2. The Inexorable Effects of Gravity
Her dad said that Jack was the son of a friend, that he went to her school and that she could get rides home with him. Of course, the entire scenario rests on the assumption that Jack is just that nice of a guy with nothing better to do. Amy knows it's a setup. That somehow her dad has contrived this little thing.
At first, she's reluctant. It's the shame of it. To think her dad has paid or begged or somehow threatened this guy into being nice to her. That she's no longer capable of having friends on her own merits.
He tries to be nice, he says 'hi' whenever he sees her, even sometimes walks with her. He offers rides. She turns down his kindness. Doesn't take rides from him. She braves the horrifying school bus, with the other kids who don't understand her and only know she's "special". Sometimes they ask her questions, she can't answer. They think she's deaf. Just as well, it isn't like she wants to hear them anyway. They throw things at her sometimes or trip her in the aisle. Because they can.
Then one day, one of the special-ed kids throws paint on her favorite shirt and she's so involved trying to wash out the paint in the bathroom that she misses her bus. She doesn't know what to do. She still has her cellphone, but it's about as useful as submarine with a screen door at this point in her life.
She figures she can walk it. Only, she didn't notice it raining outside. A big, fat, freezing rain that was supposed to be snow, but it heated up just enough to be water.
Amy pulls her hood up, starts walking. It doesn't take long to get soaked to the bone and start shaking.
Then a big black truck pulls up next to her. A window rolls down and there's Jack.
"Hey, Amy," he calls to her, a smile on his face. "Hop in."
Amy looks around. It's just cold enough to make her think underhanded little thoughts like what the hell and it's a lot warmer in there, and he could keep going if he wanted, maybe he does at least really feel sorry for me.
She's a straight-A student sitting in special ed, she's lost the ability to speak, and hey if people want to take care of her and give her things like pity and free rides, she might as well let them.
Amy lets Jack take her home that day. And the next day. And the day after that.
Then that's when Jack gets interesting. He listens to old people music and for some reason, seems a little more interested in being nice to her than he should be even for someone who's probably getting something out of the whole deal. He makes it a point to pick her up like clockwork. He asks about her day and reads what she writes at the stoplights, puts the paper on the wheel and holds it there with his thumb like the clip on a clipboard
Everything he does, he does like he knows what he's doing. He drives and maneuvers in between cars in traffic like he's been doing it his whole life. Even his little gestures, all look like he's an old hand at something. Life, maybe. He's comfortable. That's the best way to put it. He's comfortable and well worn and broken in.
It takes maybe two weeks before it's her new routine. And maybe Jack's being paid, but there's something about him. He's funny, he's not like anyone else, he talks like he's seen things, been places, met people.
Like he's got more to say, but isn't saying it, can't say it. She understands that.
Eventually, she even gets permission to stay at Jack's house so she doesn't have to be home alone until her parents – usually mom, because dad keeps the screwiest hours – get home.
She's never seen or heard Jack's parents anywhere. His apartment looks like he's the only one who lives there. But she doesn't ask, because it's enough that she gets to come there and hang out and feel semi-normal.
It's not her old life, but Amy runs with it.
And in a while, she finds that the days have settled down. Life is regular as the tide again.
The teacher's aide brings her the work from the regular teachers and
then they work on it, all the while trying to teach her sign language
as a by-product of their efforts. She signs her answers and the
teacher's aide writes them down.
Amy wonders if they think she's actually doing her own work anymore.
She's getting good at ASL, but nobody she cares to communicate with is.
Her dad's really making an effort. Her mom, for the most part, relies
on the notepad that's around Amy's neck. Every day that he's home, poor
determined dad sits down and tries to learn the new signs for the day.
So far he can tell Amy hello and that is name is Dave and when he
really works at it he can tell her that he wants eggs, bread, the
telephone. Although, to his credit, he's kind of fascinated with the
TTY phone in their house and knows how to use it. But that's because
it's a mechanical thing and that's what dad does all day.
All
of which makes it even more frustrating because Amy is pretty much
fluent in sign language. She's not sure when it happened, but now when
the sign language interpreter comes, all she has to learn is the sign
for a word. She knows how to use it. How to stand backwards to show
past tense, how get the mood and subtext of her meaning across.
She doesn't remember anyone teaching her that either. It just sort of sprouted in her brain, like an unknown weed.
Still, it doesn't help to know a language nobody knows.
Hence her mother being practical and buying her a notepad that can hang around her neck.
So that's the rhythm of life. School, Jack, home. It's a nice rhythm. Kinda upbeat, really.
