Reality A001
If Daniel counted the day he had been brought here, this was the eleventh day he'd been in this little room. He had translated fourteen texts, spent two days completely wiped out with the flu, and largely avoided the damage he'd been expecting to endure from this Jack O'Neill. He still wasn't altogether sure how he'd managed that.
Since his bout with the flu, his stomach had largely calmed down, though he still had plenty of anxious twists. He almost wished Jack would just hit him and get it over with, but he was in a jolly mood. Daniel wasn't sure why.
He looked down at the project he was working on currently. It was a large monument with Celtic inscriptions on all four sides. At home, he would have gone to the site, made videos and taken photographs. Here, all he had to work from were long shots of the sides and a large quantity of close up photographs that were numbered to show where they belonged in relation to one another. He'd spread them out one side at a time try and get a feel for the whole of the text, but he had to go a line at a time.
It was the second day he'd been working on this project, and he wasn't even halfway through. It wasn't reasonable for anyone to expect him to be done with it quickly, given the size of it, but so far he hadn't noticed much in the way of reason from those who were holding him. He had begun, as the evening progressed, to become quite worried that Jack would be angry about the amount of time it was taking.
Still, he had a powerful suspicion that mistakes would be worse, so he didn't try to rush. He simply immersed himself in the work. When the door opened, he didn't even look up.
He felt Jack put his hand on his back, and he spoke instantly. "I'm trying, Jack, but this one's going to take some time. I'm doing the best I can."
"You haven't eaten your dinner, Daniel," Jack said.
At that, Daniel looked up. There was a bowl of tomato soup that had developed a rubbery skin across the top of it, and a pair of very soggy looking grilled cheese sandwiches sat next to it on a plate. "I didn't even notice when it came in," Daniel said, blinking at it in surprise.
"I guessed." Jack's hand was resting heavily on his shoulder. Daniel looked up at the unpredictable man who had such total control over him right now, wondering what was coming. "What do I have to do to convince you to take better care of yourself, Daniel?" he asked. He both looked and sounded exasperated.
"I was kind of focused on work," Daniel replied. "I know how important it is to you that everything goes smoothly."
Jack stared at him for a moment. "You making yourself sick won't help anything," he said. "I'm going to send for another tray of food." He picked up the tray and took it to the door. Daniel heard him speaking to the people outside, and he took several deep breaths. Jack still hadn't addressed the amount of time this project was taking, and he had started out this conversation on a bad footing by failing to even notice his dinner.
The door closed again and Daniel peered around behind him. "Thanks, Jack. I'm so absent-minded, if I didn't have someone looking out for me . . ."
"Don't you worry, Daniel. You'll always have me." Contriving to smile, Daniel turned back to his work. He'd been afraid that he was spreading it on too thick, but this Jack seemed not to have a very good sense for bullshit. Jack pulled the spare chair over and sat down beside him. "So, what is it we have to do to get you to notice your food when it comes? Smack you upside the head?"
Daniel looked at him sideways. "Literally?" he asked without thinking first.
Jack rolled his eyes and clouted Daniel lightly on the back of the head. The blow, light though it was, startled Daniel into immobility. "Don't be such a wuss, Danny." Daniel forced himself to relax. It hadn't been damaging, it wasn't a big deal. He got his back muscles to untense. "Anyway," Jack continued, "I've looked at the video of when the food came in, and Carter spoke to you and you sort of grunted. What do we have to do to make sure we actually have your attention?"
Daniel shrugged. "When I'm that absorbed, Jack usually just brings me finger food."
"Jack does?" The voice was suddenly distant and slightly hard. Daniel froze. He'd done such a good job of not slipping so far. It seemed he'd relaxed a little too much. "Jack who?"
He cleared his throat. "The other one," he said, his voice cracking.
"Oh," Jack said, his voice now very sharp. "Him." Daniel was very aware of the man sitting so stiffly beside him. "So, do I not bring you the right kind of food?"
