What the hell had just happened? One second, she'd stepped into the event horizon and, next thing she knew, she was in the middle of one of the infirmary rooms with Janet looking concernedly at her. That had just been disorientating, though. What had literally floored her was when she'd caught sight of the face behind her friend. For a second she'd thought it was the Colonel through the window from them but then had come the dizzying realisation that it was a mirror...
"Colonel? Sir, what is it?"
Looking up into her friend's face, she said, "No, Janet... Janet... it's me... it's Sam."
Expression growing confused, her friend replied, "Sir?"
Going to reiterate that she was Sam and not the Colonel, she paused when she happened to glance to the side and saw Daniel lying in the bed she had fallen next to. Pulling herself to her feet, she saw it wasn't just Daniel lying in a bed. Teal'c lay in the far bed and in the near one... she lay. It was unsettling enough looking down at yourself, but a glance up at the monitors told her that she was looking down at something close to a corpse.
She felt rather than saw Janet appear at her side again.
"Colonel, I think we need to get you back to your room. You're disorientated again."
Barely paying attention, Sam looked down at herself.
"How did this happen? I don't understand..."
She became aware that the petite doctor was backing towards the door. Turning, she pleaded, "Janet, listen... it's me. It really is."
God, it felt weird to hear the Colonel's voice coming from her mouth. Sounded different inside his head.
"Colonel..."
Moving towards her, she tried to think of some way to prove she was really who she said she was. Inspiration hitting, she said, "I'm supposed to be taking Cass to Toronto this week but, before we went on the mission, I said I'd keep an eye on her for a couple of extra days whilst you're away."
"Sam agreed to that whilst you were there, Colonel."
"But! But when the Colonel asked where you were going you told him that you were going to see your mother... and when the Colonel and Teal'c left, I said that I never knew your mother's name was Steve. He's booked the two of you into a hotel in Denver for the weekend. You've sworn me and Daniel to secrecy over him for now. You've gotta know we wouldn't tell the Colonel that."
A kind of realisation dawning, Janet said, "Sam...?"
Janet looked disbelievingly at the Colonel but found herself beginning to believe in what she had moments before assumed to be him having some form of breakdown. And, given past experience, it wasn't exactly beyond the realms of possibility but even so...
Eagerly responding to the hint of belief in her eyes, ‘Sam' replied, "Yeah, it's me... Janet, please, what is going on?"
"I... I don't know..."
After a pause, she explained, "We... um... we think the pedestal was responsible but we're not quite sure what it did."
"The pedestal did this? I don't understand..."
"You all... collapsed after the pedestal's energy hit you."
"Well, yeah, but then... we were okay... it was just that we couldn't find the Colonel."
"What?"
"When Daniel woke me up... the Colonel was gone."
"When Daniel...? Sam, ‘you' have been like that since the energy blast. You never woke up."
"But I... I don't understand."
Sinking down onto the edge of Daniel's bed, she repeated, "I don't understand...how did I end up in the Colonel's body? And where is he if I'm here?"
"Well, I think... the Colonel... he's still in there as well. I was talking to him just a minute ago."
The Colonel's mouth formed an ‘o' shape before ‘Sam' said, "So we're both in here? So that's why ‘I' have no signal... but then Teal'c and Daniel? Are they in here?"
Janet just shrugged in a helplessly confused fashion as she watched ‘Sam' close the Colonel's eyes as if to search inside the head for her missing team-mates when, suddenly, his head dropped down and face become solemn. This one Janet recognised better. When Machello's body-switching device had mixed everyone up, the Colonel's body had become home to...
"Teal'c?"
Head tilting up, eyes snapped open and expression grew uncertain.
"What has occu..."
Obviously hearing the wrong voice coming from his lips, ‘Teal'c' glanced down at his hands.
With a fragile calm, the Jaffa in the human body said, "It would appear that I am in the body of O'Neill, Doctor Fraiser."
"Yeah, it seems that way..."
"How did this occur?"
"The energy from the pedestal is my best guess, for now."
Looking round at where ‘he' and his friends lay, ‘Teal'c' said, "My last memory is of stepping into the event horizon on our return to the SGC. We were searching for O'Neill. I believe my current condition presumes that we indeed found him. After that, I recall nothing that occurred."
Now getting really confused, she said, "Teal'c, you all collapsed next to the pedestal. You didn't get up again. You never came back through the gate. Now, at least you and Major Carter appear to be sharing a body with the Colonel. Possibly Daniel's in there as well."
"I do not understand."
"Neither do I, I'm afraid..."
‘Teal'c' glanced at the beds again and said, more to himself than to her, "From what you tell me, this reality conflicts with that which I previously believed to be such. Can I be certain that this reality is the true one?"
Then a thought appeared to strike him and, looking down at Daniel, he continued, "Perhaps it is possible that both are false."
Confused, Janet asked, "Teal'c?"
But as the Colonel turned back around, his eyebrows were arched and, blinking confusedly, he said, "Janet?"
Then, on hearing his own voice, he glanced at his hands and, with more of an edge to his voice this time, he repeated, "Janet?!"
