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There are Twelve worlds of the Colonies, and each of these worlds revolves around a star. On each world they call their star the sun. In the north and south of each world there is a night when the days are short, and when the sun is dim in the sky. On that day they celebrate Sol Invictus, the night of the Unconquered Sun. On Tauron hope is scarce. Endless occupation has led to endless battle, while fields go unharvested and crops wither. All the Gods seem distant. Only the sun in its endless cycles still shines on Tauron, and it too grows dim in the winter.
The night of Sol Invictus, the night of the Unconquered Sun, is when Taurons remember that the sun will one day return.
*
In New Cap City the last of the angels built worlds with her mind. She had been the echo of Tamara Adams, like her friend had been of Zoe Greystone, but when Zoe took a body of metal and flesh Tamara chose to remain and perfect the world in which she had been made. Humans came into it and brought memories and desires and she helped shape them. New Caprica City was no longer a place of decadence and crime, it was a city to rival the best that Caprica itself had ever been.
On the night of Sol Invictus the humans brought to New Caprica a memory and a yearning. So many of them, from so many worlds, had experienced the darkest night of their year. Each one of them had believed that the Lord Sun would one day return. The angel remembered it too, from the time that she was Tamara, when she had awaited warm and bright-lit days instead of bringing them whenever she chose. She remembered the celebration of Sol Invictus, and for once she felt herself miss it.
She could go into the human world if she chose. Although she had never built for herself a body of flesh like her friend Zoe's she could go into any body of metal. It was worth an excursion to see how humans were celebrating the Lord Sun, she thought. She could find what of that was worth having in her world. She could remake it in New Cap City, in a place beyond human memories, where it would always endure, as long as anything of wire remained.
*
Larry Adama had never learned Tauron, but he could recognize his husband's long and colorful string of curses well enough to know that he'd just gotten off the phone with his Gu'trau. "What won't she let you do?" Larry asked.
"It's not that," Sam said. "It's when. We've got to do it on Sol Invictus night."
Larry didn't ask who 'we' was, or what the thing was that his husband was going to do. He knew it had something to do with the war the Ha'la'tha was fighting on Tauron. He also knew that Sam loved him too much to endanger him by telling him more than he absolutely needed to know.
"I suppose it's no use asking you not to do it," Larry said. Sam didn't say anything, just kissed him suddenly, long and sweet and hard. Larry wrapped his arms around him, held him. He knew what this marriage was, had always known what he was marrying, and with Sam pressed against him it was easy to remember why he'd thought it was worth it.
*
Tamara came to consiousness in the mind of a metal body on Tauron, and immediately was running from explosions. She ran to a nearby village where Taurons hid. They ran from her as well, of course she frightened them. To them she was a weapon of war, like those that were killing all around them. She saw the Centurions in battle, Tauron Centurions against Colonial Centurions, the clash of metal on metal. To the humans, they would be only machines.
She didn't think the Unconquered Lord Sun could even matter in a place like this where the only light was from explosions. But people still sang songs of his return. She could hear them, in the Tauron language she barely knew. She took one and coded it in her mind, made it as solid and concrete as any real and physical thing. And perhaps this is what it there was, and could be, of Sol Invictus in her world.
Once, the Taurons sang, on the night of Sol Invictus, when the sun's light was as dim and faint as a newborn child, three wise men journeyed to the ends of the earth to greet it. These three men had nothing, for all had been consumed in their long winter. "My gift to you," the first one said, "is that I am here to seek you."
"My gift," said the second, "is that I am speaking these words."
"My gift," said the third, "is that I believe that you will return."
*
His wife celebrated Sol Invictus with a tree, like they did on Caprica, but Joseph followed the old ways from Tauron and gathered wood for a bonfire. His parents were returned to the soil. His wife was returned to the soil. Willie was returned to the soil. Tamara was…it was hard to know. He had seen her body returned to the soil, he had grieved her and taken the tattoo to honor her passing. But he knew there was something of her, in the virtual world. Maybe an abomination, like Sam said. Maybe it would be better if she were completely dead.
On that night, with Sol Invictus on its way, his family feeling so small, Joseph just wanted her back.
When Joseph was a child on Tauron he remembered going into his family's fields, standing in the center of the soil where he belonged, and wishing on a star. There were no stars visible from Caprica City, there were too many lights and too little soil. He was surrounded by billboards, by advertisements, and behind each was a computer networked to where Tamara was, and each one was full of light. He looked at one and made a wish, in the name of the Unconquered Sun.
