Reading Time: 154 Minutes
Title: Finding Perspectives
Series: Priceless
Series Order: 7
Author: SASundance
Fandom: NCIS, Stargate SG1, Stargate Atlantis, Criminal Minds; JAG
Genre: Crime Drama, Crossover, Dimension Travel, Established Relationship, Family, Kid!fic, Science Fiction
Relationship(s): Paula Cassidy/Anthony DiNozzo – present, Daniel Jackson/Vala Mal Doran, Jack O’Neill/Sarah O’Neill – past, Anthony DiNozzo/Paula Cassidy – past.
Content Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Rape/Non-con/Dub-con, Slavery, Torture, Violence – Graphic, Violence – Domestic and/or Against Children , Violence – graphic, offscreen torture, discussions of past and offscreen rape/non-con, issues around the loss of free will, loss of bodily autonomy, mind control, past murder of OC character, discussions of miscarriage and abortion, discussions of slavery and implications of mind control, non-consensual drug use, discussion of past domestic violence, discussion of canon vaccination and future vaccination programs, discussion of past canon unethical medical experimentation, character bashing (Elizabeth Weir and Ziva David). Not friendly to: McKay, Gibbs, Keller, McGee, Vance. (Note: slavery, mind control, autonomy issues are related to canon events)
Author Note: British Spelling
Word Count: 140,984
Summary: With Sahar finally neutralised, Ziva decides it’s time to take her daughter back to Israel and sets out to track her down, but it may be far harder than she thought. Penelope sets their plan in motion, hoping to eradicate the Trust once and for all, calling in some old hacker friends to assist Home World in thwarting her search and identifying and tracking down Trust personnel. Meanwhile, Home World Commands program to produce vaccines to inoculate Planet Earth and their Allies continues feverishly when a group of interdimensional travellers arrive at Area 51, requesting asylum, warning them that they could face grave danger. Members of this group profoundly affect some personnel when they find their worlds turned upside down. Will they take the unexpected chance at happiness, or will their duty force them to sacrifice a chance of a happy ending?
Artist: Angelicinsanity
Chapter 7
Aoife took a quick bathroom break and grabbed a bottle of water before stepping out for a couple of minutes of fresh air to clear away the cobwebs, so to speak. She always attempted to clear her mind after a session before she met with her next client, but she freely admitted that sometimes she was less successful than she would have liked. It could be difficult to let go – particularly if the session had gone well and there’d been breakthroughs or paradoxically, if the session hadn’t achieved what she’d hoped they achieved. As a clinical psychologist, she had long ago learnt how important it was to remain in the present even though sometimes it was extremely challenging.
As was the case today, but her struggle to remain focused had nothing to do with any of her previous patients, it was all about the message that had been sent requesting the return of Dr Heng to Earth as soon as possible. Now in the scheme of things, a request of that nature could be put down to some sort of family emergency and although concerned for her newest psychologist who had arrived almost two months ago, it shouldn’t be enough for her to be having trouble maintaining her focus. However, the request for Aoife to join Alain Heng if it was possible probably ruled out a family emergency being the cause of his recall.
Even as she racked her brain trying to come up with a reason why they should both be required to report to Homeworld Command, she was having trouble coming up with any issues and that made her anxious. All she knew was that it had to be something pretty big and now she was rearranging her appointments, prioritising anyone who was in crisis so that Umwali could cover for her for a few days. She’d just finished a session with Col Sheppard who was almost cleared to resume his role as Commanding Officer, having been doing the administrative side of the job for almost three weeks now and handling the pressure well.
Strangely enough, when she talked about him resuming full control including going off-world with AR-1 again, it was John who was resisting the notion. He was claiming that he needed more time which was somewhat amusing because right at the start when they’d begin their counselling sessions, he’d been keen to get back into the field as soon as possible. Truthfully, he’d been completely unrealistic about his readiness to resume command of the military on Atlantis but that was only to be expected. Yet as the time approached when she felt he was almost ready to put his traumatic abduction and torture behind him, Sheppard seemed to grow oddly reluctant to take that final hurdle and take back the mantle of control.
At first, Aoife thought that it was connected to having to get through the trials of his torturers which had proved to be somewhat of a setback and she still thought that it was the case at least in part. However, gradually she realised it was only partly responsible – that there was some other issue at play in his sudden reluctance to resume authority. It wasn’t until Rodney McKay had come to her in a panic last week that she got a clue that John’s hesitancy to take back the reins might be connected to his extremely complicated relationship with the irascible and volatile Dr McKay. Aoife had been encouraging Sheppard to acknowledge his emotions instead of trying to stuff them all down into a box and pretend they weren’t there.
She’d encouraged him to let himself feel angry and hurt that his people had taken so long to find him, even if they had been doing their best to locate him when he went missing. Aoife was trying to help John understand that with the degree of trauma he’d endured, it was perfectly normal to have emotions of frustration and hurt at not being found earlier and even if he understood on an intellectual level why it took so long, emotions weren’t rational – they just were. Pretending that you didn’t have them was no more logical that pretending that a grumbling appendix wasn’t causing you pain and interfering with your ability to do your job. Expecting that if you just ignored the dodgy appendix it would just go away was not logical and was certainly not a wise course of action, and neither would denying your feelings.
Ignoring physical pain wouldn’t fix the situation, any more than trying to pretend he wasn’t feeling angry over his abduction which would just disappear into the ether if he continued to pretend that it didn’t exist. And so slowly he was unpacking those emotions, having been given permission to feel however it was he was feeling about the entire life-changing experience. At first, he’d shied away from laying blame on anyone aside for Porteus Kolya and Lucius Lavin but gradually he’d started expressing his anger at L Corp. Joseph Favre for setting him up with Kolya’s men. Later he admitted to feeling resentful of Dr Francesca De Rosa for being so naïve and letting herself get trapped in a relationship with a violent controlling monster only to feel terribly guilty for being angry at someone who was also a victim. It had taken a lot of effort for him to work through his anger and even more to deal with the guilt but in the end, he got there, able to talk about those feelings and acknowledge that he was human, and his emotions were normal.
The giant elephant in the room though had been and still very much was, that Col Sheppard felt pissed off and deeply betrayed by Rodney for contributing to people on Atlantis viewing him as a sex-crazy skirt-chasing Lothario, unable to control his libido long enough to not bed any and every female in sight. Since John had consciously avoided any physical relationship (even of the friends-with-benefits variety) with anyone, military or civilian on the base, it was particularly galling to him that he’d developed a reputation as a man whore. For it to be a contributing factor in L Corp Favre’s betrayal of his CO to the Genii militia was something very painful. Yet for the longest time he resisted exploring those feelings, denying they existed or deflected them, saying that it was just Rodney joking around or just Rodney being Rodney but with all of the other grief work he was doing, those emotions became more difficult to suppress.
At first, when he started to express his feelings of anger, betrayal, and confusion at why Rodney had over their years on Atlantis made John out to be a craven sex addict willing to sleep with any female at hand, he was wracked with guilt for feeling that way. He felt like he was betraying their friendship by suddenly resenting what had been an ongoing situation for eight years and that he was not a good friend. But rather than his feelings of guilt resulting in him being able to suppress his anger, it had the opposite effect, causing him to explore why HE was the one feeling guilty. Surely Rodney should be the one seeking John’s forgiveness for running off his mouth and making people believe the very thing that as CO he went to great pains to avoid.
The last thing he ever wanted was for there to be even the slightest hint of impropriety in his leadership, which was why he obsessively avoided any intimate relationship with anyone on Atlantis. It also partly explained why he felt so awkward when anything personal occurred – like when after a suicide mission where he somehow made it back alive and Elizabeth Weir had hugged him in a spontaneous gesture of relief, he’d been super uncomfortable and stiff, unable to reciprocate even the most basic of interactions with her. Aoife had suggested to him that perhaps it was one reason he sought out Teyla and Ronon to spar with. It was a socially acceptable form of physical contact – an intrinsic human need – without anyone accusing it of being sexual and therefore inappropriate. And he had not exactly disagreed, stating that aside from sparring, the only other time he generally touched anyone or they touched him was in the infirmary when he was sick or injured or when he helped his people when they were sick or injured.
It was a lonely form of existence, and she wondered if anyone ever stopped to think about how much people like John sacrificed to lead. Probably not, most people were insular and self-involved. Although, now that she thought about it, L Col Lorne was, as far as she was aware, also not involved with anyone on the base and Ambassador LeClair seemed equally discreet or unattached. Mind you, since he was Atlantis’ commander anyone he was involved with would be his subordinate and that would not be a wise move. Still, he was the fourth commander to be appointed to the role in the eight years since the first expeditionary team set foot on the city, while Sheppard and Lorne had been here for over eight years and that sort of self-restraint went over and above in Aoife’s humble opinion. If either man had taken the opportunity to have an affair off or even just gratuitous no-strings sex off-world when it presented itself, then she could only say, ‘Good for them!’
Yet as John processed the myriad of emotions surrounding Rodney’s actions calling attention to the rare times when he gave in to temptation with the indigenous population of Pegasus even as he tried to remain discreet, he became driven. He wanted, no he needed to understand why Rodney, who as Chief Science Officer for Atlantis had carried on relationships with two women who answered to him since he was technically in charge of all the civilians on base, or he had been up until recently. Why would Rodney resented the rare encounters he’d had since arriving on Atlantis which John could count on two hands. McKay who’d been in an intimate relationship with Dr Keller for approaching more than three and a half years, still called him out over an exceedingly rare one-night stand a few times a year. Why begrudge him something that happened so seldom?
He’d macabrely joked that even that former rare activity was likely to be non-existence going forward, admitting to O’Shea that his libido was non-existent, and he couldn’t envisage that changing any time soon. Of course, his self-deprecating humour was a defence mechanism, as she had been quick to point out and reassure him that his avoidance of sex was merely a symptom of his traumatic experience and it was transient.
Then sometime last week after she’d broached the subject of his imminent return to duty, to which he’d stated that he wasn’t sure he was ready to assume command yet, she’d confronted him. It was only normal for him to feel nervous going out with his team off-world for the first time but delaying taking that last step through the gate wouldn’t get any easier. The point was that he would be taking that final step with his team to watch his back as he would theirs. They had been together for a lot of years, despite both Teyla and his absence when both had been kidnapped by sworn foes with vengeance on their minds but the trust they had built up over the years together would help him take the last step. They’d ended the session with John agreeing to think about returning to full field duties in the next week or two and then Col Sheppard had gone off to teach a fencing class to Aaron Hotchner’s son Jack, grumbling although Aoife was sure he enjoyed teaching the young teen.
The very next day, Rodney had come blustering into their counselling session which was progressing somewhat slowly with a bunch of fits and starts. Music seemed to be therapeutic, but the arrival of his sister with her spouse and daughter had definitely wrongfooted him. He’d confessed during an over-the-top rant where he was often unaware of what he let slip, that he had been confident that the Joint Chiefs of Staff would be able to overrule Homeworld Command and reinstate him at CSO of Atlantis because he was working on several projects for them and the CIA that was a helluva lot more important than his momentary moment of craziness when he decided hacking the Homeworld Database was a good idea.
Aoife pointed out mildly that it wasn’t just a moment of madness, that he’d been working on hacking into the servers for several days at least. It was a decision that ultimately led to him not sleeping and abusing uppers, that contributed to his psychotic break, not to mention trying to attack Alex Paddington and his young child. Rodney had been defensive which was typical of his usual reaction to anything which threatened him. However, Jeannie Miller’s arrival seemed to signal that General O’Neill might have been under pressure to let Rodney resume his duties and he had decided to circumvent them. Her presence on Atlantis had definitely caused him to regress, which O’Shea didn’t necessarily see as a bad thing. Although McKay was loath to admit it, on some level he recognised that Jeannie was as good as he was, maybe even better since she had questioned the dangers of them building the interdimensional energy collector which he’d refused to consider – too invested in the payoff if they were successful to properly consider the risks. And that had cost them a ZPM to fix the catastrophe, a very expansive price to pay for being bull-headed.
So, their progress in some ways seemed to stall, partly because his sister’s presence signalled that he didn’t have the bargaining power he thought he had and was therefore pissed off and lacking the motivation to do the work. However, there was another factor that had come into play with the arrival of McKay’s sister and that was that there seemed to be a lot of emotional baggage between the pair and so it wasn’t surprising that Rodney’s progress had been rather derailed with his family’s arrival. In that regard, he was in a similar situation to Col Sheppard, avoiding dealing with old family quarrels and hurts and letting them fester instead of dealing with them head-on.
It seemed to Aoife that in nearly every session, she was wading through resentful rants about Rodney’s abusive childhood that seemed to have consisted of their father toxically pitting the two genius-level siblings against each other. Perhaps when Jeannie decided to marry a Lecturer in English Literature and have a baby, he missed the competition. Although she felt that he struggled with her being able to give it up so easily and end up being happy when his whole identity was married to his self-image as a scientific genius, and he was patently not happy which might have had something to do with it. With Jeannie and her family right there on Atlantis, it made it all the more difficult for him to ignore.
It had been a fascinating look into the dynamics of the siblings’ relationship and Aoife wasn’t sure that Rodney’s definition of having an abusive childhood was congruent with Aoife’s. His sense of victimhood seemed far too closely aligned to anyone daring to question his brilliance for her to feel comfortable in having confidence in his self-assessment. While she would not go so far as to say that abuse didn’t occur, his whole misunderstood genius self-image made her a little chary of accepting his judgement on interactions with others. One day she would really like to get Jeannie’s take on their childhood.
When Rodney arrived at their session in a flap, naturally she’d been expecting it was over some family spat or people heaping too much praise on the younger sibling. So, she was totally unprepared for the announcement that John Sheppard unexpectedly had confronted Rodney over his constant ranting about him being Altantis’ Capt. James T Kirk, bedding any female with a pulse. Okay, she had not seen that one coming because Col Sheppard was not the confront-your-feelings kind of guy. While she applauded the fact that he’d taken the impetus to do so, she really hadn’t expected it. Strategically, he would take the fight right up to the enemy, but when it came to emotional issues concerning people close to him, he tended to favour the let-sleeping-dogs lie or even avoidance at all cost approaches. After all, as near as she could judge from the little he’d shared, after getting into a bitter fight with his father after he joined the Air Force, he’d dropped off the face of the earth, leaving his family with no avenue to pursue a rapprochement or even maintain a tenuous connection. His father died, apparently remorseful in his part of their estrangement but unable to make his peace with his son, a terrible cost for John and his family as a result.
Therefore, for him to reach out and demand answers from Rodney had initially been a shock, although O’Shea realised after considering the matter carefully that it probably was prompted by John’s reluctance to return to active field duties. If he wasn’t able to feel confidence in Rodney as a trusted member of his team, well that would definitely explain his hesitation over returning. And while it was certainly related to emotional issues, it was also affecting his ability to do his job as CO so it wasn’t as surprising that he would decide that it couldn’t be ignored since they were both on the same team.
All in all, she was surprised by his move but felt it was a good one. It had certainly shaken Rodney up and forced him out of the trough he seemed to have settled into of moaning about his sister outshining him and god forbid, being more popular than him. In the last several sessions after Sheppard had issued his ‘lay down misere,’ challenge to McKay she had begun to tentatively explore some of the aspects of his passive aggression that ‘may’ mediate how he related to people. As she waited for him to arrive for their counselling session, she wondered if he was ready yet to ask himself the question which she had been wondering in terms of why he’d fixated on his whole not-funny joking about John being Capt. Kirk. Would he ever be?
Aoife was a little more hopeful, feeling as if a breakthrough might be imminent. As curious and more than a little alarmed as she was to have received a summons from Homeworld Command, she couldn’t help wishing that whatever had prompted it could it had waited a few more days. Things seemed to be coming to a head between John and Rodney and she’d prefer they hash it out with her input but that might not be possible. As soon as Alain and Umwali returned from New Athosian later today, Col Lorne was going to fly Heng and herself to the SGC via Mid Way II.
Grinning just a bit at the familiar sound of complaining that always heralded Rodney’s arrival, Dr O’Shea stifled a chuckle as she heard, “Well, isn’t that typical! I’m here right on time and O’Shea is late. Like my time isn’t way more valuable than a jumped-up psychologist with delusions of grandeur dabbling in a quasi-scientific field that shares more mumbo jumbo with a witch doctor than a serious branch of healing. Even medicine has more scientific legitimacy than the mad Irishwoman and her woo-woo witch doctor lackeys.”
~o0o~
“So good to know exactly what you think of me, Dr McKay, “ Aoife said wryly, as she appeared in the room, having entered via the door, not the balcony. “And since my calendar is full of clients and you are still on stand down, actually, I think my time might actually be more valuable than yours, right now. Just for the record, I was here, waiting for you, I stepped out on the balcony to clear my head before we got into it.”
Rodney looked sheepish. “It was just a joke,” he protested.
“It’s only a joke if both parties find it funny, Rodney. Otherwise, it’s passive aggression which you deny using.”
She gestured for him to sit down. “Okay, let’s get started, shall we since you’ve already expressed how valuable your time is. We shouldn’t waste it.”
Rodney sat down sullenly, “I don’t know why you can’t take a joke,” he said pouting.
“Ah yes, when passive-aggressive excuses like ‘it was just a joke’ aren’t accepted by the recipient, then move on to step two. Blame said recipients for failing to have a sense of humour.” She facepalmed theatrically, “Oh goodness me, how could I be so humourless. How dare I be offended by a passive-aggressive diatribe delivered by someone who’s mortally offended when anyone dares make a joke at their expense,” Aoife said in mock anguish before grasping her hands together in a parody of prayerful gesture. “My bad, Dr McKay. Please, please forgive me!”
Rodney looked a tad uncomfortable, but it wasn’t clear if it was because he realised that Aoife was taking the piss or because his passive-aggressive personality wanted to evade having to confront his discontent and he felt acting obtuse was the best option.
“Yes, yes. Fine, I forgive you. Now let’s get on with it,” he said uneasily.
“Well, that’s a first! You don’t usually want to get on with it. But I guess since psychology is a pseudo-science akin to the practice of witch doctoring, that shouldn’t be a surprise, should it now?”
Rodney was flummoxed, unsure if he was being trolled by O’Shea or the illogical Irishwoman was offended by what he’d said when he thought he was on his own. Still, whatever was up with her, it wasn’t the smartest course of action to rile her up. She did have the power to sign off on his return to duty and in the months that he’d been kept from his work, he felt like he was bored out of his skull. And when he made the fatal error of whining about it to Jeannie and Jennifer, his sister had suggested he should use this precious time getting to know his niece better and his traitorous girlfriend agreed it was a great idea.
So now he was stuck watching Madison since Jeannie’s intellectually inferior spouse was traipsing off all over the universe helping some nanite-loving planet set up adult educational facilities for former nanite hosts in Orban, for Pete’s sake. After seducing his sister, robbing the world of a brilliant intellect, and procreating and creating a normal offspring, the least he should be doing was looking after said child, not leaving Rodney to have to endure the inanity of her childish musings.
Worst of all, even if he DID have passive-aggressive traits as O’Shea insinuated, and he DIDN’T, Madison refused to be squelched. It was most enraging that when he insulted her she would giggle and tell him he was funny! Lord he had no patience for fools at the best of times, but children were the epitome of foolish and childish. From his perspective, they lacked redeemable qualities. Of course, it was adding insult to injury that Madison was best friends with Kazumi Zelenka and Belle Paddington. Kazumi was a fairly inoffensive child as far as children went but that Paddington female, she was even more objectionable than her father which was quite the feat. Having to listen to someone who shared a proportion of his genetic profile, constantly in raptures over what the obnoxious Paddington brat had done or said now, well it was a sore test of his patience.
Lord knows he had the patience of Job, having to tolerate so many average people who annoyed him, but there was something about that child with her gift for languages and her arrogant air that made him long to put her firmly in her place. Of course, that was the very last thing he could afford to do since it was partially his attack on her (if Ronon and Lorne hadn’t stepped in at the last to stop him) that landed him in Siberia so to speak. So, he was forced to endure Madison’s inanity and her foolish flights of fancy AND listen to her spruiking the annoying declarations of the brat and finding it to be a particularly hateful form of punishment.
“Right well, have you had any thoughts on what you plan to tell Colonel Sheppard?”
Rodney who was still inwardly raging about being reduced to a mere childminder who was by proxy, forced to spend time with Paddington’s brat, felt like Aoife had just thrown a bucket of ice-cold water all over him. What the devil was wrong with this woman, she had no bedside manner – no easing into the tough topics at all.
“I… well I…”
“Are you hoping if you ignore his request, Colonel Sheppard will just drop it,” she asked with her extremely annoying way of knowing what he was thinking.”
“No, of course not. Don’t be ridiculous,” he snapped, even though it was precisely what he was hoping.
“Good, because while I can’t tell you what is said during our sessions, just like I don’t reveal what is said when we meet, I can tell you it isn’t just going to go away if you pretend it doesn’t exist.”
Damn it, why was Sheppard being so stubborn, normally John wasn’t one to hold a grudge, unlike himself he, who had them all catalogued mentally, even from childhood, thought exasperatedly. Why was he so determined to force this issue when Rodney didn’t even know himself? Inexplicitly, something that O’Shea had told him in their last session popped into his head.
‘Someone who has passive-aggressive traits may never choose to address their issues, but they will likely tally and keep track of times that they have felt wronged by others. It is this unspoken scorekeeping which they also use to justify subtle, passive acts of aggression in retaliation.’
Well, lots of people do it too and they can’t all be acting passive-aggressively, he told himself mentally.
“…so, what thoughts have you had?”
Damn, he must have missed that. “Thoughts,” he said, hoping she would repeat the question.
“About why you make such a huge issue of the rare occasions when Colonel Sheppard has chosen to have sex, blowing it out of proportion? Isn’t that what he wants you to explain to him?”
