Stargate SG1: What Dreams May Come (7/21)
All disclaimers, notes, warnings and summary are in the Master post: What Dreams May Come
Chapter Ten
"Jack?"
The end of his search, and yet only the beginning ...
But his only hope of saving her had been destroyed as suddenly as it had been discovered ...
No. No, that wasn't right. Jack hadn't destroyed the Hammer. Daniel had done that at Jack's order, because it had been the only way to save Teal'c.
"Jack!"
The secrets of the universe swirled above his head-the undeniable truth of their existence ...
But he had turned his back and walked away ...
No, Jack hadn't walked away from anything. Jack had made Daniel walk away, because the alternative had been completely unacceptable.
"Jack, can you hear me at all?"
He could have taken her to the Hammer and driven the demon from her eyes, but he had destroyed it. He could have studied the writings at Heliopolis and learned from them how to save her, but he had walked away and let them fall into the ocean ...
What was happening to him? Was he losing his mind? These weren't his thoughts; these weren't his feelings. This wasn't his dream.
This was Daniel's nightmare.
"Jack, wake up! Please!"
He couldn't seem to get his thoughts in order any more. Where did he end and Nem begin? Where did Earth and Oannes diverge? Were Sha're and Omaroca bound to the same fate? What had be-come of Belos?
As his confusion grew he heard a pounding, a beating as if of his own heart. But it was too loud, too slow, and out of sync with the pounding he felt in his head. His mind swam, then filled, then exploded with pain.
"Oh, God!"
"Jack!"
Jack sat bolt upright on the bed, his eyes wide and unseeing.
"What the hell was that?" he demanded of no one.
"Jack? Jack, are you with me?"
Jack turned his head slowly toward the voice, almost afraid to see who he knew would be standing beside him.
"I'm still dreaming."
"No," Daniel insisted, shaking his head. "No, you're not dreaming. This is real, Jack. I am real."
"You're not real. You're a figment of my imagination or something." Jack threw his legs over the side of the bed and jumped to his feet. He walked across to where Daniel was standing, next to his own dead body. Jack narrowed his eyes and leaned forward to challenge his dream. "I'm making you up."
"Okay, I know this is confusing, and more than a little frightening. But you have to believe me, Jack. This is real."
"I'm losing my mind. I have to be." Jack turned his back on Daniel and closed his eyes.
"Jack, I really need you to listen to me, okay?"
"I'm nuts. Insane. Cracked. Out of my head. Loonier than a toon. Battier than a belfry ..."
"Come on, Jack. Don't do this. Please. I need you."
Jack actually giggled as he leaned back against his bed. "You need me. Oh, that's great. The dead guy needs me." Jack shook his head. "I've completely snapped."
"No!" Daniel forced himself to calm down when he saw Jack flinch back from the sound of his voice. "No, Jack, you haven't snapped. But I'm about to. Please, Jack ... I need you to be here for this. You've got to listen to me."
"Can't listen to a dead man, Danny. Nope nope nope ... ya really can't."
"Jack, I am not dead. At least, not yet anyway. I need you to help me."
"Guess who died on the planet today? Daniel! Daniel!"
Daniel nearly roared in frustration as Jack sang out the words. "No, Jack, damn it, why? Why?! Why won't you listen to me!"
"Because you're dead!" Jack returned fiercely, suddenly lucid again. "You are dead. Fraiser showed me the squiggly things ..."
"EEG readings," Daniel offered.
"... or, to be more precise, the distinct lack of squiggly things! Your brain is shut off! Your heart and your lungs are running on machines! You're dead, Daniel!" Jack sat down heavily on the bed and buried his head in his hands. "Damn it, Daniel ... you're dead."
"No," Daniel replied, shaking his head. "I'm not."
"You are so."
"Am not."
"Are too."
"Am not."
"Are."
"Not!"
"Damn it, Daniel!"
"Jack, look at what you're sitting on," Daniel said suddenly.
Jack raised his head and looked at Daniel in confusion. "Now what does that have to do with anything?"