Just when Amy starts getting really comfortable with her new normalcy,
she starts dreaming the dreams again. Dreams that are like the things
she saw when she had the fever, when she spoke in tangled sentences and
tried to tell her dad about what was in the mountain and water that
could take you away.
This time, though, there's no fever and
neural break down to cloud her visions. They're clear like purified
water, like brand new glass.
Her dreams, truly, are like movies.
They have very little to do with her. They're there in her brain and
she's the audience and it plays out before her like some indie sci-fi
flick.
Amy thinks she can deal, if they're only dreams.
Besides, they're not really disturbing. In the day, they leave her
alone. So hey, she watches movies in her brain at night. She gets her
8-hours, she wakes up rested and refreshed.
And life goes on. School, Jack, Home. Like the thud, thud, thud of a resting heartbeat.
Still, Amy's beginning to get the feeling that something is impending. Something is waiting, there's another weed in her brain that hasn't sprouted all the way. It's an overall mood that the world takes. She gets out of school and somehow, she feels like she might not have to go back.
Every day suddenly is a lot like Friday even when it's not.
Then it is Friday, a couple of weeks after the dreams start.
Jack
comes to get her in his truck after school. And they're riding along
when Amy gets a flash of the dream she had the night before.
It's like reality shorts out.
Jack is talking and he doesn't notice Amy, because he's really on about
something. Something about an English assignment he really needs Amy's
help on.
Then it feels like someone is stabbing her behind the
eyes. She grabs her head and the world spins. It's all coming back, a
movie on fast forward with fast, high voices spiraling, spiraling
towards the end.
The city under attack and the horrible monsters
with teeth – Wraith they're Wraith that's their name – putting their
hands to the people, sucking years off their life, they die old men at
twenty and nothing can stop them. The bright round doors of water, and
the brightness of those who left. They're asleep, but won't stay
asleep. Sharp teeth like they have braces that are too big when they
close their mouths and they speak of hunger.
The nausea makes her sweat. She can't look out the window for fear of the motion making her sicker.
She reaches over and grabs Jack.
"Huh?" he says, looking over.
And Amy beats on the dashboard.
"Are you okay?"
Amy is still grabbing her head, rocking, breathing funny, and she shakes her head no.
So he pulls over and the minute the truck is stopped, Amy darts out of
the car and barely makes it to the first tree she sees before she gets
sick.
Eventually she can't even stand and she drops to her knees.
She gags until there's nothing left.
And even then she keeps gagging.
Jack holds her hair and rubs her shoulder.
"It's okay, just take deep breaths. I'm gonna take you to the base, this is gonna be alright. Just take deep breaths."
He says it in a way that she's never heard before. Not in the
hopeless-doctor lost-dad kind of way, the way that makes her know that
if she does live it's a miracle. He says it like it's true.
So
for a moment, she believes. It's hard not to. That's just how Jack is.
He's got some kind of personal gravity that she can't help getting
caught up in.
Then finally, the wave passes. She staggers to her feet and Jack helps her into the truck.
Jack keeps looking over at her, checking. Amy feels like she's coming
unraveled, slowly, like the loose thread in a sweater. Getting pulled
away from everything.
The rumble of the car puts her to sleep. She can still see the movie in her head, but it's fading. It's like someone's injected a massive dose of pain pills – like the kind dad always has – right into her.
The car rumbles, Jack talks. Rumble, mumble, whisper.
ItsokayjustbreathewerealmostthereAmystaywithmeAmystaywithme.
Rumble, rumble, Jack, whisper, whisper.
Sleep.
--------Sam
is the first that comes to Jack while he waits to see what the doctors
say about Amy. After Amy got sick, she slept in his truck. He kept
talking to her, even though he was pretty sure she was unconscious.
He couldn't wake her up when they got to the base. A medical team had
to come and get her. Jack heard Siler being paged. And Siler was
confused when he got to the infirmary – because he wasn't hurt - until
he saw Jack.
Then he put it all together.
Before Jack could explain, apologize, stutter, or speak, Dr. Carmichael grabbed Siler and took him somewhere.
So Jack is in the waiting area. None of SG-1 even knows he's here, but Sam eventually wanders by.
She sits down next to Jack and for a long time, they say nothing.
"What happened?" she asks.
"She was in my truck, suddenly she started grabbing her head, I pulled
over, she got sick, we came here, she wouldn't wake up, and now I'm
talking to you."
"And you're sticking around to see how she is?"
"Of course."
"You like her?"
"She's seventeen, Carter."
"I know, but so are you."
"She's a good kid, but she's a kid."
"Oh, a good kid."
"Yes, Carter. And I hate to see this happen to her. Amy's been through enough."
