[Daniel] The Crux of the Matter

[fikgirl]

Who: Daniel, Blaise
Where: Medical Facility: Control Room
When: Day 20, afternoon, picking up from Close Encounters with the Dead Kind
Invited: Locke, the Doctor, Megabyte, Scott, Alex (Dean, Sam, Jon and May when they return from their recon with something to report)
Status: Complete

Comments

[Doctor] Answering the Big Questions

[purplerhino]

"We can't make promises without understanding why, Alex," the Doctor's tone was reasonable. "Can you explain why it's dangerous? Illness, traps? Most of us have faced danger before, on a daily basis. It may make us a bit overconfidant at times. Understanding the danger in some manner will help us understand why you think we're not up to it."

He reached out to touch her arm. He knew his mental touch tp any psychically gifted human would be less that soothing. But he tried to project an aura of calm without any psychic ability. It wasn't like he was an empath, anyway.

"We've got a lot to handle here, anyway. It'll take us a while to sort through what we've found here, and what we can learn from our prisoners. I don't think there's an immediate danger of anyone looking for the Sunburst just yet." He looked deliberately at Daniel.

If the girl thought it was dangerous, they did not have the personnel or resources for a further raid right now. Not for something better secured, not while they had physically and mentally wounded to tend to.

He was not promising there wouldn't be looking in the future. Even if Alex didn't tell them. Unless she could actually convince them otherwise.

[Daniel, Alex] Information Dump

[fikgirl]

As Daniel watched Alex he was reminded of a panicked horse being brought back under control. The girl seemed to teeter on the edge of bolting, yelling at them, and shrinking back into herself. She must have chosen shrinking because the low hum stopped.

Alex hugged herself, looking down at the floor. Her words were heavy and it was easy to see that she was trying not to panic more. "Not illness. Not traps. Things. It's not all about . . . science. It's not all about what . . .you can . . .explain. You can't explain it . .. all with science somethings . . . just exist next . . . to science . . .and with . . .science and they're not science just . . . magic and myth and things that shouldn't."

Alex's voice took on a strange cadence and pacing as she spoke, breaking for pauses in places where he wouldn't have expected pauses, almost as though she were speaking a new language. "Some . . . people call . . . them demons. Or . . . monsters. I don't know what . . . they are but . . . they're nightmares. Even . . . with guns no . . . one goes in there."

Daniel decided not to press the issue right now. The Doctor was right, they didn't have the resources or the need to go looking for this Sunburst bunker quite yet, and the prisoners might give them more information.

"All right, Alex," Daniel said soothingly, "We won't talk about it anymore. And we won't go there. Let's talk about something else. The rest of the questions? Can you answer them?"

"Inaminnit," Alex didn't look up.

There was a moment of silence.

"What about the Swan?" Locke asked. "We know that one's near camp. We could radio Faith and George and have them look for it."

"Northeast, three miles off from your caves," Alex stated. "There's a man there. He's been alone a long time."

"DHARMA?" Daniel prompted, a bit concerned to hear that they had someone so close to their camp and didn't know it. But their perimeter sweep had only gone out approximately two miles.

"Kelvin got tired of keeping the world safe so now he's on the ceiling," Alex explained as though she'd just said the most logical thing in the world. She frowned and shook her head, muttering in a combination of French and Greek, "Focus, focus. Make the words come together."

Just as quickly, her head jerked up, and she addressed them in English, though her voice kept that odd staccato pacing. "Not DHARMA, he's not part of DHARMA. He's just unlucky. Department of Heuristics And Research on Material Applications Initiative, that's DHARMA. They hire scientists, Ph.D's, researchers. Research is what they are supposed to do. Pushing the boundaries of science. They're unrestricted. They like that. Dr. Carlson is in charge, but I think someone else is in charge of him.

"There used to be lots of people here, working, researching, but something happened four years ago and most of them left. Only some stayed. About fifty were left I think, then we went backwards and forwards and more left and we didn't go anywhere for a long time, and then you started to come."

"You're speaking of the time bubble?" The Doctor asked.

Alex nodded. "I don't know where it came from. I'm not allowed to know. I only know what she knows and she doesn't know everything. No one knows everything because Dr. Carlson won't let everyone know everything."

There was a pause and during it, Daniel recalled Locke's questions in his head, and tried to figure out which ones Alex was answering in her own unique way. "So, there's not a personnel rotation?"

"Not anymore," Alex shook her head. "There used to be comings and goings all the time, but everything changed four years ago. I remember because that's when I talked to it. It comes from the Dark Place," Alex shuddered but seemed unaware of it, "But it's not part of the Dark Place. And DHARMA doesn't have anything to do with it."

