MONDO EXTRAS

I think I just became a fucking Libertarian. And possibly a Christian. In other news, the Operative gets a screwdriver through the leg. "But right now?" Mal wraps his hands around the screwdriver, driving down: "I'm going to have to go with Wrath." Word.

Jayne listens to the battle outside, the howling and crunching beyond the now-locked door. Again, Ariel is sent to do the work of a man, against demons, impossible odds, while we rest easy. "You suppose he got through? Do you think Mal got the word out?" Zoe, still dead in her heart: "He got through. I know he got through." She's not speaking belief, she's speaking truth. She's talking about their Captain.

Mal drops, blood dripping from his mouth. The Operative watches as he stands, then apologizes, giving him the nerve pinch from the beginning, paralyzing Mal, playing out the scene that already inverted and doubled and manipulated itself so many times once again. He's the only one who sees it, who can take down a government doctor and a holdover Browncoat with the same script. His sin is Pride. "You should know there's no shame in this. You've done remarkable things. But you're fighting a war you've already lost." He comes at him, with the sword, and Mal breaks the act. "Well, I'm known for that."

Mal elbows the Operative hard, in the neck, and then does whatever looks like a half-nelson that also makes a cracking sound. "Piece of shrapnel tore up that nerve cluster my first tour. Had it moved." He picks up the sword. "Sorry about the throat. Expect you'd want to say your famous last words right now." He pauses. "Just one trouble." He runs the sword through the straps in the Operative's armor, pinning him to the railing of the platform, still choking, unable to truly feel he's been beat. "I ain't gonna kill you. Hell, I'm gonna grant your greatest wish. I'm gonna show you a world without sin." He turns on the screen attached to the central pylon, pops in the Sarah Paulson disc. "These are just a few of the few images we've recorded. And you can see it isn't what we thought. There's been no war here and no terraforming event. The environment is stable." The Operative watches -- nothing else to do -- and chokes. "It's the Pax. The G- Paxilon Hydroclorate that we added to the air processors. It was supposed to calm the population..." Philosophy in practice is the science of governance. Politics is the ground from which we take flight, the disposition of the body politic -- a lot of ones combined into the many, a sea of the personal becoming the political as a consequence of sentience -- the highest application of philosophy. Welcome to hell, Operative. Shoulda watched Battlestar Galactica, you cryptofascist bitch.