The eyes looked up and locked with hers and she recognised the final member of SG-1 looking out at her.
"Daniel?"
After a few moments of utter panic he managed to choke out, "How... I don't...don't remember..."
"Daniel, listen to me... I don't know what's going on but I need you to stay with me here, okay?"
After a brief pause, he slowly nodded, "Okay."
"Tell me the last thing you remember, Daniel."
"Stepping into... um... the event horizon..."
"That's what Sam and Teal'c remember too..."
He looked confused for a moment.
"Sam? Teal'c? You mean they're..."
As ‘Daniel' gestured at the Colonel's head, Janet slowly nodded. The others had looked disorientated and confused by the news. He looked scared. Of course, it was he who had, only a couple of months ago, been kept prisoner in his own head by the invasion of a dozen other consciousnesses. Until now, she hadn't had time to think about the parallel with that previous incident. But now Daniel's appearance had brought it up, she remembered a discussion she'd had with one of the personalities called Tryon. Using a glass of water to represent the consciousness of an individual, he'd shown that when you pour the water into a jug then you can never separate it out the way you had before. And that it worked the same for consciousnesses. The only way Daniel's mind had been able to survive the incident intact was that it seemed to have protected itself by lying dormant. She didn't want to think about the possibility this situation was equivalent.
By the time she had arisen from her morose contemplation, Daniel had gotten it together enough to have become aware of his surroundings and, turning, saw Sam, Teal'c and himself lying in the beds.
His wry sense of humour beginning to emerge from beneath the panic, he said, "Okay, that answers my next question." He turned back to her.
"I don't get it... What happened once we got back here? I mean, obviously, we found Jack but..."
Janet wondered if she'd ever get to talk to one person long enough to try and get this story straight.
"Daniel, you didn't... you didn't get back here. You all collapsed after the energy pulse from the pedestal hit you."
His head fell into his hands.
"I don't get it... how...?"
"Daniel, I'm sorry, I know this is a lot to take in but I need to try and understand what's happened to you all so that I can try and fix it."
Looking up again, he snarled, "Fix it?! How are you going to fix this?"
Seeing her actively recoil from the outburst, he quickly said, "Sorry... um... I don't know what I can tell you."
"Tell me what you think happened after the energy pulse."
"I... passed out. I woke up and woke up Sam. Teal'c was already awake. Jack was gone..."
Then a light came on in the Colonel's eyes as he continued, "No, he wasn't gone... we were gone."
"What?"
"I get it now... that's why everything was so weird... and Teal'c said he couldn't understand how we'd survived... but if we were never really drowning then..."
He trailed off at that point so, after a pause, she asked, "Daniel, what are you talking about?"
His face screwing up slightly, he replied, "Daniel? Doc?"
"Sir, is that you?"
"Of course it's me. Thought I was the one with the delusions."
She was obviously looking rather shell-shocked because he continued more timidly, "Hey, what is it?"
"Your... um... condition, sir... has had a slightly, um, unusual development, sir."
Sarcastically, he replied, "Yeah, more unusual than the rest of it."
She just looked at him so he stripped the sarcasm from the sentence and added a little upward intonation at the end.
"More unusual than the rest of it?"
"Yes, sir."
As his eyes widened, she explained, "Sir, the others... I don't understand how exactly it happened... but they are all sharing a mind - and body - with you somehow."
"What?"
"Your team aren't dead; they're in your head."
"Like with Daniel and the...?"
"Possibly, sir."
He didn't seem sure how to react.
"But this is good news, right? I mean, if they're in there then they're not dead, right?"
She knew the Colonel was aware of the ‘good news; bad news' nature of the latest development so she didn't remind him of the fact that, as far as she knew, there was no way to reverse what had been done.
But positively, she replied, "Yes, sir. We're still in periodic contact with the refugees from the Stromos. They've got a better understanding of this type of thing than we do. Perhaps they can help us get this situation sorted out, sir."
He nodded slowly.
"Doc...? If I'm sharing a head with them then why can't I hear them or feel them? Thought when the survivors were in Daniel's head they could hear each other?"
"I don't think that happened right away, sir. It seemed to happen over time. But, I think you can in a way, sir... You remember you were describing fuzziness in your head...?"
Jack glanced over at the inert bodies of his friends. So he'd got his wish. They weren't dead and they weren't gone. Perhaps, though, he should have been a little more specific in his wishing as when he'd wished they were somewhere he could bring them back from he hadn't actually meant his own head.
Knowing that this situation was probably not going to be much fun, he nevertheless savoured the moment of knowing his friends were still somewhere they could be saved from. And now they were here there maybe was a chance that they could save themselves.
Trying to keep his tone light despite the upsurge of emotion within him, he said, "Well, this is confusing. All right, I guess you should tell Carter and Daniel to figure out how to get the three of them out of my head and back into their bodies. Oh, and tell Teal'c I said hi and that he is not to shave my head. He has a habit of trying to do that when his mind's in my body."
Despite the situation, the Doc couldn't help but smile slightly at the comment.
"Yes, sir."
