Chapter 8
Helena wrote the translation way into the night, discovery with awe the story of Laura, who left to go down to a hostile planet, out of loyalty to her people, leaving behind the man who loved her. Helena took a late night walk on the darkened beach, letting the small waves brush her feet and thinking on what it must have been like, living in constant war, running for their lives, without a world to live in, out in space. Some people on earth were living that reality of war every day, but they had real air and ground under their feet, blue sky and sun. She thought about what Laura said about finding earth. Did she mean our earth? The earth orbiting around the sun? Or did she mean another habitable planet? The translation did not allow her to differentiate between the two terms. If it was our earth, then how did they know about it? They were in space, likely very far away in another region of the universe, so how did they know about earth? If they seeded the modern human race, how come they knew about this before getting here? Helena knew there had to be more to this story. She slept uneasy that night, seeing images of war and devastation and, when the sun rose out of the Indian Ocean like a ball of red fire pulled out of the water, Helena ordered some coffee and went back to continue translating.
"Baltar called the planet New Caprica. What a presumptuous name! Caprica, our beloved planet, was richer, warmer and more fertile than this ball of mud. Settling there proved itself a lot more difficult than expected. No surprise there! It is not a very hospitable planet. It is cold and wet. Most of the planet is too cold to be inhabited, with extensive polar caps. We settled on a place in the Northern hemisphere, but fairly low in latitude, which is warm enough. The planet's axis is titled enough to give that region a temperate climate. But it is still a lot colder than what we grew accustomed to. I'd say we arrived at the beginning of the spring. Snow and ice are melting rapidly in the valley and a large river swollen by the melting waters was running down to the sea into a delta with fertile sedimentary soil, which would probably be good for cultivation. So we settled in the valley, hoping that the river would not flood and the tides would not swipe us away. Some decided to settle in the nearby valley, where a small forest of deciduous trees is found. I imagine that with time and exploration, we will find better places to build houses, but for now it is probably better to remain together in a small city so that we can help each other with this process of rebuilding a world. It will take some time. For now our little town is just a mere camp and I hope that we will find enough raw material to erect buildings that are more solid and protect us better against the weather. The town is just rows and columns of tents with some of the fleet ships anchored nearby. Everyone seems to be relieved to be breathing fresh air and to start living to the natural rhythm of day and night."
"Today, I opened school for the first day. There are not many children in the fleet. We started by making an accurate census of the children by age and grade. Most teenagers are learning the work and skills directly from the adults. We are left with the younger group of children, only a few hundreds, since younger children would have been unlikely to travel with their parents at the time of the attacks. Several schools have been built up around New Caprica under my direct supervision to accommodate them. It took us a while to round up all of the supplies for the classrooms, I will be directly teaching the central school of New Caprica. We have some supplies such as tables and benches, writing supplies, a black board. All of this was installed in a tent. Chief Tyrol, on short leave from Galactica and under Bill's orders, made us wood stoves to keep our students warm, manufactured out of old steel drums, cider blocks and pipes. He made one for my tent as well, which is close by the school. Tyrol is a good man. He was so proud of setting up our schools as a project. On the opening of the school everyone came to greet the students. Tory and Maya were helping me with the school supplies, the teaching and the management. Bill did not come. I suspect that he did not get Baltar's authorization to go down on the planet. The two women will mostly help me with the teaching. They are not teachers, but we have no real teachers left in the fleet. None left with the qualifications, except for me and, in the school we set up teaching is done by anyone possessing enough skills, patience, and knowledge. They all will be multi-level classrooms, all students mixed and helping each other. It is less than ideal, but we have to adapt to our new circumstances. We are redefining our society, what to teach, how to teach it and what is important. Mostly it is important to pass our history to the younger generations, to those who will remember only space ships, because they were too young at the time of the attacks to remember anything else about who we are and where we came from. Lots of parents signed up their children, for the most part at elementary level. Older kids generally are learning jobs as apprentices. Jobs are passed by learning from those who know them best.
I am again a teacher. It has been a long time now, since I have been in an actual classroom. I have not taught anyone in years. I was so young then, idealistic and full of dreams. I wanted to change the world. And then I was involved in administration and then politics. I became chief of the Caprica city schools and then got involved in the campaign of mayor Adar. Then there was the presidential campaign. Adar was idealistic, just as I was. We were young both Richard and I. It was easy. His goals were to help the people and we were both attracted to the same ideals. It turned out naturally that our working relationship changed into a more personal one. We became involved with one another. He was married, not with me. But he became president and he nominated me as his Secretary of Education. That is when he began to change. Concessions made to power slowly changed his ideas, and he started to lose the ideals he was fighting for. He started to seek power for the feel of it, power as goal in itself. He became a politician, in the full sense of the term and I was dragged along with it. I hated what he became, and I hated myself for being part of it. But I still continued my relationship with him. I am not sure why. Maybe out of laziness, maybe out of lust, maybe out of comfort, maybe out of cowardice. I, then, did not comprehend love. I could not feel. I was using the words of love without really understanding their meaning. Still, we did have some good times. But lately, right before the attacks, Richard denied me the power to help the teachers' union and prevented me to intervene in a conflict that would likely have ended in bloodshed. That was the moment that changed everything between him and me."
