Fic: Mathematics: Order of Operations (3/10)
Series Title: Mathematics
Segment Title: Order of Operations (3/10) (links to Part 1 and Part 2)
Author: kappamaki33
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Eventually, Gaeta/Eight, implied Caprica/Baltar and (unrequited?) Gaeta/Baltar
Series Summary: Scenes from New Caprica. It was such a simple equation: Felix+Eight=valuable, effective death lists. But the math never remains that uncomplicated, once life gets factored in.
Part 3 Summary: Eight’s plan has a clear order of operations: research the target to find his weaknesses, lay sufficient groundwork, then spring the trap without the prey even knowing he’s caught. Cavil has other ideas, however, and Eight starts to wonder who is really at risk of getting ensnared.
Spoilers: Through “Face of the Enemy” Webisodes
Disclaimer: I do not own BSG or any of the characters described herein. These works are for fan appreciation and entertainment only, and I do not benefit financially from them.
Series Notes: So, this is my first-ever fic. It’s going to be a ten-part series when I’m done. I wanted to impose some sort of structure on the story to make it a bit more challenging-and also to help me develop an overall framework-so each vignette has some connection to its number, in descending order from 10 to 1. The connection to the number is more obvious in some than in others, but it served its purpose as a structural framework.
Part 3 Notes: I love the overarching theme of BSG of acknowledging the humanity of the Other, which in this case is the Cylons. However, I also really loved how episodes like “Downloaded” and “The Hub” recognized that the Cylons’ abilities, such as downloading, memory-sharing, and projection, would greatly affect and shape their culture, beliefs, and views of the universe. I think that’s part of why I’ve enjoyed writing Eight so much; I like to think of her as someone who longs for individuality but also embraces her Cylonity.
And yes, in addition to Bob Dylan and the Parker Brothers, the BSG ‘verse had Fibonacci and the Brothers Grimm (full text public domain translation of the story used is available here). Hey, Baltar mentioned Euclid on the show, and Anders quoted Milton. Also, the Isis myth Abraham mentions is from an ancient spell to ward off poison; you can read a translation here.
This segment is brought to you by the number 8, a number which Felix tries very hard to turn into a name.
Mathematics: Order of Operations
“…When the girl was alone the manikin came again for the third time, and said, what will you give me if I spin the straw for you this time also? I have nothing left that I could give, answered the girl. Then promise me, if you should become queen, to give me your first child. Who knows whether that will ever happen, thought the miller's daughter, and, not knowing how else to help herself in this strait, she promised the manikin what he wanted, and for that he once more spun the straw into gold…”
Her father that never existed leans forward in his chair so the light from the lamp on the bedside table that never existed in her pink and yellow childhood bedroom that never existed falls on the pages of a book that likely never existed, either. She scissor-kicks under the comforter to try to make her little bedtime cocoon warmer, but she stills when her father looks up from the book to see what she’s doing. He returns to the book, his eyeglasses glinting in the muted light.
“…A year after, she brought a beautiful child into the world, and she never gave a thought to the manikin. But suddenly he came into her room, and said, now give me what you promised.
“The queen was horror-struck, and offered the manikin all the riches of the kingdom if he would leave her the child. But the manikin said, no, something alive is dearer to me than all the treasures in the world. Then the queen began to lament and cry, so that the manikin pitied her. I will give you three days’ time, said he, if by that time you find out my name, then shall
you keep your child…”
Abraham Valerii’s voice is low and smooth, rumbling over the words with an ease that belies how many times he’s read this story before. The memory is a well-crafted one, Eight will give the Cylon memory writers credit for that. She feels in her bones that she’s less than four feet tall, that her scalp still aches a little from her mother putting in her pigtails too tightly today. The room is full of white and wicker furniture, stuffed animals, books, pictures. A light rain patters against the windowpane, a soothing backdrop for her father’s voice.
“…On the third day the messenger came back again, and said, I have not been able to find a single new name, but as I came to a high mountain at the end of the forest, where the fox and the hare bid each other good night, there I saw a little house, and before the house a fire was burning, and round about the fire quite a ridiculous little man was jumping, he hopped upon one leg, and shouted -
To-day I bake, to-morrow brew,
The next I'll have the young queen's child.
Ha, glad am I that no one knew
That Rumpelstiltskin I am styled.”
“Daddy,” she interrupts, “why does the queen have to figure out Rumpelstilskin’s name?”
“Because that’s the deal they made, remember?” her father says. Then his eyes smile. “Clever, Sharon, but you’re not going to convince me to read it to you again tonight. I know very well you’ve heard it enough times you could probably tell it yourself.”