As she rushed off to notify the General before she started running tests, he looked round at the bodies of his friends. It was weird. Right now, despite the fact they were apparently sharing a head, he had as little connection with them as he would have had if they really had been dead but just knowing that they still existed in some sense was enough to change that depression to hope. As a combined force, SG-1 didn't know the meaning of impossible. Maybe it was still going to be a long time until he saw Carter grin, Teal'c raise an eyebrow or Daniel roll his eyes but, right now, he didn't doubt that that time would come again.
He wished he could tell them all how empty inside he'd been feeling since they'd been gone. He wished he could tell them all how happy he was to have them back even if they'd all decided to set up temporary accommodations in his head. Problem was, of course, that he couldn't talk to them. Unless...
Picking up the blank chart at the end of the bed next to his, he picked up the pen and scrawled across the top ‘Good Morning Campers. We hope you enjoy your stay at Camp O'Neill.' Smiling in satisfaction at his handiwork, he laid it down on the bed beside him. Said it all, really.
It was only a couple of minutes before Sam emerged again. Woozily, she focused on the chart beside her and noted the scrawl of the Colonel's handwriting upon it. She couldn't help but smile slightly at the short note. Up until a few moments ago, from her perspective, she'd been beginning to fear that he was dead. It was good to know he wasn't even if she still couldn't talk to him.
Taking a few moments to acclimatise to what was hopefully a temporary situation, she brought the Colonel's hands up close to her face. It felt so odd looking through the Colonel's eyes. Glancing down the rest of the length of her... him, she had to admit that wasn't the only thing that felt a little odd right now. What was that remark she'd once made to the Colonel about reproductive organs again?
Mentally shaking herself, she turned her focus to trying to figure out what had happened. According to Janet, her memories seemed to be faulty. She'd said they'd never even woken up after the pulse from the device hit them. That had been when the Colonel had disappeared. So nothing after that had been real? Had she just dreamt it all? But it had seemed so real. Until now, she hadn't doubted it was reality for an instant.
So if it was possible that none of that was real then wasn't equally possible that it was actually this that wasn't real? Neither reality made much sense. If fact, right now, she was inclined to doubt this reality more than the other. It'd only been a couple of months ago that there'd been the incident with the Stromos when Daniel had all the consciousnesses downloaded into his brain. Still fresh in her mind, it could easily have caused this delusion. Satisfied with that theory, she grimaced and winced as the face pulling the expression felt alien to her. Question still remained what had happened after they stepped through the event horizon.
Then, wincing again at the voice, she breathed, "What if we drowned...?"
Her heart... the Colonel's heart... began to pound at the latest train of thought. Everything had made sense until she and Daniel had been caught in the flow of the diverted river. After that, nothing had made much sense at all. Teal'c not being able to explain how they seemed to have survived impossibly long after first being submerged, those weird organic cables no-one could explain, the storm seemingly vanishing, the impossibly quick build-up of pollen in the air; that malevolent feeling that neither she nor Teal'c could explain. All things that had happened after Teal'c had ‘saved' them.
But what if their rescue never happened? What if she and Daniel had drowned after all and this was all some strange vision or...?
Trying to steady her... the Colonel's breathing, she wished that her latest theory wasn't the one which made the most intuitive sense to her right now and explained the most facts.
She thought back wistfully to the night before what might have proved to be their final mission. She and Daniel had sat on the couch, at his new place, chatting whilst sampling a coffee blend that she'd been recommended. Inevitably, it had required a lot of sampling and now neither could sleep so had been sitting up chatting half the night. It'd been a tough couple of months for Daniel even if, for once, he didn't have many scars to show for it. What with a dozen other people setting up home in his head; having to play United Nations in a seemingly irresolvable dispute between their people and what had proved to be a hell of a lot of Unas; and finding himself trapped on a flooding world whilst coordinating a planetary evacuation, he'd been getting a little worn out. Last situation entirely her fault, of course. After all that, it was good to be able to just be there for her friend.
Though they'd already had a long talk after the Stromos incident, it'd actually been the first time she'd really heard the story of what had happened on that Unas world or exactly what he'd been through as the water had risen higher during the stalled evacuation. She'd apologised for her involvement but he wouldn't even accept there was anything for her to apologise for and had, instead, thanked her for her involvement in his rescue and demanded a proper account of her recent and extremely eventful space race with his most impish grin on his face. She loved the ease that had developed between them again since Daniel had descended. She knew they hadn't been as close the last couple of years before his ascension and she was determined that was never going to happen again.
He glanced down at his watch.
"I'd say it was getting late but it's a little late for that, isn't it?"
"Briefing's not until noon." Dropping her voice to an exaggerated whisper, she added, "He'll never know."
Her friend grinned back at a shared joke from earlier about the Colonel finding out about the secret coffee sessions.
Mention of the briefing turned her thoughts to tomorrow's mission.
"I can't wait to see the mineral's properties for myself."
"Definitely sounded good in the report. Oh, but what I wouldn't have given for a camera at the meeting today when the General told Jack what he'd be doing for his first day of leave."