"I didn't say that," Daniel said quickly. "I was just telling you what he does."
"Did," Jack said firmly. "What he did."
Nervous tension was threading through Daniel's gut. "Right. What he did." There was silence between them for a long moment, then Daniel's worry got the better of his common sense. "Jack?"
"Yes, Daniel?"
"Am I ever . . . going back?"
"Back?" Jack repeated as if he didn't quite understand the concept.
"Yeah, back where I came from?"
Jack leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms and looked at him. "Do you want to?" he asked. His voice was casual, conversational, but the look in his eyes was anything but calm.
Having started this, however, Daniel couldn't just stop. "I just . . . I thought you sort of . . . swapped Daniels. Kept one for awhile and then . . . swapped."
Jack shrugged. "We were, but we were just looking for the right one."
"The right one?" Daniel faltered. "What do you mean? How can you tell the right one from the wrong one?"
"I can just tell," Jack said. "You're the right one." He reached out and tousled Daniel's hair. "We're going to keep you."
"Oh." Daniel blinked, feeling more than a little stunned. "I see." Being the 'right one' could prove difficult to live up to, he had a feeling. And the consequences for not making the grade could be . . . he didn't want to think too closely about it. "So, am I going to stay in here forever? In this room?"
Jack looked around at the four walls as if he hadn't thought about it much. "Well, for now, certainly. Hammond's not sure of you, yet. He doesn't have the same feel for you that I do."
"I see," Daniel said. "It's just . . . I'm used to a lot more exercise than I can reasonably get in here, and the lack of sunlight could have an adverse affect on my health."
Jack nodded. "I'll see what I can do. In the meantime, eat the food we bring you. You could stand a little more meat on your bones." He poked Daniel in the ribs, startling him. "Hey, that got a reaction!" Jack exclaimed and did it again. Quite suddenly, he started tickling him, and Daniel didn't know how to respond. His instincts took over, and he shoved Jack away.
Grinning maniacally, Jack grabbed him again, tickling anywhere he could reach. Daniel tried to struggle free, but Jack seemed to interpret it as playing along with the game. They wound up rolling around on the floor in what Daniel recognized as being meant to be a friendly tickle fight between two men who were close enough to be brothers. It was just the knowledge that this man had killed someone who looked just like him, and possibly maimed several others, that lent it an aspect of the macabre.
Eventually, Jack seemed to tire of the play and stopped with Daniel still pinned to the floor. Jack was grinning and panting slightly. "You need to toughen up, Danny."
Daniel felt so completely befuddled with anxiety and fear and simple irritation that he couldn't speak. He just stared wide-eyed up at Jack. The door clicked, and Jack stood up quickly, reaching down to haul Daniel to his feet. Lt. Carter came in, carrying a fresh tray of tomato soup and grilled cheese.
She took the tray across to the desk and said, "I'm sorry, sir, I thought he realized that the food was there."
"It's not your fault, lieutenant," Jack said, and Daniel saw her relax infinitesimally. "We need to work out some kind of signal to alert Daniel to the fact that his food has arrived and that he is to eat it. For now, though, I think you need to stay to see that he's started the meal."
"Yes sir," she said.
"And Daniel, don't worry so much about this project. It's important, I can already see that by the translations I've seen, but no one expects you to translate every symbol on a monument that size in this short a time." Abruptly he wrapped his arm around Daniel's neck and knuckled his head. "Learn to relax a little, kid."
Having this Jack's arm around his neck nearly made him panic. He kept a lid on it, though, and when Jack let him up, he managed a faint grin. "Now, eat. Carter, stick around and see that he eats it all. And no more work this evening. Play a game, find a book to read, something. Just no more work."
Daniel nodded, and Jack left. With the thunk of the door shutting, a certain amount of tension went out of him. He turned back to the desk and the tray of food. Lt. Carter was still standing. He smiled. "Have a seat, Samantha, you're stuck with me till I finish."
She looked mildly surprised by his use of her given name, but she smiled and sat down. "I think I can stand it," she said.