“Oh please! Rare occasions? We have vastly different definitions of rare, Doctor,” he told her sardonically.
“Okay, let’s tally up the ones that you know about so I can be persuaded that it wasn’t a rare occurrence then,” she challenged him in a way that implied he was wrong, and she was right.
Never one to shy away from a challenge he huffed, “Fine. There was the conniving deceiving fallen Ancient who he had sex with, and it was glowy sex too. She’s obsessed with him, and then there was the pre-Ascended Ancient Teer, and there was the oversexed and overly ambitious Mara, the Lord Protector’s daughter on Eldrid’s planet with the mostly buried Ancient city, he said scornfully.
He was still fuming about Mara. While Rodney was crawling around like a mole deep underground in the buried city that was dangerously unstable, Sheppard was living the high life and getting seduced by a gorgeous female who came into his quarters and revealed she was naked as a jaybird under her cloak. Meanwhile, the earthquake-prone underground city was threatening to collapse onto him while that brazen whore was riding John’s dick. How fair was that?
“Plus, there was that hussy, Larrin of the Travelers, and I’m pretty sure he hooked up with Princess Flora, Queen Harmony’s older sister who fell for his clichéd hero schtick. And there was the farmer’s daughter on PZ8-769 two years ago when he was injured and didn’t remember who he was. And I’m sure that he and Larrin would have picked up where they left off when they went to retrieve the Ancient ships last year.”
“That’s it,” O’Shea asked him impassively. “Six people. Is that all?”
“Well, isn’t that enough,” Rodney retorted self-righteously.
“I’d say that your average guy would consider that to be pretty damned near monastic if you surveyed them and I’d agree! Let’s say for the sake of argument that you are right since you just said that you merely suspect he slept with Princess Flora. Let’s double that number and theorise that he’s been with twelve people since he arrived on Atlantis and the expedition has been here for almost nine years now. Plus, we’d better factor in the six months that Colonel Sheppard spent on the Cloisters planet with the time dilation where he finally succumbed to the charms of the unascended Ancient called Teer,” Aoife noted.
“According to the mission reports I’ve read, Teer was grateful to him for in the first instance saving her brother’s life and then saving the villagers several times from their monster. He was badly injured and nearly died so I can see how her gratitude might grow into attraction, a heroic handsome saviour is a heady mix, and for the Colonel, after six months he must have wondered if he was going to be rescued.”
“But he was only in there for a few hours,” Rodney rolled his eyes.
“Well, yes, but you knew about the time dilation, John had no idea that it was only a few hours; he lived out those six months with no knowledge that he was inside a time dilation. It was absolutely real for him, and he spend six months there. I think he must have felt frustrated, disillusioned, and alone wondering if you would ever come for him.”
“We couldn’t have got to him any faster,” Rodney objected touchily.
“Yes I do believe you, but you do need to try to see it from his perspective and you also need to accept that he was entitled to feel the way he did.”
Rodney huffed. Why didn’t she tell John to try to see things from his perspective, hey?
“In your list of people Colonel Sheppard slept with or you believe he probably maybe slept with, did he ever have a relationship with anyone on Atlantis? I’m sure that there would have been a lot of people happy to sleep with him,” Aoife observed idly.
“Well yeah, women and more than a few guys have propositioned him over the years, but he has this archaic notion that he shouldn’t get involved with anyone who is subordinate because he wasn’t just the commanding officer of the military expedition but also the second in command of the mission overall. So, he took that to mean that he shouldn’t get involved with anyone on the base.”
“You say archaic – that notion obviously isn’t something that you emulate – you’ve had at least two relationships with scientists who answer to you as chief science officer,” she pointed out before moving along. “But out of curiosity, how many times would you estimate you’ve had sex over the past almost nine years. Just the last almost four years you’ve been with Dr Keller if you two only had sex one or twice a week that what probably about 200 hundred times you’ve had sex, plus however many times you and Dr Brown were intimate…’ she said before he interrupted her.
“Oh please, once, or twice a week? I’ll have you know that I have an insatiable sex drive and except when we are in a crisis or one of us has to work or is off-world on an assignment we have sex every day, often more than once a day,” he said indignantly.
“Okay, my apologies, but I was just trying to make a conservative estimate. Let’s double that and say that you and Dr Keller have had a least four hundred intimate acts together and then factor in the times you and Dr Brown were intimate because you have mentioned you proposed to her before taking it back.” Seeing he was going to try to spin what happened, she rolled right over the top of him.
“And since you had no issue having a relationship with two of the scientist under you, I’m guessing that there might have been at least a couple of other short hooks up that didn’t lead to full-on relationships,” Aoife said musingly.
You keep mentioning that I have had relationships with my scientists like that is a bad thing. I haven’t breached any rules,” Rodney told the psychologist huffily.
“Some people think that it complicates matters but that isn’t the point. The military doesn’t permit fraternisation and Colonel Sheppard obviously feels sleeping with anyone, even the scientists who are technically not under his command but could be if something were to happen to the Atlantis’s Commander is not a good idea, hence his occasion affair with a Pegasus local. However, the point I was trying to make was why you feel so strongly about the far fewer number of orgasms Colonel Sheppard experienced versus your own,” she asked him bluntly.
Rodney’s eyes boggled at Aoife’s question but he just looked at her cluelessly.
“Okay if that one is too hard how about why you feel like you have the right to police his sex life? The way you carry on about him being Captain Kirk who seemed to have a new alien lover every episode and it was strongly implied that the female crew were his conquests too, is not true. I don’t believe for a minute that someone who is concerned enough about propriety that he has avoided having a physical relationship with anyone on Atlantis could judge his sporadic affairs as analogous to Captain Kirk’s conquests.”
“It was just a joke,” he said angrily. “No one took it seriously.”
“Yes, they did, Rodney… a lot of people took it seriously. Newcomers assigned to Atlantis who hear your so-called joking assume that because you are his teammate and his friend that you’re in a position to know the truth. They don’t understand that it is passive aggression, Rodney and that is why John feels that he needs to know why you do it.”
“Remember that we talked about traits which are common in everyone but when they occur in clusters it often indicates that an individual uses passive aggression to avoid dealing with their feelings or having to avoid confrontations. It is a way to express negative emotions in non-direct ways. When called out on it, one of the classic responses is deflection by insisting that the other person misunderstood their words and that is the other person’s fault, not theirs.”
O’Shea cocked her head to the side. “I don’t know why you can’t take a joke. Does that sound familiar, Dr McKay? You came in here in a filthy mood…maybe about being mandated to engage in counselling with me, maybe because someone pissed you off and that isn’t all that hard to do. So, you were venting about me being late and how little regard you have for any branch of science that isn’t hard-core.
Aoife chuckled mirthlessly noting how uncomfortable Rodney was looking. “When I called you out on your churlishness, rather than face the consequences of being overheard by the recipient of the attack, you tried to brush it off as just joking but that wasn’t going to fly because I wasn’t going to let that slide,” she said honestly as her client looked extremely unhappy with were this was going.
“Then, after I deliberated and escalated the situation, to see if you would engage in an honest discussion and express your anger, you once again avoided having an adult conversation. Instead, you used a classic passive-aggressive technique, blaming the other person for failing to understand that you were just joking.”
Red-faced, he parried, “Well I don’t see why I get blamed just because someone doesn’t have a sense of humour.”
“Someone, Rodney? Don’t you mean me? At least act like a grown-up and own it rather than deflect by talking about an amorphous someone,” O’Shea goaded him.
Fine then. I don’t see why I should be blamed just because you don’t have a sense of humour,” he said angrily. “Are you happy now?”
“I’m happy that you expressed your feelings openly but as we are having an honest exchange, I have to say that I don’t like the fact that you put the blame onto me. It’s like I said at the beginning of the session, a joke isn’t really a joke unless both parties think that it’s funny.”
She moved on to talk about some of the other issues that they’d been working on, especially dealing with stress and Rodney admitted that he was finding that playing the piano was helping him – his blood pressure was a lot more manageable, and his medication had been reduced. She took it as a win, that and he’d apologised to Alex about attacking him and Belle the night he suffered his breakdown. Oh, she was under no illusion that he’d apologised not because he was remorseful, but because he knew that it was necessary if he wanted to return to his position. Still, that old maxim – Fake it ‘til you make was not a totally ridiculous strategy when it came to socialising Dr Rodney McKay’s interpersonal relationships.
Chapter 8
It was during the briefing on how the plans for vaccinating their allies were progressing so that they weren’t used against them that led to a discussion of the extremely strong race known as the Unas. President Walsh asked General O’Neill about the logistics of how the Homeworld Taskforce would carry out vaccination.
The POTUS had asked Jack, “How the devil do you expect to vaccinate them?” then he followed up that shrewd question with another one. “Do you think that they would agree to get stuck with a needle?”
Jack shook his head, “That’s a very good question, Mr President. I asked Dr Jackson that myself and that isn’t taking into account their armour-like skin. I’m guessing that would make injections somewhat challenging, But it also brings me to another issue that we need to address now we have some idea how this attack on Earth is likely to occur.”
“And what would that be, General?”
“We need to come up with a way to disperse the vaccine to groups of people, not have to individually inject every person. Unlike the Jaffa, the Orbanians and the Langarans, who all know about the Stargate and the Goa’ulds and Ori wanting to destroy us or enslave us, our population don’t. My guess is that people from those three planets be busting their buns trying to be the first in line to get vaccinated, but it’s not going to be so easy here.”
“Who has been vaccinated so far?” Walsh inquired.
“All our military personnel and their immediate families. We are going to offer our Stargate teams and former personnel the opportunity for their entire extended families to be vaccinated if they can convince them without threatening security. Plus, we are vaccinating all scientific personnel and their immediate families who work at the SCG or at Area 51 or have in the past or are former personnel.”
“But if you have a mass distribution method and Shen and her people strike, then you can counteract it quickly before things get out of hand,” Paula noted astutely.
“Yeah, we need to refocus our efforts on ways to distribute the vac; we’ve been thinking we had time but since it has already happened in Agent DiNozzo’s reality I think we need to start throwing everything we have at figuring out how to mass vaccinate the planet but discreetly, so we don’t tip Shen off that we know what’s she’s planning. The Chinese military will take delivery of the Sun Zhu in another five weeks,” O’Neill reminded the President.
“Okay, I’ll get my people on it ASAP as you military types like to say,” President promised. “Just want to clarify that Plan B is good to go if we need to?”
“Yes, all of the Paddingtons are all set to go. Last count we had upwards of fifty thousand ready to be deployed if needed, although I’m going to look at adding another 25,000 in case we might need them,” Jack replied.
“What are Paddingtons and what is your Plan B,” Paula asked curiously.
“Oh, Paddingtons are a very specific type of bomb, to be accurate they are a supercharged rhinovirus dispersing explosive devices that we started calling Paddingtons after our AFOSI Agent in Charge came up with a somewhat off-the-wall suggestion about how to buy us time should Chen attack us before we were ready for her,” Jack told her chuckling.
“You see, the only person on the base at Atlantis who was immune to the effects of MCD –238β was Colonel John Sheppard.”
Immediately pricking up her ears, Paula asked excitedly, “Were you able to determine why that was?”
Jack nodded grimly. “Yeah, he had a bad head cold, he was sneezing and coughing and unable to breathe properly. And that’s when we realised that the pheromone-like compound has to be breathed in, which was why his cold meant he was unaffected. The first time a head cold saved a military base, but not before Lavin breached our database while everyone stood by and let him read every damned thing in the computers,” he groused.
“Okay, but why call these rhinovirus bombs Paddington? Wouldn’t it have been more appropriate to name them Sheppards,” she asked logically as the President chuckled.
“Fair point,” was his reply.
Jack smirked. “Yeah, but it was Paddington that made this off-the-wall suggestion and all of the military types thought he’d put his foot in it calling it a cold bomb by mistake. But the truth was that he was five steps ahead of everyone else, figuring that if we had to come up with a way to delay MCD –238β from working immediately, we needed to dump the rhinovirus on towns and infect people with what is a pretty harmless virus that would on average give authorities 5-7 seven days to vaccinate everyone. Well, no one was laughing at him once he explained what he’d been talking about. So now as a joke, we refer to them as Paddington and he gets cranky when we do, so win all around.
“I’m looking forward to meeting this guy, it sounds like he’s a creative thinker,” she said as Jack and the POTUS exchanged knowing looks.
After they departed the White House, Jack was dropped off at the Pentagon so he could brief the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the latest developments and had his driver and protection detail take Paula DiNozzo back to Homeworld Command where the children were being minded by the Walter and Jack’s aide Captain Sparks. As he was making his way through security, he sent Walter a text checking in. According to Harriman, the two infants had slept most of the time they’d been gone, although they’d just woken up and Joshua DiNozzo was proving to be an excellent big brother, able to keep his baby sister amused. Apparently, Sarah awoke grumpy and unsettled but a diaper change had helped her disposition according to Rachel Sparks.
Jack felt a pang at not being there when she woke up but that was foolish, he could hardly have blown off POTUS or the JCS either. At least Paula was only minutes away and Sarah seemed quite at home around her, so he figured that she’d be fine. It was him that was suffering from separation anxiety. Still, the sooner he focused on the job at hand and delivered this briefing, the sooner he could return to his office and check on his alternate realities granddaughter and make sure she was coping with all changes.
Sighing, he sent Walter one last text, telling him to order dinner for everyone and put it on his credit card before shutting off his phone and heading into the briefing. Hopefully, since this was an unscheduled evening briefing, everyone would keep things short and sweet so they could all get out of there in a reasonable time frame.
He was already thinking ahead to after the meeting. He’d get Walter to contact DHS and organise a safe house for their party to spend the night. He hoped that Captain Sparks had a go-bag with her since she was going to be going with them and acting as a chaperone so that nothing inappropriate happened. He didn’t think that it would but still, it didn’t hurt to play by the rules when it came to them spending the night together.
He sighed as one of the first things out of Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Harry Litchfield’s mouth was that perhaps the former JCS’s Rosen and Conrad had a point, it was a miscalculation. not involving Dr McKay in the program while the newly appointed Commandant of the Marine Corps. Gen Baker nodded in agreement. Time to remind them this had nothing to do with Rodney McKay, not in this reality or in Paula’s. Neither McKay had figured out what was behind the threat that Earth and her allies were facing and, in this reality at least, they had a trained investigator to thank for it that they weren’t all mindless zombies right now.
The JCS were really starting to piss him off. They were truly like a broken record. After he was through excoriating their stubborn refusal to see what was right in front of their noses, he went on to praise the folk who had been working tirelessly to mass produce the vaccine which rendered MCD –238β effectively useless and also the smaller but very well-resourced teams who were producing the Paddington Bombs. Watching the Joint Chiefs squirm each time he talked about the Rhinovirus mass dispersal devices, Jack couldn’t help feeling a childish sense of satisfaction. Agent DiNozzo had asked about the name and Jack had given her the explanation – just not the whole one. After Generals Conrad and Rosen had pulled that disgustingly grubby stunt trying to set Alex up during the JAG military trials on Atlantis, Jack took enormous pleasure in referring to the Rhinovirus bombs as Paddington Bombs. The expression on these two idiots’ faces had just too good to resist and the half-joking nickname had caught on as everyone adopted it and it made the JCS sans the former Rosen and Conrad whenever Jack used it and that was a bonus. It had given him some petty satisfaction to counterbalance his sense of rage as he’d waited on the new POTUS to sack the pair of idiots as well as their CIA co-conspirator.
Jack liked the former POTUS Henry Hayes, and he knew that General Hammond had served with the guy in the Air Force. Still, there were times when Jack (in the privacy of his own mind) had to wonder what President Hayes had been thinking when he’d appointed that pair of ass wipes to the JCS. Unfortunately, the incumbent President Walsh, while adamant that the pair would be removed for their stunt trying to frame Paddington, was being advised to wait for an opportune moment politically to get rid of them by his staff and backers. Meanwhile, they had been able to put a flea in the ear of Litchfield who wasn’t terribly bright in Jack’s opinion, blundering about like drunkard bulls in a China shop at a time when the Earth could be facing the most potentially dangerous internal security threat ever.
And it was thanks to Paddington and all of the people who made up the Homeworld special War on Zombies project for them being in an excellent place to thwart it. All the super weapons in the world that Rodney McKay might build would be utterly useless if every man woman and child was under the thrall of Lavin’s ‘special herb.’
Seeing that the meeting was going to be a long and rancorous one, he stepped out and called Director Nancy Addison, Director of DHS and requested the use of one of their safe houses for a couple of days, which had a minimum of 3 but preferably 4 bedrooms.
Sensing that it wasn’t a social call she told him she’d get right on it, and he thanked her, telling her he was stuck in a briefing with the JCS and couldn’t be reached but she should liaise with M Sgt Harriman,
Nancy chuckled, “Where’s Col Davis? Is he sick,” she joked.
“Taking care of a situation for me out at Nellis,” Jack replied cryptically, allowing Nancy to draw her own conclusions – given she wasn’t read in on the program. All she knew was that his department administered a lot of hotshot scientists and that there had been an airborne attack on the base almost four years ago.
“Okay, well when I have something, I get back to him. Just how soon do you want this?”
“Tonight,” he replied leaving her gobsmacked as he bade her goodnight and hung up.
Before he went back inside he sent a text to Walter, informing him that DHS would be contacting him about a safe house for them to use tonight. With three kids, two of them babies, a safehouse was a more practical solution than bunking down at Homeworld for the night.
Switching off his phone again he stowed it inside his pocket and took a deep breath before opening up the door and heading back inside to deal with General Harry Litchfield without getting brought up on a charge of insubordination, which, given his normal snarky demeanour in the face of bureaucracy, was certainly going to challenge his ability to bite his tongue. And since he had never mastered the art when he was captured by Goa’ulds, Jack really wasn’t all that sanguine about having better control now.
~o0o~
By the time they’d hashed out the relevant issues – not the hoary old chestnut regarding Dr Meredith Rodney McKay being the answer to all their problems, Jack was grumpy and with his protection detail headed straight for the safe house. Capt. Sparks had saved her boss food from their Chinese takeout, knowing all General O’Neill’s favourites. When he arrived, she offered to heat it up for him and he gratefully accepted.
After he started eating he realised he was quite hungry, and it wasn’t long before Joshua DiNozzo wandered out and watched him closely. “Did you eat, Josh,” he asked the lad’s expression looked just like their own DiNozzo’s.
The boy grinned, revealing a dimple on his left cheek. “Yeah, we did,” he said eyeing off the shrimp dumpling sitting there invitingly on Jack’s plate.”
“You want it,” he pointed at the dumpling.
Joshua nodded shyly. “Can I?”
“Why not,” he said grabbing a plate and putting it down on the clean plate with his chopsticks, pushing it over at the young DiNozzo. “Are those your favourites?”
Joshua considered the question carefully even as he was demolishing the dumpling. “We don’t have these in our world,” he confided, “But if we stay here, I think they will become my favourites.”
“This must be pretty hard for you,” Jack said, waving his hand around vaguely, “coming here. I’m pretty impressed with how well you’re handling it. Dealing with all of this alternate reality stuff always gives me a massive headache,” Jack told the boy.
“Mom said in this world you are a Lieutenant General who is the boss of the whole Stargate program.”
“Yeah, she’s right about that. I take it I wasn’t in charge in your reality?”
Josh shook his sandy blonde hair as his greenish-blue green eyes regarded him gravely. “No, you were on the first team that went through the stargate, but you retired sometime after that, I think. Sometimes when we were hiding in the underground from the bad people who were after us, you’d tell all of us kids stories about what you’d seen when you used to explore the Milky Way. It helped when we were scared or bored. You had some cool adventures,” he said appreciatively.
“Well, if they were anything like what happened to my team in this world, I’d have to agree but there was a lot of not-so-great stuff too.”
“Do you know my Dad in this world,” he asked curiously. “Do you work together?”
Before he had a chance to figure out how to answer that fraught question, Paula had turned up in the kitchen looking for her son.
“Josh, how about you let General O’Neill eat his dinner in peace. I’m sure he’ll be more than happy to talk to you tomorrow but for now, I think you should call it a night. It’s been a really long day,” she said, leading him out of the kitchen as Jack heaved a sigh of relief.
The topic of Anthony DiNozzo was an awkward one and he had no idea how Tony was going to respond to this weird ass situation. As Paula shepherded him out of the kitchen, she threw a look at O’Neill that promised that while she was rescuing him from answering Joshua’s question, she was not going to let him off so easily. As he finished up the last of the Peking duck, he wondered what DiNozzo – Paddington would have to say about this.
From the exhaustive background check Paul had run on DiNozzo it was clear that in this reality, they had been together, albeit briefly. It seemed from their vetting that he’d been more invested in the relationship than Paula Cassidy had been, who was extremely ambitious. Even with Gibbs’ negative reports on her performance, and a recommendation she should be disciplined for what he saw as her failures at Gitmo with the translator and a case while she was Agent Afloat aboard the USS Kennedy where she warned a young ensign rather than formally investigate it, she had managed to score herself a position as a Senior Supervisory Agent leading an NCIS team at the Pentagon. When she died thwarting a suicide bomber, Tony had only been feet away and utterly devastated by her death.
And Jack was wondering what expectations Paula DiNozzo had of their Tony, well Alex? One thing Jack knew from the Carter who’d turned up way back in the third year he’d been leading SG1 with Major Kawalsky (who was dead in this reality after being taken by a snake) Dr Carter who was married to General O’Neill not only had significant differences to the then Major Carter. She also found it difficult to compartmentalise her feelings for her husband and Jack in this reality that made it awkward between himself, Major and Dr Carter. Hell, back then he and Carter had been doing an excellent job of denying that they were attracted to each other because of fraternization regs, and Dr Carter’s appearance had made it much more difficult.
