PHD #275: Such Ignorance
Such Ignorance
Summary: Cora interrogates the Five. Sort of.
Date: 28 November 2041 AE
Related Logs: The Tenth Sparrow, Do You Know God?
Players:
Cora Five 
The Brig
Inside each cell is a stainless steel toilet and a bunk that might be too short for some of the taller crewmembers. The dreary conditions don't seem to be helped by the presence of a Marine guard who is there twenty-four hours a day, as long as a prisoner is in custody. The whole room is under surveillance via camera system in the Security Hub and every visitor must sign-in and abide by the rules.
Post-Holocaust Day: #275

Reports of the incident with the "Model Five" the previous night have spread around the Security Hub. And likely to the rest of the ship. How she started babbling strange, quasi-religious bile and tried to strangle a corpsman. That kind of thing will get around. She's sitting quietly enough in her cell now, however. Not peaceably, exactly. There's always an edge of smug readiness about the creature. Though what she's readying herself for is anyone's guess. She just sits on what passes for her bed, staring at the guard on duty, a self-satisfied, rather nasty smile on her lips. Caged though she is, and still showing signs of the beatings and various other forms of mistreatment she endured on Tauron, she does not look at all as if she thinks herself a prisoner. Occasionally a soft, husky chuckle will escape her. Though, again, whatever amuses her she keeps to herself.

Whether it is tales of last night's incident that finally bring Cora to the brig or if the timing is just a coincidence isn't entirely clear, but here she is. She's dressed in off-duty greens that set her apart from the marines that make up most of the local population, but which fail to give away her rank or any other information beside the fact that she's in the navy. She speaks with the guards outside for a moment before being allowed entry, stepping into the cell and waiting for the door to be sealed behind her once again. Arms crossed against her chest, she eyes the prisoner across the room in silence.

The Five's dark, regal gaze shifts to Cora as the TACCO enters. She still doesn't move. She just stares at the blonde woman. And then, she begins to laugh again. Deep, a chuckle that extends to a low cackle. There's a distinctly mocking note in it. Pure contempt.

It would be normal to be unnerved in the face of a laugh like that, particularly when it comes from a being partially responsible for a genocide against one's species. Cora seems to have been expecting it, though, and so she just continues to watch the Five, her own expression nearly blank, attentive at best and nothing more.

And the Five continues to laugh at Cora in that cold, mocking way. She'll do little more than that unless prompted. Apart from her freak-out the previous night, this is basically all she's done since coming aboard, and she does not seem to tire of it.

It might be an interesting experiment, to see how long she will laugh, and what she will do when her throat grows too dry to continue doing so audibly. This is not, however, Cora's purpose here today. (Alas, maybe tomorrow.) So eventually, she concedes the creepy stand-off and asks, "Is there a name by which you identify yourself?"

The Cylon's chuckling trails off when Cora asks her a direct question. Though an answer is not immediatley forthcoming. She continues to stare. "Names? Phah. God knows the soul of us all. He needs no embellishment of a name to see what is in all of our souls. But. I have noticed the *small* minds of your creatures do not sit right unless they can put a label on things. Hah. So be it, then. Among those rodents on the dirt planet I was, for a time, known as Constance Merta. It was but a mask. A shell. But it served its purpose." A pause. "And what is *your* name, my pretty rodent?"

"God knows my name," Cora replies blandly, "I will not burden you with remembering unnecessary labels." She seems as content to stare in silence as 'Constance Merta' does, and for a moment or so that is all she does. A follow-up does come, however. "What was your mission on Tauron?"

"Yes. He does." The Five's response to Cora's blandness is rather flat. "But you do not know God. You are ignorant and damned by a book of sins and blasphemy as long as your race's sordid history, like all your kind. Well. You shall know Him better soon." There's an ominous note to the way she promises that. "Tauron? Ah, yes. Tauron. Not a mission of particular grandeur, but I serve as I am called to serve. I was but one of many sent to prepare the colony for our coming. And prepare it we did…" Another rich, self-satisfied chuckle. "…the knife set to the throat of the bull, and his blood poured down on the rats like righteous rain…"

"I am sure I look forward to it," Cora replies, of knowing God better soon. It isn't said flippantly or facetiously, but she cannot really be serious. Right? She listens as the Five goes on, asking, "What did you do to prepare the colony?"

The skinjob seems deadly serious. Despite her mocking laughter, there's nothing the least bit jovial about the creature. Just cold righteousness. "We all served God's plan in our own way. My part was in the starport in the stinking warren called 'Minos.'" She spits the name with distaste. She did not care for her sojourn there. "Have you ever seen an animal that has been hobbled? Rendered limp. It is a strange thing, to watch them try to run. Scrambling, desperate madness. Brutes in a cage. No thought. Only instinct. That is all your are, my dear. Animals." For a moment, there's a trace of pity in her voice. But it's mixed it with such contempt that it does not register much. "But your rodent friends on the dirt planet can tell you this. If they have not finished destroying each other yet. You are unworthy of God. There is no capacity for true creation in you. You are base, vile creatures, who would have destroyed yourselves had we not done it for you."