Remembering the tempest that had been the Colonel's expression after he heard the news, she defended, "Shouldn't take too long to reach the sample site so we're talking early evening at the latest to get back. It's not like it's gonna cut far into our downtime or anything."
With a more knowing smile on his face, he asked, "So there was no particular reason you brought the suggestion we make this little trip to the General rather than Jack?"
Conspiratorially, she replied, "Well, if I'd brought him the proposal he'd have had to actually read the report, wouldn't he? Seemed best he just got the short version from the General."
Daniel grinned before looking up in mock seriousness.
"By short version you mean ‘SG-1, you have a go'?"
Sam shrugged non-committedly with just the trace of a guilty smirk on his face as she couldn't quite help remembering the Colonel's confused "Uh, sir... by ‘a go' you mean to leave, right?"
Chuckling for a moment, the civilian then turned more serious.
"You do know you've just made your life a living hell, don't you? Blindsiding Jack like that's hazardous to your health, to say the least."
"Says a man speaking from experience. You do it all the time."
"Oh, come on, not all the time; just when necessary."
"This was necessary, I had to see this mineral's effects for myself."
Gesturing placatingly, Daniel replied, "Hey, if you wanna spend some quality time in Jack's doghouse, be my guest. It'll give me a break from it. Just hope you're really prepared to deal with the consequences."
Rousing herself from the memory, she winced more heavily. She wasn't prepared for these consequences. No matter whether she accepted any or none of the present realities, she couldn't get around the fact that this whole situation was her fault. They were supposed to be on leave. If she hadn't been so damn eager to get to the mineral deposits they might never have come or, at least, might have arrived in better weather and been able to keep a better eye on the allergy-ridden Daniel who might never have walked into the side of the building in the first place, depriving her of the opportunity to screw things up by activating the device. There'd have been no storm, so no need to take shelter in a cave that was about to become the temporary route for a river and she and Daniel wouldn't have...
Had they drowned? Was that it? Were they dead? Or had something happened after they went through the gate and now she was in a coma? Or was this actually real? How could she possibly be inside the Colonel's body? Janet said they never woke up in the pedestal room. Did that mean that the Colonel had? Or had the SGC sent people through and found them all lying on the floor beside the pedestal? This was all too confusing...
Picking up the chart, below the Colonel's greeting, she wrote, ‘Colonel, I'm not sure if this is real, sir, but I'm sorry for all of this'
Teal'c blinked a couple of times as the pen in his hand halted. Though the handwriting was too unsteady to be familiar, the use of ‘Colonel' suggested Major Carter had been writing a message when his awakening had led to her submersion.
He had been aware of no passage of time since his conversation with Doctor Fraiser and yet the fact that she was gone and messages had been written upon the chart he had not been holding led him to surmise that it had been at least minutes since that conversation if not far longer.
His eyes drifted upwards to the message of morning greetings to campers. From experience, he knew this was often O'Neill's form of greeting to them so presumed the message came from him. The next sentence confirmed the supposition that it was a message from their host... their host. The word echoed accusingly at him. O'Neill was their host; his mind suppressed and his body usurped by others... He, Teal'c, was a parasitic consciousness in the body of his friend.
When Daniel Jackson had recently been the host of the dozen consciousnesses from the Stromos, Teal'c had felt like his friend had been invaded by a swarm of Goa'ulds. That impression had not been aided by the fact that one of the most dominant consciousnesses was that of the ‘sovereign' Martisse who, in the most apt words of O'Neill ‘could've given a few system lords lessons in how to be a selfish arrogant jackass'. He had watched the body of his friend overtaken by the will of others and seethed at his own ineffectuality. And now...
And now he had, however unknowingly, assumed the role of Martisse. By his message, O'Neill might be described as a willing host but he was a host nonetheless. And he knew his friend well enough to know that not being in control of his own actions was not something he could easily deal with. O'Neill had never been comfortable with the idea of the ‘blending' the Tok'ra claimed to be so fulfilling and that impression had been set in stone after his own ‘blending' with Kanaan. However desperate he might have been, that ‘Tok'ra' had used his friend as a Goa'uld would have and had left him to endure the torment of relentless death and resurrection at the hands of Baal. After such an incident, he could not believe that this was a situation to which he would adapt easily.
Of course, this would not be a situation to which any of them would easily acclimatise. In fact, having once resided in the body of O'Neill for a brief time, he perhaps had the advantage over the others. Residing within this body was much as he remembered it except, no longer possessing it, he did not keenly feel his symbiote's absence. He could also feel a sharp ache in the shoulder which he presumed came from the recent mission where an unas had attacked O'Neill during their mistaken assault upon Iron Shirt's tribe. His friend had not mentioned the pain of his injury since his return to active duty but it seemed apparent that it must still somewhat hinder some movements. The body carried other scars and aches that had somewhat surprised him the last time he had resided within this body. Of course, he had been injured many times but his symbiote, and now Tretonin, ensured that he carried little evidence of older injuries. O'Neill, on the contrary, carried so many that it was a wonder to Teal'c that he appeared in perfect health normally.
