"All human beings, by nature, desire to know" – Aristotle
"If you want to know your past - look into your present conditions. If you want to know your future - look into your present actions" – Chinese Proverb
Laura clicked on her Dictaphone as she began her primary examination of the sets of remains on her autopsy table. The first was a male or so she summarised from the more prominent brow ridge and slanting of the frontal bone and a square jaw. The rugged architecture and rounded supraorbital margin supported her initial conclusions. She put age around 60-80 from the prominent fusing of the cranial sutures though of course she couldn't be exactly sure. There was a high rate of skeletal deformity; the bones were thoroughly riddled with osteriopropris though in a somewhat less advanced stage. The stress markers around his hips joints and elbow sockets gave some clue to the obviously physical occupation he had when he'd been alive.
After the dirt and forest debris were removed from the bones using water and a soft brush by Felix, a number of faint cuts became visible in the left ribs and the mid-back. The number of discrete cuts in three ribs and in one vertebra suggest that this male had stabbed a minimum of three times. He also had a pre-mortem broken hyoid suggesting that he had been strangled. She noted no additional evidence of trauma and concluding that he had died from the damage to his hydroid due to strangulation. Examination of his fingers revealed them to be broken in several places pre mortem and shortly before death probably from fighting off his attacker.
She lay a hand on his face and felt the rough bone of his cheek through the latex glove she wore. What had this poor soul been through? With his deteriorating health he probably hadn't stood a chance though it hadn't stopped him fight with everything that he had.
The woman was a different matter entirely. The architecture of her skull was smooth, the mastoid process smooth while the supraorbital margin was sharp. Her pelvis was small and unmarked telling Laura that she had never given birth though she had miscarried sometime around her thirtieth birthday. Her mid-facial characteristics such as a sloped orbits suggest that she had been a white Caucasian perhaps in her mid 40'sto early 50's at the time of death or so the fusing of her cranial structures and from the surviving canines. Laura ran her fingers over a long since healed fracture in her shoulder, probably from childhood due to the rate of bone growth around the break and she had played tennis or so the stress markers of her elbows suggested.
They was no identifiable trauma as the cause of death but analysis of the bone marrow had shown traces of breast cancer, Laura concluded that this disease had been the cause of death. Not as violent a death as her fellow subject but no doubt just as painful poor woman. Working quickly and efficiently she took core samples of bone from both subjects to be sent to a specialist in ancestral genetics over in Washington while also taking samples of tooth enamel, hair follicles and nail to be sent to various others.
She flipped open her notes on the two subjects. Felix had managed to procure two workable strands of DNA from the subjects and the possibility that they had been relatives had been quickly dismissed. Had they been lovers? Husband and wife? That was something that their bones just couldn't tell her.
Maya who occasionally worked for them pro bono as a Facial Reconstructionist, drawing up portraits of how the individual could have looked when they were alive, was already busy working from the digital scans of their skulls that Laura had emailed her a few hours before. Soon she would be able to gaze upon their faces and she felt a bubble of excitement well up within her at the prospect.
Could they have been Hera's family? Part of her really hoped they were as yet more pieces of the puzzle would be neatly slotted into place though DNA analysis between the three samples was still ongoing. She looked up to see Felix hunched over his computer, back rigid as he worked. Dee was also around inspecting the bones of a cadaver that had been burnt beyond recognition in an old Ford Fiesta just outside the city. That meant the air smelt less than pleasant but she was used to it. The smell of death was in some perverted way even pleasant to her now, it was comforting and familiar.
It was worth enduring anything if she could give these people a name, a face and a past and if in the process she managed to unravel the secrets of her entire race then that was just a bonus.
"Hello Laura"
She looked up sharply as the musical tones of her step mother Elosha rang across the room. A warm smiled filled her face at the sight of the short, dark skinned woman dressed as exuberantly as usual in a heavily decorated headdress and shawl. Elosha had been good as a mother to Laura since she'd been a teenager and she held a great respect and affection for the priestess.
"How can I help you Elosha?" she asked, bending down so the smaller woman could plant a kiss on her cheek.