"It was a simple matter really, a work strike in education, teachers not working and schools closed. Yet, it was bad, because during the time that the negotiations held up to a complete halt, students were not getting taught. Richard was ready to use force against them. I was not. Some of their demands were way over the top, but others seemed justified. I thought that with a thoughtful dialogue, we would be able to reach a compromise, for the better of the students. But for Richard, any yielding to their demands signified a sign of weakness, a loss from the government. Not for me. I felt that our strength laid in our ability to talk with one another and that there was not fault in listening to what they had to say. So when the leader of their movement came over to talk to me, I did not deny him the opportunity to present his grievances. It was the day of the attacks. It was the day I broke up with Richard. It was the day he got killed in this holocaust of universal dimensions. It was the day I discovered I had terminal cancer. It was a bad day. Richard and I had drifted apart long ago, and this was really the event that catalyzed our separation. When he fought me on this teachers' union issue, I knew our differences were too big to be reconciled. I left for the Galactica, knowing that on the next day I would be without a job and a lover. Nothing really mattered anymore. Richard did not know about my cancer. But my life already had turned upside down and had forever changed regardless of his decision about the strike. It had changed when my oncologist read me the final medical report. It just was about to change even more in the next hours."
"In the Colonial flight to the Galactica, I grieved my cancer spreading blindly through my body, without consideration for the life it was destroying, but I also regretted my very own stupidity. I was stupid for leaving it unchecked, in denial that I would get the same fate my mother had. I was then an empty woman, soon without a career, a love, a family and soon without a life. What was I thinking? Sleeping with a married man, who was the president and did not care about me. I always had been alone, since my family died. Having an empty relationship based on sex was not fulfilling. That is the state of mind I was in, when I stepped aboard the ship, Colonial Heavy 798. I had nothing left to loose. I had lost everything already. So I put my best smile and I did what I had to do to set up the Galactica as a museum, a tribute to the way big space ships, battlestars, used to be. Nobody had predicted the attacks. Our world would come apart and I would have to put my own self-pity aside."
"We faced an unprecedented destruction, a holocaust of universal dimensions. As the twelve colonies burned and vanished, each planet wiped in thousands of thermonuclear bombs, we realized that the handful of people on the ships would be the only survivors of the human race. And by a twist of fate, I was the only surviving member of the government. By some absurd rule of legal succession of power, I was the 43rd person in the chain of command, the only one alive. Nobody asked me if I was capable of ruling, or if I had been trained for such a responsibility. I just became president, because there was no one else left. It was overwhelming to think that everyone I once knew, neighbors, colleagues, acquaintances, the waiter of the little restaurant I used to go once in a while, the girls who would sell me coffee every morning at the shop around the corner of my office, my secretary, our beloved custodian, all were dead, burned in the most horrible manner. Richard and I had parted on a fight. I would never see him again. There was no time to make amends, or ask for forgiveness for the words said, and all the wrong doings we had done. The world had just ended and there was only one thing left to do, run away and try to survive as long as possible. It was just a matter of survival, not about big future plan, just survival."
"I knew I was dying. Chamalla would take me so far. It might slow things down and dull the pain. I knew it would not stop it. Visions were granted to me through the action of the Chamalla. Lots of priests elicit those by taking the drug, but none ever had the visions I had. I am their so-called 'dying leader', but I was cured by the blood transfusion from the cylon fetus, against my will, may I add. I was ready to die. Bill made that decision for me. I would never have accepted the blood of a cylon. I thought I would be finding the way to Earth. The prophecies of Pythia are not clear, and I am not sure what is real and not anymore. We have found this planet and this is not Earth. But people relax and they are happy to find a life that seems more normal. And I am not a leader anymore, just a normal woman among others and a teacher. Cancer is gone. It seems that Pythia might have been wrong. Or it never was meant to be me."
Helena stared at the text in disbelief. A cylon fetus, what on earth was that? How could the blood of a fetus cure Laura's cancer? Laura seemed to hate them. Nothing made any sense and she started to wonder if she had translated the text correctly. Then obviously, it had not cured it, since she ended up dying from the cancer ravaging her body. A mere respite and remission, that is all it was. She had no idea what the cylons were and she immediately assumed that they were some kind of alien specie, another ethnic group, or maybe an animal. And who was Pythia? Why did Pythia think she was a dying leader? Again Helena was stunned to see Greek mythology come back in these texts. Pythia was an oracle of Delphi, one of the priestesses of that temple who predicted the future. Did the oracle of Delphi exist in their world? Was this tradition continued in the Greek ancient world and mythology, with visions elicited by drug-induced hallucinations? It was incredible to find such reference in this text.
"Some people still call me 'Madame President'. It makes me laugh. I really never was elected. I was put there by fate. Gaius Baltar was elected. In many respects, he is more legitimate that I ever was. That goes to say something about our constituents, who were manipulated by the oldest trick in time, promises. They fell right for it. Fairy dust thrown in their eyes and they just wanted to be happy. They have suffered so much, gone through so much hopelessness, that they cannot take anymore any crude dose of reality. I was not going to lie to them to win an election."
Thank you for reading, please keep the reviews coming. I really appreciate them.
As school starts again tomorrow and I have to go back in real life and dedicate my time to my students, I will be posting a little less frequently to give myself time to continue Laura's story and go into Season 4 events, while working on the modern story of Helena.