Supporting Character, Week 2: If You Wrong Us, Shall We Not Revenge? (2/5)
Title: If You Wrong Us, Shall We Not Revenge?
Author: Jem
Prompt: Artificial Intelligence
Word count: About 30,000
Rating: Probably PG-13, possibly R (for violence)
[Part One] [Part Two] [Part Three] [Part Four] [Part Five]
PART 2
Jeannie couldn't sleep that night. She'd tried talking to Kaleb a bit, but he could offer no help, and she could see anxiety about her involvement tensing every line of his face more and more, so eventually, feeling torn in half inside every time she looked at him, she suggested they just go to bed. And long after Kaleb was breathing deeply beside her she remained staring at the ceiling in the dark, still thinking about what Bill had told her.
She sympathized; she did. She could understand that he wanted something more for this girl. But she couldn't help feeling like it might just be . . . wrong, to do this.
And if you could convince yourself that they weren't actually conscious machines that you were creating willy-nilly? What then? Well, then she would have no problem with it, but how could she know? How could anyone know?
And there was also that niggling thought in the back of her mind, the idea that she owed this Ava Dixon Replicator somehow, because she had saved John and Ronon's lives, and they protected Mer. So, if she wanted to think about this mathematically, by the transitive property she owed Ava. Owed her a lot.
The next day she finally sent Bill an e-mail, which read only:
Bill,
I'll read up on the programming, but I'm not promising anything.
~Jeannie
She should have known what a slippery slope that was.
She spent her evenings the next couple of weeks engrossed in the current research as well as scrolling through hundreds of pages of Ancient code, scribbling in a fat notebook she kept for this sort of work. She wasn't supposed to do that, she knew-her computer had extra security on it that had been installed by the SGC (fat lot of good that had done her when Wallace had come snooping), but she wasn't actually supposed to write anything on paper. Well, too bad. She worked better in longhand.
And the more she learned-the more she got sucked into what she was doing-the more she wanted to figure out a way to do this, hands-on, if only to see if she could. She thought about Ava, living out her life in a VE. If she is conscious, then we owe her more than that, she thought. If she is a living being, a person, then it's sheer prejudice that's making them lock her up like this. If she isn't . . . well, if she isn't, then there's nothing wrong with creating more like her, is there? She couldn't help but think that all of this was rationalizing, though.
Finally she e-mailed Mer. Do you think the Replicators are people? she asked. Do you think they're sentient beings, or just programs?
He was silent for two weeks, until she was starting to worry about him, before he finally replied.
From: mckayr@atlantis.sgc.gov
To: jeanmiller1729@shaw.ca
Subject: Re: musings
Jeannie, hi. Sorry for the long wait. Busy and whatnot.
> Do you think the Replicators are people? Do you they're sentient
> beings,
> or just programs?
What brought this on? Seriously. Don't worry about this crap, it'll drive you nuts.
To answer: No. They are not people.
--Rodney
The long wait, the lack of verbosity, the effort to make himself sound normal and his own warning-she felt a lump in her throat. This very same question had definitely kept Mer up nights.
She wondered what had happened. Was it interring Ava? He hadn't interacted with her, though, as far as Jeannie knew. Probably something else, then; a Replicator in Pegasus who had shown humanity, who had done some good. Whatever it was, it still haunted him.
She sighed, resting her forehead on one palm. Nothing was making this any easier.
Her e-mail pinged.
Right above the response from Mer was an e-mail from Bill Lee. Can you come to Colorado Springs? I have something to show you.
“It came from Poole's lab,” he explained. “They had it over at Area 51 before, but it got transferred here for study.”
“So this is the apparatus he used to create Ava, huh?” Jeannie murmured, studying the bed with its heavy straps hooked up to the computer system.
“Yeah, you know, if we had some neutronium, we could just build them ourselves and then upload their consciousnesses and then scrap the bodies like we did with Ava, except without ever actually waking them up. It'd be ideal, you know? Unfortunately the SGC doesn't just leave neutronium lying around. The thing I'm having trouble with, and I don't know if you've had better luck, is trying to build that consciousness without using the nanites to construct the matrix. I don't know if-”
“I still haven't said I'm going to help you,” Jeannie pointed out mildly.
“Well, you know, if you could just bounce ideas . . . that's all I really need, you know?” He smiled at her hopefully, nervously, his hands clenching each other. “Take a look at the programming module, see what you make of it. Maybe there's a way to hook it directly into the virtual environment,” he suggested.
Jeannie ran her hand lightly over the machine. Darn it all, she wanted to. She wanted to do this, to sink her teeth into this programming just to see if she could. She wanted to see her own code create a new consciousness, a new life.
That was what scared her.
She looked past the apparatus, wanting to explore the rest of the equipment. This must be the setup for the VE, she thought. A row of six pods was against one wall; she started towards them.
“No, don't go over there-” Bill's voice suddenly sounded behind her, panicked, but it was too late.
Four identical faces lay peacefully beneath the semi-opaque face shields in four of the pods.
Floored, Jeannie spun to face Bill. “What's this?” she demanded.
“It's not what you think!” he tried to placate her, trying to usher her away from the pods.
Jeannie was having none of it. “It's not what I think? I think you already built four Replicators and plugged their minds in, without telling anyone!” She wasn't sure why she was so angry, except that these were Replicators. Everything she had heard, every mission report she had read, every e-mail from Mer, had ingrained in her that Replicators were some of the most dangerous creatures known to man, that just one on Earth could spell disaster. And Bill had not only gone and created four of them? In secret?
“Okay, maybe it's sort of what you think, but the programming of their minds is so interconnected with the nanite structure of the body! Poole's machine, it made it so easy, I just used the pattern for Ava's body and then I was able to plug in a variety of different mental presets. I didn't even wake them up. They're no danger!”
“No danger? Bill, I thought the idea was just to create artificial consciousnesses directly in the VE! You created four fully-formed-”
“Twenty-four,” he mumbled.
“What?”
“It was, uh, twenty-four,” he said sheepishly.
Jeannie was shocked. “How on earth did you get that much neutronium?”
“Well, I requisitioned it.” When she just stared at him, he elaborated with some embarrassment, “Jeannie, I'm head of the science division. I do research. I throw in enough scientific-sounding buzzwords on a requisition and they'd sign off on material that will let me build a naquadah bomb.”
Jeannie was not in a laughing mood. “You got enough material to build twenty-four of these things,” she said in disbelief.
“Well, twenty. Then I scrapped the bodies and used the scrap to make four more. There's too much waste to use the scrap from these to make another one. It's surprising how much neutronium is lost in the construction and then breaking them down into base components. And I doubt I could get more without raising flags.” He took a deep breath, then added a little severely, “And you know, I thought we agreed that they're people, not things.”