However, even though Jack would prefer that he didn’t need to hide the group of refugees on Atlantis and save Alex from having to deal with any more emotional shit, especially since there was still the ongoing situation with Ziva David hanging over his head, it wasn’t an option. Bottom line was that with confirmation of their worst fears about Xiaoyi Shen and MCD –238βthey had to play the hand they’d been dealt. Paddington and his team of investigators and analysts had done such an exemplary job of cleaning up Atlantis, rounding up the spooks and spies. He’d also tightened up operational security so that the sorts of SNAFUs like losing a ZPM because of casually blabbing to a local that they had only just arrived in Atlantis had cost them the ZMP and nearly cost them the city would never have happened if he’d been on Atlantis years ago.
Now, if they were with people in Pegasus who knew that they were recently arrived, thanks to the first expedition members being too chatty when they arrived, then they were trained to emphasize that the Ancestors as the Pegasus locals referred to the Ancients, had escaped back through the gate to Earth which was where they had come from many millennia before travelling to Lantea. And also stress that once back on Earth, the Ancestors settled down and lived and procreated with the people of Earth, which was why many of the Terreuans had the ATA gene. They were the offspring of the Ancestors and had returned to reclaim what the Ancestors had sunk deep below the oceans on Lantea.
And slowly that narrative – with their success in battling the Wraith mostly into submission or hibernation was gaining ground in the galaxy, as was the work that Alex and the ISBI were doing to help investigate crimes when races requested their help. Particularly after their successful investigation of the disgusting attack on the eight-year-old Winyan boy, Leoosh Benn and the speedy apprehension of the perpetrator. Their discovery of the forced prostitution ring behind his attack had impressed and shocked not just the Winyans but many other planets who didn’t have the resources to investigate violent crimes and had started reaching out and requesting help from the ISBI and Agent Alex and the mysterious Thomas Magnum.
But putting aside the sterling work that Homeworld’s investigative branch was doing in the Pegasus galaxy, Alex’s team’s exceptional work was ironically the reason why Atlantis was the most secure place to put the alternate reality refugees so that they didn’t give Shen advanced warning that they had her measure. They’d already gone to the most extraordinary lengths to ensure that the IOA and the Trust had no idea what they were up to on Balara, aside from some false stories they’d deliberately put out after Paddington suggested that leaking false information would make it easier to conceal their true purpose.
That decision to start up a disinformation campaign came about just after Alex had rooted out two spies that Hank Landry had sent to Atlantis to try to discover what Homeworld was doing in their secret off-world project and hadn’t Jack ripped his old friend a new one over that betrayal. Jack wasn’t accepting his excuse that the General was just trying to find out what his daughter had gotten herself involved in because he promised her mother to keep an eye on her. Landry knew better than most about the concept of need-to-know and his attempt to spy on Homeworld and the War on Zombies program was definitely something Hank didn’t need to know. He was currently under investigation by Special Agent Bates who’d been transferred to the ISBI although at this point was assigned to Homeworld to investigate the Landry situation. Meanwhile, Hank was suspended, and Colonel Dixon was acting head of the SGC and while everyone at the SCG knew he’d been suspended, it had not yet become common knowledge. General Goldstien at Area 51 didn’t have a clue the Hank had been removed…probably permanently.
Yes, in a way, Alex’s new agency’s excellence was why Agent DiNozzo, and her children must be hidden on Atlantis, not only because it was the most secure place for them to stay out of the spotlight but because his and Belle’s arrival on the base almost one year ago to escape from the Trust had proved to be a catalyst. Atlantis had become a child-friendly haven for families, with more personnel requesting to have their families assigned with them and more Athosians willing to live and work on the base.
Early on in the expedition’s mission to Atlantis, there seemed to have been a rush to judgement that the Athosians were a simple people. While they did live a life that was devoid of technology, that was more out of necessity than a reflection on their level of evolution after having their world constantly attacked and destroyed by the Wraith. Indeed, many of the peoples of Pegasus had suffered similarly, the Genii had learned to hide their technological advances underground while pretending to be simple farmers above ground to escape detection. Now, particularly in areas of botany and medicinal plants, Athosians were starting to forge ahead and want to work in Atlantis with its laboratories that helped them develop better crops and produce medicines for illnesses endemic to Pegasus. Having child-friendly living quarters was proving to be a big drawcard. From having literally, a handful of children less than a year ago there were now over twenty-five and with ISBI analyst Nikola Bates due to give birth in seven weeks, that number would increase again.
Jack was also mindful of the fact that both the DiNozzo offspring and Sarah O’Neill possessed the ATA gene at a strength that was estimated to be comparable to Paddington, Sheppard, and himself. He wondered if Sara had also inherited an extra healing gene as he had. Plus, he had a fair idea that Belle had the extra communication gene that according to Chaya Sar, Alex possessed. It would explain why the disgraced Ancient who’d been kicked off the higher plane of existence for defending her people from the Wraith was so interested in the five-year-old.
Of course, he had no intention of asking Alex outright because as a father, Jack fully understood the biological imperative to protect your offspring and he was pretty sure if he had been Belle’s father he’d have done the same. But with Daniel, all fired up to compare his genes to Alex’s to see if he too had the communication gene, it may not be possible to keep that information under wraps for too long. Part of him hoped that Daniel didn’t possess the Ancient’s communication gene even though he knew that the Space Monkey was desperately hoping he did. It had been a blow to his friend when he tested negative for the ATA gene, especially since he’d Ascended more than once.
But as disappointed as Danny might be, it would make it much easier to keep any extra abilities that Alex or his offspring might have inherited, off the radar of not just the eggheads and geeks. They were of concern, but the bigger worry was if the Trust ever found out that these kids had special abilities that they might hope to exploit or study. They would have little to no compunction about how they went about acquiring that information either. So, with the distinct possibility that Sarah might have the healing gene, Jack knew that these three kids at least would need the added protection of being far away from the Trust as it was possible to get.
He wondered if the Trust was a problem in Paula DiNozzo’s world as Jack stacked his empty plate in the dishwasher. After a brief mental debate, he decided that despite the late hour, a single cup of coffee wouldn’t be too disruptive to his sleep and set to making a cup. To be honest, if he’d read Paula DiNozzo correctly, she would put in an appearance before too much longer, wanting to talk about the counterpart to her husband in this reality. Hearing someone with a light footfall entering the kitchen he turned, expecting it to be her, only to find Capt. Sparks looking at him quizzically.
“If you’re going to be drinking caffeine, General, do you really want to be drinking that crap the DHS left us or would you prefer a properly brewed one,” she asked him with a touch of teasing.
His staff weren’t the sort to stand on ceremony with him and he appreciated that about them. He wasn’t someone who wanted or needed to be kowtowed to and if they had a snarky sense of humour then he couldn’t fault them for it seeing he was guilty of snarking at his superiors back in the day before he became the superior. In fact, he liked it when Rachel teased him. It made him feel a little bit like he was still on SG1 where even Teal’c in his terribly stoic Jaffa way would sometimes heap shit on him if he was being a jackass or just because. Paul was so damned proper all the time so he has grateful that Walter, Capt. Sparks and now Garcia would joke around and yank his chain on occasion.
This reminded him that as soon as Penelope was done recruiting the team from Leverage Consultation and Associates, he needed to get her involved with their Alt-reality refugees too. He knew she was up to her eyeballs in vetting all the recruits that were being assembled – many of them were mercs and criminals – to deal with Ziva David and the Trust but there was that maxim – you need to employ a thief to catch a thief. They’d tried everything else to try to eradicate the Trust before, but they always rose from the ashes with someone new at the helm – like some immortal human cockroach, cut off its head, it grew a new one and started back up again.
He smirked at the Captain. “Hell no, but that,” he pointed at the state-of-the-art coffee maker sitting out on the kitchen counter, “is beyond the ken of the likes of me,” he said wistfully.
Grinning, she asked, “Would you like me to make you a cup, Sir?”
“I would greatly appreciate that, Captain.”
“And here I thought you wanted me here for me to chaperone,” she joked as she used the machine dextrously, soon producing a cup of latte than could have come from his favoured coffee shop.
“That too,” he snarked back. “I hope I didn’t disturb anything too urgent.”
“Actually Sir, you did. Dinner with the Mother in Law. Rex is not happy.”
“My apologies, Sparks. Next time tell me and I’ll find someone else,” he told her sincerely.
“No, don’t you dare, General. First off, this is wild, meeting people from an alternate reality and secondly, my MIL is without a doubt the biggest dragon in the Milky Way. I was over the moon to have a legitimate excuse not to have to attend the weekly torture session where she criticises me and makes it very clear that I am nowhere near good enough for her precious son and heir.”
Jack smirked. “In that case, glad I could be of assistance.”
As Paula entered the kitchen, Rachel Sparks smiled at her. “Can I make you a cup of coffee, Agent DiNozzo? I’m just going to make one for Harriman and myself and the General.”
The blonde nodded. “If it isn’t too much trouble, I looked at it, but it is different to our ones. Can I have decaf?”
“No trouble and I can show you how to use it, it’s not that complicated,” Rachel offered as Paula nodded and Sparks demonstrated with her decaffeinated coffee before making DiNozzo make the next two while she coached her.
After the captain took her coffee and M Sgt Harriman’s coffee back into the living room, Paula sat down at the kitchen table and took a sip of her drink.
“You said that Tony isn’t a federal agent anymore. I’m having a hard time imagining that. My husband was one of the most gifted investigators I’ve ever seen. I can’t imagine what he’d have done if he couldn’t work as a federal agent anymore. Was this world’s Tony injured? It’s the only thing that I think would have made him give it up?”
“No not injured, although he was infected by a bioterrorism attack on NCIS and very nearly died earlier on,” Jack told her.
“So why did he resign?”
“He left to raise his daughter,” he said briefly.
Paula nodded. “Oh, well that makes sense. He was a brilliant dad, I think his own childhood made him determined not to neglect his own children when they arrived. Josh, Hannah, and Mikelle adored him,” she said sadly.
“You use the past tense. Is that because you think that you’ll never see him again or because he’s dead?”
Paula said, “The plan after we got the children to safety was to blow up the area under Area 52, taking as much of the complex out as possible. No one wanted to become a mindless zombie and Dr Carter and the others were adamant that they didn’t want the alternate drive technology or any of its research to fall into the hands of the enemy. Tony, Charlie, and your counterpart, who was a retired Colonel with Special Ops experience as well as leading the first SG1 team before you retired… he retired… damn this is so confusing!”
Jack gave a brief smirk, before nodding sympathetically, and said, “Yeah I know. It makes my brain feel like it’s about to explode. So, the plan was once you got through to warn us so your kids would hopefully be safe, then they were going to blow up the base and the drive, so they weren’t able to use the drive to travel to other realities.”
“Which means we cannot go back there if they were successful in finding where we were hiding out, because then Tony and Jack would have triggered the explosion, destroying half of the base and taking a lot of the enemy with them.”
They sat quietly as Jack let her grieve for her world, her friends, and her husband, who were in all probability, dead by now. His heart was mourning too because if Paula was correct, then Charlie O’Neill was also dead now in her world and he felt like he’d lost his son all over again.
Finally, they started talking in a desultory fashion, sharing stories about the Tony and Charlie versions they had each known before exhaustion took over and they decided to get some sleep and regroup in the morning. Jack was going to pay his ex-wife a visit and introduce her to her namesake, Sarah Lauren O’Neill. He was hoping that Baby Sarah would be her salvation.
Paula finished the last of her decaf coffee and went to the sink and rinsed out her mug, trying to figure out how to open up the dishwasher and stack it inside.
Jack told her, “Leave it, I’ll put it in with mine when I’m going to bed. If Sarah wakes up for a feed, call me if you need me,” he told her as she smiled politely, still lightyears away, thinking about what was happening in her own universe.
“Thanks,” she said. “Goodnight General.”
“Good night, Agent DiNozzo,” he replied as she left the kitchen.
O’Neill wondered how his ex-wife Sarah was going to deal with the news. He hoped that it might shake her out of her depression. It was nearly four years ago that Sarah had rang him and told him that she’d been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, but she’d been upbeat, saying that it wasn’t going to beat her. And she had fought the disease in her usual fashion – stubborn, organised and refusing to give in. Of course, back then, Mike Wyatt, Sarah’s dad and Charlie’s grandpa was still alive, and Sarah threw herself into a range of different strategies to fight against her MS.
Sarah was always someone who believed in healthy eating and living, had become even more disciplined, going organic, irradicating chemicals not just from her diet but her life. Cleaning products, cosmetics, if it was chemically based then out it would go and a plant-based organic substitute would take its place. She worked out a punishing regime of daily exercise and meditation, plus bi-weekly yoga sessions and a few other types of healing and massage became a part of her weekly schedule. It all seemed to be working, she hadn’t had any flareups, was still relatively mobile and active and Jack hoped that maybe the diagnosis was wrong.
Then about eight months ago, disaster struck, his former tough as an old boot father-in-law, Harry George Wyatt had suffered a massive heart attack and passed away before he made it to the ER. Sarah was devastated! After they’d lost Charlie, Sarah’s dad had been her rock and let’s face it, he’d been a mess and slunk into a pit of bitter self-recrimination that she wasn’t able to penetrate. In his self-indulgent depression, he went off eagerly to Abydos – knowing that it was probably a suicide mission, hoping it would BE a suicide mission and leaving her behind, physically and emotionally.
It was her dad that pulled her through the worst time in her life and helped her to find purpose in her life again. Harry had also given her a reason to fight her multiple sclerosis every single damned day, but now, with him gone, Sarah fell into a deep depression and her MS rapidly deteriorated. Alarmed at the dramatic decline, Jack pulled strings and got permission for Vala to use her Goa’uld Healing Device in the hope that it would arrest Sarah’s rapidly worsening condition, maybe cure her. She’d been mostly independent, requiring only a minor amount of help from Harry, for example, help to do up buttons or help her to shampoo her hair when she was having a bad day.
Now her deterioration was so bad that she was unable to care for herself at home. Jack tried to organise live-in caregivers, but Sarah refused, saying that she wanted to enter a nursing home. She was clearly depressed and said she was tired of fighting, she wanted to die so she could be reunited with her father and Charlie. He’d eventually received permission from TPTB for Vala Mal Doran to use her healing device on his ex-wife, but only because she had already been read in on the program years ago.
Back when he was first in charge of SG1, he’d had an unfortunate encounter with a very alien entity, it had transformed into a lookalike Jack and returned to Earth to try to heal Charlie, not understanding that he was dead. The alien had believed if he could heal his son, that would also heal O’Neill and he wouldn’t retaliate against the rest of the aliens who’d almost been wiped out of existence by the Goa’uld. Having seen all the supernatural stuff and the alien transforming into Charlie, it had been necessary to tell her about the Stargate and aliens, but she’d never breathed a word to anyone. They may have been divorced but Sarah O’Neill was still a loyal military spouse, and that loyalty was why, along with Jack’s sacrifices over the years, they consented to Mal Doran using alien tech on a civilian outside the SGC.
Unfortunately, by the time he’d gotten permission, Sarah had effectively decided that she had nothing left to live for. She thanked Jack but turned down the offer. Her doctors agreed that she was clinically depressed but refused to take antidepressants. They said that it wasn’t all that uncommon after the loss of a loved one, but she had the right to refuse treatment, all they could do was wait and hope she would find her way out of it in time. In the meantime, he could see how her depression meant she was refusing to follow an exercise program that had been responsible for her maintaining so much of her mobility.
Worse though, she refused to let Vala come to see her and try to heal her MS, despite everything he did to change her mind, saying that she was tired of fighting and would welcome death. She kept saying, that with Harry gone she didn’t have anyone left, that she fought so hard because she didn’t want to leave Harry alone but that wasn’t a factor anymore. Try as he might, Jack hadn’t been able to convince her and Vala had explained sadly that the Goa’uld healing device couldn’t heal broken hearts or fix depression. Possibly, because to the Goa’uld these concepts were so foreign to their understanding and certainly not something that ever afflicted the narcissistically insane parasitical race.
Yet today, with the appearance of Sarah Lauren O’Neill from a parallel but different universe, Jack was hoping that one six-month-old baby would be able to persuade his ex-wife that she did have something worth fighting for!
Chapter 9
Tony was feeling apprehensive. He’d always been very good at reading people’s moods and their non-verbal body language and that was a distinct advantage to him as an undercover operative. He knew now that it was because of his Ancient communication gene, and he was just glad that he too messed up on an emotional level to be able to read people’s specific thoughts. Although, as much as he was reluctant to admit it, there were times when he got little flashes of information when someone he was particularly close to like Tali, Teyla, Nikki, or Monique was upset. He felt bad about it – he felt like it was a form of assault, but the trouble was that he didn’t know how to stop it. Maybe one day he would get a chance to ask Chaya Sar about how to do that.
But right now, it was clear to him that Aoife had something pretty serious on her mind that she needed to share with him. The last day or so it had been obvious to him and Captain… oops he meant Major Cadman – and her promotion was long overdue – that there was something pretty big going on back on Earth. Colonel Davis had sent out an urgent request for Daniel Jackson to return to the SGC asap. The only problem with that was he’d been off-world with Clone Carson, and Vala in some remote mountainous region of Trysos which could only be reached by a challenging half-day trek up the mountain. So, Lorne had dispatched AR-4 to go and retrieve Daniel but it was still going to take at least another day for him to return to Atlantis.
In the interim, Paul Davis had ordered Dr Alain Heng, who was a fairly recent arrival on Atlantis and specialised in developmental psychology, to return to Earth asap too. The child psychologist, whose Cambodian name was Heng Raksmei, like many Asian names, in Cambodia the family name went first and the given name last, although when his family was resettled in France, like many Asians, his parents chose to use a Western name and keep his Cambodian one for when he was with family and friends. Dr Heng had been working with the former Winyan children who were now living with their mothers in New Athos as they dealt with a major change in their lives and the fact that their sperm donor had been imprisoned for eternity because of the crimes he’d committed.
But despite doing a sterling job with them, suddenly Alain had been called back to Earth and Tony hoped he wasn’t going to be away too long. The last thing the kids needed was another change in their lives when they were just beginning to establish rapport with the psychologist.
Plus, Dr Heng was also working with Adrexa and Jeroze on Winya – Lucius Lavin’s children who he’d had with Filiya Lavin. She was his wife back before he discovered his ‘special herb’ and deserted his family to live with six young female sex slaves, having non-consensual sex and impregnating them.
Lucius would probably have gotten off with a very long prison sentence, especially after Jeroze pleaded to be able to address the hearing and pleaded for his father’s life to be spared, even while acknowledging that he was not a good man. Jeroze had been compelling, pleading for his life before the Interstellar Tribunal and he had definitely moved the Tribunal members and Decerno Teal’c. He was pretty sure that they’d been leaning towards sentencing him to a very long incarceration, mainly because they felt that executing Lucius would take a significant toll on his son. But at that point, some more victims had come forward. Somehow, someone on Winya who was there to trade had learnt that Lucius was being tried for his crimes of raping and impregnating other women and word spread around Pegasus like wildfire. All up, another eight victims had come forward and there was a good chance that they weren’t the last victims of the sexual predator and that had sounded his death knell as for as Jonas Quinn, Ishta and Kalan were concerned – recommended he be executed as punishment for the terrible pain and suffering he’d inflicted on so many people.
Atlantis had interceded at the very last moment before the execution was carried out, pleading that execution was not severe enough for all of the heinous crimes he’d committed. She wanted him to be incarcerated for eternity and the Venerabiles Sodales, after consulting with his victims, had agreed. So the Ancients had constructed a special interdimensional prison where he would spend eternity.
Jeroze was only just starting to talk to Dr Heng about what had happened while Adrexa, being younger was confused about why her father was locked up forever. She had far fewer memories of him since he’d left them with she was still small. Jeroze was not dealing with the outcome, lashing out at everyone, including his little sister. Filiya had also had a harsh awakening, learning that Lucius had sexually assaulted four women on Atlantis, impregnating them too which meant that Jeroze and Adrexa had thirteen half-siblings, which was nothing short of farcical. When the other victims began to come forward on the planets where Lucius had gone to trade, she could no longer attribute the blame to the young Winyan women. She had no choice but to change her attitude toward the six women, most of whom were mere girls when Lucius drugged them and forced them to lie with him many times, all because they were, young and beautiful and they turned him down when they were in their right minds. It was definitely a most painful process for Lavin’s wife.
So, the bottom line was that Dr Heng was doing an excellent and much-needed job in Pegasus, as well as helping out with the kids on Atlantis too, including Felix Girard and Jack Hotchner. Tony wondered what was so urgent he had to be dragged back home within hours of the request being received, plus Aoife had also travelled back home with him. Whatever it was, Tony figured it must be something pretty massive. He just couldn’t imagine what could possibly have been responsible for the urgent recall of two psychologists and an archaeologist.
Nervous at what bad news Aoife had to impart, Tony decided if she wasn’t going to rip the Band-Aid off asap then he was going to have to force her hand. At least once he knew the worst, he could start figuring out what to do about it, so he reckoned that he needed to give her a nudge.
“Okay, lay it on me, Dr O’Shea. What’s wrong? Has the Trust found about me and Belle being here on Atlantis?” It wouldn’t be the first time an undercover gig had been blown. The real issue would be what to do about it.
“No, Alex. To the best of my knowledge, the Trust doesn’t know that you and Belle are here,” she told him firmly and thanks to his despised Ancient communication gene he knew that she wasn’t lying to him. But she was sure as hell freaking out about something.
“Okay, Doc, then what’s the problem, because I know something is wrong or you and Dr Heng wouldn’t have gone racing back to the SGC like the hounds of Hell were on you six,” he said firmly. “Is it Ziva?”
“No, again, as far as I know, she is still following the false trail that Homeworld has left for her, but the General did mention in passing that Penelope has hired a bunch of grifters and computer hackers to set her and the Trust up. They are hoping to smoke more of them out.”
She paused before asking, “What do you know about parallel universes?”
