Alone in Your Mind, chapter two
Feb. 5th, 2005 10:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gilascavePart one and explanations can be found here. Still PG13.
Alone in Your Mind
by James
CHAPTER TWO
The first three times, he'd been accompanied by a full contingent of scientists, military personnel, and Earth-trained engineers. They'd watched, taken notes, and asked a thousand irritating questions as Carson Beckett tried to follow the Atlantean instructions popping into his head.
He'd managed to repair the solar collector, the filtering system on the water treatment plant, and the internal sensors in the still-uninhabited sections of the city. There were people now assigned to each, studying what he'd done and marveling with each other over what he'd done. Other scientists were coming at him with the things they'd been working on, asking him to identify knobs and gizmos, or tell them how to make something work.
Most of the time he didn't know, because what they were working on wasn't a part of the city itself. Atlantean daily business, scientific experiments and the like, weren't under the maintenance crew's domain. He'd tried to tell them that, but nobody seemed to want to listen.
As he hid in the unused storage facility near the medical lab, he supposed he couldn't really blame them. Here they were in an ancient alien city, trying to do their best to learn everything they could and suddenly one of their team got handed a user's manual. It wasn't their fault, nor his, that the user's manual covered only a fraction of what they needed to learn.
For instance, he'd already exhausted the interface's database on the Wraith. It had informed him that if the Wraith were spotted, the maintenance crew's job was to take cover until the safety alarms sounded.
Carson found that oddly comforting.
But so far, no amount of insistence could convince everyone else that he couldn't help them, and if he stumbled upon something useful he would let them know. He'd had to take to hiding out, even to the extent of neglecting his work on the genetic research into the Wraith.
Which was just as well, he confessed to himself. The maintenance schedule in his brain had only slowed down slightly, mollified by his repairs thus far. But the list wasn't shrinking on its own, and he could see -- when he gave it the slightest thought and the list popped into view -- that the top items on the list were growing more urgent.
Perhaps he'd be able to effect some repairs without a crowd following him. Anyone interested was still flocked around the other things he'd worked on, talking about uses for the solar energy now being gathered and stored -- as a backup for the ZPMs, Carson knew and had started to explain. But Rodney had taken over his informed explanation with theorising of his own; Carson had let him to it, since he'd been more or less correct.
The next few items on the list weren't interesting, anyway, and not even that relevant to what they were trying to accomplish. Just little things, here and there, which, if left unattended to, would require major effort to repair sometime down the line.
Carson sighed. He wasn't getting anything done sitting here, alone in the dark. He could use the transporter just down the hall, in fact, and head down to the farmer's level and take a look at the saline vats. If he could get them fixed, they could start harvesting the ocean again for fresh food. Not right away, of course, but in three months or so when the tanks had had a chance to recharge themselves and cull enough of the ocean-life without damaging any population levels of edible species.
Pushing himself to his feet, he gave a dark thought to the data scroll which was giving him a brief overview of the saline vats. He wasn't happy to be doing this, not by a long shot. But at least he could admit it would be useful.
"Not that what I was doing before wasn't useful," he said out loud, sternly. "I'm a trained medical doctor, and a damn good one. My uncle may have been a plumber, but that does not mean it runs in the family!"
The maintenance schemata for the city's sewer system blinked briefly, and he tamped it down. First things, first. Unless the toilets really did need fixing, in which case they came before the fish.
The plumbing diagrams stayed gone, however, so he took that as a sign that they were good to go. Literally.
He went to the storage room door and checked for signs of life in the hallway. No one was there, so he opened the door and hurried down to the transporter. The coast was clear as he stepped inside and requested the farmer's level. The chart on the wall flashed, though he hadn't needed to touch it. Not anymore, he knew. The entire city was wired into his brain.
And he'd been nervous about thinking doors open. Carson shivered, and tried not to think about the doors he could probably open, now. Could he, for example, open every doorway at once? Could he open the jumper-bay door? Could he even access the--
"Weir to Dr Beckett."
Carson jumped, and hurriedly thought about doors *closing*. "Beckett here. I'm sor--"
"Can you join us in Dr McKay's lab? We found what seems to be some kind of...well, opinions differ. If you--"
"It's a ray gun," Rodney's voice interrupted.