"Just look, Jack."
With a sigh that made it very clear he was only humoring his own hallucination, Jack turned his head and looked down at the surface beneath him. It was a bed in the isolation room-the same bed he himself had just risen from. "Yeah, it's a bed. And?"
"And what's in it?"
Jack let his eyes wander across the bed, noticing for the first time the distinctly human shape under the sheet. When his eyes finally settled on the face that went with that shape, he froze.
Then he jumped as far away from it as he could.
"Holy crap!" Jack leaned forward from his new position and studied the bed in front of him. Not only had he been sitting on his bed in the isolation room, he'd also been sitting on his own legs. "What the ... am I dead too?"
"Are you?"
Jack thought about that for a moment. He didn't feel dead. After all, he'd been dead before; he knew what it felt like, and he knew that this wasn't it. "No," he answered with certainty, shaking his head. "No, I'm not."
"Am I?"
The voice was filled with patience and understanding, but when Jack looked into Daniel's eyes, he saw only pain and despair. Something had happened on that planet-of that there could be absolutely no doubt. It had been something terrible, and the true depths of it were written there in the clear blue of Daniel's eyes. But for that moment, whatever it was really didn't matter. Whatever it was they could beat it; they could fix it.
Daniel wasn't dead.
"Are you with me, Jack? Because I really need your help here."
Jack looked away from Daniel. He felt the void in his chest, the large piece that he'd felt missing in himself since he'd first watched Daniel draw his last breath on the planet, filling back up again. It didn't disappear entirely, but he convinced himself that it would be gone once Daniel was whole again. He allowed only a second for the relief to flood over him before it was replaced with a new sense of urgency. Whatever had happened to Daniel on that planet was still happening, and they had to stop it.
"Tell me what I need to do."
Janet was sitting in the observation room above when Jack began to stir. She had expected him to wake up slowly, possibly confused, most certainly still groggy. The last thing she had expected was for him to shoot up from his bed, fully awake, and launch himself to Daniel's side.
"Are you still here?" she heard him ask no one. She leaned forward in surprise, only to lean back again when she heard him say, "Good. Because I'm really going to need you to talk me through this."
Janet turned to reach for the phone to call General Hammond; she froze in place as the one-sided conversation continued.
"I still say this isn't going to work. Fraiser already thinks I'm half-nuts from you being dead. If I tell her what you just told me, she's going to think I've gone all the way." Janet turned her head slowly, expecting to see Jack still leaning down over Daniel's body. She had barely registered that his gaze was higher than she expected it to be when she heard the muttered, "Damn it, Daniel!"
Janet jumped from her chair and ran out the door before she heard Jack say another word.
"I listened to you. Now you need to listen to me."
"Jack, there's no time! You've got to tell General Hammond now!"
"Why can't we just slow things down a bit here? You've left a few big gaps in your story. Like how can I see you now? I couldn't see you an hour ago. And I'm guessing that I'm the only one who can now. How do I explain that without making it sound like I'm nuts?"
"I don't know."
"Daniel ..."
"No, Jack, I swear. I have no idea. When I was talking to you last night, I didn't know you were actually going to hear me. I was just talking, trying to keep myself from going crazy. I don't know why you could hear me then, and I don't know why you can see me now."
"Okay, well, see ... that's just not gonna fly, Daniel. There has to be a reason."
Daniel rolled his eyes. "I know there has to be a reason. I just don't know what it is."
Both men stood in silence, staring at each other as if doing so would give them the answer. Suddenly, both of their eyes widened, and they opened their mouths to speak in unison.
"The beam!"
"That's got to be it," Daniel continued. "We could read each other's minds. We're connected somehow now ... our minds, I mean ..."
"So what about Carter and Teal'c?" Jack asked. "They were in that thing with us for a while. And I know they can feel you, even though they won't admit it. Can they hear you too?"
Daniel opened his mouth to answer, then closed it and shrugged instead. "I don't know. I haven't really tried."