As his thoughts turned back to the conflict between this reality and that which he had previously considered such, Teal'c turned back down the path he had been headed before his submersion. His experience with the ascended Daniel Jackson; after the ambush of the Jaffa rebels which had led to the loss of his symbiote; had taught him that merely because one reality proved false, it did not entail another reality was real. And it had not yet been proven to his satisfaction that that which he had previously considered reality was false.
Teal'c wondered if perhaps this was a dream. He had been studying them since Tretonin's use had led to his requiring sleep rather than Kel'noreem to revitalise him. He knew from those studies that dreams could be more vivid and harder to distinguish from reality than those he had so far experienced. Experimentally, he pinched his skin as he had, on occasion, witnessed O'Neill do when the oddness of their reality had led him to suspect he was asleep. The action resulted in nothing but a sharp flash of pain. He still remained in the body of his friend.
Coming to a decision, Teal'c decided that if he were to treat a dream as reality it would do no harm whereas acting to the contrary could result in serious consequences. For now, then, he would consider this to be real.
Doctor Fraiser had still not reappeared nor was anyone else present aside from the bodies of he and his two friends. Looking down to the chart, he glanced at the messages again and decided that he should add his own so he wrote, ‘I too am unsure of the reality of these events but if they are real I am glad that you are still with us, O'Neill'. Then, a thought occurred to Teal'c and he added, ‘Daniel Jackson, if you are also present, please announce your presence to us'.
Satisfied that that would do for now, Teal'c moved to sit down beside the body of Daniel Jackson. His friend had seemed to grow ill on the planet. If the planet had not been entirely real then he was unsure what it had represented but, still, he would not be reassured until he had read his words and assured himself that Daniel Jackson was indeed with them.
If this was indeed real, Teal'c did not doubt that they would find a way to return them to their bodies. His knowledge of Tau'ri medicine assured him that the bodies were being closely monitored but were not being kept alive with the aid of mechanical intervention. It seemed logical that any procedure which kept their bodies intact was intended to be reversed or, at least, allowed for the possibility of reversal.
Taking Daniel Jackson's hand within O'Neill's, Teal'c remembered that, last time he had resided within O'Neill's body, he had, at one time, sat beside a body that was not Daniel Jackson's and yet harboured his mind. A body, old and failing, that had nearly led to the death of that mind before it could be returned to its rightful place. This time, he sat by the body of Daniel Jackson but his mind was elsewhere.
Quietly, he asked, "Are you with us, Daniel Jackson?"
Blinking owlishly, Daniel found himself looking down at his body which he appeared to be holding the hand of. Dropping it, he wondered why he seemed to have blacked out again. Janet seemed to be gone.
He didn't know why exactly but, instinctively, he believed that this was reality and, real as the time on the planet had seemed, it was not. Stranger than that, was the fact it couldn't have been entirely a product of his imagination or subconscious because Janet had said Sam and Teal'c were telling the same story. Just somehow he knew... a feeling in Jack's gut... that it might have been something he really experienced but definitely not in the physical sense.
It really was a pity he was so sure this was real. Denial would have left him with less of a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. With so little time having elapsed since the Stromos passengers had been siphoned out of his head, he wasn't inclined to see this situation as a temporary setback.
For the others' sake, he'd tirelessly maintained that he remembered close to nothing from that incident. Even Jack and Sam, who had both tormented him endlessly to try and dredge a confession from him, had only been told that he could remember hearing some voices and that bit where he'd surfaced long enough to speak to Janet. Even they didn't know the full truth. The truth where he remembered hearing almost every word that had been spoken and, worse, words that hadn't been. A dozen voices all crying and shrieking and trying to shout louder than each other in order to be heard. No wonder his own consciousness had hidden away in the corner. It'd drifted closer to the surface a few times but, always, seemed pulled back into the darkness of some deep point within his mind.
The worst memory was when he'd surfaced that one time to the point he was aware enough to speak to Janet. Though he'd been able to hear the voices in a detached way as he drifted in his coma, mixed up with the thoughts and silent screaming, nothing had been coherent enough to let him make sense of the situation. Then, finally, the voices seemed to subside for a moment and he found himself surging forward into awareness. And he'd woken to see the isolation room; to feel the restraints on his arms; to see Janet looking at him like she didn't recognise him and orderlies ready to jump on him if he shifted the wrong way. And, all at once, he'd thought he understood what was happening. It'd seemed so simple and so terrifying at the same moment. He'd really gone crazy this time. He had schizophrenia or multiple personalities or something. Maybe he'd hurt someone... maybe one of his friends... or else why wouldn't they be there?
But before he could do anything but ask what was going on, he'd heard the other voices growing in volume and then felt like he was being torn a dozen different directions at once. But, before the voices could pull him apart, a stronger pull on him hurled him back into the darkness...
Surfacing from the memory with a start, Daniel tried to focus on the current situation. Okay, so it wasn't exactly like that incident. Jack, Sam and Teal'c weren't a bunch of strangers; they were his best friends. And, so far, he wasn't hearing voices. Trying to calm himself down, he got up from the chair beside his almost-corpse and walked over to the empty bed. He paused as he saw the chart lying on it and, slowly, picked it up.
