Lead Casket, by Sophonisba [folklore challenge]
-title- Lead Casket
-author- Sophonisba (saphanibaal)
-warnings- Gen. Crossover. Philosophy. Unreliable narrator. Literary references.
-spoilers- For "Sanctuary," "Before I Sleep," and for "The Siege," parts 2 and 3. Also, technically there are spoilers for the other shows involved, but if you don't recognize them you probably wouldn't notice them anyway. Prequel to my story "Chuang Chou menq tye," which is only relevant for one line.
-characters- Sheppard, other
-disclaimer- Neither of these guys are mine. Neither of their worlds are mine. The plot concept isn't exactly mine, either.
-word count- 2062
-summary- "I've come to offer you a choice."
Lead Casket
"Weapon is armed and ready," Sheppard announced. "I'm going in."
And the world narrowed, and flying was almost all that he had ever wanted out of it, and he was the puddlejumper and the puddlejumper was him and he sailed in gently, the back of his mind automatically noting T minus thirty and counting... minus fifteen and counting... minus five. Four. Three. Two. One --
-- and he was soaring through the high infinite blue of the sky, sunlight reflecting off of clouds beneath him like the echo of a paean, a new display informing him that the Bergenholms were operating at 90% of inertial neutralization and holding a shield-shape that looked something like a Wraith dart even as he felt the wind screaming past him with his entire body, second-best rush ever combined with the best and wow, he should have tried seeing whether they could go part-inert before...
"Well, that's different," the man in the copilot's seat remarked, and John turned his head to look at him.
He looked vaguely familiar, although John couldn't quite place him: graying dark wavy hair gone entirely white in one spot, a pleasant smile that reached his eyes, same apparent age as John, and something of a Midwest accent. An academic gown, which John hadn't even realized he'd missed seeing until there it was again.
"How so?" John asked.
The scholar shrugged. "This place isn't actually here -- "
"It's what, a thought you're having in the stratosphere of some planet?" John offered, remembering A Wind In The Door.
"Something like that, although this is your thought. Mine is a bar. Dr. Jackson's was a diner. Major Carter's was a video arcade, and I thought that was odd enough -- but I think you're the first person to choose an aircraft."
John shrugged. "I like it here."
His copilot nodded. "I'd forgotten how beautiful it was."
"So," John said eventually. "not that I don't appreciate the company, but would you mind telling me what you're doing here?"
The scholar smiled compassionately. Compassionate smiles were never a good sign.
"I've come to offer you a choice."
And his granther and gramma had told him enough stories in his childhood, and Chaya had known them, Chaya had lived them --
"One of the Undying Ten Thousand is fading away," Sheppard said dully. At least he'd gotten to fly as himself once more.
"Not really," the... Undying next to him said. "Not the way you're thinking of, at least. There are considerably more than ten thousand Ascended Alterans-and-allies floating on the planes, and many of them would be willing to take up the ward if needed." His smile turned amused. "It'd at least be something to do."
"Then what...?" He'd known since Elizabeth offered him Atlantis that there was a chance he'd die with the Lost City or in its stead -- an even chance, if his childhood tales held true. He'd known since the other Elizabeth told her tale and proved that time travel was quite possible (as long as you gave up all hope of stepping twice into the same river) that his old bedtime stories of days gone by were almost certainly faded memories of his and his people's own present and future, that the resemblances he had drawn between his new comrades and fabled Liss and Tegan, Furd and Meredith, should rather operate in reverse. (Although, honestly, Meredith? That made as much sense as the Volsungasaga deriving "Gudrun" from "Krimhild.") It took neither a brilliant mathematician nor a talent for reckoning to deduce that, short of an unexpected statistically significant pattern of disturbance or the tales of a latter-day Euripides, he was fast coming up on the end of his life; and he'd made his peace with that. He'd understood that. He'd far rather that than its contrapositive, and he'd anticipated making the Wraith pay through their flat noses for it.
In a way, for the past two weeks he'd been freer than he'd ever been, with half the variables of his life reduced to a single constant.
If it were not the call-to-ward -- and that wouldn't really have been a choice, either, at least not one he'd already made over and over again long since -- why was he here in a puddlejumper in a thought-given-form when he ought to be dead?
