A/N: An important chapter as we head toward the finish. The chapter gathers themes from the previous chapters and introduces some new angles that will matter as we finish.

Nothing Like A Train

Chapter Eighteen: Lucid Dream

Dark.

Dark. Long dark. And darkness was on the face of the deep. Deep dark. Long, deep dark.

A voice, whether mine or someone else's, I can't tell. God only knows. Chuck not responding. Chuck not responding.

A pinprick of light, a start, a restart.

Light. Let there be...

A flash.

Whether in the body or out of the body, I can't tell. God only knows.

No sound. No buzzing. Just light. And then there was light. A flash.

Light. Unfocused, focusing. Love and pity. Success and failure.

A classroom? A spring day outside. Trees and sunlight. Blue sky. Leaves sway breezily. The trunks of the trees, the bottoms, ringed with five-petaled flowers, blue with a yellow center. Scorpion grass, myosotis scorpioides, Forget-Me-Nots.

Blue, green, blue, yellow. Sunlight and flower-centers.

Stanford.

Focus.

My Stanford poetry professor stalks from side to side of the classroom, interrupting each crossing by standing for a moment at the lectern or writing, her chalk in her hand, on the board. Pulling at her wild mane of hair, thinking so hard it looks painful.

Pity and love. Flashing.

I like this class. A lot. I like her, the professor, odd as she is. She seems like poetry afoot, poetry personified.

But I am not in her class anymore. I am in Russia, near Irkutsk, honeymooning with my love.

I am dreaming of the poetry class. The images are Etch-a-Sketched but colorized. Unreal and real.

A lucid dream.

Failure. Stanford, Burbank, Prague.

Why? — Why am I here? Why does this class...matter? It baffles me, despite the help of poems in the last couple of weeks.

Love and pity. Despair.

From the time I resolved to say no to Sarah in Prague, the class has preyed on my mind, various of the poets mentioned, but particularly Eliot, the poets Eliot admired. What does a poetry class have to do with spying, with computers, with the Intersect?

A poetics of espionage.

And then I realize the lecture addresses my question. To a degree. The professor is talking about C. P. Snow, the British scientist and novelist, and about his book, The Two Cultures.

Snow's two cultures were science and the arts. In his book, he lamented their alienation from one another and tried to bring them together. Unification. One out of two. We read the book, and then we read F. R. Leavis's aggressive response to it, Nor Shall My Sword. Leavis derides Snow's overly simple, tendentious understanding of the two 'cultures' (particularly the arts) and Snow's equally shallow prescription for unification. Leavis' title was a battle-cry, a partial, martial line from William Blake's Jerusalem (the Intersect gives me the lines — or my memory does):

I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In Englands green & pleasant Land.

I embody 'the two cultures'. Literally. I carry them both inside me. Mental fight. Failure and success.

True, other than my poetry class and a few other humanities classes at Stanford, my literary background is more pop, popular, or low, than high culture — but I never cared much about those distinctions, really. A great graphic novel is great art, and so is Jane Austen, and I don't care about the prefixed adjective, pop, or high, or whatever, about whether I buy it at a hubbub comic shop or borrow it from a hushed library.

And I am a software engineer, and I am a software engine, the Intersect. My head is full of code, some I learned and some I uploaded, some I am. Computer languages. The Intersect has added to the mix, to me.

I am two cultures in culture shock.

But I keep coming back — memory, flash, dream — to this poetry class. Why?

This scene, this class, it seems like I have been headed here all along, all this stuff in my head. Flashing.

The professor shifts from the argument between Snow and Leavis and moves to a test case in the poetry of Eliot. Four Quartets. That poem was on my mind in Moscow. It's been with me since.

She reads aloud, jumping passages. Flashing.

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable...

In my beginning is my end...

In my end is my beginning...

She talks about Eliot's central concern with the Incarnation, and with the human capacity creatively to transcend its slavery to place and time.

Incarnation. I am a machine incarnate. The Intersect extends my mind, my understanding, beyond what I could have achieved on my own. I know things I did not learn, make connections among them that draw on data of which I am not, in any ordinary sense, conscious. None of us knows at the moment all that we know, but I am a special case. I know so much more than I know at the moment.