"It?" Several voices prompted.

"The Guardian."

[Locke] That endearing ol' man-eating plume of smoke

[starborn_scribe]

Locke's eyes went wide. "What did the Guardian say to you, Alex?"

[Mayday] Are we interrupting anything?

[weirdweb]

Alex was momentarily saved from answering another question as someone rapped on the doorframe. The group gathered around the console looked up to see May, Kenzaki, and Jon standing in the doorway, looking disheveled and tired (but nowhere near as smelly as the last recon team had been). May looked especially tired - she wasn't in danger of falling over, but she looked like she'd finished up a marathon and was cooling down.

"Hey, don't everybody get up," Jon greeted. "We can just lean on the door for a little while longer."

"How long have you been standing there?" Daniel asked.

"Couple seconds," May answered, taking a swig of water from the bottle she'd grabbed. A bit of her wrist wrappings had come loose and a glint of metal could be seen on her right wrist. She didn't notice. "Sorry to interrupt, but is this 'Guardian' big, made of smoke, eats trees like toothpicks?"

[Jon] Are we interrupting anything?

[sophiedb]

The first thing that drew Jon's attention as they entered the security room was the monitors, still watching the prisoners. They looked entirely too healthy for his liking, but at least that meant he hadn't missed much.

The second thing was a packet of crackers left on one of the desks. He honed in on them, seating himself in the space they'd once occupied, and snagged a few before throwing the rest to May. Hungry didn't even begin to describe how he felt, but there had to be a reason for this many people crammed into one room - and it looked like her name was Alex.

"Is this 'Guardian' big, made of smoke, eats trees like toothpicks?" May asked.

Jon nodded, hastily swallowing mouthful of crumbs.

"What the hell is it guarding? Not some dingy old bunker, that's for sure - it chased us right past another one. And who's this she you know all about? Carlson too. Are they in there?" he pointed to the monitors, then grinned innocently as his belly rumbled loudly. "Anyone got more food?"

[Locke] Guardians and waking dreams

[starborn_scribe]

"Kitchen," Locke grinned at the soldier in a teenager's body. He didn't understand how or why cloning was involved, but Jon acted more like a man closer to his age than a high schooler.

Turning his thoughts back to the Guardian, Locke sobered. "Yes, that was the Guardian," he told May. "You... outran it?" May nodded. Locke wasn't too surprised considering the young woman's acrobatics. Strangely, Jon looked sheepish.

"I don't know what it's guarding," Locke continued. "I communicated with it not long after arriving here." That earned him a few surprised looks. "Actually, it communicated with me telepathically, and I'm not psychic.

" Something else 'spoke' to me a few weeks ago." He nodded at Blaise and Scott. "They were there. If it was the Guardian, it wasn't there physically. It was like I was dreaming while awake. It said that 'there are good ones and bad ones.'"

"What the hell's that supposed to mean?"

Locke shrugged. "I don't know. I'd say that the Guardian is one of the good ones, but it killed the pilot." He looked away. The man's needless death weighed on him.

[Mayday] Guardians and waking dreams

[weirdweb]

If Jon was hungry, May was famished - given the opportunity, she could probably inhale a fully-loaded footlong sub in five seconds. But after the chase scene and what they'd found, her curiosity about what they'd found and what it meant still won out over her stomach.

Still, she first offered the remaining crackers to Kenzaki. He shook his head. "You sure?" He held up a hand, trying to make it clear he didn't want any. With that, she shrugged and tore into the rest of them herself. She'd attack whatever was left in the kitchen later; the crackers would hold her over in the meantime.

"Yes, that was the Guardian," Locke told her. "You... outran it?"

Reluctantly, May nodded, glad for the mouthful of crackers that prevented her from elaborating as Locke steered the conversation back to the actual 'Guardian.' Jon looked embarrassed, which was something of a relief; he wasn't going into any details either.

She listened to Locke's story, growing more and more creeped out as she did. Her only experience with any sort of waking dream had involved a vision of her own death. May shuddered at the memory.

"If that's one of the good ones, I don't ever want to meet one of the bad ones. And for something that's supposed to be guarding things, it seemed way too intent on turning us into mulch. Would have, too, if Kenzaki hadn't gotten its attention," she added.

[Daniel, Alex] Another Piece of the Puzzle

[fikgirl]

Daniel listened quietly to Locke and May. He hadn't seen this smoke critter and quite frankly, he didn't really want to. Seeing a place to intervene and bring the conversation back on task - even if he was more than a little curious about how May and Jon out ran the thing.

"Alex, do you know anything about this place that May and Jon found? What it was? What it was used for?"

