Chapter Seven
"Commander Adama wants to meet with you." Dr Salik said as she helped Jessica into a fresh white t-shirt. Freshly sponge bathed, Jessica shivered, her skin still slightly damp. It felt good to be clean. "I suggested he come by this afternoon. There's someone I think you should talk to first. Elosha. She's our priestess." Jessica slid off the bed and slipped on a pair of uniform pants. She went to fasten the button and remembered she only had one good hand. She cursed Lee Adama for the fifth time. Dr Salik saw the girl's dilema and helped her with the zipper and top button.
"Thanks. But I'm not all that religious." Jessica told her curtly.
"Oh, I'm sure religion doesn't have to come into it at all, if you tell her so. She's just a good listener. At the beginning of the war she helped many of us get through the horrors we had seen." Salik explained. "It could help you to sort out your thoughts with her. Calm your mind. The sooner that happens the sooner your brain can heal itself physically." the doctor offered. Jessica admitted it was a sound idea. If she could get control of her frayed nerves then perhaps she could begin to undo the damage in her mind. "And she won't try and preach at me?" Jessica asked warily. She'd had her fill of religion listening to prayers that were never answered.
Salik gave her a small smile. "Just tell her how your feeling."
"I'm feeling like I've lost my mind and I'll never get it back." Jessica replied softly. Salik placed a comforting hand on her shoulder.
So much for no religion. Jessica thought as Dr Salik led her into the large chapel room.
"I can stay with you if you like?" Dr Salik offered but Jessica shook her head. The room looked more like an auditorium with it's rows of steel backed chairs but there was a different air about the place. A softness. tapestries of different religious scenes were displayed like victory pendants along the wall. The words "Lords of Kobol, hear our prayer." were spread out in yellow cloth above the podium. Behind the podium, protected by a pane of glass were thick long sheets of paper, rolled up into scrolls. Jessica felt the moment that the priestess entered the room but neither aknowledged the others presence just yet. Jessica liked that. The older woman was letting her make the first move. She tilted her head to read through the glass, some of the words on the scroll. The creation story. She'd learned it in school and then learned a different version from her mother.
"You think they saved you." Jessica said finally turning around to face the woman. Elosha smiled at her serenely.The colorfully robed black woman glided more than she walked towards Jessica.
"They did." she said with a quiet confidence that spoke volumes to Jessica.
"I don't believe that."
"You will." Elosha replied, not with the assertion of precognition, but with the certainty of one who had made her own discoveries.
"You stopped yourself before you pulled the trigger. The Lords weren't there." Jessica reminded her. It irked her more that the priestess didn't bother arguing with her. "You're alive because you chose to be. That's all life is. A series of choices." Jessica insisted.
"Have a seat, please." Elosha offered pointing to the chairs in the first row. "If you so choose." she added with a smile. Jessica titlted her head at the woman but found herself smiling. The woman put her at ease so simply. Jessica took an aisle seat and sat quietly for a while, staring up at the scrolls.
"I feel like my mind isn't mine anymore." she began, her eyes burning.
"If not yours than who's?"
"Theirs. The Cylons. My parents, Commander Adama's. Even Dr Salik. But not mine." Jessica blinked back tears. My every thought is consumed by them. Their emotions. The Cylons did what they wanted with my brain and now I'm spread in a thousand dfferent directions. Picking up everything and I can't seem to remember how to turn it off."
"Have you tried meditation?" Elosha asked her.
"Salik said it was too early. The drugs the Cylon's doctor gave me have just begun to wear off. Dr Salik doesn't want me doing anything to push my brain before it's ready. In the mean time, I'm like a frakking satellite dish with no off switch. Even you." Jessica lowered her head, tears falling into her lap. "I can feel what those men did to you. Taste the gag they stuffed into your mouth. You were a virgin." Jessica placed her hand over the older woman's. She felt the priestess shiver at the memory but stronger was Elosha's sense of peace. "How?" Jessica asked shaking her head. "How can you believe in Gods that allowed that to happen to you? My mother believed in one God that was omnipresent. Loving and merciful. And then she watched her husband hang and then was she herself riddled with bullets. Are you gonna tell me that your Gods are different? I have no interest in either your Lords of Kobol or her God." Jessica stood up and walked back over to the scrolls. "When they were about to kill her, she looked at me. She looked right at me and never wavered. And she was smiling. A smile so...so...pure." Jessica wiped at her cheeks.
"There is your answer." Elosha said and Jessica turned back to her in confusion. "You can choose to call it whatever you like. The Lords of Kobol, your mother's God. Or simply love. Love was there in that room with your mother and I believe that is why she smiled at you. Her God, her love for you was her shield from anything the Cylons could do to her. They cannot touch her now."
"Because she's dead." Jessica hissed. "You explain to me how a loving and merciful God can allow the Cylons to exist."
"Man created the Cylons." Elosha reminded her.
"But if the Lords are all powerful why don't they just stop them?"
Elosha stood up and pulled a leather bound book from inside of the podium, then walked back to Jessica. Elosha extended the book towards her. "Would you like to read this book?" Jessica reached for it but Elosha let it drop to the floor. The young woman stared up at the priestess in surprise.
"If the Lords of Kobol or your mother's God decreed that you could not read that book, would you still want to read it?"
"I don't even know what the book is-" Jessica said reaching down for it. A bible.
"That is why the Lords allow evil to exist. So you can make your own choice. Some will choose evil. But that is the price you, Jessica must pay if you want to read that book. Do you understand?" Jessica stared at the priestess, dumbstruck. But slowly she nodded.
"Now, if you choose to control your own mind. Then you will. You may feel that you have no control over your mind and how it reacts to things but you do. Or, you will. If you want me to help you, I can." Jessica stared down at the gold lettering on the cover of the book.
"Can I keep this?" Elosha smiled at her and nodded. Jessica rose up from her seat. "I'd better go meet with Commander Adama. Why did you choose not to die?" Jessica asked as the question came to her.
"They would have won. The Lords had more work for me to do." Jessica pondered that answer.
"I'd like to come back." Jessica said.
"I'll be here." Elosha replied softly.