Tony shrugged. “I know that it is a theory from quantum physics that until the Stargate program existed, it was a theoretical construct. The theory posited that there are an infinite number of realities, all existing at once in parallel universes where our alternate identities exist, and they may have very similar lives to us, or they may be radically different, depending on differences in the universes.”
Tony paused to take a breath before he ploughed on. “I know that there have been some incidents involving the SGC and Atlantis personnel turning up in each other’s realities, basically proving that multiple realities aren’t theoretical any longer, they are fact,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders. “The finer details are well beyond my knowledge or understanding, though,” he said truthfully.
Aoife picked up a file and started fiddling with it nervously as she smiled at him.
“I think quantum physics is pretty much beyond most people’s understanding on anything other than a superficial level. I would have struggled to explain it as coherently as you did,” she told him.
Taking a deep breath, she went to hand him the file but stopped at the last minute. “Two days ago, a group turned up inside Area 51 – literally out of thin air, claiming to be from another reality.” She handed him the file. “Are you familiar with the sixteen SG1 teams that turned up in Cheyenne Mountain a few years ago?”
He took the file. “I vaguely remember reading the report, it was pretty out there. I can only imagine how messed up it must have been for our SG1 team to encounter so many different versions of themselves. Wasn’t that caused by one of the alternate SG1 teams deciding to come to our universe and steal a ZMP from our Atlantis,” he asked.
“Yeah, that’s the one. Plus, while they were here, General Landry gave another one of the SG1 teams the cure for the Ori Plague which had already decimated the people in their reality.”
“I think I remember. Wasn’t that the only team with different personnel than our SG1? I think Cassie Fraiser’s adopted mom was on that team if I’m remembering it right.”
“Yes, that was the one.” Gesturing to the file she handed him, Aoife said. “Those are the five separate incidents involving individuals travelling to different realities or them travelling to our reality that Colonel Davis compiled for you to read up on it.”
“And I guess this group that turned up out of thin air at Area 51, probably the most secure facility aside from the SGC were from a parallel universe? Why did they come here, to steal our technology?”
“No, they are from the universe whose SG1 contained Dr Janet Fraiser. They came to request asylum and also to deliver a very serious warning about a possible threat, mostly because they felt like they owed us because we gave them the cure to the Ori plague when we sent them back home.”
“What was the warning,” he asked, his mouth feeling suddenly extremely dry.
“That their world was on the brink, due to some unknown technology or weapon that the Imperial Republic of Greater China had developed which turned first their populations and then one nation after another into hordes of mindless automatons who obeyed Emperor General Shen Xiaoyi and her loyal generals.
Tony sucked in a deep breath, shocked by the news. “Greater China?”
“Apparently China had taken over Korea during the 1950 – it was annexed and became a territory. Anyway, the US or the United American States as they are called in that reality, was the last bastion of resistance. They recognised that defeat was inevitable – mostly because they didn’t have a clue what was responsible for every last person turning into eager-to-please mindless zombies,” O’Shea told him very grimly.
“Why didn’t they know about Lucius’ special herb?”
“I don’t know Tony, but they didn’t. Maybe you can ask that question to the federal agent who travelled here to warn us. All I know is that a group of scientists that included Colonel Carter, Drs McKay, Miko Kusanagi, and Bill Lee among others, decided to start working on a time travelling device to travel back in time to stop Shen. Well actually, their Drs Carter and Kusanagi refused to work on the time machine, insisting it was too dangerous and that they might even make things worse. Instead, they started working on the alternate reality drive schematics and notes that their Rodney McKay brought back after their encounter with the alternate reality Daedalus, just like we had,” she said.
“Oh wow. That’s just horrible but it was decent of them that they wanted to warn us,” he commented absently. “I take it that Operation War on Happy Zombies has stepped up the pace?”
“Yes, they’re forming a new think tank of specialists to try to figure out how to use a mass dispersal system to administer the antidote more quickly than individual injections. It seems that in the alternate reality, Emperor General Shen has solved that problem and we just have to hope that she hasn’t figured it out in ours yet,” Aoife said wryly.
Tony groaned. His worst fears were coming true.
“Plus, General O’Neill has ordered that all available Paddingtons be transported back to Earth or to our Allies who aren’t vaccinated yet, “ O’Shea told him, permitting herself to have a little chuckle at Alex’s sour expression. “He also ordered the teams manufacturing them on Belara to double up on their manufacturing.”
“They are Rhinovirus bombs,” he told her with a pout. “I don’t know why no one calls them that!”
“It’s a way for people to recognise the significant contribution you have made to save us from the fate that has befallen our alt-reality brethren, Alex,” she told him with a little smirk.
He quickly became serious again. “So how many people did you say came through into our universe requesting asylum,” he queried. “I guess that also explains why Dr Heng was called back to Earth, of all the psychologists working for the SGC, he is uniquely qualified to deal with refugees.”
Aoife muttered under her breath that Alain was more qualified than Alex realised as she noted his questioning look and remembered him telling her once that he had extremely good senses, particularly smell and hearing but his eyesight was above average too.
Hurrying on, she said, “To answer your question, there were thirteen refugees at Area 51 and General O’Neill wanted to discuss the best way to keep their arrival under wraps,” she said.
“So do we have a second Bill Lee, Rodney McKay, Dr Kusanagi and Colonel Carter at Area 51?”
“No, only people who don’t exist in our universe. You see when the multiple Carters got together after the Ori’s beachhead black hole attempt dragged them all into our universe, they decided that something called entropic cascade failure that they’d encountered when a Dr Carter came here early on in SCG history was only a problem when the realities were quite different to each other. Frankly, it seems like shite to me, but I’m not a physicist,” she shrugged, noting that she was doing a lot of it today.
“Anyway, the scientists back in their reality must have agreed with out Carter because they only sent through people who were either dead in our reality or never existed. The rest of them stayed behind and were going to blow up the base and the alternate reality drive to stop Emperor General Shen from using it to follow them into our reality.
Tony felt horrified. “They were all going to sacrifice themselves to warn us and save thirteen people?”
“Yes, I gather from the agent who came through to warn us that they all were willing to give their lives to save the individuals who came through,” she said, knowing she was approaching the tricky part of their discussion and decided to just bite the bullet.
“Alex, tell me about Paula Cassidy.”
He said absently, his mind full of all of the information Aoife had dumped on him, “She was an NCIS agent who I worked with on some cases. I told you about the suicide bomber and how she saved me, my boss, several civilians and a Muslim cleric from a radical terrorist group.”
Suddenly he jumped up out of his chair and stared at her wide-eyed. You just said only people who didn’t; exist in our reality or were dead came through from their reality. Is Paula Cassidy here,” he said urgently.
“No, not Paula Cassidy, she married a federal agent, and they had three children together, although one died when she was three years old from cancer. I take it you don’t have a problem with meeting her if they come to Atlantis to hide out from the Trust and the IOA?”
“Ah, that’s what you meant about Dr Heng being uniquely qualified. I take it we will be hosting thirteen refugees from an alternate world? Atlantis has kind of turned into a sanctuary for lost souls like Tobias and people in WitSec like Belle and me and Hotch and Jack, hasn’t it,” he said pensively. “Well, it looks as if I can recruit Paula as another veteran agent for the ISBI, he said looking pleased at the notion.
He stood up to go. “Well thanks for filling me in, Doc. We have a lot of planning to do before the refugees get here,” he said, preparing to leave.
“Alex, sit down, I haven’t finished. Aren’t you curious about who Paula married?”
He stopped mid-stride. “Yeah, I suppose so. Did her husband come through into our reality too?”
“No, he stayed behind to help Jack O’Neill blow up Area 51, although they called it Area 52,” O’Shea told him.
“Did she marry someone I know in this reality? Is this why you are tiptoeing around like you’re in the middle of a minefield,” he said, looking at her with curiosity. ”Oh no! Please don’t tell me she fell for Leroy Jethro Gibbs’ ice-blue eyes and half smile. They hated each other in this reality, so if she ended up married to him, it would just be too hinky,” he protested. “Maybe she got together with Stan Burley- he’s a good guy or Trevor Ellis. She seemed to like him,” he mused.
“No not Gibbs or the other two you mentioned, Alex. She married a Naval Criminal Investigations agent who she was seeing and then broke up with before getting back together some time before that suicide bomber struck. She was recruited by Tom Morrow along with her husband to work for the SGC with the Marines who were stationed there.”
“Well, I can’t see her marrying McGee but maybe she fell for Jimmy Palmer,” he mused a touch wistfully. He had loved Paula, but she had never taken him seriously – labelling him as a player – like she was. She had been so ambitious, focused on her career despised a couple of hiccups where Gibbs had contributed some black marks on her jacket. Paula had been so damned proud when she’d been promoted to Senior Supervisory Agent and assigned her own team at the Pentagon until she lost both her agents in a terrorist bombing, and she’d been crippled by survivor’s guilt. Tony had the feeling that losing her people like that had hit home to his former girlfriend that she had no one in her life, apart from her team and then they were gone.
However, when he’d confided in her about Jeanne because he had no one else he could talk to about falling in love with the daughter of an arms dealer, she’d really listened even if he’d sensed Paula was a little disappointed to find out that he cared for someone else. Since he was undercover, he couldn’t tell her about the op or that Jeanne was supposed to be his mark and yet, good friend that she’d remained after they broke up, Paula had urged him to go to Jeanne and tell her how he felt about her.
Later on, after she’d contrived to get to the bomb and dive into the room next door a fraction of a second quicker than he had, and been killed for her troubles, he couldn’t help wondering. If he hadn’t shared his confused feelings about Jeanne with Paula that day and if she’d thought that maybe they might have had a chance of getting back together, maybe she wouldn’t have been quick so quick to sacrifice herself. Not surprisingly, he suffered survivor’s guilt for a long time after Paula died, so he felt comforted by the knowledge that at least in that universe, Paula Cassidy hadn’t died a horrible death.
“Alex,” Aoife called him as he realised he’d been wool-gathering.
“Please Doctor, just tell me who she married,” he pleaded, feeling wrung out reliving her death.
“She married Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo,” she said.
Tony flinched like someone stuck a pin in him. “WHAT? She married ME? I mean she married DiNozzo,” he stuttered.
Aoife grinned grimly. “It’s okay, Colonel Davis read me in on your true identity since the cat is going to be out of the bag and I didn’t let on about our therapeutic relationship. And as to your query, technically no, she married the ‘you’ in an alternate reality who isn’t you exactly, just a similar you,” she reminded him somewhat confusedly.
“And the ‘me’ and the Paula DiNozzo from their universe are married and have three children,” he asked in a strangled tone.
She pulled out a file. “Their son, Joshua Reese DiNozzo is twelve years old, nearly thirteen. Their second child, Hannah Rose DiNozzo was three when they lost her to some sort of cancer. Mikelle Lily DiNozzo is eleven months and crawling. Her mother thinks she’ll be walking soon,” she smiled.
“You’ve seen Paula and her kids,” he asked a little wistfully.
“That’s why we were called back. Ten children arrived needing asylum.” She handed over the list of children. When he took and studied the list, his expression became increasingly bemused as he made his way down the list.
“So, I’m not the only one in this incredibly weird situation? Daniel Jackson is too?”
“Yes as you surmised, the twins are Daniel Jackson’s – well, the Daniel Jackson in their reality – which is why the General called Dr Jackson back urgently. However, after talking with Dr Heng and myself, we pointed out how confusing it would be for the children to encounter someone who looks like their parents but is someone who is from a completely different world. So General O’Neill redirected Daniel to DC so that Claire and Nicholas weren’t further traumatised.”
“And Kelvin Austen-McKay,” he asked. “Rodney McKay in their universe is his father?”
“I know, it seems inexplicable… but it is a whole different universe,” Aoife observed.
“You’ve got that right! Their Rodney McKay is in a same-sex relationship with Kelvin’s father, plus they have a kid? I’m starting to see what you mean about their universe being very different from ours.”
“True, our Rodney isn’t exactly a fan of children. And he’s adamant that he’s heterosexual – he’s very invested in having a straight identity.”
“How do you think he’s going to cope when he learns about the presence of the refugees – particularly Kelvin,” Tony asked curiously?
“Honestly Alex, I have no idea. I think maybe he’s going to have a meltdown.”
“What about the other infant, Sarah O’Neill? Is she any relation to General O’Neill in the other reality?”
“Yes, she’s his granddaughter, well his alt-reality’s granddaughter.”
“Oh shit, so is Charlie the baby’s father?” Aoife nodded.
“I take it he didn’t die young in that reality,” he asked. “Wow, how is O’Neill dealing with that bombshell?”
“You know about him losing his son when he was young?”
“Well yeah…before we came here Jack told me about the accident, and how it nearly destroyed him. He vowed to keep Belle – to keep Tali safe.”
“Aside from his team, I didn’t get the impression that is not something he shares with many people,” O’Shea observed. “I’d say it still causes him a great deal of pain.”
Tony nodded. “Yeah, I’m not sure that you’d ever manage to get over something as terrible as that,” he said soberly. “So, what is the plan, aside from hiding the kids and the three adults on Atlantis while we try to thwart Chen and her cohorts. Sounds like Xiaoyi used Lavin’s special herb to overthrow her own country before starting on the rest of the world – she certainly seems ambitious,” he observed cynically.
“Quite an understatement, I’d say,” Aoife snarked. “As for our refugee children who have come here sans a parent, their parents sent them here to try to save their lives. I suspect that they were also hoping that their alt-realities would decide to step in and adopt the children, so they would have a guardian.”
“And what if someone doesn’t want to accept responsibility for the refugees, what then?” He didn’t name anyone specifically but they both knew Rodney McKay (well their Rodney obviously) wasn’t exactly fond of children. Even Kazumi who was the most quiet and inoffensive child you could hope to meet, still managed to irritate him on a bad day.
“Then we’ll try to find people here on Atlantis who would be prepared to step in and foster them or even adopt them,” she said firmly. “We are only talking about seven children anyway since Justine Murphy has her mother and Joshua and Mikelle DiNozzo have Paula,” she pointed out.
“True,” he said smoothing down his Atlantis uniform shirt which had ridden up in his agitation at the thought of these poor kids.
“Seven children is surely manageable,” O’Shea continued, although General O’Neill seems pretty certain that Daniel Jackson will step up and take custody of the twins. I glanced at Daniel’s personnel file, and I can understand why. He lost both his parents when he was young and his mother’s father- Nicholas Ballard who was also an archaeologist like Daniel’s parents, refused to look after him because he was always travelling to archaeology dig sites all over the world. He said it was no life for a kid.”
“Did someone else in the family take him in,” Tony frowned.
“Nope, grew up in the system, so I reckon he won’t let the seven-year-old twins of his alternate-self go into foster care. While I can see that just as you did, he might feel like that he’s ill-prepared to be a father to those kids, like you, he knows exactly what kids don’t need. And despite your own doubts, you’ve done an amazing job of parenting Belle under the most difficult of circumstances, so I’m sure he’ll figure it out too.”
Looking at the strained expression on Alex’s face, and realising that this was a massive situation to take in all at once, she asked him. “How do you think you are coping with this information?”
He shook his head. “I’m still really stunned, to be honest. I’m going to have questions…lots of questions but I need to process all of this, I think. And I’m guessing you want to brief Rodney about the presence of Kelvin Austen-McKay?”
“Yes, I do need to inform him. General O’Neill was going to inform Daniel, Colonel Carter, and Colonel Dixon while I offered to tell you, Rodney, and Kelvin’s mother. By the way, the General said to tell you that both DiNozzo children have the ATA gene as strong as yours and Belle’s. And that Sarah O’Neill also has it, which means that those children could easily become a target for the Trust, just like Belle.”
“Oh damn it,” he exclaimed! “That’s three more innocent kids with a target on their backs. “Yeah, WitSec is just about to get a bit more crowded,” he said grimly as he made a move to depart.
Frowning, O’Shea told him, “Just one more thing we need to talk about before you go. How do you feel about Paula turning up with two kids that she had with your alt-reality?”
Tony thought about it. “It feels weird, but I think a lot of that is because I was right beside Paula when she leapt onto the bomb and pushed the door closed so we were protected from the explosion. I was closer to her when she grabbed the bomb to save us than you and I are now, and I don’t think I’ll ever forget it. Just like I still wake up in a panic having nightmares about a teammate who was shot in the head when she was standing right beside me…so close that I had her brain tissue splattered on my face,” he said.
Aoife grimaced at the graphic pictures Alex painted. How did anyone recover from those experiences? “What about Joshua and Mikelle? Do you think them turning up with Paula out of the blue like this might trigger what happened when you found out that Belle was your biological child?”
Tony slumped back in his seat as he considered her question. “I’m not sure but I don’t think so. In their reality, Paula and Anthony were married, right?
Aoife nodded. “As far as I know.”
“That seems to suggest that they had a normal consensual relationship and probably decided together to start a family. Whereas, Ziva drugged me and used me as a sperm donor without my consent, until she needed someone to look after her daughter while she ran around playing super-ninja,” he said bitterly.
“And how would you feel if Paula asked you to play some type of role in Joshua and Mikelle’s lives?”
“Honestly, I’m not sure. If she needed some help to bring them up, then I think I’d be okay with it. Bringing up a child isn’t easy as a single parent and Tali is always nagging at me, telling me she wants a baby brother or a sister but maybe she’d settle for sort of cousins instead,” he mused.
“And if those two kids have the gene, they are going to be at risk from the Trust and need to be protected, just like Tali. They’re also going to have to ditch my DiNozzo last name – for their safety and ours,” he said musingly.
~o0o~
After Tony left Aoife’s office, he decided that there was no way that he could return to work with his head filled with so much information about alternate realities and people who had come from them. Plus, there was the fact that their world had been totally subsumed by that damned mind-control drug which was such a blight on people’s lives here in Atlantis. To learn that his suspicions about the potential use of it were correct wasn’t something that he took comfort from, but he supposed that it was a good thing that all the work they had done to prepare for such a crisis was not going to be in vain.
So instead of returning to ISBI he went back to his apartment and changed into his running gear. If someone needed to find him quickly they could do that via his comms but hopefully, he could squeeze in a run before Tali finished school for the day. Running wasn’t just a form of exercise for the former athlete, it calmed him down, it helped him to process information, it helped him to solve problems and sometimes it even helped him to solve cases. Right now, he needed to wrap his head around the shocking revelation that Paula Cassidy had married him in another dimension, and they had three children together. It was shocking because Paula in Tony’s world had died years ago throwing herself onto a suicide bomber and saving lives. Learning that she hadn’t died in an alternate universe had utterly stunned him. How had she survived, he wondered and knew that when he met her that was one question he wouldn’t be able to resist asking her. Maybe there had been something he could have done to save her.
As Tony started his warm-up and stretches, which was second nature to him to avoid injuries and he did them automatically, he inevitably found himself thinking about his Paula from this world. He had been smitten by her from the moment he saw her in that Officer’s Club in Gitmo but despite the circumstances of their meeting, he never doubted her integrity. They’d ended up getting together for a while, ignoring Gibbs’ disapproval, but they hadn’t lasted long, even though in his opinion, they were good together. Paula had been extremely ambitious, very focused on her career, and had told him they were too much alike, both players. The problem with that assessment of his character was that sure he played the field but only after his fiancée had dumped him the night before their wedding with some flimsy excuse about not being ready to be married.
He supposed he should have thanked Wendy for at least not standing him up at the altar – calling everyone before the wedding to tell them if was off had been bad enough when his heart was broken. The truth was that before Wendy dumped him, he’d aspired to settle down with someone who loved him and spend the rest of their lives together. After Wendy destroyed his self-esteem and broke his heart, he’d vowed never to get attached to anyone again since marriage and having someone to love him was clearly not in his destiny. So, he pretended to be a player, going out with a heap of beautiful women, and leaving every one of them before he got too attached to them. He knew he was a romantic at heart – how could he not be after spending all those hours with his mother watching those Golden Years of Hollywood black and white movies that she loved so much. But it was something that he tried not to reveal about himself, and Paula had fallen for his playboy persona, hook line and sinker.
The thing was though, that even after they’d broken up, he remained really good friends with Paula and after she died, he sometimes wondered if through their friendship they might have been able to build a proper relationship some years down the track. Yet it was not to be, and he still found himself having nightmares about her death which he witnessed up close and personal. It seemed it was his destiny to witness friends and colleagues die beside him – he still had nightmares of Caitlin Todd’s death by Ari’s sniper bullet. As he finished his warmup and slowly settled into his run he thought about Paula and Tony in the other dimension who’d been married for over 10 years. Clearly, they must be well suited to each other so why was their life so very different?
How had they become involved in the Stargate programme? How were they still federal agents and still working at NCIS? They had three children together, although they had lost one little girl when she was three years old which must have changed both of them quite a lot. Tony knew that the death of a child could also sound the death knell of even the happiest marriage and yet his alternate identity had somehow managed to weather the storm and remain with Paula. They had even had another child before disaster struck their world.
Increasing his pace and lengthening his stride, Tony wondered if he’d been a good father, as it was his number one fear that he would end up like his father, an alcoholic neglectful narcissist who wasn’t present emotionally or physically for his son, except when it was expedient for him to be there. And Tony had never wanted to inflict that sort of damage on another human being, although everyone said he was doing a good job rearing Tali. And speaking of his daughter Tali, how was he going to explain to her about Paula and her children. His daughter might be very smart but the thought of trying to explain quantum physics to a five-year-old, OK she was almost six, made his head feel like it was exploding. Aoife had suggested that he go with some version of what they planned to tell the refugee children, that people had twins that looked like them but weren’t really them. Okay, that was far from ideal but what was the alternative?