“Well yeah, but that’s not what I mean,” she says, propping herself up on her elbows and resting her chin on her hands. “Why his name? Why is her knowing his name so important?”
Abraham sits for a moment in thought. He closes the book, keeping his thumb in it to mark their spot, and leans back in the chair beside Sharon’s bed. “Knowing someone’s name is important in a lot of the old stories. Isis got her magic by forcing Ra to tell her his secret name. You know, even the god of the Five Priests, the one whose name cannot be spoken, hides his name from us.”
“But why?” she persists, sure her father will chastise her for trying to play the “endless why game” with him and return to the book. She’s surprised when he hums to himself and continues.
“Names…they have a special power, in a way. ‘A man lives when called by his name,’ so they say. If you know somebody’s name, you know something about him that you couldn’t have gotten just from looking at him. It’s something someone has to tell you, has to reveal about himself to you. And giving somebody a name-it’s like giving him a part of himself, even if he didn’t know it was missing.”
“Okay,” she says simply, tracing the flower patterns on her pillowcase.
Her father shakes his head and smiles to himself. “Sorry, kiddo, I got carried away with my answers there, huh?” He opens the book and reads on.
“…The devil has told you that! The devil has told you that, cried the little man, and in his anger he plunged his right foot so deep into the earth that his whole leg went in, and then in rage he pulled at his left leg so hard with both hands that he tore himself in two.”
~~*~~*~~
The walk from Colonial One to Tent City had never seemed this long before. Eight did her best to blend in, to walk with the purpose but dispassion of the other Eights heading to take care of their civilian responsibilities, but on the inside, she was burning with fear and excitement. Today, finally today. She might not like her assignment at all, but it was good to finally be doing something with measurable results. She almost felt like she did back when she was fighting insurgents on Caprica, back when the fight was above-board, even with ambushes and guerilla tactics. Almost.
She had been laying the groundwork for this meeting for three weeks. Even though Felix had seemed intrigued by what she had to say after the staff meeting where he and Doral had had their big blowout, Eight knew he still was suspicious of her. She’d done her best not to push too hard and spook him yet still show him she was serious. She had been challenging Doral in meetings so often that, had Doral not known this was part of the plan, she would likely have gotten herself demoted to Chief of Kitchen Security by now. As it was, Doral was still none too happy with her.
Eight had also engineered her and Felix’s schedules and project assignments so that she was regularly bringing files to Felix in his office and vice versa. Behind closed doors, she criticized the Ones and Threes and Fives and even, on occasion, the War Heroes. She’d kept her complaints measured, reasonable, so as not to overplay her part, but even so, had she not been on a mission, she probably would have gotten boxed for some of the things she’d said.
The clincher had been a brilliant piece of improvisation that Eight couldn’t help but pat herself on the back for. On several of her file runs, Eight had met a stout, middle-aged woman with tears in her eyes coming out of Felix’s office. Eight soon discovered that this woman came to Felix’s office every day at the same time, 1100, so one morning at about that time, Eight lingered outside Felix’s office, pretending to look out the windows at something.
“You can’t do anything?”
“I’m sorry, but as I’ve told you before, the Cylons won’t let me anywhere near the detention blocks. I’ve tried, I swear I’ve tried,” Felix said, his voice tired and pleading.
“I know you can’t do anything about who the skinjobs lock up, but can’t you even tell me if he’s all right, or maybe get a message out for him? Can’t you at least do that?”
“I wish I could, Mrs. Penbroke. I’m so very sorry.”
“I can make it worth your while,” the woman whispered. “Mr. Penbroke and I, we were smart while we were in the Fleet. We got hold of things, saved things. I can get you anything you want…”
Eight heard Felix stand up from his chair and walk around the desk. “Mrs. Penbroke, please. Don’t do this to yourself. We’re both just…stuck, and there’s nothing we can do about it. So don’t you dare go selling whatever you have left to the black market to bribe anybody. And don’t listen to any human who tells you differently.”
Eight heard a rustle of fabric, then a loud sniff from Mrs. Penbroke. “You really shouldn’t keep coming here and drawing attention to yourself like this,” Felix said. “You know I’ll get word out to you if I hear anything. Right?”
The next day, Eight stood outside Felix’s door at the same time, just long enough to hear Felix call the woman Mrs. Penbroke. Then she “accidentally” walked in.
Mrs. Penbroke’s eyes turned dead when Eight entered the office. Felix motioned for Eight to come back later.
“Excuse me, I didn’t mean to intrude,” Eight said, still holding her ground but looking uncertain. “I’m sorry, but are you Mrs…Penbroke?”
