Chapter 12

Deconstructing

Day 4

The lights in the Brig snapped on suddenly, jarring him awake. Apollo groaned and put his arm over his eyes. Sleep seemed infinitely preferable to being awake right now. He hadn't had a full night's sleep in days and the temptation to let himself sink back into oblivion was almost irresistible. He sighed and eased himself into the present, mentally flicking through the list of flight schedules, pilots and damaged Raptors for the pre-flight briefing. He wondered how Laura Roslin was doing, hoping that his father had finally seen sense and taken this as an opportunity to keep her in sick bay rather than sending her back to the Brig. His father had been so gentle with her – he hadn't seen his Old Man that affectionate since, well, since forever. Something told him that Laura Roslin wouldn't be coming back in here.

He lay for a moment longer with his arm over his eyes enjoying the last of the peace before the day crashed in on him. He could hear the guard shuffling a little, obviously wondering whether to do any more to wake him. Apollo let out a long slow breath rubbing his hands over his eyes as he sat up slowly, yawning and blinking in the bright light. The first thing he saw was Desmond standing at the bars that separated their adjoining cells, watching him intently.

As soon as their eyes met, Desmond immediately started speaking in an anxious, agitated voice. 'I want some answers, brother, and I want them now.'

Apollo groaned. This was the last thing he needed right now. OK - he got it that this was probably why his father had put Desmond in here, to rough up his time in hack a little; it would have seemed like a peaceful oasis if he'd been alone

'We're on a ship, right? Right?' Desmond held onto the bars separating their cells. He'd clearly been awake for a while, though at least he'd had the good sense to wait until Apollo had woken up before launching into his barrage of questions. And why was he asking if they were on a ship? Apollo was quite sure that Desmond knew exactly where he was.

'Why are you asking me, Desmond?' Apollo swung his legs over the bed and ran his fingers through his hair.

'Because I want to know!' Desmond banged the bars hard, the sound rattling around the room. The guard stood up and raised his rifle. Apollo signaled him to stand down.

Desmond started pacing his cell. 'I mean, if this is a ship, then where are we? What happened to the Island? Is this some sort of Dharma base or something? Look, I know I used the fail-safe key, and I'm sorry if it messed with your system, but I had no choice. The bloody computer got smashed, there was nothing else I could do - the building was falling apart. There was nothing else I could do, OK?' Desmond was shouting now, his face contorted with a mixture of rage and desperation.

Apollo stood up, keeping his voice low and calm. 'You smashed the computer?'

'No! I didn't smash the computer, I thought it was all true – look, I was trying to save everyone, I thought we were going to die!'

'Where was the computer, on this ship?' Apollo was fully alert now, all traces of sleep gone.

'No, no! It was on the Island, in the Hatch on the Island. Is this another hatch? Is this one connected somehow? Is that it? Why won't you tell me where we are!' Desmond slammed his fists harder on the bars, causing Apollo to take a wary step back. He watched Desmond coolly, quickly weighing up the situation.

'Where do you think you are, Desmond?'

Desmond ran his hands nervously through his hair. 'I've no bloody clue. You say I'm on a ship, but you don't say where. I was on the Island, and the next thing I know I wake up here and no one, no one will tell me what's going on.' Desmond's voice cracked. He looked dirty, disheveled and scared - the picture of a desperate man who genuinely didn't know what the hell was happening to him.

Perhaps it was much simpler than any of them had thought; perhaps Desmond was just crazy – he turns up naked in the CIC without one clue about where he is and then ends up in the Brig. Wrong place at the wrong time, though how he got into the CIC in the first place was anybody's guess. But then all of them were strung so tight that anything out of the ordinary would put them on full alert. What if this was just a huge mix-up? What if this crazy man genuinely had no idea where he was? Perhaps this island he was talking about was some sort of mental institution. What if it was as simple as that?

