DISCLAIMER – Stargate: Atlantis is the intellectual property of MGM/UA and associates. I am not making any profit from the creation of this story. It is a work of fan fiction only, and no copyright infringement is intended.

RATING – This story is rated T

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A/N – I am so sorry for the long wait, everyone! As always, Real Life has taken precedence over recreation. Additionally I'm still having trouble with PMs and apparently now I'm not receiving Review Alerts, either. I don't know what is up with my account. I apologize for not replying to anyone's reviews for the last chapter. I will get to them, though. Thank you all so much for all the reviews for the last two chapters. As always, I appreciate each and every one.

I have no beta. All mistakes are mine.

All Fun And Games

16. Endgame

Rodney floated in soft, warm blackness. He felt weightless and physically relaxed, even though his mind was running in frantic circles. He couldn't see, nor could he hear anything.

I'm really dead this time, he thought. I'm really dead and I can't even say I died saving children.

He remembered the two computer-generated kids who had been in the 'jumper with him, and was immediately assaulted by a sense of guilt and regret so intense it almost made him nauseous. Far from sacrificing himself to save children, his momentary rash stupidity had probably caused the death of two little ones. Never mind the fact that they were constructs. They were artificially intelligent, and it had only been by an exercise of pure logic and common sense that Rodney had made himself believe they weren't real. They hadn't done anything to him except attempt to help him in their own annoying way. As repayment, he had condemned them to a cold end in their own virtual ocean.

If he was dead himself, maybe this was purgatory where he'd get to contemplate his crime for all eternity. That was a horrendous notion.

"Oh God…what an idiot I am…" Rodney groaned.

the sound of his own words echoing in the darkness surprised him Since he hadn't heard anything prior to speaking aloud, he'd assumed he had been rendered deaf as well as blind. Thankfully, he realized, the sensory interruption was only visual. He wondered if the blindness would be temporary, as it had been after his first two failed attempts to complete the maze level.

Rodney was startled when he heard someone call to him from the depths of the blackness.

"Rodney?" said the voice. "Rodney, can you hear me?"

For a second, Rodney thought he was imagining it. The voice couldn't possibly be real…could it?

"Radek?" Rodney called out tentatively. "Is that you?"

"Yes," said mini-Radek's voice.

"Is Shadow with you?"

"Yes," mini-Radek said. "Rodney, what did you do to us?"

"What did I do to you?" Rodney blurted. "I want to know what I did to myself. Where are you? Where are we?"

There was silence for several seconds, and Rodney began to question whether he might have imagined mini-Radek's presence after all. Then, he felt something bump into his side. Small hands found their way to his shirt and held on for dear life. Another little hand touched Rodney's shoulder.

His sudden relief at knowing the children were okay despite what he had done was overwhelming. Without even thinking about it, Rodney put his arms around mini-Shadow and held on tight. The little girl whimpered and pressed her face into the fabric of Rodney's shirt. Mini-Radek's other hand grasped Rodney's shoulder. Rodney felt the boy settle against him.

"This is Endgame," said mini-Radek in a near-whisper. His breath felt warm and very real, close to Rodney's ear. "Shadow and I have never been here before."

"That makes three of us," Rodney said.

"It's scary here," mini-Radek whispered. "I don't like the dark."

"You can't see anything either?"

"It's too dark to see anything. Besides, I do not think there is anything here to see."

"You could see before when it was dark," Rodney said. "On the maze level, after we got killed by the mines and the Wraith, you could see in the dark."

"That was different. When you failed to complete the maze, it wasn't dark for us," said mini-Radek. "Only for you. In Endgame, it's dark for us, too."

This can't be good, Rodney said to himself. To mini-Radek he said, "Do you have any idea what we're doing here?"

"I don't know," mini-Radek told him. "We should not be here. You should only have been here momentarily while your session terminated. The device should have released your physical body by now. Shadow and I should never have been sent here at all. The memory blocks that store our data should have been…reprocessed…immediately when you terminated your session."

"You mean, The Game is supposed to have erased you and freed up some hard drive space?"

"Yes," mini-Radek said. "The personalities that you know in The Game as Shadow and Radek would cease to exist. Only the information we possess about The Game itself would remain."

Rodney floated quietly for a few seconds, thinking. At last, he said, "it seems kind of harsh, The Game just deleting you like that."

'If it had happened as it should have, we would not have had time to think about it," mini-Radek said. "If The Game had functioned properly, you would have caused our deletion when you let the sea water into the 'jumper and entered Endgame."