Now he had settled into his long and easy runner’s stride as he made his way around the outer pathways of Atlantis’ concourse, enjoying the ocean breeze coming off the water and the salty scent of the sea. White puffy-looking clouds, Tali called them the cotton-wool clouds dotted the sky as he took in the gorgeous location. So far, their extreme form of WitSec was keeping Tali safe and to be honest, until they had dealt with Shen and whoever it was she was working with it was infinitely safer than on Earth. He’d always maintained that the power wrought by MCD –238ß would corrupt her and she would try to use it personally, not hand it over for the Old Men in the Communist Party to use to conquer the galaxy.
If she hadn’t held thoughts of ruling the world before that Alien AI from Sekkari had messed around with her mind when she was on Atlantis, scheming to get rid of Richard Woolsey, Tony was willing to bet that she had been by the time she left Atlantis without achieving her goal of being the Commander.
Shen ended up endorsing Richard because she was tricked by the AI aka Vanessa Conrad into hallucinating that the other predominately much older males on the IOA had sold her out. It was a good bet her humiliation would have made her even more power-hungry and less inclined to share. Tony wondered if that’s what had happened in Paula DiNozzo’s reality too? Although really…the Emperor General! Surely that was going just a tad over the top.
Nearing the halfway point in his run, having taken the extra-long route now that he didn’t need to baby himself, he thought again about how Paula and her two children were using the DiNozzo last name. Tony knew it was far from optimal given how much she and her children had already lost, but he was hoping that she’d agree to not use the name, at least for the time being. Maybe if that Leverage team came through and Homeworld was finally able to dismantle the Trust or at the very least, severely weaken it, then it might be safe to use his name again but for now, it was simply too dangerous. Perhaps it would be better for them to all use her former name of Cassidy, at least for the present.
When he reached the final mile-and-a-half stretch and felt the welcome buzz of the runner’s high starting to envelop him, his thoughts returned to the fact that Joshua and Mikelle both had the ATA gene, like he and Tali. He wondered briefly at the fact that Sarah O’Neill had the Ancient gene too and he questioned if any one of these three children from the other dimension also possess any additional gene’s like he and Jack did? He knew Daniel was desperate to begin research into the four extra genes which Chaya Sar had told them about, but Tony had managed to forestall him from doing anything until Dr Lam was free to handle the data. He didn’t trust anyone else.
Still, the thought that there might potentially be more people with Ancient genes out there and not know it, particularly if they weren’t born with the ATA gene could be crucial information so he understood why Daniel was keen to pursue it. He just didn’t agree that it would be the best thing for Tali or the other kids, because it would be like painting a massive target on their backs.
Chapter 10
As Daniel Jackson and Vala Mal Doran made their way briskly through the stargate arriving via Midway II, they looked at each quizzically, immediately picking up on the pall hanging over the SGC base. It was the first time they’d been back to the mountain since the brouhaha had broken out when the Associate Director of the ISIB had rounded up another batch of spies, newly arrived on Atlantis from the Daedalus on its last run. Further investigation revealed two of them were acting under the orders of General Landry who told them to find out what they were up to on Atlantis. The stupidity of sending them there was that Alex and the General had security sealed tight and whatever was going on was actually happening off-world, so his two spies had zero chances of infiltrating the project.
And now that they were back at Cheyenne Mountain, the acting CO Colonel David Dixon gave them a suitably friendly welcome, yet with General Landry in a heap of trouble and on stand down, it certainly made people uneasy. Almost immediately the two former members of SG1 became aware of the rumours that Hank Landry was a dead man walking and would end up getting the chop. While Landry was not the most popular CO of the Stargate program, most people had become accustomed to him by now, so the uncertainty of not knowing what was going to happen seemed to be having a visible effect on everyone. The main worry seemed to be if Landry was history, would they end up with another bureaucratic pencil pusher like Landry or God forbid, the NID’s puppet warmonger General Bauer or Heaven-help them, even another disastrous civilian?
Following their mandatory medical (which seemed all kinds of wrong without Dt Lam there to do it) Daniel disappeared, wanting to find out when they were scheduled to be transported to Area 51. Meanwhile, Vala hung around, chatting, yes and eavesdropping on the routine chatter that went on at the base.
And today, most of it was to do the distinct possibility that they were about to be assigned a new CO. Frankly, the feeling seemed to be that there had been quite a few more commanding officers for the SCG than most people on the base felt was appropriate over the years. During the first mission, there had been a General West and then when Ra was killed, they’d assumed that the threat had been eliminated and shut down the program. Then Apophis came through the stargate and killed some AFs playing poker in the gate room, taking a female SF as a host for his queen Amonet, although Teal’c informed them she was killed after Amonet rejected her, choosing Daniel’s wife Sha’re instead. This was when TPTB learnt that there wasn’t just Ra but a whole bunch of equally bloodthirsty and insane Goa’ulds intent on terming them into slaves and worshippers, and they reactivated the program.
General Hammond was appointed as the head of the SCG despite him being weeks away from retiring and he proved to be a highly popular and long-serving commander although his tenure was interrupted by political games according to Daniel. Certain factions of the NID decided that the SGC needed to focus on developing and discovering weapons and didn’t like that the SCG was building allies and gathering scientific and cultural information during their missions. They’d had Hammond removed as CO after threatening to harm his granddaughters. His replacement, General Bauer was only interested in building and testing weapons and broke up Jack’s team, forcing Daniel and Sam off the team, and ordered Sam to send a lethal warhead through the wormhole to destroy a planet. The idiot had nearly ended up blowing up the SGC and the Earth because he refused to listen to Carter’s warnings.
Meanwhile, Jack managed to blackmail a nemesis of the SCG, Senator Richard Kinsey who was attempting to seize control of the Stargate, and he succeeded in getting General Hammond reinstated. Her Daniel had told him that there had been a lot of rejoicing and plenty of thankfulness when Jack thwarted the warmongers and arranged the return of General Hammond, a commander who actually cared about every single person under his command. Thankfully for the good folks of the SCG, he was left in command until a new POTUS was elected and his vice president, the SGC’s old nemesis Richard Kinsey succeeded in having General Hammond removed and a civilian – a diplomat installed in his stead.
Right after her political appointment, never mind that Dr Elizabeth Weir had no experience commanding military forces, Anubis emerged as the biggest threat not just to Earth but the rest of the galaxy, and politics had been responsible for removing the most experienced SGC commanding officer when he was most needed. Luckily, General Jack who was Colonel Jack back then, saved the world by downloading the entire database of the Ancients into his brain to find a way to protect everyone. Not surprisingly, Dr Weir was transferred sideways, with someone thinking it was a bright idea to put her in charge of the Atlantis base and they promoted O’Neill to Brigadier General, making him the commander of the SCG and Hammond was appointed as Director of Homeworld Security. After just a year, General Hammond had to retire and the powers that be decided that they needed General Jack at Homeworld and wham! The SCG suddenly had their eighth commander.
Vala had never served under anyone but General Hank Landry so everything she knew was based on gossip and Daniel’s accounts. It did strike her as very curious though that every military commander needed to hold at least the rank of Brigadier General to perform the job, yet TBTB happily appointed a civilian with absolutely no military or command experience and expected them to be respected by the personnel. Not that it had anything to do with Landry apart from him also being a General, although she had heard some grumbling from time to time about his being a career officer which apparently meant he had no wish to be out in the field. A lot of the troops felt that these commanders were less worthy of their respect since they didn’t truly understand what the SCG did and all of the sacrifices they made to defend Earth, being too busy looking at what they called the bigger picture. Not that Vala thought it was the size of a picture that mattered, but rather that you could see everything in it.
However, she didn’t have a lot of experience with Earth’s commanders, aside from Colonel Mitchell and General Landry. She conceded Landry was not exactly her biggest fan and she found him a somewhat humourless stickler for the rules, but he seemed reasonably competent, even if he wasn’t someone who improvised or was creative when it came to regulations. She would certainly never expected that he would get caught sending spies to Atlantis to find out what Homeworld was doing in the Pegasus galaxy. Not that he wouldn’t spy, in fact, she was fairly sure he would if he believed it was necessary, but getting caught doing it had been fairly lame of him. Mind you, General Jack had told Daniel that Agent Studly aka Agent Alex was like a bloodhound at sniffing out spies and the ISBI was finding them, often even before they even stepped off the Zephyrus or the Daedalus these days.
Landry had been stood down as the SGC’s commanding officer pending a full investigation by the Pentagon and Homeworld. According to whispers she was hearing on her return, everyone was firmly convinced that the SCG would be looking at breaking in a new commander soon. Right now, Colonel Dixon was the acting head of the SCG, and the atmosphere on the base was tense. Vala could hear the muttering as she made her way around the station. People were anxious; they didn’t know what was going to happen next and it made everyone antsy. Would Landry return or would someone new replace him? Would the newly elected POTUS decide to make another political appointment?
Of course, there was speculation that perhaps one of their own would replace General Landry. Since Colonel David Dixon was currently the acting head of the SCG – maybe they would promote the longstanding member of the SCG, who had served there almost as long as General Jack and certainly had a calm and easy authority about him that his colleagues responded positively to. The other long-timer who the base personnel had singled out as another contender was Colonel Louis Ferretti who had travelled to Abydos with her Daniel and Colonel Jack the very first time they’d ever travelled through the stargate. Lou was extremely loyal, keeping Daniel and the Abydonians’ survival secret from their own superiors. Once the program started up again, he’d been recommended to lead his own SG team and was extremely well respected amongst the old guard but for some reason, newcomers didn’t seem to take him seriously and Vala felt that Lou might struggle to win over the younger personnel.
Even though he’d been there even longer than Colonel Dixon, Ferretti just seemed to be missing something small but critical that good leaders needed. Vala shrugged, just as there were career officers who had no head for field commands, perhaps there were excellent field officers who weren’t suited to be the commander of a large and crucial military base. A good judge of character – being a grifter for most of her life – Vala needed to be able to size up individuals on the fly and know who would fall for her cons who she shouldn’t even waste her time on. Since she was a pretty successful grifter, Vala felt that it made her uniquely qualified to judge other people and their abilities. True, she might not always be able to give a rational explanation that would meet other peoples’ satisfaction as to why someone could be trusted or not, but the bottom line was that she had good instincts and was rarely wrong. She didn’t believe she was wrong about Lou, the nice guy that he was.
As she strolled around the base, greeting acquaintances and new recruits, Vala wondered impatiently when they were going to be transported to Area 51. As was her nature, she was insanely curious about why General Jack had ordered her Daniel back to Earth in such a terrible hurry. It had to be something pretty big! So, they were here now and what was with the whole hurry up and wait?
Having no clue what it could be, she sighed and returned to her musings about who might be appointed as the next CO if General Landry was kicked out onto his ass as the scuttlebutts were saying. There were two other most likely candidates that she could see, her favourite Colonels Carter and Mitchell. Colonel Cameron Mitchell had been the team leader of SG1 for several years which was considered the flagship of the SCG, helping to fight off Anubis and getting shot down and incurring terrible injuries in the process. Vala had served on the SG1 with him and knew he was a fine team leader, but she also knew that at heart he was a fighter pilot and was currently commanding a 304-warship class spaceship. She didn’t think that he would enjoy being CO of the SGC which was effectively a desk job.
Then there was Samantha Carter, a brilliant scientist, and exceptional officer. Daniel had told her once, and Vala had heard the rumblings herself, that many of the old-timers at the SCG were rather miffed over the fact that she’d ended up serving under Cameron Mitchell after everything she had done to help save the world during her time as Jack O’Neill’s second in command. Many of them had seen Colonel Mitchell as a glorified fly-boy, not a real field officer, and certainly not someone who’d earned the right to command SG1.
Unlike Carter or O’Neill, even though both were gifted air force pilots. So, Cam even if he wanted the top job which she doubted, might face an uphill struggle to gain people’s respect. That probably wouldn’t be a problem for Sam, and while she had only a year leading a three-person SGC after General Jack took over from the beloved Commander General Hammond and she lost her father during that time, she did have other command experience. She’d had a year as the Commander of Atlantis Base, in charge of civilians and the military and having to work for the IOA who appointed her, therefore they felt that she should be eternally grateful that they’d appointed her to the position for which she was eminently qualified for. In Vala’s estimation, the IOA had to be the most infuriating assemblage of individuals she’d come across and that was saying some. Honestly, they were even more irritating and idiotic than Jup and Tenat, humanoid (well more or less) aliens and traders. They were unscrupulous and extremely opportunistic traders who successfully wormed their way into the Lucien Alliance, and she’d recruited them as business partners for her space piracy enterprise.
Given that the bar was certainly not very high, Vala felt that if Sam Carter was able to keep working with that bunch of cretinous fools on the IOA without blowing up at them, she obviously was made of the right stuff to command others. Plus, at the moment, like Colonel Mitchell, she was busy making her own mark commanding a 304-war cruiser, the General Hammond and doing the SCG proud. So Vala felt she’d be a good choice and a popular one at Cheyenne Mountain. People trusted her!
Still, if General Landry lost command as rumours seemed to suggest, then it would be up to the powers that to replace him. She just hoped that they didn’t decide to appoint a career officer when they did.
Getting impatient and wondering why it was taking so long to beam them to Area 51, Vala decided to go and hunt up MSgt Siler, the best source of information on the base, now that MSgt Harriman had jumped ship to go work with General Jack. And right there – could one discern anything from the fact that after working for General Hammond and O’Neill, he’d left the SCG under General Landry or was she trying to read too much into it. Probably.
As the extremely accident-prone Siler greeted her cordially (with the omnipresent wrench on his person) and she was fairly sure the two were not connected, he proceeded to give her chapter and verse on all of the gossip which had been going down at the mountain since she’d last been there. Her Daniel finally found her there, laughing with Siler and unceremoniously grabbed her and pulled her swiftly down several flights of stairs to the conference room overlooking the stargate where they were finally going to be beamed to Area 51. Except that just as they were beamed up, Daniel with a slight frown, informed her that his orders had changed, and he was being recalled to Homeworld.
~o0o~
Jack had also received word that Daniel and Vala were on their way to Cheyenne Mountain after AR-4 (which was Sergeant Stackhouse’s team) had managed to retrieve them from their jaunt to Troysis with Clone Carson, He’d originally planned to meet Daniel at Area 51 however he’d changed his mind after consulting with Doctor Heng, Atlantis’ most recent appointee and child psychologist and Atlantis’ Head of Psychology, Aoife O’Shea. They’d strongly recommended that the children needed careful integrating into this different reality so Jack had decided that he would brief him regarding Claire and Nicholas at Homeworld HQ instead, Although Jack had really needed his friend when he first arrived at Nellis, it turned out that it would not have been in the children’s best interests to run into him yet. So, it was fortunate for them that Daniel hadn’t been immediately available to come back to Earth as soon as the children arrived – an ill-wind as the saying went.
Doctor Heng had made a very strong case for the cautious introduction of individuals who looked like the children’s parents, which made sense when Jack saw the rationale laid out logically and he wondered what the hell he’d been thinking. He knew how disorientating it was to run into alternate copies of people he knew, and he was an adult! So, he’d sent a message to the SGC to have his old friend diverted here to DC so he would brief him on this unexpected development. Jack wondered if he would want to take on the twins, but he also knew that Danny would need time to figure that out.
In preparation for their meeting, he had organised for Captain Sparks to make sure they had bucket loads of coffee on standby, figuring Daniel would need it. Although, when he heard the bombshell news, chances were he might want something a lot stronger. Sadly, Daniel did not have a head for liquor – one drink and he was blotto, and Jack had an urgent task in mind for his friend that would need a clear head, plus it would also help keep him occupied so he wouldn’t be tempted to detour down to Nevada.
When Daniel was beamed to Homeworld, Jack was very pleased to see that Vala had accompanied him. He wanted to talk to her about helping his ex-wife Sarah but first things first, he needed to talk to Daniel on his own about the alt-reality children who had appeared literally out of thin air. That was something that definitely needed doing in private so while he greeted her cordially, Vala took the hint and went to make nice with Colonel Davis and Captain Sparks who had already sent a message for their coffee order to be delivered asap. Meanwhile, as Jack herded his former teammate and a good friend into his office so they could talk in private, Daniel was trying to find out why there’d been a change of venue.
“All will be revealed in good time, Daniel.”
“Jaaaaack! You better have some decent coffee for me. I’m desperately short on sleep after AR-4 demanded we double-time it back to Atlantis and then they practically threw me on board a puddle jumper to get here asap. So, I’m warning you, I’m not in the best of moods,” he said grumpily.
“Captain Sparks will have a gallon or so of that blend you like from your favourite coffee shop, Danny Boy,” Jack told him placatingly. “It should be here momentarily, “ he said in a soothing tone, knowing that a decaffeinated Daniel Jackson required the kid gloves treatment.
He looked at the younger man evaluating him and conceding that he looked rather rough around the edges. “When did you last eat, Daniel? Want Sparks to get some mixed sandwiches sent up here too?”
Daniel was about to refuse when his stomach gave a loud growl of hunger. “So that’s a yes then,” Jack said with amusement. “ He picked up the phone and asked the captain to order a bunch of mixed sandwiches and pastries for everyone, since no one had stopped for lunch so far today and it was rapidly nearing 1600.
Seeing Daniel give a massive yawn, he said teasingly, “ Gotten soft, Dr Jackson since SG-1 was disbanded?”
Daniel started to bristle before smirking. “Yeah, I guess so. Sergeant Stackhouse was pretty brutal – I was under the impression that World War III must have broken out,” he said, somewhat seriously.
“Good guess,” Jack muttered under his breath as Captain Sparks knocked and brought in a tray of coffee that made Jackson’s eyes light up. She bustled about pouring mugs for them both and told Jack, “The sandwiches should be here in about fifteen minutes General.”
“Excellent Sparks, thanks,” he said dismissing her, knowing she was hard at work, finishing up ordering supplies and such for the refugees.
~o0o~
As she retreated back to her own desk, she could hear Vala Mal Doran, conversing with Walter Harriman. Knowing the former space pirate, she was probably pumping him for gossip. Vala did so love to be up on all the scuttlebutt and Rachel suspected that she and M. Sergeant Harriman was in cahoots, running a profitable betting pool. She could hear the murmuring of Vala’s voice as she continued her online shopping.
The thirteen refugees had arrived at Area 51 with the clothes on their backs and a small go-bag each – apart from the baby gear that they had brought for Sarah and Mikelle, such as a bottle steriliser, bottle warmer and nappy paraphernalia. She acknowledged his order and slipped out to go back to her task. During the meeting that the General had held at Area 51 with the Atlantis psychologists, Drs O’Shea and Heng, Colonels Lorne and Davis, Agent Paula DiNozzo, Thora Edmunds, and Lieutenant Murphy, she and Agent Dave Rossi had tried to compile a list of things that the children needed, as well as favourite likes and dislikes, including their hobbies or interests.
Plus, Jack decreed that they let each of the children who were old enough pick out a few changes of clothes and something recreational from the internet. His reason was that their web surfing history would help give Rachel clues about their taste. Later when they had more resources, including time and extra personnel, they would acquire more personal belongings for refugees, but this was merely to tide them over and make them feel more settled. Once they were on Atlantis and feeling more secure, then they could ensure they had all everything that they needed to settle in on the city and start their new lives, poor mites.
Rachel had to admit that she was surprised that General O’Neill seemed to been so switched on about getting the kids clothes and personal belongings to help them get settled because she hadn’t realised he was a father, but seeing him with his deceased young son’s daughter from the alternate-reality was quite a revelation. He was also natural with the infant. She responded positively to him and he was good with the rest of the children too. The captain was happy that the General was taking an active interest in those poor kids and that he was so invested in making their new life as safe and secure as they could be given all they’d been through.
~o0o~
After Daniel had skulled down his first coffee and then gone back for a refill, he looked at Jack shrewdly, “Okay, why don’t you tell me the bad news, now, Jack?”
Jack took a deep breath and said without preamble, “I was contacted by General Isaac Goldstein at Area 51 to say that a group of adults and children had suddenly appeared out of thin air. They claimed to have come from an alternate reality.”
“Not that bunch that tried to steal Atlantis’ ZMP, I hope,” he said with a scowl.
Jack grinned briefly. “Nope, the reality whose SG-1 had Janet and Martouf on it,” he said.
Daniel’s eyes lit up and not for the first time Jack wondered if Janet Fraiser hadn’t been killed during his brief tenure as CO of the SGC, might Daniel have ended up getting together with their chief medical officer? Both of them suffered from severe allergies and scoffed down antihistamines like they were going out of style. But even more crucial, Janet and Daniel both cared passionately about people and would fight tooth and nail to preserve life.
“Is Janet at Area 51,” he asked his friend eagerly.”
Jack shook his head. “No, unfortunately. It was just three adults and ten children,” he said carefully. “One of Janet’s nurses is here though. You remember Lieutenant Heather Murphy,” he said.
“Heather? Didn’t she die from the Plague that SG-6 Colonel Barnes brought back to the SGC,” Daniel asked.
“Yes, one and the same, except in their reality she was on leave from the base, so she was never infected. And she brought her daughter, seven-year-old Justine with her.” He said as Daniel looked at him questioningly.
Jack said, “ Just bear with me, while I fill ya in on this stuff. Trust me it’s important, he said as Daniel shrugged. “Anyway, the second adult was the tutor for the children of the scientists at Area 51 (although they refer to it as Area 52) who came along to help with their educational needs. And there was one more adult, a federal agent who had been involved with the SCG in what is called an Agent Afloat position. She brought her twelve-year-old son and eleven-month-old daughter to safety at the urging of her husband and the scientists. But she was also sent to our reality to send us a warning that we might be facing the same impending attack that had overtaken their planet and turned the whole world into mindless zombies who would obey their masters without question.”
“What?” Daniel exclaimed leaping to his feet in alarm. “Was she talking about MCD –238β do you think,” he asked anxiously.
Jack nodded. “Yeah, I spent a long time debriefing her and I’m as certain as I can be that it is the MCD –238β. Shen Xiaoyi in their reality has promoted herself to Emperor General and appears to have overthrown the Chinese regime and replaced it with her loyal minions,”
Daniel winched. “Well, that’s not good!”
