Chapter 3 – The Black Forest

"Can I put my robes back on yet?" I asked haltingly, blushing. "Um…hallo?" Lieutenant Gaeta didn't respond, still staring wide-eyed at me as though mesmerized. It was beginning to get a bit awkward. I squirmed under his slack-jawed gaze, finally focusing my attention on Gaius, who was glancing between Gaeta and I with a sulky, jealous expression. "Can someone please explain what is going on?!"

Gaius only pouted in response. "Felix never looked at me like that. I bet you think you're so bloody special. Frakking Cylon."

I rolled my eyes heavenward in exasperation. "I change my mind about this whole atonement thing, God—I think I've suffered enough, you can let me get back to my normal life now where things MADE SENSE!"

Suddenly the cabin door swung open and in marched a barrage of officials led by the crater-faced man who I had upset earlier…the whole, y'know, blowing-up-the-wall fiasco, really not my finest moment. With him stood a number of military escorts, including the muscular blonde woman who interrogated me earlier. The crater man in charge saluted to the guards who wordlessly unbolted the gate to the cell. I flushed a fierce red as the group filed in and stared at me with serious expressions, save for the blonde, who looked completely unfazed, even bored. "Niiice," she chuckled. "Well, kudos on the peep show. I've got to get back to, you know, my job."

"While we're at it, can I get back to my execution?" I drawled. "It sounded much less painful."

"Let's cut to the chase, Lieutenant," the gruff man growled at Gaeta, "what have you discovered about the Earthling copy?"

"It's—it's quite remarkable, Admiral, sir," Gaeta stammered, apparently unable to tear his eyes off me. "I couldn't believe it at first, myself, but there is no other feasible explanation…these two men are not identical copies! As logic stands, neither of them is, in fact, a Cylon!"

A collective gasp went up around the room, and I heard Gaius quietly cry out "No!" in disappointment. The Admiral's military escort crowd positively shook with excitement, everyone jostling to get a better look at me. "That's what I've been telling you, you asses," I snapped.

"What the hell, Felix, anyone can see they're exactly the same!" barked a guard near the back of the room.

"No, no, the Lieutenant's got it right," gasped the blonde woman in front, who was now sizing me up with an uncharacteristically shell-shocked expression. With their identically stunned-dumb expressions, she and Gaeta could be in the running for the next Cylon pair, I thought to myself wryly. "My Gods, I…I can't believe I didn't notice it right off the bat, he's right, they're totally different!"

I looked at Gaius, who had tears rolling from his swollen eyes by now, and saw nothing but a crying reflection of myself, mirror image down to the last miniscule detail. "Are you absolutely sure?" I queried honestly. Just looking at him begged the question. "He looks….just like me."

"Starbuck, Gaeta, don't keep us all in suspense, out with it!" barked the Admiral, frustrated.

"If I may direct you attention to the Earth subject's, er, chest, sir," began Gaeta.

"Yeah, we all got us an eyeful of that already," a soldier called out. The crowd laughed, and I reddened.

Gaeta glared back, silencing them. "You will notice it's relatively devoid of body hair," he explained. I glanced down at myself, feeling self-conscious. "An interesting discovery, considering that Dr. Gaius Baltar possesses an incredibly profuse amount of chest hair! And I'm talking, like, a small afro-sized portion, sir. The difference is unmistakable."

All eyes turned to Gaius, who was sulking by himself in the far corner, murmuring "Gods damnit" to himself. He glanced up, realizing everyone's unspoken expectation. "Oh, please, I'm hardly in the mood," he sniffled. At a sharp look from Gaeta, he sighed, and wordlessly unbuttoned a single button of his shirt. My jaw involuntarily dropped. It looked like a small furry animal had burrowed there. It looked like the flippin' black forest.

"Holy crap, dude," whispered a guard.

The Admiral sported a genuine look of confusion. "Mr. Gaeta, how do you know this isn't some elaborate—albeit ridiculous—Cylon ploy? How do you know the final five can't, I dunno, change their appearance to trick us? I mean, Gods, look at that hair, it just can't be real!"

"Oh believe me, sir, Dr. Baltar has always looked this way," Gaeta said evenly. "You see, I'm very familiar with his habitual appearance, I…" Gaeta suddenly blushed and trailed off into an indistinguishable tangent of mumbles.

"What's that, son? Out with it!" the Admiral barked.

"I…I keepapictureofhiminmybunk," Gaeta stammered quickly, blushing. "But I'm sure you can ask any of the Doctor's, er, female acolytes to verify. As I'm sure you know, he keeps close company with a group of women in the Sector E area."

The cantankerous Admiral paused, clearly frustrated by his newfound lack of justification for throwing me out of the airlock. "I want them examined extensively by Doc Cottle, I want blood tests, DNA tests, every frakking test in the frakking book! I want this confirmed as a verifiable fact!" He cast a furious glance around the room. "You're all dismissed! Back to work! And you two—" he fixed Gaius and I with a fiery gaze as the soldiers and Lieutenant Gaeta shuffled towards the door, "—you just stay put, in your cell, until Cottle sends for you. I want no more frakking funny business."

He turned and stormed out of the cabin as I graciously re-buttoned my robes. The rest of the crew filed out after him, the blonde soldier Starbuck pausing only to smirk back at me—"Hell of a peep show,"—and then they were gone, the cabin empty save for Gaius and I.

There was an awkward pause as I watched him wiping his teary eyes in silence. "Hey…take it easy, it's for the best really," I reassured him feebly, scarcely understanding why he wanted to be a Cylon in the first place. "I mean, I'm sure you have a decent life on the Battlestar as it is. Like that whole sector-E-fangirl-harem thing, what's that about? That doesn't sound like something to cry over, you lucky bastard." Gaius chuckled despite himself. "That's right. Sounds a lot better than the life I left on Earth."

"Yes, I suppose things could be worse," Gaius mused. "And- hey! Now I have a second me! You know, that's actually always been a dream of mine. I could introduce you to my girls! We could paint the town red, as it were!" He beamed at me. I grinned back nervously.

"Heh, I dunno," I replied self-consciously. Irrepressibly, I recalled the memory of Starbuck laughing at me as I blushingly stood before her in my skivvies. "I've never really had a way with women."

"Nonsense, you'll be a hit!" he babbled on, oblivious of my discomfort. "Those crazy girls'll be all over you, they'll probably dig the whole 'otherworldly' thing, those frakking wacked-up broads— "

Mercifully, the cabin door swung open, bringing Gaius' macho tirade to a halt. In stepped a thoroughly unremarkable woman in a lab coat and her marine escort. She motioned to the guards, who opened the cell and beckoned us out. "Hello Dr. Baltar, and, um, Earthling," she smiled. "Dr. Cottle will see you now. Please follow me."