As he quickly scanned the writing, he realised there were notes from all three of his friends. He found himself smiling slightly at Jack's and definitely sharing the sentiment of Sam's. As Teal'c's was the final one and ended with a query as to his own presence, Daniel deduced it'd been Teal'c that had been holding the hand of his empty shell just before he'd surfaced. Funny, he'd have guessed it'd been Sam or Jack.
Finding the pen, Daniel found himself unsure of what he should write. Uncertain he'd remain aware until he'd thought of something, he quickly scrawled, ‘Yeah, I'm in here too, Teal'c' so that the others didn't panic at his lack of response. Then, his attention was distracted by the entrance of Janet. He caught that same look in her eyes that he'd seen that day when he'd surfaced for that brief moment. Mentally steeling himself before the flashback caused him to panic again, he said, "It's Daniel, Janet."
Appreciatively, Janet smiled.
"All right, Daniel, we're going to have to run some tests..."
Jack lowered his head into his hands as the General and the Doc discussed him like he wasn't there. Well, of course, he hadn't been there until a moment ago. He'd been over the other side of the infirmary getting tests, Janet hadn't had her hair pinned back and the General hadn't even been here. Before that, he'd been in an MRI machine. And he had absolutely no recollection how he'd got from there to there to here; nor any idea how long Janet and Hammond had been standing there talking about him.
Currently, the General was saying, "Do you have any idea how to reverse it?"
"To be honest, sir, I don't even know where to start."
"Surely the data you collected during the incident with Doctor Jackson..."
"Means I believe this is possible, sir, but I don't think it's going to be much more help than that. They still haven't worked out how to separate out the consciousnesses once they become mixed. Daniel only survived as an individual because he seemed to place himself in a comatose state within his mind. That's not the case this time. All four have surfaced at least three times now and the EEG shows no evidence of coma."
Changing topics, Hammond asked, "Have the scans shown anything?"
Janet shrugged and took him over to see them, "The functional MRI shows abnormal activity in regions in all four lobes of both cerebral hemispheres."
Ah, the MRI... Jack had oh so fond memories of the MRI. Normally, he didn't get bothered by the machine. What with the perpetual strangeness around here, a week that went by without your head being run through every brain scanner at the Doc's disposal was a week you weren't here. And, even then, it was a treat for you as soon as you got back. But there was something very unnerving about suddenly finding yourself trapped inside the MRI machine when, a moment earlier, you'd been sitting on a bed in the middle of the infirmary.
Focusing back on the conversation, he heard the General saying, "What functions do those regions have?"
"Various regions in the brain can perform multiple functions, sir, and our understanding of the functional division of the brain is still imperfect but, in basic terms..."
Pointing out various areas of the scans as she talked, she continued, "...this one is associated with vision; these are the somatosensory and motor cortices - sensation and movement; there's speech production, there; understanding of speech is..."
Probably wishing he hadn't asked, Hammond said, "Are these regions four times as active as normal?"
"In the region of four times, yes, sir. However, the pre-frontal cortex is normal."
"You find that odd?"
"That's the area associated with higher cerebral functions. I would have expected it to be as active as the other areas. However, I think that that may explain why only one of them appears to be conscious at any one time."
Okay, now he'd had enough of being talked about like he wasn't there. Time to subtly indicating his desire to be included in the conversation...
"Well, at this one time, I'm conscious. Care to clue me in?"
Janet turned.
"Colonel?"
"So are Castleman and his gang on the planet yet, sir? Assuming we actually had the conversation I think we did when I was a little out of it."
"We did, Colonel, but I'm afraid there's more bad news on that front."
"Storm?"
Nodding, Hammond continued, "I'm afraid it's still too dangerous, Jack. We're dialling in every couple of hours but the storm is still vicious." Glancing down at his watch, he said, "We'll be dialling again in a few minutes. Hopefully, this time, the MALP will send back the right pictures. Keep me appraised, Doctor."
"Yes, sir."
"And Colonel...?"
"Yeah, sir?"
"I'm sorry about all this."
With that, he turned and left. Now, Jack thought to himself, what did the General have to feel sorry about? After all, it wasn't like they'd all been supposedly on leave when they stepped foot through that gate. It wasn't like he'd overruled him when he'd lodged a legitimate protest to being made to run errands through the gate when supposedly on downtime. It wasn't like that ‘errand' had led to the impossible situation they now found themselves in...
He shook himself mentally. Okay, so it was true that if they hadn't set foot on the planet then none of this would have ever happened but the General hadn't sent them there knowing this would happen and, if the anger was just about being sent there when he should've been on leave, then he knew the blame rested more with his second-in-command than it did with his CO. And, having just got her back from the dead, Jack wasn't really in the mood to bawl out Carter over anything yet even if such a thing had been possible.
