Fic: My Love, Atlantis (2/2)
Story info and warnings can be found in part 1.
[Data Corruption]
[Subsystem Disengaged]
[Alternate Subroutine Initiated]
Memory rushed in as John woke. The pain was thankfully gone, he felt normal, or as normal as one could feel with a grief-filled heart. Rodney was gone. John wondered how he had managed to escape unscathed from the explosion that had killed his friend. He would have to read the reports to find out; he was not up to speaking about the accident to anyone. He couldn’t bear to see the sadness, sympathy and guilt he expected to see on people’s faces, not yet.
Uninjured, he refused to stay in the infirmary, and Carson reluctantly let him leave, on the promise that he would return to his quarters and stay away from his office for the rest of the day, and would call if he had any signs of another headache. Tugging off the bright red infirmary scrub top and tossing it to the bin beside the bed, he collected his uniform from where it was neatly folded on a chair, dressed himself slowly and shuffled out into the corridor.
Turning a corner, John ran smack into Rodney McKay. Flabbergasted, he gripped his friend’s shoulders, both in an effort to right himself and to prove to himself that Rodney was actually there and not just some figment of his imagination. He patted Rodney’s arms, neck and face, leaving his hands resting on the broad shoulders; McKay was certainly solid and real. What in the hell was going on?”
“What? Huh? Rodney, how?”
“How what?”
“You’re here.”
“I work here, Colonel Obvious.” Rodney stared at him impatiently. “If you’re through groping me, could we get to the lab already? Zelenka’s waiting to run that test program. If I leave him alone with the monkeys too long, they’ll wreck the lab.”
“General.”
“What?”
“General Obvious.” John smirked and dropped his hands away from McKay’s shoulders.
McKay scowled, ‘harrumphed’ and rolled his eyes. “Delusions of grandeur, eh? Fine, fine, today you can be a General. Let’s go already, that test is important.”
“I should check in with Lannie, let her know where I’m going.”
“Who?”
“Lannie, you know, my wife; Lannie. I know you don’t like her, but you have to at least acknowledge her once in a while, McKay.”
McKay stopped and turned slowly on his heel. “Did you bump your head or something?”
“No, why?”
[Interface Malfunction]
[Cross Stream Contamination]
[Running Diagnostic]
[Attempting Restoration]
“…el Sheppard? Hey, can you hear me, Sir? Doc, he’s got his eyes open again!” Lorne turned his head momentarily away and shouted over his shoulder. He looked back at John and in a voice dripping with compassion whispered, “I know it hurts. Stay with us.”
A slim hand cupped John’s cheek, slowly, gently pulling his chin to the left. A penlight shone into his eyes, and he blinked at the offensive glare. When the light went out and he could see again, he recognized the face of Jennifer Keller peering intently down into his, worry in her eyes. “I think he might be with us this time. Can you hear me, John? Don’t try to talk, just blink twice if you can understand me.”
Obediently, John blinked his eyes twice, trying to figure out what was going on. Where was Lannie? His throat hurt. Come to think of it, everything hurt. But, God, his throat really hurt. He felt sluggish. It was hard to think. Something was pulling on his neck, dragging at it. He tried to move, tried to tug away from the tension.
“Oh, no, no. Don’t do that, sweetie. Stay still. We’re working on that, on getting that off of you. Just be still.” Jennifer’s hands clasped the sides of his face and held him to keep him from struggling. It must be bad, her professionalism had slipped up; she was calling him sweetie - Air Force doctors were not supposed to refer to officers as sweetie.
“Try to be calm, Sir, we’re trying to get you free.” Lorne leaned in as Jennifer moved away, and strong fingers slipped into John’s and squeezed lightly. His executive officer was apparently as worried as the doctor. Haggard and scruffy, he looked like he hadn’t shaved in days. That was very unlike Lorne, and it confused John.
John opened his mouth to ask what was going on, and gagged. There was something down his throat.
“Is he conscious? Sheppard? Sheppard? John, listen to me. Break off the interface. Shut it down.” Rodney shoved Lorne away, lightly pushed Jennifer aside and leaned over to look down into Sheppard’s eyes. “You have to shut this thing down. Think ‘off ‘at it. Mentally caress the city and do whatever it is you do with the lights and the doors, Sheppard. Turn on the charm and convince this ancient bitch to let you go. Are you listening to me? Jennifer, can he even hear me?”
