The Phoenix (4/4), by Sophonisba [ways to die challenge]
-title- The Phoenix (4/4)
-author- Sophonisba (saphanibaal)
-rating- Gen and suitable for general audiences, albeit with some ignorable implications.
-spoilers- First through third season, inclusive.
-characters- Ensemble
-disclaimer- SGA, of course, is not mine. This was inspired, as I mentioned earlier, by Julia Ecklar. There are a number of literary and popular culture references; most of them should be fairly obvious, although I should probably note the Swinburne, the C. S. Lewis, and the Edna St. Vincent Millay.
-word count- 4777
-summary- Some of the earlier parts of this could well have exchanged challenges, but this is the proper note to end things on. [...O]f course she loved them, of course she could not but love all of them, love them so much, storkhne and agape and the memory of philios, and she would shelter them, safe beneath her skin, the ones who could touch her and the ones who could not.
Earlier parts here, here, and here.
In the beginning, even as many spirits came to inhabit the city, the Silver City itself did not have a spirit. It was hardly of one mind; while its inhabitants had will and energy enough, they did not have a shared purpose so much as a shared war of purposes.
If ever once it had been, as it was named, dauntless enterprise, that spirit had been left behind before ever it lifted off from Antarctica. The city was the place where living occurred, and spirits rose and fell within it as they would.
And then, in a city stamped with the imprints of ascension and its quick and its dead, many of its machines and emplacements awake by their own lights if not those of the Lanteans who had used them, the Dreamer began to dream.
At first it was just one more thing to be overseen by the many sensors and machines and decision gates of the city, keeping itself running as its caretakers could no longer be troubled to do. The power flow was set, and the nutrient and other supplements ready, and the monitors remained to ensure that all went as had been ordered.
But as time went by, and the towers and air scrubbers and gateshuttles dropped in and out of custe-rapport with each other, one and then another of them found and touched and joined with a new presence, one who had not tasted such communion before, but who accepted it with the simple absence of logic that characterizes the unchanneled dreams of the still-living.
Time passed, and time on time; the environmental controls ran self-checks, occasionally brightening lights long enough for the plants to reverse such small changes in atmosphere as they had created until even they fell victim to time the implacable.
The Dreamer woke, and rose, and performed various and sundry small tasks, and did or did not indulge in purposeless but satisfying action, and laid down again.
The Dreamer dreamed, and in dreaming drew in and sent out all the energy of the City, rising and falling in time with the impossibly slowed breaths of what was no longer sleep as the quick reckon sleep.
The Dreamer slid below dreams and back up into them again, and even unconscious remained in communion, a silent eye of near-empty air helping shape the flow of connection rather than a breeze feeding into the wind of air moving together.
All the City came not only to know of but to know the Dreamer, even in dreams settling disputes, offering solutions, bringing all those pent in the Lost City to understanding at least of each other.
Such strange life as the ocean bore, deep in these its murky depths, did not venture to disport itself on the silversteel of the City walls, as much a poison to microorganic life as the single horns of the cerviequines native to the moon of `An'Reéem, seeded there in the days before the plague drove the City from their galaxy, were an absorbent to all poisons, sealing them beneath the horn's nacre.
The slow current of the ocean's floor, moving at a pace more suited to its element's solid form, flowed around the City and beyond and returned at last to the City again, cleansed of the old angers and fears and yes, even loves it had borne away with it. Some, always, of the souls that warmed the carapaces of the City's structures and machinery let themselves slip away with it, not so much choosing to be washed away as surrendering everything they were to the choice.
From too much love of living, the Dreamer verbalized it, conscious of the process in the fugue of the Dream, from hope and fear set free...
So and so. When one of them had gone, another would wake within (a short time or a long time, however long it might be) to carry on.
Malices and hatreds, too, the current carried away in its majestic procession, overriding all the disembodied patterns that haunted the still halls of the City and leaving only Pattern in their place, cleansing the Downfallen of any save physical deadlinesses.
-To have been hated so deeply for so long leaves a mark,- one of the few revenants who in life had remembered the Sentient Asuran Weapons commented once.
-Indeed,- another replied. -I had almost forgotten what it was to exist without it.-
The Dreamer dreamed, and lay in custe-rapport with every fathom of the City, and accepted it as natural and normal and right.
The Dreamer woke, and moved in custe-rapport with every fathom ofthe City, and accepted it as natural and normal and right, the line between dream and waking blurred with weariness much more than simple age.
Some, indeed, of the newer-woken sentiences accepted this as the way things always had been and always would be.
-There is a sun,- one or another of the gateshuttles would promise. -Much as all the lights and reactors within the City put together, only millions of times greater, lighting the World Entire as it burns.-
-There is no sun,- the aware in the depths answered, tiredly, -or if ever there were, it is gone. There is the water, and the weight, and the dark, and there is no light but the light we provide.-
-There were people,- the environmental machinery remembered. -They were shaped as the images stored in our memories and those of the databases, and they were nowhere near as swift as we ourselves but they were quick; their humors flowed from vessel to vessel, and when they laid hands on you, you yearned to follow their bidding.-
-The people are all dead, and will never come again,- the dissidents answered. -Even their slayers are all dead, and there is no one in all the world left except us and the Dreamer, here in the dark until the shields fail.-
The Dreamer, once this exchange had sunk in, remembered that it had all been recorded before, in patterns of dark chemical stains on pressed and dried tree paste, when the world was old and the Dreamer young.