Elosha moved passed her examining the two sets of remains with an interested eye "Your father told me about the two remains that you had found. About how they come from around the same time as Hera"
Her family had long since started to refer to her as Hera as well demonstrating the extent that the woman had been a topic of conversation around their household. Even Zak had stopped calling her the dead chick a year back.
"Yes. The remains date from around 150,000 years ago though are even earlier that the Hera remains" Laura told her as she snapped her latex gloves off with a snap.
The two women made their way towards Laura's office, Laura holding the door open for Elosha before the both took seats on the two small love seats in the corner that Laura had spent the night on more than once. In fact on more occasions than she'd like to remember.
"Do you think they may be the mother and father of us all?" Elosha asked and Laura found herself frowning. She knew that a mother and father was mentioned within the scriptures but Elosha knew that Laura put as much stock in the scriptures as she did in President's Tigh's administration – very little.
"No, the woman never gave birth so will probably not have any direct genetic ancestral line"
Elosha smiled at her obviously quite clued to that nature of her thoughts "I mean spiritually not genetically Laura" Laura raised one of her eyebrows at her. A spiritual mother and father? It sounded ridiculous and she knew the expression betrayed her feelings on her step mother's recent statement "Do you know who Hera is yet Laura or if she is the beginner of our race?"
"No but..." she attempted to argue but Elosha raised up a hand to silence her with a small smile on her face and Laura felt once more like a young child being scolded by her mother.
"Have you ever considered that the answer may just not lie in science Laura? Or are you are pigheaded and stubborn as your father when it comes to these matters?" Elosha answered and Laura found that she was unable to answer her question "As I thought...."
Elosha busied herself with scrawling an address on the back of a report that she found on the coffee table in her elegant hand while her step daughter jumped up to make the both of them coffee. With a rip Elosha had the paper containing the address in her hands which she then pressed into the centre of Laura's palm with a soft touch. Her eyes were soft but alert as if she knew exactly what was going to happen and far more than Laura.
"You'' find a man at that address named Galen Tyrol, a most remarkable young man who is studying the origins of human life just as you are. He too is at a dead end with his research. Perhaps you could help one another?"
Laura snorted loudly "I don't need the help of some scholar thank you very much. I'm a scientist not some religious nut job"
Elosha wasn't offended; she was used to Laura's strong atheist views. She was just like her father in that regard. So instead changed the subject onto Maya and her family.
After Elosha had left Laura found that she was still clutching the address in her hand. She screwed it up and threw it in the bin but found herself taking it out, smoothing out the creases and pinning it up onto her notice board. Her hands reached for her computer to enter the address into goggle.
As the first webpage opened directing her to a temple just outside 5th Avenue all she could think was what the frak was she doing?
.~.
"Place them over there please" Doctor Gaius Baltar ordered as several of the bases marines carried the boxes containing the recently procured ship remnants over to his examination table. Sice stood there waiting, lab coat looking more like a couture gown and hair curling around her shoulders gracefully
"Carefully" he warned as they bumped the container into one of his workstations. The two men had the nerve to look sheepish and Gaius frowned. Where were they hiring these idiots from?
Once it had been settle down they barely had a chance to move their hands before Sice was attacking it with the crow bar she had been holding, making short work of the lid and sides which feel away to reveal a large slice of metal hull. To her left stood another workstation that was covered in piles of human remains. Both had been transported off of what had been fondly named the 'dark side of the moon' by scientists a few weeks before. Though several tests had been conducted this was the first time that Gaius was going to be working first hand with the samples and the scientists within him stirred in anticipation.
This was going to be monumental and both he and his wife knew that with monumental discoveries came more wealth and fame than they would ever need. Gaius moved to stand next to Sice whom was studying the mental with an engrossed expression on her face.
"So what do we know?" he asked her and she grinned at him handing him several reports that she herself had written that morning. Her hand wrapped around his and her grinned at her as he read.
"The composition of the metal is unlike anything I've ever seen before. An alloy of titanium and steel mixed with some other unidentified compound with traces of some sort of fuel though that too is made from a yet unidentified compound. The age has been placed around 150,000 years ago" he told him and he studied the piece of metal more carefully.