"Well, do you think maybe that might be a good idea?" Jack asked. "They're not going to see me as exactly objective here, and they already think I'm going nuts. Because I'm the one that's supposed to ... disconnect you."
Daniel looked up, his eyes suddenly wide. "Jack, you can't!"
"I know that, Daniel," Jack answered softly. "I'm not planning on it." Jack took a step closer to Daniel. "I'm not going to let anyone kill you, Daniel. I swear it."
"Colonel O'Neill?" Janet's voice behind him caused Jack to start in surprise. "Colonel, I want you back in bed."
Jack turned to find not only Dr. Fraiser, but Sam and General Hammond, standing just a few feet away, standing so close to Daniel that Sam was almost standing on him.
"Jack, you can't!" Daniel pleaded.
"I can't!" Jack echoed forcefully.
"Colonel, you need your rest," Janet insisted.
"No, ..." Daniel breathed.
"It's all right. I'm not going back to sleep."
"Sir?" The question came from Sam. "Who are you talking to?"
"She can't see me, Jack."
"Of course she can't see you! I knew that part already. I couldn't see you either, until a few minutes ago. We already talked about this, remember?"
"Colonel?" It was Hammond's turn to voice his concern. "Who are you talking to?"
"Daniel," he answered simply. He realized immediately upon seeing their faces that it had been exactly the wrong thing to say, and he heard Daniel smack himself in the forehead behind him. Jack sighed and tried to climb out of the hole he'd just dug himself. "It's a long story, General. And it's one that I've told Daniel he's going to need to gather some corroboration for, since you all think I'm nuts and you won't believe a word I say."
"Jack, will you stop being a jackass and just tell them?"
"I'm going to tell them, Dr. Jackson, thank you. I am going to tell them that you're still alive, and that we have to take your body back to the planet so you can figure out how to get back in it. And I am not a jackass!"
Jack read all of the faces in the room almost instantly. Daniel's clearly showed his desperation. Janet, Sam, and Hammond all shared an expression that made their feelings on the matter perfectly clear.
"Okay," Jack began, turning to face them directly. "Let me start by saying that I am not nuts, and I am not hallucinating ..."
"General, it would almost certainly have to be an hallucination."
Hammond leaned back in his desk chair as he tried to make sense of what had happened earlier in the infirmary. He and Dr. Fraiser had moved their discussion into his office after Colonel O'Neill had sworn not to do anything foolish with Dr. Jackson's body. Captain Carter had stayed behind to make certain he kept that promise.
"See ... it's the 'almost' part that's stopping me from just agreeing with you, Doctor."
"Sir?"
"Well, 'almost certainly' has never been enough before-not where SG-1 is concerned. They've all been 'almost certainly' dead before, hell, they've all been certainly dead before, but they're all still alive."
"But, General, there is no ‘almost' in regards to Daniel's condition. He is brain dead. No brain activity at all for more than twelve hours, all autonomic functions shut down ..."
"But, Doctor," Hammond interrupted with a tired smile, "if what Colonel O'Neill is saying is true, then even Dr. Jackson's current state is not irreversible."
"General, it is not possible to come back from the dead."
Hammond simply looked at her.
"Point taken, sir."
"When dealing with aliens, Doctor, or when dealing with SG-1, most particularly when dealing with aliens and SG-1, it's best not to consider anything impossible."
"In that case, General, the colonel's story is possible, however unlikely. The more likely scenario is that Colonel O'Neill is suffering from stress-induced hallucinations as a direct result of being informed of Daniel's condition."
"Why would Dr. Jackson's condition cause Colonel O'Neill to hallucinate?"
"Because, sir, the question of whether or not to continue the life-support falls on his shoulders, and his alone. Add to that the events of last week, and the fact that all of SG-1 believe that the sedative they gave him is what killed him in the first place ... General, he was upset last night, but I thought he was willing to terminate the life support. Something happened overnight to change his mind. Sir, I think that Colonel O'Neill is simply looking for any reason he can find to avoid having to make that decision. He's obviously already convinced himself that Daniel is still alive, and I believe he has conjured up this altered consciousness story in an attempt to convince us of the same thing. It's almost as if he thinks that he can keep Daniel alive just by pretending that he is."