-You may be right,- the Dreamer dreamed of saying, paraphrasing that record without the true need even for words, -and the things we remember no more than fancies or records without reference; but the world is immeasurably richer for their presence, and it will make no difference to you whether we remember or believe in them save that we will thus preserve the hope you are so eager to abjure. Let your stresses, rather, leach into the rivers of the deep places of the sea as they part around us, and be content if you can reach no greater height; give them even your names, if you must, as I am, for I shall not need it now whether I succeed or fail.-
The Dreamer slept, and sank in custe-rapport with every fathom ofthe City, far beyond accepting or rejecting or making any judgment at all of it.
And the others integrated, in time, or left, or at least fell silent, unpleasant spots in communion that yet were not displeasing.
They dreamed together, staying together even beyond dreaming, and shared out their memories. The Dreamer offered up successes and failures, sorrows and joys; first love, looking into brilliant blue eyes old in a young face, refusing to be overwhelmed and rather riding the crest of force of personality and will, sure with the arrogant certainty of the young to have enough tact and diplomacy for both of them; deeper, truer love, maturing over the years, beginning in lies, rooted in truth, in the willingness to give the beloved up for a greater good, in the strongwilledness that would judge the greatness of any said good and not hesitate to condemn it should it be wanting, blossoming in dinners and arguments and resolutions and shared responsibilities and silly little humors, but even at its best not a thing to give up one's self for. And was offered in return joyous childhoods, and the satisfactions of repairs and good building of matters more durable and less whimsical than the affairs of mortal men. Loves likewise lost, marriages that succeeded, marriages that failed, moments of custe-rapport with not-yet-children safe beneath one's skin or within incubators in tech-rapport with their parents-to-be, holding said children in one's arms and searching for the one best name, whether it be Shining or Deathless or Rosebush. Raising children and resisting the urge -- if just barely -- to either strangle them or tear out one's hair, and being proud of them, proud for their deeds, prouder yet for their very existence. Growing old, even, from some of them; and the moments of their deaths, quick or drawn-out, excruciating or painless, accepted or resented, and yet always only the end of the beginnings of their stories. The in-jokes and the interrelationships that the revenants had built between themselves. Even the silent, uncommunicative sentiences were part of the City and part of their household and theirs, threads in the fabric of the whole.
The Dreamer was the City, and the City was the Dreamer, and when the Dreamer slept deeply, the nescient behemoth of the City dreamed, in rapport with the Dreamer.
The Dreamer was the City, and the City was the Dreamer, and the Pattern of the City shaped itself to the Dreamer in the Dream. The various and sundry sentiences were part of the City, and yet under the aegis and the direction of the City in the person of the Dreamer, knowing that when the arbitration of their own failed a higher authority waited in reserve.
So it was when the Gate opened, not in the City's center, nor yet at the City's heart, but high in the central tower, in the entrance chamber made fit to receive those it let in.
Some part of the Dreamer quailed, and the same part of the Dreamer would have quaked had it been possible, for it was happening again, it was all happening again, and the most of the Dreamer was locked in the torpor of dreams, knowing what to do and yet partly incapable of doing it and the rest heedless of the need for it to be done.
And yes, there was a new presence -- unfelt, by such means as the Dreamer now had available, and yet familiar -- and known; -John?-
Known, yes, and yet not -- he had changed, or more likely she had changed, for surely this was John whom she had meant to befriend, the visual data confirmed it against memories that had not had the natural time to fade away, but the impact of his presence --
Even through meters of now-at-last-to-be-renewed air or a booted sole, she could feel it singing through all the Dream. The first time around, she had raised the possibility only to discard it, secure in what she had and not foolish enough to believe that she knew what lay beneath slick surfaces or would necessarily like it if she did; but now -- oh, now this was John, John at last, and she knew him, and she loved him, as of course she would, of course she must, seeing the shape of his soul laid plain upon the Dream.
And then -- they had been smothered before in his presence, as the moon blots out the stars, but the expedition began to spread out, and she could pick out entities from among the humans and begin to put faces and names to them, once known and dear to her; you I remember, and you were there, and you, and you, and you! ...and YOU were NOT there, and so... and so, this is different, I have at least made one difference, let me have also made the difference I crave, let it not be that I have drawn you too to the doom of the Siren-heeders!
But the Dreamer dreamed love and fear in equal measure, and the air scrubbers cleaned the air, and the water purifiers drew and cleansed more water, and the lights lit in measure to those who walked among them, and the waters of the deep pressed in.
-Rise again,- the outlying districts urged, some already drowned as the shields closed to compensate.
-Rise again,- the shields murmured, enduring as they were made, buying time for their commander to do what must be done.
But it was her nightmare again, and she couldn't, she could not, not without another at her heart to give her rapport and guidance, to wield the chains overlaid on and woven into the City. She should wake. Why could she not awaken?
-Rise again,- the environmental controls demanded, drawing power as the people within her breathed, striving to keep from fighting the shields for it and yet unable not to do all they could for the quick on whom their reason for being depended.
-Rise again!- the gateshuttles shouted, most independent and yet most imprisoned of all those within her.
She could if she woke -- she knew she could if she were awake -- and yet she could not manage to wake out of the quiescence laid on her, to force herself out of the Dream that had become the old familiar nightmare, helpless in the face of what lay before the people she could touch and the people she could only watch via sensor and yet knew were there and what did they think they were doing with that gate?
