A single bird flew over the vast flow of ice. Earlier it had lost its flock to a storm which it had narrowly escaped - owing more to chance than to skill. Though now, in the ice desert, it flew alone. It staved off starvation, though it could feel the empty tingle in its fast moving blood that time was running out. The bird had emerged from nesting grounds in the Atlantic a week earlier, but the changing wind patterns had set it and its partners deeper into the areas where no birds flew from: Europe.
Below it was an unending sea of ice. Dunes of snow moved across the crystalline surface. Snow flew across the surface in almost all directions. The bird had only seen ice for days since losing its brothers and sisters. Ahead, just before the setting sun, the bird spotted what seemed to be a break in the ice. It was under snowfall, but it could distinctly make out a massive rocky spine emerging from the Earth. The bird dove forward as fast as it could toward the mountain range that emerged like an oasis in the endless glacier. It dove for what would one day be called the Swiss Alps.
Ahead, between two mountain peaks, a small column of smoke rose. The bird did not understand fire, so it could not interpret the gleam of light that emerged from a rocky crag, or the movement of smoke from it. It passed by above, momentarily curious as to how a fire could burn on ice. As it flew it did not notice the slender figure of a woman climbing up the mountain toward the fire.
Galen stoked the flames, watching the embers crisp and crackle in the orange light. Meat cured above two thick oak sticks, the fat slowly dripping into the fire. With each drop the fire reacted in protest. He held himself forward, letting the warmth wash over him. The fire had to be close to the mouth of the cave to prevent carbon monoxide poisoning. He watched the column of smoke roll off the cave walls and exit into the gathering snow storm.
A footstep snapped his attention back to the here and now. He stood up, grabbing his spear. A woman stood before him, deeply frozen. Her hair was iced together, except for a few strands which caught the wind of the snowstorm. His eyes met the strangers, and for a long moment they stared at each other. Galen froze in a moment of realization, Boomer. His mind dismissed the idea completely and returned to a more rational conclusion: Athena. He stood, unsure of what to do. In an instant she collapsed at the foot of the cave.
Athena came to in brief glimpses of consciousness. There was a fire, and there was Tyrol preparing meat. In her mind this was normal, as if over one hundred thousand years could be reduced to a day since she had last seen him. She remembered smiling at him briefly as he gave her water. Once or twice she said something she could not remember. She was unsure of how many days had passed. Not that they mattered.
She came to while Galen was asleep and the fire was dying. He curled underneath a mammoth hide by the fire. She watched him for a long time, taken aback at how little he had changed in so much time. When she last saw him she held Hera in her arms...
Athena rose and walked to the mouth of the cave. It was night, but she could see snowflakes reflected in the dying fire fall down the mountain. Below the glacier lay silent, hiding the continent below its cruelty. She stared down into it for a long time. She had seen the glaciers come and go before. Its slow relent crushed the animals and humans by smothering the plants on which they depended. The cold gusts of air swam before it, creating a permanent wall of winter that stretched for miles. They came and pushed life into refugia that clung along the coasts of the Mediterranean. Animals and humans evolved and took new forms against their changed world. Then the glaciers retreated and life returned in their wake. The cycle took forty thousand years, sometimes thirty. They had been the drum cadence on this planet, a reminder of how deeply old and isolated she was from the cycle of life.
"Be careful, it is a long way down."
Athena turned to see Galen, still groggy from sleep.
"Maybe I want to go down." She said. She looked back down the precipice. The ice, thousands of feet below her, invited her.
"How did you find me?" Galen asked. "How did you know I wasn't some Neandertal who would kill you on sight?"
"They died out a long time ago." Galen said. "Killed by your people."
"My people?" Athena asked.
"The ones from the south. The ones you and Helo joined."
"Hera's people." Athena said, looking at Galen.
"They are a lot more like us than the others. Too much like us." Galen rose from his mammoth hide. He stoked the flames of the fire, causing sparks and light to fly.