"Good." He started eating, feeling a little foolish with her watching. She looked away, and he could tell by her expression that she felt equally foolish. "So, tell me . . ." He stalled, not sure what to ask that wouldn't be a minefield. "Do you miss your Daniel?" he asked, finally, giving up on finding a neutral question. "Or did you two even like each other?"
She turned back towards him in surprise. "We . . . we had a lot in common," she said, her eyes misting up. "I miss him every day."
"I'm sorry . . . I shouldn't have asked."
"I don't know why not," she said. "You have to be curious."
Daniel shrugged. "I am. I can't help wondering how this situation came about."
She gave him a pained grin. "Kowalski would say you think too much." She glanced towards the door then pursed her lips. "We probably shouldn't be having this conversation."
Daniel sighed. "No, probably not." He ate in silence for a little while. Finally, he looked up again. "So, he ordered me to play a game. Do you want to join me? Find a chess set or some cards?"
"I could . . ." She looked mildly uneasy. "I could find a chess set," she said. "When you're done eating."
He rolled his eyes and ate the rest of his food, not hurrying because his stomach wouldn't permit it. He wasn't sick anymore, but he was under enough stress that his stomach was still very touchy. When he was done, she took the tray and left. He looked down at the project, but decided against doing any work on it. Jack had been firm, and this wasn't a matter he felt like defying him on.
Daniel wasn't sure how to feel about his easy assumption of this submissive and oppressed role. Part of why it had been so easy was that it felt so incredibly familiar. He knew how this sort of relationship worked, though not with someone who was quite seriously unhinged. Alex had been many things, but he had been completely sane, if one could ever truly call a teenager sane.
He'd have thought it would be more difficult than it seemed to be to fall back into the pattern, though. Of course, he was consciously trying to, so that was probably part of it. After more than twenty years, it was very strange to have come full circle.
He put his head in his hands and tried not to think about it, but that was a surefire guarantee that he wouldn't be able to stop. It had been his fourth foster home in two years, and as a child who had started out painfully shy around other children, two years in foster care had left him wary of his peers. Like pack animals of any kind, they sensed his unease and were drawn to it. When he'd arrived at the Genesee's group home, he had been bombarded by children of varying ages and had withdrawn. Being a scrawny, ten-year-old geek with glasses hadn't helped matters any.
Unlike the other kids, Alex had been kind and welcoming, and Daniel had responded to that very strongly. They shared another bond, both of them were orphans, not kids who'd been taken away from their parents. Years later, Daniel went back to look up the history of that and found out that Alex's mother had killed his father and then herself . . . as a solution to spousal violence.
Alex had been as much of a victim as his mother had been, Daniel surmised, and it showed. It had started out as ordinary pushing and smacking, the things that all boys do to one another, normal stuff. But it had escalated. When things weren't going well for Alex, Daniel found out about it. He became very good at coaxing the older boy out of his violent moods, but sometimes that just wasn't possible.
What had started out as the first close friendship Daniel had ever had with another child turned into a frightening secret that he couldn't share. None of the adults in Daniel's life seemed to give a damn what happened to him, not even the sugary social workers. He snorted. Being that perceptive about people's motivations at age ten wasn't fun.
He'd explained the broken arm as the result of a fall from a high tree branch, and endured the punishment for climbing trees stoically. Finally, one of his teachers had contacted CPS. The Genesees had been indignant at the suggestion that they hit any of the children they looked after, but one of the other children, younger than Daniel, told the truth.
It had taken years for Daniel to wrap his mind around the notion that Alex had genuinely cared about him, but that his wiring had been so screwed up from the start that he didn't know how to express it.
This Jack was acting much like Alex had when things were going well. Daniel wondered suddenly if the Daniel here had never been rescued from Alex, and had grown up thinking that violence was the way two men showed caring for one another. If that was the case, and he and Jack had developed some kind of a co-dependent relationship, that would rather explain the behavior Jack was showing now. And it might go a long way towards explaining the other Daniel's death.