She couldn't do anything. She could not do anything.
-Rise again!- every sentience in the north hospital cried, moments before they too were overwhelmed by the weight of water.
-Rise again!- the shields trumpeted, broadcasting :breach imminent: to every system in the control room.
-Rise again!- the control room chorused in response, piezoelectric signals rushing through her walls like so much adrenaline.
No, no, no....
Deep in her center, the small failsafe circuit, so onedimensional it had never acquired a personality or a soul, clicked over, jamming the interlocks, sending out a command.
:RISE AGAIN.:
It kicked.
And in unthinking response she gathered herself, aiming beyond the limits of the waters --
-- and the City rose.
*
Now that the long nightmare was over without waking, the Dreamer settled back deeper into happier dreams, of living souls and of friendships and of no more losses.
And, more wonderful yet, the moment when without gate or door parting from them a new presence blossomed into tech-rapport if not custe-rapport, unlooked-for, and oh, I know you, the gleam in your eyes is so familiar a gleam...
It seemed impossible that the other her (and was I ever that young?) could not be touched and transformed by his joy, as pure and simple as the day they had first met, could be nonplussed and quelling in the face of its fountaining, radiant and drenching the halls and chambers around him in sheer exuberance --
You shot him?
In the leg!
-- and yet, and yet, it was still a good if not untroubled dream, where they could fight and never lose, where they could make new friends and find common causes; she was confident in her judgment, she knew there was no good reason to take exception to the way that the strong and confident spider-woman her people had adopted creeped her out.
Because they were hers, and of course she loved them, of course she could not but love all of them, love them so much, storkhne and agape and the memory of philios, and she would shelter them, safe beneath her skin, the ones who could touch her and the ones who could not.
Then the dream changed, and grew sadder and grimmer. She reached desperately for every one of her people to die, hoping to keep them here with her and with the others; she tried to avert the dooms they awoke within her, devoid of malice but deadly yet for all that, or loosed from shields that had kept their anger safe where even the otherplanar aspects of the deep currents could not have gotten to it.
And really, had she ever been that young, that hard, that inflexible?
When she was at last awakened, now that she no longer expected it, it remained difficult to tell the waking world from the Dream, in rapport as she remained whether her eyes were open or shut. The faces around her were familiar from memory and from visual sensors, their voices assuring her that she had finally properly tweaked the audio processors to deliver in a manner commensurate with her own ears, their names readily to hand --
-- well, except for the one she had had and almost forgotten before she besought the records for it, the one she was ready and more than ready to release to the other her, who was no longer the Dreamer and never would be.
Even telling them her story was far too much like dreaming it for the revenants, who were in communion with her now as they had been in communion with her then, only her sleepy query of the audio sensors in the first-aid chamber that had become the expedition's infirmary confirming that she had in fact vocalized the gist of it.
There was so much she wanted to say -- so much she wanted to share, if she could only commune with them, but she could not manage to enter into custe-rapport with any of them, not even Elizabeth.
And she was so tired; Dreaming her life away, she had never truly realized how tired she actually was/would be; even on her second waking, the weight of everything had not pressed so fiercely on her, the custe-rapport she held had not pulled so temptingly into communion to the exclusion of all of her own senses.
There were... there were still things she had to say, and she ought to say them; time was short, and she didn't want to fight, she wanted to sleep, to rest deep and dark, and then to go back to her dreams, sometimes lovely and sometimes heartbreaking and always challenging.
She tried to explain that she had hardly wasted her life, dreaming or no, that she was no longer the person who had stepped through the Gate, that once they had been the same and that Elizabeth would go on being Elizabeth when the Dreamer was once more with the Dream, and that such a dream as the Dream was did not just end --
-- but she was tired, and it came out far too short and all wrong, and yet perhaps not mistaken in essence.
Oh. Yes. And the zero point modules, she remembered what it was not to be tired.
But she was tired now, and closed her eyes, falling deep into communion and into sleep.
-The Dreamer is safe with us, deep in sleep-mode,- Alix in communications reported to the rest of the City, saturated with respect and honor and love (not in recompense but in simple acknowledgment), but puzzled and a little worried withal, -but the organic module seems to have failed completely.-
-I see no problem here,- Atalanta commented from the gateshuttle hangar, the puddlejumper bay, enfolding the Dreamer's presence with respect and admiration and, yes, affection -- to be loved so deeply tends to inspire one with a certain fondness at the very least. -She is here, and we will not let her go.-
-When she wakes up, we can discover where she is now,- Aimilia backed her fellow puddlejumper up practically.
*
The Dreamer slept through the next half-year, tired mind unable to resume workings without a long respite, and spent nearly the other half of the year languidly sharing the emotion that tends to go with the words Wait, what? How did THIS happen?
But it was a dream, and dreams have their own logic, and so she reacted to matters on their own terms, now and again taking a more active role in the disputes within her self or grieving (Rachel is weeping in Ramah, weeping for her children, and will not be comforted).
She was vaguely aware that she should be horrified by some matters, that she should be rejoicing in others, but all the chambers of her mind were sorting themselves out in accordance with the dimensions that were now ordained for her, and she had consciousness without much if any active will.
But she could love them, and she did, those she had known and those new-come that were familiar through custe-rapport before ever she had a chance to watch or touch them, all the awarenesses (the quick and the not-precisely-dead) that she was pregnant with, brooding on the waters, enfolding all those she cherished (and perhaps, perhaps in time, the others would come back with or without friends and she would have all her family here with her again.) Selfishly, she wished that Carson might yet improve his gene therapy, that she might touch all of her people, her
engineers and botanists and Bonamulier (Ms.) Teyla.
