Writing "Colonies" Part VII: Sitrep

It's the first week of March, 2020.  I have a soft deadline of 2021 to be finished with Colonies of Kobol and to have them ready to be released into the wild.  (Mainly because summer of 2021 marks ten years since I first released Lords of Kobol.)  Don't put money on that, however.  Lest we forget that I had to take a year-long break from Prelude before I was ready to continue and conclude that one.  (Even though that ended up being the best thing for it and it became my favorite of that series.)

Still, things are going well.

Book Sixteen: Earth is halfway finished.  Now, don't get excited.  Yes, Book Sixteen is the last in the three volumes, but I'm not writing them in order.

In fact, this is the current status of all sixteen books:

There we go.

I wrote Book One first because I had just finished a BSG rewatch, so the Final Five were still in my head.  Then I moved on to Book Fourteen: The Colony because that starts with the Final Five arriving in the Colonies and stopping the Cylon War.  After that, I did a Caprica rewatch and started Book Thirteen.

Man, Book Thirteen is long.

Five-hundred fifty-four pages.  Why is it so long?  I mean, the first three entries of Lords of Kobol are about two hundred and change, each.  Prelude is three hundred and change.  For Colonies of Kobol, Earth (I) and The Colony were about one-fifty or so each.

I have come to the conclusion that Caprica is so long because the show wasn't given the finality it deserved.  For Lords of Kobol, I used about six hundred-seventy pages to tell all the story I wanted.  Plus a bit more with Prelude for a thousand pages total.  That's good enough for the Lords of Kobol, I suppose.

For Earth (I) and The Colony, I'm reusing characters from the show, Battlestar Galactica.  Their stories were told very well and pretty much in full on the series.  There's no real need to explain too much more about their characters.  Largely, it's just about depicting the events that got them where they ended up.  Now, that's not to say there's no character development or insights.  There are plenty.  But given what we saw in the show, these characters weren't necessarily begging for more.

That's not the case with the characters from Caprica.

They only had one year and then we were teased with that amazing epilogue at the end, showing what the future held for them.  And that was all we got.

So, I felt a sense of duty to get these characters to the points we saw in the epilogue and to then push them further toward the Cylon War.  And once the war started, to show what they did during it.

And that's what I did.  I feel like Book Thirteen is the second and third season of Caprica that those characters never got.  The first half of the book is the second season, which takes them from the end of the first season to the places we saw in the epilogue and then further to the start of hostilities with their Cylon companions.  The rest of the book is about the war.  Some characters are added and some drop away.  Some die.  It's long but it needed to be long.

New Caprica?  Not long at all.  Only about sixty pages.  Why?  Because the story of that colony is well known and brief.  I wanted to provide some more context to certain characters, tell a few stories that weren't told on screen (stories that Ronald D. Moore hinted at in interviews), connect dots to stuff we found out later in the series ... but that needn't take up hundreds of pages.

That's the nice thing about using the volume system like I am for Colonies.  If a story about a particular colony isn't terribly long, it doesn't have to be.  If it's begging for a full-on epic, I can do that.  I have germs of stories, skeletons of tales, if you will, for every colony and not all of them will be long.

So, Book Sixteen: Earth (II).  How long is it?  Right now, about fifty pages.  It might get to one hundred and it might not.  The story I want to tell is fairly simple, even though it details the end of the entire "Kobolverse" saga and The One True God's plans for us all.  Yes, there is an addendum, sorta, to the tale of the settlers from the ragtag fleet on our planet some 150,000 years ago.  But the bulk of the action takes place in our own future, some X-years hence.  (I am purposefully keeping the date vague both here and in the book so it's not invalidated by the passage of time in the real world.)  It is in our own future that we will determine if the cycle continues or if it starts again.

(Listen to the words of the Messengers in Times Square for a hint on which way the story will fall.)

In the past, I have given out PDFs of the first drafts to the parts of Colonies that I've finished.  I will not be doing that any longer.  Book Sixteen is the end and I don't want to give away the end.  Also, once I back up to the other books and colonies, I feel like giving away those individual pieces won't do the readers any favors since they'll lack the needed context.  With the parts that I have written to this point, readers knew many of the characters thanks to both shows, BSG and Caprica.  There's no such luck with stories about ancient Gemenon or Sagittaron or Virgon or Aerilon.  I may share chapters from time to time, however.

Speaking of, want a chapter from Book Sixteen: Earth?  Read it after the JUMP.




(As many of you know, the Messengers have been conducting "interviews," if you will, with people from humanity's past in order to get a sense of how to best guide humans in the final days before the course of the cycle is decided.  This is one such "interview.")

I

ROSLIN

Unkown Years Before Activation

She spun in the darkness on one foot, clutching her glasses.  "Hello?"  She didn't hear an echo.  Her mouth was parted and she squinted, trying to see something, anything.  When she didn't, she took a deep breath and had a realization.