When Daniel had performed so well during the crisis that came on his first night here, Jack had responded with praise, and Daniel had fallen into the right pattern almost immediately, giving Jack the correct feedback to start the loop again.
Now he was stuck in the old pattern, but he was grown now and it didn't fit. So far he had managed to keep himself together, but his temper was growing chancy. Being stuck in this room, being forced to work fifteen or sixteen hours a day without let up, being given no choices at all, not even in food, all of it was wearing on him.
This insistence that he play a game was the first break in the iron determination that he work during all his waking hours, but it still wasn't a choice.
As if the thought had called her, Samantha came back in with a box under her arm. She opened it and lay the board out on the desk. It was clearly a cheap but much used set from some recreation room somewhere on the base. He picked up one black pawn and one white, then put his hands behind his back, mixing them up. Bringing his hands out in front, he said, "Choose one."
Her eyes were amused with just a hint of sadness, and he wondered how much he was echoing her Daniel. It was difficult. Being himself quite likely meant calling up distressing memories for her, but he couldn't be anyone else. She reached out and tapped his left hand. He flipped it over and opened it to reveal the black pawn.
She smiled and took the piece and they both set up their sides of the board in companionable silence. "I haven't played chess in a long while," she said. "Not since –" She broke off and looked down at her hands.
Daniel grimaced. "I'm not a replacement," he said. "I'm –"
"I know," she replied, looking up quickly. "It's hard, though, you're so like him. Much more so than any of the others."
He didn't quite know what to say to that. Instead of speaking, he reached out and moved his first piece. The game was a little startling and very enlightening. Samantha was a far better chess player than Sam was. He won the game, but it wasn't easy. He grinned at her when they were done. "Very good game. I don't often play people who can challenge me like that."
She smiled. "Daniel and I used to play a lot."
"Really?" Daniel shook his head. "Sam doesn't like chess much. She says it bores her."
Samantha looked at him for a long time, then started resetting the board. "I don't know what matters more, the differences or the similarities."
"A very philosophical question, that is," he said. They played again, and this time she won. He gazed at the board for a moment. "See, now Sam would never have thought of using that desperation measure. It would never have occurred to her."
Samantha pursed her lips. "Maybe I'm more familiar with desperation." Her tone spoke eloquently of a resignation that bordered on despair, but she didn't seem to realize it.
Daniel didn't know what to say. He cleared his throat and reset the board, giving her white this time. They played twice more and he beat her both times, but, again, he had to work for it.
She glanced at the clock and said, "I've got to be going. It's almost time for your lights to dim."
He'd been enjoying himself, but this reminder of how few choices he really had threw cold water on his mood. He gave her a weak smile. Her eyes reflected confusion for a moment, then gradual comprehension. She'd lived with this reality for so long that she hadn't registered how odd and unpleasant it was for him. How oppressive.
A multitude of emotions cascaded through her eyes, but she presented him with a bland smile and left gracefully.
Samantha was swamped with guilt and shame that she hadn't even considered how constricting it must feel to Daniel to have his entire life regimented in ways that were beyond his control. She'd grown so used to the rules for Daniels, grown so used to not thinking about the way they'd been ripped from their own lives . . .
She could trace it, looking back over her thinking over the last seven or eight months, and see how she'd carefully insulated herself from feeling anything for the abducted Daniels, especially after the first one. This one, being so close to her own Daniel, was getting under her skin. Her defenses were dropping, particularly because he wasn't getting beaten on a regular basis. She wasn't having to protect herself from seeing that familiar face green and blue and yellow with bruises and wanting to do something to stop it. The frustration was too overwhelming when she saw them in agony and knew she was powerless to help them. Shutting down was the only option left, but it left her feeling something less than human.