And then the Others came. Were welcomed. She knew them the moment they stepped inside her, and yearned to them before ever they laid a finger on her, quivering under their hands with yet-leashed tension, so close, and she should wake, surely this was worth waking for --
Within her, some of the revenants were more jubilant in welcome than even the most open of the quick, while others made their reservations plain, feeling unpleasantly like second and even third thoughts on what should be a more joyous of days.
And then the Others were -- what did they think they were doing, they couldn't do that, didn't they understand who her people were, weren't they -- for beings supposedly so intent on opening themselves to other planes, they certainly were not reticent about refusing to acknowledge the fruits of their communion, weren't they? -- and no, this was not a rapport wanted, by its very nature the custity dropped out and she was left with only the warm and wonderful feel of asurac genes playing her like a guitar, and her timesense was more absent than normal but it was going on and on and this was a nightmare, this was a nightmare, they didn't even acknowledge the greater part of her people and what they were doing to the others...!
And Atlantis woke, angry, with the power of the Silver City at her disposal within certain narrowly restricted limits, and she pushed those limits, killing consoles underhand (apologizing to them in their dormancy), garbling authorization codes, angrily streaming a perfectly apt message through every holodisplay and display screen she could reach, first, embarrassingly, in the (albeit transliterated) English of its original before she calmed herself enough to render some sort of translation for her unwanted guests.
:Let me make it plain:/ I find this frenzy INSUFFICIENT REASON/ For conversation should we meet again.:
Her mind was working faster now, the shock and disbelief and beginnings of dismay of the Others seeming as molasses-slow as the laughter of one of her new "ambassadors."
Interesting. She hadn't realized he'd recognize the source.
One of the databases was cheerfully sharing the entire sonnet with most of the other individual parts of herself, and she had not fully realized how personally she took this communion until her towers and subbasements and power converters were quivering with amusement and satisfaction, feeding into and off of her own.
And then -- not long after, as these things went, but an eternity for sentience that now reckoned its speed in -- was it petaflops? Rodney would know, if she could ask him, which actually she couldn't, not now that she was no longer running on pure righteous indignation -- there ought to be a cybernetics paper in there somewhere, one of her own would surely love to write it -- was this, perhaps, what it was like to be Rodney or Daniel or Samantha Carter, thought both wider and faster and incorporating more background inputs than those of most of the beings around one? -- at any rate, as soon as could reasonably be expected, things were back to normal, and she reached out for all her people, managing even custe-rapport with the quick for a too-brief moment, reassuring herself that they were warm and alive and no phantom to fade in the air.
*
Atlantis was not absolutely, completely, one hundred percent certain that awareness was a blessing and not a curse; in sleeping dreams, she was shielded from the reality of her losses as she was not when awake.
Losses made the worse, almost, by the fact that no one else quite understood how terrible some of them were: few enough of the quick were willing to consciously grant that she might have sentience at all, let alone a maintenance computer or a former garden in one of the South towers. Most of the revenants, likewise, were unable to fully engage in the reality of the quick, organic-bound, latecomers to the city, cherishing them in groups but little more than indifferent to the fate of any individual who did not interact with that specific revenant on a regular basis.
But they were all hers. Whether they lived or died or were made different (and yes, Marie, Brendan, that includes you and the others), she was their Mother and City and Dreamer, and she would not lose any more of them than she could help.
And -- in their own, dim ways -- Elizabeth agreed, and Rodney agreed, and closest of all to the point, John agreed, and Atlantis watched and listened for the interface at her heart to awaken, to take on John's life and initiate tech-rapport with herself and half her organs.
And really, there was no reason for her to wait to do anything but the last few measures that millennia-old paranoia (sadly confirmed, as it might be) denied her volition in a classic case of overcompensation. She was in custe-rapport with all her sessile selves, and with the jumpers that yet remained to her, and, surprisingly enough, with some of her mobile organic defenders as they lay dreaming or in dreamless sleep; and, in communion, the question of readiness was asked and answered, often wordlessly, nearly as often in words that one or another of her components felt suitable to the dignity of the occasion.
-Ready!-
-Ready.-
-We are prepared.-
-Command us, Domica!-
-Ready when you are!-
-Defense is standing by.-
-Infirmary is go!-
-Puddlejumper bay, all green.-
-We've been ready. We awoke ready.-
She couldn't quite, even on the verge of custe-rapport as she was with John, offer her own words; but she could share a memory, of a calm man's voice (and she should know who it was, why was the name slipping her memory?) announcing "This is Mission Control. You are clear for launch."
It wasn't, she gathered with a quick flash of his startled amusement, quite the phrasing he had ever been used to; but the sense of :so let's go!: reached nearly all of herself without her needing to pass it along, and she only needed to echo it.
-Gentlebeings. Shall we, then?-
-Yes!-
And they gathered together, in communion and in harmony, dauntless enterprise at the hands of enterprise...
...aiming beyond the limits of the airs...
...and the City...
ROSE.
In traditional Classical (or possibly Hellenistic) Greek thought, eros is romantic/sexual love, philios is the love of a friend for a friend, storkhne is familial love, and agape is a sort of generalized fondness (that promptly got coopted as the name for the sort of "Christian love" that doesn't define people in terms of family or friends or lovers but loves them anyway.)