It didn't hurt.

She held the breath, without pain.  A full, restorative breath.  Then she exhaled.  It had been so long since she was able to perform that simple act fully and without suffering.  She did it again. 

Roslin turned and caught a glimpse of her hair as it flung over her shoulder.  Her hair.  Not the wig.  She reached for it and saw that her skin, too, was full and not the pale, marked, paper-thin flesh she carried for the last months of her life.

"What is this?" she asked.

"An interview, Madame President," a voice said.

She raised her head and held her glasses tighter.  She raised her voice, "Who are you?  I demand to see my captors."

"We will ask the questions," another voice said.

"You are in a position to demand nothing."

Laura ground her teeth and fumed.  She turned again, looking for a chair, an exit.

"This is not what you've become accustomed to, is it?"

She muttered, "No."

"When you became president, you wielded its power effectively."

"Some might say abusively," the other voice interjected.

"Indeed," the first voice added.  Roslin raised her head again in surprise.  "Why does that wound you?"

"I … I was the president of the Colonies.  Only fifty thousand people were left.  That's all."  Her voice hardened and she said, "I made some choices that I'm not proud of, but it was for the survival of mankind."

"There was a turn, was there not?"

This was a voice Laura knew.  She looked and saw the Priestess Elosha standing in the black next to her.  She smiled and reached out.  Elosha nodded once and grinned.  "'A turn?'"

"Yes.  First, there was the vision of the serpents.  And you learned of Pythia's prophecy of the 'dying leader.'"  The president nodded.  "Then there was Kobol and your visions about its past.  You started to believe then."

"I'm not sure I ever really believed," Laura said.

Elosha smiled.  "You're lying."  Roslin appeared shocked and the priestess continued, "Before you went to Kobol, you used the faith of the masses to your advantage.  To get what you want.  Yes?"

"Yes.  You were there."

"For a time.  Until I was killed."  The president's throat clenched and she pinched her lips between her teeth.  She nodded and Elosha said, "Still, what you beheld on Kobol gave comfort to the seed of belief in you.  Not belief in the Lords of Kobol, as such.  Mostly, belief in what Pythia wrote and what she said about the dying leader."

"I …"  She paused and looked into the darkness.  "I was convinced that I was.  So were you."

"That passage was written thirty-six hundred years ago, by Pythia, because an archon named Pellegias died.  She remembered his story in the news and she included it in her writings."

Roslin's eyebrows raised.  "Oh."

"Now, Pythia was inspired to write that down by my colleague," she nodded her head over her shoulder, "because he told her about the benefits of vague prophecy."  Laura took a step backward and felt the edge of her dress press against something.  Instinctively, she sat, knowing it was a chair though it hadn't been there before.  Elosha sat next to her in another new, unseen chair and continued, "Do you know the name Acastus?"

The president looked away and nodded.  "Yes.  Pythia wrote about him."

"No.  Not Pythia.  The Scrolls were written by more people than her.  He was written about by Alexandra Gideon, assistant to the last president of Kobol, Stephen Acastus."  Roslin's eyes widened.  "He was dying of a wasting disease and it was he who Gideon and others believed Pythia was referring to."

"Are you saying that I wasn't the 'dying leader' of scripture?"

"You were a leader and all leaders die, eventually."  The priestess shifted in her seat, "Just as all people die."  Laura's shoulders began to sag and Elosha smirked.  "Don't you remember that I said the dying leader would not live to enter the new land?"  She nodded.  "But you did.  You walked on the new Earth and saw the life around you."

Her mouth parted again and she raised her head.  She felt her eyes well with tears and this surprised her.  "I … I didn't have the time to think about that."  Her voice cracked as she spoke, "Who was the 'dying leader' then?"

The priestess shrugged.  "I don't know.  Maybe the Galactica."  Laura laughed and turned to face Elosha but she was met with a serious expression.  "That ship led the remnant of humanity from the Colonies to a new land it could not enter.  It was certainly wasting away.  Old age, damage, stress, poor workmanship."  She cocked her head and said, "Why not Galactica?"

Roslin's breathing quickened and she looked away from her old adviser.  She felt a tear run over her cheek and she thought, Why does this upset me?

"Because you believed."  The president looked back at the priestess, stunned that she was answering her thought.  "You believed that you were the 'dying leader' and that this was a 'prophecy' and not just some old story.  It made you special."  Her face contorted at the comment.  "It gave your impending demise a purpose.  Cancer makes no sense, but if your cancer gets humanity to the promised land," Elosha smacked her knee, "then your cancer has a purpose."

Laura sank in the chair and thought.  She nodded her head a little and said, "You're right."

"Of course I'm right."

