Even Carter was taken aback at the abrupt transition. “What the—”
“It’s part of the dream,” Jackson said. “Jack doesn’t like to waste time going places.”
Carter looked around nervously. “I wonder where he and Janet are,” she said, unconsciously lowering her voice. “Really are, I mean. This is just too bizarre. I want to pinch myself and wake up.”
“Not as much as I did when it happened to me the last time,” Jackson said dryly. “Trust me on that one.”
They were standing on the top level of four tiers arranged amphitheater-style around a bank of computer screens, next to a flight of steps leading downward that divided each level into two sections. On each successive tier below them were arranged computers, eight on each side of the flight of steps, with outsize monitors and keyboards built into the curving desks.
At each computer sat a short furry figure in a white coat, busily poking at the keyboard with three-fingered hands.
“This is awfully detailed,” Jackson said. “Just how involved with nuclear testing was Jack anyhow?”
“I don’t think he was, but he could have toured the area when he was involved in flight exercises. I did when I was stationed at Nellis. They used to show the place off after the test program was shut down.”
“Speak of the devil,” Carter remarked. “There he is.”
Sure enough, across the room from them, in front of a bank of monitors, Jack O’Neill was standing, deep in conversation with a group of lab-coated scientists.
“Great,” Carter said. “Let’s get this show on the road and get back to sanity.” The three of them made their way around the half circle of the amphitheater to the colonel. As they approached, one of the diminutive lab-coated “scientists”—none of them were particularly surprised to see that it was Vair—caught sight of them and scurried up to Jack from the other side, earnestly engaging him in conversation. O’Neill bent down to listen to the red-patterned Kayeechi whispering in his ear.
“Uh-oh,” Carter observed. “That doesn’t look good.”
“Jack?” Daniel asked as they came up to the colonel. “Jack, we’re here. It’s time to get to work.”
O’Neill stared at them and, they slowly realized, through them. Daniel’s glance fell to Vair, only to see the small alien staring up at them with a smirk.
“You cannot speak to him in the Shaping,” Vair said. “He is here with us. You do not belong here. Go away.”
“We’d be happy to if you’d just let us take care of one small matter.” Daniel reached for the other man’s sleeve. “Jack. It’s us. Do you know where you are?”
He wasn’t sure what he expected. Would the fabric of the sleeve melt and dissipate between his fingers, like so much fog? But it felt real and ordinary and everyday—as real as the dead bodies had looked and smelled when he had walked through the Stargate Complex counting casualties. For all practical purposes it was real.
At least the touch of Daniel’s hand managed to bring the three others into O’Neill’s notice. He shook it off and shot them a confused look.
“Of course I know where I am,” he muttered. “Get out of the way. This is important.”
Vair was shocked and alarmed by turns as O’Neill responded to the question. He reached for O’Neill’s other hand, holding on to it tightly as if to keep the tall man with him.
“Jack, you’re dreaming,” Daniel persisted. “Remember? Remember the aliens? The lucid dreaming? Janet’s monitoring you. You’re on P4V-837. Remember?”
“What are you doing?” Vair burst out. “Go away. We need this.”
“Got to check the background monitors and seismic sensors,” O’Neill said and pushed past them to descend a short series of steps and begin conferring with the Kayeechi. They closed around him almost protectively and began herding him away from the team, and he did not resist.
“He doesn’t realize he’s dreaming,” Carter said with horror. “He thinks this is real, a real test back on Earth.”
In the cave, Jack O’Neill mumbled something in his sleep, and Janet looked up sharply at the stimulator readings and fiddled delicately with a knob.
A red-furred hand reached past herself and set itself over hers, twisting sharply.
Jack O’Neill moaned and slumped into himself. Janet jerked around to find herself nose to sharply pointed teeth of a furious red-furred Kayeechi.
Vair snarled at her and pushed her away from the stimulator. She scrambled to her feet and tried to pull him away, but the little alien was surprisingly strong for his size. “What are you doing?” she shouted. “Stop it! You could kill him!”
“You are controlling his Shaping,” Vair snarled. “Trying to keep him from doing what we wish him to do. You will stop. It doesn’t matter if he dies here. We can keep him in the Shaping, in the dream, long enough to teach us this new weapon.” The words came panting through the sharp incisors, puffing against her face as she struggled to push him away.
O’Neill’s breathing was too loud, too harsh. She risked a glance at the monitors. He was at the very bottom of the dream cycle, dangerously close to slipping into a coma.
She was a doctor first, sworn to do no harm—but she was a soldier too. On an expedition like this one, she came armed, just as every other team member did. She reached back to unsnap the holster that held her sidearm in place.
Meanwhile, O’Neill was going from one group of diminutive lab-coated scientists to another, looking over their shoulders, pointing to dials and controls. Over their heads, a monitor counted down in large red numerals.