He didn't realise he'd gotten lost in his own thoughts until he looked up to see Fraiser reappearing with a laptop when he hadn't noticed her leaving the room in the first place. He was roughly 70% confident that it was a case of getting caught up in his own thoughts and not another blackout but the laptop's appearance still made no sense to him.
As she laid it down on the table that could swing over his bed, Jack asked, "What's that for?"
"It's Sam's suggestion, sir. You gave her the idea that you can all communicate when you wrote the message on the chart for them. She thought this would be more efficient."
As she booted up the computer, he said, "Doc, do you know what's going to happen to us?"
Glancing round with doleful eyes, she replied, "No, sir... my indications are that even the incident with the Stromos is only vaguely analogous to this. Until we can learn more about the device, we're just going to be playing guessing games."
Even though he could've done with some false hope right about now, he did appreciate the Doc's honesty. He'd seen how hard the Stromos incident had been on her. When he'd sat above her and ‘Daniel' watching through the glass and on the monitor, he'd often wished that she'd drop the stupid isolation rule and let him in there. After all, they'd only put him in there in the first place because when Daniel had opened his mouth and not been Daniel, ‘he's a Goa'uld' had obviously been the first thought to jump to the forefront of everyone's mind. Still, despite how much he wanted to be there for his friend, he wasn't sure he could have resisted doing actual bodily harm to Martisse and, since that was Daniel's body, it wasn't something he wanted to happen. From up on his perch, he'd watched Janet clash with Martisse, co-operate with Tryon and empathise with the poor kid, Keenan, when Daniel could jump from one personality to another so quickly he'd find himself flinching reactively back from the monitor. And, in all that time, she never lost sight of the goal that was getting Daniel's mind back to its rightful place as sole consciousness of his own body.
As the monitor flickered onto the desktop screen, Jack focused back on the present. Now he was finally back on his own bed, he glanced about for the chart that had been functioning as an impromptu memo board and found three messages beneath his own. Carter and Teal'c both seemed to be questioning the reality of their current situation. He could hardly blame them for that and wasn't exactly fully convinced himself that this reality wasn't a grief-stricken delusion of his. After all, though he doubted he'd wish his friends back like this, it was still better than the alternative if the alternative was them no longer existing. Carter's message also bore an apology and, again, he tried to swallow down the anger he felt towards her for her part in this whole situation. It wasn't productive and it wasn't particularly fair either. Teal'c had added a request to Daniel to identify himself which Daniel appeared to have briefly done.
It didn't make Jack feel better to see the brief, casual response from Daniel. Of all of them, waking up like this had to have hit him the hardest. Even though it would have annoyed him beyond words, he'd have felt a hell of a lot more comforted if the reply had been a page and a half long and full of words he didn't understand as he explained just how fascinating this all was.
He laid down the chart as Fraiser swung the computer around towards him.
"Here you go, sir."
"Thanks, Doc."
As he pressed down on the ‘J' key, Jack wondered what the hell he should write. Funny, if his team were really lying around him rather than being in his head, then he'd never be short of things to say... but it wasn't the same when you wrote a message to someone else. Especially when it was one that you might not get a reply to for a long time. He and Daniel, especially, got through almost every conversation by a sort of linguistic ricochet effect. It felt strange to just shoot your sentences off into infinity with no idea when or if they'd be bounced back.
Closing his eyes, he concentrated. If he focused, he could imagine his friends sitting around him. Could imagine their voices. He hovered his fingers over the keyboard.
J: Hey campers.
‘Hey, Jack'
‘Sir'
‘O'Neill'
J: Guess I'm not the only one who's a little freaked out right now, huh?
‘You could say that, Jack.'
‘I'm sorry, sir, this is all my fault'
Jack couldn't quite bring himself to type the words ‘not your fault' to the Major who he knew was blaming herself. Instead he wrote...
J: Carter, blaming yourself isn't going to do us much good right now. Figure out how to get everyone back where they belong and, believe me, all is forgiven.
As Janet performed checks on the bodies of Sam, Daniel and Teal'c, she glanced across at the laptop screen which was currently being ignored by ‘Daniel' in favour of his notepad. Though the conversation between the four personalities had originally been stilted and hovered mostly around the joint topics of not-blaming Sam and making sure Daniel was all right, as the hours progressed, the flow had become more seamless and the conversation had turned to their respective experiences since the pedestal room and discussions about reality versus dreams. Currently, the conversation was still hovering around those topics with the Colonel adding ever more exclamation marks to the end of his sentences as the others kept circumnavigating the whole ‘drowning' thing.
From what she'd seen of the current conversation, Daniel and Sam were still embroiled in a debate about the meaning behind certain inconsistencies on the planet, the Colonel was getting ever more frustrated that no-one would explain exactly what had ‘happened' and Teal'c seemed mostly concerned with the validity of his current reality.
Finishing her checks, she came over and looked at Daniel's notepad. It was covered in an elaborate series of doodles.
Realisation hit her.
"Sir?"
Offhandedly, he replied, "Yeah, Doc?"
"You do know that's Daniel's notebook you're doodling all over, don't you?"
He slowly shifted back a page to see Daniel's handwriting.
"Oh."
