04 - The Morpheus Factor Read online

  When they were all gathered in a circle in the sunlight at the cave entrance, O’Neill raised an expectant eyebrow. “Okay, you’ve got the floor, Daniel. Do you have some idea what’s going on? Other than this being the most restful damn mission we’ve ever been on.”

  “It’s the dreams,” he began, then stopped, trying to figure out how to go on. His audience leaned forward intently.

  “I thought I was awake, but maybe I wasn’t,” he said. There was still a raw place on his inner lip though, and it still hurt. He exhaled sharply. “I’m not sure it matters.

  “I had a dream. Woke me up. At least I thought it woke me up. So I got up—I have no idea how long ago—and thought I’d go get some fresh air.” He waved one hand vaguely at the remains of the food, still piled on the picnic mat. It was now attracting the local flies. “At least I thought I was going for a little walk.” He swallowed hard and stretched his neck, staring at the empty ceiling overhead, not wanting to meet his teammates’ eyes. “I stepped out of this clearing and I was on a beach. Gorgeous place, with white sand and palm trees and blue skies. It was daylight—high noon in fact.” He glanced over at Carter, and then immediately away, hoping that the shadow cast by the hill hid the heat in his face. “I saw you there. You were fighting something, shooting at it with a zat gun. It looked like a giant squid, one of those things they say live at the bottom of the ocean that eat sperm whales for snacks. It was almost on the beach and hitting at you with its tentacles. You were firing back at it with a zat gun, at first, and then a Goa’uld ribbon weapon. And when you killed it, there was a tsunami. And the wave changed into a mountain.”

  “That was my dream!” Carter exclaimed. “I didn’t see you there! That’s exactly what happened. But I thought I was all alone on that island. What—”

  Her words suddenly registered on her, and she fell silent, confused and a little embarrassed as more details came back to her.

  “I tried to reach you, but when I came toward you all of a sudden I was underwater.” O’Neill straightened up at this. “There was this city—coral, I think. I couldn’t see much of it because, well, I was drowning.” He gave them a twisted smile. “Never did like deep water. Anyway, I was trying to swim to the surface and all of a sudden I was lying in the middle—”

  “Of a desert,” O’Neill said grimly. “Am I right?” At the expressions of the others, he added, “That was my dream.” The colonel turned back to Jackson. “Then what happened?”

  “I woke up here,” Jackson said simply. “At least, I think I did.” He bit his Up and winced. “I figured I was just having funny dreams, maybe a reaction to the food or something. So I tried again going out for some fresh air, and—” He shuddered, forced himself to continue, looking directly at Teal’C. “I stepped out of here and I was in the Gate room back on Earth. Only it wasn’t our Earth. There had been a huge battle, and everybody was dead. You were”—he nodded to Carter—“and Hammond and Frasier and you, Jack, and even me. I found me. But not you, Teal’C. I didn’t find you anywhere.”

  His hands were still shaking, he noticed with detached interest.

  “It was the Goa’uld,” he said. “It was real. The look—the smell of it—it was all real. But it wasn’t our Earth because we’re here, not there, but we were there and we were dead.”

  “You didn’t happen to pour yourself a stiff drink in that dream, did you?” O’Neill asked dryly. “Because you’re a little more aromatic than you were this afternoon, I’m telling you.”

  Before Daniel could answer, Teal’C spoke up. “You were in my dream the last time, Daniel Jackson,” the Jaffa said. “I dreamed I was in the service of Apophis, and we had invaded Earth. I killed you. I am pleased to find it was not so.”

  “Not as pleased as we are. Alternate universe maybe?” O’Neill wondered aloud.

  “I thought of that, Jack, but how’d I get there? You were dreaming it. I was there.”

  “And they were dreams.” The colonel shook his head. “They had to be. I remember that underwater stuff. I had Vair following me around like a tour director, but I didn’t see you.”

  “But how? And why?” Daniel asked.

  “It’s those damned apples,” O’Neill speculated. “It’s always the apples in the Garden of Paradise. But that doesn’t tell us why.”