"It is *not* a ray gun," came Shepperd's voice, sounding irritated. Carson didn't blame him. Rodney was a remarkable scientist but the way he jumped to conclusions.... Irritatingly enough, he was usually right. But the fact he jumped at all, rather than studying a thing before making careful pronouncements, was...irritating.
"It's a ray gun," Rodney repeated. Carson shook his head. He could hear the smugness in Rodney's voice.
He could hear the rest of it, too. The part he didn't want to hear, had had been hearing ever since the first time his friend had confessed to having a *reciprocated* crush on John Shepperd. It was a whole different sort of smugness, one that said he would be continuing the conversation elsewhere, with a lack of clothing, and that no amount of really mind-boggling sex would make him admit to being wrong.
Carson liked being Rodney's friend, but he didn't like the fact Rodney felt no compunction against sharing *details*.
"If you could come down here and tell us if this gizmo is in that inventory you have," Weir continued, acting like she couldn't hear the smugness, either. Carson knew she could, and once or twice they'd even commiserated over it.
Carson, meanwhile, was sighing a sigh of relief. "I'll be right there," he said, so grateful he hadn't apparently opened any doors that he didn't think about the fact he was agreeing to do just what he'd been hiding from. The maintenance systems were so responsive to his every thought that it was a relief to find out there were *some* limits.
Of course there were. Carson hadn't intended to actually open the doors.
Carson froze in mid-step as he realised that those words hadn't come from *him*, at all.
*********
"Now, calm down," Dr Weir tried to remain calm herself, and encourage Dr Beckett to do the same.
"IT'S IN MY HEAD!" Carson screamed, jumping up from the stool they'd sat him on. He'd burst through the door, panicking and screaming, startling them all. She still wasn't sure what was going on, but they'd narrowed it down to the maintenance interface. It was difficult to figure out exactly what was wrong, as Carson would shout something in Gaelic, then English, and never in direct response to their questions.
It had taken John and Rodney grabbing him by the arms and hauling him over to the stool to get him to sit down at all, while they'd tried to get coherency from him.
"Don't you understand?" he shouted again, eyes wide, darting from her, to Rodney, and around the room -- hoping, no doubt, that someone would step forward with a solution.
"We're trying to," she said, soothingly. "Now, what's in your head?"
They'd already had it explained, several times since the device had attached itself to Dr Beckett, that the maintenance displays were inside his brain. He could see them as though displayed on a screen right in front of his eyes, but no one else could see anything at all. Scans performed by Dr Hathaway had confirmed that the data was contained inside Carson's brain and -- as far as anyone could tell -- were harmless.
"IT'S TALKING TO ME!" Dr Beckett started to stand up again and was held back by Rodney and John; Dr Weir seized on this new piece of the puzzle.
"The maintenance interface, you mean?"
Dr Beckett nodded quickly. "IN MY HEAD!" he shouted again. He pointed at his temple, as though they might not understand what he meant by that.
"It's talking to you?" She wanted to be perfectly clear on what was going on, which was proving difficult. Dr Beckett wasn't calming down -- and she wasn't sure she could blame him.
"It's talking," Carson repeated, and he seemed to finally be focusing on her, and the conversation.
The conversation *she* was having with him, at any rate. A thought occurred, and she asked, "Is it talking to you right now?"
He swallowed, then shook his head. "Not right this second. But--" He stopped and his eyes went even wider. He opened his mouth and she braced herself for another scream, but all he did was whimper.
She put her hand on his arm, trying to get his attention back on her. "What is it?"
His gaze flickered about, then snapped onto her. He looked like he was about to cry. "It just apologised."
"For--?" she asked, leadingly. He wasn't any less upset, but he was finally talking to them, now. She ignored Rodney muttering about how fantastic this was.
Dr Beckett heard him, however, and he fixed the other man with a fierce glare. "It is *NOT* fascinating! It's in my bloody head and it's TALKING to me! And I know how to make sure the ambient temperature in your room stays not a bit over negative 5 degrees!"
Rodney shrugged. "I usually sleep in John's room anyhow."