Mrs. Penbroke kept her cold stare locked on Eight. She didn’t respond.
“Is your husband Alistair Penbroke?”
Mrs. Penbroke’s breath hitched, and her gaze melted into silent tears in an instant. Felix’s eyes went wide, and he leaned forward in his chair. Eight closed the door behind her.
“Is he alive?” Mrs. Penbroke said, hands gripping the arms of her chair tightly as she tried to keep her voice from breaking.
“I transported him to the detention center infirmary for a check-up three days ago. He was thin, and scared, but he’s all right.”
Mrs. Penbroke let out a ragged sigh. “Thank you. I never thought I’d say it to a… Thank you.”
Eight hesitated, wondering how far she should take this. “He talked about you. Asked me if you were in detention, too. He said he’d give anything just to know you were all right.”
“Oh gods, he’s in prison and he’s worried about me-could you, could you tell him I’m all right, that the skin- that you saw me, and I’m not in prison, and that I love him and I haven’t stopped trying-”
“I’m just in charge of prisoner transfers, so I don’t see individual detainees that often,” Eight said, “but yeah, I can do that. It might take me a few days, but I’ll do that. But you’d better not come back here anymore-the others are starting to get suspicious, with you being here so often.”
The older woman nodded, smiled at Felix, then at Eight, and then left the room.
Eight turned to leave as well.
“Wait-” Felix said. Eight turned back. Felix’s eyes were still wide with shock, but his expression was tempered with something that might have been gratefulness. His mouth was open, but it seemed he couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“Least I could do,” Eight whispered, trying to look a little sad and shy, as she slid out the door.
Maybe she’d gone farther than she should, Eight thought, but it didn’t really matter. The Penbrokes would be so happy if he ever got out that they wouldn’t wonder at how Mr. Penbroke had “forgotten” the conversation with an Eight that never happened, nor that the Eight hadn’t managed to get the message from Mrs. Penbroke back to him. She had checked to make sure Penbroke was still alive, but even if he hadn’t been, she supposed it really wouldn’t have mattered.
The next day, she had passed a note to Felix in one of the files she gave him, explaining a little about an idea she had and saying they needed to talk, somewhere outside Colonial One. A few hours later, Felix had returned the file to her with his reply tucked inside.
Even more critical than the outward performances she’d been putting on for Felix’s benefit, Eight thought, was the internal groundwork she’d been laying. She had already downloaded Boomer’s memories not long after Boomer and Caprica Six had presented their plan for human-Cylon cohabitation. But since she’d been assigned this mission, she’d gone back through all Boomer’s memories of Galactica with a fine-toothed comb, searching out any glimpses of Lieutenant Gaeta from the two years they’d served together.
Her goal was to fashion herself into exactly the sort of person Felix Gaeta would love and trust. Granted, she was at a disadvantage since she wasn’t a man-Lieutenant Gaeta, in one of his rare trips down to the flight deck, looks Specialist Alex Prosna-who admittedly has a very nice ass-up and down fairly obviously. Cally and she giggle behind their hands. “What?” Gaeta says. “Don’t tell me you two haven’t ever done that before.” Early in the morning, Gaeta slips out of Skulls’ rack, his tanks and pants bunched in his hands. He sees her watching from her bunk and is startled for a moment, then just puts a finger to his lips. But she saw how much he loved and admired Dee, even if it wasn’t exactly the kind of love One would tell Eight to prey on.
Dee was her starting point, the base she built from. She was a mix of sweet and tough (Dee and Gaeta help with inventory on the flight deck. Dee dresses down a newly-promoted hotshot Viper jock for picking on a green mechanic, making the man, who is a good foot taller than her, cower. Then she joins the teary-eyed mechanic, wedging herself under the Viper to calmly shows her how to rewire the fried comm system), a pragmatist without being a cynic; in fact, she had more faith than what should be humanly possible, given the circumstances. Dee and Gaeta sit at the table in the cramped junior officers’ locker, spreadsheets in piles all around them. They’ve lugged in one of the nearly prehistoric, un-networked computer terminals that was going to be used in the museum and are entering data from the passenger manifestos of the ships in the newly-formed Fleet. They do this for hours on end, cross-referencing them with the lists of the names of relatives and friends each crewmember on Galactica is looking for. No one assigned them this job, but they stay up most of the night. They wake everyone with screams of joy when they find a match. Even with 2,900 crew on board, this only happens twice. Specialist Xander Hirshen’s sister is on the Thera Sita. Dragon tells them that Xander was one of the deckhands who died when Tigh decompressed the flight pod to stop the fire. The two stand in silence for a few moments, then return to work, hunching over the little monitor. Three hours later, more yells and hugging: Sergeant Karen McLellan’s niece is on the Persephone. No one in the room knows Sergeant McLellan, but Dee breaks out a bottle of ambrosia and announces drinks all around. She had a sharp tongue when she needed it, and she held her liquor better than anybody that size had a right to. “Didn’t you come here with Billy?” “Yeah.” “Where’d he go?” “Still in the head, I think.” “Is he sick?” “He suggested we play shot glass tic-tac-toe.” “Oh. He doesn’t know you very well yet, does he?” Full of surprising strength, without making her all sharp edges and angles. Dee clutches the dying Commander’s hand in hers, pressing it to her forehead in an attitude of prayer.
