Ardhanarishvara Part Twenty-Nine
Parts 1-20
Part 21
Part 22
Part 23
Part 24
Part 25
Part 26
Part 27
Part 28
~*~
Final evaluations done, their counselors take the team on a tour of the machinery involved and brief them on Gestalt. Finally, finally, finally, they're going to experience it, so that all of this will pay off.
Hard to believe, now, that they underwent the whole Completion business be prepared for this. Not to forget Rodney and his Hard Path; he's been strangely quiet about it. Sheppard's curious, but she's always been willing to just play along if there's no pull or push to look deeper. They're already seeing Kate and the Hermean counsellors, and besides, she's figured that if Rodney wants to talk, Rodney will talk. Or barge in and throw descriptions of meditations and walking over hot coals, or whatever they do in their sessions, at her.
As for the purpose of the Gestalt, namely the energy harnessed to power the planet-wide cloak, well, Sheppard has been letting most of the technical nitty-gritty buzz in one ear and out the other, perfectly confident Rodney's getting it all. It's a little hard to concentrate, because once they've undergone Gestalt, they'll be on their way to the Change Clinic.
She's not forgetting the technology that made them jump through all these hoops, but that doesn't mean she isn't acutely aware of her own stake in this.
No one has said exactly how long Gestalt will take. Apparently, it can vary. She's got the feeling the Hermeans don't expect the team to stick it out long. She'd be offended, but frankly she just wants to get it out of the way. So, they're kind of right.
Beon keeps talking, which has Rodney rolling his eyes, Ronon zoning out, and a muscle in Teyla's cheek twitching. Sheppard's damned glad she got Zeah as her counselor. Beon's a pain; the only good thing about...her is the somewhat muted clothing, bright red with flashes of gold. Muted by Hermean standards only, of course. Not that Sheppard cares, but even she can't ignore that Farl over here is displaying the very worst of the Hermean's taste in clothes and colors. Men in their middle age just shouldn't wear transparent, chartreuse shirts with billowy sleeves made of ribbons. Especially not with yellow skintight pants. Just shouldn't.
Back on Earth, he'd be arrested for crimes against the visual cortex...or possibly turned over to a circus. Oh, well. At least there's no lamé involved, she comforts herself, and she does have her sunglasses.
Beon, who probably noted their lack of anything even resembling rapt attention, clears her throat loudly. "Of all the difficulties of the Hard Path, the one few are aware of is that such enlightenment tempts the Learner to abandon the body, once they have found their center of peace." She looks at Rodney meaningfully, as though she thinks Rodney's center of peace is about to expand all over them.
Wait a sec. What the hell? The Hard Path is just supposed to be another way to prepare someone for Gestalt, a way that doesn't include getting sex-changed. No one said anything about temptation and leaving behind any mortal coils. Damn, she's really getting pissed off with the way folks always fail to give them the whole picture.
"Abandon their body? Like zombies?" Sheppard asks, eyes narrowed, visions of blank-faced bodies with no consciousness left in them dancing in her head. She shouldn't have watched the 28 Days Later bootleg with the marines the other night.
Zeah touches her arm, fingers light over the tensed muscles, and Sheppard realizes she's dropped her hand down to her sidearm's butt and thumbed the restraining snap open, closed, open again. "Colonel."
"Explain," she insists.
Teyla and Ronon look disturbed too, at least.
"Some of those who have chosen the Hard Path chose also to continue beyond what is necessary to function in Gestalt, to convert themselves into sentient energy," Zeah says.
Sheppard stares at Rodney, then flicks her gaze to Teyla and finally Ronon. Sentient energy? That sounds pretty familiar. "They don't happen to go all glowy and then sort of disappear?" she chokes out. Because no way, no way is she letting Rodney or any of them dissolve. Screw the invisibility shield, screw the fantastic technology, and never mind getting back to being a guy, even. Four of them came here, and four of them are going home. The same four. She should have known there would be a catch.
"That is indeed the manner of it," Deln replies, looking intrigued. "You are familiar with -"
"Ascension," Sheppard interrupts. "Yeah." Damn it.
Rodney waves it off. "Oh, for God's sake, Colonel, do I look like a candidate for ascension to you? You're the one who spent six months studying to go a-glow, not me." He snorts. "Not that you're any kind of good bet for it, either, no matter what your girlfriends told you."
Sheppard glares at him.
Rodney stares back at him, his expression going from inquisitive to smug, until he actually gives out a delighted little laugh and declares, "You're worried about me! You'd miss me, Sheppard!"
"Like a hemorrhoid."
It doesn't even dent his grin. "I don't see you holding on to your hemorrhoids." Smug, smugger, Rodney McKay. "Which, um, is a good thing." A new thought seems to occur to him, because Rodney leans in, bumps his shoulder into hers. "You like me even better right now."
"What?"
"Absence makes the heart grow...you know. Even just potential absence. Potential energy, actual energy. No physical difference."
Ronon rolls her eyes. "Don't let him start with the physics again."
Teyla nods at the counselors, answering the question on their faces. "They are always like this."
Zeah smiles. "Intriguing."
Beon also smiles. "They know each other well."
Sheppard feels herself flush a little; when she glances at Rodney, he's doing the same.
Deln, thank God, is focusing on something more important than how fucking adorable the Hermeans find them. He gestures toward a set of stairs. "If you would follow, we will continue to the Gestalt room now, so that you can become familiar with it. They are different from city to city but share the basic equipment."
"Function does define form," Farl adds, "in these cases."
"This tower holds the second oldest Gestalt room on Hermea," Deln explains as they walk up the stairs, which are surprisingly steep. "Which makes it one of the oldest buildings here as well. I apologize for any inconvenience. New ones have lifters or at least a better design, but we thought you would appreciate the sense of history this tower retains."
"Oh, yes, everyone knows how I love climbing miles of steep stairs for the sense of history that gives me," Rodney mutters, but he isn't even panting. "Why do you have to have the room at the top of a tower, anyway?"
"We like the light," Beon says, matter-of-factly.
"They like the light," Sheppard parrots, from her place right by Rodney's shoulder. "You thought they'd bury everything twenty-eight stories underground like NORAD?" Truth is, she could live without ever spending another minute under Cheyenne Mountain. Not to mention that it's on Earth, and she'd just as soon never need to go back there, either. Home is a wide ocean, a wider sky, and a blue that Earth has never known.
"We're here," Deln announces, and, well, it's pretty clear to Sheppard that they are, since they've reached the end of the stairway and are stepping slowly into a large circular room covered by a transparent dome. Sunlight streams through filigree patterned glass, its shadows painting swirls and circles and dots onto the bright-white floor.
Rodney brushes against Sheppard and mutters, "Huh, this is the first place that doesn't look like it's been decorated by two-year-olds with Day-Glo Paints and a tab of acid."
Zeah overhears and nods at them, benignly; she must have missed the meaning of Rodney's words or possibly chosen to ignore it. "It's meant to soothe your mind as well as relax your body."
"Yes, because it's easy to concentrate in a place that looks like the Jungle Room would've looked if Elvis had studied architecture."
Sheppard blinks. "You went to Graceland?"
Zeah turns. "Where?" She probably thinks it has some religious or at least spiritual meaning; all the Hermeans seem a little kooky that way.
Ronon and Teyla are, almost simultaneously, rolling their eyes. "Don't let them start."
Rodney draws himself up and starts, "I'll have you know -"
Sheppard slaps a hand over Rodney's mouth. "Don't." Under her fingers, Rodney's lips are warm, soft, and still moving despite the pressure of her fingers; of course they are. Sheppard's vaguely stunned by how much she likes it, likes the feel of Rodney's mouth on her skin. She draws her arm back, hastens to focus on the rest of the team.
Teyla, at least, looks grateful. He has, by now, given up on jumping in to mend the gaping holes Rodney rips into conversations everywhere. Teyla does look as if he has an idea what Rodney means, though it's more knowledge-of-Rodney than of Earth, really.
Deln laughs with the amused air of someone watching a pair of precocious toddlers. Maybe that's pretty much what they are to him, to the Hermeans? But no, they've seen enough of Hermea to know they aren't that much better off than Earth, just with a different technology and culture. The Hermeans may know some things the rest of them don't, but they've missed out on a lot too. Hermea isn't perfect.
"Now, if you want to take a look...." Beon gestures to the circle of lounges. They look far more comfortable than anything the Ancients would have made; the Hermean aesthetic isn't ascetic, apparently. Sheppard's relieved. Twenty couches and six people spaced around and reclining on them at uneven intervals, dressed in what passes for street clothes on Hermea. They'd look like they were napping...if it weren't for the clam-shell helmet things covering their heads, a single wrist-thick connector leading from the crown to a central podium. It looks a little like the stem of a flower, and Sheppard realizes that's deliberate. The whole thing has been designed to echo the vine and leaf pattern of decoration. She doesn't find it organic, though; it is too perfect and exact to truly echo nature.
