Chapter 8 – Finding the Cure

"I can't find anything that will help us!" John complained over his comm as the team searched the ship again and again for clues as to what afflicted Dude. "Daniel? How's the translation coming?"

"All right," the linguist replied hesitantly. "So far, it's just a description of what the ship was doing prior to their journey here—or wherever they were going."

John cursed harshly. "Just skim over it and see if you can find anything."

"Yes, sir," Daniel replied and started to do what the Colonel had said.

Daniel looked up at the wall covered with the history of the people and focused his gift, making him translate the entire wall so he could 'skim' over the text.

Feeling his energy drain slightly from the power he was exerting from concentrating that hard, Daniel found what he was looking for.

"John! I've found something!"

"Good. I'll be there in a minute. Major, meet us there."

"Yes, sir," Daniel heard Alex say and the comm went dead. Daniel waited for them to come.

"What do you have?" John asked as he and Alex neared the linguist via the main corridor of the ship.

"It's an unfinished account of what happened to them," Daniel said, indicating the last part of the words. "It says that their home world, called Dulanter, was attacked by the Androidians and that this ship was the only one to survive the mass exodus from the planet. There were at least a thousand some people on this ship at one time.

"It then describes every one of them in detail, which I skipped for our benefit. But afterward, it said that their new home-to-be, Fetrot, was many light-centuries away. That's why they're in those cryogenic freezers. They didn't have the luxury of a Spacegate, so they had to rely on their ship to travel at the speed of light to get them there. They've been preserved, or most of them have been, for some hundred years now."

"We know that already. Dr. Fields told us that before. What else do you have, Daniel?" John was getting impatient to get going back to the SGB.

"Well, it says that in order to cryogenically freeze them, their minds needed to be separated from their bodies for some reason. The people successfully did this by having a sort of memory of a computer take their minds and store them somehow in a huge network until they reached their destination. I think that the personalities inside of Dude's head are the minds of the people whose bodies are dead. It says that once they are at the destination, the minds somehow float back to their bodies on their own. I think for those who died, the minds couldn't go back to the body, and so they went to the first available one: Rick. I think that in order for them to get out, we'll need to hook him back up to a freezer."

"That should work!" Alex said, though she didn't seem too sure about it. "I mean, if we hook him up to it and have him frozen, his mind and the others would go with them. Hopefully, somehow, he is able to retain his mind while he's in the coma as the others are deleted or something."

John looked from Alex to Daniel. "It's worth a try. Let's get back to the SGB and see what the General wants us to do."

"Yes, sir," Alex and Daniel said and they started dialing home again.

"Where am I?" an almost totally feminine voice demanded though Rick. If it hadn't have been a serious situation, Kate would've laughed at it, but now she was both exasperated and relieved at the new personality…it gave her a break from the grating Gerrati, but she needed to start anew once again.

"Hush, it's all right. You're on a ship above the planet Tierra. My name is Dr. Fields. You're stuck inside one of our crewmembers. We're working on a cure for you, but we need your help. What's your name?"

Dude glanced up at Kate with a feminine look that was passed between women. Kate would've thought that a look like that coming from Rick, as well, would've been terribly hysterical but she didn't because the time was grave and she knew there was a woman's mind taking over Dude's body for the time being.

"I'm Sartra," the woman said through Rick. "I am the chief mechanic of our ship. What am I doing here?"

"We were sort of hoping that you could help us with that. We're really not sure why you're in his body. We've sent our best team back to the planet where your ship crashed to see if they could find anything to help us. We're still waiting for them to come back."

Sartra nodded. Looking into the mirror, she gasped, putting a hand up to her head, feeling around at the strange features, shocked to see herself in Rick's body.

"This is your friend?" she asked in surprise.

"Yes," Katherine said, coming to stand near Sartra. "And we want him back."

Sartra smiled grimly. "I can't help you. I'm just a mechanic. One of the bioengineers could help you, but not me. I'm sorry."

Suddenly, a violent tremor passed through her body and she fell on the hospital bed she had been sitting on.

"Sartra!" Katherine yelled, but it wasn't her aura that shone through Dude's person when Rick's body looked up at her.

"Kate?" a shaky voice said from the bed.

"Rick? Rick! Is that really you? Are you all right?"

Dude pushed himself tentatively up, looking around the room, his face the image of pain. "I…don't know. I'm fighting to keep control and I don't know how long I can maintain it. Gerrati is very strong. Is everyone else all right?"

Kate smiled. "Yes. John, Daniel and Alex all went back to The Wasteland to see what they can find, if anything, to help you. And Dagón is getting restless because he needs to stay out of The System and do your job. You don't know how much you're missed."

Dude smiled and was about to say something when he closed his eyes. On opening them, they weren't the eyes of an adult, but rather, the eyes of a child.

"Where am I? Where's my daddy?" Rick said in a small voice, his eyes becoming huge, his face showing the confusion and frightened look of a kid who is all alone. "I'm scared."

"There, now," Dr. Fields said soothingly as she sat next to Dude. "My name is Katherine. What's yours?"

"Freh," the child replied. "I'm six years old. I'm on our ship to Fetrot where daddy's going to take care of us."

"That sounds really nice, Freh. Why were you going to Fetrot?" Kate didn't know whether she should ask or not because the child seemed fragile, and she didn't want him to shrink back and let Gerrati or someone else take control again.