"And if Dr. Jackson is? Alive, that is? And is, as the colonel says, just separated from his body?"
"Sir, I just don't believe that's possible ..."
"Doctor, tell me. With what you know of Colonel O'Neill, what are the odds that he would be capable of even envisioning the story he's giving us, let alone recounting it in such great detail, and making it appear that he was arguing with Dr. Jackson the entire time?"
Janet sighed in resignation as the general voiced her own silent thoughts. "Not very likely, sir," she admitted. "But it is still possible. And him creating this story within his own mind is still a much more plausible explanation than Daniel actually ... being there."
"I'm still not convinced either way, Doctor. In the past few months, I've seen far too many things to be able to just write this whole thing off as an hallucination. Let's not forget it's not been more than a week ago that we were attending Dr. Jackson's funeral. I don't know that any of us is prepared to do that again. And if there's even a chance that he might not be dead ... I'm just going to need more proof before I can make a decision like this."
Janet nodded slowly. "General, I'd like to contact Dr. MacKenzie and have him do an evaluation of Colonel O'Neill's mental state. If this continues much longer, we are going to have to consider taking this responsibility away from him. I think we should make absolutely certain that we're justified in doing so."
Hammond considered her words for a moment. "Agreed. But if there's even a remote possibility that the colonel isn't making this up, Doctor, I want it to be made perfectly clear to Dr. MacKenzie that Jack's decision is to be honored, whatever it may be. If there's even a chance ..." Hammond shook his head. "I'm not about to be responsible for ending the life of one of my own people, Doctor."
"Understood, General." Janet stood and nodded once. "Thank you, sir." She turned sharply and walked out the door.
George Hammond watched her leave, and then leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. He wondered if there was anyone on the planet that he could ask for advice on dealing with situations like this.
Somehow, he doubted it.
Chapter Ten
"Jack?"
The end of his search, and yet only the beginning ...
But his only hope of saving her had been destroyed as suddenly as it had been discovered ...
No. No, that wasn't right. Jack hadn't destroyed the Hammer. Daniel had done that at Jack's order, because it had been the only way to save Teal'c.
"Jack!"
The secrets of the universe swirled above his head-the undeniable truth of their existence ...
But he had turned his back and walked away ...
No, Jack hadn't walked away from anything. Jack had made Daniel walk away, because the alternative had been completely unacceptable.
"Jack, can you hear me at all?"
He could have taken her to the Hammer and driven the demon from her eyes, but he had destroyed it. He could have studied the writings at Heliopolis and learned from them how to save her, but he had walked away and let them fall into the ocean ...
What was happening to him? Was he losing his mind? These weren't his thoughts; these weren't his feelings. This wasn't his dream.
This was Daniel's nightmare.
"Jack, wake up! Please!"
He couldn't seem to get his thoughts in order any more. Where did he end and Nem begin? Where did Earth and Oannes diverge? Were Sha're and Omaroca bound to the same fate? What had be-come of Belos?
As his confusion grew he heard a pounding, a beating as if of his own heart. But it was too loud, too slow, and out of sync with the pounding he felt in his head. His mind swam, then filled, then exploded with pain.
"Oh, God!"
"Jack!"
Jack sat bolt upright on the bed, his eyes wide and unseeing.
"What the hell was that?" he demanded of no one.
"Jack? Jack, are you with me?"
Jack turned his head slowly toward the voice, almost afraid to see who he knew would be standing beside him.
"I'm still dreaming."
"No," Daniel insisted, shaking his head. "No, you're not dreaming. This is real, Jack. I am real."
"You're not real. You're a figment of my imagination or something." Jack threw his legs over the side of the bed and jumped to his feet. He walked across to where Daniel was standing, next to his own dead body. Jack narrowed his eyes and leaned forward to challenge his dream. "I'm making you up."