Sarah has helped me but still…

In my beginning is my end…

In my end is my beginning…

The professor stops lecturing or I stop hearing. The classroom begins to darken, then distort, a shirt turned inside-out. I am standing in my room, Burbank, after my party. I hit the button on the computer and images flash.

Troll and nasty knife. Love and pity. Failure and success. Mental fight.

My beginning. Zork.

Bryce.

Bryce sent it to me. Lights flashing. Ending.

Bryce. I see his face, smiling in college, scheming in Burbank, fixed in death. Beginning. Ending.

I am walking to class at Stanford. Sunlight. Sidewalk. Campus bells. A rush of students. Jill is beside me. It is the day I will be accused of cheating. The final day that she will walk beside me. Sunlight flashes.

I turn to Jill and she turns into Sarah, Sarah dancing with me at the club our first night together, smiling at me, moving as only she can move, making me crazy. Beginning. Ending. The lights are flashing, the music playing…

Thump, thump.

...And I am watching the screen at a drive-in, the Intersect being taken from me, Dad's doing. Flashing. Ending. Beginning. Free, just me, only me, not crowded inside, knowing only what I have learned. I see Sarah, later, in a blue dress, electric: "It feels real."

Flashing. Failure. Success.

Bryce dead. Another download. Kung fu. Lights flashing. Ending. Beginning. Mental fight.

Flashing.

So much flashing. Lights flashing. Everything flashing. Flashing.

Sarah. Beginning. Ending. Sarah. Flashing. Everything.

I am walking to the platform at Prague, planning to tell Sarah no. Ending. Beginning. Despair. We board the train and, no station, we disembark…

...Into trees. The woods. Russia. Zariyah prays for us. Beginning. Ending. Flashing.

And then I am somewhere else…The inside-out shirt turned inside-out but not outside-out, another inside-out, another dimension, forgotten...

...A computer screen before me. I punch a button and images flash, slowly. I can't look away. But I don't know what I am seeing. Geodesic designs. Pictures. No semantics, no syntax. The screen is almost at eye-level, and then I realize that I am at its level.

Small. I am small. No, not just small.

Flashing. Beginning. Ending.

Young. A boy. In my dad's office, his computer. I am a boy. Off-limits, trespassing. Curious, so curious.

Beginning. This is the beginning. In the beginning…

Not Bryce. Bryce was an update, years after the origin story. The architecture was already implanted there, there in my dad's office. Off-limits. Trespass. Curious, so curious.

My dad, looking into my face. Afraid, alarmed. And curious, a little curious. But I am fine. It turns out I am fine. I forget all about it, eventually. Dad never mentions it again, even though he watched me carefully for a while. Failure and success.

I have been the Intersect for almost as long as I can remember being me. I just didn't know I was. The difference that night, my birthday party, Zork, was that I came to know myself as the Intersect as the result of it. But I only became what I had already been.

Coming to have the Intersect did not bisect my life at that party: my knowledge that I had it did. Or did a couple of days later.

Flashing. My beginning is my end. My end is my beginning.

I became the Intersect before I became me, at least as I know me. I hardly remember that boy, forgot that day in his life. Forgot him. Put him away. Loss. So much loss. His mom. My mom. Dad soon too. His, mine. Could not be endured, could not be relived. The boy had known too much pain; he had to be left behind. Despair. Flashing. Beginning. Ending. Flashing. Self-love and self-pity. Mental fight.

Flashing. My beginning is my end and vice versa.

Fleming. Fleming's psychology class. I was a good candidate for the Intersect because I had already been a good candidate for the Intersect, but neither Fleming nor Bryce knew that. My fate already sealed. Bryce could not avert that fate, no matter what his motivations. He was too late.

But now, love and...

...Sarah: "Chuck, Chuck, please!"

I hear Sarah pleading. I open my eyes a slit. It takes effort — like I'm working a car jack to do it. I see...Casey. Not who I expected. "Moron, you in there? Blink if you're in there!"

I blink: Casey's face disappears: blink: Sarah's appears. She looks terrified, tired: staring: unblinking. Blue and yellow, eyes and hair. Forget-Me-Not. The center of my everything.

I am caught up into Paradise, the third heaven. How, I can't tell.

Sarah.

The yurt.

I hear Zariyah but can't see her. "I made oats. And coffee. Sarah, my dear, you must eat. It's been hours and hours. The sun is up. Chuck will be well. Your man runs deeper than anyone knows, Sarah."

