[caption id="attachment_1440" align="aligncenter" width="540"] Sarah meets her birth mother.[/caption]

“The truth is you can be orphaned again and again and again. The truth is, you will be. And the secret is, this will hurt less and less each time until you can't feel a thing. Trust me on this.” - Chuck Palahniuk, author of "Fight Club"

“That connection you feel?  I feel it, too.” - Sarah, to Helena

Every answer is a new flood of questions. Every plan is an invitation for an unexpected development. Even the best of intentions bite back, and no way forward hasn’t turned into at least a partial retreat for your own survival. Veils may well lift, but what is revealed, and how it impacts each clone’s choices, is down to the jaded eye of the beholder. Blinded by science, Cosima surrendered her heart, her least discerning organ. Delphine’s betrayal occurred in her scientific blind spot, and now even empirical evidence is becoming unreliable.  Sarah was right all along: any hope that the conspiracy that created them is essentially altruistic has evaporated. Can she admit: I was wrong?  Or will she just shut up and stop pretending she knows anything. Especially who her friends are. Felix helps guide Alison out of full retreat from the burbs. Alison twists the Truth; folds it up and hides it deep inside.   On the one hand, she stands her ground and tells her monitor to suck it - but on the other hand, she keeps hiding it all from her family.  But at least she’s back in the only life she knows. [caption id="attachment_1454" align="aligncenter" width="540"] Alison gets a pep talk from Fee.[/caption] And while Sarah finally decides "eff it" - handing Helena over to Leekie is the only way to deal with her - Kira’s insights into the deranged angel wind up seeming more true, more vital with every encounter.  Then Mrs. S fills a hole in Sarah’s life so big she doesn’t even see it any more: Her mother, if even a surrogate, has come for her. And the true bombshell:  she has a sister. A real, biological sister. A twin, tied up in the trunk. Who seems to be entirely a product then, of the horrible environment that took her in. Because she is, otherwise, exactly like Sarah. Exactly? Well, genetically. We know there’s a synthetic element in the clones’ DNA that Leekie used to differentiate Sarah from Beth, but if Helena and Sarah are natural/clone twins, biologically-speaking, they may both carry the same “bar code” marker.  Potentially, they could each pass at least a microscopic examination, convincingly presenting one as the other. [caption id="attachment_1452" align="aligncenter" width="540"] Cosima discovers a "bar code" in the clones' DNA.[/caption] And Kira? Well, there isn’t even taxonomy for the offspring of a clone yet.  What Kira is - as  Sarah’s natural daughter - has no scientific name in any language.  Imagine the fruit of your loins potentially being so new in the evolution of the species, that no one knows what to call her.  Then ask yourself what you’d do to make sure the correct designation for your little girl is first, always, and forever - "Human Being."

NEXT: Hive observations, unexpected results, and mind-benders >

The Hive's Own Observations & Unexpected Results

Episode 9: Mind-Bender

In which some clones benefit from others’ misconceptions: Aynsley’s intervention, - an alleged ‘act of love and concern’ - enables Alison to turn the tables on her false friend, though not exactly following Felix’s heartfelt advice. Helena’s exposure to Sarah makes Tomas’s hollow promises suddenly ring false, saving them both from his clutches.  But, Art correctly deduces that the woman who committed suicide at Huxley Station was not in fact Sarah Manning, but Beth Childs.  And Leekie has now resolved his own confusion as to who was impersonating Beth, forcing a face-to-face with Sarah. In this episode, we return to where Sarah’s on-screen story started. Where is ‘Huxley Station’? Fictional Huxley Station is really Toronto’s Union Station. The sequence with Art on the platform was shot at the same time as the opening of the pilot.  The Hive, working well ahead on the back end of the season, spotted in the dailies an end point -- the perfect place for Art’s eureka moment that Beth is dead. Finally, a cop who has no reason to see clones, can at least solve the mystery of three matching sets of fingerprints, two dead dead-ringers, and one mug shot of a very-much-alive Sarah Manning. [caption id="attachment_1453" align="aligncenter" width="540"] Art puts the pieces together.[/caption] “It’s all coming back to the Maggie Chen shooting." Who was Maggie Chen again? When Sarah first assumed Detective Beth Childs’ identity, she stumbled headlong into a police investigation of Beth Childs’ fatal shooting of an allegedly “innocent civilian” named Maggie Chen.  We also learn that Art actively helped the real Beth beat the rap; backing up a fiction of what went down, fudging evidence at the scene.  Later, Helena tells Sarah that Maggie Chen was in fact involved in the clones’ creation, but ‘found God’ and switched teams - working with Tomas and the Proletheans to track down the clones so Helena could assassinate them as ‘abominations’.  Sarah realizes that Beth shot Maggie on purpose - to protect them. Wait, who was that woman at the window, who told Dr. Leekie that "blood is thicker than water?!" Yeah, right - nice try, Clone Club.  As if we’re going to ruin next week’s finale for you. [caption id="attachment_1441" align="aligncenter" width="540"] Who is she?[/caption] Who wrote and directed this episode? This episode was written by Alex Levine and directed by TJ Scott. Abstract Influences The Hive cites UK filmmaker Mike Leigh’s “Secrets and Lies” as a major influence on the revelation of Sarah’s birth mother.

NEXT: Visit the Hive wet lab and library >

The Hive Wet Lab & Library

Geek Heaven! Biology Courses, Online! Stem cells, evolution, Darwin’s legacy, & much more stuff we love. Compliments to Open Culture for this very cool list of online lectures, etc http://www.openculture.com/biology_free_courses It’s not magic, it’s stem cells... A brief set of introductions to fascinating takes on a bio-mind-blower.  With great thanks to Open Culture; we’ve posted their complete list of links below. Replaceable You: Stem Cells and Tissue Engineering iTunes - Jill Helms, Stanford Straight Talk About Stem Cells  iTunes - Christopher Scott, Stanford Stem Cells: Policy and Ethics  iTunes - Christopher Scott, Stanford Breaking Stories in Real-World Stem Cell Work Human Cloning Developments Raise Hopes for New Treatments From The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/may/18/human-cloning-heart-disease-genes About the Offspring of Human Clones Did you know Dolly the Sheep had old-fashioned babies? Do you know what became of them? Dolly the Sheep Gives Birth From BBC News http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/82816.stm Evolution seen in ‘synthetic DNA’ from BBC News http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17769529