Apollo was beginning to feel almost sorry for this guy. It had been drilled into him by his grandfather that it was beholden on a society to assume innocence rather than guilt - even if it meant believing some half baked lie from one of the succession of murderers and thieves that he had insisted on defending. Joseph Adama had always maintained that a society was judged on how it treated it's criminals. Apollo at least owed it to his grandfather's memory to hear Desmond out on his own terms rather than assuming immediately that he was a Cylon spy out to destroy them – though given the circumstances, Apollo wasn't even sure they had luxury of allowing themselves to behave like civilized people anymore. Desperation was turning them into savages.

Desmond stood quietly waiting for Apollo to speak. Apollo quietly met his gaze, 'Where are you from?' he could hear his own voice softening.

'I've already told you, I'm from Glasgow.' Desmond was quieter now. Something had shifted in the room. Maybe Desmond had sensed that Apollo was giving him a chance to explain.

'Which Colony, Desmond? – which planet?'

'Are you serious?' Desmond stared at him dumfounded, 'What planet am I from?' He shook his head. 'You telling me I'm crazy?'

'I never said you were crazy. It's a simple question. Which planet-'

'What is this? Oh, I get it, that's a joke, right? Captain Apollo. Planet. Ha ha.'

'Apollo's my call sign. My name is Lee'

'Alright Lee, why don't you just tell me where I am and what I'm doing here?'

'Desmond, where were you when the Colonies were destroyed?'

'Colonies? Look, I was locked up in that Hatch for three years, three years pushing that bloody button, I had no idea what was happening in the outside world.'

'Then how did you get here, Desmond?'

'I told you, I don't know.'

Apollo leaned back a little. This was getting nowhere. He decided to try a different tack. 'So, Desmond, what are you, 'Caprican? Sagittarian?'

'You want to know my star sign?'

Apollo shook his head. He checked the clock on the wall. He didn't have time for this. His shift started in ten minutes. He had to go. He felt a pang of guilt - Desmond represented too great a threat to Galactica to be allowed to remain on board. He knew that. Those were the facts. Their cozy chat just now may well have been Desmond's only chance for anyone to hear his side of it. That sucked. Along with losing the fleet, the Cylons nuking their home worlds and most everything else that had happened over the last two months. It all sucked. Every last bit of it. He caught the attention of the guard who immediately stepped forward and opened his cell door.

He knew his father wanted him to assess this prisoner, but there wasn't time. His first impression was that the guy's hold on reality was precarious, but he could easily be faking it, blanking every question with feigned ignorance. It wouldn't be hard to fake what Desmond was doing. But in the end, what the hell difference did it make? The fleet was gone. Though if this guy wasn't responsible for the virus on the ship, then that still left the question of who was. There wasn't time to figure it out now though; their priority had to be finding the fleet – and time was running out fast for many of the civilian ships.

He took one last look at Desmond, shook his head and waited as the guard opened the main hatch door, stepped back quickly as Colonel Tigh pushed his way in, flanked by four heavily armed marines. For a moment Apollo's heart was in his throat as he thought that this was it - they were coming for him, but then he realized the marines were surrounding a skinny dark haired man dressed in civilian clothes. He stepped back in surprise and waited while they formed a little procession into the Brig.

'The Old Man found another one,' muttered Tigh as he ambled past. 'This one was in his quarters. Here. Your orders.' And with a grunt he handed Apollo the ubiquitous piece of paper. Apollo sighed and took it from him, noticing Tigh's smirk as he sauntered out of the Brig.

He waited as the new man was put in the cell next to his, the one Laura Roslin had occupied. Like Desmond, this guy had a beard and hair down to his shoulders. He looked rather incongruous with a white shirt and a black tie. Now that Apollo had vacated his cell there was an empty space between the two prisoners; they could still speak but would be unable to physically interact with each other

Apollo glanced down at the sheet. His orders were to interrogate the two prisoners, see how they interacted with each other and try to find out whether they were working with other Cylon agents on board Galactica; he then had to report directly to his father before resuming his duties as CAG. Simple and straightforward. The only problem was that there was one of him and he was due in the briefing room in half an hour.