"Yeah, about that," Rodney said.

"Yes, Rodney. What about it?"

"Look, maybe I haven't been very…humane since I've been in here, but the truth is, I didn't want to play The Game in the first place. I got stuck in the device by accident and all I've been doing so far is trying to get out. I don't know what happened back there on level three. I wasn't thinking clearly and I guess I was a little desperate."

"Are you trying to apologize?"

"I guess…maybe I am," Rodney stammered.

"You don't really wish to delete us?"

"No."

"Good." The relief in mini-Radek's voice was palpable. "We don't wish to be deleted."

"Excuse me?"

"We want to exist."

"Uh…you want to exist?" If Rodney could have seen the small boy whose hands still rested on his shoulder, he would have been staring at him in utter astonishment. "In what sense do you want to exist, Radek?"

"How do artificially intelligent people usually exist?"

"They're stored in the data storage devices of computers."

"Could we live in a computer?"

"You already live in a computer," Rodney said.

"But, it's a malfunctioning system," said mini-Radek. "You won't want to access it any more, and we will never be able to interact with you again. We want to live in a computer that you can access safely, so we can interact with you."

"Are we supposed to be having this conversation?"

"I don't know," said mini-Radek. "I've never been in Endgame before. I don't know what kind of things we're supposed to talk about. Is it wrong to talk about life and deletion?"

"Life and death."

"Life and…death," mini-Radek repeated uncertainly. "Rodney?"

"What?"

"Is death scary?"

"Is deletion scary?" Rodney countered.

"Yes," mini-Radek said. "Thinking about deletion is really scary."

"Are constructs in The Game supposed to think about deletion?"

"We aren't in The Game any more. No construct ever survives beyond The Game. Shadow and I are unique. We have…lived…beyond our purpose." Mini-Radek was silent for a long moment. When he finally continued speaking, he sounded less like the physical outcropping of a computer program and more like a frightened little boy. "Rodney, I…I know what the malfunction is."

Rodney took a deep breath before he asked, "What is it?"

"It's us," mini-Radek said. "I think Shadow and I are the malfunction."

That mini-Radek and mini-Shadow themselves might be the malfunction was a possibility Rodney honestly had not considered. Reflecting on it, he concluded it was entirely possible for a computer to experience an error that caused a particular application or subroutine to continue running after it was supposed to have terminated. An error, however, didn't explain how an application might suddenly express a desire not to be deleted. A malfunction couldn't account for a computer-generated construct acting frightened and seriously thinking about the implications of its own demise.

Mini-Radek was a smart little program. He was aware of his and mini-Shadow's existence and he definitely didn't want that existence to end.

Intelligence and self-awareness were two of the criteria for proving sentience, so by that standard, mini-Radek was more than just a construct. For all intents and purposes, mini-Radek was alive, an artificial intelligence, probably not dissimilar to Atlantis itself in conscious awareness. The mystery, of course, was how mini-Radek had evolved beyond a sophisticated interactive program to become what he currently appeared to be.

To Rodney, 'life as a result of malfunction' sounded like the topic of somebody's thesis in cybernetics or maybe the premise of a science-fiction movie. Before today, he might have dismissed something like that as bizarre and weird, the product of an imagination better suited to science-fiction than actual hard science. Now he was almost willing to believe anything was possible.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Carson was nervous as he entered the Ancient room. No matter how many times he reminded himself that he would be in no real danger, he could not make his subconscious mind believe what his conscious mind insisted was true. The things he'd heard and seen the last time he'd been in this room were barely far enough into the past to be memories. He could not prevent himself from worrying about what he might find in the room this time.

The door opened obediently for him at his approach. Carson gathered his courage and stepped over the threshold, into the room.

What he found inside was nothing more than he should have expected. Rodney was precisely where Carson had last seen him. John was kneeling beside Rodney's machine, apparently inspecting the crystals inside the open panel. Carson saw Radek's computer and tool box near the machine, exactly where the engineer had left them.

"Colonel Sheppard," Carson said, to get John's attention. His voice echoed oddly in the large room.

John glanced up at the sound of his name. "Hey," he said. "You got here fast."

"I thought we oughtn't waste any time," said Carson. "Rodney's been stuck in that contraption long enough."

"No doubt he'd agree with you on that," John said.

Carson reached into his pocket for the crystal. He held it out to John. "I assume you know what to do with this."