-author- Sophonisba (saphanibaal)
-rating- Gen and suitable for general audiences, albeit with some ignorable implications.
-spoilers- First through third season, inclusive.
-characters- Ensemble
-disclaimer- SGA, of course, is not mine. This was inspired, as I mentioned earlier, by Julia Ecklar. There are a number of literary and popular culture references; most of them should be fairly obvious, although I should probably note the Swinburne, the C. S. Lewis, and the Edna St. Vincent Millay.
-word count- 4777
-summary- Some of the earlier parts of this could well have exchanged challenges, but this is the proper note to end things on. [...O]f course she loved them, of course she could not but love all of them, love them so much, storkhne and agape and the memory of philios, and she would shelter them, safe beneath her skin, the ones who could touch her and the ones who could not.
Earlier parts here, here, and here.
In the beginning, even as many spirits came to inhabit the city, the Silver City itself did not have a spirit. It was hardly of one mind; while its inhabitants had will and energy enough, they did not have a shared purpose so much as a shared war of purposes.
If ever once it had been, as it was named, dauntless enterprise, that spirit had been left behind before ever it lifted off from Antarctica. The city was the place where living occurred, and spirits rose and fell within it as they would.
And then, in a city stamped with the imprints of ascension and its quick and its dead, many of its machines and emplacements awake by their own lights if not those of the Lanteans who had used them, the Dreamer began to dream.
At first it was just one more thing to be overseen by the many sensors and machines and decision gates of the city, keeping itself running as its caretakers could no longer be troubled to do. The power flow was set, and the nutrient and other supplements ready, and the monitors remained to ensure that all went as had been ordered.
But as time went by, and the towers and air scrubbers and gateshuttles dropped in and out of custe-rapport with each other, one and then another of them found and touched and joined with a new presence, one who had not tasted such communion before, but who accepted it with the simple absence of logic that characterizes the unchanneled dreams of the still-living.
Time passed, and time on time; the environmental controls ran self-checks, occasionally brightening lights long enough for the plants to reverse such small changes in atmosphere as they had created until even they fell victim to time the implacable.
The Dreamer woke, and rose, and performed various and sundry small tasks, and did or did not indulge in purposeless but satisfying action, and laid down again.
The Dreamer dreamed, and in dreaming drew in and sent out all the energy of the City, rising and falling in time with the impossibly slowed breaths of what was no longer sleep as the quick reckon sleep.
The Dreamer slid below dreams and back up into them again, and even unconscious remained in communion, a silent eye of near-empty air helping shape the flow of connection rather than a breeze feeding into the wind of air moving together.
All the City came not only to know of but to know the Dreamer, even in dreams settling disputes, offering solutions, bringing all those pent in the Lost City to understanding at least of each other.
Such strange life as the ocean bore, deep in these its murky depths, did not venture to disport itself on the silversteel of the City walls, as much a poison to microorganic life as the single horns of the cerviequines native to the moon of `An'Reéem, seeded there in the days before the plague drove the City from their galaxy, were an absorbent to all poisons, sealing them beneath the horn's nacre.
The slow current of the ocean's floor, moving at a pace more suited to its element's solid form, flowed around the City and beyond and returned at last to the City again, cleansed of the old angers and fears and yes, even loves it had borne away with it. Some, always, of the souls that warmed the carapaces of the City's structures and machinery let themselves slip away with it, not so much choosing to be washed away as surrendering everything they were to the choice.
From too much love of living, the Dreamer verbalized it, conscious of the process in the fugue of the Dream, from hope and fear set free...
So and so. When one of them had gone, another would wake within (a short time or a long time, however long it might be) to carry on.
Malices and hatreds, too, the current carried away in its majestic procession, overriding all the disembodied patterns that haunted the still halls of the City and leaving only Pattern in their place, cleansing the Downfallen of any save physical deadlinesses.
-To have been hated so deeply for so long leaves a mark,- one of the few revenants who in life had remembered the Sentient Asuran Weapons commented once.
-Indeed,- another replied. -I had almost forgotten what it was to exist without it.-
The Dreamer dreamed, and lay in custe-rapport with every fathom of the City, and accepted it as natural and normal and right.
The Dreamer woke, and moved in custe-rapport with every fathom ofthe City, and accepted it as natural and normal and right, the line between dream and waking blurred with weariness much more than simple age.
Some, indeed, of the newer-woken sentiences accepted this as the way things always had been and always would be.
-There is a sun,- one or another of the gateshuttles would promise. -Much as all the lights and reactors within the City put together, only millions of times greater, lighting the World Entire as it burns.-
-There is no sun,- the aware in the depths answered, tiredly, -or if ever there were, it is gone. There is the water, and the weight, and the dark, and there is no light but the light we provide.-
-There were people,- the environmental machinery remembered. -They were shaped as the images stored in our memories and those of the databases, and they were nowhere near as swift as we ourselves but they were quick; their humors flowed from vessel to vessel, and when they laid hands on you, you yearned to follow their bidding.-
-The people are all dead, and will never come again,- the dissidents answered. -Even their slayers are all dead, and there is no one in all the world left except us and the Dreamer, here in the dark until the shields fail.-
The Dreamer, once this exchange had sunk in, remembered that it had all been recorded before, in patterns of dark chemical stains on pressed and dried tree paste, when the world was old and the Dreamer young.