She went to the locker room to change into civvies for her trip home. It was late, and no one was in there at the moment. The few women that were on base had probably been and gone. She popped her locker open and saw the little folded scrap of white atop her clothes. Made a little nervous lest it be discovered, she tucked it into the pocket of the jeans then stripped down to change. Putting her hand in her pocket to make sure the note hadn't fallen out while she got dressed, she picked up her purse and her keys and headed out to her car.
The night was cool, the air just a bit crisp. The drive wasn't too hectic this late in the evening, but that note was burning a hole in her pocket. She didn't dare look at it until she got home, but she wondered what this unknown person had to say to her now that she'd missed two appointments. Did he know why? Or did he think she wasn't interested in helping Daniel? Or was it a she?
Finally, she pulled up to her house and went inside. She'd already eaten dinner, so there wasn't much to do beyond checking the mail. Dropping the pile of bills and advertisements on the coffee table, she pulled the note out of her pocket and sat down.
Like the other one, this was printed on a laser printer of some sort on very ordinary copy paper. She read it through twice then sighed thoughtfully.
Lt. Carter,
I believe we still have matters to discuss. By sheer good fortune, those resources I mentioned are safe at the present time, but the situation could change at any moment.
And we both know that if the situation does change, it will most assuredly not be for the better. Those in power guarantee that.
I have placed a bumper sticker in an envelope in your box. If you find that you can meet with me some evening at the place we've already established, please place it on your rear bumper. I will see it and know.
An Interested Observer
She blinked. A bumper sticker? She hoped it would be something that no one would think twice about seeing on her car. Sighing, she refolded the note and slid it back into the pocket of her jeans. What was she going to do?
Colonel O'Neill wasn't a bad man at heart, even if he'd gotten his wires badly crossed of late. Closing her eyes, she leaned against the back of the couch and tried to think. If only General Hammond hadn't pushed so damned hard. He'd just kept asking unanswerable questions like, "Who's going to translate Goa'uld for us? Who's going to tell us what this means?" It wasn't even as if the general had ever liked Daniel. He'd put up with him because they needed someone who could understand all the languages they ran into.
She knew that the colonel had been hard pressed to justify Daniel's actions on occasion. Hammond wanted results and he wanted them yesterday. And he wanted them to bring back every bit of alien technology they found no matter what the cost was. Daniel's tendency towards negotiation rather than outright theft or extortion hadn't sat well with the general.
The logic of Daniel's position was often irrefutable, but that made little difference to Hammond. She wondered what it would be like to have the Tollans as their allies rather than as implacable enemies. The Tok'ra were only guardedly friendly, and the hell she'd gone through to persuade Hammond that he shouldn't dismiss them out of hand had made her understand Daniel's situation a lot more clearly. Abruptly she wondered how much of the colonel's bursts of temper had been related to pressure Hammond had always put on him.
She let out a huffing sigh of frustration. What did it matter now? Colonel O'Neill was the next best thing to completely cuckoo, and Hammond seemed to like it that way. And they now had a Daniel that the colonel wanted to keep, will he, nil he.
Not knowing who the note writer was, not knowing what his or her plans might be concerning anyone made it difficult to make reasoned decisions about what to do. She didn't want anything terrible to happen to the colonel, despite his misdeeds. Something in him had snapped the day he realized that their Daniel had died by his hand, and instead of getting him help, Hammond had egged him on.
Hammond's little visit made her very nervous, though, and the questions he'd asked . . . she didn't know what he was up to. Frankly, she wouldn't trust him as far as she could throw him. The trouble with this meeting was that she didn't know how she'd ever be able to get to the Cuppa Café at the time specified. She had things she had to do, feeding Daniel for one, that made a six o'clock meeting very difficult to get to. The colonel hadn't been thrilled that Wednesday when she'd cut out early to try to make the appointment.
But the more she came to like this Daniel, the less she thought it was right to keep him here. He had a life and friends . . . a Samantha Carter and a Jack O'Neill who were probably over there trying to figure out what had happened to their Daniel, and what to do with the one that had been dumped on them. She hoped he'd survived. After all, he was Daniel.