I reach out to Sarah and touch her face. She puts her hand on mine, soft and warm. "Don't scare me like that again, Chuck. I've lived through you dying twice, a car explosion and a fall, and now a third time. I...we...thought you were gone. You stopped breathing for a minute, stopped moving." I feel her shaking.

I nod. "I'm here."

And for the first time, I believe I understand who I am. I have restarted.

Reboot. Beginning and ending one and the same.

Sarah sits on the bed beside me, holding me close. I am sitting up. Sarah and Zariyah have checked me over and pronounced me okay, although Sarah's look at me when she said it made it clear we will talk later.

Casey looks at the two of us in our bed. He's had time to adjust but he's still adjusting. He's not shocked at us together, on a bed. No, he's shocked at Sarah's lack of self-consciousness about it. At one moment, when she leans in to kiss me, I see him suppress a smile. Sarah's gun is on the table, so he and she must have come to an understanding.

Zariyah is pouring coffee for everyone, humming to herself. I take a cup from her, glad for it. I feel weak and cold but, Sarah beside me, strength and warmth are returning. I need time to reflect, gather myself, mentally as well as physically. I kiss Sarah and she kisses me back.

"I love you, Chuck."

Casey stares at her when she says it, shakes his head subtly in disbelief. He does not disbelieve what she said. He disbelieves that she said it, aloud, there, in front of him, everyone.

I sip coffee and look at Casey. "I assume Sarah and Zariyah know, but what are you doing here, Casey?"

Casey looks at Sarah and she nods. Zariyah brings Sarah a bowl of oats and Sarah takes it, stirs it with the spoon, then gives me a bite. It tastes good and Sarah smiles at me.

"Well, I've given Sarah — and Zariyah — the short version. If you're up to it, I'll give you the long one."

I glance at Sarah. She's waiting for me to answer. "I'm up to it." She spoons up more oatmeal and feeds it to me. I could do it myself, but the strange wonderfulness of Sarah Walker spoon-feeding me while John Casey looks on is too much of a temptation. Zariyah seems to understand what I am doing and she hides a smile behind her hand.

"It took Beckman a while to determine that you had escaped. At first, she thought you'd just decided to tour Prague alone, and so she sent teams to search for you there. That cost her time. It seems that surveillance had been shut down, so she had no way of knowing exactly when you left or where you were headed. I assume you did that?"

I nod.

"So, she was blind. But she was also dumb," Casey pauses, grunts, "she never suspected you would run. When she couldn't find you, she worried that you'd been taken. She called me and asked me if I had heard from you. I told her no.

"She asked about Walker," Casey glances at Sarah, "told me she had not been able to get in touch with her, asked me if I had seen her. I hadn't, but I hadn't thought anything of it." He shrugs heavily. "I was tying up loose ends in Burbank, in Castle. I figured Walker was doing the same. But I went to her place," he glances at Sarah again, "your place, Walker, and the manager said that you had been gone for a few days. I broke in, picked the lock," Sarah's stiffens beside me, "and the place looked the same except for one thing. No suitcase. You really should have bought another one, Walker. I know you. You are where that thing is. If it wasn't in your apartment, you weren't.

"I had an immediate notion," Casey continues, "but I kept Beckman in the dark for a while. I wanted to be sure and to make a decision. I searched the apartment. I didn't find anything. So, I went to the Orange Orange," he makes a disgusted face, "and I dug a napkin out of the soured yogurt with numbers on it. An exchange rate, it turned out, barely legible. I got on the internet and figured out that the rate was the rate for dollars and rubles, days before. There aren't lots of banks in LA that keep rubles on hand in large amounts and you are easy for tellers, especially men, to remember..."

I hear Sarah whisper beside me. "Shit."

"And then I was sure. My notion was right. — I remember Barstow. I understood what happened, and didn't happen, there." I look at Sarah from the corner of my eye and see her blush, drop her chin. "So, I knew, decided," Casey says, "you'd gone to Chuck. Prague. The two of you had run. You were together."

He pauses and takes a breath. "Given what I found, I was sure it must have been to here. To this refrigerator planet." Casey gestures with impassioned annoyance all around us. "Russia." Zariyah coughs.