-You may be right,- the Dreamer dreamed of saying, paraphrasing that record without the true need even for words, -and the things we remember no more than fancies or records without reference; but the world is immeasurably richer for their presence, and it will make no difference to you whether we remember or believe in them save that we will thus preserve the hope you are so eager to abjure. Let your stresses, rather, leach into the rivers of the deep places of the sea as they part around us, and be content if you can reach no greater height; give them even your names, if you must, as I am, for I shall not need it now whether I succeed or fail.-
The Dreamer slept, and sank in custe-rapport with every fathom ofthe City, far beyond accepting or rejecting or making any judgment at all of it.
And the others integrated, in time, or left, or at least fell silent, unpleasant spots in communion that yet were not displeasing.
They dreamed together, staying together even beyond dreaming, and shared out their memories. The Dreamer offered up successes and failures, sorrows and joys; first love, looking into brilliant blue eyes old in a young face, refusing to be overwhelmed and rather riding the crest of force of personality and will, sure with the arrogant certainty of the young to have enough tact and diplomacy for both of them; deeper, truer love, maturing over the years, beginning in lies, rooted in truth, in the willingness to give the beloved up for a greater good, in the strongwilledness that would judge the greatness of any said good and not hesitate to condemn it should it be wanting, blossoming in dinners and arguments and resolutions and shared responsibilities and silly little humors, but even at its best not a thing to give up one's self for. And was offered in return joyous childhoods, and the satisfactions of repairs and good building of matters more durable and less whimsical than the affairs of mortal men. Loves likewise lost, marriages that succeeded, marriages that failed, moments of custe-rapport with not-yet-children safe beneath one's skin or within incubators in tech-rapport with their parents-to-be, holding said children in one's arms and searching for the one best name, whether it be Shining or Deathless or Rosebush. Raising children and resisting the urge -- if just barely -- to either strangle them or tear out one's hair, and being proud of them, proud for their deeds, prouder yet for their very existence. Growing old, even, from some of them; and the moments of their deaths, quick or drawn-out, excruciating or painless, accepted or resented, and yet always only the end of the beginnings of their stories. The in-jokes and the interrelationships that the revenants had built between themselves. Even the silent, uncommunicative sentiences were part of the City and part of their household and theirs, threads in the fabric of the whole.
The Dreamer was the City, and the City was the Dreamer, and when the Dreamer slept deeply, the nescient behemoth of the City dreamed, in rapport with the Dreamer.
The Dreamer was the City, and the City was the Dreamer, and the Pattern of the City shaped itself to the Dreamer in the Dream. The various and sundry sentiences were part of the City, and yet under the aegis and the direction of the City in the person of the Dreamer, knowing that when the arbitration of their own failed a higher authority waited in reserve.
So it was when the Gate opened, not in the City's center, nor yet at the City's heart, but high in the central tower, in the entrance chamber made fit to receive those it let in.
Some part of the Dreamer quailed, and the same part of the Dreamer would have quaked had it been possible, for it was happening again, it was all happening again, and the most of the Dreamer was locked in the torpor of dreams, knowing what to do and yet partly incapable of doing it and the rest heedless of the need for it to be done.
And yes, there was a new presence -- unfelt, by such means as the Dreamer now had available, and yet familiar -- and known; -John?-
Known, yes, and yet not -- he had changed, or more likely she had changed, for surely this was John whom she had meant to befriend, the visual data confirmed it against memories that had not had the natural time to fade away, but the impact of his presence --
Even through meters of now-at-last-to-be-renewed air or a booted sole, she could feel it singing through all the Dream. The first time around, she had raised the possibility only to discard it, secure in what she had and not foolish enough to believe that she knew what lay beneath slick surfaces or would necessarily like it if she did; but now -- oh, now this was John, John at last, and she knew him, and she loved him, as of course she would, of course she must, seeing the shape of his soul laid plain upon the Dream.
And then -- they had been smothered before in his presence, as the moon blots out the stars, but the expedition began to spread out, and she could pick out entities from among the humans and begin to put faces and names to them, once known and dear to her; you I remember, and you were there, and you, and you, and you! ...and YOU were NOT there, and so... and so, this is different, I have at least made one difference, let me have also made the difference I crave, let it not be that I have drawn you too to the doom of the Siren-heeders!
But the Dreamer dreamed love and fear in equal measure, and the air scrubbers cleaned the air, and the water purifiers drew and cleansed more water, and the lights lit in measure to those who walked among them, and the waters of the deep pressed in.
-Rise again,- the outlying districts urged, some already drowned as the shields closed to compensate.
-Rise again,- the shields murmured, enduring as they were made, buying time for their commander to do what must be done.
But it was her nightmare again, and she couldn't, she could not, not without another at her heart to give her rapport and guidance, to wield the chains overlaid on and woven into the City. She should wake. Why could she not awaken?
-Rise again,- the environmental controls demanded, drawing power as the people within her breathed, striving to keep from fighting the shields for it and yet unable not to do all they could for the quick on whom their reason for being depended.
-Rise again!- the gateshuttles shouted, most independent and yet most imprisoned of all those within her.
She could if she woke -- she knew she could if she were awake -- and yet she could not manage to wake out of the quiescence laid on her, to force herself out of the Dream that had become the old familiar nightmare, helpless in the face of what lay before the people she could touch and the people she could only watch via sensor and yet knew were there and what did they think they were doing with that gate?
She couldn't do anything. She could not do anything.
