Chapter Eleven

Earth-New York City

Mother Aloysius led the Colonial missionaries down a hallway in the all-girls Catholic school known as the Convent of the Sacred Heart. Ursula glanced approvingly at the students dressed in the school uniform of white and maroon. They were all respectful to the school headmistress, nodding to her, occasionally curtsying to her and murmuring, "Mother."

As they walked down the hall, the priests noticed that one of what appeared to be a glass poster on the wall had moving images. It showed a model of the school below a throbbing sun almost completely hidden by moving dark clouds while several idealized snowflakes fell from beneath the clouds. Bar and pie graphs had moving colored parts and changing numbers. The poster—it was apparently a simplified version of the television—was titled SACRED HEART ENERGY USAGE, with today's date under the title.

It was apparent to the Colonials that the school was concerned with energy use and self-sufficient power production. It was also apparent from the students' nonchalant walking past the motion picture with almost no reaction that the children were completely used to the technology on display.

Ursula pursed her lips. She was old enough to remember the way Caprica, Virgon and Leonis were before the Cylon rebellion sparked off the First Cylon War. The reminder of antebellum Caprican technology only added to her inner unease with Earth's technological path. She mentally cursed that wealthy scientist Daniel Graystone for creating Cylons. His creation had smashed the Twelve Colonies' bright technological future and set the Colonies back for decades.

Mother Aloysius finally brought the Colonials to a glass partition separating a classroom from the hallway. The headmistress touched the glass wall and nodded at a notification that appeared at her fingertips.

"We can see in but the students won't be able to see us. We do not want to distract them from their academics, do we?" She smiled.

Students filed in and sat at their desks. Each of them brought out what appeared to be a frosted glass tablet out of their bags and put them on their desks. This action appeared to activate images on the large blank wall at the back of the classroom. Small pictures of the students' faces and their names appeared on the wall, apparently an attendance list. The teacher, another of the ubiquitous nuns of the school, smiled as she touched a colored panel in the wall, which turned out to be actually smart glass. The touch acknowledged the students' attendance and activated the day's lesson for the class. The teacher began to speak.

The missionaries noticed that the day's lesson automatically appeared in each of the students' tablets. As the teacher moved and touched parts of the graphics on the white wall, the corresponding parts also moved on the tablets. When she apparently asked for the students' homework assignment, the girls tapped in a command in their tablets and swiped toward the back wall. The teacher nodded in satisfaction when an envelope icon appeared and throbbed, and she pushed it aside to look at later.

The Colonials exchanged glances at each other while Aloysius smiled over the view of the class. This was yet more evidence of integrated Terran society. In passing, Elosha wondered if all Terran school children were taught this way, or was it only the select few or economically entitled that had this opportunity. That was something she was interested in finding out.

The teacher had chosen mathematics and then narrowed the choices down to geometry. As she spoke and showed various shapes and the mathematic equations for measuring the shapes, one of the girls tapped her tablet. In response, a transparent holographic image rose from her tablet, allowing her to see all sides of a pyramid.

The Colonials frowned at this new evidence of technological advancement. The more knowledgeable of them like Ursula, Luke and Linus knew that the processing power required for creating holograms while remaining network-integrated and multitasking would be immense. Linus, who was former military, scowled at the implications.

Mother Aloysius was polite enough to pretend to not having noticed the missionaries' reactions. She smiled graciously again and gestured for the clerics to move on with the tour of the school.

The sun was at its apex, though anyone looking would not know, considering the heavy grey overcast skies. Even so, the missionaries blinked in the daylight as they crowded out of the Convent of the Sacred Heart and hurried to the waiting limo to minimize their exposure to the cold as much as possible.

As they piled into the car, Tyberi said, "So, brothers and sisters, what do you think?"

"The classes are not much different from ours at home," said Ursula. "Except for the dominant religion and the monotheism, students from our temple schools would not feel out of place here." She added, "And of course, except for the technology here. It's too much like Caprica on the verge of creating Cylons!"

Linus nodded. "If a mere student could have the processing power at her command in a little tablet, imagine what's at the disposal of the military here. They could create their own Cylons at any time! Even more so with the Cylon refugees giving them information." He looked around at the city as if imagining it ruined and burning while genocidal robots rampaged and hunted for humans to exterminate in the streets of New York. What was the name of the movie that disturbed Luke so much? He sighed and put it out of his mind for the moment. "Did you notice that the nuns all look prim and uptight?" Linus asked to change the topic. "They're polite, even kind, to be sure, but…." He shrugged. "I guess that's what a life of chastity will do to you."

