Stargate Genesis
Episode 12
"Toward Insanity"
The traditional Kelownan game Seirá involves placing colored stones on a grid in an attempt to create a row of the same color, while your opponent does the same. Dr. Bailey Evans had spent some time on Langara among the Kelownans, and had picked up the game over occasional meetings with Jonas Quinn to discuss her translation work on the ruins left behind by the Goa'uld Thanos. When she finished her research and returned to Earth to work under the tutelage of Dr. Daniel Jackson, Jonas gave her the parting gift of a hand-carved Seirá set.
Sitting in the cafeteria of the Elizabeth, Bailey carefully placed the small wooden board on the table and slid a shallow tray out from the side, revealing a collection of flat colored stones. She looked up as Eli Wallace dropped heavily into the seat across from her. He was dripping sweat, and his t-shirt stuck to his chest. Bailey reached into her bag and retrieved a bottle of hand sanitizer, offering it to Eli.
"Still training with Colonel Sheppard?" she asked.
"Why, am I sweating?" responded Eli, smirking.
"With all this exercise you've been getting, I worry your gaming skills will begin to deteriorate," said Bailey. She allowed her eyes to wander from Eli's face for a moment; since she had first met him, the man had lost some weight and developed some muscle tone. It was not a change she minded.
"I may not be playing World of Warcraft anymore, but I can still outsmart you," said Eli, taking a stone from the tray and placing it on the board.
"Whatever you say, Mr. Dropout," Bailey retorted, placing a stone of her own on the board.
"Never gonna let that go, are you?" said Eli.
"Speaking as someone who worked hard for their degrees," said Bailey, "I'd say the chances are pretty low."
Eli studied the board, considering where to place his next stone. A thought occurred to him, and he leaned in across the table.
"Have you noticed anything … different about Todd lately?" he asked conspiratorially.
"You mean besides his usual 'life force draining alien' creepiness?" asked Bailey, raising an eyebrow.
Making a decision, Eli placed his next stone on the table and then looked up at Bailey. "Yeah," he said. "Besides that."
"I think the whole sabotage situation really rattled him," said Bailey, seeing an opportunity on the board and placing another stone.
"I don't know," said Eli. "I've never met another Wraith, but he seems really angry."
Eli took his turn, putting a stone down that blocked Bailey's partial row. He had been playing Seirá every day with Bailey for the last week. Normally he was very good at games like this, but Eli had yet to beat Bailey, who had been playing the game for years. They played the next few turns in silent concentration.
While he was deciding where to place a piece, he noticed something carved into the edge of the board closest to him. It was a message that read "Help, stuck in your brain - Ginn." How the hell did that get—
"He has that serum Dr. Beckett invented to keep his Wraith requirement to feed suppressed," said Bailey. "I wouldn't worry about it too much. You know, if you can get past the bit about eating people I think he's kind of sweet."
"What?" said Eli, snapping back into focus. He looked back down at the edge of the board, but the message was gone. He absentmindedly placed the stone in his hand on the field. "Yeah, you're probably right."
Bailey smiled and put a stone down triumphantly, completing a row. "Seirá!" she proclaimed. "Gotcha again, gamer boy!"
"Great," said Eli, standing up. "Listen, I've gotta go. I'll see you later."
Bailey watched him walk off, already lost in the personal world inside his head. He left the cafeteria in a hurry, leaving Bailey Evans sitting alone with her game board.
"Seeya later, Eli," she said quietly to herself.
~~00~~
It had been nearly a week since the Lucian Alliance saboteur had been discovered, and the Elizabeth had been forced to fend off a fleet of modified Ha'tak vessels. The damage to the ship wasn't major enough to warrant the return trip to Earth, so Colonel Sheppard had decided to get the ship back on course. The Elizabeth hadjust passed the furthest point the Destiny had travelled — also the place where Eli and Ronald Greer had watched solar flares tear the ship apart — and for the first time the crew was in entirely unknown territory.
As Eli walked down a corridor toward the medical bay, he passed a viewport. If he had been paying attention, he would have seen an entirely different set of stars than anyone from Earth had ever seen before. The Elizabeth was resting in the middle of empty space while the gate drive recharged. It had been nearly eighteen hours since the last gate jump. Because some of the damage was still being repaired, Sheppard was insisting on twenty-hour breaks in between jumps. They weren't in a hurry, after all. No one even knew what they were flying towards.
He walked into the medical bay, where a lab technician was working. Without saying hello, Eli walked up to the fMRI machine and started entering commands into the console. The technician stopped what he was doing and stepped over.