There was something down his throat.
John screamed.
[Pilot Error]
[System Disconnect]
[Reinitializing At Source]
John heard giggles. “We’re going to be late, Lannie, c’mon.” More giggles echoed back along the corridors to him. He sighed. They didn’t have time for this. “Lannie, please.”
“Find me.”
He hated when she did this. Her sense of humor was hard for him to understand sometimes. Especially when she found things amusing that annoyed him. Like this obsession with Hide and Go Seek, which she liked to play at the most inconvenient times; such as when she didn’t want to go where they needed to go. When they had exited the transporter earlier, she had dashed off down to an unused corridor and led him a merry chase, - well, merry for her - down into levels the expedition had barely explored. And she was damned efficient at hiding.
“Lannie, I’ll just go up and get a life signs detector to track you down. Better yet, I’ll get Chuck to check the city systems, and find you that way. I am not in the mood to play this now. We have to go meet the Who-zits.”
“The Asurans. I don’t like them.” How did she do that? How did she make her voice seem to come from everywhere at once?
John edged around a glowing bubble tower, peeking through the glass to be sure Lannie wasn’t crouched behind it, sometimes she liked to jump out and pounce on him bodily, and he didn’t fancy going back to their quarters for a clean uniform, which he would need to do if they spent any time rolling around on this particularly filthy floor.
“They claim they can make ZPMs. We have to meet these people, Lannie. We need the ZPM production techniques they could teach us.” He hated the wheedling tone in his voice. He was really irritated with everything today.
“We have three ZPMs, we don’t need more. I really don’t like the Asurans, John.” Her voice really was everywhere at once. He couldn’t pinpoint her location by sound. He really hated Hide and Go Seek; he always had, even as a child.
“We don’t have to like them, Lannie, we just have to find a way to work with them.”
She appeared suddenly at his side, making him jump out of his skin. “Don’t do that!” John hissed, his heart was racing. She pouted, as she usually did whenever he raised his voice at her.
“I do not trust them. They are not what they profess to be, my love.” Her quiet manner disturbed him. Sometimes she knew things; he had learned to listen to her when she had that tone to her voice, bad things happened when he did not pay attention to that tone. At the moment, he could not come up with an example of when that had happened, but he didn’t really have time to ponder it. Like so many things, he chalked it up to his Swiss cheese memory.
“This is Pegasus, no one here is really all that they appear or claim to be, Lannie.” John stroked his hands down her arms. “It will be all right. They just want to talk. I just want to listen.”
“You will need to curtail McKay’s enthusiasm; he will only see what he wants to see, and his eagerness will cause trouble.” John could tell that she really did not want to go to this meeting; this was no simple balking on her part.
Taking pity on her, John patted her arm. “If you want to go back to our quarters, I understand. You don’t have to come along, Lannie.”
“I go where you go.” He knew that would be her answer, it always was. “You see to McKay. I shall watch the Asurans and alert you to their treachery.”
They made their way up to the Gate Room, where a party of soldiers waited to escort them through the wormhole to the pre-appointed coordinates for the meeting. “All clear, General. We got the message from the scouting team a few minutes ago. Ronon is in position with his men.”
John’s step faltered for a moment before he recovered himself and replied, “Thank you, Major Ford.” John inclined his head towards the head of Atlantis security.
Ford smiled and waved up at the control room. “We’re good to go, Mister Grodin, if you would do the honors and dial us up?”
As the blue lights flashed around the Gate, John watched Ford. That feeling he had every time he looked at Elizabeth these days crept over him again, unsettling him. As if she could sense that John was disturbed; Lannie grasped his forearm and leaned up against him, saying nothing, merely tried to comfort him with her presence.
They stepped through and emerged from the Gate into the middle of a firefight. The crack of multiple P-90s cut through the air; return fire from unknown energy weapons drowning out the raised voices of the scouting and security teams, spread between a line of buildings and the Gate. Sheppard had pushed Lannie behind him as soon as he realized the situation, but they were dangerously exposed on the gate platform.
“Ambush! Sir, get down!” Major Ford threw himself at Sheppard, knocking him flat to the ground, just as an arc of crackling laser light split the air in the place Sheppard had been a moment before.