Frankly, it's a little creepy, even knowing it isn't supposed to be, and she wishes for Atlantis' hard but always clean and unambiguous lines.
"Four is the minimum number of Gestalt participants in one location," Farl tells them. "Ten is the average number to participate. Each mind added to the Gestalt adds power, but also increases the stress levels. There hasn't been a full Gestalt in five generations, since the Caiv fleet arrived in our system and stayed for five cycles. Other Gestalts operate in our other major cities, providing a measure of overlap and redundancy without resorting to the full meld."
"Sounds like this thing has a casualty rate," Ronon says.
Farl twitches. "We do not look at it in that fashion, but, after the last complete Gestalt, there was a higher than normal percentage of suicides, and three citizens translated into energy form. We compensated by establishing the other towers. I must add that this was quite a long time ago."
"So, instead of running one engine at max until it blows, you share out the load among several," Sheppard boils it down, thinking suicides? No one said anything about suicides, either, which sure as hell sound like casualties to her. What the hell happens in Gestalt that people want to die afterward? She expects Rodney to throw a fit at that, but, as sometimes happens, he's too intent on the prospect of new technology and information to worry about the danger.
Zeah smiles brilliantly. "Yes, exactly."
"Only you're talking about our brains, not generators," Rodney grumbles. Finally.
With a stricken look on his face, Deln shakes his head. "It's not like that, Dr. McKay. As we told you, we have eliminated physical threats."
"Why, I'm relieved, then...."
Sheppard relaxes. Here it comes, the patented McKay survival instinct, slightly time delayed.
"...since life-long psychological damage is so much better than a quick, clean death from overloaded synapses."
Sheppard tenses again.
Beon shakes his head. "That is not the reason for the deaths."
"Oh, then what, pray tell, is? Because I want to know before I take part in this Gestalt. I'm too important to Atlantis, not to mention myself, to throw myself into something that may lead to me wanting to die!"
"Rodney...."
"Oh, what, like you weren't thinking it," Rodney replies with a roll of his eyes that says he's onto her. She gives him a tight smile in return.
"Not helping here."
"Fine, fine." He turns to Deln. "So, what next?"
It's Zeah who speaks up, though. "The suicides followed a complete Gestalt, one involving many thousands of our people. You won't be experiencing that; we have adjusted the numbers so that there is less energy but also less of an impact on the individual mind. I assure you, there have been no deaths as a result of Gestalt since then."
Rodney gets his usual impatient You're Talking Too Much expression. "So, you're saying less brainpower, no catastrophic mental overload?"
Deln frowns, then smiles beatifically. "That's one way to put it, yes."
Sheppard looks at Rodney, who makes a face, but nods. She checks with Teyla and Ronon just as silently. They are both steady, obviously prepared to take any chance she asks of them. She's the one who has to decide if the risk is worth it.
She doesn't like it, but it still is. A full planetary cloak that requires nothing but people and some tech Rodney can set up in his sleep with both hands tied behind his back?
"Okay," she says.
"All of you should remove your weapons and relax. Try to become as comfortable as possible," Farl directs.
"As Farl says," Deln confirms.
Sheppard raises an eyebrow at the weapons divestiture, but doesn't comment. Maybe all that metal would interfere. Or fuck up their zen. "Got some place safe for us to leave our stuff?" she asks instead. "We wouldn't want just anyone picking them up and playing with them." She can imagine some idiot shooting their foot off all too easily. Now that's one complication they don't need.
Beon steps over to one of the couches and presses a button at the foot. A long drawer slides open from beneath it. "Storage." He presses the button a second time and light flares over his finger tip from the button. The drawer closes. "It reads your fingerprint and won't open for anything else. When you open it, the lock is wiped and ready to be re-keyed."
"Simple but sensible," Rodney comments. He stabs at the button a couple of times, ascertaining that nothing happens. Beon pushes it and the drawer opens again.
"Okay, it works for you." He keys it to his fingerprint, and it works the same.
"That'll do," Sheppard tells Zeah. She gets a quiet smile in return.
Ronon and Teyla head for the couches and begin disarming themselves.
Rodney glances back at Sheppard, his fingers on his tac vest. "I guess there's no getting out of this now, is there?" His lopsided smile says he doesn't really want to get out of it.
"Nope," Sheppard replies, letting her own crooked version of a smile answer his. Planetary cloaking technology, and maybe anything else Rodney can work out from it, is a pretty big carrot; plus, damn it, she and Ronon and Teyla have gone through six months of weirdness, whacked out hormones, strange looks, and enough psych sessions to earn their own degrees. She'd like to let Rodney back out, but he's the one they're going to need to understand this. Besides, he'd never let them try it and leave him out, no matter what he says.
"It is nothing to be afraid of," Farl assures them.
"Well, you know, we've heard that before."
"From you, sometimes," Sheppard reminds Rodney.
"Yes, and as you like to remind me, I'm not Superman, and I'm not always right."
"Don't worry about it. None of us would trade you in for Clark Kent." She pauses, then adds, "Rodney, did you just admit to being fallible?"
Rodney glares at her.
She just smiles back, while Ronon chuckles.
Time to sit down. She does, shifting on the couch a little warily. It's almost too comfortable, conforming to and supporting her body perfectly. One thing the Hermeans have down is comfortable furniture, something the Ancients sucked at creating. Blow up a star, sure, but make a chair you could sit in for more than twenty minutes without a back ache, not so much. She doesn't slouch during meetings just to seem insolent.
On the next couch, Rodney makes a startled, approving sound and then gives out a long, appreciative groan.
"Can we take one of these home with us?" he asks, and, despite herself and the current situation, Sheppard thinks of sex, because the groan reminded her of the way Rodney sounds in the bedroom. She mentally slaps herself upside the head. No thinking about sex when you're about to do some freaky mind-meld thing with your teammates and a bunch of alien strangers, she tells herself. It works about as well as trying to not think of pink elephants.
Great, now she's imagining pink elephants having sex.
"Please become as comfortable as possible," Beon tells them. "The more comfortable your body is during the Gestalt, the less discomfort you'll experience afterward." A pause and then an amendment of the statement follows. "Physical discomfort."
"Oh, I so don't like the sound of that," Rodney mutters, but he stays on the couch, even though he looks a little pale and the line of his mouth is a little thinner than usual.
Sheppard turns her head and checks out Teyla and Ronon. Teyla is already lying down, hands neatly folded together. Ronon's sitting on the edge of the couch, looking at her and Rodney. There's a hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth, as though she could follow Sheppard's train of thought, and maybe she could. Maybe she recognizes Rodney's sounds, too.
It's surreal, remembering that not only has she slept with Ronon, too, but Ronon and Rodney have been together. The only thing they haven't done is the three of them together, and they came close, that one night. The only one left out is Teyla, by Teyla's choice. Part of her thinks it might be better if they had all slept together at this point, so that at least everything would be balanced...and that thought is just crazy, but hey, so is Pegasus. Which reminds her to ask later about what happens with the birth control implant in her thigh when they get changed back.
"You'll share some surface thoughts and sensations as the Gestalt evolves," Beon says.
"Just surface stuff?" Rodney asks.
They've gone over it more than once already, but Sheppard doesn't blame him for asking again. She's just as unsure about this as he is.
Zeah told them early on that each citizen receives a stipend while they're on 'gestalt duty' or whatever the Hermeans call it officially, in their own language. The reassuring bit was that boring everydayness of it. There are tax breaks, extra goodies and preferential treatment for people working in the gestalts: reserved seats at entertainment centers, day care, discounts, and a general kind of respect. Sheppard kind of got the feeling from Zeah's chatter that anyone wanting to move up in the government not only had to have done the duty once, but maybe more than once, because that earned them a sort of veteran's cred. But that sort of credit only comes from sacrifice and danger, she figures. No matter how many times they're assured Gestalt isn't really dangerous, just another job every citizen does at some point in their life, she doesn't buy it. Hermeans may commute to their shield towers from home, but this isn't home, and it sure as hell isn't Earth, and taking part isn't just a gimme.
Plus, she's firmly convinced that what is in her head should stay in her head. She'll share what she wants to share. Human beings don't grow up expecting that the things they think may someday be read by someone else. It's the truest freedom anyone has, the privacy of their mind, and the scariest stuff she's ever come across were the studies on bio- and chemo-warfare theorizing ways of literally affecting the way the enemy would think and feel. She'd rather be forced than happily changed. Zeah may have been right; the physical switch may suck but has nothing on poking at her mind and self. Then again, being turned into a woman wasn't just about body parts; there was a whole load of mindfuckery involved, not to mention feelings to sort out.
She deliberately forces those disturbing considerations away. Going into this freaked-out and disturbed can't be a good idea. She recites 'blue skies, wide open fields' to herself, and the amusement this evokes settles her nerves slightly.
"Just the surface thoughts," Farl confirms, but there is something in his expression that bothers Sheppard. "The six already in the Gestalt will guide you. They have volunteered, since any mesh with a new mind can be traumatic."