The ethical reminder stabbed her conscience, and she was immediately annoyed, because she was not in the mood for losing the moral high ground at the moment. “The discussion was that they might have a consciousness that could constitute some new artificial life form. I don't recall ever coming to a conclusion on that. And we know for a fact how dangerous they can be. What if they had gotten loose, and your programming was just a little bit off? Even if you meant to make them all like this Ava woman, I don't have to tell you how complicated this coding is!”
He blinked at her from behind his glasses. “Well, of course I didn't make them all like Ava, that wouldn't be a very good reward for her. I just used her body. They'll imagine themselves with different appearances in the VE, of course.”
“You're missing my point!” cried Jeannie. She was desperately wondering what to do. Should she tell someone? But whom? Should she call Mer? Did she know anyone else here at the SGC?
“Meet her.”
Jeannie's thought processes took a sharp left. “What?”
“Come into the VE with me and meet her. You owe her that, at least. She did save the world at least once.”
Jeannie let out an exasperated, incredulous sigh. “Meet her.”
“Yeah. You'll see.” When Jeannie just crossed her arms, he pleaded, “Come on, it's perfectly safe. Just meet her. Say hello, have lunch with us, and if you still disagree that she's at least as complicated a machine as a human being, then I won't try to convince you anymore. But you have to meet her before you decide anything, don't you think?”
Against a foreboding that she was quite sure was her better judgment talking, Jeannie said, “All right. What do I do?”
Bill programmed their pods to enter the virtual environment, irritation tickling underneath his skin. Jeannie Miller wasn't even part of the program-well, officially-who was she to judge him on this? Aside from being the right thing to do, it was also legitimate research. And he really had gone through official channels; it wasn't his fault if General Landry didn't read every word of everything Walter put in front of him to sign.
Not to mention that if she had just helped him in the first place, they probably could have figured out how to do this without actually building the Replicators' bodies.
Ava was stuck in there, living out a false existence, no matter how real it seemed. It was as if everyone around her was a goddamn NPC, and she didn't even know it. And no matter what his ex-wife claimed he thought, real life was so much . . . so much more than a computerized one.
He frowned at the tablet he held as he prepped the pods. The activity in the VE looked . . . different. He couldn't put his finger on exactly how-it seemed both more active and less at the same time. No-a smaller part of the population was being more active than usual, that was it. And he could see at least ten or twelve of the Replicator consciousnesses he had added in being extremely active; the waves representing their consciousnesses were markedly different and easy to pick out. Hmm. It would be interesting to see what had developed.
“So do I just, uh, lie here?” Jeannie asked, tucking herself into the pod's bed a little nervously.
“Yep. That's it. Ready?”
“What do you think?”
“Oh, come on, it can't hurt you! Aren't you a scientist?”
“Yes,” said Jeannie a bit crossly, fidgeting a bit and sweeping one hand around to make sure her blond curls were tucked in close to her head, “and I'm one who hasn't had an opportunity to study all this and know how it works.”
“Just relax,” he groused, and climbed into his own pod. “Here we go.”
They appeared by the lake.
Jeannie staggered a bit, as if she had somehow been knocked off balance by the imaginary transport. “Wow,” she murmured, glancing around.
“Something, isn't it?” murmured Bill proudly, but a frown was already creasing his forehead. Something was . . . off.
The park was empty.
It was mid-afternoon, and every other time he had been here, the park had been teeming with people: families playing with their young children, elderly couples out for walks around the lake, dogs chasing bicyclists along the paths. He had never seen it so deserted. “Well, um, this is a little odd,” he admitted aloud. “I mean, usually there are more . . .”
“People?” finished Jeannie, and she was sounding worried, too.
“Yeah.”
They started to pick their way around the lake. The unusual silence was oppressive, as if they were approaching a ghost town. As they climbed the hill towards the street, they ran across trash scattered haphazardly across the paths. Bill glanced worriedly towards Jeannie.
“I don't like this,” she said softly.
“Neither do I,” he admitted.
“Look.”
He glanced over. She was picking up a woman's purse from where it had been thrown carelessly onto the grass.
“Her wallet, keys, phone-Bill, everything's in here.”
He didn't know what to say.
As they continued towards the town, more personal items started showing up, all scattered haphazardly, some crushed or broken. They saw a red umbrella with its ribs savagely bent back, a girl's flowered sweater, a black iPod that had been either run over or stomped on hard enough to break the casing . . . keys, papers, even ten-dollar bills were lying in a sick collage along the path.
“Bill,” said Jeannie softly, “Do you think we should get out? Examine all this from the outside?”
“Maybe you're right,” he had to admit. “Let's just-just peek into town, okay? It'll be a lot easier to figure out what's going on if we see it with our own eyes. And remember, we can get out at any time just by concentrating, so, we should really get as much information about what's going on as we can.” He swallowed. “I . . . I'm kinda worried. About Ava. Let's at least find her.” He didn't add what he knew they both were thinking, that the only change in the VE had been his two dozen-strong addition of Replicator consciousnesses.
Jeannie pressed her lips together, but didn't insist.
They'd gone another dozen steps and were just reaching the street when Jeannie suddenly bent down. “Bill, look at this.” She was picking up a flyer from the ground; she looked at it worriedly for a long moment before passing it to him.
WE'RE BEING CONTROLLED
The world you see around you is not the real one!!!
Irrevocable proof - Everyone in this town is brainwashed
and is living out a fantasy! THIS IS NOT REAL!
Bill's heart sank.
“It looks like some of the flyers I've seen some really loud men give out at Main and Hastings,” said Jeannie uncomfortably. “Except, well, true.”
“How?” whispered Bill. “They couldn't know, they-it's not perfect, but no human could-”
“What, you didn't program them all to be super intelligent and perceptive enough to note VE discrepancies?”
“Of course not!” Bill glanced around desperately. The street was still as empty as ever. “I mean, some of them are intelligent, and resourceful, I mean, I was trying to go for an interesting mix! But not-not-”
Doors banged open to reveal shotgun barrels; figures rose from behind bushes and out of alleyways. Behind him, Jeannie gasped.
“Not violent,” he finished in a whisper. “This-this wasn't supposed to happen.”
“Who are you?” demanded one of the men in the lead. He was tall, and looked to be in his fifties, but had a face and bearing that were tough as old leather. “What are you doing here?”
“We're just, uh, just passing through,” Jeannie tried, her voice a little higher than usual.
“People don't 'pass through' here,” he spat back suspiciously. Bill's eyes were tied to his gun barrel-so small a thing, but such a yawning, explosive chasm of destruction. If they died here, what happened in real life? He was afraid he already knew. It's like The Matrix, he thought, terrified adrenaline prickling through his veins. 'The body cannot live without the mind . . .'
“Listen,” Jeannie attempted again, “We really don't know what's going on here.”