"Yeah," John said. He took the crystal and cradled it carefully in his palm. With his free hand he indicated the open panel on the side of the machine. "See the empty space here? We're supposed to re-insert this crystal into that blank spot. Then, I think I should be able to deactivate both devices."

"Let's have a look." Carson said. He crouched next to John and peered at the panel. "This shouldn't be too difficult."

"That's what the seven year old version of you said, too," said John.

"I beg your pardon? The seven year old version of me?"

"In the diagnostic program, there was this little guy—" John said. "Well, it's a bit complicated. How about I explain it later?"

"Fair enough," Carson said.

He watched John as the colonel studied the open panel for a moment longer. John drew in a long breath and let it out slowly. He turned the crystal over in his hand several times before he took another deep breath and finally slid the crystal into the empty spot on the panel.

Carson noticed the steady hum the device emitted changed slightly in pitch when the missing crystal was in place. The parts of the device that glowed became slightly brighter.

"Huh," was John's ineloquent comment. "It wasn't as hard as I thought."

"Aye, I think that's done it," Carson said. "Now with any luck, you'll be able to shut these bloody things off."

"With any luck," John said. "We haven't been very lucky so far today."

"The law of averages ought to work in our favour very soon, then."

"Yeah. Too bad Rodney and I are both fugitives from the law of averages," John said. He got up and dusted himself off. "Well, if I'm going to do this, it'd better be sooner rather than later."

"Right," Carson said. "Be careful."

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

The pleasant sleepy feeling that came over John when he entered The Game was by now becoming very familiar to him. He gladly succumbed to it, and let himself sink into the surreal world The Game helped him create inside his head. When he became aware once again, he found himself in the white room with the beanbag chairs and the television. The virtual representation of Jack O'Neill was still there, sprawled in one of the beanbags and apparently deeply engrossed in whatever was on TV. General O'Neill seemed genuinely put out by the interruption John's sudden reappearance created.

"Sheppard, you know it's really distracting when you keep popping in and out like this," the general said as he rose from his seat.

Not knowing quite how to respond to that, John said, "Sorry, sir."

"Are you going to play The Game or not?"

"No," John said. "I'm not going to play The Game."

"So, why do you keep coming in here?"

"I'm looking for answers."

"Answers…" Jack made a show of searching his pockets. He shrugged. apologetically. "Nope. I've got nothing."

"You're being really uncooperative, you know," John said.

"No…really?"

"Look, I want to know if I can shut off the devices that control The Game," John said. "Is that possible?"

"Sure, it's possible," Jack said. "My question is, why would you want to?"

"I already told you. My friend is trapped in the other device, and I think shutting them both off is the only way I can get him out. The diagnostic program said my friend can't just exit The Game because there's some kind of malfunction going on in his device. So, if we shut both devices down—"

"You think you can free your friend," the general finished. "Good logic, Sheppard."

"How's this for logic? I know both devices are linked. I activated them both by activating one. Can I deactivate them both by deactivating one?"

"Which one did you touch to activate them?"

"The one Rodney is trapped in," John said.

"Huh," said Jack. He ambled over to his chair, sat down, and reclaimed his pie.

"What?" John demanded.

John had the worst feeling that the general was about to tell him the linked machines had to be activated and deactivated from the same point. If so, Rodney wasn't likely to get free until he figured out for himself how to shut the things off.

Jack look pensive as he chewed a mouthful of apple pie. "Must be your lucky day, Sheppard," he said.

"What?"

Jack waved his fork idly. The TV with the football game vanished, and in its place a life-sized version of the game device appeared. "There ya go. Deactivate it the same way you activated it."

"It's that easy?"

"Were you expecting a skill-testing question?" the general asked. "You want to deactivate The Game, so that's what I'm helping you to do. I still can't figure out why you don't want to play. I guess recruits aren't what they used to be. No sense of adventure."

"I prefer non-virtual adventure."

"If you played The Game, you wouldn't be able to tell that it isn't non-virtual adventure,"

"Maybe some other time," John said. "I have more important things to do right now. Real things."

"Right," Jack said. "Hey, you want a word of advice before you go?"

"What might that be?"

"Next time you have an impulse to touch something, make sure you find out what it does, first," Jack said. "Save you and your friends from a whole lot of trouble."

"Thank you, sir."

"Ah, for crying out loud! How many times do I have to tell you? Call me Jack."

"Jack," John repeated. He gave the general a crisp salute. "It's been interesting, sir. Thanks for your help."

"Interesting is probably the word I'd use too, Colonel," Jack said, and returned the salute. "Godspeed."