Thinking about the multiple Daniels was enough to give her a headache and make her heartsore. What those kind and gentle men had gone through, simply so that General Hammond could get his translations and Colonel O'Neill could feel, however briefly, that he hadn't killed his best friend. His break from sanity was only a very limited excuse.
The acid in her stomach was churning, and she had to work tomorrow with those men so she forced herself to stop thinking about it for now and went to bed, where her mind wouldn't stop turning things over. Finally, she decided that she would work out a way to get to the café in time. Something had to give, and she wasn't willing to be party to this anymore.
With a decision made, her mind stopped fussing over the issues and let her get to sleep.
Friday, April 16
Daniel woke earlier than his lights did, but since the bathroom lights always worked, he decided to take advantage of the non-work time to take a long, hot shower. Letting the steamy water wash over him felt great. It was a choice he'd made, and he doubted very much that anyone could object to it, so he wasn't going to pay for it later.
Eventually, though, he knew he had to get out of the shower and face the morning and that enormous mountain of work. He didn't mind the work so much, he just wished he had gate addresses for some of those places because then he could suggest them as destinations when he got home.
He got out of the shower and dried off, then got dressed. He had pajamas and fatigues, and that was it. For a moment he considered putting on a pajama top with the fatigues, but decided against it. Jack might just consider it disrespectful, and he wasn't quite to the point of doing things just to piss the man off. He had a little self-preservation left.
The lights were on when he went back into the main room. He looked around. It might seem like a large enough room to someone who wasn't on their twelfth day confined there. He knew it could be worse, but telling himself that only helped so much.
Shaking off the melancholy, he settled down at the desk and got back to work on the text of the monument. He'd finished one side and part of another, by simple virtue of working on it for the better part of two days. It described a battle between two Goa'ulds, and though it was, as always, couched in terms of deities and godly might, there was a fair amount of real information regarding tactics used by both parties. A person with knowledge of Goa'uld technology could also make educated guesses regarding what equipment was used and so forth. In terms of immediate benefit, it told them nothing about either Goa'uld's current strength, but knowledge of tactics was never wasted.
Samantha came in about an hour after he got up with a large carafe of coffee and a mug. She set them down on the desk then stood waiting for him to acknowledge her. He was in the middle of a fiddly bit of translation, so he finished what he was focused on, then sat back. "Good morning," he said, his voice neutral. "I hope you slept well."
She flinched at the question, which hadn't been his intention, but he didn't respond outwardly to the movement. "Okay," she said. "Um . . . you should know, we've been ordered offworld for the next thirty-six hours or so, I mean, SG-1 has."
He blinked up at her, not sure what this meant precisely. "And that means?"
"Colonel O'Neill, Major Kowalski and I will be gone for about a day and a half." He nodded, his stomach feeling suddenly like a bottomless pit of anxiety. "General Hammond will assign a couple of airmen to bring your meals, but you aren't supposed to engage them in conversation."
"I see." His mouth was dry. "And when will you be leaving?" he asked.
"Around thirteen hundred hours," she said, the twisting of her hands betraying her agitation. That this made her uncomfortable didn't reassure him any. "I've got to go do some prep work, so one of the airmen will be bringing your breakfast in shortly, but Colonel O'Neill wanted me to tell you so you'd be prepared."
He nodded. "Tell him I appreciate the consideration," he said. Her eyes widened, and he gave her a very tight smile. "Truly. It would not have . . . I wouldn't have liked hearing it from one of the airmen."
Her smile mirrored his, he had a feeling. She put a hand on his shoulder and left the room. He reached out with careful hands and poured himself a cup of coffee. The thought of Jack and Samantha leaving the base was not a good one . . . how dangerous was this mission? What would happen to him if they were killed or captured? Was this Jack really sane enough to go on offworld missions?
