![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
[BSG] Our Wings Will Burn :: PG :: Gen :: 1/1
Title: Our Wings Will Burn
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
chaletian
Fandom: BSG
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Daybreak II
Summary: A sequel to Spaceships and Cave Paintings and Killer Robots and Clones (with ref to How the World Began). An archaeologist meets a man who has a bizarre fascination with ‘Mitochondrial Eve’.
Cath Crawford’s at a college reception, decked out in dress, academic gown and high heels, when the man approaches her. He’s dark haired, about her height or a shade shorter, and she’s not sure she likes him.
“Dr Crawford?”
“Yes?”
“I understand you’re the woman to talk to about the Mitochondrial Eve hoax in Tanzania a few years back.”
She hates it when people put it like that; it sounds like she had something to do with it. “You could say that.”
His name is Roger Heaney. He’s an American – something in television, according to the Dean – and, from what Cath can tell, has more money than sense. He wants to go to the site where they found Eve, and he wants Cath to take him. I have teaching commitments, she says. We’re only in fourth week here. Later, he urges, and she says she’ll think about it.
Think about it she does. In the evenings, when she should be marking exam papers, she gets out the photographs of the cave paintings, and looks at them. Tiny figures engaged in the pursuits of man. That student of hers was right, she thinks. The drawings were made with charcoal and crude paints made from local flora, by at least two people. There isn’t a single anomaly with the dating. Except the spaceships. If it was a hoax, why do it? And how?
She hasn’t thought about it in a while, because life goes on, but now the burning curiosity raised by facts that don’t make sense overtakes her, and she rings Roger and says she’ll go.
It’s the same as when she left four years ago, though weather and wind have blurred the scars they made with their excavations. There’s some rubbish by the mouth of the cave with the paintings, but there clearly haven’t been many visitors; the site is too remote.
The paintings are exactly the same, and none of it makes sense, and Roger finds a fossil, wedged face down at the back of the cave. She wonders what made him dig it up, hacking at the edge with his boot until it comes free. On the smooth underside of the rock is imprinted a perfect hexagon, with a chain leading from one side.
“We have to go to Angola,” says Roger, white and urgent. Cath laughs at him and refuses. “It’s important,” he says, but won’t explain why, and she’s not flying around Africa with a lunatic.
She lies in her tent and wonders about Eve and Adam and the people someone drew. Eve’s leg had been broken, and set straight. 150,000 years ago, they wouldn’t have known how to do that, homo sapiens sapiens or not, and the odds of a weight-bearing limb happening to set straight are slim to none. She wonders about the – necklace? – Roger found. She’s confident about the result if they date the rock – unscientific but true – but no-one had metalworking skills that sophisticated till modern times. And now Roger wants to go to Angola. She wonders what he thinks they’d find.
“Do you believe the alien theory?” Roger asks over breakfast, drinking coffee made over a smoky primus stove and looking like he hasn’t slept.
She shrugs. “Dunno. It seems unlikely – you’d think we’d have found evidence – actual, physical evidence.” She pauses. “Sometimes I think, maybe it’s more Planet of the Apes, except backwards.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Time travel?”
She flushes a little, and hopes it doesn’t show because what is she, twelve? “Who knows what we’ll be able to do in the future,” she says. “Why Angola?”
“There’s a folk tale,” says Roger, “about the world being empty, and people flying on birds from far away to fill it.”
“I’ve heard that,” says Cath. “It’s just a story.”
“All stories start somewhere. Maybe we’re the aliens. Maybe our ancestors arrived here long ago and filled an empty world.”
“Why would they do that?”
Roger shrugs, pours more coffee, and doesn’t look at her. “Maybe they went too far, and their own technology tried to kill them and followed them halfway across the galaxy until they found sanctuary here.”
This time Cath laughs. “Jesus, Roger, how many times did you watch the Terminator films growing up?”
His jaw is tense, and his head jerks up to look at her, eyes fierce. “It’s a warning,” he says. “Try and fly too high, and our wings will burn.”
“Whatever,” she says dismissively. “And Icarus’ wings didn’t burn. The wax melted.” She stands up, tosses the dregs of her cup off to one side. “Is there anything else you wanted to look at? Otherwise, give me the sat phone. I’m going to call for the helicopter. I have a summer school to run.”