"And ours could be really traumatic, since we're aliens," Rodney says.
He's right. They're the aliens here, and that is something they don't remember often enough. They're the ones saying 'Take me to your leader' when they come through the gate, and isn't that a kick? Plus, between the four of them, they've faced some damned nasty situations, things the Hermeans haven't dealt with in so long, they've probably forgotten how.
She glances around once more and frowns. Six? There are seven people on the couches. What's with that?
The helmet over one of them retracts about then. The woman lying on the couch draws in a deep breath and then stretches before shaking out her arms and legs in a reassuringly normal way.
It seems she's in her fifties, with curlicue gray hair, as if Shirley Temple had stuck her finger in a light socket, and bright brown eyes. She's got on something so fluttery and multicolored it hurts. Looks like the top of her head would just about reach Rodney's chin if she was standing up. Somehow, Sheppard doesn't peg her for the sweet grandma type.
She sits up and looks around curiously, taking in the Atlantis team as well as the four counselors accompanying them. "Oh," she says. "You must be the offworlders."
"Yes, they are," Farl confirms.
She smiles at Sheppard. "You look a little nervous."
"Wouldn't you be?"
"Well, this is my third rotation - " she breaks off, looks at them for a moment before continuing, "and you must know, I grew up knowing I would take my place in it eventually." She smiles a little weirdly. "It's an extraordinary experience, hard to describe once it is over. Sometimes it's a bit of an effort to shake it off."
"Yeah?" Sheppard asks.
"Yes. Tiring, though," she adds, smothering a yawn, then rakes her fingers through her gray hair, messing it up more than straightening it. "I'm Hels, by the way."
"John Sheppard," she answers and introduces the others: "Rodney McKay, Teyla Emmagan, Ronon Dex."
"There's a showing of Gidarapes' Middlenight Blooms at the Parjeron," Deln mentions. "Jesp is playing Fain."
Beon turns around at that, looking intrigued, but the woman just shakes her head.
"Six hours, that's what takes it out of me these days, and I've done Middlenight Blooms twice before. I might catch it on trans later, if the reviews are really good. I can always use my discount that way."
Rodney sits up, unable to stay out of the conversation. "So, you're going home to crash on your couch with a bag of potato chips?"
Sheppard sighs. "Rodney."
Hels looks vaguely confused. "I'm not tired enough that I would crash my mobile, really. But you're right, relaxation is in order, something to settle myself again. I like going to the I-Madge, mostly, just not tonight."
"Pardon," Teyla asks, "what did you say?"
Sheppard figures that whatever Hels had said, the automatic 'gate translator hadn't found anything close enough in Athosian to offer, meaning that Teyla had just heard a sound that meant nothing to her beyond its context.
"Oh, you don't have I-Madge offworld?" She leaned forward, studying them with more interest. "I saw your picture on a holotrans historical documentary. There was an entire section on resuming contact with other worlds. It's fascinating, how different life is off Hermea."
Ronon grunts and smothers the sound in a faked cough. Sheppard gets it. Hels sees their lives as something she'd watch on TV or holotrans, whatever the Hermeans use for entertainment. It's different, living it, especially for Ronon. What Ronon went through might seem like a good action flick, but it makes for a truly shitty life. Sheppard bites back the impulse to snap that Sateda being culled had certainly been fascinating, if the people there hadn't been distracted by dying. But only because it wouldn't really help, just bother Ronon more.
Beon speaks up, "Our visitors are preparing to join Gestalt for the first time, Hels."
She looks almost disappointed. "Oh, you're going to join now? I'm sorry my shift is over." She glances at Rodney, at Sheppard, not focusing on the less than happy vibes coming off Ronon. "But, right, you wanted to know what we do. Well, we, we Hermeans, go to the Imaginations Centers. Three-dimensional entertainment. The Parjeron is the finest here in the city, but there are others. You may never have seen them, I suppose."
Not strictly true; Sheppard now remembers their guided city tour. Big, spherical building a few miles down to the...east? West? Either way, the mention of "I-Madge" didn't exactly stick, especially seeing as they ran into riots five minutes later.
So Sheppard just nods and says, "Cool," face as bland and blank as possible, while catching Ronon's eye.
Rodney is intrigued. Of course. "It's interactive?" A frown creases his brow. "Expensive and loud and crowded, I'll bet."
Sour grapes syndrome. Sheppard suppresses a smirk, but Hels doesn't have to. "For others, sometimes, yes. I get the lobby seats and first avatar choice, reserved for those who recently have done their Service. There are perks."
"What, you get a badge, I Gave My Mind Today, Be Nice To Me?" Rodney says, snippy and unimpressed as only he can be. It makes even Ronon grin.
"...and I can select the extent of my interaction, depending on how tired I am. Or you can merely observe."
Now, Rodney's eyes are brighter than bright. He turns toward Sheppard. "Hey, don't you think? I seem to recall I had a good, excellent, really, handle on the last virtual reality -"
"On the Aurora?" Sheppard says. She snorts. "Sure you did. Until the Wraith came." She shakes her head. "Rodney, we're here to learn how to shield Atlantis, not play."
Rodney pouts for a second, then sighs. "All right."
"It's very difficult to imagine what it was like, to live in fear of the Wraith the way our ancestors did," Deln remarks.
"It is equally difficult for us to imagine a life not lived in their shadow," Teyla says, repressively.
Ronon nods.
Rodney and Sheppard share a glance, then Sheppard shrugs. "You get used to it. We, ah, we grew up on a planet unknown to the Wraith, before we ended up here."
"Which isn't to say there weren't scary threats hanging over our heads," Rodney adds.
"Actually, Hermea reminds me a lot of Earth," Sheppard adds. "No one has a clue."
"Yeah, that bugs me too," Rodney replies quietly, just to her.
Zeah notices their reaction.
"You are bothered?"
Rodney thinks about it. "Just because you are fine doesn't mean the rest of the galaxy isn't still a war zone."
"The contrast is striking," Teyla adds, somber. "Every planet we visit, people live in justified fear, their loved ones killed, even their enemies subject to the same dangers. You seem very...innocent."
"Say," Rodney asks Teyla. "Did we seem that way when we got here?"
Teyla smiles sweetly at him. "No, Dr. McKay, you merely seemed arrogant and foolish."
"Hey!" Sheppard protests, but Ronon is chuckling and even Rodney doesn't seem too bothered. She switches her attention back to the four counselors and Hels. "Look, the shield you've got is great, but is hiding really the answer?"
"For us, it has been," Zeah says. "And you wish it for your own planet, yes?"
"Well, kinda," Sheppard says. "Obviously, we want the ability, too. But it -"
"Doesn't do much for anyone else," Ronon finishes.
Beon considers this. "We are willing to share with those you vouch for, if they succeed at Completion. But that is all we can do," he quickly adds. "We have no means to actually fight the Wraith."
"And everyone who can't keeps on suffering."
"Ronon," Sheppard says. She holds up a hand. "We aren't saying you're wrong." Shrugs. "Just, this isn't the answer to the Wraith problem."
The counselors turn to face the team. Zeah speaks, measuredly. "Have you considered that maybe there is none?"
Rodney lifts his chin. "There's always a solution."
Sheppard sighs. "Just not always a good one." Thinking of Heka and the Xa and a brewing war.
Zeah makes a helpless little hand gesture. "But none within our grasp. We have no armies or spaceships, not even weaponry."
"We know," Teyla says immediately. "And we're very grateful for what you have offered us." It's good to hear some gentler tones from Teyla. Sheppard's been pretty worried about her. Even if the mysterious, wise alien shtick is a mask, more than anything, Teyla has always made sure to be patient and conciliatory off-world. Until Hermea, that is.
Hels gets to her feet; she doesn't seem quite as comfortable as she looked before. "I enjoyed meeting you, but it's time for me to return home." They bid her goodbye absently as she leaves.
Ronon eyes the machines behind them with a speculative eye. "You said this is pure energy. It can be used."
Beon nods. "But the cost of using the Gestalt as an offensive weapon is too great. Minds burn out like wood in a fire. And the energy itself, if control is lost...all of Hermea could be destroyed."
"You tried." Sheppard knows she sounds surprised. She shouldn't be. Weaponizing any discovery seems to human beings' first instinct.
Farl, who's been pretty quiet, so far, pipes up. Sighs, actually. "Yes. We tried." His hands still, and so do the ribbons at his sleeves.
Beon's smile is a little less benign. "You think we didn't try everything, at first, in the beginning, with the Wraith still looming about our forefathers' heads? When we realized that the Ancestors would not protect us - nor share their secrets so that we could fight, ourselves?"
Teyla nods, and Ronon inclines her head. Rodney lets out a little snort, conveying his feelings about the 'Ancestors.' Sheppard should say something, but she's come around to the same lack of respect. They made great machines, but the Ancestors had about as much spine as a flatworm. Never gave a damn about anyone they considered lower on the evolutionary totem pole, either.
