Lifting all the magical realism out of BSG and tossing it into BOK, one odd installment at a time.

Lay Down your Burdens
Part III: Sometimes a Great Notion



*****

Some of the evenings are perfect. She feels- How to say it? She feels perfect. She feels like a perfect being.

They fall into the bed together, laughing. He bites her ear. She fiddles with the buttons of his shirt, working them loose, one after the other. He kisses her jaw, then the place where her neck meets her shoulder. She sighs, presses her palm against his bare chest.

“Wait,” she says, “wait.”

He pushes up, back, just a little, hovering over her.

“How can you not believe in God?”

“Me, in particular? As if I in particular should believe?”

“Oh, you know what I mean.”

“I do,” he says. “I do know what you mean.” He rolls to the side, pulls her leg over his hip, runs a hand through her hair. “I have lots of reasons, I suppose. There are so many good arguments to be made for, if not atheism, than at least agnosticism. The inductive, the deductive, the epistemological, the-”

“But if you had to-”

“If I had to,” he shifts next to her, persists in removing the last of her clothing as he speaks, “if I needed to, if I were forced to settle on just one reason, it would be this: I do not see the necessity of God.”

“What does that mean, necessity?”

“I don’t believe in God. I believe in matter, in atoms, in entropy...” He runs a finger over the curve of her hip. “I believe that everything can be explained, and traced down to its essential source, and that that essential source is always natural, never supernatural. I believe in the laws of physics.”

“Don’t you violate those laws?”

“I choose to believe that those laws have yet to be fully understood. But I am, to rehash my old objection to your increasingly tiresome refrain, completely real. I feel real. I feel real to you, I feel real to myself. I’m made of the same stuff as you.” He pauses, strokes her forehead. “The same stuff as you. We’re all made of the same essential matter, elements forged in stars, at the beginning of time- Once you grasp that, that the matter in each of us is older than ourselves and will persist after we are gone and that we are made, literally, of the stuff of stars, once you accept and absorb the enormity and beauty of that essential truth, all other quests for meaning- the theological, the philosophical, the poetic- seem weak and drab by comparison.”

She stares up at him; she’s naked and breathless. He winds his fingers into her hair and kisses her in a way that is, while soft, not at all a gesture of affection.

It’s his way of telling her the conversation is officially over.



*****


She’s thinking about stardust and atoms when Lloyd leans over her desk.

“Julianne, do you think you could find something more about his parents?”

She opens her mouth when the voice comes floating over her shoulder.

“Good God,” he says, “do I really look like that?”

Julianne freezes.

“Julianne?” It’s Lloyd, real Lloyd, speaking. “Julianne are you okay?”

“Do I really look like him?”

“Yes,” Julianne manages. It comes out as kind of a squeak.

Other Lloyd rounds the desk, considering his oblivious doppelganger.

“Are you sure?” Says the real Lloyd.

“He’s a mess,” says Other Lloyd.

“Yes, absolutely,” says Julianne. Her hands are shaking. “I mean- No, yes- I mean, I’ll be fine, I just need a minute.”

The real Lloyd frowns at her, decides not to push the issue. “Okay,” he says.

Other Lloyd runs a hand down his double’s arm. Julianne’s heart does a terrified flip. How can he not feel that? “This is disgusting,” says Other Lloyd. “Really, it hardly qualifies as clothing.”

“I just need a minute,” says Julianne. She lays her hands on the desk, takes a breath, then bolts for the bathroom.



*****



She doesn’t throw up. She kneels on the floor, leans her forehead against the cool ceramic of the toilet seat, but she doesn’t throw up.

He’s not real. The phrase repeats in her mind, again and again, like the theme of some demented waltz. He’s not real. She gasps for air, struggles with the heat in her eyes and the lump in her throat.

Somehow, in the safety of her home, the unreality of him had faded. Had dulled. She had believed the feeling of his body against hers, believed what appeared to be his hands undoing her clothes, believed- But seeing him, hearing him, seeing him stand next to Lloyd, seeing that Lloyd did not see, and did not hear- She feels dizzy, awful.

“You need to pull it together, Julianne.” He’s crouching next to her.

“I’ll tell him.” It comes out in little hiccups.

“Tell who what, exactly?” He sounds distinctly unamused. “Tell that weedy, shabby mess out there that you’ve been seeing- what? The better version of him?”

She shakes her head. “You’re not real,” she whispers.

“Whether I am or not is of secondary importance. The question you need to ask yourself is this: if they find out you see me, do you keep your job?”



*****


Back at her desk, she feels brittle, but she manages; everyone on some level presumes that she’s just having an off day. That this behavior is normal for someone like her. Even Lloyd, she can tell, thinks he’s only seeing regression.

It’s like a slap in the face. How can they all be so blind to the awful thing that’s happening to her?

In a quiet moment, he comes back. The Other Lloyd. He settles into the chair closest to her desk. She finds herself staring at him with a kind of dreadful desperation. Whatever else he may be, he’s the only one who knows what she’s going through.

“You’re dealing with a mystery, not an impossibility, Julianne,” he says. His voice is almost kind. “The difference is more than semantic. You should hold on to that.”

“Julianne?” Ray’s voice cuts across her mind. “Julianne, what are you looking at?”

“Nothing.” She shakes her head, blinks, and it’s true. “I was just- It’s nothing.”


*****


In the safety of her apartment, she breaks down.

She holds her head in her hands. She sobs as she has not sobbed for years, great gasps welling up from the center of her chest, tears rolling down her cheeks.

She feels him. She feels his weight settling onto the couch, feels his arms slip around her. She screams, hits his chest, but he’s so strong. Whatever he is, he is strong, and she can not break free.

He holds her until the tears run out.

He keeps holding her.

“I was very proud of you today,” he says. His mouth is pressed against the top of her head. “I was very proud of you.”

“Why?” It’s pitiful, how broken her voice sounds.

“You were very strong. You will have to keep being strong, Julianne.”

“For what?”

He pushes her away from his chest, cups her cheek with his hand. “You have to be strong, to face the shape of things to come.”


*****

In Maybelle, Lloyd considers the problem of Julianne. Lloyd knows, he knows, that steps backwards are normal. It's a normal part of recovery. But it still bothers him. It stays with him. Something was wrong with her. Something was not right.

"Those mean the same thing."

The voice makes him start. He looks up, sees, shakes his head, blinks rapidly. Blinks more. But she doesn't go away.