Under Tauza's domain, days were strictly organized. She would appear with water and food on precise times, and leave just as punctually, often earlier if her brutal lessons hadn't sunk in as well as she had hoped. Even when she herself was preoccupied, trays of food would appear by his door for him to consume. A daily intake of necessary nutrients, and nothing more.
There was no way to keep track of time within his living space, although Tauza did teach him about the concept of time. That is how he managed to work out his own age, eventually. Twelve cycles he spent under the loving care of his trainer. He had learned to love her in his own way. He remembered the dependency, his need for social contact whenever she entered the room. Tauza had a presence that wasn't easily ignored. Especially not by a child.
There were times that he worshipped her. That's what he hated the most. She tortured him, and he'd loved her for it. Scorpius loathed himself just thinking about it. He swore he would never be put into that position again.
She'd been ruthless to him, lying to him from the very start, since his very birth, all with the singular purpose of creating a weapon; to harness whatever strengths were inherent to the Sebacean DNA and add them to the arsenal of weapons the Scarrans planned to use in their conquest of the galaxy, which they had planned for for so long.
Yet the Scarran Hiërarchy had never counted on it backfiring so gloriously. Scorpius took pride in that. If only he could see the look on Tauza's face when the wormhole weapon would be deployed against the Scarran fleets.
Oh, if only he hadn't killed her and stabbed her eyes out. Shame.
Day 99
"Let go!"
"It's mine! I stole it fair and square!"
They froze when Scorpius walked up to them and didn't stop. He snatched the necklace straight from their hands and looked at it. For a microt there, he was expecting something far more beautiful and worthwhile, but it was just a necklace. One tug and all the fake jewels would clatter to the floor.
He didn't intend to spare any of their feelings.
"This is a fake and worthless piece of junk! Why are you wasting your time…"
Chiana tried to take it from his closed fist, but his reflexes were too quick.
"It's MY worthless piece of junk. Ever thought about that? Now give it back!"
Scorpius released his grip, but flared his fangs at her. He detested her pointlessness, and the fact that she took pride in it. If this was how she was going to spend her time, so be it. She was a hopeless cause.
"I could have sold that," Rygel said.
His rehearsed justifications bored Scorpius.
"To whom?"
"Traders. They wouldn't have known the difference anyway. We could've made a small profit, but she'll hoard any and all trinkets she can get her hands on. She'd even get emotional for a waste disposal hatch. Now, if you don't mind…"
Rygel turned his pompous chin in the other direction and left.
Scorpius felt disgusted.
Their endless monotony started to get on his nerves. Every day, the same agonizing mind-numbing trivialities, on a never-ending loop. Even in his cell, he could not escape from it.
How long had he been doing this? He tried to count the days in his photographic memory, but all he could find was insanity, so he turned away. He never thought there could be anything that could make him feel so helpless.
He never thought there could be anything that could ever break him.
Scorpius felt like he did so many cycles ago; a laboratory rat, some test subject running around a maze for someone's cruel enjoyment. He could feel Tauza's gaze pierce the back of his head even now, beyond death, mocking him, and watching him as he crawled through the dust begging for water.
He already tried to get the attention of anyone that could possibly be out there, in the mysterious cracks of space through which science could not peer. He sent a message on all frequencies. He shouted into thin air, causing the crew to think him crazy. That was thirty days ago, and there had been no response.
Day 100
"Let go!"
He crushed the necklace in his closed fist, reducing it to dust.
Day 101
He threw it out into the corridor, where it shattered, sending pieces all over the floor.
Day 102
He took the necklace and swallowed it whole. Chiana and Rygel had just stood there, staring at him.
Day 103
In the end it didn't matter what he did. He even used his time to test Crichton, to set up elaborate scenarios to gauge his response. Scorpius called it helpful research. He didn't want to admit he was bored.
He'd ask him different questions every day and gauged his responses, but usually it was the same. He had established long ago that there was little he could do to dissuade Crichton; the distrust ran too deep. But there were levels on which they understood each other, and countless ways in which they didn't.