  “It looks like somehow, outside of this cave, our dreams are real,” Carter said slowly. “And you know what, it’s not just us. I’ll bet that’s why we saw things right out of the Gate.”

  “Perhaps this is merely a characteristic of this world,” Teal’C said. “I do not think it could be the food we ate. We saw strange things as soon as we set foot on this planet.”

  “Maybe so, but it doesn’t make it a prime tourist spot in my opinion.” O’Neill got to his feet. “We’re heading for home, folks. Right now. I don’t care what resources this world has or how many Goa’uld weapons might be hidden away. We are outta here.” His whole attitude exuded relief that he finally was able to say it without any reservations whatsoever.

  Daniel eyed the clearing outside the cave and shook his head. His face was still pale with shock. “I don’t know, Jack. Can we get home?”

  O’Neill winced. “Good point. But if we’re all awake and all stick together, we ought to be able to get back to the Gate.”

  “If we really are all awake,” Daniel muttered. “How can we tell?”

  “All right, so maybe we can’t. But if we aren’t, we’re going to sign up for a joint hallucination. We will all see the same thing.”

  As one, the team decided not to examine that particular resolution too closely, and gathered up their packs and supplies.

  They stuck close together as they ventured out of the cave, by common consent keeping Daniel in the middle of their little band. He was having trouble enough trusting reality without venturing more than a couple of feet away from the rest of them. But of all of them he was the least surprised when, once out of the clearing, they found the morning sun—which nanoseconds ago had been in late-afternoon phase—shining brightly down upon them.

  “‘And that was odd, the Walrus said,’” O’Neill began.

  “‘For it was the middle of the night,’” Carter took up the rest of the verse.

  Daniel couldn’t bring himself to comment. He was still shaking convulsively, jumping at every little noise, looking quickly from side to side as if to catch some fleeting glimpse of some other reality ducking behind every tree. Teal’C merely filed the exchange away as one more odd Earth thing to figure out someday.

  Shasee! Shasee, Vair, Eleb, they are leaving the cave!

  The Shape has collapsed. Where is Etra’ain? Go and get her. We must stop them.

  With effort, the teammates retraced their path to the village where they had first feasted with the Kayeechi. They were uneasily aware that they were being watched—the sudden stillness of birds and the residual trembling of a tree branch were enough to tell them that, whether it was seen as an oak tree or a fern or a lilac bush. None of them reported seeing any cities, though Daniel in particular kept searching for his crystal tower.

  They had crested the last rise, and the Gate itself was in sight, when the Kayeechi rose up out of the grassy brush all around them. The team formed a circle, back to back to back to back, to meet them, weapons ready.

  “Why are you here?” Shasee asked plaintively, trotting up to O’Neill and stopping only when the colonel raised his rifle across his chest in a clearly defensive move. “You aren’t supposed to be here. You’re supposed to be at the sleeping place. Please, go back. Do you not wish to see—”

  “Thanks, but we’ve had just about enough of your hospitality,” O’Neill informed him. “We’re going home now. If we’re ever back in the neighborhood, we’ll say hi.”

  “No. You must stay. You have much to teach us.” Even on the alien face, the expression of anxiety was easy to read. Shasee was frightened, and not of the weapons the visitors to his world were holding.

  The
Kayeechi kept crowding forward, a rainbow of small furry creatures.

  “Keep moving to the Gate,” O’Neill said out of the corner of his mouth, and the phalanx of SG-1 took a step closer to the DHD. The Kayeechi had surrounded them, six or seven deep, but gave way unconsciously to the physical pressure of the movement.

  They were giving way to another pressure as well. O’Neill could see the aliens looking back over their shoulders at some of the newcomers and then parting to welcome them. He could track their progress by the movement of the natives, but meanwhile, he kept the team moving, one unobtrusive step at a time.

  The newcomers had finally made it to the front of the crowd, facing them. One, with thin lines of purple fur crosshatched over her face, stepped clear of the rest, and Shasee and the others gave way in obvious deference. The murmurs of the crowd faded out as the aliens listened, and the progress toward the DHD halted.