"HIS ROOM, TOO!" Carson was on his feet again, and Weir had to push him back down. Shepperd was sputtering about how none of this was *his* fault.
"Carson, look at me," she tried to get things back on track. Not that they'd ever been on track, but she had to try. "Are you saying that the maintenance interface is sentient?"
Again it took a moment before Carson seemed to hear her, and think about his answer. Perhaps he was talking to it, she realised. That gave her a chill. How did they know what intentions this entity had? Had Carson been compromised by an alien life form?
Finally he shook his head, and his expression was beginning to lose some of its fear, and be replaced by wonder. "It isn't alive. I've.. I've got the system parameters right here. It isn't alive, not even for a computer." He paused, obviously reading something over. "It's just....well-programmed to respond to user requests."
He turned a look on her, one that made her think of a puppy begging to be taken home from the pound.
"Can you confirm that? I mean.. it isn't lying to you?" She hated to ask, but the question had to be answered.
But Dr Beckett shook his head. "I don't *think* so, but obviously I can't be sure. But.. it isn't talking to me. It was just...responding." He looked confused. "Like an ATM that's programmed to wish you a good day. Only a bit more sophisticated." He was definitely beginning to sound calmer, and that, if nothing else, was progress.
Weir nodded. She wasn't convinced she believed this -- but one step at a time. They couldn't get any answers with Carson bouncing off the ceiling.
"This is wonderful!" Rodney said, and she could tell he'd been about to burst for the last several minutes. "Carson, can we--"
"No."
"But I haven't even--"
"No." Dr Beckett looked determined, and Weir didn't blame him.
Rodney looked hurt, and said, "I was only going to ask if we could--"
"The answer is 'no.' Whatever it is, it involves my brain, and you aren't doing it."
"--cut open your skull and take a look," Rodney finished, dead-pan. Carson gaped at him, and John reached over and thumped him on the arm.
"That's not nice."
"I'm *kidding*! Jeez, people. I was going to ask if there was anyway we could communicate with it. Hook up a laptop to the interface or something."
Carson was shaking his head. "I don't want anything in my brain." He looked at her once more, and she wished that she had an answer. Unfortunately, he was the very one who knew most about the device that was doing this to him.
"There's no way to remove it?"
"Believe me, I've looked. I've researched retirement, being fired, being transferred... The only way to get rid of it is if there's no more me, or no more city."
His eyes had gone wide with fear, again, but he wasn't panicking. Weir patted him on the shoulder and felt, not for the first time, utterly out of her depth.
"We'll keep looking into it," she promised. Carson nodded, though she could tell he didn't have much faith in finding an answer.
No one said anything for a moment, and Weir knew they were waiting for someone to suddenly get a brilliant idea. No one offered anything, though, and finally Dr Beckett said, in a shaky voice, "So where's this gizmo you wanted me to take a look at?"
"Ray gun," Rodney said instantly, though Weir could tell his heart wasn't quite in it. But he moved towards the table they'd laid it out on, and Carson got to his feet and walked over. He stared at it for a moment, then looked at her.
Dr Beckett cleared his throat, then said, "It's a ray gun."
"Dammit," John said, and she didn't blame him.
"You owe me a forfeit," Rodney said to John. Smugly.
*************
Carson lay on an examining table, staring at the ceiling. He was also staring at a map of the city, watching areas being highlighted one after another. The interface was giving him a briefing about the sections of the city and their functions -- at least what they'd been used for once upon a time, ten million years ago.
He'd been talking to it for hours, now, while the medical team had observed him. They'd detected no sign of brain waves other than his, nor any hint of personality overlay. He and the interface had talked about a variety of topics, ranging from engine repair to gene therapy to the proper feeding and care of pet fish.
As they'd talked, Carson had gradually noticed a certain stilted quality to the responses he was getting. The interface had no personality, he'd realised. Its comments had the feel of stock programming, where a basic algorithm determined the proper response to what he said. There was no feeling of *person* behind the conversation.
When Dr Hathaway finally gave her diagnosis that there was no one in his brain except him, he'd already come to the same conclusion. He'd relaxed, and gone back to asking questions about the uses the Ancients had put the city to. Some of them were utterly alien -- why devote an entire room to the growing of a single tree, which was neither rare, biologically useful, nor spiritually significant? Others made more sense, and he'd flagged those to get back into working order so they could be used again. The gymnasium in particular would be well-received.
