Emissary From Another World

Doc,

Please don’t start with me again about Kara. Not being with her is hard enough. The only consolation is that I know I made the right decision.

I’m going to ask you one more thing, though. I’m going to ask you to think about Julia. I have a strong memory of a conversation we had, where you said, firstly, that some of the righteousness of fighting came from the righteousness of me – that it was partly the way I thought about it. Respectfully disagreed, Doc, but I still think about it. I also think about what you said about the larger controversy. I agree with your assessment as regards bifurcation, and that’s one of the reasons that being here is important to me. I can’t accept those things for any people, not when I have the power to affect it, and I never could. What impressed me, though, is the way you could think it out like that, the way you could see what was happening, even if you kept saying you didn’t. So I’m going to ask you to apply that thinking to our situation.

I know you can, and, in fact, I think you probably already are, though you’re likely to be keeping it to yourself. I don’t know if I ever told you that I read your prison notes. Did I tell you? I feel like I told you at the time, but maybe not. It might have been one of the reasons I wanted to defend you in court, because in a way, it made me realise why we had a judicial system. Because, even if I hated you, those actions that repulsed me weren’t the whole of who any person was – that your mind was good, even if your soul was rotten, which I thought it was. I’ve since changed my mind, but that’s partly because you changed yours. I thought the book was equal parts accuracy and bullshit, but the b.s. was the kind of bullshit that showed up only because of its clear proximity to the truth. Those were good ideas, and we needed them. We’re going need them now. I think you’ve been trying to say this when we’ve been talking. That the real trick is ideas for managing ideas. I only have a B.A., rather than two Ph.Ds, though, so I’ll need you to explain this for the class.

Love,

Lee

Lee,

Frak you to hell, and I mean that in all seriousness. Your communicae is, as you are, dictatorial and imperious and you can shove it up your righteous, patriotic ass. I will also ask you to consider what you think you are being patriotic to, especially given the complete lack of any nation state for you to be affiliated with. There is a very good reason I tend not to have a stance in such matters – because allegiances are ephemeral, and entropy tends to render them all nonsensical before long. Besides, I do have them, and they are to my family and (I might tentatively add) my friends. I see no reason to extend my “patriotism” beyond this.  I will never kill another living thing that I do not plan to eat or wear, and I do not wish to be in a situation, or even a manner of thinking, where I might be required to, or will accidentally do this. My conscience can’t take much more, I’m afraid. So, where fighting is concerned, you will indeed be without me. I thank you for your understanding in this matter.

Kara is fine. She misses you very much, and I think you should be aware of how young she is. It won’t take her forever to forget you. Keep that in mind. You don’t want to be a stranger to her. She cries less already. She and Felix have worked out how to live together. From being very good friends, they went through a little adjustment and now it seems alright. She’s quite the stubborn little miss, but I find that less than surprising, considering who her parents are. And we love having her, so no need to worry on that count. Also, she is slightly less fussy at the dinner table than is F., so she is a good influence, as her father is on yours truly.

The unpleasantness of the last time we spoke was my fault, not yours, and so I apologise. We’ll talk when we meet again. You should know, if we’re assigning jobs (and you started it) that ensuring that this happens is YOUR job, and also that hearing from you has eased a great deal of anxiety on my part.

Please take care of yourself, Lee, and our regards to your source. Tell her that she is the best pupil that I have ever had, because she is. I could not be prouder of her, and it’s difficult to tell her things like that. I trust you will do better.

Very sincerely,

Dr. Gaius Baltar

Doc,

I hope this gets where it is going. I know you will anyway, but please show Hera the same hospitality you’ve shown us. Karl and Sharon came round eventually but it took some talking. Don’t frak it up.

I could apologise for using you and Caprica as de facto foster care, but I won’t, because it’s your job. You’ve become pretty decent in your old age, and this is the kind of thing decent people have to do. Welcome to the human race, Doctor. I won’t ask you to fight again, and part of that is because I respect your stance. To be totally honest, I respect your having a stance at all, because I know it doesn’t come all that naturally to you. While we’re being honest, that’s always pissed me off, since you’re possibly the most intelligent person I’ve ever met, and we could use you. But it also makes me think, probably for the same reason. I don’t understand your total lack of allegiances. I never have, and I never will, but I do respect it. So I am only going to ask you to do this one thing. Please take care of our children, until we can be with them again. Don’t take it out on Caprica, either. My money is on the fact that she’ll be doing the lion’s share of the work anyway, and I’m told by sources who shall remain nameless that she is wholly on board. You should also know that I trust your paternal instincts completely, and that’s another thing that you shouldn’t frak up. We have no choice but to trust you, and I hope you understand how serious that is.

I will apologise for whatever I said to you when we last spoke. I don’t remember what it was. Too much was happening. Thank you for taking care of my daughter, is what I should have said. Please tell her that we love her very much and that we are counting the days until we can be together. And that we miss her.

Love,

Lee.

Caught myself today. I had already started grieving for Lee. He’s not going to die, because he is my friend and the last thing that I say to him will not be awful. The last memory I have of my friend Lee will not be his shoving his child at me and telling me to frak off after my stinging critique of his parenting and worth as a human being. How much it means that he trusted me even then. And that is why he will not die, until he is very old. Because god recognises meaning, and so do I. This will not be his epitaph.

It came on because I swear I smelled smoke yesterday. And that’s as much as I can write about it because I’m a superstitious idiot and I’m afraid that whatever I write will come true. EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE. Everything will be fine.