A tall black woman stepped forward and momentarily lowered her own weapon to pull out some kind of scanner. “Well?” growled the middle-aged man. “What are you getting, Lisa?”
She frowned. “They're not fake.” She looked up and scrutinized Bill and Jeannie. “They're also not our kind. Janus, I think they're real humans. From the outside.”
Janus's eyes widened, then his face folded in on itself, ugly, intense, blaming. He reshouldered the shotgun and stepped forward; Bill stumbled back until he ran into Jeannie. “Are you responsible for this?”
Bill's mind was racing. Something had pinged in his memory-he had become so familiar with each one, almost as if they had been his children-“I know you,” he gasped. “I know both of you. Lisa Babcock, right? Uh, intensely curious, predilection for science, urge to find out the, the why's of the world . . .” Bill trailed off. He had tried so hard to choose interesting, vibrant presets, ones that would allow these people to grow into a colorful and stimulating population, no matter what choices they made. It felt like the tragedy of his error was crashing down on him in slow motion. “And Janus Longspur,” he murmured, somehow unable to stop. “I remember. You are idealistic-passionate-ideals of liberty and the-the determination to follow through . . .”
Fury slammed down over Janus's hard features. “Who the hell-”
The explosion of a gunshot ripped through the air, interrupting him, as Lisa screamed and jerked backwards.
Chaos erupted.
Everything was dust and explosions and shouting. Janus was shouting, “Go! Go! Go!” almost right in Bill's ear. He heard, “Take them!” and felt rough hands dragging him violently. A redheaded girl in pigtails carrying a weapon larger than she was let rip one explosive shot and then spun to drag one of Lisa's arms over her shoulder and help her stagger back from the fighting. Then suddenly other people had appeared, battling furiously hand to hand, and one of them-
He froze in shock.
He got one good look at Ava's face before he was being dragged backwards again, and then he was coughing on dust and smoke and everyone was yelling and he couldn't even tell which way was up, let alone what was happening.
He already felt half-conscious from all the knocking about and the lack of clear air, but suddenly a smothering cloth was yanked over his face, and he was being prodded and bullied to run, run, stumbling over rough ground, his feet stubbing themselves and tripping as hands yanked at him with an iron grip. The next thing he knew he was in a chair, ropes pulled rough and tight against his wrists, and the bag was being whipped off his head. Dazed, he registered a dim, dingy room, sunlight slanting through slatted windows. A slight movement and gasp from behind him told him Jeannie had received the same treatment; it felt like she was tied back-to-back with him.
Janus stood in front of him, arms crossed, hunting knife strapped to one hip. The redheaded girl Bill had caught a glimpse of during the fighting was standing behind and to the side of him like a bodyguard, her ridiculously enormous weapon cradled in her arms. Lisa was seated in one corner, her face tight with pain while a swarthy man bandaged her bleeding shoulder.
“All right.” Janus's gaze narrowed, a hawk pinning his prey to the spot. “I want to know who you are and what you're doing here.”
Bill felt Jeannie move, and heard her hiss in his ear, “I can't believe you created a revolutionary!”
“I didn't mean to!” he whispered back. Stupid, stupid, he should have realized! These . . . people . . . were not the simplistic denizens of the VE. Once created, they could make their own choices, could discover, could change. That was what he had wanted them to be: people.
Except in his eagerness, he had set predilections for incredibly smart, incredibly innovative, and incredibly passionate people. People who, if they found out the truth . . . for God's sake, the early Americans had had a bloody revolution over taxes! How could he have expected his created children to react? How would he react, if he found out he was living a lie? And how had it never occurred to him that they might figure it out?
Janus drew his hunting knife with a deliberate scrape of steel. “I'm not going to ask twice.”
“We have-we have no idea what's going on here. Really. Honestly,” came Jeannie's voice from behind him, and he thought he heard the irony in it.
“Then let me help you,” said Janus. “This-” He gave a grand gesture, and then whipped his arm forward, sending his knife flying across the room to thunk into the wall. Bill flinched involuntarily against the ropes. “All this-is not real!” His words ended in a near scream, and he lunged forward, right in Bill's face. “This is some sort of psychological entrapment, a maze we're all trapped in! We even somehow thought we were human-” his hands made sarcastic air quotes around the word- “whatever that means. And yet, you know, something wasn't quite right, and you know what it was?” When Bill made no response, he lunged forward again crazily. “I said, do you know what it was?”
“N-no?” Bill managed. It was hard to concentrate on what the man was saying; involuntarily, his thoughts had become one wildly spinning repetitive mantra: Please don't hurt me please don't hurt me please don't kill me . . .
“Well, I'll tell you that, too. It turns out we're not these human creatures we apparently so resemble. Not only are we not living in a real world, but we're not even human. What are we, you may ask? I don't know.” He shrugged, and barked a laugh. “I honestly do not know. I don't know what we are. I don't know what we're capable of. Now. What do you think of that?” When Bill couldn't think what to say, he let out another sharp laugh. “No denials? No 'you must be crazy?' You know the truth, don't you. Don't you!”
“Janus,” said Lisa softly from behind him. She was back on her feet, one arm bound up in a sling, and was examining what looked like a small handheld.
“Lisa,” Janus acknowledged, still gazing coldly at Bill.
“I think I've worked out what's going on. They've got bodies hooked into the system.”
“You hacked into the VE mainframe from inside?” Bill cried incredulously, before he thought. “How on earth-”
Janus took a stride forward and collared him. “Aha! Yes, and what do you know about it? Are you responsible for this?”
“No!” Bill squeaked, reacting entirely on instinct, and then, still not thinking, amended, “Well-” before he stopped himself.
It was all the proof Janus needed. “How do we escape?” he demanded, shaking Bill where he sat tied in the chair. The ropes dug painfully into his wrists. “How? Tell me!”
“Bill,” Jeannie hissed, “I think we should get out of here.”
Oh, God, of course! They could just think themselves out-how could he have forgotten? “I think you're right!” he cried, and started to concentrate-
“Shut up!” Janus shouted, and his left arm was coming around in a wicked hook-
Bill flinched and ducked, but Janus wasn't aiming at him. Behind him, he heard Jeannie give a sharp, quickly aborted cry, and then her head sagged back against him.
“Jeannie? Jeannie!” Panic flooded him. “Jeannie!” McKay is so going to kill me- “Jeannie!”
“She's unconscious,” said Janus coldly. “Now, what were you saying about getting out of here?”
Bill's insides went cold.
You can leave the VE and get help for her, he told himself, even as he knew he wouldn't. Janus seemed to be having the same thought: “You 'go' anywhere, mister, and we'll kill her.”
“Not-not going anywhere,” said Bill weakly. Jeannie . . . oh Lord, I got you into this . . .
“So. Bodies hooked into the system?” Janus said to Lisa.
“Yes, I think so.” She looked at Bill coolly, studying him. “I think they're from outside this . . . whatever this is, and interfaced their consciousnesses somehow.”