"Do you need a doctor?" he asked.
"Why would I need a doctor?" asked Eli without looking at the man. "Do you know how to use this machine?"
"Well, yeah, but I would need authorization from the doctor…" said the technician hesitantly.
"It's not hard," said Eli, laying down on the bench of the machine. "Just push the button."
The technician watched as the bench Eli was laying on slid back into the machine until his head was in place for the imaging process. He raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms.
"What the hell are you waiting for?" came Eli's voice from inside the fMRI.
"I'm going to get Dr. Whaile," said the technician.
"Get Colonel Sheppard while you're at it, so you can tell him why you refused to comply with a senior officer's orders!" yelled Eli impatiently. "My name is Eli Wallace, you can run my ID if you want."
"Sorry, sir, I didn't realize," said the technician, straightening up. "Starting the scan now."
He looked at the console to see that Eli had already entered the parameters. All he had to do was start the sequence. As images of Eli's brain began to appear on the screen, the technician did a double take; the scan showed more than double the brain activity than the average scan of a conscious adult should show, even during unusually high stimulation. Certain that there was an error in the data, the technician ran a background diagnostic program, but the machine appeared to be functioning perfectly.
As the scan finished, the bench slid forward and Eli sat up.
"Anything weird?" he asked.
"Well, your brain activity is-"
"Yeah, thanks," said Eli, standing up and pushing the man out of the way. He sent the data to his private lab and then deleted all records of it from the system using his officer's clearance.
"Hey, you can't just-" started the technician. "You know what, nevermind. Do whatever you want."
"Thanks for your help," said Eli, before walking out of the medical bay as quickly as he came in.
~~00~~
"Dr. Evans!" said Colonel Sheppard jovially, as Bailey walked onto the bridge, staring at her feet. "Just the doctor I needed to see."
"Oh?" she asked, looking up at him. "What is it?"
"Major Burnette, will you please show the doctor what you found?" said Sheppard, turning in the airman's direction.
"Yes, sir," said Lauren Burnette, entering a command into the console she was sitting at, and bringing up a holographic window with strange symbols displayed on it.
"That looks like Ancient," said Bailey. "But we are way further from the Milky Way than we thought the Ancients ever went."
"We picked up a distress call about half an hour ago," said Burnette. "At first we thought it was Ancient, but Colonel Sheppard and Major Ročenka both read Ancient, and they couldn't understand a word."
"We sent a return signal, but there hasn't been a response," Burnette continued.
"It's too far away for Elizabeth to check for lifesigns, but I don't want to go rushing in to see for ourselves until we know what the message says," said Sheppard.
Bailey stood, staring at the strange text, her lips silently moving.
"If you have any—" started Burnette, before being hushed by Sheppard, who raised his eyebrows meaningfully at her. Major Burnette closed her mouth and turned back to her console in silence to let the linguist think. After a few more moments, Bailey broke the silence.
"It's not Ancient, exactly, but I think it's related," she said. "In fact, I think this may be a cousin of Ancient — a language that evolved from the same ancestor as the Ancient we know."
"How did you figure that out just from this message?" asked Burnette.
"Never mind that, just tell us what it says," said Sheppard.
"I can't translate it exactly, but I think the ship is stranded," said Bailey. "They ran out of power."
~~00~~
Alone in his lab, Eli paced back and forth, running his hands through his hair.
"How could this happen?" he asked. He stopped, looking around for any sign of an answer.
"Can you hear me, Ginn?" he said to an empty lab. Sitting down at his workbench, he pulled up the holographic display of his fMRI scan once again. There was an entire extra consciousness camping out in his brain. It really explained a lot, thought Eli. Normal people don't hallucinate messages telling them to fly a spaceship to the end of the universe.
"Can't you talk to me?" he asked. "You've done it before."
A message appeared across his brain scan. "It's not easy," it read.
"If we were back on the Destiny, I could use the chair to upload both of our consciousnesses to a simulation," mused Eli. "As cool as this ship is, it's missing a few toys."
The message on the screen changed. "Communications stones," it said.
"Duh!" said Eli excitedly, standing up. "Why didn't I think of that?"
He walked to the far end of the lab and opened a drawer. Inside were several small boxes, each of which contained Ancient devices that had been brought along for the benefit of Eli, Todd, and several other scientists on board. Though some of the secrets behind Ancient technology had been unlocked in recent years, such as the science which made the wormhole drive possible, much of the Ancients' technology remained a mystery.