C. is really very smart. I knew this already, obviously, but I’m so impressed by what she said last night when I was talking to her while she was cooking and I had Julia in the tub. She wasn’t even paying full attention, and she said that the problem was that actions got all mixed up with beliefs. Really, it’s the same thing she says every time, but it’s only now that I start to understand how deeply intelligent it really is. An action is just an action and it doesn’t have to be representative of anything. Everything is itself and it makes sense to itself. It’s the same thing she told me and the same thing I learned myself. That’s the secret, really. To view everything as totally separate, even as it is totally connected.

This is good stuff to know. I don’t want to be involved, not even at all, and I was fighting with this even as I was out in the fruit trees, pruning and keeping an eye on F. & K. But I think the answer is more knowledge, not less. As if we have to teach each other good knowledge about how to have knowledge. As if we have to have the proper technology to use technology. I feel like I have to tell everybody about this: we have to learn how to think, not what to think!

She also told me to rein in my ego. I didn’t start a war. She was a bit annoyed about that, actually. I didn’t notice at the time because I was too busy thinking about what she’d said about actions, but reflecting on it now, she was, and I understand. I didn’t start a war and neither can I stop it.

C. is really very smart. I knew this already, obviously, but I’m so impressed by what she said last night when I was talking to her while she was cooking and I had Julia in the tub. She wasn’t even paying full attention, and she said that the problem was that actions got all mixed up with beliefs. Really, it’s the same thing she says every time, but it’s only now that I start to understand how deeply intelligent it really is. An action is just an action and it doesn’t have to be representative of anything. Everything is itself and it makes sense to itself. It’s the same thing she told me and the same thing I learned myself. That’s the secret, really. To view everything as totally separate, even as it is totally connected.

This is good stuff to know. I don’t want to be involved, not even at all, and I was fighting with this even as I was out in the fruit trees, pruning and keeping an eye on F. & K. But I think the answer is more knowledge, not less. As if we have to teach each other good knowledge about how to have knowledge. As if we have to have the proper technology to use technology. I feel like I have to tell everybody about this: we have to learn how to think, not what to think!

She also told me to rein in my ego. I didn’t start a war. She was a bit annoyed about that, actually. I didn’t notice at the time because I was too busy thinking about what she’d said about actions, but reflecting on it now, she was, and I understand. I didn’t start a war and neither can I stop it.

Worried, worried, worried about Lee and Mrs.  Kara has settled down but I want more than anything to ride down and check but I can’t leave them. Frakking politics! Why did I teach her anything? I should have just said no and told everybody to frak off. I don’t know what to do about Hera, either. C. is in favour of the tutoring in general and says she would be willing to let me go one night once Julia has started weaning, once she’s down to one or two feeds, but that’s a few months off and anything could happen in that time. I keep imagining that I’ll ride down and everything is on fire and not because Lee and I are drunk. I worry that somebody will kill Mrs. because of what I taught her, and it’s more likely to be her own people, according to Lee. We shouldn’t have come. We should have flown ourselves into the sun with our ships. I know now that that’s what we should have done. At the very least it would have stopped me from starting another war.

NB:  Nobody gets pregnant from oral sex.

Also, trim beard.

Small fight with the wife last night regarding “rhythm method”. At the time she first brought it up I was too stunned to speak much but last night I couldn’t help myself. She’s still mad at me. I’ll admit whined pretty unbecomingly, but it really is a bit unfair. Eight days! That’s not enough days! What if we have visitors?  She can’t even get pregnant while she’s breastfeeding anyway, but she says that is beside the general point.

She says, she’s not just sick of washing cum out of our things, she’s sick of washing things, period. So I said I would do some more of the laundry and she said that was impractical, because my human weakness makes it inefficient and besides, Julia is still on the tit (YES, I KNOW, CAPRICA, THAT’S WHAT I SAID) and we can’t even start weaning for about three more months. So I said, does that mean we aren’t having any more? And she said not right now, but maybe in a couple of years. And I said that it wasn’t fair for her to make a decision like that without me, and she asked me what happened to all my loquacious pro-choice social justice rhetoric and I said it was different, and besides, that was a low blow, considering everything that was going on, and then she admitted that it was and I said, thank you, and then I leaned over to kiss her because I thought I had won and she put her hand!! between her mouth and mine!! and said that, even so!! if I really felt that way then I could have them myself!!  So of course I said that was ridiculous, and that, again, it was an irrelevant discussion until we began weaning. She said “we?”, in an incredulous tone, as I’d never done any work when she was weaning, which obviously is untrue. So I started to say this, and she cut me off. She said, with hand gestures, that pushing out a child was like pushing a melon through a hole the size of a cubit, not to mention the backache and the swelling and the breastfeeding and everything else besides, and she wanted a frakking break. It was a fair point, really, but it’s not as if I needed the condescending lesson. I had to let it go because it was getting heated and I certainly did not to wake up the brood after having finally gotten them to sleep. But she’s my wife and I want to have sex with her! More often than eight days out of the month!

Why is she bringing this up now?!?  As if I didn’t have enough to worry about! At any rate, I would like to register my absolute disdain for the so called “rhythm method”. It didn’t even occur to me that C. was serious when she started keeping the “calendar” shortly after her woman’s bits came back on after Felix was born, but she was, and she has worked it all out in the interim and apparently been keeping it in reserve. The upshot is that I am now restricted to fourteen days a month! Fourteen days! What does she think I am? A camel?

AND six of those days she has her bits (I don’t mind, but she does.) She won’t go back to withdrawl either –it’s not one hundred percent (though neither is the frakking method, actual frakking science demands that I point out) and besides, she says she’s sick of washing it out of our things. Tempted to re-invent the pill.