Just as his thoughts had gotten that far, John was told, "You have two -- well, three, really -- choices. You can Ascend. See the wonders of the universe, think on many different levels, be everywhere and everywhere is you."
No. No, no, no. He realized he was shaking his head, and turned his revulsion into speech. "No. There are -- I would -- if they..." The words caught in his throat, and he tried again at an angle, in his native tongue. "Undying and unliving and unmindful of what living's for, and seeing everything but unable to do anything about it -- that's... not me. I couldn't. I'd go crazy and eat planets or something. How do they stand it?"
"Many of them are... not scared, exactly, but removing any temptation that they'll ever demand worship. Many of the rest are unwilling to disobey the others. Most of what's left just don't care -- what happens when a Zen master ascends?"
"I don't know," John said, recognizing this as a joke. "What?"
"He doesn't notice."
They both laughed harder than the joke probably really deserved.
"And then," the scholar said, "you can always do what I do."
"What's that?"
"Cheat."
John was startled into another burst of laughter.
"They'll notice anything big, like poor Athar's grand gesture, and come down on you like a ton of bricks."
Yes. He remembered that.
"But if you can calculate the probabilities enough -- and you have a mind that can do that, once you can think in higher dimensions at once -- you can leap back to somewhen they aren't looking and... tap things a little, so that eventually they work out closer to the way you want them. Things get disturbed all the time in the backwash of their sightseeing, and you can't observe the particle and its direction at once, even if it takes you several tries to get it right." His face crinkled. "There've been a few times when I screwed things up so much I had to drop back to before I started and keep the times when I changed things from happening; it's a good thing reality's more resilient than classic science fiction would have you believe. Cumulative recurrence is vastly, vastly underestimated.
"They'll eventually start suspecting, of course, and it makes it harder when they're looking at places -- some of them have been watching Atlantis ever since your expedition walked into it -- but they won't act without proof. All you have to do is learn to be more patient and sneakier."
Oh. And oh, of course he recognized who or at least what the scholar, the doctor, was; not any of the seven he recognized, of course, and he'd blocked that travesty claiming to be the movie from his mind (although he thought he'd have remembered the white forelock) and never seen the casting for the revival, but television shows weren't precisely reality anyway even if they echoed it... "But if they're watching, what are you doing here? Rodney said you weren't allowed to teach people how to Ascend. Chaya knew you weren't allowed to teach people how to Ascend." Nor would John have thought of him as that sort of Undying...
"Teach, no, but you've known since she shared it with you." The gentle, compassionate smile, the smile of a doctor delivering uncomfortable truths, was back. "I couldn't have caught you if you hadn't been half-there yourself, any more than Ælwine could have caught me when I finally rewrote myself out of existence -- even though he'd hijacked my project and been bouncing me around to his tune for several years elapsed without a by-your-leave." The angry crease that had risen between his brows on the last phrase eased. "And they're watching the second siege of Atlantis, while we are in your thought, currently taking place at the day and the hour of your birth."
"Why birth?" John wondered, diverted. "Why not twenty years ago, or quickening, or... "
"It has to do with the part of you that exists in six dimensions. If you rise a little farther, you'll understand perfectly, and if you don't, it'd take me three days to explain it."
"So, Doctor, you're saying I should ascend?"
"I'm explaining your second choice -- you could ascend or part-ascend and -- " he shrugged -- "take a sad song and make it better. You could leap on your own, or... there are places they'd watch for me but not for you, and places they'd watch for you but not for me. You'd have your hands tied every inch of the way until you descended or faded away or slipped up and were cast out, but you'd be able to see the people you care about before they're dead and now and then be able to do something for them.
"Or, should you choose the third option... I'd ask you for your permission to nudge you into making changes I don't dare be caught making, and whatever your answer would be, I'd leap back and tweak the Daedalus so that it's just that much faster."
"So that it would arrive in time to save my people?" Major Sheppard demanded.
"So that it would arrive in -- transporter range -- a minute and a half before the time when you loosed your body and I caught you before you went on to... wherever... rather than three minutes and forty seconds afterwards, and this whole conversation would never have happened," the man he now thought of as the Doctor told him, visibly hanging onto his temper. "I don't play those sorts of games."