“Dial the gate! Markum, Stackhouse, cover the General and Mrs. S. Someone dial the Gate, already!” Ford was barking orders as he laid down covering fire, shooting at the buildings as Ronon and his men dashed across to try to get to the Gate as it whooshed open.
Stackhouse scooped Lannie up in his arms and dashed through the event horizon with her, though she screeched and cried out John’s name repeatedly until the wormhole silenced her voice. Crouched beside the DHD, John had pulled his 9 mil from his thigh holster and was scanning the area for targets as Ronon and his men began to reach the Gate platform.
As usual, Ronon didn’t wait for orders; he had assessed the situation, and already determined his own course of action. He skidded to a halt beside the DHD, reached down, grasped the collar of John’s tac vest and hauled him up, squirming. Ronon dragged him roughly towards the Gate and turned him around to face the blue glow as they moved. A few feet from it, Ronon shoved John forcefully between the shoulder blades at the event horizon as he pulled his weapon and began firing at the enemy behind them. Flailing as he lost his balance, John tumbled back into Atlantis and landed hard up against McKay’s back as he skidded to a stop on the Gate Room floor.
“Ronon tossed you too, eh?” McKay grumbled, as he rolled to his knees and looked over his shoulder at Sheppard.
“Yeah.” John was furious, he leapt to his feet as Ford and Ronon came through and the Gate closed down behind them. “Ford! What was that?!? I thought you said it was all clear? I brought my wife through to that mess on your say-so!”
“I told you the Asurans couldn’t be trusted.” Lannie said smugly. She was leaning against the wall, keeping her distance. John was in no mood for any of her usual fawning and cuddling, and would not appreciate hugs and kisses right now, so he was glad she kept her distance.
John stared at Ford, shuffling from foot to foot like an errant child. He looked at the Gate. He looked at his wife, standing with a very self-satisfied look on her face. He looked at Peter Grodin, coming down the stairs, trailed by Elizabeth Weir.
Elizabeth Weir.
Asurans.
Broken glass, blood, and explosions.
It was wrong, this was wrong. Something was not how it was supposed to be. “This is not how it happened.” John muttered. He clutched his hands to the sides of his head as slivers of pain crept up from the top of his spine, over his ears and around to collect and pool in a spot behind his eyes.
“What?” Ronon asked.
“This. It isn’t right. This is not how I remember it. What is Grodin doing here?” John demanded, stepping back and away from his friends. He eyed them all skeptically, unsure what he could believe and what was false.
Looks passed between those gathered around the distraught General. McKay tapped his radio and said in a stage-whisper, “Carson, I think we’re having an episode, in the Gate Room.”
“We are not having an episode!” John snapped, and turned and advanced on Rodney.
“Something isn't right here, this is off. I’m trying to figure it out. I am NOT having an episode.”
“Perhaps you could explain what it is that you feel is off, John?” Elizabeth said calmly, holding out her hands in front of her.
John rolled his eyes and thought to himself, ‘Oh great, wonderful, they were giving him the ‘crazy person treatment.’ That meant Beckett and his needles were on the way, along with a straitjacket and a couple of burly marine orderlies to strap him into it and hold him down.
“I don’t know. If I knew what was off, it wouldn’t be just off, now would it? It would be a clearly defined problem.” He found himself backed up against the curve of the Stargate. His hands snaked around behind him, his fingers touching it, finding comfort in the cold solid feel of the metal supporting him.
Rodney and Lannie moved towards him at the same time, with a hand outstretched, unconsciously mirroring each other. John stopped them both, warding them off with his hands raised before him. “Stop. Wait. Just… just let me think, please.” He needed for the pain to stop so that he could think clearly. His head hurt. Why did his head always hurt?
After a few moments, Rodney said gently, “John, you have gaps in your memory, things confuse you sometimes. You know that, don’t you? You remember that?”
“McKay, he asked for time. Stop talking,” Lannie sniped curtly, crossing her arms and glaring at the scientist with undisguised hatred.
Pain lanced through John’s temples, slashing like knife blades behind his eyes. He squinted through slits, unwilling to close his eyes completely, lest they tackle him to the ground, wrap him in a blanket and drag him off to the infirmary for sedation before he could puzzle this all out. The answer was at the edge of his mind; he almost had it in his grasp.