She dusts her hands together, instead, and eyes the headset thingie on her couch. "Well. I guess it's time to get this show on the road."
Now Rodney does pale a little. She smiles at him. "I'll go first, buddy."
"Yes, that; such a relief," Rodney mutters and reclines again, still looking nervous.
The four counselors hook up the head gear.
"Just close your eyes and concentrate on a single point, a color or sound," Zeah instructs.
"Um, does it have to look like snakes in a cap?"
Sheppard had closed her eyes, but they snap open with that wonderful bit of imagery. Thank you, Rodney. She grits her teeth and forces her eyelids closed again, picturing the blue of the stargate.
Deln laughs. "Some of the newer towers have wireless." He adjusts his orange-rimmed glasses. Sheppard's standing close enough to note that their thin lenses don't refract the light. Either Deln's vision impairment is minimal, or, more likely, this is nothing but a fashion accessory.
Zeah coughs, catching Sheppard's eyes briefly. She leans in, addressing Sheppard more than the rest of them, and murmurs quietly, "Joyous gestalt." The other counselors echo her.
Rodney grumps. "Great, we would get the dinosaur technology and a party in our heads."
"Rodney, shut up," Sheppard says. She closes her eyes. And falls into a blue circle.
~*~
It's dropping into a pool of water and dissolving. It's twining fingers with eighteen other hands. It's a woven tapestry, every thought a thread, a color, a knot wound into the others. It's nothing at all like the scientific breakdowns he was given as part of the Hard Path, numbers and figures and earnest, dry rules. This is sight to a blind man. It's drowning in someone else's flesh, someone's else's memories, their life. Rodney flails against nothing, no gravity, no body, no secure case of bone and consciousness, then tries to curl back into individuality like a gravitic anomaly, dense and allowing nothing to escape itself.
There's no sound, but the caress of someone else, someone known, draws him outward again, like a curl of steam rising from seething water, becoming air.
John.
Someone else approaches. A touch like the gentlest of hands touching the surface of water, but Rodney can feel the ripples, force and and motion moving beyond, reaching them all.
Teyla?
Rodney senses another familiar persona. Wordless and warm on the surface, projecting a confidence laced with deep, lava-like rage, the fuel that keeps a Runner alive when everything else falls away.
Ronon.
They swirl around each other, currents of different temperature water twisting together, memories like molecules migrating between each other, while, beyond them, six others approaching close to their edges.
Aban, Fedl, Wima, Dejm, Gipe, Taiz.
The sense of greeting from them is friendly, tentative yet welcoming. They urge the four of them to let go and reach out, meshing with each other and them.
As they do, they expand, everything they have been augmented by all that the others encompass. They amplify each other, connections made that no single human brain could create. The machines making it possible are a hum in the back of their minds, though, and their selves remain tethered through them to bodies lying in a sleep-like state. The parts of their brains still devoted to their autonomic systems are their anchors, a guarantee their individuality isn't lost.
Rodney surges to the fore, Sheppard, Ronon, and Teyla a cometary tail drawn out behind him. Rodney takes advantage of the power of the gestalt, using it with instinctive ease. Rodney is aware on one level of Sheppard watching, on another that Sheppard has always liked watching Rodney take things apart with mind and hands alike; this is the same, in a way, except Sheppard is also part of it, riding the same wave of thought, question, reason, answer. Providing parts of it. Winding through Rodney, along with the rest of the team. Perfect.
Rodney's joy pervades the gestalt, and the Hermeans echo it back. They open up, and then he truly glimpses the Gestalt.
It burns like a sun.
Rodney approaches it in wonder. These, these are the real secrets of Hermea. Not their technology, not Completion (that's just the gate all must pass through to reach the Gestalt). This.
Rodney is amazed, frightened. Fascinated.
It's so much more than a byproduct of the Hermeans' desperate attempt at harnessing enough power to protect themselves from the Wraith, more than ten thousand years ago. The gestalt of minds he and his team have formed, in conjunction with the six Hermeans in the tower with them, can do that. Rodney-in-the-Gestalt has grasped all of it already, a part of his mind already tracing the pathways of power that run from the towers to the huge machines buried underneath them, where the shields are generated, and out to where the technology baffles sensors and senses. It isn't very efficient, but when Rodney-in-the-Gestalt realizes why, Rodney-alone wants to - to laugh, cry, burst with something that's surprise and envy and sheer, blinding joy because the Hermeans are tapping subspace directly. He'd never dreamed this was what the Gestalt did!
All that, Rodney-alone would have done - will do - when he is an individual again, but here and now, Rodney-in-the-Gestalt knows this already: it is already another thread of consciousness pulling energy into their dimension with them, guiding it. Lightning held in his hands.
But the Gestalt….
Sheppard gets it. Sheppard's awe shivers through Rodney, too.
It isn't human. Made up of humans, but the Hermeans' minds are like cells that live and die in the body while the body continues, always, always replaced, always changing. It's a mind, but one made of many, and existing out of time.
The Gestalt is. It has existed since the first Hermeans merged their minds in an attempt to grasp the power their scientists told them the Ancestors had possessed, when the Ancestors refused to teach them the way to build a case that could contain the zero point energy existing in subspace. This Gestalt is.
All of Hermea, its culture, its technology, its society, is a product of the Gestalt. Originally, it came into existence to protect the individuals that made it up. Rodney thinks that maybe now, the individuals exist to continue it.
It's far too great for a single mind to encompass. Rodney realizes understanding only results from being part of it. When Rodney leaves the Gestalt, when all of them do, their minds won't be able to hold on to the even a fraction of the substance and truth they've seen. Shadows on a cave wall.
No wonder some people turn to Ascension in its wake, or that most are too overwhelmed to enter the gestalt again. To have been a thought in the mind of a god and then be expelled, exiled, is more than humans can comprehend. More than many can bear; better to spend the rest of their lives in denial, forgetting. Repressing.
Rodney knows the memories will fade. Of course, some ideas will stay. That's the Gestalt's way, too. It shapes Hermea to safeguard itself. Leaves the clues to new discoveries, new theories, new sciences in the minds of those that leave it. That's how it maintains a consciousness that has existed separate in itself for thousands of years, one that's not immortal, but so close that it makes almost no difference. It muffles and dead ends the paths that would lead to results that might allow the Hermeans to abandon the Gestalt in favor of some other safeguard.
Exhausted at last, Rodney falls back, draws away from the Gestalt, into the simpler mesh of the team, feels the others come along, breathless in this place without air. The Hermeans fade from his consciousness, not understanding.
It's beautiful, Rodney, thinks, but The Gestalt's loyalty is to itself and not the humans that make it up.
Its good is not necessarily the same as theirs, Sheppard whispers at the back of Rodney's mind, always wary. Teyla and Ronon echo his caution, bewildering the Hermeans as they withdraw.
Hours could have passed in the outside, physical world. Eternities have passed in the Gestalt. Even as Rodney thinks about it, there's the knowledge of losing it, all but a few pieces, fragments of thoughts gleaned from its unbroken consciousness.
Awakening into his body, he does have the memory of Tala Dmar, though, fresher and clearer than his own of what he had for breakfast.
Tala Dmar, a man as brilliant as Rodney, forced to beg the Alterrans for help as the Wraith fleets approached Hermea. Dmar had already grasped the principles of zero point energy, had created the first cloak but lacked the time to discover the methods and create the technology that would let the Hermeans create their own potentia to power it.
Rodney knows (remembers) the fury and despair Tala felt as the Alterrans refused to share their knowledge. Culling an entire planet with the population of Hermea would slow the Wraith in their progress to Atlantis.
He remembers Teyla horrified by that revelation.
Dmar hadn't just given up, however. If they couldn't channel zero point energy from subspace into a container, it was still there, always there; Hermea just had to find a way to use it. A way to channel it. And he had found it with the Gestalt.
But there's one more thought that has stayed with him, though, one that maybe is not but feels more important than all the Hermeans' secrets or even the not-so-surprising selfishness of the Ancients.
As their thoughts had slipped apart, Sheppard had thought: don't let this be the end.
Rodney blinks his eyes open and sucks in a deep breath as the helmet retracts, providing him with a view of the opalescent, softly lit ceiling. On both sides of his couch, he hears the others stirring. He wonders what they've brought out of the Gestalt with them. He feels a little shaky as he sits up.
Sheppard is looking at him. The soft, curvy mouth is slightly parted. Rodney hadn't tried to hide his thoughts about Sheppard as they sank into the Gestalt - not that he could; that's precisely it - that both versions were beautiful to him.
"I didn't believe it," Sheppard says. Her voice is hoarse enough to echo the way she used to sound. It makes Rodney shiver.
"Well, now you know," Rodney replies, his own voice foreign in his ears, but that doesn't matter because, oh, he knows, knows, Sheppard isn't going to freak out, that the knowledge, the truth and the feelings are welcome and returned.
Joyous gestalt, indeed.