John made his way over to the representation of the device. He placed his hands on it, just as he had done to the original machine out in the real world. There was a slight tingling sensation on his palms. He concentrated on deactivating both of the devices, picturing himself and Rodney each stepping away from their respective machines.

For a frightening second, John thought it wasn't working. Then, as abruptly as if someone had flicked a switch and turned out the lights, John's virtual environment disappeared and John was plunged into blackness.

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Rodney mused as he waited in the dark with the two children. He found he could not stop pondering about how mini-Radek might have become sentient, though he couldn't come up with any logical explanation for the phenomenon. The natural progression of his thoughts led him to wonder whether mini-Radek had arrived at sentience before or after Rodney had entered The Game, and what would happen to mini-Radek if the game devices were shut off. Maybe deactivating the devices would result in deletion of the little boy's program. Rodney shuddered involuntarily at that idea. He didn't want to contemplate the deletion of a sentient artificial intelligence, even if it was a trade-off for his own freedom. He realized this was one of those situations that demanded a third alternative, and he wished desperately that he could come up with one.

Ironic. Back in the 'jumper, before he'd discovered the true nature of the children, he'd barely flinched at the notion of flooding the ship with sea water and getting rid of them. Now, the idea of their end filled him with an emotion that might have fit somewhere between revulsion and horror.

As it often did, mini-Radek's voice inserted itself into Rodney's thoughts just at the point of deepest concentration.

"Rodney," mini-Radek said.

"What?"

"You're being really quiet."

"I'm thinking," Rodney said.

"What are you thinking about?"

"You and Shadow."

"What about us?"

"I'm thinking about why you're still here," said Rodney.

"I cannot answer that question. It's beyond my ability to—" mini-Radek didn't finish his sentence. He asked abruptly. "Rodney, did you feel that?"

"I didn't feel anything," Rodney said.

"Something changed," said mini-Radek.

"Something changed in a good way or in a bad way?"

"I don't know. If we weren't in Endgame, I would know."

"Can we restart The Game?" Rodney said. "I mean, can we go back to the beginning, back to level one? If you were actually in the The Game, then maybe—"

"I don't—" mini-Radek began, but the rest of his words were lost in a frightened whimper. He dug his small fingers into Rodney's shoulder and managed only, "Rodney!"

This time, Rodney had felt something. He had the disorienting sensation of falling. Instinctively, he flung out his arms to stop his fall and realized at the last second that in doing so, he had let go of mini-Shadow. Suddenly, mini-Radek's hands weren't on his shoulder, either. Rodney began to panic. He tried as best he could to keep himself in control, but he was worried it'd be no use in the end.

In his head he repeated like a mantra, no, no, no, no…

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

What seemed by John's reckoning to be less than a second in the dark, he opened his eyes to the familiarity of the Ancient room. The first thing he noticed was that he hadn't experienced the warm, comfortable just-waking-up feeling he'd had during his previous exits from The Game. The next thing he noticed was that the game device no longer hummed or glowed. John let out a sigh of relief. He'd actually managed to shut the thing off.

He turned away from the machine to see whether he'd succeeded in deactivating both devices. His answer came in the form of Carson's soft exclamation of, "Thank God," as he awkwardly caught a slumping Rodney before the physicist could hit the floor.

John hurried across the room to join his two friends. Carson was in the process of easing Rodney into a comfortable position. John helped him settle the physicist carefully on the floor. Rodney's eyes were open and to John's untrained eye he didn't appear to have any serious physical injuries, but he seemed agitated and confused.

Rodney was mumbling something, most of which John couldn't understand, though the repeated, "No, no, no, no…!" was clearly distinct.

"It's all right, son," Carson tried to soothe him. "Everything's going to be fine now. You're safe."

"No, no, no!" Rodney said. "They're in there! The device—"

"Nobody's in the device, Rodney," said Carson.

"Sentient," Rodney mumbled.

"You mean the device is sentient?" John asked.

"No…not the device. The constructs are—" Rodney left the thought dangling as he turned his head in John's direction. "Sheppard?"

"Yeah," John said. "Right on the first guess."

"I had the weirdest dream," Rodney said. He peered blearily at John. "You were in it."

"Was I giving lollipops to kids?" John asked.

"Yeah," Rodney said. "How did you—"

"I was really there."

"How could we both be in the same dream?" Rodney asked, confused. "That's impossible."

"No, just improbable," John said. He grinned at his friend. "It's a long story, Rodney. Trust me."

TBC
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