Elosha rolled her eyes but she couldn't help the small smile tugging at her lips. Men. He she repeated her question. "What do you think of the mass?"

The missionaries looked at each other. Linus and Tyberi shifted uncomfortably.

There were a few moments of silence until Luke decided to answer. "I caught some elements that are similar to those in our own rituals. Leading the congregation, petitioning the god with prayers; the use of holy wine, the use of an ancient sacred language in prayers and the priest wearing that stole and over-robe, for example. And the singing, too. Overall, a nice solemn service, like some of our temple services."

"Yes," interjected Julian. "But their god is a bleeding man nailed to a cross. Worshipping that is rather macabre. And that drinking of wine and eating of bread being…what did they call it, Luke?"

Luke consulted his open notebook. "Transubstantiation."

"Yes. That. They said when the priest blessed the wine and bread, they literally became the blood and body of their god." Julian shook his head in puzzled wonder. "They seem to still be just wine and bread. But still…even if it's only symbolic or allegory, it smacks of cannibalism. That's…unsettling."

Luke weakly smiled but a twinkle of amusement broke through his discomfort. "That's exactly how the ancient Romans saw the early Christians."

"It's like Mithras," pointed out Elosha. "The drinking of wine and eating of bread are part of the worship feast in honor of Mithras' salvation of the universe. Of course, that's not counting the water and meat in the feast. Don't forget the barley drink and cake in commemoration of the death and resurrection of Persephone."

"Yeah, but…ritual symbolic cannibalism?" insisted Julian.

Elosha nodded. "It's disturbing, but no less disturbing than the stories of men who commit the crime of spying on women's private celebrations of Dionysus—the offenders are torn apart by the women and often eaten." She shrugged. "Remember, we use symbols that could be construed as terrible as well. Such as the virgin human sacrifices made to Hecate in the V-world on Caprica before the Cylon Revolt. Even if it's all fake and symbolic, I'll admit it's disturbing."

Linus spoke up. "I'm not sure if I understand the rationale behind their god. I mean, if this Jesus is the Son of God, how is he also God himself? What did they call it? The Trinity. It's confusing."

Tyberi said, "That's one thing I don't understand—"

"One thing?" quipped Linus.

Tyberi ignored that. "Their beliefs are…interesting to say the least. Item: God created Man and Man was originally sinless and innocent. The first man and woman ate a forbidden fruit that God planted and were punished for it even though they had no sense of right or wrong before eating the fruit, so humans are now born with their original sin. Item: To forgive humans of that sin, God became his own son and sacrificed his son for the salvation of human mortals from that sin. Item: The only way for humans to be saved from that sin is to accept God's son as their savior—the son who is also God himself. I may not be as clever as Luke here, but…does that mean God sacrificed himself to himself to save humans from the sin of a distant ancestor disobeying him in a garden? Am I missing something?"

Luke consulted his notes. "You didn't miss anything as far as I can see. It's confusing for me, too." He shrugged. "Like they said, it's a mystery. I guess people have to accept all that on faith. Just like we'd have to accept on faith the story of Zeus swallowing his pregnant wife Metis and then Athena came out of Zeus' head fully grown and armed; just like we'd have to accept on faith the story that Dionysus was 'twice-born'—taken out of his dying mother and put into Zeus' thigh to be brought to full term at birth."

"Please stop," begged Linus. "You're all giving me a headache as if Athena herself is in my head."

Luke looked around at his fellows. "You know, the Romans said the Christians were atheists."

That puzzled Tyberi. "How? They have a god."

Luke smiled. "Yes, but they denied all other gods like the Cylons denied the Lords of Kobol. They did not believe in any other god but their own. So even though they worship God, they are also atheistic about all the other gods."

The missionaries groaned and rolled eyes at that.

"Well," thought Tyberi aloud, "the difference is we know the Lords of Kobol are real and their God is false."

"They would say the same thing about us," countered Elosha. "Remember that this form of monotheism overran our Terran counterparts. I wonder what would have happened if this Christianity had become rooted in our culture?"