“No it isn’t,” he agreed, “but we knew that this was a possibility and Agent DiNozzo has given us an idea of how it will start here if things pan out the same way as in her reality. Combine that with all of the amelioration steps we’ve put into place with Project War on Happy Zombies,” he said, grinning at the name Alex had come up with for the vaccine program, “and we’re a lot better off than Agent DiNozzo’s reality.
“Are the Rhinovirus bombs good to go,” Daniel asked him.
“We’ve increased production of the Paddington bombs and as we speak the POTUS is forming a research group to figure out how to deliver mass vaccinations against MCD –238β to countries being targeted. The JCS is currently drawing up contingency plans based on the intel that Agent DiNozzo has already shared and I have a couple of special tasks that I’d like you to undertake asap,” he said.
Daniel said immediately, “Absolutely, Jack, what do you need me to do?”
“First I need you to finish debriefing Agent DiNozzo and compile it in a report so we can analyse it and use it for modelling purposes and so forth.”
“Easy, done! I assume Agent DiNozzo will cooperate,” he checked.
Jack nodded. “Yes, no problem, she’s eager to help us in any way she can,”
“Okay, you mentioned several tasks. What was the other one?”
“Well as soon as you finish compiling the intel from the alternate reality, I want you and Vala to undertake a tour of our allies who are cooperating with Operation WOHZ to warn them that the attack on Earth could be imminent and they should be prepared too. Plus, check in with Jonas and Kalan about whether they can consult with their scientists to see if they have any brilliant ideas about how we can mass dispense the vaccine to large numbers of people at a time. Preferably as discreetly as possible but that would be the cherry on top of the sundae but not a deal breaker,” he said seriously.
Daniel looked relieved to have jobs to carry out. He said, “And I guess you want to find some other reason to explain our reason for visiting Bra’tac, Jonas and Kalan?”
Jack grinned. “You’re the best, Space Monkey. The last thing we need is to tip off Ambassador Shen or frankly, the IOA since we have no idea who Shen’s recruited.”
Daniel nodded. “Yes, you’re right. We’ll come up with something,” he promised. “I go straight to Area 51 and start interviewing Agent DiNozzo then,” and made a move to leave.
“No Daniel,” Jack said firmly. “That won’t be possible. I’ll have her come here instead.”
Daniel stared at his friend. “Um, why? What’s the problem with Area 51? Why didn’t we meet there as you’d originally indicated you wanted me to go?”
Looking grave Jack prepared to tell him the rest of the news, which was going to dramatically change his life, whether or not he decided to become the caretaker of Claire and Nicholas. Lord knows O’Neill’s world had been thrown into turmoil and he had no idea what the eventual outcome was going to be, except that it would be radically different from what it had been before.
Steeling himself, since it had to be done, he took a few steadying breaths. “Area 51 is off limits to you because I’ve only told you part of the information about the alternate-reality refugees. I told you about the three adults plus the three children, a twelve-year-old boy called Joshua, a seven-year-old girl Justine and eleven-month-old Mikelle. But there are seven more children, and they are effectively orphans since the plan was to blow up their Area 51…er 52 so Shen couldn’t use the dimensional drive and follow them to our universe or anywhere else.”
Daniel was frowning but still didn’t have a clue where this was leading. “Okay, so there are seven orphans. What does that have to do with me not going to Nevada, Jack?”
“The children are all offspring of either SGC personnel or scientists attached to the SCG and working out of Nevada. They built the interdimensional drive to send their kids to safety since they figured out that as our reality was so different from their own that it wouldn’t be safe for their parents to come with them,” he said as Daniel looked confused.
“Entropic cascade failure,” Jack elaborated. “Carter and Bill Lee came up with a new explanation during the sixteen SG-1s appearing, basically postulating that entropic cascade failure was more likely to happen when the alternate realities were very different. Agent DiNozzo’s reality figured that since they were the only ones to have Martouf and Janet on their SG-1, they were the most at risk for it if they came through, so they sent their kids here without them. And because they didn’t know how Shen was able to take mass control of populations who appeared to be happy to follow orders, they decided to blow Nellis up along with themselves so the same fate didn’t befall them.”
Daniel looked distressed but still not understanding. “That is incredibly tragic if that is the case, particularly since we have the solution, but what does that have to do with me not going to Area 51, Jack?”
“Remember when I told you Paula DiNozzo brought her son and daughter, who is a baby?” Daniel nodded. “Well, she wasn’t the only baby. She also brought through another baby. A six-month-old named Sarah Lauren O’Neill. She’s my granddaughter – Charlie’s daughter. Well, technically she would not be my granddaughter in this universe because Charlie died over two decades ago.”
“Daniel’s face was stricken. “Oh. My. God. Jack. I’m so sorry. That must have been incredibly painful for you. I’m sorry I wasn’t here,” he said, immediately understanding that Jack would have been in desperate need of a friend to who he could show his vulnerable side. Instead, he’d had to be strong around his subordinates who would see emotionality as weakness.
“Thanks, Daniel, I was called to Area 51 because Charlie had told Paula to surrender his daughter to me and only me. They had no idea I was director of Homeworld because in their reality I’d retired and when Janet and Martouf were at Cheyenne Mountain, General Landry was CO,” he explained.
“Oh man, that must have been a real kick in the guts,” his friend said in empathy and Jack agreed, thinking about the irony of the conversation.
“So, wow, Charlie never died in Janet’s reality. It certainly IS very different to ours,” he observed.
“Charlie didn’t shoot himself. Sarah found him with my service revolver and tried to take it from him and he accidentally discharged it. He killed her and then had to deal with crippling guilt,” Jack said.
Daniel jumped up and hugged his friend, knowing the amount of guilt that Jack struggled with even after all this time. This must have been pure torture, dredging it up again. Jack sagged against him for a few seconds of comfort before pulling back again. He couldn’t afford to let go yet – he still had to break the hard news to Daniel.
Suddenly it seemed to hit him. “Oh, man! You said that Charlie was alive in their reality but that they were intending to blow up Area 51 and the interdimensional drive. He could have come through to this one but he’s either stuck in theirs and under the permanent control of Shen if they failed to destroy the base, or he’s dead there too. I’m sooo damned sorry, Jack. It has to be intolerable and you still have to deal with this intel of an imminent threat. I don’t know what to say!”
“Yeah, I know Danny. The only thing that helps me to keep it together is holding Sarah,” he admitted.
“Is she here at Homeworld?”
“No, at the moment she is with Paula at Area 51, but she’ll be here later today and bring Sarah and her two kids with her. We stayed at a safe house, and you can come too. We’ll have to double up for sleeping purposes but you can debrief Paula at the safe house,” Jack explained.
“Well, I can’t wait to meet Sarah, Jack. I take it Charlie named her after his mother?”
Jack nodded. “Yes and he wasn’t the only one,” he said. “Daniel, trust me when I say I know this is going to come as a massive shock but the ‘you’ in that alternate reality married or was with Sarah Gardiner. I’m not sure which and they had seven-year-old fraternal twins. They called them Claire Janet and Nicholas Melburn Jackson. And they come through into this reality.”
“I have twins,” Daniel spluttered in shock. “With Sarah?”
“Well, technically not you., Your alternate you,” Jack said mildly.
“I named them after my parents and Nicholas Ballard,” he said sounding choked up with emotion.
“That was my assumption too,” he said. “And Janet Fraiser.”
“I want to see them, “ he said immediately.
“Yeah I know, Danny. But not yet.”
Daniel glared at Jack. “Why the hell not,” he demanded. Give me one good reason why I can’t see them. You’ve already admitted you’ve seen your counterpart’s granddaughter. You said that you’ve held her. I want to see my counterpart’s twins too,” he said with determination.
Jack signed, glad he’d diverted Daniel to DC. If he’d been at Nellis, there would have been no way he could have stopped him, short of slapping him in leg irons and manacles.
“I’ll give you several. First off, I spent the morning consulting with Dr O’Shea and Dr Heng from Atlantis about the children, Daniel. They advised that the kids are all traumatised by fleeing their world without their parents. The psychologists said that meeting their parent’s alternate selves without dealing with their grief and loss for their world would be incredibly upsetting and confusing to them. We have no way of knowing how different you and your alternate self may be and the psychologists were adamant it could cause great distress, confusion and psychological damage,” Jack said.
“ I spent time with Sarah before I was made aware of these factors. I didn’t mean to cause additional trauma. Fortunately, the situation is quite a lot different for Sarah. Firstly, I’m not her parent, I’m a grandparent and second, she is too little to notice subtle or not-so-subtle differences between me and my other self. So they agreed that it was okay in her situation to continue to interact with her,” he said.
Daniel looked at him jealously. “Well how long before I can meet them,” he said with a distinct pout.
“Dr Heng is going to be working with them, helping them to make the transition from their world to ours and provide grief work for them. We will be guided by their recommendations. He has already suggested that any meetings with their parent’s alternates take place on Atlantis.”
Jack saw that his friend was about to ask why Atlantis. “We’ve agreed, at least in the medium term that all the refugees with be hidden on Atlantis so Shen doesn’t get wind of it and move up her timetable. Plus, Dr Heng, who was a refugee himself as a child, fleeing with his family from Cambodia and living for years in a refugee camp on the border inside Thailand informed me that the children are drawing comfort from each other at the moment. He says they view the other adults and children as their only surviving family and that it would be cruel to split them up and put them into single-family units at this stage. So, this week he’s going to figure out how to split them into three smaller groups so they’ll be living with either Heather, Paula or Thora and be housed in Atlantis’ family quarters so they are all still close and will be close to the Atlantis kids too.”
“And then will I get to interact with Claire and Nicholas,,” Daniel whined.
“Maybe, but the psychologists said that the first primary relationship that they should form while still living with their peers is with the adults who are willing to foster or ideally, to adopt them before we throw people into the mix who look just like their parents but aren’t their parents. That’s only going to confuse them more than they are already since most of them are pretty young,” he explained, trying not to smirk at Daniel’s expression. He thought that Daniel might panic at the thought of rearing two kids after growing up in the foster-care system, but it looked like that wouldn’t be the case.
“What if I wanted to adopt them and bring them up?” Daniel looked pleadingly at Jack.
Anyone whose alternate self is the parents of the refugee children will more than likely get the first opportunity to adopt them if that’s what they decide they want. Unless there is a pressing reason why they aren’t fit to adopt. But seriously Daniel, everyone will need to think long and hard about adopting them, it is a big commitment. It would likely mean that you couldn’t return to a field team until they were adults,” he said seriously.
Daniel nodded musingly. “Yeah, it would mean making a lot of changes, I get that. But I think I want to do it. I don’t like the thought of them growing up in foster care.”
Jack nodded understandingly. “Yeah, I get that, Anyway, you do need to think about it. Nothing is going to happen with them right now,” he said soothingly. “And I know it isn’t the same, but I did get some video of them on my phone. I figured you’d need to see them, he said handing over his smartphone as Daniel scrabbled it up so he could see the first look at his children from an alternate reality, staring at it raptly before he began playing it over and over.
Jack simply smiled indulgently at his best friend, knowing that if everything worked out, Daniel would soon be the proud parent of a pigeon-pair set of fraternal twins. It would certainly mean a lot of sacrifices but maybe being a dad might finally help heal his grief over losing the love of his life.
Leaning forward, he picked up his office phone and called Capt. Sparks. “Okay we are ready for those sandwiches now, he told her,” as she quickly delivered their late lunch. She smiled at Daniel who was unable to take his eyes off the twins.
She said, “They are a couple of cuties. I checked with Dr Heng, and he said that it would be okay for you to have some extended footage, he’ll send it to you asap,” she promised as he looked up at her and smiled gratefully.
“Thank you, Rachel, that’s really kind of you. I’d like that a lot.”
Chapter 11
Aoife was mentally preparing for what she decided would either be the meltdown to end all meltdowns or Rodney would be rendered speechless. At the moment she was lean leaning heavily towards it being an epic tantrum but maybe he would surprise her. She would just have to wait and say when she broke the news. Aoife admitted to herself that she was apprehensive and had made sure that Dr Biro would be available if McKay ended up having a panic attack. It was better to be safe than sorry.
Hearing his by now familiar footsteps outside her door with his usually muttering about something which had been inflicted upon his person (no, I’m not passive-aggressive much) she took a deep steadying breath and prepared for what would be a torrid forty-five minutes. And if that sounded over-the-top Drama Queen future catastrophising, well it wasn’t – not by a long shot. The truth was that even before she started mandatory therapy sessions with him multiple times a week so he would be cleared for duty, even his earlier voluntary counselling sessions with her had 45 minutes of his scorching fury directed at everything that had set him off in the interim.
So, it wasn’t exactly a stretch that today’s news was going to set him off, she just needed to take care that she wasn’t caught in the blowback.
As he walked through the door she could see he wasn’t in the best of moods. He was muttering something about having better things to do than supervise Jeannie’s rug rat, and Aoife realised he must have been spending time with Madison again.
He scowled at her and said, “You wanted to see me?”
“Yes, I did Rodney. Please sit down, I have something I need to tell you.”
He remained standing. “But I’m not due to have a mandatory session with you until tomorrow afternoon,” he protested grumpily.
Taking a deep breath, the seasoned psychologist nodded. “That is true but this is nothing to do with your mandatory counselling sessions. She stopped and considered before reframing her words. “That is, it isn’t directly related to your mandatory session although how you cope with this news I’m about to share with you might impact on the issues we have been dealing with,” she said, choosing her words very carefully.
“WHAT? What are you talking about? You’re speaking in riddles.”
“I’m sorry about that,” she said, “But you’ll understand what I mean when you hear what I have to tell you.”
“Yes. Yes, well get on with it. I don’t have all day, you know. Some of us have more important things to be doing than sitting around yacking.”
Aoife bit her tongue, realising that their session was going to be difficult enough already. “As you already know, I was called back to Homeworld along with Dr Heng for a consultation with General O’Neill after an incident occurred at Area 51.”
Why on earth would a psychologist be required for that,” Rodney wanted to know with a touch of scorn. “ Let alone two of you.”
Dr O’Shea just looked at him. “Maybe it has something to do with a bunch of people appearing out of thin air. These people claimed to be from an alternate dimension, and they brought news about the demise of their own world and a warning for us.”
Rodney looked shocked. “Is General O’Neill satisfied that they are who they claim to be?”
“According to Colonel Davis, they have run exhaustive scientific tests upon the individuals and are confident that they have come from an alternate reality. DNA has already confirmed a number of the group’s identities.”
McKay grumbled, “Well I’d feel a lot more comfortable if I could run the tests. Why didn’t they summons me? It’s not like I’m busy right now,” he said sarcastically.
Aoife just looked at him and said, “You know why Rodney. You aren’t cleared for it and right now, I’m not sure that anyone is thinking about your comfort.”
“This is ridiculous. I’m perfectly fine!”
The psychologist thought to herself that even if that were true, she seriously doubted he would be after he heard what she had to tell him. “Well, you don’t get to judge whether or not you are fit to return to your job. I do and ultimately General O’Neill has the final say. But you know all of this already, so let’s just focus on what’s relevant to the discussion today,’ she told him firmly.
Rodney huffed at her. “This is stupid. Fine then, what did the interdimensional travellers have to say that was relevant?”
They said that over time people started noticing the various country’s populations appeared to be acting like mindless zombies, happily obeying commands of people in authority without question. Slowly it began to spread all around the globe one after another democracies and autocracies fell like 9 pins. By the end, all who were left were a handful of scientists at Area 51, trying to figure out what was going on but ultimately, they failed. So instead, they tried to create a time machine to go back in time and save their world.”
Rodney looked horrified as he blurted out, “It sounds like some sort of mind drug. A bit like that stupid herb that Lucius Lavin tried to drug all of us with,” he commented musingly.
“It IS Lavin’s special herb which Ambassador Shen managed to get hold of, and she used it to take over their world. General Landry gave their SG1 team the cure for the Ori plague which we’d developed, so they wanted to warn us about the terrible danger coming. Meanwhile, Doctor Carter and Doctor Kusanagi refused to work on the time machine, saying it was too dangerous. They tried to rebuild the dimensional drive which their AR-1 rescued from the interdimensional ship the Daedalus which they got stuck on like you did.”
“What are they? A pathetic bunch of imbeciles or something? Why did they waste their time building time machines or interdimensional drives to travel to another dimension? A vaccine for the special herb was way simpler and would have worked, he said scornfully.
“I’ll take your word for that, Rodney. The only problem was that they didn’t know about the drug, nor could they get their hands on it to run tests. Not even your counterpart in the other dimension who had seen Lavin’s drug up close and personal more than five years ago figured out what it was. Since the plant didn’t grow anywhere in the Milky Way, I guess he didn’t think it might have been the cause.”
McKay stared at Aoife. “How could they not know?”
“Look Rodney, there are many discrepancies between our two dimensions. Atlantis was destroyed weeks after Lucius drugged you all in that dimension. We never went back there after the Ancients repossessed the city and from what they’ve told the General, it wasn’t safe to go back to Pegasus Galaxy. There was no way of them knowing that their Ambassador Shen had procured a sample before we lost Atlantis.”
Shaking his head disparagingly, McKay said, “Well if I had been there, I’m sure we would have figured it out in time.”
Doctor O’Shea refrained from rolling her eyes, although she did roll them mentally. “Hate to burst your bubble, Sunshine, but you were there. You were the one who was gung-ho about building a time machine to go back to the past and have more time to figure out what was going on. Doctor Carter refused to participate, saying it was too dangerous to alter the past, but McKay persisted with the other scientists working right up until the end.”
“I don’t believe that for a minute. I figured it out in this dimension, so how could I not do the same in that one?”
Aoife sighed a little and counted to ten in her head. “Rodney, there were many things that were different in the alternate timeline starting with Atlantis being blown up years ago. All the cumulative differences contributed to you not knowing what Ambassador Shen was planning. Can we just move on from this and focus on the bigger picture?”
Although he looked frazzled, Rodney agreed. “Fine then, we need to get started right away. There isn’t a moment to lose if we want to have enough vaccine to be able to save our world.”
Preparing for the explosion, Dr O’Shea breathed deeply before plunging ahead. “No Rodney, that isn’t what I wanted to talk to you about. General O’Neill has the matter of Lucius Lavin’s mind control drug well in hand at this stage. We have been anticipating that this threat might come and the warning from our alternate reality selves has merely driven the timetable forward somewhat.”
“WHAT? Why wasn’t I consulted on this? I was the one who figured out what was affecting everyone on Atlantis and came up with the vaccine,” he protested wildly.
Aoife looked at him. “I understood that Dr Beckett also had a hand in completing the vaccine after Lucius drugged you while you were working on it,” she said mildly.
“But it was my brainpower that developed it,” he whined. “I should have been kept informed.”
She found herself becoming rather terse. “Look. Rodney. That is a situation you need to discuss with Colonel Lorne. General O’Neill made the decision to work on this project in absolute secrecy, so Ambassador Shen wasn’t alerted and decided to push ahead with her plan before we were ready to stop her. But that is not why I needed to see you. I have something else that you need to know about the dimensional travellers.”
In the end, she just had to let Rodney run out of rants because he just kept going off about how it was outrageous that he had been deliberately kept out of the loop and now they needed his help. Finally, after going for almost ten whole minutes with barely a break, he seemed to realise she wasn’t even listening to him.
“Alright,” he exclaimed petulantly, “if you didn’t want to tell me about my work being appropriated without so much as a by your leave, what do you want?” he demanded rather rudely. “Clearly I’m going to have to take this up with Lorne, as you say, to get some straight answers,” he said rising and preparing to leave.
“Sit. Down. Listen to what I’m trying to tell, you Dr McKay,” she told him rather stridently. “If you attempt to leave before I’ve finished, I’ll be forced to ask the SFs to post a guard on this door until we are done.”
Looking more like a sulky teenager than the brilliant scientist he was supposed to be, he fell back down into the chair and glared at her. “Go on then,” he snapped.
Evidently, cooperation wasn’t going to include civility but as long as she could tell him what needed to be told, Aoife was willing to settle for his sulky puss as long as his mouth stayed shut until she got it all out.
“The scientists from the alternate dimensions, in the end, decided that they didn’t have enough time left to complete a time machine, so they all pitched in to finish building the dimensional drive. My understanding is that they completed it in the nick of time, having decided that they would send their young children through to our dimension, hoping that their alternate selves would decide to care for their children. They planned to blow up the drive and Area 51 to prevent Emperor General Shen from realising what they had done and following them through or having that technology.”
Yes, yes that’s all very touching, I’m sure,” he said looking anything but touched. But I don’t see what it has to do with me.” He paused for a moment or two before looking worried. “Please don’t tell me that my alternate self who turned up on Atlantis six years ago is back again? He was a real pain in the butt,” Rodney said acerbically.
“No, Dr McKay. The only adults who came through were females, no males. No extra Rodney McKays came through.
“ Oh well, that’s good then. It’s NOT my sister?”
“No, not Jeannie exactly.”
“Not exactly. What does that mean,” McKay demanded snarkily?
“Rodney, please just shut up for a minute and I’ll tell you.”
He folded his arms and glared.
“Three adults came through into our dimension. A federal agent who is already dead in our reality, an Air Force Lieutenant who was a nurse at the SCG and died during the Plague that the Ori sent back to Earth. And lastly, a teacher who was teaching the children of the Area 51 scientists.”
“Don’t tell me,” Rodney grumbled. “I suppose she’s dead in our reality as well.’
“Got it in one,” Aoife said facetiously “and they brought 10 children with them from their world.”
“Yes… well… all that is very interesting and touching I’m sure, but if it isn’t my alternative self or my alternate sister, then I really don’t see why you are telling me all of this. I need to go and talk to Colonel Lorne about the imminent threat we might be facing.”