"I suppose we can let you go," Dr Hathaway said, interrupting him. Carson looked at her, and sat up.
"Is there anyway to be sure Carson isn't in any danger?" Dr Weir asked. He appreciated her concern, but he was -- finally -- convinced that there was no immediate need to panic. He reserved the right to change his mind, but for now he thought it might actually be all right.
Dr Hathaway shook her head. "No more so than the rest of us, just by being here."
"Great," Carson muttered.
Dr Weir smiled at him, and gave him a half-shrug. "Sorry," she said.
"Oh, I don't mind being dragged to another galaxy and put into constant mortal danger. My life back home was getting stagnant and boring." He got off the table, making sure no one was about to say 'just one more test'. He could empathise with certain subjects of his own experiments, now. There was nothing quite like having someone want to stick things into your body to make you wish you'd never heard the word 'science.'
"See? You just have to put it into perspective." Weir grinned, and then she grew serious again. "I do want someone to keep an eye on you, and I want these tests repeated regularly, until we are sure nothing's going to happen."
Dr Hathaway nodded, and Carson sighed. "All right," he agreed, if only because he knew it was the proper, and sane, thing to do. "I can get back to work, though, right? I'm not on medical leave?"
"As long as you feel up to it," Weir said. "But don't overdo it for a few days, ok? Take it easy for awhile."
He nodded. Not that any of the work he had to do was very taxing; it would be easy to focus on it to the exclusion of everything else. Dr Weir accepted his agreement and walked off with Dr Hathaway, telling her to keep her informed in case anything should change.
Carson grabbed his jacket from the next bed, and shrugged into it. There were things to do, and he wanted to grab some lunch before he dove into it. The saline tanks were still first on the list, but the subsonic frequency modulators were rapidly moving up the list. It might have something to do with the experiments being done in the audio lab. He'd keep an eye on it and have a talk with them about what they were doing. In the meanwhile, it would be good to get back to work.
He walked out of the infirmary, not looking back.
end chapter two
*************************************
Alone in Your Mind
by James
CHAPTER TWO
The first three times, he'd been accompanied by a full contingent of scientists, military personnel, and Earth-trained engineers. They'd watched, taken notes, and asked a thousand irritating questions as Carson Beckett tried to follow the Atlantean instructions popping into his head.
He'd managed to repair the solar collector, the filtering system on the water treatment plant, and the internal sensors in the still-uninhabited sections of the city. There were people now assigned to each, studying what he'd done and marveling with each other over what he'd done. Other scientists were coming at him with the things they'd been working on, asking him to identify knobs and gizmos, or tell them how to make something work.
Most of the time he didn't know, because what they were working on wasn't a part of the city itself. Atlantean daily business, scientific experiments and the like, weren't under the maintenance crew's domain. He'd tried to tell them that, but nobody seemed to want to listen.
As he hid in the unused storage facility near the medical lab, he supposed he couldn't really blame them. Here they were in an ancient alien city, trying to do their best to learn everything they could and suddenly one of their team got handed a user's manual. It wasn't their fault, nor his, that the user's manual covered only a fraction of what they needed to learn.
For instance, he'd already exhausted the interface's database on the Wraith. It had informed him that if the Wraith were spotted, the maintenance crew's job was to take cover until the safety alarms sounded.
Carson found that oddly comforting.
But so far, no amount of insistence could convince everyone else that he couldn't help them, and if he stumbled upon something useful he would let them know. He'd had to take to hiding out, even to the extent of neglecting his work on the genetic research into the Wraith.
Which was just as well, he confessed to himself. The maintenance schedule in his brain had only slowed down slightly, mollified by his repairs thus far. But the list wasn't shrinking on its own, and he could see -- when he gave it the slightest thought and the list popped into view -- that the top items on the list were growing more urgent.
Perhaps he'd be able to effect some repairs without a crowd following him. Anyone interested was still flocked around the other things he'd worked on, talking about uses for the solar energy now being gathered and stored -- as a backup for the ZPMs, Carson knew and had started to explain. But Rodney had taken over his informed explanation with theorising of his own; Carson had let him to it, since he'd been more or less correct.