"Daddy said that the bad guys were going to take over our home on Dulanter. Since my daddy was the second captain on the ship, he was allowed to take one other person with him while there was a lottery for the other people. Mommy said that she'd take the chance with the rest of the family and made daddy take me.

"I haven't seen my mommy in a long time. I love my mommy." Freh leaned over and put his head on Kate's lap as he cried. Kate began to stroke Dude's back, trying to offer comfort.

Suddenly, however, Rick's body shook as his hands tightened on her doctor's coat where they had been resting before. An arrogant, threatening voice then said from her lap, "What are you doing?"

Kate jerked her arms back and watched as Rick's body straightened up, looking at her with a menacing stare. "Don't ever do that again!" Gerrati said menacingly, sending chills up the doctor's spine.

Dr. Fields got up and stared back at him, her anger flaring. "We're going to get you out of his body if it's the last thing we do!"

"You take us out, you kill him," Gerrati said, his voice rising in anger. "You'll also be losing a very valuable asset. I could be your king! You would have many a prosperous year under me. Does that sound good to you? I could forgive your transgressions if I assume power. If you try to extract us, you'd kill me in the process."

"I don't give a damn about you!" Kate screamed back. "That man's body is not yours and I will get it back!" Storming out of the room, Kate didn't look backwards to see the expression of shock on Gerrati's face from his realizing that a woman—a woman!—had stood up to him.

Walking to the 'Gate Room, Katherine saw the Spacegate begin the dialing process.

"Incoming connection!" Dagón announced over his comm.

"Who is it?" Hoffman asked, acknowledging Dr. Field's presence.

Typing furiously, Dagón said, "Their clearance code be GC-1, me General."

"Open the iris. Let's hope that they've found something." Hoffman really hoped that they had found something and that no one was like Rick.

"Aye, me bucko," Dagón said in reply and opened the iris as the aqua-colored waters swirled around and established a connection to the other Spacegate.

A minute later, the three crewmembers walked out of the aqua water and entered the SGB 'Gate Room.

"What did you find?" Hoffman asked as he entered the 'Gate Room via a connected doorway. Dr. Katherine entered behind him.

"Sir, Daniel found something," John said. "Tell him."

"What is it?" Joseph demanded.

"Well, sir…when we were on the crashed ship, we found some old runes, and I was able to translate them. It said that each person cryogenically frozen needed to take their mind out of their body by putting it in a sort of, well, hard drive that was connected to a huge network. It also said that when the person's body was awoken, the mind would quickly go back to its original body. So I thought that if the mind goes right back to the body, then, what if the mind doesn't have a body to go back to? I mean, I think that the people in Rick's head are from the bodies we saw that had not much more than bones left. What if they tried to get back to their bodies, couldn't, and so took the next best thing? It all makes sense."

"Very good, Dr. Matthewson, but how do we cure him?" Hoffman was expecting the worse. Rick was his computer specialist, his right-hand man when it came to the technology of other worlds…and to lose him, well, it would be like losing a leg or arm. The General would feel like that for any of his crewmembers.

Daniel shook his head, worrying the General. "Sir, it wasn't my idea; it was Alex's. I think you should ask her."

"Major?" Croft looked at the General with a grimness Joseph knew didn't mean good.

"We think, sir, that we should take Dude back to the planet and hook him up to the cryogenic freezer. I think that it would work since only Dude's mind is in the coma, but we're not sure. It's our only chance, sir. Colonel O'Brien thinks that it's worth at least a shot."

John nodded when the General looked at him. "Sir, if I may say something, I think that it's a better shot at getting Rick back then just isolating him for the rest of his life. He won't get better unless we act on something. Sir, this is our only chance!"

Thinking for a minute, Hoffman—to the rest of the crew's relief—nodded and said, "You have a go. Doctor, can you get Dude sedated enough so that he's not violent?"

Fields nodded. "Yes, sir." She ran off to do what the General had said she should do.

Looking back from watching the doctor hurry away, Joseph faced GC-1. "I don't know if this will work, but you have my entire support behind you. God speed.

"Dial to The Wasteland!" Hoffman shouted.

"Aye, Cap'n," Dagón said through the intercom from the Control Room and started the dialing process.

Somehow, they got Rick back to the crash-landed ship. Hooking him up to the cryogenic freezing chamber, he let out a moan that turned into a scream. Rick screamed as each personality was sucked out of him. The screams altered from feminine, to child-like whimpering, to terrified yelling, and then to an anguished scream of rage as the four personalities were sucked into the hard drive and out of the Captain's head.

"Stop it!" Dude's normal voice yelled. "Turn it off!"

"Shut it off!" John yelled, and Alex did what he commanded her to. Once she turned it off, they watched in horror as Rick sagged to the bottom of the freezing chamber, seemingly dead.

John reacted fast, but Daniel even faster. Just as John was going to give the order to check Rick's pulse, Daniel was getting the chamber open and Dude out onto the ground, having Alex take his pulse.

Looking up from doing so, Alex smiled. "He's only unconscious, sir. Let's get him back to the SGB." Daniel and the Colonel came to lift Dude off of the ground.

"All right," John said after he and Daniel were supporting Dude between them, "let's go home! Alex, you know the dialing code, right?"

"Yes, of course, sir."

"Start dialing, then."

"Yes, sir!"