“I have dreams,” he says, and she walks away.
She runs her summer school, and she and the students decamp to the Thames estuary. She sees on the news there’s been a bomb at an Angolan port, and she wonders if Roger Heaney ended up going, or if he went back to his safe, rich life in America.
Two days later she gets an email. It’s blank, and she doesn’t recognise the email address. There’s an attachment: ANGOLA014.jpg. It’s a picture taken by an underwater camera, murky and indistinct, but good enough for her to make out the top of an ancient underwater skeleton, the same hexagonal shape fused to the sternum that they found in Tanzania.
At the start of the new term, he appears at the Porters’ Lodge. He looks thinner than he did, stubbled and wide-eyed. “You didn’t reply to my email,” he says. “I found it.”
“Found what?” she asks, ushering him to her room, not willing to have any conversation with him that might get back to her colleagues.
“The spaceship.”
He stands in her college room, neat and ordered, with its striped sofa and wide, wide desk, and tells her he’s found the spaceship that brought humanity to earth.
“There was nothing left of it,” he says. “I mean, 150,000 years old. But I tested the soil by the skeleton, and it showed unusually high levels of iron, zinc, aluminium and titanium, and discoloration indicating something large and metal had been there. The body dates to the right period.” He’s fumbling in his case, produces the papers with a nervous hand.
Cath stares at him. She makes no move to take the papers. He’s standing in her college room, with its striped sofa and wide, wide desk, and telling her he’s found the spaceship that brought humanity to earth.
“The skeleton was just waiting for you?” she says, voice edged with sarcasm. He is oblivious.
“The explosion! Some bomb, some… I don’t know. It shifted a weak point on the coastline. I knew. I knew.” He’s excited and flustered and looks high but probably isn’t. He doesn’t look mad but maybe is. She tells him to leave.
In first week, one of her new students asks her about Eve and Tanzania and the stuff Roger Heaney’s been saying on the internet.
By second week, Roger’s made the news, but just the bit before the weather, when they talk about light stuff.
By fifth week, she’s joking with someone about making computers that don’t crash with almost-finished essay, when he says, “Yeah, but let’s not go too far, otherwise they’ll end up coming after us.”
By seventh week, she reads in Yahoo! Entertainment that Roger Heaney, TV producer, has been admitted to hospital for nervous exhaustion. She feels sorry for him; she hopes he’ll be OK; she wonders what happened to that body in Angola.
A couple of years later, she and her husband are making out on the sofa, and he suddenly sits up. “Shit! There’s something on TV I wanted to watch!” She laughs and tosses him the remote. He switches on the TV, and there’s a grizzled man standing at a podium, addressing an audience.
“…to play God, create life. When that life turned against us, we comforted ourselves in the knowledge that it really wasn't our fault, not really. You cannot play God then wash your hands of the things that you've created. Sooner or later, the day comes when you can't hide from the things that you've done anymore.”
“It’s the new Roger Heaney show,” says Ian. He’s practically rubbing his hands together in glee. “It’s supposed to be great.”
They watch. The characters’ dog tags are hexagonal. At the end, the same man speaks.
“It won't be an easy journey. It'll be long, and arduous. But I promise you one thing: on the memory of those lying here before you, we shall find it, and Earth shall become our new home. So say we all!”
“The thing about programmes like this,” says Ian, pointing at the credits on the screen, “is that they really make you think, y’know? I mean, about what we could do. Stem cell research, and cloning sheep’s ears and all that. AI and stuff, too – have people never seen Terminator? It’s like that line in Jurassic Park – about getting so carried away with whether we can do stuff, we don’t think about whether we should.” He wriggles happily. “God, it makes great TV. Can’t wait for next week!”
Next week, Cath walks past the Computer Science faculty building, and sees a group of students picketing against the AI programme.
She wonders if this is what Roger Heaney dreamed about.
THE END
A/N: Hmm. I seem to have written a story involving the two elements of BSG that I like least: the whole actual external greater being guiding human lives, and the end (OMFG the end, how much did I hate it?) where it's all you! Yes, you! Your technology will KILL YOU DEAD! Because while I do believe that we must bear ethical considerations in mind, and not get carried away by our own awesomeness, I also think we cannot stunt our own exploration and development because we’re scared of what will happen. So. There you go. *g*
Author:
chaletianFandom: BSG
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Daybreak II
Summary: A sequel to Spaceships and Cave Paintings and Killer Robots and Clones (with ref to How the World Began). An archaeologist meets a man who has a bizarre fascination with ‘Mitochondrial Eve’.
