John claps his hands together very loudly, earning Teal'c's full attention and half of Chiana's. "Okay guys, here's the plan today," he says as if everyone is listening. "We're staying on Moya and doing nothing."
"Good plan," says Cam, who had secretly been paying attention while pretending to be asleep for no reason. "We deserve a day where nothing bad happens."
"Have we not tried that before?" Teal'c says. "And we still found ourselves in danger."
"Don't crush my hopes and dreams of a panic-free day, Teal'c," Cam says.
"I apologize," Teal'c replies.
The morning is calm and relaxing for exactly fourteen microts. Then Moya jerks upward and back down again and everyone finds themselves on the floor.
"I hope that was just us hitting a bump," John groans.
"There are no bumps in space," Sikozu says because John seems to have forgotten this particularly obvious fact.
"We have run into an unknown substance," Pilot announces.
"Not what I wanna hear, Pilot," John says.
"It appears to be harmless," Pilot assures them. "Though it is bigger than I originally thought…"
Daniel glances at the slightly distorted image of space on the viewer. "Wait, are we inside the unknown substance?"
"Don't say yes, don't say yes," Cam mutters under his breath.
"Yes," says Pilot.
"You couldn't have gone around it?" John asks.
"I…could have…" Pilot admits.
"Good god, Pilot, you don't just fly into random unknown substances floating in the middle of space," John says.
"Maybe we'll get lucky and this one really is harmless," Vala says.
Jool snorts. "Since when are we ever lucky?"
Suddenly they are no longer on Moya.
"This kind of thing is not supposed to be able to happen!" Cam says, looking at his own frustrated expression in an unexpected mirror.
"And yet it always does," Daniel says.
There is a high-pitched scream behind them and they turn around to see Scorpius in a bathtub hiding behind the shower curtain. "Haven't you ever heard of knocking!" he says, readjusting his completely unnecessary shower cap.
"What the heck are you doing here, Scorpius!" Cam says.
"Are you blind, man?" Scorpius replies in a very un-Scorpy-like fashion. "I'm getting a shower, of course!"
Daniel looks around the surprisingly human-style bathroom they are in. "Where is here?"
Cam has noticed something else. "Where's John!"
The setting changes from a bathroom to a living room. Scorpius sits on a couch and holds a pen over a notebook. "He's unavailable at the moment. Can I take a message?"
Everyone is understandably stunned for a few microts. Cam points angrily. "You better start explaining right now, Scorpius."
Scorpius holds up his hands. "You got the wrong man."
Cam stares.
"Huh?" Aeryn manages to say through her overwhelming confusion.
"They call me…" Scorpius strikes a pose and a drum roll comes out of nowhere. "Harvey!"
"And where are we?" Cam asks, not even trying to understand anymore.
"In John's head," Harvey replies as if it is the most obvious and normal thing.
Everyone looks around.
"Then where's John?" Stark asks.
"He is currently unconscious," Harvey says helpfully.
"How are we even here?" Chiana asks.
"That I don't know," Harvey says. "But I'm betting on the mysterious space cloud you flew into today."
"Darn it," Cam says. "I'm having a little talk with Pilot when we get back."
"If we get back," Teal'c says.
"Quit raining on my parade," Cam says.
Teal'c refrains from mentioning that he is physically incapable of such an action. Vala, on the other hand, has a different view on that phrase and laughs, causing Cam to wonder about her sanity (not for the first time).
"So any ideas about how to get out of John's head?" Cam asks.
They can barely comprehend being here in the first place, much less how to get out. Harvey lounges on the couch and watches them think.
Finally, Sikozu says, "Maybe we just have to wait for John to wake up."
Cam ponders this and shrugs. "It's something."
"It is possible that John Crichton is seriously injured and may not wake up," Teal'c says.
Cam gives him a look. "Didn't I tell you to stop doing that?"
"What if he dies?" Jool asks nervously. "What happens to us?"
"Don't panic," Cam says. "For now we're gonna wait and assume he just got knocked out for a little while."
They wait for approximately eight microts before the boredom starts to get to Vala. "Can't we do something while we wait?" she asks impatiently.
Harvey jumps up. "I'll give you the tour!"
With nothing better to do they follow Harvey out the front door and onto a long road. On the side of the road is a giant gate with all kinds of locks and chains on it. Behind the gate is a big swirly blue thing.
"First stop, wormholes," Harvey announces. "It is the one place I can't get into."
A little farther down the road is a graffiti-covered garage with skateboards and packs of gum surrounding it. Loud screaming music comes from inside.