  “I am Etra’ain,” Purplehatch announced, as if this in itself was supposed to awe them. It certainly awed the Kayeechi, or at least most of them. “I am she who Shapes. You cannot leave. We have need of you. You know this is true.”

  “Shapes? You’re shaped like a Teletubby,” O’Neill said pleasantly, if not correctly. “And no, I don’t know it’s true. I don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s been fun, the meals were great, and now we’re going home.”

  Etra’ain looked as distressed as Shasee had, her small hands twisting around each other. “But you must know. You have seen the battles. You have fought with us. We will be destroyed if you leave.” She walked around their circle, looking each of them in the eye. “You,” she said to Daniel. “You are a wise man who seeks justice. You walked in the Shapings. You,” she addressed Teal’C, “are a man who knows what it is to lead armies and conquer.

  “You,” she said to Carter, “are a man who is resourceful and inventive. You all have much to offer, much more than you have given us already. We need you.”

  “I think you have a few of the details wrong,” Carter muttered indignantly.

  “Don’t get me wrong, I think you’re very nice people,” O’Neill said with considerable patience, “but we can’t stay here. We can’t trust our senses, and that puts us in danger. You may not understand that, but it’s very important to us that we see reality.”

  The aliens muttered to each other, and Vair and Shasee approached Etra’ain and spoke to her directly. When they had finished and stepped back out of her way, she sighed and nodded. “I understand. You wish to see the—” She tilted her head. “There is no word for it in your language.”

  “Try,” O’Neill encouraged.

  “‘Reality’?” she said tentatively. “We don’t understand the term.”

  “We want to see things as they are,” Daniel said. “Each one of us sees something—a tree, for instance—as a different thing. If we were looking at reality, each of us would be seeing the same thing.”

  Again, the aliens muttered to each other.

  “To all see the same thing, you would all have to be the same person,” Etra’ain protested. “How could this be? Each mind is different. Each spirit is different. How can the world be the same to all of you?”

  The team looked over their shoulders at each other blankly. “Boy, wouldn’t you like to meet this world’s Einstein?” Carter asked. “Imagine what their Theory of Relativity must be like!”

  “I think we are meeting this world’s Einstein,” Daniel said. “Look.”

  Vair and Shasee had returned, bearing small covered pots with slits in the lids. Smoke curled out. The two aliens were wearing masks to keep from inhaling it.

  “If you wish to be all of one mind,” Etra’ain said with distaste, “we can make it so for a little time. We can give you the clear sight with mor’ee-rai. But you must stay with us, for you are very strange and different and you can aid us. You can save us. We need you.”

  “Wait a minute. What’s that stuff?” O’Neill demanded as Etra’ain gestured and Vair held the little container up to him and whipped off the top. As he did so, the entire mass of Kayeechi took a deep breath and blew, as if putting out a giant birthday cake. Their combined breath pushed the smoke of the burning incense into their faces. “Hey!”

  Daniel sneezed, as did Teal’C. Carter made a face and waved a hand to get the smoke out of her eyes, but it was too late for all of them.

  Like a shelf of snow falling off a mountain or a curtain being taken from a window, the valley around them changed. They were still surrounded by a crowd of Kayeechi, but everything else was different. Even the Kayeechi themselves were different. Several were heavily bandaged, and some required the support of others to walk. Most of them wore expressions that the team had seen all too often on too many worlds, including their own: shock, weariness, and pain.

  The four members of SG-1 stepped apart, looking around.

  “Teal’C, what do you see?” O’Neill asked.

  “Signs of battle,” the Jaffa responded promptly. “Much of the vegetation has been burned off, and there are bodies in the near distance piled as for a pyre ….”

  “There’s a trench dug in front of them,” Carter added, turning around. “There are two distinct kinds of aliens represented: one like the Kayeechi and another that looks like some kind of…”

  “Octopus,” Daniel took up the description. “A land octopus holding clubs in multiple arms.”