It was pointless. There was no way he could pry open the human's skull and find what was inside. He'd tried that. He had learned to accept that it was not within his power to ever harness the power of the wormholes. He'd learned that the hard way; even when he had taken the knowledge from Crichton's mind and managed to decipher the contents of the chip, he still had no means to understand what it meant. Only Crichton had managed to earn the trust of these so-called Ancients, and only Crichton would know how to use their technology.
His subconscious knowledge had even managed to bring him back to his homeworld. Crichton always blundered his way from epiphany to epiphany, based on blind luck and instinct. It almost offended Scorpius that the human had had a natural talent for wormholes almost injected straight into his DNA. On what grounds had these creatures found him worthy?
And yet his first arrival into this system was via wormhole. Crichton called it an accident, but what if it was skill? Scorpius had had to work his entire life to achieve the same level of research Crichton had simply stumbled upon. This primitive caveman tripped and fell into the greatest discovery known to the universe, and now the lives of all its inhabitants rested in his hands. It was almost cruel.
Scorpius pondered on this on days when he simply stayed in his cell to think and meditate. And often as he closed his eyes, he heard a whispering voice creep on him, telling him it was all for nothing.
As days turned to months, Scorpius' drive to find a solution waned. His purpose, that had once been so clear and true, now seemed alien to him, distant, and unreachable. No longer inevitable. His life had been reduced to…. This. Just this. Just the emptiness.
Forever.
...
But he refused to surrender. One day, one like any other day, he wandered the corridors of Moya in search of that static feeling again; the signal he had felt on the first day. It had to mean something. He kept telling himself that that was the key.
He had searched every tier and every room. He'd even donned a space suit and explored every metra of Moya's outer hull by hand. He'd found nothing.
Day 104
He woke up feeling something was wrong.
His insides were burning. Scorpius could feel his stomach convulsing, rejecting something inside, and flexing involuntary muscles in his body. He leaned over the edge of his bed and stuck a gloved finger down his throat. Green stomach acids and bits of last night's dinner rapidly oozed from his body,
Scorpius looked down on the floor. Bile dripped down his lips and chin. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he could see bits within the bile that didn't belong. He reached an arm down to the floor, and as he moved, he could see a sticky length of string rise up from the liquids. Pressed between his fingertips were the remains of a necklace, and bits of fake jewels scattered in the liquids below his bed.
This changed everything.
Chiana was eager to inspect the goods, even after she was told it had come from Scorpius' stomach.
He was propped up on the slab again in the medbay and Sikozu was prodding and examining him carefully, and gently, moving from head to toes. The equipment was inadequate and ancient compared to the technology used on modern Command Carriers, but they were the only thing they had that could do the job.
"It's a copy," Chiana said, examining the jewels, and holding her necklace side by side. "It has to be."
"If what Scorpius is saying is true," John spoke concerned, "we have a problem."
"IF it's true," D'Argo said.
Something was different this time, because Scorpius changed it, and something about Scorpius made him able to change it. He had dismissed the possibility that the problem had to have been him before. Had he been so sure of himself, so arrogant, that it had blinded him from the solution all along?
The object had survived the transition by being encased inside his stomach. His memories, his awareness, all came from within. There was an element here he was missing. Something that explained his immunity to the temporal disturbance.
In preparation for the next day, Scorpius had the crew of Moya record a message on a datavid. He planned to insert it orally just before the transition occurred to prevent as much corruption of the file as possible. He hoped it would save him from having to answer the same questions over and over.
"Why you?" Chiana asked. "Why not any of us? Why'd it have to be you?"
"We should count ourselves lucky," Sikozu replied. "Without Scorpius, none of us would have been aware of the disturbance. We could have been repeating the same day for thousands of years and never have known."
"How many days has it been?" John dared to ask.
"104," Scorpius spoke.
"But that's…." Aeryn said, and as the scenario played in her mind, the reality of it sank in. "…horrible."
"So we've had this conversation before," D'Argo concluded. "How does this play out, exactly?"
"Do as I say, Ka D'Argo, and we might be able to avoid unnecessary repetition."
Scorpius, however, remembered he had spoken that exact line to the Luxan three times before already.
As they spoke, his mind still raced on for possible explanations. Scorpius knew Scarrans had a biological immunity to certain types of radiation. Perhaps his natural abilities had let him gain the upper hand. Maybe it was a natural phenomenon after all, and they just couldn't see it on sensors. They had to be recalibrated.