~*~
Part 30
Part 21
Part 22
Part 23
Part 24
Part 25
Part 26
Part 27
Part 28
~*~
Final evaluations done, their counselors take the team on a tour of the machinery involved and brief them on Gestalt. Finally, finally, finally, they're going to experience it, so that all of this will pay off.
Hard to believe, now, that they underwent the whole Completion business be prepared for this. Not to forget Rodney and his Hard Path; he's been strangely quiet about it. Sheppard's curious, but she's always been willing to just play along if there's no pull or push to look deeper. They're already seeing Kate and the Hermean counsellors, and besides, she's figured that if Rodney wants to talk, Rodney will talk. Or barge in and throw descriptions of meditations and walking over hot coals, or whatever they do in their sessions, at her.
As for the purpose of the Gestalt, namely the energy harnessed to power the planet-wide cloak, well, Sheppard has been letting most of the technical nitty-gritty buzz in one ear and out the other, perfectly confident Rodney's getting it all. It's a little hard to concentrate, because once they've undergone Gestalt, they'll be on their way to the Change Clinic.
She's not forgetting the technology that made them jump through all these hoops, but that doesn't mean she isn't acutely aware of her own stake in this.
No one has said exactly how long Gestalt will take. Apparently, it can vary. She's got the feeling the Hermeans don't expect the team to stick it out long. She'd be offended, but frankly she just wants to get it out of the way. So, they're kind of right.
Beon keeps talking, which has Rodney rolling his eyes, Ronon zoning out, and a muscle in Teyla's cheek twitching. Sheppard's damned glad she got Zeah as her counselor. Beon's a pain; the only good thing about...her is the somewhat muted clothing, bright red with flashes of gold. Muted by Hermean standards only, of course. Not that Sheppard cares, but even she can't ignore that Farl over here is displaying the very worst of the Hermean's taste in clothes and colors. Men in their middle age just shouldn't wear transparent, chartreuse shirts with billowy sleeves made of ribbons. Especially not with yellow skintight pants. Just shouldn't.
Back on Earth, he'd be arrested for crimes against the visual cortex...or possibly turned over to a circus. Oh, well. At least there's no lamé involved, she comforts herself, and she does have her sunglasses.
Beon, who probably noted their lack of anything even resembling rapt attention, clears her throat loudly. "Of all the difficulties of the Hard Path, the one few are aware of is that such enlightenment tempts the Learner to abandon the body, once they have found their center of peace." She looks at Rodney meaningfully, as though she thinks Rodney's center of peace is about to expand all over them.
Wait a sec. What the hell? The Hard Path is just supposed to be another way to prepare someone for Gestalt, a way that doesn't include getting sex-changed. No one said anything about temptation and leaving behind any mortal coils. Damn, she's really getting pissed off with the way folks always fail to give them the whole picture.
"Abandon their body? Like zombies?" Sheppard asks, eyes narrowed, visions of blank-faced bodies with no consciousness left in them dancing in her head. She shouldn't have watched the 28 Days Later bootleg with the marines the other night.
Zeah touches her arm, fingers light over the tensed muscles, and Sheppard realizes she's dropped her hand down to her sidearm's butt and thumbed the restraining snap open, closed, open again. "Colonel."
"Explain," she insists.
Teyla and Ronon look disturbed too, at least.
"Some of those who have chosen the Hard Path chose also to continue beyond what is necessary to function in Gestalt, to convert themselves into sentient energy," Zeah says.
Sheppard stares at Rodney, then flicks her gaze to Teyla and finally Ronon. Sentient energy? That sounds pretty familiar. "They don't happen to go all glowy and then sort of disappear?" she chokes out. Because no way, no way is she letting Rodney or any of them dissolve. Screw the invisibility shield, screw the fantastic technology, and never mind getting back to being a guy, even. Four of them came here, and four of them are going home. The same four. She should have known there would be a catch.
"That is indeed the manner of it," Deln replies, looking intrigued. "You are familiar with -"
"Ascension," Sheppard interrupts. "Yeah." Damn it.
Rodney waves it off. "Oh, for God's sake, Colonel, do I look like a candidate for ascension to you? You're the one who spent six months studying to go a-glow, not me." He snorts. "Not that you're any kind of good bet for it, either, no matter what your girlfriends told you."
Sheppard glares at him.
Rodney stares back at him, his expression going from inquisitive to smug, until he actually gives out a delighted little laugh and declares, "You're worried about me! You'd miss me, Sheppard!"
"Like a hemorrhoid."
It doesn't even dent his grin. "I don't see you holding on to your hemorrhoids." Smug, smugger, Rodney McKay. "Which, um, is a good thing." A new thought seems to occur to him, because Rodney leans in, bumps his shoulder into hers. "You like me even better right now."
"What?"
"Absence makes the heart grow...you know. Even just potential absence. Potential energy, actual energy. No physical difference."
Ronon rolls her eyes. "Don't let him start with the physics again."
Teyla nods at the counselors, answering the question on their faces. "They are always like this."
Zeah smiles. "Intriguing."
Beon also smiles. "They know each other well."
Sheppard feels herself flush a little; when she glances at Rodney, he's doing the same.
Deln, thank God, is focusing on something more important than how fucking adorable the Hermeans find them. He gestures toward a set of stairs. "If you would follow, we will continue to the Gestalt room now, so that you can become familiar with it. They are different from city to city but share the basic equipment."
"Function does define form," Farl adds, "in these cases."
"This tower holds the second oldest Gestalt room on Hermea," Deln explains as they walk up the stairs, which are surprisingly steep. "Which makes it one of the oldest buildings here as well. I apologize for any inconvenience. New ones have lifters or at least a better design, but we thought you would appreciate the sense of history this tower retains."
"Oh, yes, everyone knows how I love climbing miles of steep stairs for the sense of history that gives me," Rodney mutters, but he isn't even panting. "Why do you have to have the room at the top of a tower, anyway?"
"We like the light," Beon says, matter-of-factly.
"They like the light," Sheppard parrots, from her place right by Rodney's shoulder. "You thought they'd bury everything twenty-eight stories underground like NORAD?" Truth is, she could live without ever spending another minute under Cheyenne Mountain. Not to mention that it's on Earth, and she'd just as soon never need to go back there, either. Home is a wide ocean, a wider sky, and a blue that Earth has never known.
"We're here," Deln announces, and, well, it's pretty clear to Sheppard that they are, since they've reached the end of the stairway and are stepping slowly into a large circular room covered by a transparent dome. Sunlight streams through filigree patterned glass, its shadows painting swirls and circles and dots onto the bright-white floor.
Rodney brushes against Sheppard and mutters, "Huh, this is the first place that doesn't look like it's been decorated by two-year-olds with Day-Glo Paints and a tab of acid."
Zeah overhears and nods at them, benignly; she must have missed the meaning of Rodney's words or possibly chosen to ignore it. "It's meant to soothe your mind as well as relax your body."
"Yes, because it's easy to concentrate in a place that looks like the Jungle Room would've looked if Elvis had studied architecture."
Sheppard blinks. "You went to Graceland?"
Zeah turns. "Where?" She probably thinks it has some religious or at least spiritual meaning; all the Hermeans seem a little kooky that way.
Ronon and Teyla are, almost simultaneously, rolling their eyes. "Don't let them start."
Rodney draws himself up and starts, "I'll have you know -"
Sheppard slaps a hand over Rodney's mouth. "Don't." Under her fingers, Rodney's lips are warm, soft, and still moving despite the pressure of her fingers; of course they are. Sheppard's vaguely stunned by how much she likes it, likes the feel of Rodney's mouth on her skin. She draws her arm back, hastens to focus on the rest of the team.
Teyla, at least, looks grateful. He has, by now, given up on jumping in to mend the gaping holes Rodney rips into conversations everywhere. Teyla does look as if he has an idea what Rodney means, though it's more knowledge-of-Rodney than of Earth, really.
Deln laughs with the amused air of someone watching a pair of precocious toddlers. Maybe that's pretty much what they are to him, to the Hermeans? But no, they've seen enough of Hermea to know they aren't that much better off than Earth, just with a different technology and culture. The Hermeans may know some things the rest of them don't, but they've missed out on a lot too. Hermea isn't perfect.
"Now, if you want to take a look...." Beon gestures to the circle of lounges. They look far more comfortable than anything the Ancients would have made; the Hermean aesthetic isn't ascetic, apparently. Sheppard's relieved. Twenty couches and six people spaced around and reclining on them at uneven intervals, dressed in what passes for street clothes on Hermea. They'd look like they were napping...if it weren't for the clam-shell helmet things covering their heads, a single wrist-thick connector leading from the crown to a central podium. It looks a little like the stem of a flower, and Sheppard realizes that's deliberate. The whole thing has been designed to echo the vine and leaf pattern of decoration. She doesn't find it organic, though; it is too perfect and exact to truly echo nature.