Dr O’Shea heaved a visible sigh as she sent a silent prayer for patience. “If you will stop interrupting I will explain to you that your alternate self sent his four-year-old son through the dimensional drive to our world even as he stayed behind, hoping to save him.
“My what! Stupid woman. I don’t have a son.”
“No, you don’t in this world, but your alternate YOU does in his world. Your son is 4 years old in the other dimension and his name is Kelvin Max Austin-McKay.”
“I have a son in that dimension,” Rodney repeated disbelievingly. “How can this be? I hate children and they hate me. They’re loud and make a mess and they only think of themselves. Why would I have a child?”
Aoife shrugged, knowing that this wouldn’t be the most difficult part of this story for Rodney to accept. “This reality of theirs seems to be quite divergent from our own one. When the 16 other SCG teams ended up at the mountain a few years ago, the team from this reality differed vastly from the team members on every other team.”
“OK, I don’t understand. Why didn’t the scientists rig the dimensional drive to blow up on a timer and come through with their children?”
“They said it had something to do with entropic cascade failure. The 16 Carters hypothesised that the cascade failure which they’d encountered before only happened when two individuals from very divergent dimensions occupied the one universe simultaneously. As they already knew that their universe was different to ours in many respects, they felt that entropic cascade failure was a highly probable outcome. So, they sent the children alone and hoped for the best.”
“What you’re saying is that my me in the other dimension is dead?”
Aoife nodded. “Yes, the federal agent who came through with the children felt that it was highly likely that everyone left had chosen to die rather than become a mindless slave to Shen and her bunch of despots.”
“Well, if I couldn’t figure out what was causing people to become slaves, I was probably too stupid to stay alive anyway,” he said with a great deal of derision.
Holding her tongue with difficulty, O’Shea pressed on with the purpose of the meeting. “Right now, other people like yourself are being informed of the arrival of the offspring of your alternate selves. These children are effectively orphans in our world, we are asking all of you if you might be willing and capable of becoming guardians for these children. And there will be some special conditions that need to be met in addition to the usual ones…”
McKay started laughing before he realised that she was serious. “Oh, that wasn’t a joke. See, I understand why some people might find it appealing but we’ve previously established that I hate kids and they hate me. I find it indescribably boring to have to spend time with Madison and she is nearly nine, so the idea of me being the guardian of a four-year-old is ludicrous. It would be an utter disaster, although I’m perfectly happy to set up a trust fund for him…that I can do,” he offered magnanimously.
“I’m sure whoever becomes Kelvin’s guardian will appreciate that generosity,” she told him.
Rodney shrugged, “Of course, they will. It is an extraordinarily generous gesture for me since technically he’s not my child in this universe, so I have no legal obligation to provide for him,” he said.
“That’s true,” she said, feeling like it probably was for the best, Rodney would certainly not be her ideal archetype for a parent for a highly traumatised young boy from an alternate reality. She really hoped that Jeannie and Kaleb Miller who were already parents to Madison, were more open to the idea because she thought they’d be good for Kelvin.
“Alright, are we just about done here,” Rodney wanted to know.
“Just a few more things and then we’re done,” she temporised. “The decision has been made that we’ll be hiding all of the refugees, adults, and children here on Atlantis, so Kelvin will inevitably see you around the place. Since you look like his father, you should try to avoid him as much as you can, at least until he has gotten used to the idea of the man who looks just like his daddy but isn’t him. We’ll tell the kids that all the people who look like their parents are in fact their twins since they are too young to understand infinite dimensions and quantum physics.”
She could see that he was getting impatient as he nodded in an irritated manner. “Fine, yes that sounds like a good idea. Can I go now?”
“Just one last thing you need to know about Kelvin and his other parents, aside from the you in the other dimension,” she said steeling herself for the big explosion.
“How many does he have,” McKay inquired lazily.
“Three parents, a biological mother…”
“Well obviously he had a biological mother,” Rodney interrupted. “ And also obviously, if her name is Austen then I’m not with Dr Keller in that reality. Is she hot? Is she a brilliant scientist? More importantly, is she a hot brilliant sexy scientist? What am I saying, she’s with me so of course she is,” he answered himself in that arrogantly self-assured way of his that was quite pathetic all things considered.
Wishing she had a camán (an Irish hurling stick) to whack Rodney over the head, she managed to say between gritted teeth, “A lot of people think she’s just as smart as you are but better because she doesn’t possess your degree of arrogance and I think she’s pretty, but I’ve only seen her in a lab coat,” which took the wind out of his sails.
He scowled at her as Aoife shrugged. “Don’t ask me a question if you aren’t prepared to hear an honest answer, Dr McKay.”
“And who is the third parent? Did his mother and I divorce in that world, and then I got remarried?. Did his stepmother adopt him legally? Is she hot? Is that why he has three parents?”
“No, Rodney, it isn’t. I know that this is going to be tough for you to hear but he will tell people when he comes here, so you do need to know even if you don’t intend to be involved in his life. Your sister Jeannie donated an egg to you and your husband, Dr Jake Austen and he donated sperm. Kelvin was conceived in an IVF lab and implanted into Jeannie’s uterus. Heather Mitchell, she’s the SCG nurse who came through the dimensional drive with the children, said you…well not you but your alt-you and Dr Austen were just so in love with each other, so demonstrative in public. You…err…they… were desperate to have a family together that she talked to Kaleb, and they decided they wanted to help them to realise their greatest wish. Heather said that when he was born and the alternate you adopted him legally, he told her that Kelvin was his most precious achievement.”
Rodney seemed incapable of speaking but his face was growing progressively redder by the second and he started to yell. “No no no no no no no!”
Aoife immediately called for Dr Biro via her comms. Luckily, the doctor was on standby and able to respond immediately. After administering a calmative intramuscularly, they bundled him onto the ubiquitous psychoanalyst’s couch, but in truth, O’Shea only used it occasionally to take a short nap between difficult clients. Although her predecessor favoured psychoanalytic therapy, she was no fan of Sigmund Freud. She thought the man was a twat but regardless, she kept the couch and moved it into an out-of-the-way corner of her office. Now Dr Rodney McKay was slumbering on it, his mouth slightly agape as his colour returned to a more normal pink.
Dr Biro had immediately wrapped a blood pressure cuff on his left bicep and was monitoring his BP assiduously. She’d also whipped out an oximeter to monitor his oxygen levels since Dr O’Shea reported that he was having trouble breathing during his temper tantrum, somewhat like a child will hold his breath.
Aoife gestured towards Rodney. “How long do you think he’ll be out,” she asked, feeling a bit frazzled. It wasn’t often she needed to call in a doctor to sedate a patient.
Barb gave a two-shouldered haven’t-got-a clue shrug. “Not long. I only gave him a small dose so maybe 20 minutes or so. I’ll keep an eye on him until he wakes up and hopefully, when he does he’ll be a lot more coherent. What the hell set him off, anyway?”
O’Shea grimaced. “I had to give him some news which I suspected was going to upset his equilibrium.”
The doctor gave a wry grin as she said, “Yes, well it looks like your suspicion was correct. It must have been a doozy of a piece of news for it to affect him so much,” she observed with a sigh before changing the subject. “That was certainly a lightning-quick trip back to earth so you and Dr Heng. He didn’t come back with you?”
The psychologist shook her head. “No, but he’ll be back probably in a week, or two at the most. Alain is doing some consultancy work for General O’Neill.”
The doctor checked Rodney’s blood pressure again before settling back down again with a pleased sigh. “Thankfully it’s returning to normal, well normal for McKay that is. Jennifer is not going to be pleased that we didn’t notify her immediately about Rodney.”
“Not pleased because she’s his partner or not pleased because she’s the chief medical officer?”
Barb rolled her eyes dramatically. “Either! Both?”
“And that’s the problem that I have with her treating Dr McKay – the boundaries are blurred. Also, I chose not to inform her because there is a privacy issue here, not just for McKay but I was carrying out notification of something which concerns some people on Atlantis. I didn’t get to finish Rodney’s notification before he freaked out on me. Plus, I still have one other individual to notify, which is also why I’m being cagey with you too, although everyone will know soon enough.”
Dr Biro nodded her head. “Now I’m curious. I take it that it has something to do with your sudden trip back to Earth?”
As McKay groaned signalling he was returning to consciousness, O’Shea responded, “Yes it does.”
A couple of minutes later when Rodney resurfaced, albeit somewhat confused, but a lot calmer than before, Dr Biro gave him a quick once over before pronouncing him fit to continue and departed with a brief professional smile.
McKay still a little dazed looked at Aoife. “What just happened?”
You flipped out on me, Rodney. In fact, I was concerned that you were going to have a stroke and I called Dr Biro in. She took one look at you and sedated you. So, we’ve been here monitoring you in case we needed to transfer you to the Infirmary. Luckily, you seem fine now.”
“Don’t be absurd. I don’t flip out! I’m the most mentally stable person here on Atlantis. Why would I flip out,” the scientist demanded of her tetchily.
“Perhaps it was learning that the YOU in the other reality had a husband and a child.”
“That is simply ridiculous. I’m not gay, how many times do I have to say it?”
“It depends, Rodney. Are you saying it to convince me or yourself? Besides, is there anything in quantum theory that would disallow someone’s sexual orientation to diverge from another reality?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know. Stop trying to confuse me – I need to think. How do I know this isn’t some massive hoax to try and convince me that I’m gay?”
Aoife looked at him steadily, “I guess that in the fullness of time when the children arrive on Atlantis, it will prove that this is real and therefore not a hoax. Perhaps you might want to think about why we would go to such extremes to convince you about something that shouldn’t be such a big deal. In the meantime, I need to notify your sister too.”
“Why? What’s it got to do with her,” he demanded obstreperously.
Breathing deeply to maintain her temper, O’Shea raised her eyebrows at him. “It concerns Jeannie because, in an alternate reality, she was the one who was Kelvin’s surrogate mother. She has a right to know, just as you do. She also has the right to foster or adopt him, as her alternate self was, in a strictly biological sense, his mother.”
Shortly thereafter, Rodney departed, professing to feel overwhelmed. Aoife told him that was totally understandable, and that he needed time to process it. Unfortunately, his means of doing so was to stuff it down into his subconscious and focus on his sense of victimhood for being excluded from the information about Shen Xiaoyi’s plot to use Lucius’ accursed drug to take over the world.
~o0o~
After Rodney professed to need time to deal with the bombshells she’d dropped in his lap, Aoife knew that the real reason he didn’t want to stay around and chat with her was that he would make a beeline for Colonel Lorne, intent on lodging a complaint about being excluded from the mind control project. And to lodge a complaint i.e., indulge in a huge temper tantrum and raise his BP sky-high again but hey – he would never flip out! After all, he did profess to be the most mentally stable person on Atlantis.
She empathised with Evan Lorne but apart from a heads up to expect an imminent visit from Rodney, she figured he was capable of dealing with McKay. Right now, she needed to contact Jeannie Miller and explain to her about the refugees who would be arriving here next week. Fortunately, this wouldn’t be Miller’s first time dealing with people from an alternate reality, since she had already dealt with a Rod McKay from an alternate dimension during her first visit to Atlantis. Aoife wondered if Jeannie had shared the experience with her husband Kaleb because otherwise, he was in for an extremely sharp learning curve when it came to quantum physics.
Aoife thought about how things were going back on Earth. Did Dr Jackson know about Claire and Nicholas by now and if so, how had he reacted to the news? Had he panicked or had he felt impelled to step up to the plate and become a guardian for the twins, unlike the adults in his own life when he was a child? Of course, Daniel did appear to be at something of a loose end at the moment. It seemed to Aoife that he might be searching for a new direction, which would make it easier for him to change course and think about staying on Atlantis for the time being so that he could become a parent to the twins. She was still trying to classify the relationship he and Vala shared; certainly, they had an extremely strong friendship and she seemed to be smitten by him, judging by all the one-sided flirting she did with him, but his feelings for her were not so easy to read. Sometimes she thought that they had a sexual relationship but other times she wasn’t so sure.
One thing she was fairly certain about though was if Daniel did decide to adopt the seven-year-olds it would change his relationship with her irrevocably. Although it did seem fairly obvious that Vala, in her interactions with Belle and the other youngsters, was very fond of children and related well to them. So, if they were already a couple and Daniel decided he wanted to become their adopted father, O’Shea expected Vala would be very supportive of that decision. She didn’t think that they would break up over it – if they were actually together, and that remained extremely ambiguous to the psychologist. At times she thought that Vala, despite all her flirting acted rather like a mother towards him. It was definitely a complicated relationship.
Then there was Riley Faxon whose mother in that alternate reality was Dr Samantha Carter, while Samantha Carter in this reality was a highly decorated Air Force Colonel currently commanding the George Hammond somewhere out in space. Would she want to give up her career to become the guardian as a child, who for the moment would need to stay put on Atlantis? It surely would be a very difficult decision because if she chose to give up her Commission then what would she do instead? She’d already been assigned to Atlantis some years ago by the IOA as the commander of the base in charge of the military and civilians living there, so a return here without that authority would be awkward at best.
General O’Neill had mentioned Joseph Faxon in this reality was MIA although they presumed he was dead, so he could not be approached about fostering or adopting Riley. Which kind of left it all up to Samantha Carter, placing her in a really difficult situation. Frankly, Aoife didn’t envy her one little bit, just like she didn’t envy the decision that Colonel Dixon would be asked to make as well. He and his wife already had four boys and his career was based at the SCG at Cheyenne Mountain. It would not be easy to integrate Davinia into their family which was unfortunate but sometimes that was life!
As the psychologist flicked off an email requesting an opportunity to talk to Dr Miller at her earliest convenience, she thought about McKay’s reaction to the news of Kelvin Max Austin-McKay. Part of her felt relieved that he didn’t want to be a parent to the little boy, rejecting the thought emphatically. Another part of her wondered if it might not be the making of the man to have to love a child and receive love in return. To have to put somebody else’s wants and needs ahead of what Rodney McKay wanted and needed, but it was his decision to make. There was still time for him to change his mind but she suspected that he wasn’t ready to become a parent yet. He needed to resolve this situation with Colonel Sheppard before either of them could move on.
Jeannie answered her email almost immediately saying she could swing by after picking up Madison in around 30 minutes. She would ask Rodney to keep his eyes on Maddie so they could talk.
Aoife replied that she didn’t think that it was a good idea to ask Rodney to watch Madison right now – that he’d left her office not that long ago and was quite agitated. She suggested that Jeannie should ask Alex Paddington if he wouldn’t mind keeping an eye on Maddy for a little while since he already knew what Aoife needed to discuss with her. After agreeing to O’Shea’s suggestion, the psychologist quickly checked in with Alex over their comms, explaining that she had to notify Dr Miller about Kelvin. He’d immediately agreed to watch Maddie for her, saying that Belle would be thrilled to spend time with the older girl. That sorted, Aoife decided to take a short stroll before briefing Jeannie on the situation.
Never when she was starting out her career would she have dreamed that this is where she would end up having to explain to people that they had children with other people in an alternate reality to the ones they had in this one. Talk about a crazy life but it was one she wouldn’t swap since she’d found her soulmate. She just needed to travel to a distant galaxy to do it, as did he!
Chapter 12
The Ascended being, formally known as Vetus stared around the virtual reality that he’d created with considerable assistance from the being formerly known as Melia. While it had been many millennia since they had departed from Atlantis and returned to the Milky Way, it seemed that they had an excellent recall of the Ancients’ city where they had spent so many years in pursuit of knowledge, technology, art and cultural activities. They spent a great deal of time creating a virtual reality where they could incarcerate the Asurans, including Elizabeth Weir for eternity, because although the current residents of Earth were working on the creation of a virtual reality, they had slowed down on the project since they focused on the problem of the mind control drug that had almost cost them control over the city.
They could have had years to work on a solution but had lost over five precious Earth years due to Elizabeth Weir’s cover-up of the extent to which the Atlantis personnel had been affected by the mind control drug. In her report, she wrote it off as just a couple of people affected and so no one ever realised just how dangerous that plant was until the individual arrived from Earth who had two of the Ancient genes. Clearly, his bloodline must have had a strong linkage to the Ancients who’d fled the Pegasus galaxy when they realised they couldn’t defeat the Wraith, retreating instead back to Earth.
The former Melia appeared in their constructed reality and looked around approvingly. “This is exactly as I remember this,” she said sounding happy. “Are we sure this is necessary?”
“We may be Ascended beings but even we cannot tell the future,” former Vetus responded. “Given the disaster with Anubis, I want to be very sure that the Asurans never find a way to Ascend. Elizabeth Weir is obsessed with the concept of Ascension and I doubt that she will ever give up on the idea.”
Former Melia frowned. “I agree. We were wrong not to check that she had departed with everyone else and we should never have trusted Janus either. It had already proved to us he was not trustworthy when he ignored our dictum regarding the time machine ships.”
“That is true,” he agreed with his former colleague on the Atlantis Council. “And I fear that Weir’s determination to achieve Ascension will serve only to encourage the Asurans who possess a real singlemindedness already.”
The former Melia frowned. “Do you really think that the Asurans could become a repetition of the Anubis fiasco?”
Former Vetus, normally a serious entity, looked even graver in his corporeal form. “I honestly do believe that and so do a great many others. They agreed that this is a step that needs to be undertaken to prevent such a situation from ever reoccurring.”
“So, this virtual reality field has the blessing of the others,” she asked, sounding relieved.
“Yes, they support this departure from our usual policy of non-interference since in a lot of ways, had we not left Dr Weir behind on Atlantis when we left Pegasus, this would not have happened.”
“You don’t think that it would have happened anyway? The Asurans, at least the faction who was obsessed with Ascending to prove that they were worthy of being our chosen offspring, and yet were so envious, so desirous of our love and admiration, you don’t believe they would have reached this point without Weir becoming Asuran?”
“I think that after they destroyed their physical bodies, they probably would have caused a lot of trouble but I’m not sure they could have managed to get access to Ancient technology to rebuild corporeal bodies for themselves. It was the Asuran Weir, manipulating and deceiving the members of the Earth expedition who had feelings for her who succeeded in them being able to regain bodies again.”
“But Asuran Weir did see the error of her ways,” former Melia pointed out, trying to be scrupulously fair since it was one of their most treasured tenets.
“Yes she did, but it was only after she was shamed into it by the expedition members – the people who felt that she was still their friend. She could easily be swayed back to doing whatever it took to Ascend when someone should pass by and decide to rescue them. Her human desire to Ascend when combined with her Asuran drive to show their creators that they are just as good as we are, is just too dangerous to leave to chance,” the former Vetus said firmly.
“You are probably right, you usually are,” the former Melia conceded. “But I still don’t see why we needed to break our most cherished rules of non-interference when the humans were going to do the same thing, confine them to a virtual reality sooner or later.”
“The humans have become distracted by the urgent nature of the mind-controlling drug. They have learnt that it has already been used in another reality and their focus remains directed at it right now. The scientist who was previously in charge of the virtual reality project was transferred to the mind control program and the work on the virtual reality world has stalled.”
The Ascended one formerly known as Melia pursed her lips and thought how strange it was to feel them after so many millennia of existing as nothing but pure energy. “Are you worried that someone else may find them? This is quite a remote region of the Pegasus galaxy,” she argued.
“And yet, even today someone passed by and it was far too close for comfort. It is only a matter of time before someone finds them and decides to reanimate them,” former Vetus said with much conviction.
The Ascended Ancient paused as he inspected the gate room for the tenth time since former Melia had arrived. “But even if no one stumbles upon them and decides to rescue them, even if the humans on Atlantis do complete their virtual world and manage to detain them, we know the Asurans’ physical and mental states will not deteriorate, unlike the humans. What happens in many millennia when the human race has ceased to exist, and some other life form might come along and find them trapped and foolishly decide to interfere. What then?”
The Ascended Ancient looked discomforted. “I will admit that I did not consider those factors at all. I think I understand now why we needed to go to all of this trouble.”
The former Ancient who had been known as Vetus told her, “You go and inform the former Janus that the others wish to speak to him. I will go and collect the eight Asurans and we will meet back here. It is time to see that they are never able to pose a threat to Pegasus galaxy again.”
By the time the former Ancient Melia returned with a less than enthusiastic Ascended being formerly known as Janus. When he saw not just the former Vetus and the pile of frozen Asurans he scowled.
“What is this?”
“This is a virtual reality created to contain the Asurans. The other elders have decided that they pose too big a risk to Pegasus floating around out there in space, and they are never going to give up on Ascension. We decided that we do not want to risk another Anubis-sized disaster.”
The former Melia frowned. “Actually, it would be eight times worse than Anubis.
Former Vetus nodded. “Which is why the Elders had decreed that it cannot be permitted to happen. That is why they authorised this reality to be created here in subspace.”
The former Ancient called Janus frowned. “Do you really think that the Asurans will be able to be contained in this reality for eternity? I think that is unrealistic.”
The Ancient formerly known as Vetus looked concerned. “What makes you say that?”
Former Ancient Janus looked incredulous. “From what I understand, this group of Asurans, unlike the others who were intent on more and more building and acquisition, have been obsessed for more than ten millennia with wanting to Ascend. Do you really think that they would let a virtual reality contain them and thwart their greatest desire?”
“But what if they believe that when we Ascended, we created a place like Atlantis to live so we would feel like it was home,” Melia asked him.
“For that to work, we would need to share knowledge with them and interact with them,” former Janus objected.
“Well, we could tell them that they have to completely free their minds from their Asuran past,” former Vetus suggested.
“Or we could pick one piece of knowledge which is wonderous but completely useless – like how we let go of our former identities and adopted new names which are pure aromas combined with subharmonic tones. I think that would be suitably benign enough so we do not create another Anubis,” the former Melia proposed. It will take them some time to master that – as it did us.”
Former Vetus nodded approvingly. “That is an excellent suggestion.”
