madness is a kind of sanctuary. He is like an urn that is filled to the top with horror. He would like to smash the urn but what he really needs is to be emptied out. I believe that when he begins to talk again he will be on the road to a cure. And to assist in that cure I am glad that I have Vulpa with me. I am sure also that when all is revealed we will look upon him more in pity than in contempt.197Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYp1Y9iUp1l
For therapy this I propose. Sleep, naturally, and good food. There are Callrine herbs that will help him. So far as I am able I will lead him toward pleasant dreams. I will relax my grip on his consciousness as he shows his mental strength rising. However, he must start this process for himself.197Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡKc04ZHHGRS
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At the moment as I compose this he is sleeping in my womb. I have moved from the building and out into the shady green of my garden. It is almost midday and the autumn sun is gathering its last strength. Last night there were high winds and this morning there was a shower. Weather patterns are changing rapidly. The rain has unleashed many smells. The garden is alive with wraiths of steam. It is an old belief that sun after rain is oddly beneficial and I have noticed that those who are sick frequently relish such sunlight.197Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡnKBYadkuYf
So let it be with Adama.197Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ68ianQsBS3