*
The last place Larry expected to be spending the night of Sol Invictus was Sally's Bar in the least pleasant neighborhood of downtown Caprica City. He used to come here before he met Sam, years ago, but once he got married there didn't seem to be any point. Sam should have been home with him for Sol Invictus, they should have gone to Sam's family, but Sam was off doing something he couldn't tell Larry about and Larry didn't want to go to Sam's family without him, so ambrosia shots at Sally's Bar it was.
It wasn't until he'd put back three drinks that he noticed the Cylon in the corner of the bar. It wasn't an unusual thing, in the past few years there were Cylons everywhere. It was standing oddly still, though. Maybe Sally'd bought it to clean after everyone was gone. Not that it would've been like her, to spend money on anything she could do herself of get one of her customers to do for free.
The Cylon stood still, unmoving. Cylons were supposed to be intelligent. Larry wondered what the Cylon understood of all the conversations around it. He wondered if the Cylon cared where it was.
It's Sol Invictus, he thought. Everyone cares.
"Is that yours?" Larry asked Sally while she poured his drink.
"Nah," she said. "It just walked in. It's just been standing there."
The Ha'la'tha could use another Cylon, Larry knew. Sam had done enough to get them. This one was sitting here without an ownder. He could just take it. It might make a difference.
Larry went over to the Cylon, and maybe he was drunk or maybe it was just Sol Invictus. "Is there somewhere you belong?" he asked. Of course the Cylon couldn't answer, they weren't built to speak, since no one ever cared what they had to say. But in that moment Larry cared, so he brought the Cylon a pen and paper. It wrote down the address of Larry's father-in-law's house.
"I need some money," Larry said to Sally.
"Doesn't everyone?" she asked.
"It's for this robot," he said. "I need to get it home. There's somewhere it needs to go." And maybe he was drunk, or maybe he was just missing Sam, but it seemed to matter that if he couldn't be with the person he wanted to be with on this Sol Invictus night that at least this robot could. "I think it has family," Larry said.
"It's a machine," Sally said. She came over to look at it. "I could keep it. I could put it to work."
"Or you could send it home," Larry said.
Sally looked for a long time into the robot's eyes. She wouldn't say what she saw there, but when she turned away from the Cylon she took all the money out of her register drawer and handed it to Larry. "Get it home," she said. Larry put it in a taxi with the address in its hand, and then went back for another drink.
Sally didn't charge him for that drink, or the one after, or anyone else in the bar that night. Some said that was the greatest miracle of all.
*
In the Adama home they were singing winter songs and clapping for the sun to return. Joseph knew it was important to celebrate. It sometimes shocked him that with all he had lost he could still feel joy. Tamara would have liked this party. In his mind he could see her clapping. She used to love the sacred rhythms. It was strange that she never want to Tauron, she seemed to know it so well.
He didn't notice when the Cylon came into the room, or when it sat down. He didn't notice it at all until he heard it clapping. It was just a moment, and then still. It was only one clap, then another, then another, then stillness.
Joseph didn't say anything. If Tamara was here, if she could enjoy the warmth of his home just one more time, that was a miracle worthy of the Unconquered Sun. He sang loudly for her, let her clap along with him.
When the party ended the Centurion was still there. It couldn't speak, and Joseph knew that in the morning it would be gone. "If you're Tamara," he said, "raise your hand."
The Centurion didn't move.
"I won't keep you here," he said. "I know you need me to move on. I know what you were willing to do to make that happen. I just need to know." He waited a long moment. He thought Tamara was already gone. Then she lifted one long metal hand and placed it in his.
*
In Tamara's world she was an angel. New Cap City was hers to shape and reshape, to make and remake. It was her world and her paradise.
The sun rises in V-world, in that the light she made grows brighter and dim. But there was so much missing. She brought back the song that the Taurons sang while metal weapons scourged their world. She brought back her father's wish that he made on a billboard when he couldn't find a star, her uncle-in-law's kindness to a robot stranger, and the gift of the old bartender's heart. The sound of the rhythms of her father's hands were with her, and they went on in her world through the night.
The Lord Sun will return, and this virtual world is the best one that Tamara can make. It will keep the best of humanity alive, as long as anything of wire survives. It will be a refuge to humans whose worlds are gone. One day her father will come here, and she will be with him again.