But as night fell, there were still no new findings. D'Argo and the others were still working on the sensors without new results, and Sikozu and Scorpius were still in the medbay, using the equipment to analyse the necklace. Without knowing what they were looking for, however, their search always came up empty.
"Maybe," the old woman continued. "Maybe you're looking at it all wrong. Maybe time isn't lineair and there is no loop. There's just this."
Sikozu was baffled by her sudden silence. "What?"
"Hmmm?"
Scorpius had no love for Noranti. Her potions may be impressive to junkies and amateur herbologists, but she was a con-artist. Nothing more. He had once ordered her transfer to his Command Carrier after he had stumbled upon her file on a cargo ship's manifest. She had been arrested for cooking and dealing illegal intoxicants and posing as a healer on plague-infested worlds, claiming she could cure the condition known as the Living Death. Her claims held no truth. High on her own spirits, she believed herself to be some kind of savior until the Peacekeepers managed to beat that delusion out of her. And clean, she was less helpful.
Scorpius growled at the old woman to leave and to take her drugs with her. She seemed offended, and raised her chin up high as she left. Scorpius didn't care.
"It's hard to believe that we're the only two with any semblance of sanity on this ship," he said.
Sikozu smiled, and allowed herself to look away from her research. "Is it true what you told the others? That you have lived through this day a hundred times?"
"104," Scorpius corrected her.
"So many days we can't remember ever having happened," Sikozu continued. "Anything could have happened."
"Infinite possibilities," Scorpius said.
"Were you never tempted?"
He tilted his head slightly. Her questions amused him as she leaned nearer ever so slightly.
"If every day resets to a default state, there are no consequences to your actions. You could do anything, anything at all, and no-one would ever know."
"Are you asking me if I've ever done anything…. immoral?"
"Morality is subjective. I know you have your own distinct personal code you live by, but still…"
Scorpius smiled.
"Do you really want to know all the horrible things I've done?"
Sikozu hesitated now.
"There is much I am capable of," Scorpius said. "But if I told you, you'd simply forget by the end of day."
He sighed.
"If I told you, I would want you to remember. Otherwise, the truth wouldn't matter. It would serve no purpose."
"Must everything have a purpose? Couldn't things just be the way they are?"
"Things are…. For a reason. It is our purpose… to find it."
Day 120
In the shadows of his cell, Scorpius lay on his bed, with his eyes closed. The solitude he spent with his thoughts however, to organize his emotions, was crudely interrupted by a sudden announcement.
It came very unexpected.
"Everyone, prepare for Starburst!"
Scorpius shot upright. This wasn't meant to happen. This was new.
He raced up to Command to find John in leather garb and without a drop of sweat on him. Sikozu stood alongside him, checking all of Moya's systems as they careened through the cracks of the universe. Out the forward portal, they saw what Moya saw; swirls of infinite blue, the Starburst energy that covered Moya's entire superstructure and blinded her from seeing her destination.
Scorpius was at a loss for words. Somehow, the situation had resolved itself. Without him.
Time progressed normally the following days, and the days after that. Scorpius stared at the ceiling of his cell pondering the meaning of his dreadful experience. He felt older. He felt tired.
He felt angry that he hadn't been able to solve it.
And the universe seemed unaffected as well. According to Braca's hidden signals, Grayza was still in hot pursuit. It seemed he had been the only one to suffer the indignity of the temporal loop.
Had it been a personal attack? Why had he been singled out? And why had he been released? And why hadn't the culprit presented itself? Not knowing infuriated Scorpius to no end. To be the plaything of someone else's awful games. He punched a hole in the wall and this time the hole stayed.
Had it all been meaningless after all?
Finally, the waters of his temporary existence calmed. The assessment had been complete. Scorpius proved a significant influence on Crichton, and often a hostile threat to the knowledge he carried in his mind, but none that Crichton couldn't handle himself. Time would tell if the half-breed would turn out to be a trustworthy ally.
And time did tell. Time always did.
Einstein returned to his side of the wormhole. In time, he would return.
Or maybe he already had.
