"The Care and Feeding of Your Daggit" Battlestar Galactica Gallery (Realm Press) Programming by Barry Lyga Interface by Dan Parsons Output by Mark Haynes Cover by Matt Busch 2000

Apollo worries that Boxey has become too attached to his artificial daggit, Muffit.

Story Summary

As Apollo tucks Boxey into bed, the boy insists that his father say goodnight to Muffit. Apollo thinks it's silly to say goodnight to an unfeeling robotic drone, but does it to get his son to go to bed quietly. Apollo then turns out the light and Muffit goes into his own SleepSim for the length of Boxey's sleep period, 8 centars (hours).

When Muffit's SleepSim ends after 8 centars, he finds that Boxey is not in his bed. His programming tells him "If Not BoxeyPresent then daggitState=UNDEFINED". The daggit leaves the room to search for his master. Along the way he bumps into Boomer and Giles and then overhears Apollo talking to Adama about his fear that Boxey is displacing his pain of losing his mother, Serina, into love for the artificial daggit.

Muffit continues down the corridor and bumps into Starbuck, who guesses the little daggit must be searching for Boxey. He tells the drone, "I think he's in the rejuvenation center with Athena."

Muffit increases his pace to maximum, heading for the rejuvenation center. Arriving there, he sees Athena and Boxey eating breakfast, but the boy is complaining he wants to go play with Muffit. The daggit bounds into the center and jumps into Boxey's surprised arms, spilling the meal. Boxey has a huge smile on his face, while the adults present look reproachfully at the drone.

"If BoxeyPresent then daggitState=JOY."

THE END

Notes from the BSG Chronology

This story is a bit hard to place in the chronology due to the continuous series of events that occur in the Marvel comic book series, beginning almost immediately after "A Death in the Family" with "The Memory Machine" ("a few short hours" after Serina's death). The story can't easily be plugged in within the Marvel series due to the appearance here of: Commander Adama, who spends much of that series trapped in the memory machine; Starbuck, who spends much of the time after Adama's return trapped on Scavenge World; and Muffit, who is seemingly irreparably damaged in issue #14, "Trial and Error" (he gets better in #23, "The Last Hiding Place"). So, if this story is to take place not long after Serina's death, as it seems to, it can really only fit immediately before the Marvel series (immediately after doesn't seem to work because if Apollo was so worried about Boxey's attachment to Muffit, why did he allow the daggit to be repaired and returned to the boy?). So this story pretty much has to take place the night of Serina's death, with Apollo now tucking Boxey in to bed for the night. Boxey's preoccupation with Muffit as he's being told to go to sleep would then be a legitimate concern for Apollo since it's immediately after the death of the boy's mother. Even with the above reasoning, there is still a minor continuity error in that stars appear through the porthole window in Boxey's room, when the fleet should still be in the void at this point.

Didja Notice?

Muffit's tail is depicted incorrectly throughout the story as short and stubby instead of the longer, segmented one seen in the TV series.

On page 3, during his search for Boxey, Muffit comes across Lt. Boomer and Sgt. Giles. Giles is a character played by Larry Manetti in a handful of episodes, though not often seen in the licensed materials. Manetti is best known as Rick on the TV series Magnum P.I.

On page 5, the pyramid game Starbuck is walking away from appears to have a number of aliens in attendance. I wasn't aware that the fleet was in the habit of picking up non-humans. Maybe these are refugees rescued from Carillon before it blew?