"By this time, Beckman was calling me again. I didn't tell her I knew anything beyond my suspicion that you two were together. That shut Beckman down for a while, shut her up. But, it turns out she had also discovered the fangs at her own neck, the vipers in the compound. That scientist woman; I forget her name, her assistants."

I supply him with a bit of information, curious about how he will take it. "She hurt me. They did. Experimented on me."

Casey nods, his face angry. "I'm not here to defend Beckman, Chuck. Where you're concerned, she...I…" he looks at Sarah, "all of us have been incapable of...hitting the mark, understanding who and what you are, were."

I grin ruefully. "Me too."

He gives me a puzzled look. "Anyway, Beckman was contrite. Well, as contrite as generals are. She did not authorize what they did to you, and the reports she got minimized or misdescribed the procedures you were...subjected to. And I guess you never said anything?"

"No, I thought it was what she wanted and I wanted...to make it work, to find a way to control the Intersect. I was willing to suffer — if that's what it took."

Casey gives me a frank, admiring look and a quick nod. "Beckman made serious errors and no wonder. She was railroading you, Chuck, trying to make you into something overnight that no one can become immediately. She kept forgetting that the computer in your head needed to be controlled, not that it needed to control you. She just didn't think hard enough about you, about the whole situation. — Hell, I'm not Sarah, but I tried to tell Beckman before she left for Prague that it was Chuck-with-the-Intersect, not the Intersect-with-Chuck. The damn computer has to be the understudy, it can't be the star, because someone — you — has to bear it. Like a cross. Or like that...ring in that stupid movie you made me watch in Burbank. The bug-eyed guy who grunts..er, um...makes funny noises…"

"Gollum?"

"Yeah, that guy. But you're more like...um...Frodo, that was his name, right? And Sarah's sorta...Sam."

Sarah jerks beside me, gasps quietly, and I am unsure why.

I don't look at her, call attention to the fact that I noticed.

I agree with Casey. "Right, Samwise Gamgee. He and Frodo bore the Ring together, in the end, in Mordor. Until Gollum bit…"

Casey holds up his hand. "I remember, Bartowski." I notice that he has the ring finger of the hand bent, the other fingers extended.

"So, I told Beckman I told you so. Generals aren't much better with I-told-you-so's than they are with contrition. But she asked me what I wanted to do. And I told her. I wanted to find you two and make you an offer. A better offer than you've been made so far, Chuck. She let me do it."

I start to ask about the offer, but he waves me off, all fingers of his hand extended this time. "We'll get to that." I can tell Sarah and Zariyah are both curious about it too. Casey hasn't told them that yet.

"You know I knew about Walker before Burbank?" I nod. "Well, her reputation was...um...scary, but, then again, so was mine. You got a glimpse of that on the rooftop that first night.

"I thought I had heard Langley scuttlebutt about Walker in Russia. Just one isolated whisper, but Red things stick with me." He pauses while Zariyah laughs and shakes her head. "So, I asked Beckman if I could see Walker's records." Sarah visibly bristles and Casey leans back a bit, but then Sarah relaxes. "I couldn't find any trace of a mission to Russia. But I still wondered. I didn't tell Beckman what I was looking for, I just asked her if Graham has any sealed, personal records. Turns out he did, and Beckman managed to produce them for me."

Casey takes a moment to swallow loudly. "That file was an...education...even for me, and I've been both a soldier and a spy...But I found what I wanted. Notes of a mission of Walker's to Irkutsk, two missions, actually…"

"Son of a bitch," Sarah whispers, loudly enough for everyone to hear. "He lied to me." She looks at Casey. "He said there were no records."

"Well, there weren't any official ones. But a man like Langston Graham never yields a potential advantage. It made sense to me that you'd come back here, especially since there were no official records that you'd ever been here."

Now I begin to worry. "But if you figured it out, Beckman…"

"Beckman will hold her water. I convinced her that your running proves that she needs to rethink her strategy, her understanding of you, Chuck, and of your relationship to your handler…"

"Don't call me that, Casey…"

"Besides, there are a lot of...Enforcer missions in that file, missions from all over the globe. Gotta say, Walker, you got around."

Sarah lowers her head and I know she checks my reaction to Casey's line. Zariyah sees Sarah's reaction and clears her throat. "And, Mr. Casey?"

Casey shrugs. "And...I don't think the Watchful Eye of Beckman has any particular reason to be looking to Irkutsk."