"Amy?"
"What else am I supposed to call her?"
Carter is smiling too much for Jack to think it's over. She walks away
anyway. How was it he never noticed that about her? All these years and
he never knew what a know-it-all Carter was. Okay, he did know, but he
didn't think that she could be so smug about it.
The things you don't notice until you're a sixteen-year-old clone.
An hour later Siler comes out and says that Amy's EEG, PET, and CT
scans show some abnormalities, and they're going to keep her for a few
days.
Siler tries to tell Jack to go home. Poor guy even offers
gas money, because he's just so grateful Jack is taking care of her,
that she's got something like a friend and that maybe she was beginning
to get something like a life back.
So what if he arranged for his mute daughter's new best friend to be the teenage clone of his former boss. It worked. Because Amy's a good kid and Jack's got a mission.
The idea of accepting a dollar for all of it, really, really burns at Jack. Hurts, even. He refuses to take the money.
He refuses to leave. His otherself has to march down there, stand over
him, and tell him things involving national security and Amy's well
being to make him leave.
--------
All the time that Amy's at the mountain, being examined by doctors and neurologists, she has flashes of things. Not like the world-stopping vision she'd had in Jack's truck, but more like gently tuning out reality for a moment to remember something pleasant.She tunes out a lot at the mountain.
She's remembering - or seeing rather, because she hasn't seen it before and therefore can't remember it - a large stone ring with electric water in the middle that's neither electricity nor water.
Slowly things come to her.
But the big revelation is when she puts the stone ring and the word 'stargate' together in a coherent thought. When she figures out what's going on.
The name stargate gives it all away. Somehow this stone ring takes people somewhere involving stars. Probably other planets. It explains why they took her to the base infirmary as opposed to a hospital. The virus that nearly killed her was alien.
It all becomes so clear.
The sickness, her dad's injuries, the weird stories on the news, the very strange conversation with General O'Neill about remembering things. This is it, this is what she wasn't supposed to remember.
The Stargate.
Even as the crest of discovery and accomplishment rises, it crashes.
The other shoe, the fact that the military and the government have kept this secret, drops down like a two ton anvil.
She knows something she is never supposed to find out. The most
powerful government on Earth is obviously determined to keep it a close
secret. Maybe other governments are involved.
Right about now, she should be calling her dad, telling him that she knows. She promised General O'Neill that she would.
Then, for no reason, she thinks about Jack. About the fact that her life will no longer be school, Jack, home if she tells. School sucks, home is awkward at the best of times, but Jack isn't.
The idea of life without Jack is kind of empty. Because he's pretty much all she's got left, friend-wise. He's the only person who knows how to listen, now that Amy's got so much to say.
Amy curls up underneath the blankets and asks herself the question. Can she keep the secret? She lays there and stares at the wall and realizes that it's not that hard. She can lay there and not tell anyone and hey, it isn't like she's going to blurt the secret on the news – she can't – so not a problem.
Okay, well, now she has secrets. And secrets can't be as bad as dealing with the loss of her school, her friends, her voice, and her life.
Besides, she kind of has the right to keep any secret she wants. What's happened to her, it's their fault. She's not sure how or why, but if they hadn't been doing what they were doing, she wouldn't have gotten sick.
She'd be at home doing homework, she'd be with Lacey, Jessica, and Sarah at the mall, she'd be on the telephone, maybe a party tonight.
They took her voice and her life and so she's going to take their secret. It's nowhere near fair, but hey, Amy's over the whole "not fair" thing.
Knowing she's going to be spending her entire weekend in the mountain, she curls up and she sleeps, and dreams of Egyptian pyramids. She dreams of deserts. She dreams of snakes that crawl inside of people and talk with their voices. and always, there is the Stargate. She dreams of a bright city, emerging from the sea. She dreams of the dead rising to become bright lights.
Eventually, all her scans come back normal. So Sunday morning they let her go. The nice blonde lady, who's a colonel (which is kind of impressive, because Amy didn't think there were any women colonels anywhere) comes and talks to her for a few moments.
Tells her that Jack didn't leave until Saturday afternoon.
Amy smiles at her. It makes her feel very, very warm. Maybe she's not Jack's chore anymore. Maybe she's his friend.
When Amy finally goes home, the dreams keep coming. It begins to
frighten her. She's dreamt of the Stargate for several nights. Each
morning she wakes up feeling less and less connected to the world. She
feels lost.
She drifts through her days, and wants to scream
because nobody notices it. Her parents don't even suspect that there's
something different. She doesn't try to write or sign much anymore, and
there doesn't seem to be anyone who pays attention to her moods now
that she can't talk about it.