"Ah, the rebellious teenage years," Harvey says. He takes a stick of gum and starts chewing it.
They continue on through John's mind, passing an astronaut section, a dog section, a girl section, and plenty of other sections, until they arrive at a theme park. Everyone runs off toward the rides. (Harvey should not have run while chewing gum; he swallowed it)
"John's mind is fun!" Vala says when Daniel finally drags her away after six rides on the roller coaster.
"Aren't you concerned that we are in someone's mind at all?" Daniel asks.
"I suppose," Vala says thoughtfully. "I hope we don't go in yours next. It's probably like a boring old library in there."
"I hope we don't end up in yours," Daniel replies. "I probably wouldn't survive."
"Hey!" Vala punches Daniel in the arm.
"I hope we don't go into anyone's mind next," Cam says after crushing Sikozu and Harvey in bumper cars.
"John sure is taking long to wake up," Jool says with her mouth (and her hair) full of cotton candy.
They meet up with Aeryn, who beat Chiana in a shooting game, and Teal'c, who regrets his decision to ride the teacups since Stark threw up on him. Suddenly they all disappear.
"Thanks for coming!" Harvey calls after them.
The crew of Moya blinks away the disorientation of being transferred from John's mind and, by the looks of it, into another. This one has grey metal floors and walls that are constantly moving and turning and breaking off to float away into a vast emptiness. Looking at one spot for too long causes dizziness.
"Where the heck are we?" John asks.
"Hey, welcome back," Cam says. He explains what's going on and where they'd just been.
"In my head?" John asks, and more hesitantly, "What did you see in there?"
"Chill man, Harvey took us to a theme park," Cam says.
Chiana trips on the irregular floor. "Whose head is this?"
Aeryn looks around. "Stark's not here."
"So that means we're in Stark's head?" John asks. "Why is this happening?"
"Harvey thinks it's got something to do with the weird substance we flew into this morning," Cam says.
John sighs. "Pilot's gonna hear about this."
"I wonder what's behind this door," Chiana says.
"Pip, don't touch that," John warns.
"I wasn't gonna open it!" Chiana says, pulling her hand away from where she was obviously gonna open it. "And I'm allowed to touch whatever I want."
The tip of Chiana's finger brushes the door. It flies off its hinges and goes tumbling out into open space. The room behind it is pitch black.
"Chiana, get away from there," Sikozu says in a rare demonstration that she might actually care.
A hand reaches out and grabs Chiana's ankle. She screams as her foot is yanked out from under her and she face-plants on the floor. Teal'c grabs her outstretched arms and pulls her out of the hand's grip.
More hands appear, clawing at the walls and floor, dragging their shadowy bodies out of the doorway.
"What are those?" Sikozu asks as they all back away down an unstable, wobbly bridge.
"We are the darkness, the pieces of souls caught, trapped, unable to cross over," says the writhing black mass forming in front of the doorway.
"Do you think if we die here in Stark's head, we die in real life?" Jool asks in a trembling voice.
"Yes," says the soul monster.
"I wasn't asking you!" Jool shrieks at it.
They all run through the ever-shifting landscape of Stark's mind, toward a distant glow on the far side. The dark soul pieces chase after them, moaning loudly.
"No wonder this boy's got issues," Cam says.
"We have to find his happy place," John says. "I don't think that…thing can go there."
"You've been there before?" Daniel asks.
"Yeah, once, when he took his mask off to comfort me in my time of need. Which we will not be discussing any further."
They run toward the brightness until they reach a teeny tiny little room filled with light. They all cram in and the soul monster stops. It paces back and forth in front of the room but it doesn't enter.
"We'll just hide in here until Stark wakes up," Cam says.
"I hope it's not long," Daniel says. "This place is making me feel…like, drunk happy."
"Yeah, well, you get drunk after half a beer, Daniel," Cam says.
"No I don't," Daniel says defensively. "It takes at least one whole beer."
"Actually I'm starting to feel it too," John says.
Then they are no longer in the bright little room. Instead, they are in a dusty old library.
"I told him," Vala says, realizing it is Daniel's mind.
"What did you do!" Stark shrieks and falls to his knees, holding his head in his hands.
Cam shoves Chiana forward.
"Sorry, I kinda unleashed a dark soul monster," Chiana apologizes.
John puts his hand on Stark's shoulder, but Stark lashes out at him. "Just think of the souls being locked in a room again," John suggests.
Stark puts a lot of effort into this. "Okay," he says quietly after a while. "Okay." He stands up and allows John to pat him on the back.