Tyberi looked at the priestess as if she was being stupid. Elosha mentally shrugged and settled back in her seat as the limo hummed its way through the city streets. "I wonder how their Protestant and Orthodox counterparts differ in comparison."

A thoughtful silence reigned until Damari clapped her hands once for attention. "Well, we will be at the American Museum of Natural History soon. I hope it will be even more of an education for us all." She turned to Tyberi. "I've just gotten word over my phone that Lucy has been cleared to join us at the museum."

A flicker of worry swept across the high priest's face. Tyberi took a deep breath and murmured, "At least she wasn't there at the Catholic school."

He avoided Ursula's cool calculating gaze.

The limo pulled up on the street in front of the American Museum of Natural History. Even though it was still somewhat early, the wide sidewalk and the steps leading up to the museum were packed, filled with people walking and waiting to obtain their tickets into the museum. Most people simply pre-purchased, but not everyone. Even though the local society has been slowly but inexorably moving toward a credit economy, cash wasn't dead yet.

For the arriving missionaries, the face of the museum offered a magnificent view and the first real opportunity for them to interact with the locals as well as see some of the sights. Driving past the museum, they could see different architectural styles that went into the museum's construction. That told them that the institution had expanded in different periods of local history. At the moment, where the limo was parked, the museum façade appeared old with rough stone blocks. Two sets of stairs led visitors up to the entrance, now hidden by a low arched bridge separating the stairs. A fountain bubbled in the middle of a small garden gracing the small plaza in front of the museum. Father Patrenus, Julian, Luke, Linus, and Priestess' Elosha Gale and Ursula Silva stepped out of the limo into the brisk chilly air. They look up at the museum, ignoring the pedestrians on the sidewalk not far away.

"Here, we are, the VIP entrance," Damari told them.

"Wait," asked a perplexed Tyberi. "'VIP'?"

"VIP means 'Very Important Person', the same as back home in the Colonies. You are honored guests."

Tyberi frowned. "We're here to interact with the locals as well as see some of the sights. This is our first real opportunity to do that. Oh, the school doesn't count. We want to see the regular daily people outside of the members of the exclusive upper classes. Our messages are not just for the rich and powerful."

"But…the security concerns…," Damari pressed.

"Ambassador Adar insisted that our itinerary be made public record. He said that since we're here on Earth, we can't remain hidden forever—our purpose is to make contact with the people here. I agree. Otherwise, how can the Terrans have any opportunity to come up to us and hear us while we learn from them?"

Damari deflated. "Very well. The car will take us to the main entrance."

"No. We'll walk. It's just around the corner, right?"

"…Yes." She signaled the two Terran plainclothes security personnel with a nod and they fanned out to discretely flank the missionaries as they walked down the sidewalk.

Several reporters had arrived at the scene and begun to shadow the missionaries at a short distance behind them. Some of the Colonials were not pleased by the extra attention but that couldn't be helped. Some of the other Colonials were pleased, though. The extra attention would only serve to help spread the messages of the Lords of Kobol via the missionaries more than just the basic face-to-face meetings so far. Nevertheless, the Terran security offered more than sufficient protection and, in order to avoid an incident, they'd do everything in their power to keep their 'guests' safe. No one surrounding them really cared. To the people milling around on the sidewalk and in front of the museum, the Colonials were simply just another set of tourists. The walk turned out to be not as short as they'd like, especially in the cold of New York. Even this late in the season, the moisture in the brisk wind buffeting the city pushed the mild wind-chilled temperature low enough so that their faces felt like falling off. The building in and of itself was huge, more than one point six million square feet filled with collections of samples of nature and human artifacts from all over the planet.

"Look at their coats," said a fascinated Luke.

Ursula stared in the direction that Luke was point at. "What?"

"I mean, look at the coats and shoes on some of the people here. The sidewalk is wet, there are puddles, and this snow is wet. But there's no stain or wetness on them."

It was true. While most people on the sidewalk had wet coats and shoes, some of the clothing appeared completely dry even though they were walking unprotected in the wet flurries and through the puddles on the sidewalk. Whenever water splashed on them, the water simply slid off rather than staining. At that moment, a woman shook her head protected by a wide-brimmed hat. The water that pooled in the folds of her hat's brim jumped off and fell to the ground with absolutely none of the usual staining spill. The hat looked completely dry.

It was like magic.