Except Jack. He's starting to
notice. He's said something. She shrugged and merely wrote that she was
still feeling a little tired.
Amy wants to hug Jack for not
buying it, for looking her in the eye and paying attention. Most people
who try to talk to her end up having entire conversations with
themselves, because she's not there to stop them and make them listen
to her voice. But with Jack, sometimes, he doesn't speak for minutes at
a time, because he's reading or watching her sign.
He actually
treats her like she's part of the conversation. Which is why he knows
her little excuses are such crap. But, he's Jack, and he's cool enough
to let it go and get out the chess board and asking her to do his
English homework, because he just doesn't get Shakespeare and she does.
He does her math, because it's only fair and he likes it better.
If Amy didn't fear what the government would do, she'd tell Jack about
the Stargate. Just to hear what he'd say. Maybe just to see if she
could goad him into the use of the word "honkin'". That's Jack's word.
Honkin'. Big honkin' Stargate.
Yeah, she definitely wants to hug Jack.
She's also starting to feel the need to find the Stargate. And go through it. It itches, like a nearly-gone rash. Small enough so that she can ignore it, but she's never really at peace.
Any down time in her day,
waiting in a line at lunch, the five minutes before the bell rings,
moments when she's not focused are all spent thinking about the
Stargate.
Then, one night, when the winter has finally settled
in, Amy dreams of the stargate and a dialing pedestal next to it. Only,
she dreams of it in detail. She touches all the crystals and somehow,
it all fits together in her brain. She understands what the crystals
are for and how they work. It fits like puzzle pieces and round pegs in
round holes and a really great pair of jeans.
It's knowledge she doesn't even have to try for. Because it's like language, like walking, like tying her shoes.
She understands how the Stargate works.
She understands the event horizons and the wormholes the stargate
creates. She understands the symbols. They're stars, keys to plotting a
course to another planet. Six stars will take you there, and the
seventh will tell the stargate where you've come from. Point of origin.
Plot points. Everything is grid, a lattice, a matrix in her head.
A woman with strange tangles for hair and a ratty patchwork looking
dress, with a pale, kind face appears before the Stargate and curls her
fingers in a come hither motion.
In her dream, Amy talks to the woman. In her dream, she still has her voice.
It's disturbing enough to wake her up.
She wakes up sobbing, because in her dream she had a voice. It hurts for a moment, to remember her own voice.
She sobs for a long time, hating how quiet she is, that even if she
wanted to try, she couldn't scream or sing or speak. Even her crying is
just breathy sounds. She never realized how much she used her voice.
She tries, she opens her mouth wide and tries to force air through, but
nothing happens.
Finally she gives up and lays diagonally with her feet on the pillows, and sobs. Contemplates ending it all.
Death isn't what she wants. It's too frightening, the thought of being permanently lost.
What she wants is to scream, and go through the Stargate.
She sleeps again and the woman that she talked to in her first dream appears.
Shapes light up on the round podium and the woman says to her, "Follow me. Remember the stars and follow me."
She goes through the event horizon that ripples like the surface of a lake and then it dries up.
Amy remembers the stars. She even writes them down.
The rest of the night she spends trying to decide who to tell. She
knows that even if she did tell her dad, he'd only turn the information
over to the government, over to General O'Neill. Who would probably
just talk at her for a long time and she's probably be sworn to secrecy.
And of course, the big punishment of No Jack. No chess games, no doing laundry in his basement, perched on the dryer, tapping him with a broom every time he recited Shakespeare wrong.
It wasn't like they'd say "okay, you can go through the Stargate. Be our guest."
Under no circumstances would her dad let his daughter, his "disabled" daughter, go to another planet.
Especially since Amy thinks she wouldn't be coming back.
So it's time to tell Jack, and hope that he can understand.
Something's gotten into her.
So when they're on their daily drive back to his place, with snow coming down around them and Jack driving very slow, he asks her.
"So, anything new?"
Amy nods, and smiles at him.
"What, is there a guy?" Jack asks and makes himself not pay attention to the hundreds of bad feelings that happen when he thinks about Amy with another guy. A teenage guy. So he thinks of other things that are happy making. Less queasy happy things. "You make an a? Win a contest? Get some money? Come on, spill," he urges.
Amy just keeps smiling mysteriously.
"Tell you what, we'll play chess. Winner spills all."
She agrees with a nod and a smile. Jack drives against a battering of snow and once they're in his apartment, they get out the chess board. Only, before Jack can make the first move, Amy stops him. She goes to get a folder out of her backpack and gives it to him.