"I'm sorry," Sheppard said. Three minutes and forty seconds. Three minutes and forty seconds. Surely that would be enough time to... he'd probably bought that much time in Wraith disorganization, and possibly the Daedalus would have a longer weapons range than -- transporters, honest to goodness transporters, not the matter-mitters that Rodney had labeled transporters, and he'd miss seeing something that cool. If he missed them.
Three minutes and forty seconds, and Ford would understand, and Teyla would never forgive the Wraith, and Rodney would never forgive him. Or, worse, himself.
But even that --
"So if I went with you, they'd be all right? They've got the chain of command, they'll have the reinforcements, and they'll be able to go on managing -- "
"I can't, at the moment, tell you what would happen," the Doctor sighed. "I know right where you are, you see."
"Can you tell me what's likely to happen?"
"A ninety-eight percent chance that some of them will survive. The percentiles vary for whom specifically and in what combinations. If you go with me, you may find ways to make more of them survive or keep them surviving. If you go back to them, you may find ways to make more of them survive or keep them surviving." He shrugged again. "Sorry I can't be more helpful."
"I could ascend and then descend into Atlantis right after I left." And that if anything would seem the creation of a disciple of Garrick or Disney working in the best Morgensternian tradition, but should it work...
"Or you could do that -- but the others tend to watch people who pull that one off very carefully for a long time, and I'd be unlikely to be able to help you and yours for quite some time afterwards."
"What you're saying, basically, is that I get to pick a box and hope I haven't chosen the one that'll dump iratus bugs all over me."
"Pretty much. I never much liked the idea of the one that poured gold and silver coins over the girl, either; she'd probably have been black and blue by the time it was done."
"I always thought the right box was the one that had lunch in it," he confessed. "Maybe your grandma told it differently."
"Maybe."
They flew on for a little longer, the clouds below them parting and revealing a Mediterranean-blue sea, before John Sheppard at last made his choice.
Am I the only person who thinks that at least half of A. E. Housman's Last Poems seem to be all about John Sheppard?
-author- Sophonisba (saphanibaal)
-warnings- Gen. Crossover. Philosophy. Unreliable narrator. Literary references.
-spoilers- For "Sanctuary," "Before I Sleep," and for "The Siege," parts 2 and 3. Also, technically there are spoilers for the other shows involved, but if you don't recognize them you probably wouldn't notice them anyway. Prequel to my story "Chuang Chou menq tye," which is only relevant for one line.
-characters- Sheppard, other
-disclaimer- Neither of these guys are mine. Neither of their worlds are mine. The plot concept isn't exactly mine, either.
-word count- 2062
-summary- "I've come to offer you a choice."
Lead Casket
"Weapon is armed and ready," Sheppard announced. "I'm going in."
And the world narrowed, and flying was almost all that he had ever wanted out of it, and he was the puddlejumper and the puddlejumper was him and he sailed in gently, the back of his mind automatically noting T minus thirty and counting... minus fifteen and counting... minus five. Four. Three. Two. One --
-- and he was soaring through the high infinite blue of the sky, sunlight reflecting off of clouds beneath him like the echo of a paean, a new display informing him that the Bergenholms were operating at 90% of inertial neutralization and holding a shield-shape that looked something like a Wraith dart even as he felt the wind screaming past him with his entire body, second-best rush ever combined with the best and wow, he should have tried seeing whether they could go part-inert before...
"Well, that's different," the man in the copilot's seat remarked, and John turned his head to look at him.
He looked vaguely familiar, although John couldn't quite place him: graying dark wavy hair gone entirely white in one spot, a pleasant smile that reached his eyes, same apparent age as John, and something of a Midwest accent. An academic gown, which John hadn't even realized he'd missed seeing until there it was again.
"How so?" John asked.
The scholar shrugged. "This place isn't actually here -- "
"It's what, a thought you're having in the stratosphere of some planet?" John offered, remembering A Wind In The Door.
"Something like that, although this is your thought. Mine is a bar. Dr. Jackson's was a diner. Major Carter's was a video arcade, and I thought that was odd enough -- but I think you're the first person to choose an aircraft."
