The wind on her exhilarated face, there in her mother's house, in the bug room, becomes the hole in her cockpit canopy. The whistling wind brought by the dawn, a portrait of the womanchild cavern of the soul under pressure-heat ratio ides of evolutions have buried their fears end of line. Kara Thrace wakes up, eyes wide, lightning everywhere. I mean to say that Kara wakes up in a storm.

No. I mean to say that in every house there's a little room we don't know about. And on the other side of that door, there are insects and darkness and the sound of scratching, and a hot red heat at the back of your eyes. And a lot of us don't ever open the door. But if you can, if you can burn off what doesn't work and step to the door and open it, if you are strong enough to accomplish the impossible, you learn an amusing fact. On the other side of that door you find the Temple of Five, the Great Hall, Heaven, Elysium: a room bigger than the universe, filled with light and singing, and all the gods and heroes you could ever want, welcoming you in. And the joke of the bugs: to think that once they were terrifying, to think that once you were so scared that they were real -- that Cylons are evil, that fear is worthwhile, that hatred is an option, that anger or violence are ever appropriate, that there are moments where God looks away, that there are times when you're alone, that anyone's destiny or fate ever went wrong, that the unfolding can be disrupted, that there's a dimension that doesn't include love, and laughter -- when those bugs are just so small, and silly, and made of plastic. That stupid joke, to think your life is a story being told by anyone but you.

"Starbuck, Apollo. Lost you on dradis. I say again, I've lost you." His voice calls her back; she's got one hand on the eject lever. She skips to the abyss and dances back again. She stops herself: the bugs aren't jumping. She should be afraid. Why isn't she afraid? Is this about death? When you're a pilot you can see the ground curve away, the way the world goes around and around. The flat Earth goes round on you, and you've gained a whole dimension to play in.