“To study us?” asked Janus coldly, and Bill felt guilt wash through him along with the fear.
Lisa gave an elegant half-shrug with her good shoulder. “I don't know.”
“Well, can we escape through their bodies?”
Bill felt his eyes widening in horror. No. They won't be able to do that, they can't . . . can they?
Lisa studied her handheld, and frowned. “You know, I think we may be able to. We're able to manipulate the system to some degree, so-”
Janus gave a sharp nod, and turned to the redheaded girl behind him. “Penny, go with Lisa. You two try it; see what you can find out.” The redheaded girl gave a military-style salute and headed for the door.
No no no-dear God, what was he going to do?
Lisa was still frowning at the screen. “Janus, it looks like there are six of them.”
Bill hadn't thought it could get any worse. Clearly he had been wrong.
Janus turned towards the statuesque scientist frowning at her handheld, his motion dangerously deliberate. “What did you say?” Penny the redhead paused and looked around.
“Six bodies, hooked in from the outside,” said Lisa.
Bill didn't even see Janus' fist coming; he was just suddenly looking at a different part of the room, his head ringing oddly. Pain started to spread through his jaw, and he tasted the metallic tang of blood. “Where are the rest of you?” Janus growled from above him.
He almost laughed, though there was no humor. “There are no more. And you know, I know you won't believe that if you watch any movies at all, because I know they always say-”
This time the pain came immediately, and he cried out, a sob rising in his throat. “There aren't any more! I swear!” he found himself screaming.
“Janus, he may be right. I think I've found a way to get a lock on everyone inside, and they're the only two who look like . . . them. But I still think six of us may be able to get out. I'm not sure yet what the other bodies are.”
Janus gave a sharp nod. “All right. You, Penny, Hiram-Carlton or Madge would be a good choice-”
“We'll need you,” cut in Lisa.
Janus gestured towards Bill and Jeannie. “I'm needed here. Especially with that Dixon woman around.”
“Ava?” gasped Bill.
Janus' head whipped around.
“You're needed with us,” insisted Lisa softly.
Janus was still staring at Bill. “All right. But not yet. Take Penny, Hiram, Madge, and Alex. Leave me instructions.”
It was like watching disaster unravel in slow motion. He couldn't believe it was happening and couldn't do a thing to stop it. He watched Lisa nod and leave into the darkening twilight, followed by Penny, who he would swear leered at them unpleasantly on the way out. Penny Longspur. He remembered her, too. A vivacious girl, totally committed, who would throw her whole self into whatever she did . . . he cursed his stupidity again and again, jaw throbbing, and tried to wrack his brains and figure out what he could possibly, possibly do . . .
“And now,” said Janus, turning back to him, the red sunset filtering through the windows backlighting him with a bloody corona, “We talk.”
Terror made Bill's thoughts freeze in place. It almost seemed fitting when the red sunset suddenly exploded in a shower of scarlet and gold flame.
Bill ducked backwards as much as he could.
And then it was all noise and fury and fire, and people were shouting, and Bill quailed back and knew he was going to die here and he closed his eyes against it all until he gradually realized that he was not dying and that someone was tugging at the ropes around his wrists-
He looked up.
Ava Dixon, dressed in military-style fatigues and combat boots, was cutting at his bonds, the building cracking and falling in flames around them against the darkness of the dusk outside. Their eyes met.
The smile that had been starting to rise to his lips cracked and fell forgotten at the look he saw in her face.
Unspeaking, she finished cutting his bonds and stepped around to start on Jeannie; behind her, fire whooshed up the wall, consuming the wood. Sparks burst around them; with a great cracking sound a portion of the wall collapsed. Bill flinched even as he tried to scramble to his feet, clumsily massaging his bruised wrists; he was trying to hurry but his body was not responding correctly after Janus' treatment. His eyes were starting to sting from the smoke; he blinked rapidly. He could half-see shadowed figures moving around in the flickering gold light of the half-consumed building; he squinted, trying to see, but found himself starting to cough instead.
“We have to get out of here,” said Ava, leaning down to get a shoulder under Jeannie's arm. “This whole place is going to go up pretty soon.”
Jeannie groaned against her, her head lolling.
“Jeannie?” gasped Bill, coughing; he reached out and tried to shake her. “Jeannie? Can you hear me?” He coughed again, his throat rasping.
“Bill, we have to get out of here. Talk later,” Ava commanded. “Help me with her.”
Bill hauled Jeannie's other arm over his shoulders. “Jeannie? Hey, can you hear me? Are you okay?”
She mumbled something.
He had no time to decipher it. The building might be collapsing around them, but after what had just happened, he knew that they were in much worse trouble if he and Jeannie didn't get back to the SGC right now. “Jeannie! Listen to me. They're trying to take over our bodies. Can you hear me? We have to get out of here. Now! Concentrate!”
“Whaddawho?” she slurred, and coughed against Ava's shoulder.
“Jeannie, the Replicators.” He stumbled, his vision blurring so badly that he couldn't see anything at all. He kept driving forward blindly, talking raspingly through the smoke. “Come on, wake up! They're going to put their consciousnesses in our bodies and the other four Replicators that are interfaced into the system. Do you understand? Get out! Now!”
“Bill?” she said halfway intelligibly, and finally seemed aware. “Bill? What-what?”
“Did you hear what I said? Go!”
She coughed. “I'm trying!”
“Try harder!” What if they had her body already? What could they do?
“It's not working!”
This couldn't be happening. It's thought processes, he thought madly, It's all triggered by thought processes, you know exactly how it works, you know how it's triggered-
“I'm going to try to get you out!” he tried to tell her, the shout coming out more of a wheeze. “They might have your body already, but-I think I can-” His thoughts scrambled madly; concentrate, concentrate, concentrate-
And then he stumbled again, because suddenly Jeannie had flickered out and was gone from against him, and he was tripping forward and falling, and sparks were flying around him. It was only the sudden presence of Ava's arm grasping his that allowed him to stagger back upright.
“Are you leaving too?” she asked flatly. He noticed vaguely that she didn't seem to be having any trouble with the smoke.
He looked at her face, feeling trapped, wondering how it had all gone so horribly wrong. “I don't think I can,” he croaked honestly. In fact, he knew it. He had felt it somehow, sensed it through his thoughts, when he had managed to push Jeannie out-no other bodies were hooked into the VE. The Replicators had gotten the rest.
He was stuck in here.
“Come on,” said Ava emotionlessly, pulling at him, but suddenly it seemed like too much work, and his legs were giving out-
He felt Ava pull one of his arms over her shoulders, supporting him with far more strength than a girl her size should have had. “Gladys!” he foggily heard her call. “I need some help here!”
And then there was another strong presence on his other side, and somehow they were moving, and taking him with them, staggering and hacking, out of the burning building and into the blessedly cool night air.