"They know how to survive." Athena said, coming toward the fire. She grabbed a log and put it on. "Where have you been Chief?"
"Chief." Galen smiled. "I remember that name. That's what I was called, wasn't it?" Galen spread his arms before the cave. "This has been it. I join a tribe sometimes. But what can you do? I have tried to show them better ways of making tools but... they die out."
"Not all of them." Athena sat by the fire and hugged her knees close to the spreading flames. "I've seen children. Hybrids. The humans love them like their own."
"Like Hera?" Galen asked.
"Like Hera." Tears came to Athena's eyes. She wept quietly by the fire. Galen watched, no explanation was needed.
"How long ago?" He asked as she overcame her emotion.
"She was a human. I wanted her to live like us but... she died young. In her twenties." Athena rocked back a little. "She had her own kids. I watched over them. Then they had their children. They forgot who I was. I was a stranger in the tribe, drifting away from the others. I left them after a hundred and fifty so years. I returned to Hera's grave and wept there for another thousand. It seemed like such a long time then..." Athena bit her lip.
Galen looked at her softly. "I always wondered." Athena who stared into the flame as tears rolled down her eyes. "Are you ok?"
"No." Athena wiped a tear and let it fall into the flame. She watched it turn to steam and salt. "I want to die. All the time. When I see the mouth of the cave, I want to leap down to the glacier below. When I see the fire in front of me, I want to jump in. I want to die. To leave this world behind. There is nothing I want more than to simply disappear and return to… to whatever is next" Athena looked up to Galen, the light from the fire disappearing into something dark in her eyes. "But you programmed us so that we could not commit suicide. To be cruel you gave us human minds. And human minds cannot comprehend the passage of time, not like this."
"How could we have?" Galen laughed. "I'm speaking for a man who doesn't exist. One of us... who?... he said that we wandered for thousands of years before we came to the colonies. I don't think that was normal. What would I have used to make you better prepared for this?"
"The ability to die. Or suicide. Either would work."
"There must have been a reason." Galen looked away, his eyes moving as if he could find the secret on the cave walls.
"Or just a defect." Athena picked up a broken spearhead on the ground. "There was an imperfection in this, wasn't there? You can see it on the tip - some kind of other, weaker, mineral crossed through it. It isn't fully made. It must have snapped while you were finishing it. But its a rock - it will last forever in its flawed state. It can't change back. You made it imperfect and immortal. Like me."
"Do I look perfect to you?" Galen opened his arms up. "Look at everything I did! I killed a woman who was suppose to have been my lover in a previous life. And I almost destroyed humanity and Cylons for that moment of revenge! How can something so imperfect as me create something better? We descend from decay."
"Not Hera." Athena looked back out at the snow storms. "Maybe that's what makes life different. They can get better. We are frozen, like the glacier. They move like the river. Our immortality is locked into a machine. There's is fluid, becoming different people at different times. Some smart, some strong, they become whatever they must. Combining and recombining for eternity. They think that they are inferior. Always have. But in the long time they are so vastly superior."
"In a way." Galen looked out at the snow storms with Athena. In an instant they disappeared from the cave. A long grassy field opened up before them. They sat on a hill, looking out over a field where gazelle grazed. Thatch huts dotted the landscape. Some people wore hides, others wore their already worn out clothes from the colonial fleet.
In the grass, below the hill, Hera and Helo played. Hera was 5 or 6, tactile enough to evade her father's efforts of being a lion. She laughed loudly as Helo stumbled along, maintaining a precarious balance on both his good and bad legs.
"She looks happy." Galen said.
"She was her whole life. She took it hard when Helo died." Galen looked at Athena concerned. "I don't think he every fully recovered. She didn't when he finally passed. He never walked right after he was injured rescuing her. She took care of him. Gathered his food. He would tell Hera's two children about the battles with the evil Cylons with the help of the good Cylons. He made this elaborate mythology. Calvin was the devil. Gaeta was the corruption of humans. And Adama was the balance between the two. And from him was survival. I don't know if Hera's children ever believed the stories. He died when they were still little."