She turned again and saw that the priestess had been replaced by the admiral.  Roslin smiled and he did, too.  He took up her hand and kissed her knuckles before returning it to his leg.  "Because your cancer made sense, you had to remain the leader."

"I did."

"You tried to steal an election."

She tilted her head and said, "Gaius Baltar should never have been president."

"Maybe," Bill said, "but that's not your decision.  That's the free will of the voters, and you were never elected president."

"We almost died on New Caprica because of him," her voice cracked as it firmed.  "We lost more than a year we could have spent looking for Earth."

"But you didn't die on New Caprica.  If you had real faith, you wouldn't have worried."

She rolled her eyes.  "Even if I had faith, I would still have to work to get us off that planet."

Adama smirked, "So you admit it?  You didn't have faith?"

Laura paused.  "I did.  To a point."

"The point at which we found Earth.  The first one."

Roslin sighed and remembered the joy in Galactica's CIC.  The anticipation of the Raptor ride to the surface.  Then, the crushing despair that settled over her when she saw the destruction and heard the clicking of the radiological devices.  "Yes."

"If Earth was a lie, then so were you.  You couldn't be the 'dying leader.'  Your cancer no longer had purpose or made sense."

"Yes."

"The faith you had wasn't in the gods.  It was in yourself."  She nodded and the admiral continued, "Because of that faith, you felt you were always in the right.  The presidency and your disease made you a powerful narcissist."

Laura looked at him and narrowed her eyes.  "We were trying to preserve the few people we had left.  I made hard decisions because I had to."

Bill tilted his head and looked at her askance.  "Sometimes.  And sometimes you were simply cruel."

The president scoffed with laughter.  "'Cruel?'"

"Hera Agathon."

Roslin shook as though he had hit her.  She cleared her throat and put her glasses on, as if the eyewear could shield her from further impacts.  "My initial reaction to the child was … unfortunate."

"You wanted her aborted."  Adama's voice became deeper, gravellier, "Then, after her blood saved your life, you took her from her parents and made them believe she was dead!"  The president pulled her arms close to herself and her fingers fidgeted against each other.  "Your deception lasted for months until she was taken by Cylons!"

"I know!"  She saw Bill's expression of barely contained rage and she raised her hands to stay further verbal assault.  "I … I know."  Her voice trembled, "I have few regrets of my time as president but my treatment of Hera and her family is one of them."

"Your conspiring made things much more difficult."

Laura wasn't certain what he meant, but she nodded.  "I'm sure."

"The One True God's plan was nearly undone."  Roslin stared at him and the admiral continued, "Thankfully, we had contingencies in place.  The child was found and saved by others more susceptible to us."

The president studied him.  This seemed for all the worlds to be Bill Adama, yet he spoke of the Cylon god?

"Don't worry about whose god is whose."  The admiral brought a small cigarette up to his mustachioed lips and inhaled.  The end glowed briefly and he held his breath.  Finally, he exhaled and handed the drug to her.  She pinched it and looked at him again, "The important thing is you did everything you were supposed to do.  Mostly.  There was more on your shoulders than on most people, that's for sure."  He smiled a toothy smile, spreading that peppered facial hair over his grin.

She smiled in response and breathed in the smoke from the cigarette, too.  She felt it in her lungs and the quick flush of warmth through her body.  The sensations of her balance and self being slightly knocked askew.  She nodded and exhaled.  The smoke vanished in the blackness.  "I don't think a lot of people understand what it's like having the literal weight of the galaxy on themselves."  She leaned toward him, knocking his shoulder with hers.  "You do."

"Mmm-hmm."

"I did everything I could to keep as many alive as I could."  She took another puff and passed it back to Adama.  With her voice choked, holding the exhale as long as she could, she said, "I get that there was some kind of grand cosmic plan," she pursed her lips and blew the smoke away, "but I don't know the details."

"You didn't need to."  He inhaled from the cigarette again.  "You did your part."

"I did."

"You truly wanted to help humanity find a new home, despite your health.  That was selfless."

"Hmm."  Laura laid her head on Bill's shoulder.  "Maybe.  Maybe you're right about the, the narcissism thing, too.  I thought I had been anointed by the gods to be the one to lead, so I had to be the one who leads."

"Selfless acts carried out with self-centered motives?"  Adama kissed the top of her head.  "Do they cancel each other out?"

Roslin closed her eyes and thought.  "I don't think so.  The actions are what matter."  She lifted her head and faced the admiral.  "Not the thoughts behind them."  She kissed him lightly on the lips and he embraced her. 

After a moment, he withdrew.  Bill's eyes danced over her face and he said, "Interesting."

"Hey," Laura whispered, "can we lay in the grass and look up at the stars?"

He again flashed that wide smile and held her.  As the blackness around them became speckled with distant points of light and green blades appeared beneath their feet, he said, "Sure."

Thanks for reading.