Author's Notes: DrDredd, I forgot to say - I loved the Magician's Nephew! You're inspiring me to re-read the entire series.

As for the rest of you... thank you for the feedback! Now, let's take a poll on people's favourite games. Mine was one called 'Chinese Mysteries of Old Peking,' but I think myself and myfriend were the only two people to have ever played. sigh Who's up for some Twister?

Chapter Eleven - History of 404

Despite differences across space and culture, on Earth or in Pegasus, certain facts seem universal. One was the smell and style of a hospital corridor. Clean lines and polished floors, the walls painted in a wash of nauseating green, the ceiling a clinical white. A janitor stood at the far end, pushing a gray mop, and an elderly gentlemen in a thick brown sweater dozed on a plastic chair. There was constant background noise, like the distant waves on a beach. Hushed voices and the muffled hum of machines. And there was the smell, of bleach and starch and sickness.

One hospital looked very much like another, so Sheppard figured he could be forgiven for forgetting the name of this one. He assumed it was his memory; even if hadn't, logically, been his turn, there was a deep, itching sensation in his gut, a sense of dread. He'd seen too many hospitals in his past, both as a visitor and as a patient, and this one failed to stick in his mind.

Until he saw the brightly painted emblem decorating a pane of frosted glass set into a door.

His feet stopped so suddenly McKay walked into him.

"What?" The scientist rubbed his elbow, looking aggrieved. "What is it?"

A passing nurse, her hair a premature gray and her eyes a muted blue, scowled at McKay and raised a finger to her lips. The scientist grimaced, but lowered his voice obediently.

"Where are we?"

"Hospital," Sheppard replied, his answer clipped and terse.

"I can see that, Captain Obvious. Where on Earth are we?"

"Seattle." His feet refused to move. There were dark things in his past, things that haunted him on sleepless nights, things he would choose to forget. But not like this. Nothing buried so deep.

He shouldn't remember it, not in this detail, but he did. The pitying, sorrowful looks of the nurses, the patronizing tone of the counselor. The sour smell of illness even after being scrubbed from the floor. Her weakness…

Hell, even the room number. The room two doors down on the left. The room to which he was now being drawn, inexorably, unable to stop himself.

"Major?"

With a painful effort Sheppard wrenched his feet around, tripped, and stumbled into a wall, panting heavily. Ford was looking at him with trepidation, the younger man glancing up the corridor as though trying to imagine what it was his superior feared.

Her pale face, the bruises under her eyes, the bones beneath the skin. The wires and bags and monitors and lies. Him, thirteen years old and wanting to bury himself into her arms and never, ever let go. His father's hand on his shoulder…

Sheppard leapt back a foot at the touch and McKay snatched his hand back.

"Sorry, sorry," the physicist blustered, pinning the offensive hand under his other arm. "Just, ah - are you alright?"

"Yes." He pressed his back against the wall, cold seeping through the thin cloth of his shirt, chilling his shoulders. His father had insisted on him dressing smartly for every visit, because he wanted to keep things as normal as possible - which was a lie, because when had John ever willingly worn a shirt, or his smart black pants.

"Because you don't look so good," McKay pressed.

"I'm fine," he retorted, sharply. Pressing a hand against the wall Sheppard levered himself upright, forcing himself to turn towards his team. His efforts had only partial success, his gaze wandering back to the room.

His attention had not gone unnoticed. "Who is in there?" Teyla asked softly, her voice full of compassion.

He swallowed, his mouth dry. "My mother."

He was aware of Ford's expression softening, of a strange mix of pity and anger flickering across McKay's face.

"This isn't a game. If it were, you'd think this damn computer would pick something more fun."

"Yeah." Sheppard drew a hand across his eyes. "My first football game. My tenth birthday. The first time I went up in a jet. I think this thing's more twisted than that."

McKay shook his head, starting to pace around a small spot on the clean floor. "I don't get it. Why would the Ancients invent something like this? Unless it's a side-effect of the power surges causing corruption in the files but this is so specific and…"

"What is there to know?" Sheppard snapped roughly. "It's screwed up, I get that." He glanced back towards the room, taking one faltering step forwards.

"She died," Teyla said, softly. It wasn't a question.

"Yeah."

"I'm sorry, sir."

"It was a long time ago, Lieutenant." And now a damn computer game was denying him the comfortable distance time had brought him.

"How old were you?" Teyla asked.

"Thirteen." He took another step towards the room, his own body betraying him. The sick feeling in his stomach was growing, and his hands were clenched into fists, his nails digging into the flesh of his palm.

McKay stepped into his line of sight, looking pale but determined. "You don't have to play along."

"I'm not." He gritted his teeth together but was unable to stop another step forward. "Unfortunately the rest of me seems to have other ideas."

Rodney wrapped one hand around Sheppard's forearm. "We still seem to have control."

"Lucky you." He tried to pull his gaze away from the door and back to McKay, with little result.

McKay's grip on his arm tightened. "We can stay out here."