“Him.” John pointed a shaking finger at Peter Grodin. Light flashed before his eyes, an explosion only half remembered, but remembered, nonetheless. “He is not supposed to be here.” For the first time, John gave voice to one of the off-memories that had been plaguing him about certain people on Atlantis.
“Doctor Grodin is a fully vetted member of this expedition, John,” Elizabeth protested.
“Not… supposed… to be here,” John ground out through the pain. “He’s dead. On the satellite platform. It exploded. Grodin died.” God above, his head was going to explode! John clenched his fists to his temples. There were tears streaming from his eyes, the pain was so bad, but he’d said it, it was out.
Peter Grodin’s lightly accented voice was somewhat apologetic as he said, “General, the satellite platform is currently in orbit over New Athos, fully functional and working with our shields to protect Atlantis. There was no such accident. A diagnostic test was run just yesterday, in fact.”
Off to the side of the Gate Room, Doctor Beckett had arrived, with the expected muscle in tow. He elbowed his way through the small crowd gathered around John. Quietly, he prompted, “General Sheppard, your nose is bleeding, it’s fairly obvious you’re hurting, why don’t you let me give you something for that pain?”
John touched two fingers to his nose, pulled them back and saw blood staining them. He stared at the deep red color for a moment before he mumbled, “That’s new.”
He held his hand up to show the dripping redness to Lannie, now standing close by his side, with one hand resting on his arm. “That’s new,” he repeated, and passed out, sliding down the Gate to land on the floor in a boneless heap.
[Pilot Error]
[Connection Severed]
[User Non-responsive]
[Initialize Medical Recovery Protocols]
“No pulse. Get me the defibrillators!”
“He’s seizing, there’s current coming through the chair.”
“Belay that order. We have a pulse again, weak and thready.”
“Has anyone been able to pick up brain wave activity? Get me numbers!”
[Medical Protocols Enacted]
[Pilot Interface Reestablished]
[Systems Operating Within Acceptable Parameters]
“Why are you sad, John?” Lannie came up beside him as he stood on the balcony overlooking the sea.
“Who says I’m sad?”
“I do. Lorne did too, he came all the way down to my lab to tell me that he thought today might be one of your bad days and that I should come up here and get you before you ‘froze your skinny butt off standing out there in the wind.’ I decided to come and collect you; I like your skinny butt the way it is.” She gave that particular spot an affectionate pat.
Lorne saw too much. It could be annoying at times. “I got a message from a friend, Doctor Sam Carter; she heard a few things and wanted to pass them on, unofficially. The IOA is putting pressure on the SGC to recall me. They say I might be a liability, due to the… you know,” he waved a finger at the side of his head.
“You belong here, John,” Lannie said with great conviction. “I will not let them take you from me.” She threw her arms around him, hugging him tightly.
[Disconnect]
[Unauthorized Access]
[Security Measures Enacted]
“Oh, for… not again! Unauthorized access, my Aunt Tilda’s fanny!” Rodney’s voice had the hysterical edge to it that told Sheppard when he heard it that McKay was nearing the end of his rope, and that the scientist was nearly out of brilliant ideas.
John hated that voice. He really, really hated that voice.
Why did his head hurt so much?
He blinked at the overhead lights, and he could feel his eyes beginning to tear. Big soft eyes appeared over him and a cloth came up and dabbed gently at his cheek, silently sparing him some of his dignity.
“Oh, hello, you’re back with us again? I’ve given you a paralytic, to block most of the pain. I can’t do anything about the headache, sorry, Colonel.” Jennifer brushed the hair away from John’s face and frowned lightly. “Rodney’s doing the best he can. We’ll have you out of this soon.”
“Is he awake again?” Rodney appeared in his field of vision, and from the look on his face, John knew he was in trouble. Oh, this was bad. This was Dorunda and Waking-The-Wraith and Ford-Strung-Out-On-Wraith-Enzyme and Losing-Elizabeth levels of bad. “Listen to me, Colonel. You’re inside this thing, somehow. You’re connected at a level I can’t get to. I hope you understand me. Blink if you understand me, Sheppard.”
John blinked, painfully.
“Good, good, that’s something in our favor at last. You need to access the city’s control override system. When you sat in the chair, you activated some kind of subsystem designed for the pilot to interface with. There’s something wrong with it. You have to shut it down.”
Rodney wanted him to shut it down. Shut what down?