"So definitely not one of ours then?" he asked her and she nodded in agreement "What about the writing down the side?"
He ran a glove covered finger across the writing which neither of them had been able to translate "No one was able to translate aboard the station but I sent a copy of the writing to a professor Zareck in Toronto"
Gaius raised an eyebrow at her "Zareck? Isn't he the one who tried to say that our race is descended from aliens who came to our planet in a big ol' space ship?"
Sice laughed "Yes he is but we need him. Apparently he thinks it may be some form of the ancient texts so he's going to translate for as soon as possible"
"And the remains?" He enquired and she led him back to the table top on which the remains rested.
"The bones hadn't been sorted yet but after random DNA sampling it was appear that though the genetic makeup is highly similar to that of Homo Sapiens there are several distinct differences. For example there seems to be a lack of bone sialoprotein within the organic make-up of the bones" She explained using her index finger to print up a 3-d image of the bone's structure on the screens above "And as you can see this rendering the bones seem to lack all osteoclast cells of a normal healthy human bone"
Well that was interesting "So they're not human?"
"They many appear so but definitely not" She moved her finger again and a schematic of a human body appeared on the screen just above her head "Though from our initial scans and measurements they would seem to be highly similar to us in physical appearance"
Gaius looked over the schematics with a slight expression of wonder "We'll need to run some more tests but this is big, I can feel it"
"Do you want me to get Leoben to fax over the findings to the President's office?" Sice asked him and he nodded just imaging the expression on President's Tigh face. Sice put a hand to her ear piece and he could hear her soft tones instructing one of their assistants Leoben to fax over the documents and report to the President's office. The smile she sent him was full lipped and half lidded and made him pants uncomfortably tight.
They had met 10 years ago at the launch of some hedge fund or other. She been wearing a tight red dress and they'd been out of the door 10 minutes later. Sice had always strived to study biology but she had had to get a job as soon as she was able to leave school to support her parents. Modelling had made her a pretty large nest egg and it hadn't been long till she had her first degree under her belt. The same day she had been told she was pregnant and expecting twins they had become engaged and she had finally retired from modelling.
They'd worked together ever since. She was his fantasy woman, the mother of his children and his best friend all rolled into one and he loved her completely. Once she was finished on the phone her lips soon found their way to his and her hands to his shoulders. He kissed her soundly before pulling away all too aware of the various cameras that followed their every move. She took his hand and led him to their room and soon his thoughts stopped lingering on the strange metal fragments and dead remains.
However that night as she was tucking Gina into bed, Lida already curled up fast asleep in a foetal position, she said something that made him think once more to the earlier discovery.
"And so he drove the ship into the sun to take them both to their final resting place" she mumbled sleepily and Gaius looked at her face quizzically, her half laden eyes half covered by her long honey blonde hair.
"What was that Li?" he asked her and she yawned loudly
"I had a dream. There was a man and he was all hooked to these tubes and wires. He drove a big ship into the sun and it exploded and rained down into space in a thousand pieces. It looked really pretty"
She was soon asleep after he kissed her forehead and he couldn't help but dwell on his daughter's words. A man who had flown his ship into the sun? There was no way that that was what could have happened to the person's who remains lay down the hallway from them.
Was there?
.~.
The strong smell of incense that washed over her when she walked into the temple reminded her of the many times she visited a similar one with her mother when she'd been a younger child. The sickly scent never changed and it always made her gag. Heavy curtains lined the windows so the light that spilled into the wide entrance hall was tinged with red. Along the wall next to the incense burners hung lamps and various religious scrolls and paintings.
Laura paid no attention to them, she wasn't here to take in the scenery after all, and made her way to the young man who was waiting for her next to a dark wooden door. She was uncomfortably aware of the sharp sound her heels made on the marble floor almost uneasy to disturb the reverent silence. Growing up with a priest had left it mark.
"Professor Tyrol?" she asked and he took her hand enthusiastically pumping it in his own.