John shrugged. "I like it here."
His copilot nodded. "I'd forgotten how beautiful it was."
"So," John said eventually. "not that I don't appreciate the company, but would you mind telling me what you're doing here?"
The scholar smiled compassionately. Compassionate smiles were never a good sign.
"I've come to offer you a choice."
And his granther and gramma had told him enough stories in his childhood, and Chaya had known them, Chaya had lived them --
"One of the Undying Ten Thousand is fading away," Sheppard said dully. At least he'd gotten to fly as himself once more.
"Not really," the... Undying next to him said. "Not the way you're thinking of, at least. There are considerably more than ten thousand Ascended Alterans-and-allies floating on the planes, and many of them would be willing to take up the ward if needed." His smile turned amused. "It'd at least be something to do."
"Then what...?" He'd known since Elizabeth offered him Atlantis that there was a chance he'd die with the Lost City or in its stead -- an even chance, if his childhood tales held true. He'd known since the other Elizabeth told her tale and proved that time travel was quite possible (as long as you gave up all hope of stepping twice into the same river) that his old bedtime stories of days gone by were almost certainly faded memories of his and his people's own present and future, that the resemblances he had drawn between his new comrades and fabled Liss and Tegan, Furd and Meredith, should rather operate in reverse. (Although, honestly, Meredith? That made as much sense as the Volsungasaga deriving "Gudrun" from "Krimhild.") It took neither a brilliant mathematician nor a talent for reckoning to deduce that, short of an unexpected statistically significant pattern of disturbance or the tales of a latter-day Euripides, he was fast coming up on the end of his life; and he'd made his peace with that. He'd understood that. He'd far rather that than its contrapositive, and he'd anticipated making the Wraith pay through their flat noses for it.
In a way, for the past two weeks he'd been freer than he'd ever been, with half the variables of his life reduced to a single constant.
If it were not the call-to-ward -- and that wouldn't really have been a choice, either, at least not one he'd already made over and over again long since -- why was he here in a puddlejumper in a thought-given-form when he ought to be dead?
Just as his thoughts had gotten that far, John was told, "You have two -- well, three, really -- choices. You can Ascend. See the wonders of the universe, think on many different levels, be everywhere and everywhere is you."
No. No, no, no. He realized he was shaking his head, and turned his revulsion into speech. "No. There are -- I would -- if they..." The words caught in his throat, and he tried again at an angle, in his native tongue. "Undying and unliving and unmindful of what living's for, and seeing everything but unable to do anything about it -- that's... not me. I couldn't. I'd go crazy and eat planets or something. How do they stand it?"
"Many of them are... not scared, exactly, but removing any temptation that they'll ever demand worship. Many of the rest are unwilling to disobey the others. Most of what's left just don't care -- what happens when a Zen master ascends?"
"I don't know," John said, recognizing this as a joke. "What?"
"He doesn't notice."
They both laughed harder than the joke probably really deserved.
"And then," the scholar said, "you can always do what I do."
"What's that?"
"Cheat."
John was startled into another burst of laughter.
"They'll notice anything big, like poor Athar's grand gesture, and come down on you like a ton of bricks."
Yes. He remembered that.
"But if you can calculate the probabilities enough -- and you have a mind that can do that, once you can think in higher dimensions at once -- you can leap back to somewhen they aren't looking and... tap things a little, so that eventually they work out closer to the way you want them. Things get disturbed all the time in the backwash of their sightseeing, and you can't observe the particle and its direction at once, even if it takes you several tries to get it right." His face crinkled. "There've been a few times when I screwed things up so much I had to drop back to before I started and keep the times when I changed things from happening; it's a good thing reality's more resilient than classic science fiction would have you believe. Cumulative recurrence is vastly, vastly underestimated.
"They'll eventually start suspecting, of course, and it makes it harder when they're looking at places -- some of them have been watching Atlantis ever since your expedition walked into it -- but they won't act without proof. All you have to do is learn to be more patient and sneakier."