No one on Earth had yet to figure out how the communication stones worked exactly. The ansible device used communication stones in conjunction with Wraith organic polymer, but even Todd hadn't figured out how the original connection was formed. Therefore, Homeworld Command had sent several sets of stones with the Elizabeth so that Todd and the other scientists could pursue further experiments. Unlike the stones that Eli had used on the Destiny, these stones were not connected to other stones back on Earth. Instead, each stone was stored in a box with its counterpart.
Eli chose a box and walked back to his workbench. As he opened the box, Bailey walked into the lab.
"Eli!" she said. "We found something."
Punching a button to close the holographic display, Eli looked up at Bailey.
"Oh, hi," he said. "Sorry, I've just had something else on my mind."
"Are those communication stones?" asked Bailey. "Is this what you've been working on?"
"Yeah," said Eli. "Actually, can you help me?"
"Sure, but you're gonna wanna see the distress signal we received," she said. "The origin is off our projected path, but Colonel Sheppard has authorized an extra jump to investigate."
"Just pick up one of these stones," said Eli. "I want to try something."
"Okay…" said Bailey, picking up the stone closest to her. As soon as she did, Eli grabbed the other stone.
~~00~~
Ginn gasped as she sucked in a lungful of air for the first time in years. It wasn't that she was suffocating during that time, she had just really missed breathing. When she was in Eli's body she felt him breathing, but she couldn't actually breathe for herself. Looking down, she took in the body she had just taken control of. It was shorter than she was, and heavier.
"Did it work?" asked Eli. Ginn looked up at him and smiled.
"Eli!" she cried, attacking him with a hug. "Eli, I'm here, it worked."
"Ginn?" he asked. She stepped back and looked at him.
"It's me," she said.
"How are you here?" asked Eli. "I thought you were lost when the Destiny was destroyed."
"I don't know," said Ginn. "The last thing I remember on the Destiny was checking on your vital signs while you and the rest of the crew were in stasis. Then suddenly I was in your head, and you were in the shuttle with Greer while solar flares ripped the Destiny apart."
"Is it possible that you accidentally backed yourself up into my brain?" asked Eli.
"I don't know how I could have, but there was so much about the Destiny I didn't understand, even when I only existed as a consciousness inside the computers," said Ginn. "It's possible."
"And you were just inside my head?" asked Eli. "What was that like?"
"I could see and hear and feel everything you did," said Ginn. "Anything you thought, I heard. But I couldn't talk to you; I couldn't do anything."
"Ginn, I'm so sorry," said Eli, taking her hand.
"I'm just glad I can talk to you now," she said, reaching up with her other hand and running her fingers through his hair. She stepped closer, looking into his eyes.
"We shouldn't," said Eli, swallowing hard and looking away. "It's just…"
"Right," said Ginn, stepping back.
"Eli, I need you on the bridge with Dr. Evans," came Sheppard's voice over the comm system. "We're about to make a jump."
~~00~~
On the bridge, John sat in the captain's chair. Eli and Bailey had just arrived, and were taking their seats, with Bailey occupying Todd's usual chair.
"Are we all set back there, Todd?" asked John.
"The gate drive is ready, John Sheppard," came Todd's voice over the comm system.
"Take us out, Major Burnette," said John.
"Yes, sir," said Burnette, entering the command into her console.
Looking out the front viewport, John watched as a wave of distorted energy emanated from a point just below the bridge and expanded into an event horizon several hundred meters in front of the Elizabeth. The giant blue portal shimmered with impossible light, held in its circular shape by an invisible barrier. The ship's sublight engines came on, propelling her toward the entrance to the wormhole.
~~00~~
As the Elizabeth re-emerged on the other side of the wormhole, Eli looked over at Bailey. She looked back at him, smiling.
"I'm still here," Ginn said.
Eli wondered where that left Bailey, but quickly abandoned the thought as he looked out the front window. Floating in the distance was a ship that looked eerily familiar.
"That's an Aurora-class ship," said Sheppard.
Ginn punched in a command on Todd's chair and brought up a holographic screen of the ship, magnified several times.
"That's not Aurora-class," she said. "I can see why you thought that, but the design's all wrong."
"What exactly did the message say?" asked Eli.
"Didn't Dr. Evans tell you?" asked Sheppard. Eli looked over at Ginn, who shrugged.
"It was a distress call," explained Sheppard. "These guys were stranded with an empty tank."
"The message was over a thousand years old," said Burnette. "I'm not getting any lifesigns; there's no one left."