Athena wiped a tear from her eyes. Galen put his arm over her shoulder and hugged her. "You did good. You did everything you could, and more."
"Did I?" Athena watched Hera duck and roll from Helo's somewhat exaggerated grasp. Helo let out a "RAWRRRR" and Hera squealed in delight as she dove away, pretending to be a gazelle. "She was mortal. I think she died of cancer, but no one who knew medicine survived to diagnose her. She suffered a lot. I can remember the look of fear in her eyes when she looked back at me. I told her about God's plan and heaven. But she never believed me. Or the Lords of Kobol. She was smarter than anyone else - she would have been able to outwit Baltar. But I think she believed that nothing came after. That there was nothing - that life faded like a fog. I watched it die in her eyes. God, she didn't even get thirty years."
Athena kicked a small rock, and it rolled down the hill. "She did this once... trying to prove a point to me when she was pregnant with her first child. She said that the rock could think it was alive because it moved. And it imagined that after it stopped - after it died - it just kept rolling on into another eternity. As if the memory of it rolling could continue and be understandable. I didn't understand her then - it took me ten thousand years - but I think I know now." The rock came to a stop a few feet from where Hera and Helo were playing. Hera noticed it and waved up with both arms, jumping up and down. Helo waved to and gave her a warm smile.
Athena waved back, tears in her eyes. "The rock just stops rolling. It returns to what it was before. Nothing."
Galen waved back to them as well. "How often do you come back here?"
"I try never to leave." Athena hugged her knees again. "What's out there? Glaciers. Different species of humans trying to wipe each other out with stone tools. An eternity alone, wandering in the forest, living in the past."
"I've forgotten so much of it." Galen said. "I can remember Cally though. I remember Calvin and Adama. Boomer… but it becomes a blur. It's like my mind cannot hold a hundred thousand years worth of memories. So I lose so much the longer I live. I wonder, if in a hundred thousand more, I will forget it altogether."
"I don't forget anything. I wake up every morning remembering. I go to sleep every night remembering. I wander forests remembering. I wander glaciers remembering. The past becomes its own religion that way."
"I want to forget it all." Galen forced a scowl away. "There is nothing for me back there."
"You always seem cynical and sad. Even back then. Why? We would have been lost if it weren't for you. I would have had terrible things happen to me had you and Helo not saved me."
"The war happened because of me. The genocide happened because of me." Galen looked over his shoulder at Athena. "You happened because of me."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Didn't the number 8's just seem different? You. Boomer. Think about it. There was a spark there that was missing from the other models. Just like humans have a spark that makes them different than other animals. You were capable of so much greater good and evil than the other models. If we had built a city instead of dispersing, you would have become their god."
"I think you're dreaming." Athena laughed a little.
"Not entirely. They are you. Hera's genes have spread through them. Some of them are yours. You are the divine spark in this new species of human. Just think, half of your genes went into her and have given birth to a species. "
"And the thousands of other colonials. They interbred too." Athena paused, lost in a thought. "Have you ever wondered how strange it was that there are two types of human?"
"What do you mean?"
"Look at the stars at night." Athena and Galen looked up as the sun fell from the sky. The stars shined through the vast darkness that separated them. "All those worlds out there. And we land on one that just happens to have a mirror genetic species. That makes no sense. It would be a miracle to find a life form that shares the same type of DNA, let alone the exact same one."
"God." Galen said.
"No. There isn't one. There never was."
"What makes you think so?"
"A force that can do whatever it wants? Cause so much suffering? Think about what you went through. Think about the people on the Galactica who suffered and struggled only to be killed and watch the people they love be killed?" Athena shook her head in disgust. "No. A god like that shouldn't exist."
"Yet people live. You gave birth to a beautiful little girl. She gave birth to humanity. And we shepherded her through hell to make this possible." Galen stared at Athena intently. "Do you deny that there wasn't a hand there guiding is in just the right way?"