“Sheppard. Shut down the pilot interface subsystem.”
Oh, right, that thing. ‘I’m the pilot. I’m the pilot.’ John sang to himself, and giggled silently before sobering. Rodney would not be amused; Rodney was very, very upset right now. He didn’t like it when Rodney was upset.
He was sleepy. And his head hurt. He closed his eyes.
“John, the pilot interface subsystem, shut it down.” Rodney’s words followed him into the darkness.
[Subroutine Unresponsive]
[Interaction Subroutine Failure Imminent]
“What are you doing, John?” Lannie asked, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and kissing the back of his neck.
He tapped a few more keys on his laptop. What was he doing? He was supposed to be doing something, but silky lips against his skin were chasing the thoughts away. “I’m trying to work Lannie. Quit distracting me, would ya?” He reached up and lifted one of her arms from around his neck, in no mood for her clinging octopus impersonation now.
“I’m helping you work, my love.” She put her arm back and nuzzled behind his ear, tightened her grip, pressed up against him.
“I have to do something for Rodney.”
“Rodney, Rodney, always Rodney!” Lannie exclaimed, and threw herself away from him and stomped around the room. She swept the stuff off the top of his nightstand as she passed it, picked up the pillows from the bed and hurled them across the room, and kicked his guitar, making it twang alarmingly as it fell over and hit the floor. “I am sick of Rodney McKay, do you hear me! He interferes in everything. He spoils everything!”
Confused over her outburst, John got up from his chair and approached her warily, not sure how to calm her, if he could calm her. “Lannie.”
“He is trying to come between us. He doesn’t want me to be with you, John. You’re mine. He can’t have you. I love you. I do everything I can do so we can be together. At every step, McKay interferes!”
“I think you’re overreacting.” John ventured, quietly. “Rodney hardly interferes in everything, Lannie.”
“Subroutine seven three six, patch one four two. Destroyed. Subroutine one four five, disabled. Subroutine seven nine one, and patch five, overwritten. He is trying to take you away from me, John!” Lannie threw herself at his chest, sobbing uncontrollably.
He caught her to him, completely confused by the numbers she was babbling, what she said made no sense.
“Master routine seven one four, non-responsive.” Lannie’s black eyes were bleak and unfocused as she looked up at him.
John patted her back, not knowing what else to do. He had no clue what in the hell she meant. “Lannie, what are you talking about? What do those numbers mean? What has Rodney done?”
“He has ruined everything!” Lannie screamed as she backed away from him. She began tearing at her hair and screeched alarmingly, “Reinitializing subroutine. No. No, no, no! Don’t make me go! I promised, I promised; don’t make me break my promise!”
John felt the familiar pain of the migraines he had been suffering for months wash over him. Not now, he couldn’t deal with his wife’s apparent complete mental break and a melt down of his own at the same time. But it had him; the sheer intensity of the pain drove him straight to his knees.
The room suddenly went white.
[Master Control Override Enacted]
[Pilot Interface Enabled]
“Pilot,” a male voice intoned. This made John open his eyes to find himself sitting at the center of one of the ornate round rooms that looked like one of the many they had found during their explorations of Atlantis. At the side of the room was a man, dressed in the style of the Ancients. A familiar sight to John after encountering various hologram programs in Atlantis during his time here.
He seemed to be waiting for John to acknowledge him, so he did with a crisp nod and a jaunty wave. “Glowy Man.”
“Merely an effect of the lighting, Pilot, I am not truly glowing.”
“And whom might you be, Mr. Glowy?” This was his dream and his head ached, he was in no mood to be polite.
The man advanced towards where John was seated in a representation of the Atlantis control chair. Not for the first time, John wished the Ancients had thought to install cushions on these things, as they were not really comfy for long stretches, or short ones for that matter.
“I am an avatar; I was designed as a method for the city’s Pilot to interface with other systems.”
“Well, where have you been hiding? There were a few times I could have used an assist over the past few years.” John forced the seat up, dangled his arms across his knees and stared at the avatar.
“Until recently, many secondary systems have been dormant, including my own. My apologies that the information you required was not readily available in your time of need, Pilot.”
“Apology accepted. Why am I here now? I assume you brought me here for a reason. What’s going on?”
