Four months ago, the Hub goes down in a hail of fire; Boom joins John on his Baseship, the original one, where her Raptor still sits from before the civil war. He greets Ellen with a drink -- of all infinities, count on her love of liquor and Saul, two constants in a world of madness -- and stares down at her wigging. She takes him in, and looks over at Boomer as she clears the cobwebs away. "Something's happened," she realizes, and sits up in her bed, crossing her legs. She's been a hostage of hate for fourteen months; this is the first change in routine. She laughs at her son when he tells her what the 268s have done: "Begun contemplating your mortality?" She takes a drink; it belies her tone.

"More than that. Our extinction." She's sick of him now, reminding us that this isn't one long conversation but a year-plus captivity we're only seeing bits of, and hoping -- as they spend every conversation hoping -- Boomer's listening, taking it all on as she always does: "Always so dramatic!" Cavil gets as close as he's going to, to begging for her help rebuilding, reinventing resurrection, before this self-inflicted genocide finds them all. She's sick enough of him to wish him luck and grin.

"Don't need luck. We need your help. They destroyed the Hub, but they don't even know about the Colony. All your equipment is still there..." She tells him it takes Five, if it will work at all, and at his thrown fit promises she's telling the truth. "Don't insult my intelligence! Your children are dying, Ellen. And you won't lift a finger to save us? Why? Out of spite? Because I refuse to kneel to your orthodoxy?" God, she's so right, like the whole thing with Galen didn't prove it. Such drama! "Now you finally see the truth about your Final Five!" he yells at Boomer. Which is sort of sad, because even if I used to love Boomer I have to admit that going from getting your God's/Mother's approval to trying to get the most pathetic fucking person you know's approval is a drop indeed. Boomer's like, "YEAH! Tell us about ... that thing he is talking about!" Ellen's like, "To reiterate: I can't, you idiots."

Cavil starts screaming -- again, to poor fucking sadsack Boomer whose opinion wouldn't matter less if she was anything less than his fifth-iteration robot girl, if you can imagine that -- about how "see how she forces me?" and comparing her to "the humans that enslaved us," about which whole concept (God as despot) Sartre wrote at least five awesome plays I can't quote here because this is getting ridiculous, and threatens to quote "cut open your head." Ellen still loves him enough, as her son and creation, to be shocked by this. She says his name, once, quietly, catching up to what he's become. After all this, her capacity for shock is proof of her love for him, and makes me like her even more. Him, too: "The brain is a marvelous thing. It's a big electrical grid. Just lay it open, stimulate it in the right places, and I can trigger your deepest memory. Your deepest fears, your deepest guilt. And even the recipe for life everlasting."