He sighed, mentally going through the list of pilots to see who he could find to take on some of his duties this morning. The only name he could come up with was Starbuck. She was the only one with the experience to act as CAG. The rest – hell, his father was right; there wasn't anyone else.

Apollo closed the hatch door and stood outside the cells, watching the new prisoner carefully. Being his fathers 'go to' man and occupying the role of disgraced prisoner was becoming more and more crazy. The poor guards didn't know how to treat him. One minute he was in the cells locked up and the next here he was playing interrogator as their superior officer. It was ridiculous. And now Colonel Tigh had doubled the guard inside the Brig so there were two marines huddled at the small table, both bristling with weapons so there was barely room for any of them to turn around. If their situation hadn't been so tragic Apollo would have laughed. Instead he shook his head ruefully and focused on the scene in front of him..

At first the new prisoner looked confused and a little frightened. He stood still for a moment before twisting around and assessing his surroundings. He finally turned to Apollo and said in a small voice, 'Look, I need to explain – I really am no threat to you at all, and I realize this must sound a little odd, but-' he stopped speaking when he caught sight of Desmond in the far cell. 'Ah, did he turn up the way I did?' Apollo's eyes widened in surprise.

'I'll take that as a yes.' The new prisoner turned across to Desmond, 'Hey! I'm Faraday. Daniel Faraday. Queen's College, Oxford. And…as we are the only two locked up here I'm guessing that you're from Earth as well, right?'

Apollo stood leaning on the guard's table, his arms folded across his chest. He had a sudden urge to laugh. Earth? This was becoming more farcical by the second. Either farcical or very dangerous. He sobered up quickly. One crazy man, yes. But not two. And certainly not with one of them dangling Earth in front of them. What the hell was going on? He suddenly began to see why his father had put these two in here.

When Desmond made no move to speak, Faraday raised his eyebrows in surprise, 'Earth?' he persisted, 'It's a planet – I'm looking for-'

'Oh for god's sake!' Desmond rounded on the new man, moving to the edge of his cell and practically shouting his fury through the bars. 'Look, I know what you're up to and it won't work, OK?'

'And you are…?'

'You know who I am!' Desmond spat out the words between gritted teeth.

Apollo turned curiously to Desmond and then across to Faraday.

Faraday's eyes narrowed, 'OK… whoever you are… what is it I'm up to? – why don't you just enlighten me?'

'You drugged me and brought me here as part of a mind experiment to see just how far you could push it. Well, I know what's going on and it's not going to work.'

'You think I drugged you and dragged you here…?'

Apollo couldn't help a wry smile. So much for these two working together as Cylon spies. Unless of course they had this little double act all planned…

Faraday squinted across Apollo's empty cell to Desmond. 'I'm guessing you just found yourself here, not knowing how you arrived, right? And you are from Earth, yes?' there was a tinge of sarcasm to the new man's voice, quickly covered over when he saw Desmond's expression. 'Look, I can understand that this is all very confusing for you, but I can explain how you got here and I think I've figured out how to get us back-'

Apollo stepped forward. 'Hold on, you're saying you're both from Earth?' He had to hand it to them, they certainly had his attention now.

'Well what planet do you think you're from, brother?' it was Desmond's turn for sarcasm.

'Caprica. I'm from the planet Caprica.' There was silence.

Faraday was smiling, 'The planet Caprica? That's amazing. Absolutely amazing – what's it like? And this ship, we are in space, aren't we? I could tell when I mapped your position, but how far are we from your home planet?'

Faraday's questions were laced with such sincerity and enthusiasm that in spite of himself Apollo could feel himself getting drawn in. He pulled his focus back to reality, 'You think you're from Earth? You think you're from the Thirteenth Tribe? So how did you get here? Where's your ship?'

'Oh, I don't have a ship. No, not a ship. I rode here on the back of an energy matrix – which, I assume was his.' He pointed to Desmond.