"Okay, I know this is confusing, and more than a little frightening. But you have to believe me, Jack. This is real."
"I'm losing my mind. I have to be." Jack turned his back on Daniel and closed his eyes.
"Jack, I really need you to listen to me, okay?"
"I'm nuts. Insane. Cracked. Out of my head. Loonier than a toon. Battier than a belfry ..."
"Come on, Jack. Don't do this. Please. I need you."
Jack actually giggled as he leaned back against his bed. "You need me. Oh, that's great. The dead guy needs me." Jack shook his head. "I've completely snapped."
"No!" Daniel forced himself to calm down when he saw Jack flinch back from the sound of his voice. "No, Jack, you haven't snapped. But I'm about to. Please, Jack ... I need you to be here for this. You've got to listen to me."
"Can't listen to a dead man, Danny. Nope nope nope ... ya really can't."
"Jack, I am not dead. At least, not yet anyway. I need you to help me."
"Guess who died on the planet today? Daniel! Daniel!"
Daniel nearly roared in frustration as Jack sang out the words. "No, Jack, damn it, why? Why?! Why won't you listen to me!"
"Because you're dead!" Jack returned fiercely, suddenly lucid again. "You are dead. Fraiser showed me the squiggly things ..."
"EEG readings," Daniel offered.
"... or, to be more precise, the distinct lack of squiggly things! Your brain is shut off! Your heart and your lungs are running on machines! You're dead, Daniel!" Jack sat down heavily on the bed and buried his head in his hands. "Damn it, Daniel ... you're dead."
"No," Daniel replied, shaking his head. "I'm not."
"You are so."
"Am not."
"Are too."
"Am not."
"Are."
"Not!"
"Damn it, Daniel!"
"Jack, look at what you're sitting on," Daniel said suddenly.
Jack raised his head and looked at Daniel in confusion. "Now what does that have to do with anything?"
"Just look, Jack."
With a sigh that made it very clear he was only humoring his own hallucination, Jack turned his head and looked down at the surface beneath him. It was a bed in the isolation room-the same bed he himself had just risen from. "Yeah, it's a bed. And?"
"And what's in it?"
Jack let his eyes wander across the bed, noticing for the first time the distinctly human shape under the sheet. When his eyes finally settled on the face that went with that shape, he froze.
Then he jumped as far away from it as he could.
"Holy crap!" Jack leaned forward from his new position and studied the bed in front of him. Not only had he been sitting on his bed in the isolation room, he'd also been sitting on his own legs. "What the ... am I dead too?"
"Are you?"
Jack thought about that for a moment. He didn't feel dead. After all, he'd been dead before; he knew what it felt like, and he knew that this wasn't it. "No," he answered with certainty, shaking his head. "No, I'm not."
"Am I?"
The voice was filled with patience and understanding, but when Jack looked into Daniel's eyes, he saw only pain and despair. Something had happened on that planet-of that there could be absolutely no doubt. It had been something terrible, and the true depths of it were written there in the clear blue of Daniel's eyes. But for that moment, whatever it was really didn't matter. Whatever it was they could beat it; they could fix it.
Daniel wasn't dead.
"Are you with me, Jack? Because I really need your help here."
Jack looked away from Daniel. He felt the void in his chest, the large piece that he'd felt missing in himself since he'd first watched Daniel draw his last breath on the planet, filling back up again. It didn't disappear entirely, but he convinced himself that it would be gone once Daniel was whole again. He allowed only a second for the relief to flood over him before it was replaced with a new sense of urgency. Whatever had happened to Daniel on that planet was still happening, and they had to stop it.
"Tell me what I need to do."
Janet was sitting in the observation room above when Jack began to stir. She had expected him to wake up slowly, possibly confused, most certainly still groggy. The last thing she had expected was for him to shoot up from his bed, fully awake, and launch himself to Daniel's side.