"Let's go check it out then," said Sheppard. "Eli, Dr. Evans, you're with me. Todd, care to join us?"
"I would prefer to stay on the Elizabeth this time, John Sheppard," came Todd's voice over the comm system.
"Alright then," said Sheppard. "Major Burnette, you're in charge until I get back. Don't sit in my seat though."
~~00~~
"Shouldn't we have shut off the stones?" whispered Eli to Ginn, who was sitting next to him in the hold of the shuttle. Across from them sat two armed airmen. Colonel Sheppard was flying, and another airman sat in the co-pilot's seat.
"I want to see this for myself," whispered Ginn. "We can shut them off when we get back. I haven't been properly in a body for years, and besides, I am just as qualified as you to be here."
"Everything alright back there?" called Sheppard from the front of the shuttle.
"Yeah, everything's fine," said Eli, looking at Ginn. "Just talking about something that I couldn't get out of my head."
"We're about to dock," said Sheppard. "Hold on."
The shuttle rocked as it settled over one of the strange ship's airlocks.
"We have a good seal," said the co-pilot. "De-activating artificial grav and opening the hatch. The shuttle is detecting breathable air inside the ship."
The circular hatch in the floor of the shuttle hissed and lifted open as Eli felt himself becoming weightless. The two airmen across from him unstrapped themselves and floated toward the hatch, working to open the outer door of the airlock revealed under it. Finally the door slid sideways, retreating into the hull of the ship. The airmen dropped into the opening, switching on the flashlights attached to their weapons.
"All clear," called one of the airmen from inside the ship. Eli opened the box that was sitting next to him and a single kino floated out of it and toward the hatch. Eli pulled up the video feed and followed after the spherical device. He pulled himself through the airlock past the inner door, which was already open. As he floated into a hallway, he turned around to see Ginn close behind. She was already looking over scans of the ship on her tablet.
"There is an active energy signature coming from the front of the ship," she said, as Sheppard floated through the airlock behind her.
"Lead the way," said Sheppard.
~~00~~
As they entered the bridge of the ship, a pedestal in the center of the room lit up with a bright green light. Ginn pushed through the doorway straight toward it, not noticing the vertical tubes on either side of the bridge. One of the airmen floated in behind her, shining his flashlight toward the wall on his left. As the beam fell over them, he saw a decaying corpse in each tube.
"They look human," he said.
"They must have gone into stasis when no one responded to their distress beacon," said Eli. "They were probably alive for hundreds of years before the power failed completely."
He shuddered, thinking of all the people who died in stasis pods on the Destiny.
"Careful," said Sheppard. "Just because they're dead doesn't mean they didn't leave any surprises for us."
Ginn arrived at the glowing pedestal, grabbing the edge with her hands to bring herself to a stop. When she touched it, a glitchy hologram appeared above the pedestal. The image of a man, seemingly human and dressed in a sharp uniform, blinked into focus. He began to speak, but the language was alien.
"Bailey, can you translate?" asked Sheppard.
"Um, I can try," said Ginn. She didn't have Bailey's advanced linguistic abilities, but she did speak Ancient, and this sounded almost similar. She looked over at Eli, who had just arrived next to her.
"If there wasn't enough power to move the ship, this message might be using up whatever reserves are left," he said. The kino floated next to him, recording everything. "If you can't translate it before the power dies, you can review the footage later."
The man in the hologram was still speaking, and his voice was becoming more urgent. He spoke for a minute longer and then the image froze. After a moment the message restarted from the beginning.
"I couldn't make out most of it, but he kept repeating one word over and over," said Ginn. "Opifex."
"What does that mean?" asked Sheppard.
"There is a Latin word, opifex," said Ginn, "which can mean maker, inventor, or creator."
"Could it mean the same thing in this language?" asked Sheppard.
"If these people share a common ancestor with the Ancients, then it would make sense," said Eli. "After all, Latin originally evolved from Ancient. Right, Bailey?"
"Yeah," said Ginn. "It could mean the same thing. I'll have to compare this message to examples of Latin and Ancient when we get back to the ship."
Suddenly the hologram blinked off, and the glow from the pedestal faded, leaving Sheppard, Eli, Ginn, and the two airmen in relative darkness. Ginn's tablet flashed with a red warning.
"Oh no," she said. "The oxygen level is dropping."
"Eli?" asked Sheppard.
"The oxygen levels started dropping as soon as the power shut off," said Eli, looking at his own tablet. "At this rate the air won't be breathable in five minutes."
"Let's get out of here!" shouted Sheppard.