"He's right, sir." Ford took up position beside McKay. "Even if we can't exit we don't have to go along with this. We just wait here until Atlantis sends a team to get us out of here."

"Yeah." Sheppard swallowed, his throat like sandpaper. Behind Ford the corridor was shifting, the walls melting and changing shape, the door dragging itself closer. "I'm not sure that's going to work."

Teyla had noticed the same, her eyes wide as she called out a warning. "Lieutenant."

The janitor had disappeared, absorbed into the green of the walls. The door was shimmering as it drew closer, and Sheppard could make out silhouettes; a bed, a chair, a trolley. A large, male figure sat on the chair and in the bed…

"No!"

With a wrench he pulled himself free of McKay's grip, his body screaming at him in protest, as though every part of his body was trying to tear itself apart. The feeling lasted barely a second but it was enough to knock the breath from his chest and he staggered backwards. The hospital corridor disappeared, vanishing behind a sudden bloom of white.

"Dammit!" He scrubbed a hand through his hair and pulled away from his team, desperate for privacy but denied it by the void. Breathless, he pressed his hands to his knees, swallowing bile and trying not to throw up.

An image haunted him, a flash of skeletal hands and a grim, bloody smile, a glimpse snatched just before his jerk out of the game.

Not his mother. Not, he repeated, not his mother. A monster. A nightmare.

"Sir?" Ford sounded at his youngest, uncertain and afraid. "Are you alright?"

He wiped his mouth with the back of one hand. "Not really, no, Lieutenant." He had the overwhelming urge to hide under his blanket, as though he were six years old and the bogeyman were out to get him.

"Uh, Major?"

"Not now, McKay."

"Major."

Reluctantly he turned, forcing himself to stand straight. The hologram stood before them, still dressed in the cream robes of before, but now wearing an oddly confused expression on its face.

"Why did you exit?"

Sheppard struggled against the urge to throw a punch, knowing it would be useless and worse, do nothing to alleviate his mood. "Why? You think you can take us down this little nightmare trip down memory lane, twist everything, and then you ask why we might not want to?"

The hologram frowned. "This was your past."

"No," Aiden retorted. "It wasn't like that."

"This is the challenge of the game."

"This isn't a game," Sheppard snapped, his voice rising to a yell. "It's our lives!"

"You have to complete the level…"

"No!"

"Major." McKay was still pale, but there was a determined jut to his chin. The scientist eyed the hologram. "Why did the Ancients create this place?"

The hologram turned and offered him a bright smile. "I do not understand."

"The people who created this game," McKay explained, gesturing violently with his hands. "Why? What was its original purpose?"

"It entertains the players."

"This is not entertainment," Teyla objected.

The hologram tilted its head to one side, "The original statement for the game's purpose?"

"God, it's like trying to talk to a pocket calculator. Yes," McKay repeated patiently, "the original statement."

"It was created as a training program."

Sheppard blinked, his anger dissipating suddenly. "A training program for what?"

"It trained the players against enemy attacks."

"The Wraith?" Ford asked.

"Yes."

McKay snapped his fingers enthusiastically. "I should have known. A training program. Of course! Using virtual reality to help the Ancients learn how to fight the Wraith."

"Like a battle simulation?"

"Exactly."

"But none of the memories shown to us so far involved the Wraith," Teyla said, frowning.

"Worse than that," Ford muttered, softly.

"No." McKay hesitated. "But I'm right, right?"

The guide inclined its head in a nod. "Yes. The computer uses the memories of the players to build an environment in which the enemy can be studied."

"Why use mission reports when you can access the memories of the survivors, huh? It makes sense." Sheppard felt a swell of anger, remembering a flash of bones and skin. "But this wasn't like that."

"No." McKay started to pace, his hands gesticulating wildly. "But when the Ancients decided to hide out here they probably changed the program. Changed its code to keep them occupied whilst in stasis."

"Why would they not simply sleep?" Teyla pressed.

"Sure, that would keep power usage down, but they probably didn't figure they'd be kept in stasis this long." The physicist snorted derisively. "It's entertainment."

"But let me guess," Sheppard said slowly, "something's gone wrong." He clenched his hand into a fist, then uncurled his fingers slowly.

McKay turned to the hologram, his face animated. "There must be some sort of internal diagnostic function. Something to allow a user to fix the game from within."

"You don't think the Ancients would have tried that?" Ford objected.

"Probably, but it doesn't hurt to look."

The guide frowned. "You are a technician?"

Rolling his eyes, McKay nodded. "Yes, yes. Whatever."

Hesitating, the guide gave McKay an appraising look, then raised one arm and swept it across the horizon to his left. There appeared a green wall of light three meters across, stretching from the space beneath their feet to the invisible ceiling above them, where it arced away and disappeared into a point. On the wall scrolled black letters, the language of the Ancients, moving at a speed tracked by McKay's eager eyes.