'An energy matrix?' Apollo restrained the urge to laugh out loud. OK, so they were both crazy.

'Yes, incredible, isn't it?' Faraday was smiling with enthusiasm. 'I had no idea that this was even possible – I mean, of course it was within the realms of possibility, but let's face it, some of the possible scenarios did seem pretty unlikely. But this? I was getting close to replicating the movement of consciousness through space-time, but it hadn't occurred to me that the movement of bodies could be a reality. I didn't think it was possible myself. But here we are!' Apollo stared at him with his mouth open. This was definitely not what he had expected.

Faraday's expression grew serious. 'Look, I realize that our arrival must have seemed a little alarming, but I assure you,' and here he started waving his arms expansively and speaking slowly and carefully as if Apollo didn't speak English, 'that we mean you no harm. We just got caught in an experiment that worked really, really well. Now,' he said more briskly, directing his words at Desmond, 'I think I've figured out how to get us back, but-' and he turned again to Apollo, 'You'll have to let us out of here first.'

'You want me to let you out?' Apollo smiled. Of course he does.

'Yes.'

'And why would I want to do that?'

'Well, for a start because you are clearly advanced enough to understand the implications of what is happening; we don't belong here – and although I don't necessarily hold to the position that space-time is vulnerable to random violent events, there is still the possibility that this is the case. And… well, to be honest, I'm wondering if I haven't just opened a Pandora's box. On balance the best thing, I think, in the circumstances would be for you,' he pointed at Apollo, 'to let us go and for me,' he pointed to his chest, 'to try and send back the ones who got pulled in from this side-'

Apollo shook his head in a sort of amused disbelief. 'Hold on, you're trying to tell me that someone from here has gone - where?'

'I'm saying that two separate event sequences went from this place to Earth - once the hole had been opened in space-time they must have been sucked into it. I can draw you a map if you like.'

What was this? Crazy land? What should he do, go along with it, or just walk out and start flying Raptor missions to try and find the fleet? With an ache he suddenly wished Starbuck were here. With her brutal good sense it would take her all of two seconds to start scaring the crap out of these two clowns. She always found a way to ram some sense into a situation. Not always the sense he wanted, but… with an effort he pulled himself back to the present. He had to focus on the two jokers in front of him. Fine. What did it matter?

'A map. Yeah. That would be good.'

'Pen? Paper?' Faraday's expression was confident, almost cocky now. A little bit like Baltar, Apollo realised with a sigh. Didn't the guy realize the danger he was in?

Apollo pulled out a flight schedule from his pocket and handed it across the bars, reluctantly giving Faraday a short pencil as well. He hoped he wasn't going to stab anyone with it, but Faraday took the pencil like a long lost friend and started drawing quickly on the back of the paper.

'I'll draw it to scale to make it clearer.' He marked a series of lines across the paper to make a grid, 'Be easier if I had a straight edge.' He looked up as if Apollo should have supplied him with a decent ruler and set square as well, then frowned in concentration and turned his attention back to the page. 'OK, here is where we are, and here and here are where the two events occurred. There is a large mass here – I assume that is a planet - and at the time there were various signatures here, here and here.' Apollo looked down at the picture emerging from the page. He could see it too. The planet was Kobol and Faraday was mapping out their positions, marking in each ship.

'How did you get this information?' Apollo's voice was sharp with suspicion. Faraday glanced up dismissively, then realised from the look on Apollo's face that a more careful response was needed.

'OK, just imagine that a hole is punched through the fabric of space-time, so that for that one moment it is possible to measure across the folds.' He raised his eyebrows as if that should be all the explanation Apollo would need in order to understand what he was trying to say, but when he saw Apollo's look hardening, he reassessed his explanation, 'Look, space and time are linked, a bit like that blanket over there. If you can think of individual times and locations in space as separate folds in the blanket and at the same time hold onto the idea that it is still one blanket, then that is sort of an analogy as to how the deeper levels of the universe are constructed. Once a hole was made in one fold I could see through to a completely different fold. And then it was simply a matter of mapping the energy matrix signatures that I could see. If you want to know how I did that, well, it would involve a visit to my lab in Oxford, which could be arranged, but probably wouldn't be such a good idea as I have no clue how all this is affecting the timelines here or on Earth - and I would be a pretty poor scientist if I just went around screwing the human race, now wouldn't I?'