"Are you still here?" she heard him ask no one. She leaned forward in surprise, only to lean back again when she heard him say, "Good. Because I'm really going to need you to talk me through this."
Janet turned to reach for the phone to call General Hammond; she froze in place as the one-sided conversation continued.
"I still say this isn't going to work. Fraiser already thinks I'm half-nuts from you being dead. If I tell her what you just told me, she's going to think I've gone all the way." Janet turned her head slowly, expecting to see Jack still leaning down over Daniel's body. She had barely registered that his gaze was higher than she expected it to be when she heard the muttered, "Damn it, Daniel!"
Janet jumped from her chair and ran out the door before she heard Jack say another word.
"I listened to you. Now you need to listen to me."
"Jack, there's no time! You've got to tell General Hammond now!"
"Why can't we just slow things down a bit here? You've left a few big gaps in your story. Like how can I see you now? I couldn't see you an hour ago. And I'm guessing that I'm the only one who can now. How do I explain that without making it sound like I'm nuts?"
"I don't know."
"Daniel ..."
"No, Jack, I swear. I have no idea. When I was talking to you last night, I didn't know you were actually going to hear me. I was just talking, trying to keep myself from going crazy. I don't know why you could hear me then, and I don't know why you can see me now."
"Okay, well, see ... that's just not gonna fly, Daniel. There has to be a reason."
Daniel rolled his eyes. "I know there has to be a reason. I just don't know what it is."
Both men stood in silence, staring at each other as if doing so would give them the answer. Suddenly, both of their eyes widened, and they opened their mouths to speak in unison.
"The beam!"
"That's got to be it," Daniel continued. "We could read each other's minds. We're connected somehow now ... our minds, I mean ..."
"So what about Carter and Teal'c?" Jack asked. "They were in that thing with us for a while. And I know they can feel you, even though they won't admit it. Can they hear you too?"
Daniel opened his mouth to answer, then closed it and shrugged instead. "I don't know. I haven't really tried."
"Well, do you think maybe that might be a good idea?" Jack asked. "They're not going to see me as exactly objective here, and they already think I'm going nuts. Because I'm the one that's supposed to ... disconnect you."
Daniel looked up, his eyes suddenly wide. "Jack, you can't!"
"I know that, Daniel," Jack answered softly. "I'm not planning on it." Jack took a step closer to Daniel. "I'm not going to let anyone kill you, Daniel. I swear it."
"Colonel O'Neill?" Janet's voice behind him caused Jack to start in surprise. "Colonel, I want you back in bed."
Jack turned to find not only Dr. Fraiser, but Sam and General Hammond, standing just a few feet away, standing so close to Daniel that Sam was almost standing on him.
"Jack, you can't!" Daniel pleaded.
"I can't!" Jack echoed forcefully.
"Colonel, you need your rest," Janet insisted.
"No, ..." Daniel breathed.
"It's all right. I'm not going back to sleep."
"Sir?" The question came from Sam. "Who are you talking to?"
"She can't see me, Jack."
"Of course she can't see you! I knew that part already. I couldn't see you either, until a few minutes ago. We already talked about this, remember?"
"Colonel?" It was Hammond's turn to voice his concern. "Who are you talking to?"
"Daniel," he answered simply. He realized immediately upon seeing their faces that it had been exactly the wrong thing to say, and he heard Daniel smack himself in the forehead behind him. Jack sighed and tried to climb out of the hole he'd just dug himself. "It's a long story, General. And it's one that I've told Daniel he's going to need to gather some corroboration for, since you all think I'm nuts and you won't believe a word I say."
"Jack, will you stop being a jackass and just tell them?"
"I'm going to tell them, Dr. Jackson, thank you. I am going to tell them that you're still alive, and that we have to take your body back to the planet so you can figure out how to get back in it. And I am not a jackass!"
Jack read all of the faces in the room almost instantly. Daniel's clearly showed his desperation. Janet, Sam, and Hammond all shared an expression that made their feelings on the matter perfectly clear.