The next few items on the list weren't interesting, anyway, and not even that relevant to what they were trying to accomplish. Just little things, here and there, which, if left unattended to, would require major effort to repair sometime down the line.
Carson sighed. He wasn't getting anything done sitting here, alone in the dark. He could use the transporter just down the hall, in fact, and head down to the farmer's level and take a look at the saline vats. If he could get them fixed, they could start harvesting the ocean again for fresh food. Not right away, of course, but in three months or so when the tanks had had a chance to recharge themselves and cull enough of the ocean-life without damaging any population levels of edible species.
Pushing himself to his feet, he gave a dark thought to the data scroll which was giving him a brief overview of the saline vats. He wasn't happy to be doing this, not by a long shot. But at least he could admit it would be useful.
"Not that what I was doing before wasn't useful," he said out loud, sternly. "I'm a trained medical doctor, and a damn good one. My uncle may have been a plumber, but that does not mean it runs in the family!"
The maintenance schemata for the city's sewer system blinked briefly, and he tamped it down. First things, first. Unless the toilets really did need fixing, in which case they came before the fish.
The plumbing diagrams stayed gone, however, so he took that as a sign that they were good to go. Literally.
He went to the storage room door and checked for signs of life in the hallway. No one was there, so he opened the door and hurried down to the transporter. The coast was clear as he stepped inside and requested the farmer's level. The chart on the wall flashed, though he hadn't needed to touch it. Not anymore, he knew. The entire city was wired into his brain.
And he'd been nervous about thinking doors open. Carson shivered, and tried not to think about the doors he could probably open, now. Could he, for example, open every doorway at once? Could he open the jumper-bay door? Could he even access the--
"Weir to Dr Beckett."
Carson jumped, and hurriedly thought about doors *closing*. "Beckett here. I'm sor--"
"Can you join us in Dr McKay's lab? We found what seems to be some kind of...well, opinions differ. If you--"
"It's a ray gun," Rodney's voice interrupted.
"It is *not* a ray gun," came Shepperd's voice, sounding irritated. Carson didn't blame him. Rodney was a remarkable scientist but the way he jumped to conclusions.... Irritatingly enough, he was usually right. But the fact he jumped at all, rather than studying a thing before making careful pronouncements, was...irritating.
"It's a ray gun," Rodney repeated. Carson shook his head. He could hear the smugness in Rodney's voice.
He could hear the rest of it, too. The part he didn't want to hear, had had been hearing ever since the first time his friend had confessed to having a *reciprocated* crush on John Shepperd. It was a whole different sort of smugness, one that said he would be continuing the conversation elsewhere, with a lack of clothing, and that no amount of really mind-boggling sex would make him admit to being wrong.
Carson liked being Rodney's friend, but he didn't like the fact Rodney felt no compunction against sharing *details*.
"If you could come down here and tell us if this gizmo is in that inventory you have," Weir continued, acting like she couldn't hear the smugness, either. Carson knew she could, and once or twice they'd even commiserated over it.
Carson, meanwhile, was sighing a sigh of relief. "I'll be right there," he said, so grateful he hadn't apparently opened any doors that he didn't think about the fact he was agreeing to do just what he'd been hiding from. The maintenance systems were so responsive to his every thought that it was a relief to find out there were *some* limits.
Of course there were. Carson hadn't intended to actually open the doors.
Carson froze in mid-step as he realised that those words hadn't come from *him*, at all.
*********
"Now, calm down," Dr Weir tried to remain calm herself, and encourage Dr Beckett to do the same.
"IT'S IN MY HEAD!" Carson screamed, jumping up from the stool they'd sat him on. He'd burst through the door, panicking and screaming, startling them all. She still wasn't sure what was going on, but they'd narrowed it down to the maintenance interface. It was difficult to figure out exactly what was wrong, as Carson would shout something in Gaelic, then English, and never in direct response to their questions.
It had taken John and Rodney grabbing him by the arms and hauling him over to the stool to get him to sit down at all, while they'd tried to get coherency from him.
