It was with understandable frustration that Grelmin found himself staring down the length of this strange wooden pole with a near-invisible string attached. He did not understand this scenario and no longer had access to the translation of language and culture that Daniel Jackson had before provided. He had understood the concept of the gambling game because the occupier had been present when that scenario had first presented itself but this one was alien to him. This lack of knowledge vastly reduced his chances of becoming awareness.
And, yet, he felt happy to know that they were so near achieving what he had dreamed of for so long. Something so far above a mere human that it had been worth dying for; worth the sacrifice of his own people. The fact that he should now have to sacrifice again was of no importance. That he would be a part of his greatest creation was reward enough for losing what little remained of his self.
Turning to look at the former awareness, he saw him smiling to himself oddly as if there was something he found humorous. Then he found his gaze redirected as the sky above them darkened; clouds rolled in from all directions and the lake before him began to bubble as if boiling. Then the whole body of water became bright white before a figure began to rise up out of it.
"What is this?"
As the figure clearly formed into Daniel Jackson, it began to walk through the water towards him still trailed by tendrils of light. The longest of these was attached to the wrist of the former awareness who did not seem surprised by the turn of events. Instead, he folded his arms, in a self-satisfied manner and leant back in his chair.
"Oh, you're so screwed right now."
"I do not understand."
Unfolding his arms just long enough to remove his shaded glasses from their perch on his hat and place them over his eyes, he refolded them.
"I think maybe you got him pissed what with trying to delete him and everything. And that's really not a good idea."
"But I removed him."
By now, the glowing figure had reached the edge of the lake and stepped from the water to the shore although it did not appear to actually be touching either. As it did so, it fully solidified into the form of Daniel Jackson with all but one tendril disappearing. He wore the uniform of his team but of a white material.
"No," the figure corrected him, "you tried to but you made a mistake because to remove me you made me live your last few moments; you killed me before you deleted me."
Stepping forward, he smiled gently at the former awareness as he continued, "You killed me when I was connected to Jack... and I guess I've died a few too many times since I've known him because he just seems to expect I'll come back somehow."
"Well, you always do, don't you?"
Daniel Jackson smiled at the awareness's response before bending towards his ear.
"You wanna know what's funny? I mean, I was more surprised than anyone to find this out."
He continued with relish, "Turns out this was my plan all along. I don't think I ever really knew how to stop you. I just realised that all I had to do was truly convince Jack that if I was fully-ascended I'd know what to do. Because in here, Jack really is the centre of the universe and even the laws are written by him. I could never have stopped you without your help. Because I'd forgotten my own plan. It was only after you killed me that I could ascend... only this isn't real ascension. This is Jack's perception of it..."
Leaning in closer, he continued, "All powerful; all knowing... and capable of anything if there weren't those damn other glowy things around. Well, you know something, there aren't any ‘others' in here. Go figure."
Straightening up again, the anomaly stepped back so he said, "The process cannot be stopped."
"Oh but it can. Fact is Jack already stopped it. He's blocked you. No-one can win; not the game you're playing. Nice work by the way, Jack."
Acknowledging the compliment with a smile and a shrug, the awareness said, "So what happens now?"
"Now, we fix things."
The anomaly swept his arm in a wide arc that encompassed the other occupiers and, suddenly, the two were sitting in the uniforms of the team looking extremely confused.
The woman turned to O'Neill then the anomaly.
"Sir? Daniel? What's...?"
Turning accusingly to the anomaly, he said, "How did you restore the occupiers, the aspects were too..."
"Well, I am an all-powerful energy being but I have to admit the space you cleared on the memory buffer and that naquadha reactor helped. Now there's just one thing I have to deal with before I can straighten everything out... and that's you."
His expression was dark and terrible as he raised his hand. Seemingly in synchrony with him, the clouds grew darker. The tendrils of light creeping around him again, he locked eyes with him, "You destroyed a whole world. You tried to destroy me and my friends. Give me one reason why I don't finish what your people started."
Sam felt as she'd been asleep for millennia and the cogs in her brain were dusty, covered in cobwebs and in desperate need of oiling. Turning slowly to where Teal'c sat, she saw he was looking equally bemused by their current situation. By all appearances, they seemed to be at the Colonel's cabin in Minnesota but Grelmin was here too and Daniel seemed to have ascended again somehow. Last she remembered she'd been being dragged down by vines... although she also had a freak memory of decking a highway patrol officer...
Confusion forcing her into observer status, she dumbly watched events unfold.
"You are ruining my work! You are ruining everything! The evolution of our species...."
"It's over, Grelmin. Now you have two choices. You can go back into the memory buffer or you can just be gone. It's up to you and to be honest I don't much care either way."
Distraught for a moment, the scientist appeared to pull himself together and put on his most arrogant expression.
"Then I shall return. I shall return to my sleep until your people realise the value of what it is I offer."
The Colonel said, "Yeah, wouldn't hold my breath for that happening."