"Call me Galen please Doctor Roslin. Elosha called to inform me that you'd be visiting" Laura couldn't help but roll her eyes, of course she had. Elosha always had a uncanny habit of being right. She followed him in the direction that he had gestured in and found herself in his study filled to the brim with books and overflowing with pieces of parchment. Galen quickly and apologetically moved a large pile of papers go that she could sit down opposite to him.
"So you want to know about the book of Pythia then?" he asked and her confusion must have shown on her face because he laughed "She's one of the oracles in the ancient Sacred Scrolls. 3,600 years ago, Pythia wrote about the exile and rebirth of the human race"
"What, like some kind of prophecy?" Laura asked him and he nodded rooted through a pile of books until he found the one he was looking. The bindings were coming loose and it smelt musky and strongly of damp. She took it in her hands and delicately opened the first page.
"Exactly, Pythian prophecy Doctor Roslin. It is supposed to chronicle the exodus of humanity and their search across the stars for a new home" He flicked a few pages in the book she was holding and pointed out a certain passage.
""All this has happened before, and all of it will happen again" she read aloud her eyes meeting his as seeking some kind of answer.
"Some scholars believe that humanity is caught in an eternal cycle of violence and exodus and that New Earth is just one more home that we have searched for across the stars" he explained to her before pointing out yet another passage to her.
"And the lords anointed a leader to guide the Caravan of the Heavens to their new homeland" she read once more but she had the overwhelming feelings that it wasn't the first time that those very words had slipped out from her tongue.
"Most scholars believe that this refers to some kind of leader who led them across the starts to their new home. Apparently she suffered from sort of wasting disease believed most likely to be some sort of cancer. She was never supposed to see the Promised Land that she had led her people too with if your religious people believe to be New Earth"
Could Hera be this woman? But no, she had died of a heart attack which is hardly a wasting disease. Her mind wandered to think of the corpse sat on one of her examination table. She'd died of breast cancer and her remains dated from around the same time as Hera's. Could she be the dying leader?
"I have just been studying some skeletal remains this morning of a woman. It is estimated that her remains are some of the oldest ever recovered. This most interesting thing is, at least in relation to this scripture, she died of breast cancer"
She could see Galen's eyes rise upward and he began flicking through scrolls and pieces of papers that littered his desk until he found what he was looking for with a triumphant grin. He handed her a sheet of paper of which sat a photocopy of the page of some sort of diary in a language she wasn't able to read.
"This is one of the oldest ever recovered historical artefacts. From what a Professor Zareck has been able to translate it seemed to belong to a woman named Laura" she didn't miss the widening of his eyes though Laura was hardly an uncommon name "and she speaks of a President whom led her people across the stars to a new home but whom was plagued by a great disease. Though of course quite a few scholars think it's nothing more than a fake"
"So do you think this Laura is the woman mentioned in the Prophecy and could be the same woman that is lying on my examination table back at the Smithsonian" Laura couldn't help the sceptical note that coloured her voice.
"Is it really that hard to believe? You should take the copy of the translations, they aren't complete by any shot and some of the text was decayed beyond recognition but I'm sure you'll find it interesting" she nodded at him in thanks and he flicked the page so Laura was gazing upon a sketch of some sort of large structure and her mind was gone.
In her mind's eye she could see a planet, lush and green. She could feel rain on her skin and blood on her tongue, a mixture of joy and agony curling in her stomach as her entire body ached with exhaustion. A tomb and an arrow which she had held in her hands to illuminate the way. As Galen showed her more scriptures of interest a picture caught her eye and she reached out to stop his hand from turning the page.
"Wait what is that?" she asked her fingers tracing the picture of an arrow
"The arrow of Apollo that was supposed to lead the way to Earth" He looked at the started expression on her face "Are you alright Doctor Roslin?"
This was more than strange. This was downright disquieting "I'm fine. It's just I have that very arrow on display on my coffee table"
.~.
There was no way that anyone could have told her apart from a real human. She felt human to the touch, looked human to the eye and smelt human. Her skin was flesh and blood, a heartbeat throbbing underneath the skin of her wrist underneath his fingers. He rang a finger through her hair which was smooth and silky against his skin. Her eyes flickered underneath her eyelids as she dreamed.