Jack opens it and the first thing he sees is a Stargate address. His eyes go wide. His heart skips one, two, three beats. His head is on his neck, nodding like a bobble doll's head. And if the floor weren't concrete, his chin would be in the basement because that's just how wide open his mouth is.
"Where did you get this? Who told you?" he asks, closing the folder.
Amy opens the notepad from around her neck and writes: you know what they are?
For a moment Jack looks like he's debating. "Maybe. Tell me where you got them."
She scribbles quickly. DON'T tell anyone. I dreamed it.
Jack
opens the folder again and she waits while he browses through. There
are five pages worth of 7 and 8 coordinate stargate addresses, and
piece of paper that's folded four times just so it will fit in the
folder, he sees plans for a stargate.
"Your dreams told you how to make a Stargate?"
How did you know?
Jack looks away for a second, because he can't make this decision staring Amy in the face.
He's still Jack. Maybe he's a teenager, maybe his entire life is gone, but he's still Jack. And he still knows the score. He should call the SGC, Siler, maybe even his other-self and report this. If she knows, if she's going around toting information that you normally need the Security Clearance of God to see, then somebody needs to be told.
Because so many things could go so horrible, terribly, unfortunately wrong.
Only, he looks up at her and some little thought in his brain undoes all his cautious military thinking. Hey, things have already gone wrong. You're a teenager and she's got no voice.
"Who else were you planning on showing this to?" asks Jack.
Just you.
"Why me?"
You listen to me. How do YOU know?
"I just know, okay?"
Amy doesn't have to write anything down for Jack to know that it's not okay.
"It's a long story. If you know so much about the Stargate, then you know why it has to be a secret. Why didn't you tell someone at the base about all this, about what you've been seeing? This could really help them, you know."
Amy throws down her pencil and gets in his face and takes his jacket in her hands and shakes him and when he's gotten her arms immobilized because her wrists are locked in his hands, she mouths 'They. Won't. Listen."
"What?"
Amy shakes her head and tugs her wrists away. Jack lets her go. She grabs her pencil from the floor and scribbles, in frantic fast words. They won't listen. They won't let me help. I have to do this. They won't let me. THEY WON'T LISTEN. YOU WILL.
"Okay, so I listen, then what?"
Help me.
"Help you?"
I need the Stargate.
"Woah! Back up. You want to go through the Stargate? There's no way in hell your dad, let alone the air force would even consider it. Ever. No way. It's impossible. Cannot be done."
Build our own.
Jack starts coughing. Nothing is going down the right tube, because all
the air is being sucked out and his head is full of helium and wow, did
she just write that?
"You realize that these things were built
by an advanced race a long long time ago, right? We still don't fully
understand it and the brightest minds on earth have been dissecting it
for almost a decade. And you think we can just build one. Out of what? My toaster oven?"
Other things. Not nakwada. I can do it.
"You misspelled naquadah, by the way. And where are we going to get
'other things'? Some of these addresses you're using have eight
coordinates. That takes so much more power, I mean, the SGC can't even
do it. There's no way we can do this. This is nuts, this is insane. Like I said, it's impossible. There's no way to make this work."
I have to do this.
"Why do you have to go through the Stargate? Do you have any idea how
dangerous it is? Because trust me, I know how dangerous it can be.
Really."
How?
Jack sighs. So much for planetary security and classified information. Yeah, somehow, someway, this conversation's gone to pot. Amy's managed to drag everything out of him except his life story, and he still has no idea what she wants or why.
"Because the Stargate is the reason I'm like this. You know why you don't see any parents around here? I don't have any. I'm not sixteen. I'm almost fifty. I'm not what I look like. About a year ago, an alien, from a race called the Asgard – that's an even longer story – decided to clone me and copy my entire consciousness into a clone body. Only, he screwed the pooch and instead of being a copy of myself, I ended up with the body of a fifteen year old. So here I am, with no life, no job, stuck in high school, and all because of the Stargate, okay? So you think losing your voice was bad. People have died because of the Stargate, all right. Died. On a regular basis. It's dangerous out there. We have enemies. Enemies with big honkin' ships that want to take over your brain and your planet and for the love of god, believe me when I say, I know that what you're asking is impossible."
Who did you used to be?
"I used to be Colonel Jack O'Neill."
Amy narrows her eyes. General O'Neill?
"Yeah, well, the other guy got promoted. Me, I'm still Jack O'Neil with one 'L' and two years 'til graduation."
Amy stares at him, really, really stares like she's trying to see the old guy in his face.
"I'll start to look a lot more like him when I get about twenty and grow a mullet," he assures her, sitting on the arm of the couch.