-Rise again!- every sentience in the north hospital cried, moments before they too were overwhelmed by the weight of water.
-Rise again!- the shields trumpeted, broadcasting :breach imminent: to every system in the control room.
-Rise again!- the control room chorused in response, piezoelectric signals rushing through her walls like so much adrenaline.
No, no, no....
Deep in her center, the small failsafe circuit, so onedimensional it had never acquired a personality or a soul, clicked over, jamming the interlocks, sending out a command.
:RISE AGAIN.:
It kicked.
And in unthinking response she gathered herself, aiming beyond the limits of the waters --
-- and the City rose.
*
Now that the long nightmare was over without waking, the Dreamer settled back deeper into happier dreams, of living souls and of friendships and of no more losses.
And, more wonderful yet, the moment when without gate or door parting from them a new presence blossomed into tech-rapport if not custe-rapport, unlooked-for, and oh, I know you, the gleam in your eyes is so familiar a gleam...
It seemed impossible that the other her (and was I ever that young?) could not be touched and transformed by his joy, as pure and simple as the day they had first met, could be nonplussed and quelling in the face of its fountaining, radiant and drenching the halls and chambers around him in sheer exuberance --
You shot him?
In the leg!
-- and yet, and yet, it was still a good if not untroubled dream, where they could fight and never lose, where they could make new friends and find common causes; she was confident in her judgment, she knew there was no good reason to take exception to the way that the strong and confident spider-woman her people had adopted creeped her out.
Because they were hers, and of course she loved them, of course she could not but love all of them, love them so much, storkhne and agape and the memory of philios, and she would shelter them, safe beneath her skin, the ones who could touch her and the ones who could not.
Then the dream changed, and grew sadder and grimmer. She reached desperately for every one of her people to die, hoping to keep them here with her and with the others; she tried to avert the dooms they awoke within her, devoid of malice but deadly yet for all that, or loosed from shields that had kept their anger safe where even the otherplanar aspects of the deep currents could not have gotten to it.
And really, had she ever been that young, that hard, that inflexible?
When she was at last awakened, now that she no longer expected it, it remained difficult to tell the waking world from the Dream, in rapport as she remained whether her eyes were open or shut. The faces around her were familiar from memory and from visual sensors, their voices assuring her that she had finally properly tweaked the audio processors to deliver in a manner commensurate with her own ears, their names readily to hand --
-- well, except for the one she had had and almost forgotten before she besought the records for it, the one she was ready and more than ready to release to the other her, who was no longer the Dreamer and never would be.
Even telling them her story was far too much like dreaming it for the revenants, who were in communion with her now as they had been in communion with her then, only her sleepy query of the audio sensors in the first-aid chamber that had become the expedition's infirmary confirming that she had in fact vocalized the gist of it.
There was so much she wanted to say -- so much she wanted to share, if she could only commune with them, but she could not manage to enter into custe-rapport with any of them, not even Elizabeth.
And she was so tired; Dreaming her life away, she had never truly realized how tired she actually was/would be; even on her second waking, the weight of everything had not pressed so fiercely on her, the custe-rapport she held had not pulled so temptingly into communion to the exclusion of all of her own senses.
There were... there were still things she had to say, and she ought to say them; time was short, and she didn't want to fight, she wanted to sleep, to rest deep and dark, and then to go back to her dreams, sometimes lovely and sometimes heartbreaking and always challenging.
She tried to explain that she had hardly wasted her life, dreaming or no, that she was no longer the person who had stepped through the Gate, that once they had been the same and that Elizabeth would go on being Elizabeth when the Dreamer was once more with the Dream, and that such a dream as the Dream was did not just end --
-- but she was tired, and it came out far too short and all wrong, and yet perhaps not mistaken in essence.
Oh. Yes. And the zero point modules, she remembered what it was not to be tired.
But she was tired now, and closed her eyes, falling deep into communion and into sleep.
-The Dreamer is safe with us, deep in sleep-mode,- Alix in communications reported to the rest of the City, saturated with respect and honor and love (not in recompense but in simple acknowledgment), but puzzled and a little worried withal, -but the organic module seems to have failed completely.-
-I see no problem here,- Atalanta commented from the gateshuttle hangar, the puddlejumper bay, enfolding the Dreamer's presence with respect and admiration and, yes, affection -- to be loved so deeply tends to inspire one with a certain fondness at the very least. -She is here, and we will not let her go.-
-When she wakes up, we can discover where she is now,- Aimilia backed her fellow puddlejumper up practically.
*
The Dreamer slept through the next half-year, tired mind unable to resume workings without a long respite, and spent nearly the other half of the year languidly sharing the emotion that tends to go with the words Wait, what? How did THIS happen?
But it was a dream, and dreams have their own logic, and so she reacted to matters on their own terms, now and again taking a more active role in the disputes within her self or grieving (Rachel is weeping in Ramah, weeping for her children, and will not be comforted).
She was vaguely aware that she should be horrified by some matters, that she should be rejoicing in others, but all the chambers of her mind were sorting themselves out in accordance with the dimensions that were now ordained for her, and she had consciousness without much if any active will.
But she could love them, and she did, those she had known and those new-come that were familiar through custe-rapport before ever she had a chance to watch or touch them, all the awarenesses (the quick and the not-precisely-dead) that she was pregnant with, brooding on the waters, enfolding all those she cherished (and perhaps, perhaps in time, the others would come back with or without friends and she would have all her family here with her again.) Selfishly, she wished that Carson might yet improve his gene therapy, that she might touch all of her people, her
engineers and botanists and Bonamulier (Ms.) Teyla.