Sheppard stepped up to the wall cautiously. Placing a hand towards its surface he felt it vibrate minutely, the tremors running up his arm. It was a fraction of a centimeter thick and transparent. When he stepped around the back Sheppard could see the scrolling letters from behind.

"This is the diagnostic?" Teyla asked.

"It's the computer code which created the program, the instructions designed by the Ancients to build this game." McKay took a step closer to the wall, tilting his head back to follow the lines of text up into the ceiling. "Typical Ancient construction however. Incredibly detailed but containing numerous redundancies." He pointed at a long phrase on the left hand side of the wall as it scrolled upwards. "This piece, for example, tells the machine what to do if…"

"McKay," Sheppard growled, walking back around to the front of the wall. "How do we know this is accurate?"

McKay glanced at the hologram. "It's not sophisticated enough to lie to me."

"No offence doc, but are you sure?" Ford eyed the hologram. "What if this AI's gone nuts, isn't that possible?"

"No," the scientist replied, dismissively. "You're ascribing human characteristics to a collection of binary information. Lying would require thought, and this abacus isn't displaying any."

Sheppard found himself glancing at the hologram, but the guide still wore the same fixed expression, staring obliviously through McKay. "So what can you find out?"

"Give me a minute, Major." McKay waved at the hologram. "Show me the interchange between this program and the training simulation."

The text on the wall flickered and briefly disappeared, replaced a second later by a new, fresh set of letters. McKay hummed and hawed his way through it, muttering softly to himself as he read, while Sheppard grew increasingly impatient.

"Oh, no, no. That's not right. And here… what sort of patch job is that supposed to be?"

"McKay," Sheppard interrupted, warningly.

"I've seen high school projects with more sophisticated… oh, wait, that explains that particular hole but what about…"

"McKay!"

With a disgruntled snort the scientist straightened and glared at Sheppard. "Do you honestly expect me to have the answers at my fingertips every time?"

"No." Sheppard flashed him a bitter grin. "Just this time. Get on with it."

The reply was a huff, and a reluctant: "Fine. It looks like this game was built on the basic outline of the battle simulation. But the Ancients must have hidden themselves away in a rush, because the job is patchy and clumsy, and the power shorts haven't helped."

"That would affect the program?" Teyla asked.

"It's like an Earth computer. If the system crashes, or power goes down without warning, then there's a danger of information being lost, of the hard drive being damaged. The more often the system crashes, the more damage the hard drive gets, until the corruption starts to spread even when the rest of the computer is functioning fine. In this case…" He gestured back towards the wall, "corruption is attacking the base code of the program. I'm sure when the Ancients originally booted it up it worked perfectly, and all they got to experience were a few happy Hallmark memories. But it looks like the two sets of instructions started to overlap and contradict each other, and when the system tried to compensate it created this."

"This isn't a battle simulation," Sheppard pointed out.

"No, but it plays by similar rules. It scans our thoughts and recreates our memories, just like the game was intended to, but it then changes events to present a…" He paused, speaking the words distastefully, "a challenge."

There was a small pause.

"So," Ford grimaced, "this is going to get harder."

"The system assesses each player or group in terms of their skill set and provides an environment in which to challenge them," the hologram explained helpfully. "After each completed task the player or group moves on to the next challenge. The increasing difficulty of each task means the player or group must acquire new skill sets…"

"We get it," Sheppard snapped. "But we're not playing, you got that?"

"You must complete the game to exit."

"Enough with the broken record act."

"You must play the game if…"

"No," he interrupted, turning his back on the guide and addressing his team. "We stay here. It won't let us out, then fine, but that doesn't mean we have to play along with it."

"Oh, right." McKay sighed heavily, folding his arms. "Of course, why didn't the Ancients think of that? We'll just wait for Atlantis to rescue us."

Sheppard glared at him. "Unless you want to go back down the rabbit hole?"

"Hardly. But I'm not sure we have a choice." The scientist looked towards the hologram. "Do we?"

"Each player is required to complete the game before exiting," the guide answered. "If a player decides to pause the game the system will reset to default."

"Default?" Teyla glanced between the hologram and McKay. "What does it mean?"

"Oh, I dunno…" McKay gestured out to the white. "That?"

Sheppard following his hand, expecting to see nothing but more void. But there was something, a horizon, a thin dark line that was growing rapidly as it drew closer. The air was darkening, the green wall of information flickering several times before disappearing. A shade of blue started to creep across the ceiling, rough concrete forming under his feet. Taking an instinctive step backwards, Sheppard turned towards the hologram in time to see the guide vanish.

"Major!"

Alarmed, he spun round on his heel and saw Teyla stumble, supported by McKay. Rodney turned a frightened gaze upon him before they both suddenly disappeared, sucked up into the burst of color around them. Details were forming in the horizon, its wall meeting the sky and blending seamlessly into one.

Grass to the left of him, concrete beneath his feet, blue sky overhead and the sound of engine noise.

Sheppard turned, bewildered, desperately looking for Ford.

A firm hand suddenly landed on his shoulder.

"So, Johnny? You ready for this?"