Amy still stares, but she looks hurt on his behalf. Her whole face is soft and round. Round, sad eyes, round sad mouth. She, perhaps more than anyone else, understands the loss of self.
She starts to write, slowly.
I need this. Have to find who made the virus.
Jack
stares at the words on the little piece of light blue paper. He holds
the notebook that's around her neck. Contemplates the weight of it, the
weight of everything. She stands there and waits, lets him hold the
notebook and seems so patient with him.
"You think they can give you your voice back, don't you?"
She nods softly, like maybe she hadn't wanted to confess that at all.
Jack cocks his head and looks very deep at her like maybe she's a clone
of someone he used to know. All he sees is soft-eyed Amy, who knows his
pain and plays chess with him. "You really think you can do this?"
Again, she nods. He looks down at the folder, staring at the gate
addresses and the pencil drawn plans for a stargate. Lists of materials
they need.
"What about your family, Amy?"
Amy turns her head a little and takes in a hard breath. I need this. They don't need me anymore. There's trouble. I have to stop it.
All this time he'd envied his old-self, and hated his life, hated being
trapped in high school, trapped in a place he didn't belong. All this
time, he'd been sitting on the bench, permanently red-shirted out of
his life.
So was she.
And now, here she is, offering him a new missing, a new purpose. Offering him the Stargate.
It's insane, thinking a couple of teenagers could build a Stargate and go through it.
But Jack figures neither of them are really teenagers, that they've
gone so far past being normal or teenagers that it doesn't matter if
their ages haven't caught up.
It's this or stay on Earth and
malinger through their lives with the added bonus of being completely
unable to pretend there wasn't another way.
He has to do it. Even if it means trusting Amy blindly.
The mute leading the blind.
So what if he's blind, he figures. She's got the vision to take them
both where they need to be. And if there's a wormhole involved, well,
it won't be his first.
So, they decided to do it.
It wasn't a hard decision, once all the secrets had come spilling out.
Amy dreamed dreams every night, kept adding addresses and other things to the growing rag tag folder full of information about the Stargate.
Everyday he thought about calling the SGC and turning it all over. Everyday, he didn't, because every time he went through it, a list started forming in his head. A list of what needed to be done.
It was like a briefing almost, having Daniel or Carter lay out their idea and Jack thinking to himself how he could make it happen.
A real, honest-to-god mission. Illegal, off the books, likely to fail miserably, but that also describes quite a big chunk of his former career, so on balance, it's not so bad.
The first issue is money. Jack considers getting a job, but a part-time minimum wage will not bankroll a Stargate. Jack starts selling things off on E-Bay. Clothes, furniture, his toaster. Anything to bring in money. Amy starts selling jewelry and some of her old clothes and stuffed animals. But never enough to make her parents notice.
Jack's apartment slowly becomes empty. He has no toaster, no dishes, the guest bedroom is completely emptied out. The bed, the dresser, everything. Gone. But that's fifteen hundred dollars they've got.
In three weeks, they've scraped together enough money so they can buy most of the smaller parts that they need.
They build what they can outside, but some pieces are big and have to be put together outside and then covered. So they build in the woods that stretch out for about a mile behind Jack's apartment.
After a while there are chunks of a stargate, of conductors and wires, metal boxes scattered all over the woods like a plane wreck.
Eventually, Jack gets bold enough and uses his old identity to apply for a credit card. He gets a gold card with an unlimited balance and orders like crazy. It's amazing what a person can do with a gold card and a crazy idea. Sure, his otherself is going to have horrible credit when all is said and done, but hey, it's for the good of the human race.
Jack tries not to let on that it amuses him as much as it does.
They both, however, have to be careful not to act differently. It's so easy to let their homework slide, because they know it won't matter. They're above and beyond the system. They're exempt from life.
They can fail school, rob a bank, anything. Because in a few weeks, if all goes well, they're going to be millions and millions of miles away.
Only, Jack's done this too long to think that there's not going to be consequences. Complications. He's doing it and every day doesn't believe how far they've gotten.
Eventually, the complications come.
It's Tuesday. He goes to pick Amy up and she's no where to be found. It's snowing furiously, and he thinks maybe she stayed inside. So he parks in the fire lane and goes looking for her.
He searches down by the special-ed classes.
It's 3:55 type quiet, so quiet that he jumps when he hears something shatter inside the girl's bathroom. He doesn't even stop to ask himself if he should go on.
That's where he finds her, staring at the shattered mirror with the silver pieces in the sink and all over the floor. The look on her face, with her eyes wide and her mouth hanging tells him she might well have left the building, that maybe nobody's behind the wheel, the lights are on, but Amy's on vacation, gone fishing, out to lunch. The king has left the building, folks.