Frankly, it's a little creepy, even knowing it isn't supposed to be, and she wishes for Atlantis' hard but always clean and unambiguous lines.
"Four is the minimum number of Gestalt participants in one location," Farl tells them. "Ten is the average number to participate. Each mind added to the Gestalt adds power, but also increases the stress levels. There hasn't been a full Gestalt in five generations, since the Caiv fleet arrived in our system and stayed for five cycles. Other Gestalts operate in our other major cities, providing a measure of overlap and redundancy without resorting to the full meld."
"Sounds like this thing has a casualty rate," Ronon says.
Farl twitches. "We do not look at it in that fashion, but, after the last complete Gestalt, there was a higher than normal percentage of suicides, and three citizens translated into energy form. We compensated by establishing the other towers. I must add that this was quite a long time ago."
"So, instead of running one engine at max until it blows, you share out the load among several," Sheppard boils it down, thinking suicides? No one said anything about suicides, either, which sure as hell sound like casualties to her. What the hell happens in Gestalt that people want to die afterward? She expects Rodney to throw a fit at that, but, as sometimes happens, he's too intent on the prospect of new technology and information to worry about the danger.
Zeah smiles brilliantly. "Yes, exactly."
"Only you're talking about our brains, not generators," Rodney grumbles. Finally.
With a stricken look on his face, Deln shakes his head. "It's not like that, Dr. McKay. As we told you, we have eliminated physical threats."
"Why, I'm relieved, then...."
Sheppard relaxes. Here it comes, the patented McKay survival instinct, slightly time delayed.
"...since life-long psychological damage is so much better than a quick, clean death from overloaded synapses."
Sheppard tenses again.
Beon shakes his head. "That is not the reason for the deaths."
"Oh, then what, pray tell, is? Because I want to know before I take part in this Gestalt. I'm too important to Atlantis, not to mention myself, to throw myself into something that may lead to me wanting to die!"
"Rodney...."
"Oh, what, like you weren't thinking it," Rodney replies with a roll of his eyes that says he's onto her. She gives him a tight smile in return.
"Not helping here."
"Fine, fine." He turns to Deln. "So, what next?"
It's Zeah who speaks up, though. "The suicides followed a complete Gestalt, one involving many thousands of our people. You won't be experiencing that; we have adjusted the numbers so that there is less energy but also less of an impact on the individual mind. I assure you, there have been no deaths as a result of Gestalt since then."
Rodney gets his usual impatient You're Talking Too Much expression. "So, you're saying less brainpower, no catastrophic mental overload?"
Deln frowns, then smiles beatifically. "That's one way to put it, yes."
Sheppard looks at Rodney, who makes a face, but nods. She checks with Teyla and Ronon just as silently. They are both steady, obviously prepared to take any chance she asks of them. She's the one who has to decide if the risk is worth it.
She doesn't like it, but it still is. A full planetary cloak that requires nothing but people and some tech Rodney can set up in his sleep with both hands tied behind his back?
"Okay," she says.
"All of you should remove your weapons and relax. Try to become as comfortable as possible," Farl directs.
"As Farl says," Deln confirms.
Sheppard raises an eyebrow at the weapons divestiture, but doesn't comment. Maybe all that metal would interfere. Or fuck up their zen. "Got some place safe for us to leave our stuff?" she asks instead. "We wouldn't want just anyone picking them up and playing with them." She can imagine some idiot shooting their foot off all too easily. Now that's one complication they don't need.
Beon steps over to one of the couches and presses a button at the foot. A long drawer slides open from beneath it. "Storage." He presses the button a second time and light flares over his finger tip from the button. The drawer closes. "It reads your fingerprint and won't open for anything else. When you open it, the lock is wiped and ready to be re-keyed."
"Simple but sensible," Rodney comments. He stabs at the button a couple of times, ascertaining that nothing happens. Beon pushes it and the drawer opens again.
"Okay, it works for you." He keys it to his fingerprint, and it works the same.
"That'll do," Sheppard tells Zeah. She gets a quiet smile in return.
Ronon and Teyla head for the couches and begin disarming themselves.
Rodney glances back at Sheppard, his fingers on his tac vest. "I guess there's no getting out of this now, is there?" His lopsided smile says he doesn't really want to get out of it.
"Nope," Sheppard replies, letting her own crooked version of a smile answer his. Planetary cloaking technology, and maybe anything else Rodney can work out from it, is a pretty big carrot; plus, damn it, she and Ronon and Teyla have gone through six months of weirdness, whacked out hormones, strange looks, and enough psych sessions to earn their own degrees. She'd like to let Rodney back out, but he's the one they're going to need to understand this. Besides, he'd never let them try it and leave him out, no matter what he says.
"It is nothing to be afraid of," Farl assures them.
"Well, you know, we've heard that before."
"From you, sometimes," Sheppard reminds Rodney.
"Yes, and as you like to remind me, I'm not Superman, and I'm not always right."
"Don't worry about it. None of us would trade you in for Clark Kent." She pauses, then adds, "Rodney, did you just admit to being fallible?"
Rodney glares at her.
She just smiles back, while Ronon chuckles.
Time to sit down. She does, shifting on the couch a little warily. It's almost too comfortable, conforming to and supporting her body perfectly. One thing the Hermeans have down is comfortable furniture, something the Ancients sucked at creating. Blow up a star, sure, but make a chair you could sit in for more than twenty minutes without a back ache, not so much. She doesn't slouch during meetings just to seem insolent.
On the next couch, Rodney makes a startled, approving sound and then gives out a long, appreciative groan.
"Can we take one of these home with us?" he asks, and, despite herself and the current situation, Sheppard thinks of sex, because the groan reminded her of the way Rodney sounds in the bedroom. She mentally slaps herself upside the head. No thinking about sex when you're about to do some freaky mind-meld thing with your teammates and a bunch of alien strangers, she tells herself. It works about as well as trying to not think of pink elephants.
Great, now she's imagining pink elephants having sex.
"Please become as comfortable as possible," Beon tells them. "The more comfortable your body is during the Gestalt, the less discomfort you'll experience afterward." A pause and then an amendment of the statement follows. "Physical discomfort."
"Oh, I so don't like the sound of that," Rodney mutters, but he stays on the couch, even though he looks a little pale and the line of his mouth is a little thinner than usual.
Sheppard turns her head and checks out Teyla and Ronon. Teyla is already lying down, hands neatly folded together. Ronon's sitting on the edge of the couch, looking at her and Rodney. There's a hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth, as though she could follow Sheppard's train of thought, and maybe she could. Maybe she recognizes Rodney's sounds, too.
It's surreal, remembering that not only has she slept with Ronon, too, but Ronon and Rodney have been together. The only thing they haven't done is the three of them together, and they came close, that one night. The only one left out is Teyla, by Teyla's choice. Part of her thinks it might be better if they had all slept together at this point, so that at least everything would be balanced...and that thought is just crazy, but hey, so is Pegasus. Which reminds her to ask later about what happens with the birth control implant in her thigh when they get changed back.
"You'll share some surface thoughts and sensations as the Gestalt evolves," Beon says.
"Just surface stuff?" Rodney asks.
They've gone over it more than once already, but Sheppard doesn't blame him for asking again. She's just as unsure about this as he is.
Zeah told them early on that each citizen receives a stipend while they're on 'gestalt duty' or whatever the Hermeans call it officially, in their own language. The reassuring bit was that boring everydayness of it. There are tax breaks, extra goodies and preferential treatment for people working in the gestalts: reserved seats at entertainment centers, day care, discounts, and a general kind of respect. Sheppard kind of got the feeling from Zeah's chatter that anyone wanting to move up in the government not only had to have done the duty once, but maybe more than once, because that earned them a sort of veteran's cred. But that sort of credit only comes from sacrifice and danger, she figures. No matter how many times they're assured Gestalt isn't really dangerous, just another job every citizen does at some point in their life, she doesn't buy it. Hermeans may commute to their shield towers from home, but this isn't home, and it sure as hell isn't Earth, and taking part isn't just a gimme.
Plus, she's firmly convinced that what is in her head should stay in her head. She'll share what she wants to share. Human beings don't grow up expecting that the things they think may someday be read by someone else. It's the truest freedom anyone has, the privacy of their mind, and the scariest stuff she's ever come across were the studies on bio- and chemo-warfare theorizing ways of literally affecting the way the enemy would think and feel. She'd rather be forced than happily changed. Zeah may have been right; the physical switch may suck but has nothing on poking at her mind and self. Then again, being turned into a woman wasn't just about body parts; there was a whole load of mindfuckery involved, not to mention feelings to sort out.
She deliberately forces those disturbing considerations away. Going into this freaked-out and disturbed can't be a good idea. She recites 'blue skies, wide open fields' to herself, and the amusement this evokes settles her nerves slightly.
"Just the surface thoughts," Farl confirms, but there is something in his expression that bothers Sheppard. "The six already in the Gestalt will guide you. They have volunteered, since any mesh with a new mind can be traumatic."