Cath Crawford’s at a college reception, decked out in dress, academic gown and high heels, when the man approaches her. He’s dark haired, about her height or a shade shorter, and she’s not sure she likes him.
“Dr Crawford?”
“Yes?”
“I understand you’re the woman to talk to about the Mitochondrial Eve hoax in Tanzania a few years back.”
She hates it when people put it like that; it sounds like she had something to do with it. “You could say that.”
His name is Roger Heaney. He’s an American – something in television, according to the Dean – and, from what Cath can tell, has more money than sense. He wants to go to the site where they found Eve, and he wants Cath to take him. I have teaching commitments, she says. We’re only in fourth week here. Later, he urges, and she says she’ll think about it.
Think about it she does. In the evenings, when she should be marking exam papers, she gets out the photographs of the cave paintings, and looks at them. Tiny figures engaged in the pursuits of man. That student of hers was right, she thinks. The drawings were made with charcoal and crude paints made from local flora, by at least two people. There isn’t a single anomaly with the dating. Except the spaceships. If it was a hoax, why do it? And how?
She hasn’t thought about it in a while, because life goes on, but now the burning curiosity raised by facts that don’t make sense overtakes her, and she rings Roger and says she’ll go.
It’s the same as when she left four years ago, though weather and wind have blurred the scars they made with their excavations. There’s some rubbish by the mouth of the cave with the paintings, but there clearly haven’t been many visitors; the site is too remote.
The paintings are exactly the same, and none of it makes sense, and Roger finds a fossil, wedged face down at the back of the cave. She wonders what made him dig it up, hacking at the edge with his boot until it comes free. On the smooth underside of the rock is imprinted a perfect hexagon, with a chain leading from one side.
“We have to go to Angola,” says Roger, white and urgent. Cath laughs at him and refuses. “It’s important,” he says, but won’t explain why, and she’s not flying around Africa with a lunatic.
She lies in her tent and wonders about Eve and Adam and the people someone drew. Eve’s leg had been broken, and set straight. 150,000 years ago, they wouldn’t have known how to do that, homo sapiens sapiens or not, and the odds of a weight-bearing limb happening to set straight are slim to none. She wonders about the – necklace? – Roger found. She’s confident about the result if they date the rock – unscientific but true – but no-one had metalworking skills that sophisticated till modern times. And now Roger wants to go to Angola. She wonders what he thinks they’d find.
“Do you believe the alien theory?” Roger asks over breakfast, drinking coffee made over a smoky primus stove and looking like he hasn’t slept.
She shrugs. “Dunno. It seems unlikely – you’d think we’d have found evidence – actual, physical evidence.” She pauses. “Sometimes I think, maybe it’s more Planet of the Apes, except backwards.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Time travel?”
She flushes a little, and hopes it doesn’t show because what is she, twelve? “Who knows what we’ll be able to do in the future,” she says. “Why Angola?”
“There’s a folk tale,” says Roger, “about the world being empty, and people flying on birds from far away to fill it.”
“I’ve heard that,” says Cath. “It’s just a story.”
“All stories start somewhere. Maybe we’re the aliens. Maybe our ancestors arrived here long ago and filled an empty world.”
“Why would they do that?”
Roger shrugs, pours more coffee, and doesn’t look at her. “Maybe they went too far, and their own technology tried to kill them and followed them halfway across the galaxy until they found sanctuary here.”
This time Cath laughs. “Jesus, Roger, how many times did you watch the Terminator films growing up?”
His jaw is tense, and his head jerks up to look at her, eyes fierce. “It’s a warning,” he says. “Try and fly too high, and our wings will burn.”
“Whatever,” she says dismissively. “And Icarus’ wings didn’t burn. The wax melted.” She stands up, tosses the dregs of her cup off to one side. “Is there anything else you wanted to look at? Otherwise, give me the sat phone. I’m going to call for the helicopter. I have a summer school to run.”
“I have dreams,” he says, and she walks away.