The Ascended former Janus shook his head, sceptically. “And what about when they have mastered that knowledge in several centuries? It will only make them hungrier for more.”
“Then we tell them they must learn every Ascended being’s ascended identity so that when they are permitted to choose a name, it is unique and nothing like any other Ascended being,” former Melia shrugged, thinking how strange it was for her energy to once again be encased in a body after so many millennia existing without one.
“Granted that will take up another century or two but in a plane of existence where we are no longer mortal, time passes more quickly,” former Janus observed. “And what then. So much of the knowledge we have acquired would be much too dangerous for these Asurans to have access to,” he objected.
“In this, you speak the truth, my brother. This is why they must not be permitted to gain too much knowledge or the wrong sort. The other Ascended are adamant that it must never happen and are prepared to bend the rules enough to ensure that the last of the Asurans which in our former incarnations we created in our image and our children were forced to destroy when they became a threat to the people of Pegasus, cannot ever do any further harm. They also recognise that there will be some sacrifices that need to be made but they see it as a small price if it prevents the rise of another Anubis.”
Former Janus looked pleased. “I am gratified, my brother. I have always argued that our non-interference stance on matters that we created should be more flexible. But I do not see how this applies to this situation. You haven’t come up with a plan for what happens when they want to acquire more information.”
“Actually, we have. Once they have fully mastered how to combine subharmonic tonal communication with aroma amplification then we will wipe the knowledge from their memory banks and let them believe that they have only just Ascended and teach it to them again. We will continue to do it for eternity, or until we come up with something as equally complex and benign that would not pose a threat to any life on the physical planes,” the former Vetus told him.
“That level of interaction with beings from the physical plane is unprecedented, given our abhorrence of becoming like our Brethren,” former Janus commented in surprise.
His mention of their brethren was a reference to the Ori, who they’d parted ways with far back in the mists of time. Once they had been one race, one people and had been known as the Alterans but over time, a deep schism had developed within their race. One group of the Alterans were obsessed with following a purely spiritual path that had eschewed a life of science and knowledge and had seen them break away from their brethren and become the Ori. Over eons, the Ori had become increasingly hungry for power, desiring to be worshipped by less evolved races and they’d been corrupted by the power they possessed. The remainder of the Alterans had wanted to pursue an existence studying science, technology, the arts, and cultural endeavours, and this group of former Alterans over time became the Ancients. Of course, they too became obsessed with their quest for knowledge, ready and willing to push the boundaries of what was prudent and wise. While they weren’t looking to be worshipped as Gods, in many ways, their inventions and technologies still allowed them to play god with those around them. Examples of their increasing hubris included being responsible for the not entirely intentional creation of the hybrid race of humans and Iratus bug which came to be known as the Wraith and the absolutely intentional creation of the Asurans to destroy the Wraith when they failed. Those and other massive errors of judgement had frequently brought down catastrophic effects on not only the Ancients but lesser evolved races around them who were far less capable of protecting themselves and their offspring.
“I must say that I have never agreed with the philosophy that we must not try to clean up the mess we created with the Wraith and the Asurans,” the former Janus said candidly and felt rather surprised by his candid speech to his fellow Ancients.
Even as Ascended beings, it was usually prudent not to be too outspoken. While Ascended Ancients could read each other’s minds, they generally tried to avoid doing so since eternity was a long time to argue with each other. Far more peaceful to hold one’s tongue and stay out of each other’s thoughts.
“I would normally not agree,” the former Ancient known as Melia stated. “But in this instance, after discussions with our brother formerly known as Vetus, I feel that this is one instance where an exception needs to be made.”
“Yes, this is true. Sometimes exceptions need to be made and this cleaning up involves sacrifices by individuals that may seem overwhelming. However, in this case, there is a far greater good at risk than the sacrificing of one entity,” the former Vetus agreed.
Former Janus frowned. “What does that mean, the sacrificing of one entity for a far greater good?”
Former Vetus looked surprised. “Why, I would have thought it was obvious my brother. These eight Asurans pose a great risk to the Pegasus galaxy if left floating out there in space. Eventually, someone will find them and then try to save them or study them. Each scenario is fraught with dangers, not just for the altruistic or the curious but for the rest of the galaxy, maybe even the universe. This virtual reality is where they must be contained…for eternity and they will require a mentor. An Ascended being who can become their teacher and also (though they must never realise it) be their Gaoler. They will need their knowledge to be wiped from their memory banks once they have fully mastered it, along with the fact that they are incarcerated in perpetuity rather than their belief that they have achieved their goal and Ascended,” Vetus explained as if to a child.
“Do you really think that the Asurans, who are probably far smarter than we were, will fall for such a massive lie,” the former Janus demanded, highly sceptical. He was starting to get a really bad feeling about this situation.
Former Melia said, “They must be convinced, my brother. The consequences if we fail here…they do not bear thinking about. Should they ever succeed in their goal of Ascending, then that would make Anubis look benign by comparison.”
All three beings shuddered at that possibility. Former Melia was correct, it did not bear entertaining.
“It will not be easy to fool them,” the former Janus said uneasily. “They are very smart!”
Former Vetus agreed, “And that was our fault when we created them.”
The Ancient once known as Malia got a sudden gleam in her eye. “We are fortunate that there is one individual amongst the Asurans who can convince them that we can be trusted. As their leader, provided we can convince her that they have truly Ascended, then all will be well with the other Asurans,” she said with great assurance.
The former Janus watched as his two companions engaged in an empathic conversation. “Who is this individual to which you are referring,” he asked anxiously.
“Their leader is Dr Elizabeth Weir. She was captured by the Asurans some years ago trying to acquire a zero-point module after the Asurans almost destroyed Atlantis. They integrated her into the Asuran collective consciousness and created a nanite body for her after learning about her obsession with Ascension,” former Vetus explained gravely.
“She was desperate to Ascend and she is psychologically primed to accept what Ancients tell her, or at least one Ancient in particular,” the former Melia said rather pointedly.
The former leader of Atlantis formerly known as Vetus nodded his head, “That is certainly true.“
The Lantean who had once been known as Janus, felt a cold wave sweep over him. Never a good feeling at the best of times, after aeons of time spent as pure energy, it was extremely unpleasant. And not just because of the physical sensation, but because he now understood the implications of what they were referring to. What they were asking him to do. They were asking him to sacrifice himself.
“You cannot ask me to sacrifice myself for eternity,” he objected nervously.
The former Melia gave him an innocent look and said, “Why not my brother, someone must do it and you have a strong link to Dr Weir. It makes sense for you to become her mentor since she will trust you and follow your lead.”
“But you are asking me to incarcerate myself here with the Asurans for eternity. That is too much to ask of anyone,” he argued vociferously.
“We have already asked it of Oma Desala. She is engaged in an eternal battle with Anubis, as you well know. This is a far less horrible fate, surely?”
The former Janus glared at the former leader Vetus. “That is a different matter entirely,” he declared. “Oma created the problem with Anubis when she helped him to ascend, which was expressly forbidden among our people. And for that transgression, she had to bear the consequences of her actions.”
“It is true that she broke our highest laws. But she also recognised that there were consequences and she volunteered to pay them willingly,” former Melia pointed out mildly.
Suddenly they were not alone, many of the elder Ascended beings now joined them and Janus realised with dread that they had been listening in the whole time.
One of the beings whose Ancient name had been Arnos and was also one of the first of them to successfully Ascend frowned at the former Janus. “Just like Oma Desala contributed to the unfortunate situation with Anubis, you too bear some degree of responsibility for this particular happening. You were warned not to continue experimenting with time travel, yet it is clear that you ignored that directive, since you left a gate ship behind on Atlantis when we left that was capable of time travel. And you continued that work once we arrived back on earth since another ship was discovered in the Milky Way.”
The former leader of the Atlantis expedition agreed. “The ship you left lying around on Atlantis was directly responsible for bringing Dr Weir back in time 10,000 years so that she encountered us abandoning the city. A situation that was bad enough and yet you exacerbated it by allowing her to remain behind for 10 millennia to radically change the past. She was supposed to come back to earth with us so we could minimise the fallout from her time travelling to which you were directly responsible. Instead, you created a completely new timeline where she encountered the Asurans and this is one of those results.”
The Ascended being known formerly known as Arnos smiled a little grimly. “So, you see there isn’t a lot of difference between yourself and Oma. And it seems to me that what we are asking of you is far less onerous than what we required of her. Here at least you will have the company of the Asurans, especially the hero-worship of Elizabeth Weir. We will also periodically drop in to maintain the facade that the Asurans have Ascended.”
The oldest Ascended female who was a descendant of Atlantis’ brother and whose former name was Vivia nodded. “Remember, others have paid even higher prices for ignoring our rules. Chaya Sar, for one who was forced to live for eternity, protecting a planet of mortals is a far crueller punishment than living with eight beings, who are also immortal.”
Janus looked dismayed. “This is a grave injustice,” he proclaimed.
Former Vivia glowered at him portentously. “Accept the consequences for your actions with grace, as did Omar Desala when her sacrifice became necessary. Do not force us to impose this course of action upon you,” she told him. Then one by one the other ascended beings took their leave of the virtual reality created to incarcerate the eight Asurans forever until it was just the former Melia, the former Vetus and the former Janus remaining.
When they were alone again, the former Ancient, Melia gave him a look of empathy. “It won’t be that bad, you know. Not like Oma, locked in an eternal battle with a megalomaniac half Ascended Goa’uld. It won’t even be as cruel as Chaya Sar, surrounded by beings whose life expectancy is a mere blink in the fabric of time to her, making it impossible to form anything other than the most perfunctory and superficial relationships with them. And as for Orlin, Descended as punishment for helping the people of Velona, wipe out the entire race and forcing him to live alone on the planet with his memories and knowledge intact and banned from using it was far harsher than this one.”
Former Janus looked unconvinced but in reality, it wasn’t as if he had much choice in the matter.
The Ancient formerly known as Vetus decided to offer a small enticement that may make him more resigned to the inevitability of what must be. “To convince the Asurans that they are in the process of Ascending, it will be necessary for us all to drop in periodically. If you accept this censure gracefully, I’m sure that the elders could be persuaded to let you out for good behaviour and have someone else fill in to give you a respite. However, should you force their hand, I doubt that would be an option. I think that Chaya and Oma would jump at such an arrangement.”
Former Janus thought about the inducement offered by the former Vetus. It wasn’t much, but his brother was right. It was far more than Orin, Chaya and Oma had been offered. And truth be told, sometimes he thought that immortality was more of a prison than a perk. Apart from the benefit of so much knowledge bestowed upon them through Ascension and to have to stand by and not be able to do anything with it was a hard lesson to have to learn. At least keeping the Asurans contained here on this replica of Atlantis, even if it was just a virtual reality, would be diverting for a few millennia, at least.
Then there was Elizabeth Weir, who in her child-like longing to learn the secrets of the Ancients had been rather sweet. He was sure her hero-worshipping would be amusing and help pass the time. Perhaps in time, he would grow weary of her adulation – after all, an Ascended being was surely supposed to be beyond that sort of ego stroking – at least they were presumed to be. As he considered Elizabeth Weir, he acknowledged that the other Ascended beings were right; her enthusiasm and her faith in him for what he had done in saving the city in a new timeline would have earned him a lot of kudos from her. If she was the unchallenged leader of the Asurans who were all equally desperate to Ascend, then perhaps they would be psychologically disposed to believe that they had indeed managed to Ascend. They may be prepared to accept that this place was part of the evolution that all Ascended Ancients had to go through to gain further knowledge.
He also knew that his brother’s argument that other Ascended Ancients would need to drop by regularly was more than just hyperbole. He remembered the virtual reality world that former Ancient Oma Desala created to engage with Daniel Jackson and Anubis. She had called it a diner – a place where people went to eat and drink beverages. Many of their brethren had been fascinated and dropped it to observe the interplay between the three participants, although they were there as mere spectators, unable to look away. However, in this instance with the Asurans, they would need to be more than just bystanders – for them to convince the replicators that they had achieved their long-held ambition, the Ascended would need to interact with the eight Asurans and do so convincingly. So, the former Janus would still have contact with his brethren and the possibility of time out for good behaviour.
Sighing in defeat, since he really didn’t have a choice he said, “If I must do this then I must but I am relying on you to honour your word that from time to time, I will be permitted to leave this virtual reality and return back to the higher planes of existence.”
~o0o~
Elizabeth Weir woke up in her quarters on Atlantis, feeling utterly confused and disorientated. How had she gotten here? The last thing she remembered was being on Atlantis and getting ready to lead her faction of rebel Asurans (who wanted more than anything to Ascend) through the gate to somewhere out in the cold depths of space. She did this, knowing this would be the final time she left Atlantis…the final time she saw her former colleagues and the individuals who had become her friends and family. Oh, how she missed them after becoming an Asuran and how good it felt to be back home again. It had felt so good that she had let her judgement become severely impaired – at least it had when it came to Koracen. She’d come to the devastating conclusion that her desire to regain a physical body had overruled her responsibility to the Lanteans, putting them at serious risk.
She honestly thought that all of her fellow rebels would be too heavily invested in regaining a physical body even if it was carbon-based, to cause any trouble but she had greatly underestimated Koracen’s contempt for having his consciousness housed in an imperfect human body. When she entered his head, he’d claimed that his objection was purely pragmatic, because the human bodies would wear out and then they’d be back where they started. However, that objection was ridiculous – it would buy them at least fifty to sixty years for them to come up with a way to finally figure out how to Ascend. Besides, it had been Koracen who came up with the brilliant idea to destroy their nanite bodies as a final step to ascending.
Elizabeth figured that it elevated the ‘you need to release your burdens’ creed to a whole new stratosphere. Unfortunately, while the Asuran had simplistically seen the problem as his physicality was standing in the way of him being able to Ascend, it clearly wasn’t that simple or maybe it was. Maybe the truth was that nanite-based lifeforms were simply not capable of Ascension. Still, one thing was clear to Weir when she’d delved into Koracen’s consciousness, she’d found that he had decided that Ascension was not a viable proposition for them, and he was already scheming about how the Asuran could take over Atlantis, which was why she knew that she had to destroy him. Elizabeth felt that the rest of the Asuran rebels, particularly Lia was still optimistic about the possibility of them Ascending, but she’d made a grave mistake bringing the other Asurans back, assuming they weren’t a threat to Atlantis.
That was why she realised that she had to make amends for her terrible betrayal of the Lanteans’ trust. So she’d come up with the scheme along with Richard Woolsey, John, and Rodney to lead the rest of the rebel Asurans into the wormhole to take them to a stargate located out in space and not, as she had told them to a place where they would be able to continue to work on the problem of how to Ascend. She remembered floating in space before her nanites began to shut down and that was it. The trouble was, Elizabeth couldn’t remember what had happened after that. How had she come to be back here on Atlantis again? Was the entire being taken over by nanites and being forever banished from going home to Atlantis because they were all terrified of who she’d become, some horrific nightmare that she’d dreamed. She hoped so, but it seemed so detailed, all the memories of time spent as an Asuran and then after Koracen had convinced them to destroy their nanite bodies, the endless months, possibly years spent as a disembodied consciousness. Then on her return, the suspicion and fear she’d encountered from John, Ronan, and Rodney… Teyla’s caution had been surprising but perhaps it was all just some fantastic story her subconscious had dreamed up while she was sleeping. How else could she explain how she was here, in her very familiar quarters otherwise?
Just as she decided to investigate, Elizabeth became aware that there was someone sitting in the shadows on one of the armless single-seater lounge chairs that were dotted around the city, and they were watching her. Sitting up in her bed, she felt instantly comforted by the fact that she was fully clothed and not in her skimpy sleepwear. Although it posed another conundrum – why was she asleep when she was still in her day clothes anyway? This whole situation just kept getting stranger and stranger, she concluded.
Realising she was aware of his presence the individual ( she had the impression that it was a male) spoke to her. “Good, you’re awake,” said the distinctly male voice, sounding relieved.
“ I did wonder if you’d remember me, Elizabeth Weir, but I suppose that was extremely fanciful considering the last time you and I met was in a separate timeline, many millennia ago,” the male said wistfully.
Weir leaned over and switched on the bedside lamp it properly examine the male who’d just spoken those rather outrageous words. He was sort of familiar looking but of course in this timeline Weir didn’t meet Janus, the Ancient who this person was implying that he was. As Elizabeth strove to think who it was this individual reminded her, she wondered why she wasn’t feeling alarmed by his presence. Anyone who thought it was acceptable to sit watching someone as they slept (that is if she was asleep) because while humans slept, Asurans didn’t, was more than a little bit creepy in Weir’s opinion.
“Who are you and what are you doing in my quarters,” she asked.
The individual smiled at her benignly. “Ah well, it is as I expected. You do not remember me. In my former life as a carbon-based being, I was known as Janus. I was what you know as an Ancient, but what the people of Pegasus know as one of the Ancestors.”
Deciding to test this spare-looking man who had a thin rather clever face and curly brown hair, and certainly didn’t look like how she expected Ancients to look, decided to test him out. “So how did you meet me in a previous timeline,” she asked him.
Janus shot her a look that said he knew what she was up to, but he would go along with her anyway. “In a previous timeline when the Expeditionary force arrived in Atlantis, the city did not have enough power to maintain her shielding when you switched on all of her applications. She had barely been maintaining the shields, preventing the pressure of the ocean from crushing the city. You, Elizabeth Weir and several others managed to get to a gate ship and escape from the city before every other human was drowned. It is most unfortunate that in your haste to escape, you happened to choose the only gate ship which I had converted into a time travelling vessel. It brought you back ten millennia in time, but it crashed and all but yourself died. We were in the process of evacuating Atlantis, but we stopped to rescue you and repair your injuries.”
The Ancient purporting to be Janus gave her an enigmatic smile, and asked, “Shall I go on?”
Weir sighed. “No, but if you are who you say you are, why are you here watching me sleep? I don’t understand why you are here in Atlantis.”
Smiling jovially, Janus told her, “Because strictly speaking this isn’t Atlantis, at least not in the physical sense. It is a re-creation of our former home that we find useful for the newly ascended to reside in as they begin to learn about the final stages of ascension. I suppose you could say this is an Ascension School.”
“But I don’t remember ascending,” Elizabeth protested. “All I can remember is stepping through the Stargate at Atlantis and exiting the wormhole through the Stargate into space. I told the other rebels that we were going someplace to continue our work into figuring out how to ascend but I lied to them to trick them into being deactivated. I realised that we were too much of a threat to the lanterns and needed to be halted.”
Janus smiled at her fondly. “You are very much like the Elizabeth Weir I remember from the first timeline. Given the opportunity to return to Terreua with us and spend a lifetime learning many wonderous things, she insisted on remaining in the city all alone. Elizabeth opted to give up her life to spend the next ten millennia in stasis. She awoke only three times in the remainder of her lifespan so she could rotate the three power sources so that she could save the lives of the Expeditionary force when they returned in the new timeline.”
Weir frowned, “But how did I Ascend?”
“You achieved the first stage of Ascension by giving up on your obsession to ascend to a higher plane of existence when you finally realised that the burden that you needed to release was that you were a threat to the people of Pegasus. Choosing to deactivate yourself and your fellow rebels, was the missing piece of the puzzle that was required to allow you to let go and Ascend. And as you were the leader of your group and had eradicated the threat posed by Koracen, this enabled you to bring along the other rebels.”
“Are the other Asurans here too,” she questioned wanting clarification.
“They are. Like you, they are recovering from the deactivation. As their leader, I wanted to apprise you of the situation, so that you could assist me in reassuring them as they returned to consciousness. I have been assigned to you all as your mentor and teacher and there is much, I have to impart to you so that you can exist as fully ascended beings without the need for bodies.”
As Elizabeth and Janus stood up, it finally struck her who it was that Janus reminded her of. When she used to babysit for Simon’s sister, her tween daughters Jessica and Alannah used to watch a show called Charmed, a fantasy drama about a family of three sisters who were also witched. Although Simon’s sister, Faye, didn’t approve of the girls watching the show, calling it blasphemous and Satanic, Elizabeth couldn’t really see any harm in it. She liked the theme of the three sisters who had been estranged before the death of their grandmother brought them back together and they found their powers. Once they had been reunited, their bond had only strengthened over time and Elizabeth who was an only child, loved the narrative of the power of the three sisters and their love for each other. But the point of her remembering a time in her life pre-Atlantis was that there was a character on that show called Gideon who was the Headmaster of Magic School so, it was very apropos that Janus should be her teacher at Ascension school. However, while it seemed to be a big coincidence Weir was in no doubt that Janus and the other Ascended Ancients had no idea that the show even existed. Indeed, she strongly suspected that they didn’t even understand entertainment like television or movies.
Meanwhile, as Janus was leading Elizabeth out of her quarters to the one where Lia (who was the most ingenuous of the rebel Asurans) was re-activating, he felt pleased with how his meeting with Weir had gone. Convincing her was the first hurdle but now that she seemed persuaded that they had Ascended, she would be an invaluable assistance in helping to convince the rest of the Asurans too.
Perhaps having to take responsibility for the second timeline wouldn’t be such a horrible burden after all. Not that he would let Vetus and Melia and the rest of them know because they might rescind their offer to give him time outs for not forcing their hand on this fix-it. If, while taking on a physical body again, perhaps he could engage in pleasures of the flesh. It could most certainly have been a worse fate. No doubt, Oma, Moros, Orin, and Chaya Sar would probably swap places with him in a second.
It was interesting to see the different reactions of the “parents” to the children from the alternate reality. To be honest, Rodney’s reaction was as expected. It’s probably for the better that Kelvin goes to someone else. He’s so focused on himself, he wouldn’t be able to take care of a child. I don’t envy Lorne to have to explain to him why he was excluded.
An unexpected solution for Elizabeth Weir and the other Asurans. At least I hope it’s not canon and I’ve just forgotten.