Teal'c

Canyons and plateaus stretched around me filling the planet in a complex kaleidoscope of rich reds and browns. The sky stretched onward as a canvas for the sunset, filling in the pinks and indigos of the evening hours. I reached my hand into the pocket of my suede vest and pulled out a handful of dried corn laying my palm flat for my equine to graze against.

"Good girl, Snowball." I whispered to her as she took the offering and laid a gentle hand along the fine muscle of her neck. Once she had fished I swung myself back into the saddle and continued the patrol of the borderlands around my designated perimeter.

"Sherif Teal'c!" A male called out to me from his equine that was galloping around the corner. "Bandits, they're a' headin' towards the old Gem Saloon! They're a' threaten' Miss Lyla May!"

I cracked a smile and moved the reins in his direction. "This will not happen in my territory. Partner." I chided and took off following him down the path. "I find great amusement in this program." Speaking mostly to myself than to the characters around me I blazed the trail.

Daniel

The flames licked my skin, encompassing the tents around me. I was still trying to get the fire out, kicking sand onto it was doing nothing and Aya had said she went into town to get help, but I had a feeling that it was a lost cause. Billowing columns of thick dark smoke rose up as a signal in the air, anyone from the town at this point would see it, but no one had come. I didn't know how much longer my lungs could take in the ash on a fruitless endeavor so I slumped down in the sand and fell onto my back draping my burned gritty arm over my face to block out the blazing sun. My bare back sizzled against the raw sand, my pants were still damp and clinging to my legs like paper mache. I heard multiple footsteps come up to me and stop.

"It's no use," I groaned. "It's all gone now."

"Hey Daniel," Jack's voice shot down to me and I flung my arm off to look up at him. "What's going on here?"

"I was looking for someone, something, I'm not sure. I had been waiting my whole life for this, it was everything, and just as I was on the break of finding out, it went up in flames. All of it. I tried to out it out, but clearly I failed at that too." I gestured to the fire and he reached a hand out to me, pulling me up to my feet.

"No, we're in some kind of simulation. Colonel O'Neill and I have been going through similar, um, trials." Sam was wearing our off world gear smattered in blood.

"Are you okay?" I asked her, looking for any sign of injury. She seemed unharmed, but her eyes told a different story.

"We're fine Daniel, but your fun is over. You're only half naked lying out in the desert sun for a tan here. Can't imagine soot is much of a sun repellent." Jack was in a pair of pale blue tailored shorts and a striped polo with what I believed to be boating shoes.

The first smile to tickle my lips in a long time emerged in how ridiculous he looked. "And what about you Jack? What's with your get up?"

"I'll share mine if you share yours," he smirked back and they guided me back towards the town.

"We need to find a doorway of sorts that doesn't belong," Sam began after we stepped onto the cobbled streets marking the entrance of the village. Mud brick and palm logged structures with multicolored fabric awnings started speckling the sides of the street. Carts of fruit and grains clacked along further down the pathway. "Like a small alley that seems to have no light, or..."

"A sewer in a village with no running water?" I interrupted pointing to a circular manhole cover in the center of the road. They agreed, and we ran toward the grate, lifting it and seeing the darkness and eerily quiet of nothing in return. Until I thought I made out horses whinnying and gunshots from under us.

"This will be it." Jack nodded, taking the first plunge, then Sam, and finally trusting they were correct I jumped in feeling the hard earth beneath my feet. I blinked in the dark until my eyes adjusted and made out a glowing light upwards of the path. The clinking of metal against rock echoed around us. Sam motioned for us to follow her out toward the tunnel entrance and as we did the sunlight grew beckoning for us to come into its arms out of the dank caverns behind us.

A gunshot fired and we paused to look around, but it wasn't toward us. The sound of hooves hitting hard clay tumbling toward us, there on a pristine white steed dressed in taupe fringed suede and a beaming grin cracking his face in two Teal'c came riding up.

"That should provide adequate instruction on how the settlers of this community feel about your mishandling of goods and services." He boomed with a roaring laughter and paused to look down at us. "Oh! Hello Colonel O'Neill, Major Carter," he nodded and looked at me puzzled, "Daniel Jackson you are wet and lacking adequate clothing for the frontier."

I just gawked back. We seemingly were put through the ringer, and he was playing cowboy. "Howdy, partner."