Continue to Part Three.
Author: Jem
Prompt: Artificial Intelligence
Word count: About 30,000
Rating: Probably PG-13, possibly R (for violence)
[Part One] [Part Two] [Part Three] [Part Four] [Part Five]
PART 2
Jeannie couldn't sleep that night. She'd tried talking to Kaleb a bit, but he could offer no help, and she could see anxiety about her involvement tensing every line of his face more and more, so eventually, feeling torn in half inside every time she looked at him, she suggested they just go to bed. And long after Kaleb was breathing deeply beside her she remained staring at the ceiling in the dark, still thinking about what Bill had told her.
She sympathized; she did. She could understand that he wanted something more for this girl. But she couldn't help feeling like it might just be . . . wrong, to do this.
And if you could convince yourself that they weren't actually conscious machines that you were creating willy-nilly? What then? Well, then she would have no problem with it, but how could she know? How could anyone know?
And there was also that niggling thought in the back of her mind, the idea that she owed this Ava Dixon Replicator somehow, because she had saved John and Ronon's lives, and they protected Mer. So, if she wanted to think about this mathematically, by the transitive property she owed Ava. Owed her a lot.
The next day she finally sent Bill an e-mail, which read only:
Bill,
I'll read up on the programming, but I'm not promising anything.
~Jeannie
She should have known what a slippery slope that was.
She spent her evenings the next couple of weeks engrossed in the current research as well as scrolling through hundreds of pages of Ancient code, scribbling in a fat notebook she kept for this sort of work. She wasn't supposed to do that, she knew-her computer had extra security on it that had been installed by the SGC (fat lot of good that had done her when Wallace had come snooping), but she wasn't actually supposed to write anything on paper. Well, too bad. She worked better in longhand.
And the more she learned-the more she got sucked into what she was doing-the more she wanted to figure out a way to do this, hands-on, if only to see if she could. She thought about Ava, living out her life in a VE. If she is conscious, then we owe her more than that, she thought. If she is a living being, a person, then it's sheer prejudice that's making them lock her up like this. If she isn't . . . well, if she isn't, then there's nothing wrong with creating more like her, is there? She couldn't help but think that all of this was rationalizing, though.
Finally she e-mailed Mer. Do you think the Replicators are people? she asked. Do you think they're sentient beings, or just programs?
He was silent for two weeks, until she was starting to worry about him, before he finally replied.
From: mckayr@atlantis.sgc.gov
To: jeanmiller1729@shaw.ca
Subject: Re: musings
Jeannie, hi. Sorry for the long wait. Busy and whatnot.
> Do you think the Replicators are people? Do you they're sentient
> beings,
> or just programs?
What brought this on? Seriously. Don't worry about this crap, it'll drive you nuts.
To answer: No. They are not people.
--Rodney
The long wait, the lack of verbosity, the effort to make himself sound normal and his own warning-she felt a lump in her throat. This very same question had definitely kept Mer up nights.
She wondered what had happened. Was it interring Ava? He hadn't interacted with her, though, as far as Jeannie knew. Probably something else, then; a Replicator in Pegasus who had shown humanity, who had done some good. Whatever it was, it still haunted him.
She sighed, resting her forehead on one palm. Nothing was making this any easier.
Her e-mail pinged.
Right above the response from Mer was an e-mail from Bill Lee. Can you come to Colorado Springs? I have something to show you.
“It came from Poole's lab,” he explained. “They had it over at Area 51 before, but it got transferred here for study.”
“So this is the apparatus he used to create Ava, huh?” Jeannie murmured, studying the bed with its heavy straps hooked up to the computer system.
“Yeah, you know, if we had some neutronium, we could just build them ourselves and then upload their consciousnesses and then scrap the bodies like we did with Ava, except without ever actually waking them up. It'd be ideal, you know? Unfortunately the SGC doesn't just leave neutronium lying around. The thing I'm having trouble with, and I don't know if you've had better luck, is trying to build that consciousness without using the nanites to construct the matrix. I don't know if-”
“I still haven't said I'm going to help you,” Jeannie pointed out mildly.
“Well, you know, if you could just bounce ideas . . . that's all I really need, you know?” He smiled at her hopefully, nervously, his hands clenching each other. “Take a look at the programming module, see what you make of it. Maybe there's a way to hook it directly into the virtual environment,” he suggested.
Jeannie ran her hand lightly over the machine. Darn it all, she wanted to. She wanted to do this, to sink her teeth into this programming just to see if she could. She wanted to see her own code create a new consciousness, a new life.
That was what scared her.
She looked past the apparatus, wanting to explore the rest of the equipment. This must be the setup for the VE, she thought. A row of six pods was against one wall; she started towards them.
“No, don't go over there-” Bill's voice suddenly sounded behind her, panicked, but it was too late.
Four identical faces lay peacefully beneath the semi-opaque face shields in four of the pods.
Floored, Jeannie spun to face Bill. “What's this?” she demanded.
“It's not what you think!” he tried to placate her, trying to usher her away from the pods.
Jeannie was having none of it. “It's not what I think? I think you already built four Replicators and plugged their minds in, without telling anyone!” She wasn't sure why she was so angry, except that these were Replicators. Everything she had heard, every mission report she had read, every e-mail from Mer, had ingrained in her that Replicators were some of the most dangerous creatures known to man, that just one on Earth could spell disaster. And Bill had not only gone and created four of them? In secret?
“Okay, maybe it's sort of what you think, but the programming of their minds is so interconnected with the nanite structure of the body! Poole's machine, it made it so easy, I just used the pattern for Ava's body and then I was able to plug in a variety of different mental presets. I didn't even wake them up. They're no danger!”
“No danger? Bill, I thought the idea was just to create artificial consciousnesses directly in the VE! You created four fully-formed-”
“Twenty-four,” he mumbled.
“What?”
“It was, uh, twenty-four,” he said sheepishly.
Jeannie was shocked. “How on earth did you get that much neutronium?”
“Well, I requisitioned it.” When she just stared at him, he elaborated with some embarrassment, “Jeannie, I'm head of the science division. I do research. I throw in enough scientific-sounding buzzwords on a requisition and they'd sign off on material that will let me build a naquadah bomb.”
Jeannie was not in a laughing mood. “You got enough material to build twenty-four of these things,” she said in disbelief.
“Well, twenty. Then I scrapped the bodies and used the scrap to make four more. There's too much waste to use the scrap from these to make another one. It's surprising how much neutronium is lost in the construction and then breaking them down into base components. And I doubt I could get more without raising flags.” He took a deep breath, then added a little severely, “And you know, I thought we agreed that they're people, not things.”