He looked up at the clock on the wall. Thirteen hundred hours, one p.m. in laymen's terms. That was six hours away. If she needed to do prep work now, maybe that was an indication that it was a scientific mission. Something relatively harmless . . . he shook his head. He really didn't need to think about this now. There was nothing he could do, so there was no point in worrying about it. He would deal with what came when it came, and there wasn't a damned thing he could do about it before he knew what it was.
The door opened behind him, and though he knew it was just the airman with his food, he stiffened. Militarily correct, the man paced in, put the tray on the desk, did an about face and left again. Daniel looked at the food and swallowed. It didn't look any less appealing than any other food he'd received lately, but his stomach was not feeling receptive at the moment. Still, the last thing he needed was Jack getting on his case for not eating.
He pulled the tray towards him and managed to force down the sausage and eggs. Then he got back to work, eating the toast in bits and bites.
His eyes kept being drawn to the clock, and he wished he could stop being so aware of time's passage. It wasn't helping his nausea any. It wasn't actually interfering with either his eating or working, which was fortunate, but it made him feel wretched.
No one came to fetch the breakfast tray, and he wondered if it was just going to stay there till lunch. Noon rolled around, and still no one came. He got up to go to the bathroom and heard the door open. When he came out, there was a tray with hot ham sandwiches and greasy french fries sitting on his desk, and the breakfast tray was gone. His coffee, too, had been refreshed. He sat down and ate, then put the tray aside.
With no interruptions, the work went smoothly, though he was still pulled up short occasionally by the differences in the books. He'd go to look up a reference he knew of in a book he remembered, but it wouldn't be there, or it wouldn't be quite as he remembered it, so he'd have to search. Thirteen hundred hours came and went without so much as announcement. Daniel realized abruptly that he hadn't heard any announcements of any kind the whole time he'd been here. This room must be soundproofed and not on the PA system.
He kept working, focusing on the translation to keep himself from worrying too much about Samantha. The afternoon dragged on, and despite there being nothing to anticipate but dinner, he kept looking at the clock which just made him aware of the slowness of the day.
Eventually, the work grabbed him sufficiently that he became less conscious of how the day was passing. He glanced up after a long while and noticed that it was eight. Dinner was very late. Samantha came with it always around six to six thirty.
Shrugging, he returned to work. He wasn't overly hungry in any case. Late wouldn't be a problem. When the lights dimmed, he looked up in astonishment. It was already ten? And no dinner had come at all. He stood up slowly. They had forgotten him, that's all. His stomach made a tentative gurgle and he told it sternly to be quiet. He made a last trip to the bathroom and changed into nightclothes and went to bed. It wasn't part of their usual routine. Surely they wouldn't forget him in the morning.
Saturday, April 17
Sure enough, at half past seven an airman came in with a fresh carafe of coffee. Daniel was already hard at work, so he just ignored the young man and kept on with what he was doing. He was still slogging through the second side of the monument, though he was almost done now. Pouring himself a cup of coffee, he stood up and stretched. Going to the bookcase as he sipped at the bitter drink, he started scanning for a couple of Latin and Norse reference books he hoped would be there . . . and not too terribly different from their counterparts in his own world. He took down the Norse one, but he didn't see the Latin. Maybe it had never been written. Samantha had told him that all of their Daniel's books had been moved into this room, and he had difficulty imagining a Daniel who didn't have that particular book if it was available.
He put the Norse book down and poured himself some more coffee, then went back across to the shelves. Even if that one wasn't here, there had to be something he could use. He started pulling books off and flipping through them, drinking the coffee to stifle the awakening hunger in his stomach.
Finally, he had what looked like the right reference, but he felt as if his eyes were having trouble staying focused. He took the book back to the desk and put it down, then sat in his chair, rubbing his eyes with his hands. He blinked a couple of times, and the world started spinning. If he hadn't been sitting already, he would have fallen down.
Am I getting sick again? he wondered. Jack won't like that.
He put his head down on his arms on the desk to rest his eyes, sure that it was just some passing feeling of dizziness. It would go away in a moment. Then darkness came up and took him whole into itself and he knew no more.