  “And the smell—my God,” Carter said. “Burning. Decay…”

  “You can taste it in the air,” Jackson added. “But is it real? Or are we dreaming again? Hallucinating?”

  “When one has many alternate possibilities to choose from, all equally valid, reality is what you choose to be real,” Teal’C said. “This time, we share the reality. Therefore, it is real.”

  “An existentialist Jaffa,” O’Neill muttered. “That’s all I need.”

  “This is a battlefield,” Teal’C said, ignoring the colonel. “You said that you had disputes with your neighbors. This is the result.”

  “You see,” Etra’ain said, covering the pot again. “You all see the same thing, although we sorrow to make this so. But you must understand that we are at war. Those we fight are evil and we must destroy them.”

  “We’re not going to fight your war for you.” O’Neill was quite definite about that.

  “You need not,” she responded. “You need only continue to share your knowing of your world. You have wonderful things.”

  “We’re not going to tell you—and just telling wouldn’t do any good anyway.”

  “Oh my God,” Jackson said, interrupting. “That’s it. The staff and the zat gun. They’re getting the weapons out of our dreams. They’re using our dreams to create reality.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” O’Neill said.

  As he spoke, six of the aliens gathered behind Etra’ain produced zat guns and aimed them awkwardly at the team.

  “Um, you don’t suppose they got those at the local K-Mart?” Jackson asked.

  One of the guns went off, startling all of them. Fortunately or otherwise, the beam struck one of the other aliens, who screamed and crumpled, thrashing on the ground. The other Kayeechi milled around frantically. More beams flashed.

  The team began to return fire, aiming by common consent over the aliens’ heads, as they retreated to the Gate. The diminutive folk produced energy staffs and began hauling them up to fire, even though it sometimes took two of them to hold one weapon. As Jackson activated the Gate, the alien aim improved. Bolts of energy from both staff and zat guns began to punch holes in the air uncomfortably close to their heads.

  O’Neill crumpled. Teal’C promptly hauled him over a shoulder and they stepped through the wormhole.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The signal that opened the protective iris at Star-gate Command on Earth also triggered a buzz of activity at the core of the complex. The twenty-four-hour guard stood poised in case a hostile party had gained access to the iris trigger. A medical team mobilized to
administer immediate aid to potential incoming casualties. Notification was sent immediately to General George Hammond that someone, presumably and hopefully one of the Stargate teams, was arriving.

  All of this was standard operating procedure. Thus, when SG-1 stumbled through the Gate, with Teal’C carrying the stunned O’Neill like a rag doll, a shock cart was standing by, and before Carter had managed to get to the end of the ramp, the colonel was on his way to the infirmary. An officious lieutenant counted the remaining three noses on the team and demanded, “Any other injuries?”

  Teal’C, Jackson, and Carter looked at each other and at the reassuringly familiar surroundings of the Gate room and shook their heads.

  “It was a zat gun,” Jackson called after the departing gurney. One of the enlisted personnel moving the recumbent officer along raised a hand in acknowledgment.

  “Threat condition?” asked the captain of the watch, shooing the medical lieutenant out of the way.

  The team members looked at each other again. “Uh, not high,” Jackson ventured.

  “There is no immediate danger to Earth or the Gate,” Teal’C clarified. “I do not believe the natives are capable of understanding Gate technology or are in a position to launch an attack.”

  “Agreed,” Carter said. “How’s the colonel?”

  The iris had snapped shut, and the Gate guard detachment stood down. The murmur of voices in the background indicated that the preliminary report was being passed along to Stargate Command.

  “Wouldn’t know. You’d better go ask,” the captain said.

  Carter looked up at the observation deck. “I think we’d like to find out. And maybe get cleaned up before we debrief,” she said.

  General Hammond, who was watching from the glassed-in vantage point above, saw the question in her expression and the utter weariness in the three team members. As he stood there, an aide passed along the immediate rundown from Medical. He sighed and nodded to the team below, then waited to get the whole story.