Setting it down, he said, "Doc, have they... did any of them tell you what happened?"
"Sir, I know as much about as you do. You have to remember that this is as disorienting for them as it is for you. It's going to take you all some time to fully process what's happened."
"But some of this stuff they've written... it sounds like they think that I somehow made that storm they were in."
Janet, who'd read a fair proportion of it, corrected him.
"Sam was hypothesising it might be representative of some innate defensive mechanism by your own consciousness. Daniel thinks their journey to the Stargate was some sort of analogy for their consciousnesses gaining a foothold and that your subconscious was just trying to protect you."
Obviously not getting her point, his head dropped so she tried to elaborate.
"It wasn't something you could consciously control, sir. In fact, you probably saved them and gave them their window to surface when you asked me to sedate you."
Still directing the gaze down at the sheet, he said, "Teal'c said Carter and Daniel nearly drowned in that storm. If they'd died there...they'd have died out here, wouldn't they?"
As he looked up, eyes demanding an answer, she said, "There's no way to know that, sir."
Unfortunately, her instinctive guess was that death on the ‘planet' probably would have meant cessation of their consciousnesses and that was obviously clear in her eyes because, reading them, his gaze dropped again.
"I could've killed them and never even known about it."
Hammond stood outside the Infirmary and tried to gather himself. He told himself, as hard he might find it to deal with this whole situation, SG-1 had to be finding it a hundred times harder. He owed it to all of them to be as calm and positive as possible about everything.
Breathing deeply, he walked through the door and looked over at the bed where his second-in-command sat. Stepping forward, he saw Jack look up at him.
"General?"
Aside from being fairly certain it wasn't Teal'c, Hammond found he couldn't distinguish which member of SG-1 was looking at him.
"Who am I speaking to?"
"Major Carter, sir."
"How do you feel, Major?"
Jack's face contorted as the Major looked for an appropriate way to describe how she felt.
Giving up, she replied, "Odd, sir."
"That's understandable."
"I'm sorry. What's understandable, sir?"
"Feeling odd."
"Sorry, sir. Think I've come in halfway through this conversation."
Hammond looked lost so Jack helpfully said, "This is Daniel you're talking to, by the way."
"Oh, sorry, Doctor Jackson. This is going to take some getting used to."
"Try it from this side. I black out and come to again with no idea what's been going on in the meantime."
"It must be very frustrating."
"To be honest, it's more disorientating than anything else. So what's the latest?"
"Our last dial-in showed that the storm has totally ceased on the planet. The temperature is already building and there's no indication of any lingering traces of the storm. Castleman's team are gearing up as we speak. Now, you think the answers are in those engravings?"
"I can't be sure, sir... I'd barely begun translating them before the device activated... but they do seem to relate to the pedestal that did this to us. Unfortunately, Janet says my camera's completely blank."
"I'll have Castleman's team collect more footage whilst they're studying the device."
He looked down.
"Yes, sir..."
The tone made him ask, "Doctor?"
Looking up again, Doctor Jackson's expression was clear on Jack's face.
"I just wish we... I...SG-1 could go back. I've a pretty good grasp on the language so I'd have a better idea what I was looking for than SG-5 will have."
"Sorry, Doctor. That's just not an option at the moment. Without knowing more about the device, we have no idea what else will happen to... the four of you."
Deflated, he replied, "I know that, sir."
Doctor Fraiser piped up.
"Sir?"
"Doctor?"
"Even with the most up-to-date neurological, neuropsychological and neuroscientific theories, I can't even begin to understand - let alone explain - what's happened to SG-1. Sir, as much as I wish I could, I can't help them. Keeping him... them here... well, I can observe what happens to them but I can't help them in any way."
"Are you telling me I should let them go through to the planet?"
Eyes clearly saying ‘yes', she simply replied, "That's your call, sir."
"You think they're fit for duty when all four of them are suffering from blackouts?"
"Sir, I'm simply saying that sending them through with SG-5 isn't going to put them in any worse a position that they're already in. Obviously, I would go through with them in order to monitor their condition."
Levelly, he said, "Doctor?"
Equally levelly, she replied, "Sir."
There was a delicate moment before he relented.
"All right, Doctor. You get together any medical supplies you feel you need. I'll send...SG-1 through with SG-5."
As if trying to reassure him, she added, "I'll monitor them carefully, sir. If they collapse or there's any serious deterioration in their condition I'll have them brought back here immediately."
"Very well, Doctor..."
Jack's voice drifted over.
"Sir, what the hell's going on? Medical supplies? SG-5? Collapsing?"
Recognising the tone easily, the General swiftly said, "I have to go delay SG-5's departure. I'll let the Doctor explain, Colonel."
As Hammond made a hasty exit, he heard Jack say, "Well?"
"Uh, Daniel wanted to go back to the planet with SG-5 to see if the answers he needs are there."
"And Hammond agreed?"
"If I come along, yes, sir."
"Anyone think to let me in on the decision?"
The last thing he heard before the distance between him and the Infirmary got too great to make out the conversation was the Doctor replying, "Sorry, sir."