“Oh, no,” Carter said. “He’s briefing them. He’s describing a bomb.”
“You’ve got an inner core and an outer core, and that’s surrounded by explosives that push the two cores together into a critical mass,” O’Neill was saying.
“We’ve got to stop him,” Carter said. “All these ‘scientists’ are Kayeechi. They’re making notes. We have to shut him up, or they’re going to end up knowing everything they need to make a nuclear bomb themselves. Or at least a reasonable facsimile of one.”
She trotted across the room and grabbed O’Neill’s arm. The scientists to whom he spoke ignored her as if she were invisible. She tried to pull him around to face her, but it was like pulling on a marble monument.
Jackson joined her. “Jack, listen! Please! Remember why you’re here! Remember what you’re doing! This is a dream! You’re in control of the dream!”
This finally got the attention of the rest of the little scientists, who turned to look at the team with expressions of shock on suddenly openly rainbow-furred faces. Jack pushed them away, and Teal’C reached out to take hold of his shoulder.
Unlike Carter’s, Teal’C’ grip could not be ignored. O’Neill twisted around, his face furious. “What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded. “We’ve got work to do here! You’re not cleared to be here!”
As he spoke, doors all around the control area opened, and armed security guards began to pour in.
“That tears it,” Carter said and pulled out her automatic. As the security guards moved in on them, she fired a full clip at the control panels.
They blurred, then reappeared, undamaged.
“It’s his dream,” Jackson said. “He’s not going to let us stop him.”
“Then we will stop him anyway,” Teal’C said and took a zat gun out of the hand of the nearest security guard and carefully shot Jack O’Neill down.
The dream wavered, stuttered. The O’Neill on the floor moaned.
Then the dream solidified again, and instead of being in the control room they were at the bottom of a primitive test tower, with the Kayeechi, still in the miniature lab coats, all gathered around in an earnest audience, taking notes. Next to them was the monitor, counting down the seconds to detonation. “Of course,” Jackson muttered ironically.
“The wiring,” Carter said under her breath as she faced the crowd. “Yank the wiring.”
“Which wire?”
/> “Who cares?”
Without hesitation, Teal’C swung himself up to the interlaced girders and began to climb the tower, while Carter raised her hands to catch the attention of the Kayeechi.
“The colonel told you about the cores,” she said loudly. The aliens glanced at each other and then at her. “But he didn’t finish. You have to remember the cores have to be purple. If they’re not purple, it won’t work. And soak them in prune juice heated to minus forty-three degrees Celsius, and dried in lavender—”
The aliens looked from the crumpled O’Neill to Carter and then to each other as the countdown continued.
“You mean he didn’t use prune juice?” she shouted. “It’s got to be prune juice! It doesn’t work if it’s not prune juice, double distilled!”
The aliens continued taking notes.
The countdown reached minus five.
Jackson stepped back and was in the control room again, stepping over O’Neill’s body. He hesitated, and then ran to the remaining control panels, frantically flipping switches.
“And when it detonates you get the biggest damn mess you ever saw,” Carter went on. “Everybody dies, you hear? Everybody. Starting with you because you’re right here!”
Teal’C had reached the top of the tower.
In the cave, Janet had pulled her sidearm free.
“And you know what you die of?” Carter went on, suddenly inspired. “They’re creatures from Earth and you’re allergic to them—horribly allergic—you won’t be able to breathe—”
From somewhere invisible and close by, a gunshot cracked.
Teal’C yanked a random wire.
The dream vanished.
In the blink of an eye, they found themselves back in the cave, with a frantic Janet shoving away the dead body of a little, red-furred alien and trying to revive a deeply unconscious O’Neill.
“So it worked?” O’Neill asked groggily, some time later in the “condition serious but not dying” ward at the Complex. “You’re sure?”
“We’ve had a probe monitoring the place,” Jackson said. He was back in workout clothes, looking supremely comfortable. “No explosions. Not nuclear anyway.”
O’Neill blinked. “And what does that mean, pray tell?”
Daniel snickered and gestured to the other two. Carter blushed and looked down.
“Since the only knowledge the Kayeechi have of nuclear weapons comes from what they were told by us,” Teal’C said, “they expect the bright flash and high winds. However, we also informed them that the expected results of the explosion would turn them all into butterflies.”
“Butterflies?” O’Neill mumbled, bewildered.
“Yes, butterflies,” Carter said finally, grinning. “Let them figure out that dream for a change.”
“Once upon a time,” said the philosopher Chuang Tzu, “I dreamt I was a butterfly.
“I was conscious only of my fancies as a butterfly, and unconscious of my individuality as a man. Suddenly I awoke, and was myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming that I am a man.”
—Chuang Tzu, ca. 4th C. B.C.
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