"Don't you understand?" he shouted again, eyes wide, darting from her, to Rodney, and around the room -- hoping, no doubt, that someone would step forward with a solution.
"We're trying to," she said, soothingly. "Now, what's in your head?"
They'd already had it explained, several times since the device had attached itself to Dr Beckett, that the maintenance displays were inside his brain. He could see them as though displayed on a screen right in front of his eyes, but no one else could see anything at all. Scans performed by Dr Hathaway had confirmed that the data was contained inside Carson's brain and -- as far as anyone could tell -- were harmless.
"IT'S TALKING TO ME!" Dr Beckett started to stand up again and was held back by Rodney and John; Dr Weir seized on this new piece of the puzzle.
"The maintenance interface, you mean?"
Dr Beckett nodded quickly. "IN MY HEAD!" he shouted again. He pointed at his temple, as though they might not understand what he meant by that.
"It's talking to you?" She wanted to be perfectly clear on what was going on, which was proving difficult. Dr Beckett wasn't calming down -- and she wasn't sure she could blame him.
"It's talking," Carson repeated, and he seemed to finally be focusing on her, and the conversation.
The conversation *she* was having with him, at any rate. A thought occurred, and she asked, "Is it talking to you right now?"
He swallowed, then shook his head. "Not right this second. But--" He stopped and his eyes went even wider. He opened his mouth and she braced herself for another scream, but all he did was whimper.
She put her hand on his arm, trying to get his attention back on her. "What is it?"
His gaze flickered about, then snapped onto her. He looked like he was about to cry. "It just apologised."
"For--?" she asked, leadingly. He wasn't any less upset, but he was finally talking to them, now. She ignored Rodney muttering about how fantastic this was.
Dr Beckett heard him, however, and he fixed the other man with a fierce glare. "It is *NOT* fascinating! It's in my bloody head and it's TALKING to me! And I know how to make sure the ambient temperature in your room stays not a bit over negative 5 degrees!"
Rodney shrugged. "I usually sleep in John's room anyhow."
"HIS ROOM, TOO!" Carson was on his feet again, and Weir had to push him back down. Shepperd was sputtering about how none of this was *his* fault.
"Carson, look at me," she tried to get things back on track. Not that they'd ever been on track, but she had to try. "Are you saying that the maintenance interface is sentient?"
Again it took a moment before Carson seemed to hear her, and think about his answer. Perhaps he was talking to it, she realised. That gave her a chill. How did they know what intentions this entity had? Had Carson been compromised by an alien life form?
Finally he shook his head, and his expression was beginning to lose some of its fear, and be replaced by wonder. "It isn't alive. I've.. I've got the system parameters right here. It isn't alive, not even for a computer." He paused, obviously reading something over. "It's just....well-programmed to respond to user requests."
He turned a look on her, one that made her think of a puppy begging to be taken home from the pound.
"Can you confirm that? I mean.. it isn't lying to you?" She hated to ask, but the question had to be answered.
But Dr Beckett shook his head. "I don't *think* so, but obviously I can't be sure. But.. it isn't talking to me. It was just...responding." He looked confused. "Like an ATM that's programmed to wish you a good day. Only a bit more sophisticated." He was definitely beginning to sound calmer, and that, if nothing else, was progress.
Weir nodded. She wasn't convinced she believed this -- but one step at a time. They couldn't get any answers with Carson bouncing off the ceiling.
"This is wonderful!" Rodney said, and she could tell he'd been about to burst for the last several minutes. "Carson, can we--"
"No."
"But I haven't even--"
"No." Dr Beckett looked determined, and Weir didn't blame him.
Rodney looked hurt, and said, "I was only going to ask if we could--"
"The answer is 'no.' Whatever it is, it involves my brain, and you aren't doing it."
"--cut open your skull and take a look," Rodney finished, dead-pan. Carson gaped at him, and John reached over and thumped him on the arm.
"That's not nice."
"I'm *kidding*! Jeez, people. I was going to ask if there was anyway we could communicate with it. Hook up a laptop to the interface or something."
Carson was shaking his head. "I don't want anything in my brain." He looked at her once more, and she wished that she had an answer. Unfortunately, he was the very one who knew most about the device that was doing this to him.