"Let's try not to screw up anyone's brain from now on," Cam says. "No messing with things."
Vala is already messing with a stack of books.
"Hey, I said don't!" Cam says, but he is not quick enough to prevent the books from toppling over. "Vala! That could be his memories or something you just knocked over!"
Vala is flipping through one of the books. "Nah, it's just about languages and artifacts. Typical Daniel stuff."
Cam takes it away from her and carefully restacks the books. He certainly doesn't want one of the few sane people here going crazy. "Don't touch anything."
They sit there in the library for an unbearably long time. At least now Vala can tell Daniel that his mind was the most boring.
Then the library vanishes to be replaced by a different room. This one's walls are lined with guns and there's a large Peacekeeper symbol painted on the floor.
"This is obviously Aeryn's," Sikozu says.
They all follow Cam's previous directions and don't touch anything. After an indeterminate amount of time standing in the middle of the room, they switch minds. Except this mind is no different from Aeryn's, besides the fact that Aeryn is now present.
Chiana looks at Aeryn. "Who the frell's mind are we in now?"
"It's obviously a Peacekeeper's," Aeryn points out.
"It looks exactly like yours, Aeryn," Sikozu says.
Aeryn shrugs as if to say, yeah so?
"That must mean Peacekeepers found us and we're in their head," Cam says.
John notices something out of place. "Harvey, how'd you get in here?"
"What?" says an extremely confused-looking Harvey.
"Oh shoot, you ain't Harvey."
"Where are we?" Ba'al asks from behind Scorpius.
Moya's crew explains the situation to the villains.
"So now we must be in Braca's mind," John finishes.
Everyone awkwardly stands there.
"This is a great opportunity to frell Braca in the head," Chiana says, eyeing the assortment of guns on the wall.
Scorpius growls menacingly. "I will not let you do that."
Thankfully (for Scorpius anyway) they leave Braca's head at that moment. This time they find themselves in a chaotic mess of a place. Random broken objects cover the floor in a potentially lethal carpet. The occasional sound of something falling and breaking can be heard in the distance.
"I don't even know where to start on this one," Cam says, staying perfectly still lest he skewer his foot on a sharp broken edge.
They figure it out by seeing whose missing.
"It's Vala," Daniel says. He picks up a shiny pearl necklace and nods at it as if it confirms his observation. Then it breaks apart in his hands and the pearls are lost in the mess at his feet.
A very bewildered Braca watches the scene before him uncomprehendingly until Scorpius bothers to fill him in.
"Everyone just be careful," Cam says. "We shouldn't mess this place up any more than it already is."
Daniel wants to laugh at that but realizes he probably shouldn't. He doesn't feel like laughing anymore when a giant shard of broken glass falls out of nowhere and impales him.
Jool screams. Teal'c quickly removes his jacket and presses it to Daniel's bleeding chest. Cam also removes his jacket and shoves it in Jool's mouth before going over to kneel beside Daniel.
"Oh god," he says. "Hang in there, Jackson."
"This is not how…" Daniel coughs. "…not how I envisioned myself dying."
"You might not really die," Cam says. "We don't know yet."
"It sure feels real," Daniel says weakly.
The moment is interrupted when they are forced out of Vala's mind and unceremoniously dumped onto the floor of Command.
Daniel wakes up coughing and clutching at his chest. Cam rushes over, but Daniel is no longer bleeding to death. Cam collapses back to the floor in relief.
An oblivious Vala crawls over to Daniel. "I was right about your mind, Daniel. It was the most boring library ever."
"And I was right about yours," Daniel replies. "I almost didn't survive."
Vala punches him playfully.
"Pilot?" John asks groggily.
"We have exited the strange substance without incident, Commander," Pilot responds.
Daniel snorts and mumbles, "Without incident, my butt."
"Nothing weird happened here?" John asks.
"Apart from all of you falling asleep on the floor at the same time, no," Pilot answers.
Aeryn remembers to ask the important questions. "Is Scorpius on board?"
"No, but I detect a Marauder in the space cloud," Pilot says.
"Good, they can enjoy each others minds," John says. Then he spaces out.
Cam snaps his fingers in front of John's blank face. "You all right, man?"
John returns to reality. "Huh? Oh, yeah. Harvey just wanted me to tell you he wants a rematch in bumper cars."
Cam lies back on the floor to hopefully get that moment of stress-free relaxation he's been wanting all day. "I don't intend to visit your mind again any time soon. Or ever, for that matter."
"Pilot, take us away from here," John says. "And please, no more flying into unidentified substances."