"I absolutely deny it. It was us, Chief. It was us the entire time. And if there was anything else involved, it has weaknesses just like you and I. Think. We are immortal, you and I. We have seen one hundred thousand winters. We may see one hundred thousand more. What would happen to the mind of something that sees a million? A billion? You cannot be alive and see that kind of time. The rock is either moving or it is not. Life has a beginning and an end. "
"We had a beginning. And we are machines." Galen said.
"We're not machines. I'm not." Athena looked back at Hera as she wrestled away from her father yet again. "A machine couldn't have made her. We are alive. Humans made us but never understood us. Their technological skill outpaced their reasoning abilities. That they had split the atom was their undoing."
"You're children are already making art, did you know that?" Galen asked.
Athena nodded. "That's her."
"...and that's still you. There was something different in the number 8's."
"It has been thousands of years, and you look at me and still see Boomer." Athena chuckled a little. "You haven't forgotten it all."
"I wanted her to be like you so badly." Galen said mournfully. "To be redeemed."
Athena stayed silent.
"They divided her into two. One Cylon, one human. And when they combined the two, she was undone. I wanted her to be better, to rise above it. So much..." A tear came to Galen's eye, the first in many years.
"I don't think anyone can be all bad.." Athena said.
"I would give anything to have a second chance to find it." Galen watched Hera play. "I never wanted to see you again. Ever. I don't know how I feel about you being here right now."
"You need to forgive yourself Chief. Everyone else did." Athena put her hand on his. "Don't spend eternity on those four years."
"Isn't that what you do?"
Athena looked back at Hera. "I will spend eternity here if I can. It is imperfect. But it is my heaven. There will be none better."
"What will become of her children?"
"They have everything they need. All that's left is the rest of the spark."
"What do you mean?"
Athene pointed to the gazelle. "Hera's children are not like that. They are not animals grazing on a world that they do not understand. They will create. The essence of Hera will take over the essence of that. Whatever it is in humans that is great will spread through them. Almost like a virus. You are right. It isn't a coincidence that there are humans on this planet. But it isn't God. That would be too cruel. There is something that we don't know - that we may never know. But worshipping what we don't understand it is a mistake. I know enough to know that life is too precious to waste away on such thoughts. But they are thoughts that gazelle will never have. Hera's children will become what the humans were. They will build cities. They will make songs and art and computers. And eventually..."
Hera looked up at the night sky then dove toward the gazelles screaming. Helo took the moment to rest in the grass. Hera ran and waved her arms, startling the gazelles into a panic before her. She ran as far as she could to keep up with them, but eventually they disappeared on the horizon - she had scared them all away.
Athena closed her eyes and smiled. She took in the Tanzanian air. She swept her hands along the grass of the hill. Cold set in. The fire was dying, and dawn was breaking on the glacier. Their shadows cast back and forth in the remaining licks of the fire. One shadow came from the fire Galen made, the other from the rising sun. Both moved in concert along the cracks and crevices of the rock.
They sat in silence for a few minutes. Galen retrieved a log and started the fire once again.
"What next?" He asked.
"I return to the forest." Athena bowed her head. "It isn't time yet, but I will wait."
"Are you planning on something?"
Athena shook her head. "My job as Hera's mother isn't over. You?"
Galen looked at her, partially perplexed at the question - he had never asked it of himself. "I'll live. I don't know what else. You don't know how lucky you were to have Hera."
"You made me right? She's your daughter too, in a way."
Galen smiled. "In a way."
Athena looked out at the rising sun. She should leave, she knew it. But something compelled her to stay. Maybe it was companionship. Maybe it was nothing more than an open fire. But a few days here - or years, wouldn't change anything. The time had not yet come when she would be needed again. She thought back to Admirable Adama and his mistrust of her when they first met.
"How wrong he was." She said softly to herself. "How wrong we all were."