The ethical reminder stabbed her conscience, and she was immediately annoyed, because she was not in the mood for losing the moral high ground at the moment. “The discussion was that they might have a consciousness that could constitute some new artificial life form. I don't recall ever coming to a conclusion on that. And we know for a fact how dangerous they can be. What if they had gotten loose, and your programming was just a little bit off? Even if you meant to make them all like this Ava woman, I don't have to tell you how complicated this coding is!”
He blinked at her from behind his glasses. “Well, of course I didn't make them all like Ava, that wouldn't be a very good reward for her. I just used her body. They'll imagine themselves with different appearances in the VE, of course.”
“You're missing my point!” cried Jeannie. She was desperately wondering what to do. Should she tell someone? But whom? Should she call Mer? Did she know anyone else here at the SGC?
“Meet her.”
Jeannie's thought processes took a sharp left. “What?”
“Come into the VE with me and meet her. You owe her that, at least. She did save the world at least once.”
Jeannie let out an exasperated, incredulous sigh. “Meet her.”
“Yeah. You'll see.” When Jeannie just crossed her arms, he pleaded, “Come on, it's perfectly safe. Just meet her. Say hello, have lunch with us, and if you still disagree that she's at least as complicated a machine as a human being, then I won't try to convince you anymore. But you have to meet her before you decide anything, don't you think?”
Against a foreboding that she was quite sure was her better judgment talking, Jeannie said, “All right. What do I do?”
Bill programmed their pods to enter the virtual environment, irritation tickling underneath his skin. Jeannie Miller wasn't even part of the program-well, officially-who was she to judge him on this? Aside from being the right thing to do, it was also legitimate research. And he really had gone through official channels; it wasn't his fault if General Landry didn't read every word of everything Walter put in front of him to sign.
Not to mention that if she had just helped him in the first place, they probably could have figured out how to do this without actually building the Replicators' bodies.
Ava was stuck in there, living out a false existence, no matter how real it seemed. It was as if everyone around her was a goddamn NPC, and she didn't even know it. And no matter what his ex-wife claimed he thought, real life was so much . . . so much more than a computerized one.
He frowned at the tablet he held as he prepped the pods. The activity in the VE looked . . . different. He couldn't put his finger on exactly how-it seemed both more active and less at the same time. No-a smaller part of the population was being more active than usual, that was it. And he could see at least ten or twelve of the Replicator consciousnesses he had added in being extremely active; the waves representing their consciousnesses were markedly different and easy to pick out. Hmm. It would be interesting to see what had developed.
“So do I just, uh, lie here?” Jeannie asked, tucking herself into the pod's bed a little nervously.
“Yep. That's it. Ready?”
“What do you think?”
“Oh, come on, it can't hurt you! Aren't you a scientist?”
“Yes,” said Jeannie a bit crossly, fidgeting a bit and sweeping one hand around to make sure her blond curls were tucked in close to her head, “and I'm one who hasn't had an opportunity to study all this and know how it works.”
“Just relax,” he groused, and climbed into his own pod. “Here we go.”
They appeared by the lake.
Jeannie staggered a bit, as if she had somehow been knocked off balance by the imaginary transport. “Wow,” she murmured, glancing around.
“Something, isn't it?” murmured Bill proudly, but a frown was already creasing his forehead. Something was . . . off.
The park was empty.
It was mid-afternoon, and every other time he had been here, the park had been teeming with people: families playing with their young children, elderly couples out for walks around the lake, dogs chasing bicyclists along the paths. He had never seen it so deserted. “Well, um, this is a little odd,” he admitted aloud. “I mean, usually there are more . . .”
“People?” finished Jeannie, and she was sounding worried, too.
“Yeah.”
They started to pick their way around the lake. The unusual silence was oppressive, as if they were approaching a ghost town. As they climbed the hill towards the street, they ran across trash scattered haphazardly across the paths. Bill glanced worriedly towards Jeannie.
“I don't like this,” she said softly.
“Neither do I,” he admitted.
“Look.”
He glanced over. She was picking up a woman's purse from where it had been thrown carelessly onto the grass.
“Her wallet, keys, phone-Bill, everything's in here.”
He didn't know what to say.
As they continued towards the town, more personal items started showing up, all scattered haphazardly, some crushed or broken. They saw a red umbrella with its ribs savagely bent back, a girl's flowered sweater, a black iPod that had been either run over or stomped on hard enough to break the casing . . . keys, papers, even ten-dollar bills were lying in a sick collage along the path.
“Bill,” said Jeannie softly, “Do you think we should get out? Examine all this from the outside?”
“Maybe you're right,” he had to admit. “Let's just-just peek into town, okay? It'll be a lot easier to figure out what's going on if we see it with our own eyes. And remember, we can get out at any time just by concentrating, so, we should really get as much information about what's going on as we can.” He swallowed. “I . . . I'm kinda worried. About Ava. Let's at least find her.” He didn't add what he knew they both were thinking, that the only change in the VE had been his two dozen-strong addition of Replicator consciousnesses.
Jeannie pressed her lips together, but didn't insist.
They'd gone another dozen steps and were just reaching the street when Jeannie suddenly bent down. “Bill, look at this.” She was picking up a flyer from the ground; she looked at it worriedly for a long moment before passing it to him.
WE'RE BEING CONTROLLED
The world you see around you is not the real one!!!
Irrevocable proof - Everyone in this town is brainwashed
and is living out a fantasy! THIS IS NOT REAL!
Bill's heart sank.
“It looks like some of the flyers I've seen some really loud men give out at Main and Hastings,” said Jeannie uncomfortably. “Except, well, true.”
“How?” whispered Bill. “They couldn't know, they-it's not perfect, but no human could-”
“What, you didn't program them all to be super intelligent and perceptive enough to note VE discrepancies?”
“Of course not!” Bill glanced around desperately. The street was still as empty as ever. “I mean, some of them are intelligent, and resourceful, I mean, I was trying to go for an interesting mix! But not-not-”
Doors banged open to reveal shotgun barrels; figures rose from behind bushes and out of alleyways. Behind him, Jeannie gasped.
“Not violent,” he finished in a whisper. “This-this wasn't supposed to happen.”
“Who are you?” demanded one of the men in the lead. He was tall, and looked to be in his fifties, but had a face and bearing that were tough as old leather. “What are you doing here?”
“We're just, uh, just passing through,” Jeannie tried, her voice a little higher than usual.
“People don't 'pass through' here,” he spat back suspiciously. Bill's eyes were tied to his gun barrel-so small a thing, but such a yawning, explosive chasm of destruction. If they died here, what happened in real life? He was afraid he already knew. It's like The Matrix, he thought, terrified adrenaline prickling through his veins. 'The body cannot live without the mind . . .'
“Listen,” Jeannie attempted again, “We really don't know what's going on here.”
A tall black woman stepped forward and momentarily lowered her own weapon to pull out some kind of scanner. “Well?” growled the middle-aged man. “What are you getting, Lisa?”