"They look more well-to-do than others. Maybe it's something expensive?" wondered Julian.

Tyberi looked to Luke who then scribbled down a note to remind himself to look up this phenomenon later. As they continued walking, Tyberi said, "We must remember our task: to bring the Terrans back into the embrace of the Lords of Kobol. Whether that return entails a political reunion of Earth with the Colonies does not matter, not really. It's not all about fighting and gadgets and such. It's about reaching out to people, showing them that there's love and hope still left in the universe, available for the unfortunates of this world—"

A homeless woman interrupted with a loud voice, "Hey, spare change?"

"Get a job, you lazy cow!" a man grumbled as he walked up the museum stairs.

Elosha arched an eyebrow at that. But they were already moving past the Terran unfortunate and up the steps to the museum main entrance. The entrance was built like a massive triumphal arch with windows replacing the usual side-arches. Here, it's clearer than ever that the museum represented the triumph of knowledge to be had within.

As everyone entered the building, they were discreetly scanned as all newcomers would be for weapons, bombs or other types of threats. Several Islamic and domestic terrorist organizations considered the museum a high value target for various reasons and security was understandably tight.

Being the first to enter the museum, Tyberi heard and felt his watch ping and vibrate slightly as he walked through the security area that also served to confirm that had paid to get in—or at least the Colonial embassy had paid for his entrance. His watch received the e-receipt and then reverted back into scan-while-waiting mode. The others followed suit and thus were the first non-ambassadorial Colonials to set foot in one of the largest natural history museums in the world.

As they stepped beyond the security area into the grand vault-ceilinged hall, the Colonials heard a nearly shouting, familiar shrill voice directed at them.

Tyberi couldn't resist sighing.

It was Lucy.

"There you are! I've been waiting!" she yelled. "Can you believe this?" Lucy was gesturing behind herself toward what looked like three skeletal structures set up in the middle of the grand entrance hall. Elosha craned her neck to follow the skeletal neck of one of the structures.

"They call them dinosaurs. This one is an allosaurus. The tall one is a barosaurus and it's protecting a baby barosaurus over there. What do they take us for? No. Scratch that. What do they take the Terrans for?"

The clerics looked at the dinosaur skeletons. They were impressive specimens and Elosha had no doubt that they'd be even more impressive clothed in their own long-gone flesh. Especially the tall apparently rearing barosaurus. Meanwhile, Luke had eagerly moved to read the plaques mounted at the edge of the display. His watch dutifully translated the englisa script.

"It says they're from the Upper Jurassic Period of Earth's history—between two hundred one and one hundred forty-five million years ago."

"That's…that's so old!" gasped Linus.

Lucy scoffed. "They can't be real. I've read the same placard, Luke. It says most of the bones are plaster replicas because real bones would be too heavy to be arranged this way. How can we be sure that they're not faking or lying? How can they even figure out the age? Or even think that such an old age could be plausible?"

"It's not far-fetched that Earth would have its own ancient native life," said Julian. "Most of the Twelve Colonies had their own native life forms before we came from Kobol and wiped most of that with our own Kobolian flora and fauna."

"The difference," admonished Lucy patiently as if to a child or an obstinate student, "is we have observed the native life and recorded it. Were these Terrans there to observe and record that? They came here from Kobol only four thousand years ago, for gods' sake! The Terrans weren't there when the dinosaurs lived. They can't observe that." Lucy waved a hand at the dinosaur skeletons. "They couldn't have observed that."

Cautiously, Elosha said, "I think the more interesting question would be 'How do they know?' I'd be very interested in how they find out, test what they find and come to the conclusion they did."

Ursula nodded. "That's what we are here for. Ambassador Saltum told us some disturbing things about Earth. We are here to test and verify what the ambassador told us."

The missionaries nodded their agreement. Damari sighed in relief. With that, they proceeded to go deeper into the museum.

After getting over their initial shock, the missionaries used their watches to take photographs and make comments for future references. Again, most were very thankful that these watches were able to scan, read and translate Englisa for the Colonials, using their Bluetooth translators.