Daniel sighed and lowered his hand.
"Goodbye, Grelmin."
As her friend waved his hand in lazy dismissal, the man vanished into nothing leaving his fishing rod to clatter noisily to the ground.
Standing up and walking towards the empty deckchair, the Colonel pulled his sunglasses off and perched them on his hat.
"Couldn't you just have zapped him a little teensy bit? For me? I mean you had the storm clouds and everything and you just vanished him?"
Daniel chuckled humourlessly. She wished she knew why he appeared to be ascended again but for right now her answers were gonna have to wait because he turned to the Colonel and replied, "Sorry, Jack. Tell you what, how about I make it up to you by getting us all out of your head?"
"Um... yeah, that sounds fair, I guess."
Sam became aware of an odd feeling spreading across her. She looked up again to see the Colonel grabbing at his head.
"Whoa..."
Then she was aware of a sensation like a huge hand grabbing at her and pulling her backwards. As the scene around her disappeared, she felt herself being swallowed down into nothingness.
As the monitors in front of her started to fluctuate madly, Janet froze for a moment before saying, "McKay..."
From his vantage point behind her, he replied, "I see it. Power drain's just doubled."
All they could do was wait right now. Until the device cut off, that building was off-limits. She crossed her fingers and willed her friends to keep those monitors blipping.
With an unholy moan worthy of a mummy rising from the crypt, Sam's eyes snapped open and she slowly pulled herself upright. Coughing as the dryness in her throat made itself known, she looked down to see the numerous cables trailing from her torso and arms. Trying to get her bearings, she looked around and saw the Colonel lying on the ground with similar cables trailing across him. Going to pull the suckers from her skin, though, she found that her left hand seemed determined to follow her right one around. Confused gaze alighting on her wrists, she came across the reason. Why were they tethered together? Awkwardly, she eventually managed to rip herself free of the suckers and got to an ungainly crouch before kneeling at the Colonel's side.
"Sir? Sir?"
When he made no reply, she checked him over as best she could given her current wrist restraints. She couldn't help but notice that the Colonel wasn't wearing a set of matching bracelets. Still unable to rouse him, she climbed to her feet to explore the room further but found herself instantly curtailed as a wave of dizziness threatened to fell her. Grabbing, double-handed, at the nearest object, she found the pedestal device beneath her hands and finally remembered where this was. She was too confused right now to try and work out how or why she was here, though, so for now she kept her hands on the pedestal and, awkwardly navigating a bunch of cabling, headed further around the room. It only took a couple of paces until the stretcher came into view with her civilian friend bound to it. Lowering herself back down, she found it inordinately difficult to undo the fairly simple bindings. She'd have liked to think it was just a manual dexterity problem caused by her hands being tethered but truth was her brain was definitely not firing on all cylinders yet.
As she struggled with the bonds, she said, "Daniel? Daniel, can you hear me?"
"Major Carter?"
Looking up, she found Teal'c looming above her. Like her, his wrists were bound but with somewhat sturdier shackles. Despite them, however, he managed to go fluidly from standing to kneeling without any appearance of struggling to maintain balance.
Now with the potential of getting some answers, she asked, "Teal'c, what're we doing here? I can't really remember anything before being at that lake."
"Long story. Long, long, long, long, long story."
At the reply, both of them looked round to see the Colonel awkwardly shifting across the ground to make it to where they knelt.
As he reached them, he said, "How's Daniel?"
"Breathing but unconscious. Sir, seriously, what is...?"
"Please, Carter, I'm already gonna have to go through this whole thing at the debriefing... don't make me explain it all twice. Right now, I'd just like to be sure everyone's here and no-one's missing anything."
Sharing a look with Teal'c over the ‘missing anything' comment, she obligingly dropped it for now. However, there was another issue she wasn't quite so prepared to drop.
Teal'c beat her to it.
"O'Neill, why am I restrained?"
There was hesitation on the Colonel's face but under their joint scrutiny, he broke.
"You and Carter haven't exactly been yourselves lately. Here..."
With that, he reached out and started undoing her restraints. As they dropped to the ground, she rubbed at her wrists. Only now could she see the grazing on them which would only have been caused by her fighting against the restraints. As she flexed the fingers of her right hand, she realised her knuckles had that slightly tender feeling they usually got after she punched something. Biting her lip, she wondered how much of an understatement ‘haven't been yourselves' was.
She was shaken from her contemplation as Teal'c's heavier manacles clanked to the ground so she got back to releasing Daniel from the tethers. She wished she could remember what was going on but even the disjointed memories she had seemed to conflict with each other. Slowly, she became aware of a buzz of static and a muffled voice that somehow managed to sound familiar. Locating the source, she found to her puzzlement it seemed to be coming from the Colonel.
"Sir...?"
He looked at her inquisitively for a moment before appearing to register the sound himself. As he reached down to his side, she finally saw the radio.