"Amy?"
She turns to look at him. And she's wearing that same shell-shocked expression. Yeah, there's definitely a vacancy in Amy's head.
"What happened?"
Amy starts to back away. Jack doesn't understand. Amy backs up until she runs into the wall and sinks down. She covers her ears and rocks back and forth frantically. She's mouthing something, but going to fast for Jack to read her lips.
"Amy?"
She closes her eyes. Jack steps over the broken glass and stands over her.
"Amy, I don't know what's going on, and it's kind of obvious you can't talk about it right now, but I think we need to go. Okay?"
Amy nods, picks herself up and they leave. On the ride there, Amy sits in the front seat of Jack's truck, just staring. She looks catatonic.
Suddenly, she covers her eyes. Then she scrambles around the cab of the truck, opening the glovebox, checking the cupholders on the console. Looking for something. She reaches back and sees Jack's backpack. She grabs it clumsily and takes out the first notepad she can find and the first pencil.
She starts writing frantically. So much so that she uses the last of the pencil lead and gets a pen and keeps going. She's three pages into writing by the time they get to the apartment.
Amy doesn't quit writing for a couple of hours. She uses up an entire subject in Jack's notebook and when she quits, it's like she's finished some kind of masterpiece. She stares down at it and has her head in her hands.
Jack sits next to her. He turns the notebook to a clean page in the next section and puts then pen on top of it.
"Start from the beginning. Take your time."
Amy nods and picks up the pen again.
Virus made me different. Made me like them. I broke the mirror but didn't touch it.
"Egar and Woden," Jack murmurs. Amy looks at him with a question in her expression. "On a mission, this Goa'uld, Nurty, she was trying to create superior human or hockers, hockeyters or something like that. They were telepathic, telekinetic."
Amy nods and scrubs her face. Tired. Stuck on the Stargate. We need help.
"I was thinking the same thing, actually," Jack says. "I'll take you home. You need rest, kiddo."
No. I can do this.
"It's been a rough day. We both need a break."
Please don't give up. Need you to do this.
"We're not giving up. We're taking a break so we don't have to."
Amy relents. She gets her coat and is dragging back to Jack's truck. Once he's back home, Jack stares at the phone.
The thought of talking to himself, talking to the bastard who's walking around wearing his body and doing his job bites at him. The bastard who's got not one tiny shred of sympathy, because of course, god forbid anyone should be an affront to his existence.
And he sits down on his futon/sofa which the replacement for the leather couch he used to have. He stares at the words Amy wrote. He's got a whole notebook full of her words. He can store their conversations any time he likes. Open it up and there's Amy, even when she's gone.
It takes two days to screw his courage together, but on the second day, when he looks at that page, still staring up at him because he can't take his notebook to school, he decides it's not worth wasting everything Amy's been through.
He sighs and picks up the phone and calls his otherself.
He's a little amazed that he's actually at his desk.
"General O'Neill speaking."
"General O'Neill. Hmm. Has a nice ring," Jack taunts his otherself.
"Mini-me?"
"Jack actually. Jack O'Neil. One 'L'. There's another one, with two
L's. He's kind of a shrug. Just pretend I'm another person named Jack."
"Is there something wrong? You're not in jail are you?"
"No, just high school. Look, I just need someone to give me a number where I can reach Major Davis."
"Why would you need to talk to Davis, if you don't mind me asking?"
"I do mind and none of your damn business. Either you give me the
number or you don't. In which case I'll be forced to call Carter. You
know she thinks I'm cute, right? And hey, no regs. Wonder how she feels
about younger men, although technically I'm not. But you know, there's
something to be said for stamina."
"All right, jesus! Could you please not talk about Colonel Carter like that?"
"Whatever. Are you gonna give me the number or not?"
"Fine. Let me find it."
A few moments of indiscriminate grunting later, Jack listens as his
other self scrolls off the number of both Major Davis's cellphone, home
number, and work number with the caveat, "I don't know what you think
he's going to be able to do for you. They've got him babysitting
physicists right now. It's not like they're letting him do anything
important."
"Exactly," Jack says, smiling smugly wishing that
he could see the look on other-Jack's face. "Oh, and uh, say hi to T
and Daniel for me."
He hangs up and waits until after office
hours to call Paul, who is fascinated with the idea of talking to Jack
O'Neill's 16-year-old otherself.
"I'd heard what happened, but wow. Sir, this is..."
"Weird, I get it. I heard they have you babysitting physicists right now."