"Observation," Alex said very quietly. "Sometimes they would confine people and things. And observe them. I only know that from what I read and heard. It hasn't been used in a really long time."

"Would those people and things be the bodies that were found in the graveyard?"

"Maybe. Probably. Some of them. I guess, I don't know. I never asked what they did with them when they were done observing. I'm not even supposed to know about that. The observation stuff."

"Now there's a graveyard?" Jon asked.

"Dean and Sam found it. I'm sure that they can fulfill all of our curiosity when they return from the showers," Daniel nodded.

"He's not in there," Alex spoke up suddenly, loudly, the blushed furiously as all heads swiveled to her. She looked shyly at Jon, "You asked if Dr. Carlson was in there. With the prisoners. He's not. He's not here.

"And guns, tranq guns, and guns with bullets and stun guns. Weird ones, the stun guns. Not what I've seen in books and stuff."

"Guns?" Daniel echoed in confusion.

"Mr. Locke's questions. About the weapons."

[Locke, Scott] Another Piece of the Puzzle

[starborn_scribe]

OOC: I'm making a huge assumption about the "weird" stun guns below. fikgirl, if I'm wrong, tell me and I'll repost.

"How are the stun guns 'weird,' Alex?" Locke asked.

Alex turned to him, her head tilting as if studying him. "They're snakes."

"Snakes?!" Scott and May echoed. Jon, Daniel, and Blaise seemed as disgruntled as the other were incredulous.

"Not *literally,*" Alex returned with a petulant teenage sigh. "They curve like them. Like a black, hooded cobra."

Locke frowned, puzzled. Scott voiced his thought, albeit in more colorful language. "What kind of whack job designs a stun gun that looks like a snake?" Alex simply shrugged.

Then Scott faced Jon, Kenzaki, and May. "Was anyone -- or anything -- in the place you found?" He repeated a rough equivalent of the question in Japanese for Kenzaki.

"Just a lot of algae and mold," Jon replied. "And more An-- of that writing that was on the obelisk."

[Mayday] Another Piece of the Puzzle

[weirdweb]

"Oh, yeah," May said suddenly, carefully retrieving the disc in her pocket. Without having a case to put it in, they'd settled for folding it in several more pieces of paper found in the desk drawers for safekeeping. Fortunately, the trek back had been uneventful, so the disc was fine.

She unfolded the paper enough to reveal the disc inside. "Found this just sitting in one of the old computers. Seemed a little bit too convenient to be entirely coincidental, though."

[Blaise] Snakes--why'd it have to be snakes?

[sinanju]

Blaise was unsurprised. Given that they were already in possession of ring transporters, obelisks and other alien tech, that DHARMA had gotten their hands on the Goa'uld energy weapons was par for the course. He shook his head slightly and dismissed the issue. Nothing he could do about it now.

He leaned forward and studied the disc. It looked harmless enough, like any other data disc. Still, there's no way they'd be putting it into any computer they weren't willing to sacrifice.

"Ya think?" Blaise asked, realizing only after he'd said it that he sounded like Jon. (I've been hanging around him too long.)

[Doctor] Snakes--why'd it have to be snakes?

[purplerhino]

"It's a regular melting pot on the other side of the field as well, isn' it? Now to figure out who scavanged what and how. Haven't even told you bout the temporal bubble generator, yet." The Doctor threw in.

"Even if that doesn't wipe or set up a remote program on whatever computer we sacrificed to it we couldn't trust a thing on it anyway." He pointed to the disk.

[Daniel] Snakes--why'd it have to be snakes?

[fikgirl]

"Agreed," Daniel assented. "Let's not tempt fate. And like May said, it is a little too convenient that something like that was left behind. Whatever that is.

"Let's pull together everything that we know. What about the temporal bubble generator, Doctor?"

[Doctor] Snakes--why'd it have to be snakes?

[purplerhino]

"It's design is the one Time Lords learn in their fifteenth year at the academy. My people were always mired in tradition even in science. There's as much tradition put into the way we learn to make these devices as there is the science to make them work. Whoever put that one together used the full traditional method, with all the symolic welds and connections. The parts were picked up from different worlds, differant time periods... but the construction was pure Prydian Acadamy. And considering the fact that I'm the only Time Lord left, that leaves a bit of a mystery. Someone has gotten hold of technology that should not even exist anymore." The doctor crossed his arms, his posture defensive.

"And I'm not saying we shouldn't look at that disk, by the way. Learning what they intended to do can tell us alot. Virus, backdoor program or planted information, it'll let us know a bit more how they think. I'm just sayin' if it gave step by step directions to a door off this island, I'd discount it."

Redirect

[fikgirl]

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