Solipsism
Ten: Poor Jack
Poor Jack, I say to myself after I leave his room. I sleep but do not dream; he dreams but does not sleep. I suspect he got the short end of the stick, as they are wont to say on that whirling third planet out from Mother Sol. On that marbled world my old "friend" (ha!) Sigmund Freud used to say that bad dreams let the brain learn to gain control over emotions resulting from distressing experiences. No doubt Jack has had enough such experiences to keep his subconscious busy for a long, long time.
Despite their dark side, I must admit that I envy the ability to dream. Sleep has always seemed like such a terrible waste of time to me; why not put it to good use? And while I too have experienced my share of horrors, there are some things… some people that maybe I'd like to dream about. Places and people I miss, for example. But Gallifreyans, as amazing a race as we are, don't possess the dream gene; we weren't programmed with that particular ability.
Dreaming is a curious business, to be sure. Of course many species on Earth are hardwired to dream, not just humans… even Spike dreams! But not me… We Gallifreyans have developed very different psychological mechanisms for consolidating memories and forming internal narratives.
And as for sleep, well… don't get me started. The total suspension of consciousness is inconvenient and tricky, if not downright dangerous sometimes. It sure isn't much of a survival stratagem.
But still, one might wonder how Jack can rest at all these days, beset as he is with bad dreams stemming from all those distressing experiences I mentioned earlier. What happened recently to him back in Cardiff was unimaginably wicked. It still makes me fantastically angry to think of it. Yes… Poor Jack. I try my best to get him to talk about his dreams. I believe it is important for him to do so, but admittedly I'm not being entirely altruistic. Jack's dreams reveal things about him that he doesn't divulge in other ways. Important things… Fascinating things… Complicated things… Disquieting things…
And what in the world is he doing in there? It's good the TARDIS has more than one bathroom because I've never known anyone ever who spends more time in front of a mirror than Captain Jack Harkness. And here I'd been thinking that all those good looks came naturally to him. Hah! What you learn about someone when they become your roommate!
"Jack!" I yell at him again. "I'm not getting any younger!" That's a joke of course. And I hear him snicker as his footsteps approach the control room.
He walks in smiling, carrying Spike like a baby in his arms. Have I told you yet how much Jack loves cats? That's another thing I didn't know about him until we became roomies. He positively adores Spike, and anthropomorphizes the blasted animal beyond all rational logic. Honestly, it's disgusting.
"That's a good kitty, a pretty kitty," he's saying as he gazes adoringly into Spike's green eyes. He's using a tone of voice I've never heard him use with anyone else – at least never with me – the quality is somewhere in between baby talk and an intimate whisper.
I roll my eyes. "Jack, you're going to spoil the cat," I admonish him. That's a joke, too. We both spoil the cat ruthlessly. Although it doesn't seem fair: I feed Spike and brush him and clean up his barf and scoop out his kitty boxes but Jack… Jack gets to carry him around like a baby without getting lacerated by the sharp little knives that live at the business end of Spike's paws.
"Aw… he deserves to be spoiled… you should've seen him just now… he's such a good kitty…"
I interrupt him, "Yes, and a pretty kitty, I know. How come you never say such nice things about me?"
Jack allows Spike to drop gracefully to the floor, then looks up and smiles as he holds out his arms toward me, "I dinnae ken, laddie, do ye want me to say nice things about ye?"
The unexpected Scottish brogue causes me to snort loudly through my nose and Jack laughs wholeheartedly in response. Despite the horrible things that happened to him and despite the terrible dreams, he is, it seems, coping magnificently. But would you expect anything else from Captain Jack Harkness?
"So what's on our agenda?" he asks.
I pull out my glasses and put them on. It's show time.
"Whoa!" exclaims Jack, "class is in session!"
I ignore his snarky remark and instead ask Socratically, "Tell me what a Dyson sphere is."
"Well, not that I've ever seen one, mind you, but I believe it is a solid sphere of material enclosing a star, engineered to involve habitation or industrial elements." He shrugs. "At least that's what I think…"
"And you'd be wrong if you did," I point to the console display and he walks over beside me and takes a look. "That's a common misconception. And not that anything is entirely impossible in this universe, but according to the Time Lord Galactic Database, such a construct would be highly impractical and no such shell-like structure has ever been cataloged. What the database describes instead is a system of orbiting solar power satellites or solar sails meant to completely encompass a star and capture most or all of its energy output."
I tap my knuckle on the monitor; it's displaying an image of a cloud of solar satellites and space habitats orbiting in dense formation approximately one AU around a star.
"The purpose of this system would be to meet the energy needs of an extremely technically advanced civilization. Such a civilization would've progressed to the point where it required the total energy output of their star.
"A civilization capable of building and deploying sufficiently advanced spacecraft and satellites in the numbers needed to create a solar system-sized integrated energy-gathering construct would have to be impressive, to say the least. In addition, a system that size of independent gizmos would have to be incredibly smart and self-maintaining."
I take a deep breath and look at Jack wondering if he has any questions…
"A hell of a thing," he manages to mumble. Humph, I maybe expected something a little more intelligent out of him. But then his eyes sparkle and I realize he's pulling my leg. Again.