She frowned. “They're not fake.” She looked up and scrutinized Bill and Jeannie. “They're also not our kind. Janus, I think they're real humans. From the outside.”
Janus's eyes widened, then his face folded in on itself, ugly, intense, blaming. He reshouldered the shotgun and stepped forward; Bill stumbled back until he ran into Jeannie. “Are you responsible for this?”
Bill's mind was racing. Something had pinged in his memory-he had become so familiar with each one, almost as if they had been his children-“I know you,” he gasped. “I know both of you. Lisa Babcock, right? Uh, intensely curious, predilection for science, urge to find out the, the why's of the world . . .” Bill trailed off. He had tried so hard to choose interesting, vibrant presets, ones that would allow these people to grow into a colorful and stimulating population, no matter what choices they made. It felt like the tragedy of his error was crashing down on him in slow motion. “And Janus Longspur,” he murmured, somehow unable to stop. “I remember. You are idealistic-passionate-ideals of liberty and the-the determination to follow through . . .”
Fury slammed down over Janus's hard features. “Who the hell-”
The explosion of a gunshot ripped through the air, interrupting him, as Lisa screamed and jerked backwards.
Chaos erupted.
Everything was dust and explosions and shouting. Janus was shouting, “Go! Go! Go!” almost right in Bill's ear. He heard, “Take them!” and felt rough hands dragging him violently. A redheaded girl in pigtails carrying a weapon larger than she was let rip one explosive shot and then spun to drag one of Lisa's arms over her shoulder and help her stagger back from the fighting. Then suddenly other people had appeared, battling furiously hand to hand, and one of them-
He froze in shock.
He got one good look at Ava's face before he was being dragged backwards again, and then he was coughing on dust and smoke and everyone was yelling and he couldn't even tell which way was up, let alone what was happening.
He already felt half-conscious from all the knocking about and the lack of clear air, but suddenly a smothering cloth was yanked over his face, and he was being prodded and bullied to run, run, stumbling over rough ground, his feet stubbing themselves and tripping as hands yanked at him with an iron grip. The next thing he knew he was in a chair, ropes pulled rough and tight against his wrists, and the bag was being whipped off his head. Dazed, he registered a dim, dingy room, sunlight slanting through slatted windows. A slight movement and gasp from behind him told him Jeannie had received the same treatment; it felt like she was tied back-to-back with him.
Janus stood in front of him, arms crossed, hunting knife strapped to one hip. The redheaded girl Bill had caught a glimpse of during the fighting was standing behind and to the side of him like a bodyguard, her ridiculously enormous weapon cradled in her arms. Lisa was seated in one corner, her face tight with pain while a swarthy man bandaged her bleeding shoulder.
“All right.” Janus's gaze narrowed, a hawk pinning his prey to the spot. “I want to know who you are and what you're doing here.”
Bill felt Jeannie move, and heard her hiss in his ear, “I can't believe you created a revolutionary!”
“I didn't mean to!” he whispered back. Stupid, stupid, he should have realized! These . . . people . . . were not the simplistic denizens of the VE. Once created, they could make their own choices, could discover, could change. That was what he had wanted them to be: people.
Except in his eagerness, he had set predilections for incredibly smart, incredibly innovative, and incredibly passionate people. People who, if they found out the truth . . . for God's sake, the early Americans had had a bloody revolution over taxes! How could he have expected his created children to react? How would he react, if he found out he was living a lie? And how had it never occurred to him that they might figure it out?
Janus drew his hunting knife with a deliberate scrape of steel. “I'm not going to ask twice.”
“We have-we have no idea what's going on here. Really. Honestly,” came Jeannie's voice from behind him, and he thought he heard the irony in it.
“Then let me help you,” said Janus. “This-” He gave a grand gesture, and then whipped his arm forward, sending his knife flying across the room to thunk into the wall. Bill flinched involuntarily against the ropes. “All this-is not real!” His words ended in a near scream, and he lunged forward, right in Bill's face. “This is some sort of psychological entrapment, a maze we're all trapped in! We even somehow thought we were human-” his hands made sarcastic air quotes around the word- “whatever that means. And yet, you know, something wasn't quite right, and you know what it was?” When Bill made no response, he lunged forward again crazily. “I said, do you know what it was?”
“N-no?” Bill managed. It was hard to concentrate on what the man was saying; involuntarily, his thoughts had become one wildly spinning repetitive mantra: Please don't hurt me please don't hurt me please don't kill me . . .
“Well, I'll tell you that, too. It turns out we're not these human creatures we apparently so resemble. Not only are we not living in a real world, but we're not even human. What are we, you may ask? I don't know.” He shrugged, and barked a laugh. “I honestly do not know. I don't know what we are. I don't know what we're capable of. Now. What do you think of that?” When Bill couldn't think what to say, he let out another sharp laugh. “No denials? No 'you must be crazy?' You know the truth, don't you. Don't you!”
“Janus,” said Lisa softly from behind him. She was back on her feet, one arm bound up in a sling, and was examining what looked like a small handheld.
“Lisa,” Janus acknowledged, still gazing coldly at Bill.
“I think I've worked out what's going on. They've got bodies hooked into the system.”
“You hacked into the VE mainframe from inside?” Bill cried incredulously, before he thought. “How on earth-”
Janus took a stride forward and collared him. “Aha! Yes, and what do you know about it? Are you responsible for this?”
“No!” Bill squeaked, reacting entirely on instinct, and then, still not thinking, amended, “Well-” before he stopped himself.
It was all the proof Janus needed. “How do we escape?” he demanded, shaking Bill where he sat tied in the chair. The ropes dug painfully into his wrists. “How? Tell me!”
“Bill,” Jeannie hissed, “I think we should get out of here.”
Oh, God, of course! They could just think themselves out-how could he have forgotten? “I think you're right!” he cried, and started to concentrate-
“Shut up!” Janus shouted, and his left arm was coming around in a wicked hook-
Bill flinched and ducked, but Janus wasn't aiming at him. Behind him, he heard Jeannie give a sharp, quickly aborted cry, and then her head sagged back against him.
“Jeannie? Jeannie!” Panic flooded him. “Jeannie!” McKay is so going to kill me- “Jeannie!”
“She's unconscious,” said Janus coldly. “Now, what were you saying about getting out of here?”
Bill's insides went cold.
You can leave the VE and get help for her, he told himself, even as he knew he wouldn't. Janus seemed to be having the same thought: “You 'go' anywhere, mister, and we'll kill her.”
“Not-not going anywhere,” said Bill weakly. Jeannie . . . oh Lord, I got you into this . . .
“So. Bodies hooked into the system?” Janus said to Lisa.
“Yes, I think so.” She looked at Bill coolly, studying him. “I think they're from outside this . . . whatever this is, and interfaced their consciousnesses somehow.”