"After what happened with Prometheus and the meeting with the Asgard,
they decided I needed to be transferred. I'm still the liaison, I'm
just doing a lot less with the SGC and a lot more with the Pentagon.
Another year of this and I'll be ready to retire."
Jack looks
up to the ceiling and mouths 'thank you!', because there's no way it's
all coincidence, that everything is falling so perfectly into their
laps for no reason.
The Stargate wants them. It can't be
anything but that. The Stargate wants them, the universe wants them and
it's laying down a lovely little yellow brick road to lead them out.
"Interesting you should mention that, Major. Because I might have a chance for you to do something you've always wanted."
"Be on SG-1?"
"Something like it."
"Sir, no offense, but last I heard you were working towards a high school diploma."
"Consider it my day job."
"And your night job?"
"You're either in now or you're not. You squeal and it's over. First,
it's not illegal – technically, and secondly, it's for the good of the
planet. So, can I trust you?"
"You realize what you're suggesting to me, sir. Over the phone?"
"I wouldn't come out into the open like this unless I had something big and I was really, really desperate. I'm saving the planet here, Paul."
"We're talking about my job, my life. Why would I do this?"
"Fine, spend the rest of your career watching other people go through the Stargate while you shuffle papers and supervise scientists. You know what it's like out there. You can't tell me you didn't want to do it again."
"Well, sticking with my current job seems to be a better route."
"You really think you're ever going to get through the 'gate at the SGC again? I'm telling you that you've got options, if you're willing make some sacrifices."
Jack hears him sigh, hears the phone rattle.
"You have my word, sir."
"I know someone who's building a Stargate as we speak."
"My god. You're talking about an illegally run Stargate program?"
"Last I checked, there weren't any laws forbidding a completely
independent private citizen from running and operating a Stargate
program."
"If you're talking about the Trust?"
"The Trust? What? Who the hell are they?"
"Figures you wouldn't know. Let's just say they're a group of very rich private business owners looking to get control of the SGC."
"That's not
us. Right now, a grand total of three people on Earth know about it.
We're at a stand still, and we need someone with know-how."
"Sir, I don't think my knowledge is anywhere great enough to assist in building a Stargate."
"No offense, but right now, we don't exactly want you for your brains.
You're not an expert on the gate, but you probably know someone who is.
I'm thinking that you could get Dr. McKay. If Carter's number one in
the field, he's number two right?"
"Rodney McKay? Sir, he'd
never do it. Right now, the government is watching every move he makes.
Plus, he's being used for a number of projects. There's talk of moving
him to the SGC to work with Colonel Carter."
"Damn."
"Here's an idea. Right now, Jennifer Hailey's stuck doing theory, and she's not happy about it."
"Jennifer Hailey?"
"You did say..."
"I know. Fine. You think she be trusted."
"Yes. I've worked with her a lot lately. She'd be head of the list, but
believe it or not, she's actually less tactful than Dr. McKay.
Fortunately, her heart's in the right place. Even if her mouth isn't."
"Spoken like a man who's worked with her. You two get on the next flight out here."
"I can't believe I'm agreeing to this."
"Neither did I at first."
"Just out of curiosity, what is it we're going through the stargate for?"
"To find what the SGC can't, Major."
"Well, that was cryptic."
"I was taking lessons from Teal'c before I got cloned."
"The next flight available arrives in Colorado Springs at 4:30 am Thursday, can you meet us?"
"Sure."
--------
The next afternoon, Jack picks Amy up and tells her the news. She's rather happy about it, and looks anxious the entire way to the airport.
"I've known Major Davis for years. He's a good guy. Hailey's a little...umm...well, she's kind of a bitch, really. She doesn't mean it. It's a personality flaw. She's a scientist," Jack explains.
Amy smiles and straightens her hair in the visor mirror.
When they get to the airport, Hailey looks shocked enough to see the former gray-haired Colonel that barked at them all through training as a gangly, coltishly built sixteen year old, with another teenager in tow.
"Bring your girlfriend, sir?" asks Hailey, trying not to laugh, putting a magazine from the plane in front of her face. "This is a joke."
Hailey turns to leave and Paul Davis catches her arm.
"It's not a joke."
"I'm not going to explain in a crowded airport," Jack tells her, in the exact same tone he would have used if he were standing in front of a line of trainees, ready to fail the whole lot of them.
They get out to the parking garage, on the top floor where there's hardly anyone. Jack looks around suspiciously.
"Show 'em," he says to Amy and jerks his head in her direction.
Amy closes her eyes, takes a breath, and the luggage is floating mid-air.
"Jennifer Hailey, Paul Davis, I'd like you to meet Amy Siler," Jack says, with no small amount of pride in his voice.