A second passes before I realize Casey made a Lord of the Rings joke. I laugh belatedly as he goes on although Sarah, looking up, and Zariyah, looking around, are puzzled by my laughter. "I really think she's at the end of her rope. Maybe if the training in Prague looked more promising…or maybe if either of you had proven less hard-headed…" He shrugs again. "So, I came to find you but I took a long way around, used discarded networks, off-the-book contacts. No one followed me. I'm sure of that. But I'm also sure that the Ring is still looking. Beckman can't find the scientist or her assistants. Contacts have told me people are looking."

"What does Beckman say about Sarah? Is she rogue?"

"No. For now, Beckman has her listed as in deep cover. No one's missed her, except in Burbank."

"How's Ellie?"

"I haven't seen her much, but okay. Last I knew she still bought the story you told her when you went with Beckman. — Have you contacted her?"

I look at Sarah. She answers. "Yes, we have. But she doesn't know where we are."

Casey grunts. "Good. If she got worried, that woman could raise a stink that would blow clear to DC. I'm sure she can keep a secret."

"So, Casey, what's this offer of Beckman's?"

I'm now sure that Sarah has yet to reveal the Intersect work we've done, the degree of control I have over it. I can tell that my 'episode' has her worried. I should have told her about the headaches. And I wonder about her reactions to my conversation with Casey.

"Beckman says that if you come back, Sarah may come with you and stay with you. No more handler/asset. You decide how your training should go. Hell, her exact words were — 'Who's going to have any luck with him if he doesn't want to cooperate? I never have and we're on the same side.'" Casey chuckles, a low rumble. "You can bring Orion in if you want. In effect, you get to decide what becomes of you, Bartowski. If it works out that you end up wanting to help her, well, that'd be great. Of course, she's hoping for that. But she owes you for two years of your life, and for what happened to you in Prague, under her nose. Still, you don't have to come back."

"If? — So, she's risking me telling her to just go to hell?" The pent anger in my voice surprises everyone, including me.

Casey nods one time.

"Do you trust her, Casey?"

He narrows his eyes in response to Sarah's question. "I believe she meant it when she said it. But I wouldn't go back without guarantees. She's a general. 'Expediency' is her middle name. You need guarantees, not from Beckman, but ones you put in place yourself — if that's possible."

Sarah looks at me and I look at her. She knows I trust her with my life.

Sarah gets up from the bed and walks to the table. She opens the atlas and carries it to me. It's open to South America. "Choose a country or region, Chuck. Fill Casey in on the last thirty years, if you're up to it?" She sits down on the bed again.

I put my finger on Colombia and start the recitation, the Intersect and I speaking as one, my earlier anger still clipping my tone.

When I finish, Casey marvels at me. Sarah puts her hand on my forehead. "Are you still feeling okay, Chuck?"

I nod but then add, "My head's beginning to hurt a little." The pain's not nearly as bad as when I collapsed but it's bad.

Sarah stands up. "I need you and Casey to take a walk, Zariyah. Chuck and I need to talk."

Casey is shaking his head as he and Zariyah bundle up and head out into the snow. When they close the door, Sarah turns to face me. "What's going on with your head, Chuck?" She wants to be mad, but she's too worried to do it.

I look at her. "There are some things I need to tell you, some...old...and some new but all news."

She sits beside me. "Me too," she says, her voice slightly shaky, "but you first, Chuck."

I give her a tentative grin, rubbing my temple with one hand. "What I'm about to tell you...came to me in a dream…"

A/N: Thoughts?

Some of you will recognize that the Intersect is quoting scripture again, or Chuck is, or his dream is. The opening of Genesis but also 2 Corinthians 12. I think most of the other quotations are identified.

A puzzle in the show is that after the reboot, and the defeat of Shaw, the show never reckoned with the backward-flowing changes of significance the reboot entailed. It was used as a convenience, a quick way out of some of the particular troubles with the Intersect Chuck was having. But it shifted the show's centers of weight. The whole first season has to be recontextualized, for example, particularly the early episodes, since everyone involved misunderstood what was actually happening, misunderstood it as Chuck's first time with the Intersect: but it wasn't. I do some recontextualizing here, and I will do some more of it as we finish, but I don't aim to do it all.

Thanks to LetsGoRed, Beckster1213 and Neil Horne for pre-reading.