“To study us?” asked Janus coldly, and Bill felt guilt wash through him along with the fear.
Lisa gave an elegant half-shrug with her good shoulder. “I don't know.”
“Well, can we escape through their bodies?”
Bill felt his eyes widening in horror. No. They won't be able to do that, they can't . . . can they?
Lisa studied her handheld, and frowned. “You know, I think we may be able to. We're able to manipulate the system to some degree, so-”
Janus gave a sharp nod, and turned to the redheaded girl behind him. “Penny, go with Lisa. You two try it; see what you can find out.” The redheaded girl gave a military-style salute and headed for the door.
No no no-dear God, what was he going to do?
Lisa was still frowning at the screen. “Janus, it looks like there are six of them.”
Bill hadn't thought it could get any worse. Clearly he had been wrong.
Janus turned towards the statuesque scientist frowning at her handheld, his motion dangerously deliberate. “What did you say?” Penny the redhead paused and looked around.
“Six bodies, hooked in from the outside,” said Lisa.
Bill didn't even see Janus' fist coming; he was just suddenly looking at a different part of the room, his head ringing oddly. Pain started to spread through his jaw, and he tasted the metallic tang of blood. “Where are the rest of you?” Janus growled from above him.
He almost laughed, though there was no humor. “There are no more. And you know, I know you won't believe that if you watch any movies at all, because I know they always say-”
This time the pain came immediately, and he cried out, a sob rising in his throat. “There aren't any more! I swear!” he found himself screaming.
“Janus, he may be right. I think I've found a way to get a lock on everyone inside, and they're the only two who look like . . . them. But I still think six of us may be able to get out. I'm not sure yet what the other bodies are.”
Janus gave a sharp nod. “All right. You, Penny, Hiram-Carlton or Madge would be a good choice-”
“We'll need you,” cut in Lisa.
Janus gestured towards Bill and Jeannie. “I'm needed here. Especially with that Dixon woman around.”
“Ava?” gasped Bill.
Janus' head whipped around.
“You're needed with us,” insisted Lisa softly.
Janus was still staring at Bill. “All right. But not yet. Take Penny, Hiram, Madge, and Alex. Leave me instructions.”
It was like watching disaster unravel in slow motion. He couldn't believe it was happening and couldn't do a thing to stop it. He watched Lisa nod and leave into the darkening twilight, followed by Penny, who he would swear leered at them unpleasantly on the way out. Penny Longspur. He remembered her, too. A vivacious girl, totally committed, who would throw her whole self into whatever she did . . . he cursed his stupidity again and again, jaw throbbing, and tried to wrack his brains and figure out what he could possibly, possibly do . . .
“And now,” said Janus, turning back to him, the red sunset filtering through the windows backlighting him with a bloody corona, “We talk.”
Terror made Bill's thoughts freeze in place. It almost seemed fitting when the red sunset suddenly exploded in a shower of scarlet and gold flame.
Bill ducked backwards as much as he could.
And then it was all noise and fury and fire, and people were shouting, and Bill quailed back and knew he was going to die here and he closed his eyes against it all until he gradually realized that he was not dying and that someone was tugging at the ropes around his wrists-
He looked up.
Ava Dixon, dressed in military-style fatigues and combat boots, was cutting at his bonds, the building cracking and falling in flames around them against the darkness of the dusk outside. Their eyes met.
The smile that had been starting to rise to his lips cracked and fell forgotten at the look he saw in her face.
Unspeaking, she finished cutting his bonds and stepped around to start on Jeannie; behind her, fire whooshed up the wall, consuming the wood. Sparks burst around them; with a great cracking sound a portion of the wall collapsed. Bill flinched even as he tried to scramble to his feet, clumsily massaging his bruised wrists; he was trying to hurry but his body was not responding correctly after Janus' treatment. His eyes were starting to sting from the smoke; he blinked rapidly. He could half-see shadowed figures moving around in the flickering gold light of the half-consumed building; he squinted, trying to see, but found himself starting to cough instead.
“We have to get out of here,” said Ava, leaning down to get a shoulder under Jeannie's arm. “This whole place is going to go up pretty soon.”
Jeannie groaned against her, her head lolling.
“Jeannie?” gasped Bill, coughing; he reached out and tried to shake her. “Jeannie? Can you hear me?” He coughed again, his throat rasping.
“Bill, we have to get out of here. Talk later,” Ava commanded. “Help me with her.”
Bill hauled Jeannie's other arm over his shoulders. “Jeannie? Hey, can you hear me? Are you okay?”
She mumbled something.
He had no time to decipher it. The building might be collapsing around them, but after what had just happened, he knew that they were in much worse trouble if he and Jeannie didn't get back to the SGC right now. “Jeannie! Listen to me. They're trying to take over our bodies. Can you hear me? We have to get out of here. Now! Concentrate!”
“Whaddawho?” she slurred, and coughed against Ava's shoulder.
“Jeannie, the Replicators.” He stumbled, his vision blurring so badly that he couldn't see anything at all. He kept driving forward blindly, talking raspingly through the smoke. “Come on, wake up! They're going to put their consciousnesses in our bodies and the other four Replicators that are interfaced into the system. Do you understand? Get out! Now!”
“Bill?” she said halfway intelligibly, and finally seemed aware. “Bill? What-what?”
“Did you hear what I said? Go!”
She coughed. “I'm trying!”
“Try harder!” What if they had her body already? What could they do?
“It's not working!”
This couldn't be happening. It's thought processes, he thought madly, It's all triggered by thought processes, you know exactly how it works, you know how it's triggered-
“I'm going to try to get you out!” he tried to tell her, the shout coming out more of a wheeze. “They might have your body already, but-I think I can-” His thoughts scrambled madly; concentrate, concentrate, concentrate-
And then he stumbled again, because suddenly Jeannie had flickered out and was gone from against him, and he was tripping forward and falling, and sparks were flying around him. It was only the sudden presence of Ava's arm grasping his that allowed him to stagger back upright.
“Are you leaving too?” she asked flatly. He noticed vaguely that she didn't seem to be having any trouble with the smoke.
He looked at her face, feeling trapped, wondering how it had all gone so horribly wrong. “I don't think I can,” he croaked honestly. In fact, he knew it. He had felt it somehow, sensed it through his thoughts, when he had managed to push Jeannie out-no other bodies were hooked into the VE. The Replicators had gotten the rest.
He was stuck in here.
“Come on,” said Ava emotionlessly, pulling at him, but suddenly it seemed like too much work, and his legs were giving out-
He felt Ava pull one of his arms over her shoulders, supporting him with far more strength than a girl her size should have had. “Gladys!” he foggily heard her call. “I need some help here!”
And then there was another strong presence on his other side, and somehow they were moving, and taking him with them, staggering and hacking, out of the burning building and into the blessedly cool night air.
Continue to Part Three.