~~00~~
Back in the shuttle, the two airmen worked to seal the floor hatch as Eli and Ginn strapped in to their seats. Sheppard pushed himself toward the pilot's chair.
"Get us out of here!" he shouted to the co-pilot as he climbed into his seat.
The co-pilot re-engaged the artificial gravity as the floor hatch was sealed, and lifted the shuttle off the alien ship's airlock. When they were a safe distance away, Sheppard turned around to look at Eli.
"Is the kino still in there?" he asked.
"Yeah," said Eli, pulling up the video feed on his tablet. The kino was still floating in the ship's bridge, next to the pedestal.
"What the hell happened in there?" asked Sheppard.
"My guess is that the ship used its emergency power reserves to activate basic life support when it detected the Elizabeth arriving," said Eli. "Whoever left this ship behind wanted us to be able to get on board and hear their message."
"But then the emergency power ran out," said Ginn. "Taking the life support with it."
"Will the ship be safe to explore with EVA suits?" asked Sheppard.
"Sir, the ship is gone," said the co-pilot.
"What?" asked Sheppard.
"The ship, sir," repeated the co-pilot. "It's not there anymore."
Sheppard turned and looked out the front window. Where the alien ship had been floating a moment before, there was now only empty space.
"Is it cloaked?" asked Sheppard.
"I'm not detecting any energy signatures," said the co-pilot. "I don't think it's cloaked."
"Eli," said Sheppard, "what is the kino showing?"
Eli looked down at his tablet. "There's no signal," he said. "We lost the kino."
"What the hell…" said Sheppard. "Major Burnette, did you see that?"
"We saw the ship vanish," came Burnette's voice over the comm. "There's no trace of it, sir. It's just... gone."
~~00~~
John stood on the bridge of the Elizabeth, in front of a hologram of General Samantha Carter.
"Are you sure the ship is gone?" asked Sam.
"We're positive," said John. "I had 302s sweep the entire area. It's not here anymore."
"What does Todd have to say about it?" asked Sam.
"He's never seen anything like it," said John. "That ship was completely dead. The last of the power reserves were depleted powering the life support and the emergency beacon."
"So you think whatever moved the ship was an outside force," said Sam.
"That's what I'm thinking," said John. "But it wasn't anything close to here; we are in the middle of empty space between galaxies."
"What about the message?" asked Sam. "You said you recorded the emergency message that the crew of the ship left behind."
"I'll send the video files Eli recorded to you," said John. "Dr. Evans hasn't been able to translate it yet, except for one word she recognized as possibly Latin: opifex."
"Creator," said Sam.
"Yeah, that's what Evans said," confirmed Sheppard.
"I'll have Danesh look at it," said Sam. "Maybe she will see something Dr. Evans didn't. In the mean time, I want you getting back on course. You still have a mission objective."
"Yes, ma'am," said Sheppard. "We are plotting the next jump now."
"Good luck, John," said Sam, before the hologram blinked off.
~~00~~
Eli opened the box on his workbench, revealing the two communication stones.
"Where do you think Bailey's been all this time?" asked Eli.
"If I had to guess," said Ginn, "I'd say she's in your head, where I was. But I'm not sure."
"I'm going to find a way to get you out again, permanently," said Eli. "I can't believe I'm already sending you back."
"The inside of your head's not so bad," said Ginn, smiling. "I get to watch everything you do."
"Everything?" asked Eli, horrified. "Even…"
"Yup," said Ginn, stepping closer to him and putting her hands on his shoulders. "Everything."
"Aren't you worried Bailey's in my head right now, watching this?" asked Eli.
"I don't care," said Ginn, reaching up to kiss him. Eli was surprised to find how good she felt in his arms. Just as he was thinking about how nice her lips were, he realized once again that it was Bailey's body in front of him, not Ginn's. He pulled away from her.
"Sorry, it's just weird," he stammered, "I don't…"
"Right," said Ginn, stepping back. "Let's do this."
She reached toward the box and picked up one of the stones. Eli picked up the other stone.
~~00~~
Bailey gasped as her lungs filled with air. She looked up to see Eli standing in front of her.
"Eli!" she said, trying to catch her breath.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
"Did you think that was okay, like, at all?" asked Bailey.
"I'm really sorry, Bailey," said Eli. "But Ginn is alive."
Bailey stared at Eli, and started to back away slowly before turning around and walking quickly out of the lab. He didn't go after her.
Written by Caleb Palmquist
Story by Andrew Marron and Caleb Palmquist