She was his life's greatest achievement. The Boomer model and the future of robotics and New Earth's planetary defence system. When she awoke from the medically induced coma she had been placed in she would have her own individual personality and make her own choices. He had given his child free will though he wasn't claiming to be God, he never had been. He was a scientist and therefore in his opinion better than any non spatial 'God' hovering outside of the edge of the universe
She was the first of her line, the first viable Cylon model though his eighth attempt. She was number Eight, Boomer.
His phone began to ring and he flipped it open pressing it to his ear "Hello Bill Adama speaking?"
"Mr Adama its Cottle. You need to get back right away, there's something wrong with Tamara. She 's all panicked and her temperature's through the roof" the gruff voice of Doc Cottle told him across the line and he swallowed a hard lump that had developed in his throat.
"I'll come straight away" Bill felt worry pool in his stomach and he was already half way to his car before he'd flipped his phone shut. His foot didn't leave the gas until was already outside of New York City and well on his way home.
At his Mansion he had been greeted by the worried face of Tamara's personal maid and attendant Ishay Lane. She had almost run to greet him, eyes wide and lips pressed tightly together.
"I'm sorry for getting Doctor Cottle to ring you but neither of us can calm her down" her voice was near hysterical though Bill understood it perfectly. Ishay spent every day with Tamara and saw the young woman as a little sister and Bill knew how much Tamara adored Ishay.
"It's okay Ishay just take me to her" he ordered and she nodded quickly leading him to Tamara Adama's room. As he approached he could hear hysterical crying that made his heart break.
He flung the door open and was faced by a most heart wrenching sight. Tamara was curled up into a foetal position on the bed, knees clutched to her chest and tears flowing down her swollen. As soon as she saw him enter her room she had jumped up from the bed and thrown herself into his arms. Her pale frame was shaking violently and the skin pressed up against him was burning as if on fire. He wrapped his arms around her tightly
"Tam what's wrong?" he asked softly stroking her hair comfortingly
"It's all happening again Bill! The flood is coming and the planet will burn!" she looked up at him and her eyes were wide and frenzied sweat dripping down her face.
"You need to lie down Tam" he tried to push her towards the bed but she fought him off.
"Once more shall the great Caravan burn across deep space and the children of humanity shall be baptised in the blood of their makers. The dying leader shall see them numbered ten and twelve"
She suddenly went rigid in his arms and slid to the floor. He caught her and cradled her in his arms as she began to gasp for breath shaking violently with blood around her mouth "It will happen again no matter how Gaia and Uranus and their eternal angels try to stop it. Love could conquer all but you don't love her. You need her, find her Bill, find HER!"
And with that she was still. Bill could hear Ishay screaming for Doc Cottle but it was dimmed as a million miles away. All Bill could focus on was the young woman collapsed in his arms.
Tamara Adama his little sister, 25 years dead and the first human-robotic hybrid.
.~.
They were watching her sleep. Hand in hand, her hair on his shoulder. She had been furiously studying the scrolls that Galen had given her and now she was fast asleep on her desk, cheek stuck to the papers no doubt leaving an ink mark on her skin. The arrow of Apollo lay next to her on the desk glowing faintly in the dim light.
Gaia turned to Uranus and sighed, her lips pursed tightly together "She hasn't any faith. She needs faith"
He kissed her on the cheek "Just give her time. Galen planted the seed now it just needs to grow. Don't lose your own. Laura Roslin is strong no matter into what incarnation she is born"
"Will they be able to overcome this and find one another?" she asked him quietly and he smiled at her rubbing the ring she wore on her finger
"Just as we love another their love will overcome any barrier God places in front of them. A love like theirs can't just be forgotten. You should know that as you are the most precious part of my life for an eternity"
And so they watched over her as Gaius and Caprica materialised by their side. Gaia and Caprica shared a long look "She is dying and the child has begun to see. It's all beginning" Caprica sighed dejectedly "Again"
They continued their silent vigil as far away a life was extinguished and a small child dreamed of a great ship and a burning battle, the sands of time began to fall for the oncoming of the greatest choice that humanity would ever have to face.
This time all they could hope was that they would make the right choice.