The first two and a half hours of the tour left the missionaries stunned. There were, of course, dozens of museums on Caprica, Picon, most of the other Colony worlds. However, the number of native animals and plants, their familiar evolutionary progressive history from ancestral to modern variants and how everything came together—there was simply no comparison to be made on any of the twelve habitable worlds of Cyrannus. The visitors were shocked by the dinosaur bones in incredible numbers, remains of huge and terrifying creatures that once roamed the Earth. Earth's animals, positioned in their simulated natural habitats, impressed them not only in numbers but in varieties. The huge ninety-four foot blue whale creature supposedly roaming the Earth's oceans shocked them. The huge numbers of fish, animals and insects, the ancient tools created by humans from different ages, the dioramas…it was overwhelming. The small group could spend months in this museum trying to understand everything they were seeing. The incredible numbers of religious artifacts from scores of religious practices and beliefs present alone, left them bewildered and flustered.

But what shocked them the most was on display in a certain gallery called the Anne and Bernard Spitzer Hall of Human Origins.

"What…is this?"

The Colonials crowded around a scandalized Ursula. In front of her was a life-sized model of a particularly hairy and naked man apparently assessing a sharpened stick to be used as a spear. A rough pelt of fur was draped over one shoulder so that it tastefully hid the man's genitals from public view. His hair and beard were long and clearly ungroomed. What set him apart from normal humans were his incredibly heavy brow. The display's accompanying placard identified the not-human as a Neanderthal.

"This…is what Terrans think they were like on Earth more than twenty thousand years ago?"

"It says human family. But…."

"Oh…my…gods…!" Lucy rolled her eyes. "How could they even know?! They have to be faking this. There is no way humans could change from that…that thing to human! This must be how they erased the history of Kobol and their memories of Kobol. If this is even remotely true, they must be missing some sort of link here. This…this…." Lucy opened and closed her fists as she shook in outraged horror. "…is a scandal!"

The missionaries gazed at the tableau of the Neanderthal family that the hairy heavy-browed man was part of. Lucy still couldn't contain herself.

"Were they even there? How could they have observed this?"

Gently, Elosha repeated herself. "Again, the more interesting question is how did they know? How did they come to their conclusion? As for the question, 'Were they there?' here's a simple example for you to think about: A man claims he is innocent of murder. There are no witnesses to the crime. However, at the crime scene, we find fingerprints on the murder weapon that matches the man's fingers, genetic traces under the victim's fingernails which match his DNA, bite marks which match his teeth, and bloody boot-prints which match his shoes. Is the question of the man's guilt or innocence beyond scientific verification just because the crime was not directly observed?"

Lucy's scowl deepened. "But that's different," she muttered sullenly.

"We must find out how they know, how and why they came to the conclusion they did."

"It;s called carbon dating. One can determine the age of something organic by using the properties of carbon 14 isotope. It can accurately determine the age of organic material. We have the technique in the Colonies, but still..." In shock, he faced the others. "Mm…guys? You might want to see this."

The priests moved over to where Luke was pointing at. It was a display of an apparently incomplete skeleton of a person who was very short at four feet tall. A picture beside the skeleton was shown of the reconstructed face that the person would have when she was alive. The face was even more primitive, atavistic than the Neanderthal. There was no chin to speak of even though the mouth jutted far forward, the nose was flattened and little more than large nostrils in the snout, the brow ridge was heavy enough that the round black eyes appeared beady. What part of the torso was visible was apparently even more hairy than the Neanderthal man. Overall, the effect was more like an ape than a human. The placard announced the skeleton to be one of the oldest—two to four millions years old, and the most complete of the early hominid species known as Australopithecus afarensis, apparently an ancestor of humanity.

And her name was Lucy.

Lucy Ferro stared wide-eyed and dumfounded. "Why does everybody hate me?" she muttered too low for anyone to hear.

Linus covered his mouth, Tyberi covered his eyes and Julian covered his ears, and they all shook their heads in their refusal to acknowledge the evidence at complete odds with their dogma.

If this 'Lucy' was real, she represented an ancestry that confirmed much of the assertions made by Terrans that Earth was the original home of mankind. Along with the other examples and the great ape families, this was the culmination of the more outlandish assertions that the Terrans had insisted were true.

Even Elosha was struck dumb.

Overall, the time spent in the museum so far was fascinating and yet unnerving to the small group of interstellar travelers, forcing some to yet again re-evaluate their views of Earth and of their own history. Several others hunkered down and were more entrenched in their beliefs than before. In their opinion, the Terrans were wrong in their scientific conclusions.

They had to be.

Thankfully, it was almost time for the mid-afternoon meal.