As Jack extracted the radio from his belt, he looked down at the still form of Daniel before pressing down the button.
"I'm okay, Doc. Can you get in here yet?"
"Device is still active, sir. The others...?"
Well, that was the question, wasn't it? Carter and Teal'c seemed okay but they had seemed all right last time too. And Daniel was still to awaken.
"Carter and Teal'c are awake. Daniel's still out but breathing at least."
"I'm looking at his EEG right now, sir. There's definitely activity."
Hope rising, he said, "So he's okay?"
"He's... not brain-dead."
Even though Carter was obviously yet to catch up with current events, Janet's less-than-promising evaluation was enough to spur her to prise the lids of Daniel's left eye apart with her fingers.
"Tell Janet his pupils are responsive to light. Daniel?"
As he conveyed the message onwards, he watched Carter's attempts to wake their friend until he was distracted by an urgent Teal'c.
"O'Neill."
Turning to the Jaffa, he was vaguely aware that he could hear McKay saying something about energy readings in the background of the Doc's reply but he forgot all about everything else as he saw what Teal'c was looking at.
Oh crap.
In the centre of the room, the pedestal device had begun to make a disturbingly familiar sound as the controls lit up and the memory buffer began to glow white. In the centre of the device, he could swear he saw a small figure before the glow became too extreme.
"Son of a... Gizmo," he growled.
Daniel, why didn't you just zap him?
He turned to Carter and Teal'c.
"Get out, now!"
"But, Daniel..."
There wasn't time to get the unconscious man manoeuvred out past all the cabling before the device would activate so he just yelled, "That's an order! Go! Get out!"
As the other two reluctantly followed his order, he pulled himself to his feet and looked back towards his friend. If he stayed now then he and Daniel were going to end up sharing a head again so right now the best thing he could do for his friend was to get out but damn if it didn't feel like abandoning him.
Carter and Teal'c had made it out into the narrow corridor by the time he'd released his hold on the side of the device and headed after them.
Unfortunately, he'd been rather counting on his legs being able to follow basic instructions and now found that they hadn't come fully online yet. Swaying wildly, he collided heavily with the wall and crumpled to his knees. Scrambling back up, he heard a familiar whine that made him turn back towards the device in time for the glow to nearly blind him.
I'm too late.
Defeated, he watched the beam shoot up to the ceiling and braced himself for what was to come. Suddenly, though, as the beam went to hit the ceiling, it faltered and seemed to be sucked back down into the pedestal. There was an unsettling hum for a moment before white lightning began to flicker around the memory buffer. Sounded like the whole thing was going to...
"Daniel!"
Screaming for his legs to work, he stumbled back across to where his friend lay and, wrapping his arms around his torso, began to clumsily drag him and the still-connected stretcher away from the device. He made it halfway to the wall before the change in pitch behind him told him it was time to duck.
Throwing himself down over his friend, he tried to shield him as the device exploded. He felt debris hit his back but not half as dramatically as he'd envisioned. Looking round, he saw the pedestal was still relatively intact but Grelmin's memory buffer was now just a couple of pieces of charred, twisted metal. A few seconds later, the naquadha reactor shut off and the room was left in silence.
"He really shouldn't have done that."
Head snapping round, Jack looked down to see his now-conscious friend squinting at where Gizmo's device had sat.
"Daniel!"
Sitting back so he could lever his friend up off the ground, he heard him say, "Jack?"
Rubbing him companionably on the shoulder, he replied, "Hey, buddy. You okay?"
Nodding slowly, he looked around.
"Is this... are we really... is this real?"
Hell if he knew for sure. There'd been so many layers of unreality and so much strangeness in his recent reality that he didn't have the first clue how you could tell anymore.
But, cupping his hand round the back of his friend's neck so he could lock eyes with him, he said, "Till someone tells me otherwise, yeah."
Understanding that that was the best they could do in the establishing reality stakes, his friend nodded and pressed his hand to his forehead as if in pain.
"Hey, you all right?"
"Yeah, I think so..."
"Daniel?"
His expression rather pinched and eyes closed, his friend made a vague noise to indicate he was listening.
"The device... did you do that?"
Opening his eyes again, Daniel shook his head.
"I don't have any abilities out here, Jack. I'm just me again. Grelmin did it to himself."
Under the questioning gaze, he continued, "I sort of rigged the device... internally."
Jack remembered back when they'd been standing by ‘his' lake and Daniel had given Gizmo the chance to go back into the device rather than wiped from existence.
"You knew he'd try to start it up again."
"Yeah, but I still had to give him the choice."
"He zapped himself."
Jack looked at the mangled device and wondered if Carter would be saddened by the destruction of the technology despite what it had done to them. Yeah, he decided, she probably would. Yet, he was glad it was gone. Gizmo had been insane and the Ha'ranas experiment had been a failure by any standard but Jack could just imagine some people on earth who really wouldn't have a problem with sacrificing four people to create a monster if that monster also happened to be smart beyond measure.