"There's no way to remove it?"
"Believe me, I've looked. I've researched retirement, being fired, being transferred... The only way to get rid of it is if there's no more me, or no more city."
His eyes had gone wide with fear, again, but he wasn't panicking. Weir patted him on the shoulder and felt, not for the first time, utterly out of her depth.
"We'll keep looking into it," she promised. Carson nodded, though she could tell he didn't have much faith in finding an answer.
No one said anything for a moment, and Weir knew they were waiting for someone to suddenly get a brilliant idea. No one offered anything, though, and finally Dr Beckett said, in a shaky voice, "So where's this gizmo you wanted me to take a look at?"
"Ray gun," Rodney said instantly, though Weir could tell his heart wasn't quite in it. But he moved towards the table they'd laid it out on, and Carson got to his feet and walked over. He stared at it for a moment, then looked at her.
Dr Beckett cleared his throat, then said, "It's a ray gun."
"Dammit," John said, and she didn't blame him.
"You owe me a forfeit," Rodney said to John. Smugly.
*************
Carson lay on an examining table, staring at the ceiling. He was also staring at a map of the city, watching areas being highlighted one after another. The interface was giving him a briefing about the sections of the city and their functions -- at least what they'd been used for once upon a time, ten million years ago.
He'd been talking to it for hours, now, while the medical team had observed him. They'd detected no sign of brain waves other than his, nor any hint of personality overlay. He and the interface had talked about a variety of topics, ranging from engine repair to gene therapy to the proper feeding and care of pet fish.
As they'd talked, Carson had gradually noticed a certain stilted quality to the responses he was getting. The interface had no personality, he'd realised. Its comments had the feel of stock programming, where a basic algorithm determined the proper response to what he said. There was no feeling of *person* behind the conversation.
When Dr Hathaway finally gave her diagnosis that there was no one in his brain except him, he'd already come to the same conclusion. He'd relaxed, and gone back to asking questions about the uses the Ancients had put the city to. Some of them were utterly alien -- why devote an entire room to the growing of a single tree, which was neither rare, biologically useful, nor spiritually significant? Others made more sense, and he'd flagged those to get back into working order so they could be used again. The gymnasium in particular would be well-received.
"I suppose we can let you go," Dr Hathaway said, interrupting him. Carson looked at her, and sat up.
"Is there anyway to be sure Carson isn't in any danger?" Dr Weir asked. He appreciated her concern, but he was -- finally -- convinced that there was no immediate need to panic. He reserved the right to change his mind, but for now he thought it might actually be all right.
Dr Hathaway shook her head. "No more so than the rest of us, just by being here."
"Great," Carson muttered.
Dr Weir smiled at him, and gave him a half-shrug. "Sorry," she said.
"Oh, I don't mind being dragged to another galaxy and put into constant mortal danger. My life back home was getting stagnant and boring." He got off the table, making sure no one was about to say 'just one more test'. He could empathise with certain subjects of his own experiments, now. There was nothing quite like having someone want to stick things into your body to make you wish you'd never heard the word 'science.'
"See? You just have to put it into perspective." Weir grinned, and then she grew serious again. "I do want someone to keep an eye on you, and I want these tests repeated regularly, until we are sure nothing's going to happen."
Dr Hathaway nodded, and Carson sighed. "All right," he agreed, if only because he knew it was the proper, and sane, thing to do. "I can get back to work, though, right? I'm not on medical leave?"
"As long as you feel up to it," Weir said. "But don't overdo it for a few days, ok? Take it easy for awhile."
He nodded. Not that any of the work he had to do was very taxing; it would be easy to focus on it to the exclusion of everything else. Dr Weir accepted his agreement and walked off with Dr Hathaway, telling her to keep her informed in case anything should change.
Carson grabbed his jacket from the next bed, and shrugged into it. There were things to do, and he wanted to grab some lunch before he dove into it. The saline tanks were still first on the list, but the subsonic frequency modulators were rapidly moving up the list. It might have something to do with the experiments being done in the audio lab. He'd keep an eye on it and have a talk with them about what they were doing. In the meanwhile, it would be good to get back to work.
He walked out of the infirmary, not looking back.
end chapter two
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