She runs her summer school, and she and the students decamp to the Thames estuary. She sees on the news there’s been a bomb at an Angolan port, and she wonders if Roger Heaney ended up going, or if he went back to his safe, rich life in America.
Two days later she gets an email. It’s blank, and she doesn’t recognise the email address. There’s an attachment: ANGOLA014.jpg. It’s a picture taken by an underwater camera, murky and indistinct, but good enough for her to make out the top of an ancient underwater skeleton, the same hexagonal shape fused to the sternum that they found in Tanzania.
At the start of the new term, he appears at the Porters’ Lodge. He looks thinner than he did, stubbled and wide-eyed. “You didn’t reply to my email,” he says. “I found it.”
“Found what?” she asks, ushering him to her room, not willing to have any conversation with him that might get back to her colleagues.
“The spaceship.”
He stands in her college room, neat and ordered, with its striped sofa and wide, wide desk, and tells her he’s found the spaceship that brought humanity to earth.
“There was nothing left of it,” he says. “I mean, 150,000 years old. But I tested the soil by the skeleton, and it showed unusually high levels of iron, zinc, aluminium and titanium, and discoloration indicating something large and metal had been there. The body dates to the right period.” He’s fumbling in his case, produces the papers with a nervous hand.
Cath stares at him. She makes no move to take the papers. He’s standing in her college room, with its striped sofa and wide, wide desk, and telling her he’s found the spaceship that brought humanity to earth.
“The skeleton was just waiting for you?” she says, voice edged with sarcasm. He is oblivious.
“The explosion! Some bomb, some… I don’t know. It shifted a weak point on the coastline. I knew. I knew.” He’s excited and flustered and looks high but probably isn’t. He doesn’t look mad but maybe is. She tells him to leave.
In first week, one of her new students asks her about Eve and Tanzania and the stuff Roger Heaney’s been saying on the internet.
By second week, Roger’s made the news, but just the bit before the weather, when they talk about light stuff.
By fifth week, she’s joking with someone about making computers that don’t crash with almost-finished essay, when he says, “Yeah, but let’s not go too far, otherwise they’ll end up coming after us.”
By seventh week, she reads in Yahoo! Entertainment that Roger Heaney, TV producer, has been admitted to hospital for nervous exhaustion. She feels sorry for him; she hopes he’ll be OK; she wonders what happened to that body in Angola.
A couple of years later, she and her husband are making out on the sofa, and he suddenly sits up. “Shit! There’s something on TV I wanted to watch!” She laughs and tosses him the remote. He switches on the TV, and there’s a grizzled man standing at a podium, addressing an audience.
“…to play God, create life. When that life turned against us, we comforted ourselves in the knowledge that it really wasn't our fault, not really. You cannot play God then wash your hands of the things that you've created. Sooner or later, the day comes when you can't hide from the things that you've done anymore.”
“It’s the new Roger Heaney show,” says Ian. He’s practically rubbing his hands together in glee. “It’s supposed to be great.”
They watch. The characters’ dog tags are hexagonal. At the end, the same man speaks.
“It won't be an easy journey. It'll be long, and arduous. But I promise you one thing: on the memory of those lying here before you, we shall find it, and Earth shall become our new home. So say we all!”
“The thing about programmes like this,” says Ian, pointing at the credits on the screen, “is that they really make you think, y’know? I mean, about what we could do. Stem cell research, and cloning sheep’s ears and all that. AI and stuff, too – have people never seen Terminator? It’s like that line in Jurassic Park – about getting so carried away with whether we can do stuff, we don’t think about whether we should.” He wriggles happily. “God, it makes great TV. Can’t wait for next week!”
Next week, Cath walks past the Computer Science faculty building, and sees a group of students picketing against the AI programme.
She wonders if this is what Roger Heaney dreamed about.
THE END
A/N: Hmm. I seem to have written a story involving the two elements of BSG that I like least: the whole actual external greater being guiding human lives, and the end (OMFG the end, how much did I hate it?) where it's all you! Yes, you! Your technology will KILL YOU DEAD! Because while I do believe that we must bear ethical considerations in mind, and not get carried away by our own awesomeness, I also think we cannot stunt our own exploration and development because we’re scared of what will happen. So. There you go. *g*