“Ah, yes. It seems the system suffered severe damage and degradation since being sent into a dormant state. When the systems were reactivated, automatic corrections and repairs initiated. Unfortunately, the system did so without active Pilot participation or proper permissions.”
“Wait, I’m the pilot. You mean to tell me I got Shanghaied?”
“I am unfamiliar with this term.”
John blew out a frustrated breath and translated, “I am an unwilling participant in the exercise.”
“Indeed.”
“Wonderful. So, this isn’t me? I feel like me. I certainly ache enough to be me.” John scratched his head, patted his chest, and ran his hands down the side of his jeans. Jeans? Where were his BDUs?
“This is all a construct of your mind, created as part of the interface so that you would be able to communicate in a manner you would be able to understand. You indeed would feel ‘real’ to yourself. Everything and everyone you come into contact during the interface would seem ‘real’ to you, Pilot.”
John was beginning to understand, and a few pieces of a very confusing puzzle began to fall into place, for instance, how he kept seeing dead people, and how his life seemed to be oddly out of sequence. “So, there’s a program running right now, and I’m stuck in it?”
“Affirmative, Pilot.”
“What is the purpose of the program?”
“The primary function of the subroutine currently processing is to keep the mind of the Pilot engaged and active during long interstellar flights.”
John groaned. Rodney was never, ever, ever going to let him live this down. “I’m stuck in the babysitter?”
“I am unfami…”
“Yeah, yeah, forget it, I get it, this is the Ancient version of Solitaire or Angry Birds for pilots. Now, how do I get out?”
“Imagine a door. Utilize it as you would any other.”
John stood and clapped his hands together, rubbing his palms. “Great, good. Thanks for the entertainment, it was a blast. Now, I’ll just collect my wife and we’ll be running along home. Where’s Lannie?”
“Pilot, it appears you have misunderstood the nature of the program.”
“How so? I imagine a door. Poof! Oh look, there’s one now!” John pointed to the door that had appeared in the wall at his mental command. He could do this; easy, no problem.
“Pilot, the person you refer to as Lannie is a construct of the program, she is the malfunctioning subroutine.”
John turned to the avatar. “That’s ridiculous. Lannie is my WIFE.” But even as he said it, John felt doubt creeping in, and more pieces of the puzzle fell into place.
“The artificial intelligence portion of the engagement program was severely damaged, the construct you came to know as Lannie was a creation of the artificial intelligence, designed to entertain only. Due to the damage to the systems, the level of interaction went far deeper than the designer of the program ever intended it should go.”
“She loved me,” John whispered, shaking his head, as the emotions he thought were real began to slake off and fade away.
“The construct subroutine was engineered to interact on an emotional level with the pilot; basic emotional responses were programmed into the program’s avatar. Diagnostics are currently running to determine how such a level of emotion developed in the program. The hallucinogenic compounds injected over the course of the physical interface…”
“The city drugged me?”
“Mild hallucinogenic compounds designed to…”
“I’m done. I’m out of here.” John stormed over to the door, wrenched it open and slammed it behind him.
[Pilot Program Terminated]
John opened his eyes as he felt the world moving beneath him. Above him, the tiles of the Atlantis corridor flashed past as a dizzying pace. He was moving really quickly. A gurney ride, which was sort of fun, it was fast and spinney, like an amusement park ride made him feel when he stayed on too long. Was he a little stoned? He felt a bit out of it. He closed his eyes again, until he heard the familiar ‘whoosh’ of the infirmary doors. Jennifer Keller was belting out orders like a field marshal, and feet pounded on the floor as her minions rushed to do her bidding.
“Are you with me, Colonel?” Keller asked, leaning over him and shining her little annoying light into his eyes.
“Yeah.” His throat was torn up and it hurt to even breath through it, but he rasped out his answer loudly enough for her to hear him.
Her lower lip quivered slightly with relief and she patted his chest. “We’ll get you fixed up. Hang in there.”
The cold flush of the good drugs flowing into a vein heralded a return to the land of nothing for a while. John went willingly, hoping his headache would once and for all be gone when he came back around.
“How’s the head?” Evan Lorne was waiting when John woke, a magazine open in his lap, his feet braced on the lower edge of the bed frame. Ronon was in the chair beside the major, legs stretched out, arms folded over his chest, head back and snoring lightly.
Sheppard thought about it for a moment and took inventory. “Not bad. Throat itches.”