"And ours could be really traumatic, since we're aliens," Rodney says.
He's right. They're the aliens here, and that is something they don't remember often enough. They're the ones saying 'Take me to your leader' when they come through the gate, and isn't that a kick? Plus, between the four of them, they've faced some damned nasty situations, things the Hermeans haven't dealt with in so long, they've probably forgotten how.
She glances around once more and frowns. Six? There are seven people on the couches. What's with that?
The helmet over one of them retracts about then. The woman lying on the couch draws in a deep breath and then stretches before shaking out her arms and legs in a reassuringly normal way.
It seems she's in her fifties, with curlicue gray hair, as if Shirley Temple had stuck her finger in a light socket, and bright brown eyes. She's got on something so fluttery and multicolored it hurts. Looks like the top of her head would just about reach Rodney's chin if she was standing up. Somehow, Sheppard doesn't peg her for the sweet grandma type.
She sits up and looks around curiously, taking in the Atlantis team as well as the four counselors accompanying them. "Oh," she says. "You must be the offworlders."
"Yes, they are," Farl confirms.
She smiles at Sheppard. "You look a little nervous."
"Wouldn't you be?"
"Well, this is my third rotation - " she breaks off, looks at them for a moment before continuing, "and you must know, I grew up knowing I would take my place in it eventually." She smiles a little weirdly. "It's an extraordinary experience, hard to describe once it is over. Sometimes it's a bit of an effort to shake it off."
"Yeah?" Sheppard asks.
"Yes. Tiring, though," she adds, smothering a yawn, then rakes her fingers through her gray hair, messing it up more than straightening it. "I'm Hels, by the way."
"John Sheppard," she answers and introduces the others: "Rodney McKay, Teyla Emmagan, Ronon Dex."
"There's a showing of Gidarapes' Middlenight Blooms at the Parjeron," Deln mentions. "Jesp is playing Fain."
Beon turns around at that, looking intrigued, but the woman just shakes her head.
"Six hours, that's what takes it out of me these days, and I've done Middlenight Blooms twice before. I might catch it on trans later, if the reviews are really good. I can always use my discount that way."
Rodney sits up, unable to stay out of the conversation. "So, you're going home to crash on your couch with a bag of potato chips?"
Sheppard sighs. "Rodney."
Hels looks vaguely confused. "I'm not tired enough that I would crash my mobile, really. But you're right, relaxation is in order, something to settle myself again. I like going to the I-Madge, mostly, just not tonight."
"Pardon," Teyla asks, "what did you say?"
Sheppard figures that whatever Hels had said, the automatic 'gate translator hadn't found anything close enough in Athosian to offer, meaning that Teyla had just heard a sound that meant nothing to her beyond its context.
"Oh, you don't have I-Madge offworld?" She leaned forward, studying them with more interest. "I saw your picture on a holotrans historical documentary. There was an entire section on resuming contact with other worlds. It's fascinating, how different life is off Hermea."
Ronon grunts and smothers the sound in a faked cough. Sheppard gets it. Hels sees their lives as something she'd watch on TV or holotrans, whatever the Hermeans use for entertainment. It's different, living it, especially for Ronon. What Ronon went through might seem like a good action flick, but it makes for a truly shitty life. Sheppard bites back the impulse to snap that Sateda being culled had certainly been fascinating, if the people there hadn't been distracted by dying. But only because it wouldn't really help, just bother Ronon more.
Beon speaks up, "Our visitors are preparing to join Gestalt for the first time, Hels."
She looks almost disappointed. "Oh, you're going to join now? I'm sorry my shift is over." She glances at Rodney, at Sheppard, not focusing on the less than happy vibes coming off Ronon. "But, right, you wanted to know what we do. Well, we, we Hermeans, go to the Imaginations Centers. Three-dimensional entertainment. The Parjeron is the finest here in the city, but there are others. You may never have seen them, I suppose."
Not strictly true; Sheppard now remembers their guided city tour. Big, spherical building a few miles down to the...east? West? Either way, the mention of "I-Madge" didn't exactly stick, especially seeing as they ran into riots five minutes later.
So Sheppard just nods and says, "Cool," face as bland and blank as possible, while catching Ronon's eye.
Rodney is intrigued. Of course. "It's interactive?" A frown creases his brow. "Expensive and loud and crowded, I'll bet."
Sour grapes syndrome. Sheppard suppresses a smirk, but Hels doesn't have to. "For others, sometimes, yes. I get the lobby seats and first avatar choice, reserved for those who recently have done their Service. There are perks."
"What, you get a badge, I Gave My Mind Today, Be Nice To Me?" Rodney says, snippy and unimpressed as only he can be. It makes even Ronon grin.
"...and I can select the extent of my interaction, depending on how tired I am. Or you can merely observe."
Now, Rodney's eyes are brighter than bright. He turns toward Sheppard. "Hey, don't you think? I seem to recall I had a good, excellent, really, handle on the last virtual reality -"
"On the Aurora?" Sheppard says. She snorts. "Sure you did. Until the Wraith came." She shakes her head. "Rodney, we're here to learn how to shield Atlantis, not play."
Rodney pouts for a second, then sighs. "All right."
"It's very difficult to imagine what it was like, to live in fear of the Wraith the way our ancestors did," Deln remarks.
"It is equally difficult for us to imagine a life not lived in their shadow," Teyla says, repressively.
Ronon nods.
Rodney and Sheppard share a glance, then Sheppard shrugs. "You get used to it. We, ah, we grew up on a planet unknown to the Wraith, before we ended up here."
"Which isn't to say there weren't scary threats hanging over our heads," Rodney adds.
"Actually, Hermea reminds me a lot of Earth," Sheppard adds. "No one has a clue."
"Yeah, that bugs me too," Rodney replies quietly, just to her.
Zeah notices their reaction.
"You are bothered?"
Rodney thinks about it. "Just because you are fine doesn't mean the rest of the galaxy isn't still a war zone."
"The contrast is striking," Teyla adds, somber. "Every planet we visit, people live in justified fear, their loved ones killed, even their enemies subject to the same dangers. You seem very...innocent."
"Say," Rodney asks Teyla. "Did we seem that way when we got here?"
Teyla smiles sweetly at him. "No, Dr. McKay, you merely seemed arrogant and foolish."
"Hey!" Sheppard protests, but Ronon is chuckling and even Rodney doesn't seem too bothered. She switches her attention back to the four counselors and Hels. "Look, the shield you've got is great, but is hiding really the answer?"
"For us, it has been," Zeah says. "And you wish it for your own planet, yes?"
"Well, kinda," Sheppard says. "Obviously, we want the ability, too. But it -"
"Doesn't do much for anyone else," Ronon finishes.
Beon considers this. "We are willing to share with those you vouch for, if they succeed at Completion. But that is all we can do," he quickly adds. "We have no means to actually fight the Wraith."
"And everyone who can't keeps on suffering."
"Ronon," Sheppard says. She holds up a hand. "We aren't saying you're wrong." Shrugs. "Just, this isn't the answer to the Wraith problem."
The counselors turn to face the team. Zeah speaks, measuredly. "Have you considered that maybe there is none?"
Rodney lifts his chin. "There's always a solution."
Sheppard sighs. "Just not always a good one." Thinking of Heka and the Xa and a brewing war.
Zeah makes a helpless little hand gesture. "But none within our grasp. We have no armies or spaceships, not even weaponry."
"We know," Teyla says immediately. "And we're very grateful for what you have offered us." It's good to hear some gentler tones from Teyla. Sheppard's been pretty worried about her. Even if the mysterious, wise alien shtick is a mask, more than anything, Teyla has always made sure to be patient and conciliatory off-world. Until Hermea, that is.
Hels gets to her feet; she doesn't seem quite as comfortable as she looked before. "I enjoyed meeting you, but it's time for me to return home." They bid her goodbye absently as she leaves.
Ronon eyes the machines behind them with a speculative eye. "You said this is pure energy. It can be used."
Beon nods. "But the cost of using the Gestalt as an offensive weapon is too great. Minds burn out like wood in a fire. And the energy itself, if control is lost...all of Hermea could be destroyed."
"You tried." Sheppard knows she sounds surprised. She shouldn't be. Weaponizing any discovery seems to human beings' first instinct.
Farl, who's been pretty quiet, so far, pipes up. Sighs, actually. "Yes. We tried." His hands still, and so do the ribbons at his sleeves.
Beon's smile is a little less benign. "You think we didn't try everything, at first, in the beginning, with the Wraith still looming about our forefathers' heads? When we realized that the Ancestors would not protect us - nor share their secrets so that we could fight, ourselves?"
Teyla nods, and Ronon inclines her head. Rodney lets out a little snort, conveying his feelings about the 'Ancestors.' Sheppard should say something, but she's come around to the same lack of respect. They made great machines, but the Ancestors had about as much spine as a flatworm. Never gave a damn about anyone they considered lower on the evolutionary totem pole, either.