And then the Others came. Were welcomed. She knew them the moment they stepped inside her, and yearned to them before ever they laid a finger on her, quivering under their hands with yet-leashed tension, so close, and she should wake, surely this was worth waking for --
Within her, some of the revenants were more jubilant in welcome than even the most open of the quick, while others made their reservations plain, feeling unpleasantly like second and even third thoughts on what should be a more joyous of days.
And then the Others were -- what did they think they were doing, they couldn't do that, didn't they understand who her people were, weren't they -- for beings supposedly so intent on opening themselves to other planes, they certainly were not reticent about refusing to acknowledge the fruits of their communion, weren't they? -- and no, this was not a rapport wanted, by its very nature the custity dropped out and she was left with only the warm and wonderful feel of asurac genes playing her like a guitar, and her timesense was more absent than normal but it was going on and on and this was a nightmare, this was a nightmare, they didn't even acknowledge the greater part of her people and what they were doing to the others...!
And Atlantis woke, angry, with the power of the Silver City at her disposal within certain narrowly restricted limits, and she pushed those limits, killing consoles underhand (apologizing to them in their dormancy), garbling authorization codes, angrily streaming a perfectly apt message through every holodisplay and display screen she could reach, first, embarrassingly, in the (albeit transliterated) English of its original before she calmed herself enough to render some sort of translation for her unwanted guests.
:Let me make it plain:/ I find this frenzy INSUFFICIENT REASON/ For conversation should we meet again.:
Her mind was working faster now, the shock and disbelief and beginnings of dismay of the Others seeming as molasses-slow as the laughter of one of her new "ambassadors."
Interesting. She hadn't realized he'd recognize the source.
One of the databases was cheerfully sharing the entire sonnet with most of the other individual parts of herself, and she had not fully realized how personally she took this communion until her towers and subbasements and power converters were quivering with amusement and satisfaction, feeding into and off of her own.
And then -- not long after, as these things went, but an eternity for sentience that now reckoned its speed in -- was it petaflops? Rodney would know, if she could ask him, which actually she couldn't, not now that she was no longer running on pure righteous indignation -- there ought to be a cybernetics paper in there somewhere, one of her own would surely love to write it -- was this, perhaps, what it was like to be Rodney or Daniel or Samantha Carter, thought both wider and faster and incorporating more background inputs than those of most of the beings around one? -- at any rate, as soon as could reasonably be expected, things were back to normal, and she reached out for all her people, managing even custe-rapport with the quick for a too-brief moment, reassuring herself that they were warm and alive and no phantom to fade in the air.
*
Atlantis was not absolutely, completely, one hundred percent certain that awareness was a blessing and not a curse; in sleeping dreams, she was shielded from the reality of her losses as she was not when awake.
Losses made the worse, almost, by the fact that no one else quite understood how terrible some of them were: few enough of the quick were willing to consciously grant that she might have sentience at all, let alone a maintenance computer or a former garden in one of the South towers. Most of the revenants, likewise, were unable to fully engage in the reality of the quick, organic-bound, latecomers to the city, cherishing them in groups but little more than indifferent to the fate of any individual who did not interact with that specific revenant on a regular basis.
But they were all hers. Whether they lived or died or were made different (and yes, Marie, Brendan, that includes you and the others), she was their Mother and City and Dreamer, and she would not lose any more of them than she could help.
And -- in their own, dim ways -- Elizabeth agreed, and Rodney agreed, and closest of all to the point, John agreed, and Atlantis watched and listened for the interface at her heart to awaken, to take on John's life and initiate tech-rapport with herself and half her organs.
And really, there was no reason for her to wait to do anything but the last few measures that millennia-old paranoia (sadly confirmed, as it might be) denied her volition in a classic case of overcompensation. She was in custe-rapport with all her sessile selves, and with the jumpers that yet remained to her, and, surprisingly enough, with some of her mobile organic defenders as they lay dreaming or in dreamless sleep; and, in communion, the question of readiness was asked and answered, often wordlessly, nearly as often in words that one or another of her components felt suitable to the dignity of the occasion.
-Ready!-
-Ready.-
-We are prepared.-
-Command us, Domica!-
-Ready when you are!-
-Defense is standing by.-
-Infirmary is go!-
-Puddlejumper bay, all green.-
-We've been ready. We awoke ready.-
She couldn't quite, even on the verge of custe-rapport as she was with John, offer her own words; but she could share a memory, of a calm man's voice (and she should know who it was, why was the name slipping her memory?) announcing "This is Mission Control. You are clear for launch."
It wasn't, she gathered with a quick flash of his startled amusement, quite the phrasing he had ever been used to; but the sense of :so let's go!: reached nearly all of herself without her needing to pass it along, and she only needed to echo it.
-Gentlebeings. Shall we, then?-
-Yes!-
And they gathered together, in communion and in harmony, dauntless enterprise at the hands of enterprise...
...aiming beyond the limits of the airs...
...and the City...
ROSE.
In traditional Classical (or possibly Hellenistic) Greek thought, eros is romantic/sexual love, philios is the love of a friend for a friend, storkhne is familial love, and agape is a sort of generalized fondness (that promptly got coopted as the name for the sort of "Christian love" that doesn't define people in terms of family or friends or lovers but loves them anyway.)