Oh. And oh, of course he recognized who or at least what the scholar, the doctor, was; not any of the seven he recognized, of course, and he'd blocked that travesty claiming to be the movie from his mind (although he thought he'd have remembered the white forelock) and never seen the casting for the revival, but television shows weren't precisely reality anyway even if they echoed it... "But if they're watching, what are you doing here? Rodney said you weren't allowed to teach people how to Ascend. Chaya knew you weren't allowed to teach people how to Ascend." Nor would John have thought of him as that sort of Undying...
"Teach, no, but you've known since she shared it with you." The gentle, compassionate smile, the smile of a doctor delivering uncomfortable truths, was back. "I couldn't have caught you if you hadn't been half-there yourself, any more than Ælwine could have caught me when I finally rewrote myself out of existence -- even though he'd hijacked my project and been bouncing me around to his tune for several years elapsed without a by-your-leave." The angry crease that had risen between his brows on the last phrase eased. "And they're watching the second siege of Atlantis, while we are in your thought, currently taking place at the day and the hour of your birth."
"Why birth?" John wondered, diverted. "Why not twenty years ago, or quickening, or... "
"It has to do with the part of you that exists in six dimensions. If you rise a little farther, you'll understand perfectly, and if you don't, it'd take me three days to explain it."
"So, Doctor, you're saying I should ascend?"
"I'm explaining your second choice -- you could ascend or part-ascend and -- " he shrugged -- "take a sad song and make it better. You could leap on your own, or... there are places they'd watch for me but not for you, and places they'd watch for you but not for me. You'd have your hands tied every inch of the way until you descended or faded away or slipped up and were cast out, but you'd be able to see the people you care about before they're dead and now and then be able to do something for them.
"Or, should you choose the third option... I'd ask you for your permission to nudge you into making changes I don't dare be caught making, and whatever your answer would be, I'd leap back and tweak the Daedalus so that it's just that much faster."
"So that it would arrive in time to save my people?" Major Sheppard demanded.
"So that it would arrive in -- transporter range -- a minute and a half before the time when you loosed your body and I caught you before you went on to... wherever... rather than three minutes and forty seconds afterwards, and this whole conversation would never have happened," the man he now thought of as the Doctor told him, visibly hanging onto his temper. "I don't play those sorts of games."
"I'm sorry," Sheppard said. Three minutes and forty seconds. Three minutes and forty seconds. Surely that would be enough time to... he'd probably bought that much time in Wraith disorganization, and possibly the Daedalus would have a longer weapons range than -- transporters, honest to goodness transporters, not the matter-mitters that Rodney had labeled transporters, and he'd miss seeing something that cool. If he missed them.
Three minutes and forty seconds, and Ford would understand, and Teyla would never forgive the Wraith, and Rodney would never forgive him. Or, worse, himself.
But even that --
"So if I went with you, they'd be all right? They've got the chain of command, they'll have the reinforcements, and they'll be able to go on managing -- "
"I can't, at the moment, tell you what would happen," the Doctor sighed. "I know right where you are, you see."
"Can you tell me what's likely to happen?"
"A ninety-eight percent chance that some of them will survive. The percentiles vary for whom specifically and in what combinations. If you go with me, you may find ways to make more of them survive or keep them surviving. If you go back to them, you may find ways to make more of them survive or keep them surviving." He shrugged again. "Sorry I can't be more helpful."
"I could ascend and then descend into Atlantis right after I left." And that if anything would seem the creation of a disciple of Garrick or Disney working in the best Morgensternian tradition, but should it work...
"Or you could do that -- but the others tend to watch people who pull that one off very carefully for a long time, and I'd be unlikely to be able to help you and yours for quite some time afterwards."
"What you're saying, basically, is that I get to pick a box and hope I haven't chosen the one that'll dump iratus bugs all over me."
"Pretty much. I never much liked the idea of the one that poured gold and silver coins over the girl, either; she'd probably have been black and blue by the time it was done."
"I always thought the right box was the one that had lunch in it," he confessed. "Maybe your grandma told it differently."
"Maybe."
They flew on for a little longer, the clouds below them parting and revealing a Mediterranean-blue sea, before John Sheppard at last made his choice.
Am I the only person who thinks that at least half of A. E. Housman's Last Poems seem to be all about John Sheppard?