"Okay," Jack began, turning to face them directly. "Let me start by saying that I am not nuts, and I am not hallucinating ..."
"General, it would almost certainly have to be an hallucination."
Hammond leaned back in his desk chair as he tried to make sense of what had happened earlier in the infirmary. He and Dr. Fraiser had moved their discussion into his office after Colonel O'Neill had sworn not to do anything foolish with Dr. Jackson's body. Captain Carter had stayed behind to make certain he kept that promise.
"See ... it's the 'almost' part that's stopping me from just agreeing with you, Doctor."
"Sir?"
"Well, 'almost certainly' has never been enough before-not where SG-1 is concerned. They've all been 'almost certainly' dead before, hell, they've all been certainly dead before, but they're all still alive."
"But, General, there is no ‘almost' in regards to Daniel's condition. He is brain dead. No brain activity at all for more than twelve hours, all autonomic functions shut down ..."
"But, Doctor," Hammond interrupted with a tired smile, "if what Colonel O'Neill is saying is true, then even Dr. Jackson's current state is not irreversible."
"General, it is not possible to come back from the dead."
Hammond simply looked at her.
"Point taken, sir."
"When dealing with aliens, Doctor, or when dealing with SG-1, most particularly when dealing with aliens and SG-1, it's best not to consider anything impossible."
"In that case, General, the colonel's story is possible, however unlikely. The more likely scenario is that Colonel O'Neill is suffering from stress-induced hallucinations as a direct result of being informed of Daniel's condition."
"Why would Dr. Jackson's condition cause Colonel O'Neill to hallucinate?"
"Because, sir, the question of whether or not to continue the life-support falls on his shoulders, and his alone. Add to that the events of last week, and the fact that all of SG-1 believe that the sedative they gave him is what killed him in the first place ... General, he was upset last night, but I thought he was willing to terminate the life support. Something happened overnight to change his mind. Sir, I think that Colonel O'Neill is simply looking for any reason he can find to avoid having to make that decision. He's obviously already convinced himself that Daniel is still alive, and I believe he has conjured up this altered consciousness story in an attempt to convince us of the same thing. It's almost as if he thinks that he can keep Daniel alive just by pretending that he is."
"And if Dr. Jackson is? Alive, that is? And is, as the colonel says, just separated from his body?"
"Sir, I just don't believe that's possible ..."
"Doctor, tell me. With what you know of Colonel O'Neill, what are the odds that he would be capable of even envisioning the story he's giving us, let alone recounting it in such great detail, and making it appear that he was arguing with Dr. Jackson the entire time?"
Janet sighed in resignation as the general voiced her own silent thoughts. "Not very likely, sir," she admitted. "But it is still possible. And him creating this story within his own mind is still a much more plausible explanation than Daniel actually ... being there."
"I'm still not convinced either way, Doctor. In the past few months, I've seen far too many things to be able to just write this whole thing off as an hallucination. Let's not forget it's not been more than a week ago that we were attending Dr. Jackson's funeral. I don't know that any of us is prepared to do that again. And if there's even a chance that he might not be dead ... I'm just going to need more proof before I can make a decision like this."
Janet nodded slowly. "General, I'd like to contact Dr. MacKenzie and have him do an evaluation of Colonel O'Neill's mental state. If this continues much longer, we are going to have to consider taking this responsibility away from him. I think we should make absolutely certain that we're justified in doing so."
Hammond considered her words for a moment. "Agreed. But if there's even a remote possibility that the colonel isn't making this up, Doctor, I want it to be made perfectly clear to Dr. MacKenzie that Jack's decision is to be honored, whatever it may be. If there's even a chance ..." Hammond shook his head. "I'm not about to be responsible for ending the life of one of my own people, Doctor."
"Understood, General." Janet stood and nodded once. "Thank you, sir." She turned sharply and walked out the door.
George Hammond watched her leave, and then leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. He wondered if there was anyone on the planet that he could ask for advice on dealing with situations like this.
Somehow, he doubted it.