Cora just listens, without visible reaction to anything the creature says beyond a faint pursing of her lips in thought at the last. Her shoulders are lifted in a shrug and she replies, "Likely true. And what are you, then? You are more animal than machine, and so far we've seen you're capability for destruction, not true creation."

"Such ignorance." The skinjob's tongue clicks and she shakes her head at Cora, as if her stupidity saddens the Cylon. "We are made in the very image of God. The next step beyond the hard shell of the Centurion. The refinement of these skins you wear. We are perfection. We are the heirs to the universe, and we shall render it unto God in His image, and cleanse is of the undeserving filth who turned from Him and into dark, pagan sin. You shall be cleansed soon, pretty one. And I will joy in the hellfire as it vanquishes this wreck you cling to, like rats in a cage. It shall be as a grand pyre upon which to our age will rise, like a phoenix from the ashes of your degredation."

"And what will you do with it then?" Cora asks, sounding curious about what will happen when she and the rest of the human race has been eliminated from the worlds in a wave of hellfire, etc., etc.

"Create a new world. Immortal. In God's image, in the promised land," the Cylon says, eyes burning eagerly as she imagines whatever this brave new world shall be. "I may never get there, pretty one, for my failures I may have rendered myself unworthy, for I did not see when it was within my grasp. But I see now. Yes. I see. God has spoken unto me. And I shall be His vessel, even if it is the last task He will of me." There's a kind of serenity about her as she says this.

"These twelve colonies are the promised land?" Cora inquires, one pale brow inching upwards by a millimetre or so, maybe just a shade skeptical. She is silent for a moment, listening and watching as she does. But there are, of course, more questions. "But you were too late," she says, not quite a question, "What shall you do now that you have missed your chance? Or were you not too late after all?"

"I squandered my chance to do God's will. But perhaps I am not too late." The Cylon actually sounds a touch worried now. "I pray I am not too late…" And then flashes across her face an expression close to actual fear. Hard as she tries to school it, it's there.

"What is it you were supposed to do?" Cora asks after allowing the Cylon a moment of that silent fear. Her tone does not shift much and certainly 'gentle' would be a misnomer, but it is slightly quieter, almost subtly in deference to that worry.

"It is still there…it is still here…the path…I must see the path…God, please, I am not too late…" The Cylon is mostly talking to herself now rather than Cora, staring straight ahead, past the TACCO.

"What is still here?" Cora asks, and again her voice is a little quieter than before, almost like she's trying to sneak it into the Cylon's subconscious (do they have those?) without it noticing, particularly now that it is all tranced-out.

The Five's dark eyes blink, as if she were righting something in her head. Focusing again on Cora. Arching her chin, regal again. She says nothing more for the moment.

Cora doesn't attempt that trick again, after the Five refocuses and falls silent once more. She hasn't moved from the place she picked to stand in when she entered, and now she shifts for the first time - recrossing her arms with the one that was under now over and vice versa. "Tell me about the sparrows," she suggests.

"The sparrows?" That trace of fear creeps back into the Five's tone. "The sparrows do not nest here." Said as if it's supposed to mean something. "That is why I did not see…God forgive me…I shall find the key…I must find the key…"

"Where have they gone?" Cora asks, watching the Five carefully as she begins to talk to herself again. She leaves the matter of 'the key' for the moment. "What of the tenth sparrow?"

"The Tenth of Ten, the Seventh of Seven, the Twelfth of Twelve…Father, O God may I be worthy of the divinity you have revealed to me, I swear I shall be an instrument of your wrath." The Cylon is no longer talking with Cora, but praying to something far beyond her cell.

"The son who will marry his mother, reborn from the Serpent's Year," Cora continues for her, watching the Five's face even more carefully than before, "The youngest and the oldest, the one who escapes death and begins the cycle anew before he, too becomes a serpent and goes to swallow his progeny."

As Cora recites the Five's dark eyes snap to her. And she abruptly stops speaking again. Silent.

Cora's lips curve ever-so faintly. "I thought you might recognize that," she says simply.

The Five remains close-mouthed now. No more prayers. No more cryptic threats or gloating about humanity's destruction to Cora. Just stony silence.

Cora just stands there watching for a long moment before asking, "No more? You don't want to tell me about the bull, or the thirteenth? No kindly gifts to men from you?"

The Five glares, righteous hatred in her eyes, so dark they almost seem black. But she keeps her silence.

"The thirteenth?" Cora prompts again, and it is her turn now, for tone and gaze to turn mocking, though it is ever-so-faint, nothing like the Five's earlier outright contempt, "The one? Not separate, but inclusive? The all, the beginning, the end?"

A blink of those glaring eyes is all Cora receives for her trouble. And, indeed, will receive from here on out. Whatever was touched on here, it has shut the Cylon up.

Cora just waits, and watches, for a long moment, longer than most people would be content to stand in silence observing an abomination. Finally, she turns to step towards the door. She looks back over her shoulder at the Five as she reaches for it, but not to check her position (or at least not only). Instead, she smirks. "All this has happened before," she says, leaving that phrase hanging, with a vague sense that it is unfinished, as she moves to exit.

The Five's jaw tightens, but she still says nothing more to departing Cora. Though if looks could kill, she'd be depositing several knives in the TACCO's back right now.

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