Dee never joined their Triad game, even though Gaeta and others invited her, but other than the way he was with Dee, Boomer knew Gaeta best from the card table in the rec room. He generally wouldn’t sit down to play if Colonel Tigh or Starbuck was already there, and he was quiet whenever either of them sat down in the middle of a game. When those two weren’t around and the players were gossiping about them, Gaeta would grit his teeth and swear under his breath at Starbuck’s flamboyant but irresponsible stunts, and he’d roll his eyes at almost any story involving Tigh. It hadn’t been too hard to subtract their traits from the personality of Felix’s Eight.
She added in a few little touches from other people, moments that made Gaeta smile or little bits of admiration he mentioned in passing. He liked that Crashdown was good about keeping private things private-“So, I hear you went on a little reconnaissance mission in the nuggets’ bunk room, Crash.” “Did you, now?” Crashdown answers, not looking up from his cards. “Yeah, with a certain Ensign Davis…” “Fascinating,” Crash deadpans, “but are you in, or are you folding?” He admired the old CAG, Captain, later Major, Spencer, for the way he respected Tigh and Adama as superior officers without fawning or panicking over them. He liked Helo for many reasons, not the least of which being the man’s abs, which had been on display the one time they’d all gotten drunk enough to play strip Triad. “Do you think anyone would notice if I tried to stack the deck so he loses?” Gaeta asks her in a whisper. “Hell, even if they do, nobody but Helo’s gonna complain,” she whispers back. He liked Helo’s quiet sense of humor, impressed with moments of subtlety one normally didn’t find in pilots, and he admired Helo’s firm loyalty, rarely voiced but always felt. “It’s gonna be all right,” Helo says, tagging along behind as Gaeta leads her to the Old Man’s quarters. “And if it’s not, I’ll go in and tell him myself that nobody could make a pretty landing with that frakked-up gimbal.” “Don’t you dare, Helo.” They are at the Commander’s quarters. “Well then, I’ll tell him that when the chips are down, I’d feel better flying with you than any other pilot on this ship.” Helo salutes her and pats her on the shoulder as Gaeta opens the hatch.
And then there was Dr. Baltar. He could have served as a starting point for the new persona, too, Eight supposed, but even from what little she’d seen at the table, that relationship was so complicated and so obviously full of heartache on one side that she almost didn’t want to touch it at all.
Strangely, it was hardest for Eight to figure out how Felix felt about Sharon Valerii herself. Eight got the feeling that Sharon wasn’t terribly self-reflective, and that she became less and less so as her programming crept in, doing her best to ignore whatever darkness was within her as it grew. She knew from the Triad games that Felix wasn’t impressed with her pilot bravado, but there were moments, glimpses, really-on her first day on Galactica, her first time in CIC, Gaeta winks and nods reassuringly when he shakes her trembling hand; she feels tears biting the backs of her eyes when someone mentions how irritable Chief has been since Sergeant Hadrian’s aborted investigation, and Gaeta gives her a look of sympathy subtle enough not to call the others’ attentions; a finger to his lips and a conspiratorial half-grin as he climbs out of Skulls’ rack; the time he-
“Fancy meeting you here,” Felix said, flicking a cigarette butt into the dirt as he stood in the doorway of his tent.
Eight shook off the projection as best she could, but she struggled to get her eyes to focus in the weak light of a cloudy New Caprican dusk. “I said I would.”
He looked her in the eyes and said slowly, “I’m ready to get to work. Would you like something to drink?”
Eight said, “Some Aquarian wine would be lovely.”
Felix nodded and ushered her in, securing the flap behind her. “Are you sure that’s such a good code word, considering there’s probably no Aquarian wine left in the universe?” he asked.
“That’s the point of a good code word,” Eight answered. “It has to be something strange enough that no one else would say it by accident. Any Eight might ask you for a cup of tea.”
On to the second half...