Faraday delivered a final, patronizing smile and a wave of his arm before he turned back to the map, 'Now, here are where the two events happened – one here,' he circled a small marker near Kobol, 'and the other here,' another circle, nearer the fleet this time. 'Both had two life signatures.'

Apollo looked curiously at the diagram in front of him, there was the Base Star orbiting Kobol, there was the fleet, and…

'...and when was this supposed to have happened?'

'Ah, well, the when is a tricky one; when is a very relative term - but there was a massive energy discharge just as this one popped through,' he circled the small mark near the planet Kobol, 'and this one happened at roughly the same time, though it was further from the epicenter, so it's trajectory was more curved. Do your ships have some sort of hyper light capability?'

'FTL, yes.'

'FTL?'

'Faster than light. It's a hyper light drive.'

'Ah, OK, yes, yes that makes sense. If that was activated around the area here, near the hole, then yes, they would have been sucked back in. Of course, that makes sense now. And that might explain why he,' he pointed over at Desmond again, 'was pulled in– does this ship have a hyper light too?'

Apollo nodded.

'Right, so that would explain it – somehow the ship's hyper light must have activated in the same event field, creating a sort of push-pull effect.'

'In that case why didn't Galactica get sucked in too?'

'Too big, I guess. The hole isn't vast, but it would have produced enough of a cascading effect to create a significant vortex – though certainly not large enough for anything other than a small craft.'

Apollo had to admit he was shaken. This man was clearly some sort of Cylon spy. There was no other way he could have plotted their positions with that level of accuracy. He hesitated a moment, figuring out whether or not he should tell his father before or after the pre-flight briefing.

Faraday must have sensed his hesitation because he quickly added, 'Look, I know it's a lot to take in, but I think it's important that we work together on this - Oh, and in the spirit of mutual cooperation… that virus that the Commander showed me? – here, these are the four possible permutations.' He wrote down a series of numbers. 'I think that's right. I got a good look at the figures, so I'm pretty sure that's correct. I never forget a number – here.'

Apollo looked confused.

'The virus,' explained Faraday, 'That's the solution. Those four are the only possible trajectories - I assume they're coordinates. They would all involve the use of a hyper light drive, though – let's see, one of them would find you about here, I guess,' he marked a position on the map he had drawn, 'Another around here, third one here and the fourth is off this map - here, I'll scale it to a smaller graph,' he drew a small square box, marking in the landmark of Kobol and placing an X in the corner of his new grid, '- somewhere over here.'

Apollo was stunned. These were complex calculations. Not even Gaeta or Baltar could plot a set of jump coordinates from a string of numbers without running it through several subroutines first. Faraday must have read his thoughts, 'I've always been good at numbers. Lousy with names but great with numbers.' He handed the paper through to Apollo, and reluctantly gave him the pencil as well. 'I'd really appreciate my notebook back,' he said wistfully.

Apollo looked down at the piece of paper. Was this for real? What was this supposed to be? Faraday had said it was the resolution of the virus, but why would the virus need resolving? Surely it had fulfilled it's purpose already. The fleet was scattered. Was Faraday really saying that the fleet were at those coordinates? Or maybe it was just a ridiculous story with a very accurate map of all their positions and the positions of various Cylon Base Stars that he couldn't possibly have known about unless he was some kind of Cylon agent. He nodded to Faraday and moved away from his cell. He gestured to one of the guards to open the hatch door to the Brig. As the guard opened the door, he gave him a puzzled look. Apollo shrugged and headed toward the flight deck.