"Howdy, indeed." He grinned back. "I am thoroughly enjoying this game. Though, I do believe I have had my fill and it is time to return."

"Game?" I spat out. "This is a game? It hasn't been fun for us. Did nothing happen to you? A test or a problem you couldn't solve that seemingly just got worse when you tried to do the right thing?" His brows knit together while he sat atop his horse, maintaining elegance as he thought.

"What's wrong Teal'c, someone poison the waterhole?" Jack's brow rose.

"Unfortunately the orphanage burned down and I was unable to successfully complete my mission."

"Not the children," Sam's eyes widened in horror.

"The children are all safe, and placed in nurturing homes that will provide for their necessary requirements. No, unfortunately I left behind young Tommy's stuffed bear."

"Right," Jack shot a look at me and then back to Teal'c, "it happens to the best of us champ. Let's find a way to mosey on out of here."

"Sheriff!" A mod of auburn curls came riding up on a significantly smaller dappled horse. He was sporting a similar uniform to Teal'c and ignored our out of place appearance. "Oh sheriff, it's terrible! Ol' prospector Doherty is causing mayhem down in the ravines again." His thick Irish accent calling Teal'c sheriff made the three of us bite back laughter. "He has a barrel of TNT with him!"

"You can probably handle this deputy." Jack blinked and turned back to Teal'c.

"Yes, I am now retired." He nodded, taking the star pin off his shirt and tossing it to the ginger headed man. "You are now sheriff Thomas O'Flanahan. I have full confidence you will do the honorable thing."

"Th, th, thank you sheriff Teal'c!" The man stammered and Teal'c dismounted his horse. He smacked it's backside and off it ran into the horizon. He turned to us, took the cream cowboy hat off his head and held up two fingers.

"To leave, all we must do is place these two fingers to our right temple. Were you not instructed in the same manner I was before entering this entertainment device?"

"No," Jack balked, "apparently not." We all four placed our fingers to our temples and in a gasp of breath I was encased in a plexiglass tomb with wires and sensors all sticking to my head. I clawed away at the mask over my face and calmed my breathing down. The top of the chamber I was in opened and a cheery face beamed down back at me.

"So? What did you think Dr. Jackson?" Her large doe eyes sparkled with intrigue as I registered her as the woman who had strapped me into the machine before. It was all flooding back to me.

"What the fuck was that?!" I heard Jack shout from his containment device, shaking and pulling at his straps.

"You enjoyed it that much then?" A portly man clapped his hands together in amusement and Sam grimaced. Our tanks were formed in a four pointed square from one another upright, with a central panel in the center I assumed was for monitoring the subjects.

"Enjoyed it? It was a test of torture for us." He seethed as the young woman who helped me out of my restraints rushed over to Jack to help with his.

"No, it shouldn't have been. Colonel, do you not like the scenario that was created for you?" The portly man looked confused at the panel reading something on the screen.

"I don't imagine that he did, that any of them did." Another voice came from around the corner. His expression was dark and unsettling. "You wanted a machine for the military to use for training, well I showed you what could happen."

"Dr. Plagen, this is most unorthodox." The portly man responded to the lanky doctor who was glaring at us all. His wispy hair combed over to one side and menacing eyes pointed directly at Jack.

"My creation, my tool for relaxation and enjoyment will not be used as a torture device for the military." He snarked. "I created this for therapeutic uses. Now you have a taste of what your own tortures can inflict on someone."

"We were never going to use it for torture tactics," Sam shook her head in astonishment, "we wanted to run trials to help with sorting through the post traumatic stress that is endured by our soldiers, civilians, doctors. I thought we were in agreement over that."

"That's what I thought as well, until our own military started to use it to extract information from our enemies during the war of both ways three years ago. Since then I trust none of your militaristic kind." He snapped back at her and Jack shook his head in disbelief.

"Please," the portly man begged, "please don't consider this one outlier a reflection of our people."

"We will be in contact, but not about this." Jack waved at the mechanism and boxes we had been trapped inside. The simulation that was marketed to us as a therapeutic device of altered reality, but instead turned into a chamber of nightmares. The four of us made our way out the door, and returned back to the gate quietly, none of us truly wanting to discuss the conflicts we had endured and the meaning behind them.