So say we all

I dreamed the other night that I was in a new version of Battlestar Galactica. With the dream-state ability to hold two seemingly irreconcilable ideas in my head at once, I knew that it was another occurrence of the story told in the TV show, although this was reality. Humanity had actually been pursued to the point of genocide by the creatures of its own creation: All of this had happened before, and all of it would happen again.

This time, things turned out differently than in the recent series. We had colonized a small, undesirable planet to make a go of it, but the Cylons had found us. They reached no truce with us but again tried to exterminate us. Humankind now only numbered a few hundred souls. Our leaders had decided that our species was doomed; the only thing to decide was how we would make our exit. We would do it on our own terms, or at least on the terms of our leaders.

So we had loaded everyone into our last battlestar and set out into space to buy ourselves some distance. The plan was that, at a final signal, all of us would drink a poison and lay down our lives. I may have had misgivings, but no wherewithal for insurrection. The people around me were beginning to go; some could not wait for the final bell and had drunk their kool-aid early. There I was, the stars of space outside, and bodies dying quietly around me. An unusually coherent dream, and if all that is going to happen again, I'd prefer for Captain Adama to save us.