She dusts her hands together, instead, and eyes the headset thingie on her couch. "Well. I guess it's time to get this show on the road."
Now Rodney does pale a little. She smiles at him. "I'll go first, buddy."
"Yes, that; such a relief," Rodney mutters and reclines again, still looking nervous.
The four counselors hook up the head gear.
"Just close your eyes and concentrate on a single point, a color or sound," Zeah instructs.
"Um, does it have to look like snakes in a cap?"
Sheppard had closed her eyes, but they snap open with that wonderful bit of imagery. Thank you, Rodney. She grits her teeth and forces her eyelids closed again, picturing the blue of the stargate.
Deln laughs. "Some of the newer towers have wireless." He adjusts his orange-rimmed glasses. Sheppard's standing close enough to note that their thin lenses don't refract the light. Either Deln's vision impairment is minimal, or, more likely, this is nothing but a fashion accessory.
Zeah coughs, catching Sheppard's eyes briefly. She leans in, addressing Sheppard more than the rest of them, and murmurs quietly, "Joyous gestalt." The other counselors echo her.
Rodney grumps. "Great, we would get the dinosaur technology and a party in our heads."
"Rodney, shut up," Sheppard says. She closes her eyes. And falls into a blue circle.
~*~
It's dropping into a pool of water and dissolving. It's twining fingers with eighteen other hands. It's a woven tapestry, every thought a thread, a color, a knot wound into the others. It's nothing at all like the scientific breakdowns he was given as part of the Hard Path, numbers and figures and earnest, dry rules. This is sight to a blind man. It's drowning in someone else's flesh, someone's else's memories, their life. Rodney flails against nothing, no gravity, no body, no secure case of bone and consciousness, then tries to curl back into individuality like a gravitic anomaly, dense and allowing nothing to escape itself.
There's no sound, but the caress of someone else, someone known, draws him outward again, like a curl of steam rising from seething water, becoming air.
John.
Someone else approaches. A touch like the gentlest of hands touching the surface of water, but Rodney can feel the ripples, force and and motion moving beyond, reaching them all.
Teyla?
Rodney senses another familiar persona. Wordless and warm on the surface, projecting a confidence laced with deep, lava-like rage, the fuel that keeps a Runner alive when everything else falls away.
Ronon.
They swirl around each other, currents of different temperature water twisting together, memories like molecules migrating between each other, while, beyond them, six others approaching close to their edges.
Aban, Fedl, Wima, Dejm, Gipe, Taiz.
The sense of greeting from them is friendly, tentative yet welcoming. They urge the four of them to let go and reach out, meshing with each other and them.
As they do, they expand, everything they have been augmented by all that the others encompass. They amplify each other, connections made that no single human brain could create. The machines making it possible are a hum in the back of their minds, though, and their selves remain tethered through them to bodies lying in a sleep-like state. The parts of their brains still devoted to their autonomic systems are their anchors, a guarantee their individuality isn't lost.
Rodney surges to the fore, Sheppard, Ronon, and Teyla a cometary tail drawn out behind him. Rodney takes advantage of the power of the gestalt, using it with instinctive ease. Rodney is aware on one level of Sheppard watching, on another that Sheppard has always liked watching Rodney take things apart with mind and hands alike; this is the same, in a way, except Sheppard is also part of it, riding the same wave of thought, question, reason, answer. Providing parts of it. Winding through Rodney, along with the rest of the team. Perfect.
Rodney's joy pervades the gestalt, and the Hermeans echo it back. They open up, and then he truly glimpses the Gestalt.
It burns like a sun.
Rodney approaches it in wonder. These, these are the real secrets of Hermea. Not their technology, not Completion (that's just the gate all must pass through to reach the Gestalt). This.
Rodney is amazed, frightened. Fascinated.
It's so much more than a byproduct of the Hermeans' desperate attempt at harnessing enough power to protect themselves from the Wraith, more than ten thousand years ago. The gestalt of minds he and his team have formed, in conjunction with the six Hermeans in the tower with them, can do that. Rodney-in-the-Gestalt has grasped all of it already, a part of his mind already tracing the pathways of power that run from the towers to the huge machines buried underneath them, where the shields are generated, and out to where the technology baffles sensors and senses. It isn't very efficient, but when Rodney-in-the-Gestalt realizes why, Rodney-alone wants to - to laugh, cry, burst with something that's surprise and envy and sheer, blinding joy because the Hermeans are tapping subspace directly. He'd never dreamed this was what the Gestalt did!
All that, Rodney-alone would have done - will do - when he is an individual again, but here and now, Rodney-in-the-Gestalt knows this already: it is already another thread of consciousness pulling energy into their dimension with them, guiding it. Lightning held in his hands.
But the Gestalt….
Sheppard gets it. Sheppard's awe shivers through Rodney, too.
It isn't human. Made up of humans, but the Hermeans' minds are like cells that live and die in the body while the body continues, always, always replaced, always changing. It's a mind, but one made of many, and existing out of time.
The Gestalt is. It has existed since the first Hermeans merged their minds in an attempt to grasp the power their scientists told them the Ancestors had possessed, when the Ancestors refused to teach them the way to build a case that could contain the zero point energy existing in subspace. This Gestalt is.
All of Hermea, its culture, its technology, its society, is a product of the Gestalt. Originally, it came into existence to protect the individuals that made it up. Rodney thinks that maybe now, the individuals exist to continue it.
It's far too great for a single mind to encompass. Rodney realizes understanding only results from being part of it. When Rodney leaves the Gestalt, when all of them do, their minds won't be able to hold on to the even a fraction of the substance and truth they've seen. Shadows on a cave wall.
No wonder some people turn to Ascension in its wake, or that most are too overwhelmed to enter the gestalt again. To have been a thought in the mind of a god and then be expelled, exiled, is more than humans can comprehend. More than many can bear; better to spend the rest of their lives in denial, forgetting. Repressing.
Rodney knows the memories will fade. Of course, some ideas will stay. That's the Gestalt's way, too. It shapes Hermea to safeguard itself. Leaves the clues to new discoveries, new theories, new sciences in the minds of those that leave it. That's how it maintains a consciousness that has existed separate in itself for thousands of years, one that's not immortal, but so close that it makes almost no difference. It muffles and dead ends the paths that would lead to results that might allow the Hermeans to abandon the Gestalt in favor of some other safeguard.
Exhausted at last, Rodney falls back, draws away from the Gestalt, into the simpler mesh of the team, feels the others come along, breathless in this place without air. The Hermeans fade from his consciousness, not understanding.
It's beautiful, Rodney, thinks, but The Gestalt's loyalty is to itself and not the humans that make it up.
Its good is not necessarily the same as theirs, Sheppard whispers at the back of Rodney's mind, always wary. Teyla and Ronon echo his caution, bewildering the Hermeans as they withdraw.
Hours could have passed in the outside, physical world. Eternities have passed in the Gestalt. Even as Rodney thinks about it, there's the knowledge of losing it, all but a few pieces, fragments of thoughts gleaned from its unbroken consciousness.
Awakening into his body, he does have the memory of Tala Dmar, though, fresher and clearer than his own of what he had for breakfast.
Tala Dmar, a man as brilliant as Rodney, forced to beg the Alterrans for help as the Wraith fleets approached Hermea. Dmar had already grasped the principles of zero point energy, had created the first cloak but lacked the time to discover the methods and create the technology that would let the Hermeans create their own potentia to power it.
Rodney knows (remembers) the fury and despair Tala felt as the Alterrans refused to share their knowledge. Culling an entire planet with the population of Hermea would slow the Wraith in their progress to Atlantis.
He remembers Teyla horrified by that revelation.
Dmar hadn't just given up, however. If they couldn't channel zero point energy from subspace into a container, it was still there, always there; Hermea just had to find a way to use it. A way to channel it. And he had found it with the Gestalt.
But there's one more thought that has stayed with him, though, one that maybe is not but feels more important than all the Hermeans' secrets or even the not-so-surprising selfishness of the Ancients.
As their thoughts had slipped apart, Sheppard had thought: don't let this be the end.
Rodney blinks his eyes open and sucks in a deep breath as the helmet retracts, providing him with a view of the opalescent, softly lit ceiling. On both sides of his couch, he hears the others stirring. He wonders what they've brought out of the Gestalt with them. He feels a little shaky as he sits up.
Sheppard is looking at him. The soft, curvy mouth is slightly parted. Rodney hadn't tried to hide his thoughts about Sheppard as they sank into the Gestalt - not that he could; that's precisely it - that both versions were beautiful to him.
"I didn't believe it," Sheppard says. Her voice is hoarse enough to echo the way she used to sound. It makes Rodney shiver.
"Well, now you know," Rodney replies, his own voice foreign in his ears, but that doesn't matter because, oh, he knows, knows, Sheppard isn't going to freak out, that the knowledge, the truth and the feelings are welcome and returned.
Joyous gestalt, indeed.
~*~
Part 30