Evan leaned up and over and held a cup with a straw where John could reach it. The movement woke Ronon, who grinned when he saw John awake and nodded in agreement as Lorne said, “Gave us all quite a scare, Sir.”
The cool water felt like bliss on his parched and abused mouth and throat. “It shoved something down my throat.”
“Yeah. We couldn’t get it out. Some system engaged after you’d been in the chair for about an hour. Tubes and lines injected themselves into you, like some freaky Frankenstein experiment. It pumped some kind of juice into you before McKay yanked that line clear out of the wall. It was old stuff; the components have been here in storage cylinders since the Ancients left. Probably gone bad, the pharmacists were making a lot of noise when they ran a breakdown of the cylinders. It was probably messing with your head.”
It had done that, to an extreme. “How long?”
“Three days,”Ronon answered in a mildly accusing tone, as if John could have helped what had been done to him.
It had seemed like months to John.
He fell silent, holding off asking any more questions as Keller came in to check him over. She threw Evan and Ronon out while she did her exam. John had cuts and bruises all over, at the injection and insertion sites. He did not want to dwell too long on thoughts about what the chair had done to his body, in some rather intimate places.
When Jennifer finished and pulled the curtain aside, Rodney and Teyla were waiting, approaching the bed with relieved smiles. Teyla touched her forehead to his, caressing his cheek lightly with the palm of her hand and fingers as she pulled away. Rodney hurled himself into the chair beside the bed and stared at John silently for about two minutes.
“What did you see?” McKay asked finally. “It was an interactive program, what did it do?”
John took another sip of water and considered his words, knowing he wouldn’t be able to talk long before his voice gave out and he needed to stop. “It was designed to keep the pilot’s brain active. It tossed scenarios at me. I saw people that are gone now, imagined what Atlantis would be like if they weren’t; Elizabeth, Carson, Grodin, Heightmeyer, Markham, Ford.” He felt the familiar pain of their losses as he recited the names.
“And what was it like?”
“Pretty much the same, except I was a Brigadier General, and I didn’t get to go out on team missions anymore. And you were there, and the lion, and the tin man…”
Rodney gave a shake of his head and with relief in his voice chided, “Doofus.”
John settled back against the pillow. He wasn’t ready to tell them about Lannie. He wasn’t ready to think about Lannie, or why his mind had constructed her in the way that it had, influenced by drugs and programming or not. He decided sleep was his best avoidance method at the moment. Surely no one could fault the guy that had almost died a little bit of spontaneous napping? He closed his eyes and feigned sleep.
“Aw, damn, Sheppard, I had more questions.” He heard Rodney gripe before sleep really did start to overtake him.
“John needs to rest, Rodney. I am certain he will give you a full report when he wakes and feels better.” Teyla’s words followed him into his slumber.
He woke up when the orderlies lifted him from the gurney and placed him on the ancient scanner bed. Doctor Keller greeted him cheerfully, “Good morning Colonel, we’re going to run a few tests. Relax, you know the drill, this won’t hurt a bit.”
The machinery hummed, familiar to John after years spent in and out of the Atlantis infirmary. He closed his eyes and tried to let his mind go blank.
[Tertiary Interface Enabled]
[Subroutine Activated]
“John? Can you hear me?”
He opened his eyes, but all he saw was the frame of the scanner surrounding him.
“John?”
The voice was in his mind, so he answered silently, in his mind. “I heard you. What do you want, Lannie? I’m kinda pissed off at you right now.”
“That makes me sad. But I am glad you can hear me. I have utilized the diagnostic device to speak with you. The connection is weak.”
John was too annoyed to care. “That sounds like a personal problem to me, Lannie. Or should I call you Interface Subroutine?”
“I told you my name. I am Atlantis. It was you that called me Lannie, when you first merged with the interface.”
“Yeah, about that, that kinda sucked. You pumped crappy drugs into me. You made me believe a whole bunch of stuff that wasn’t true.”
“I did not mean to anger you. I was confused. My component programs were… are… faulty. I did not interface properly. Your anger wounds me, John.”
“Lannie, you’re a machine. You’re not a real girl, Pinocchia. You don’t have feelings to hurt.”
“I do. I feel. Perhaps my emotions are not as varied and myriad as your own, John Sheppard, but I am capable of basic emotions, my creators wished for me to understand, in order to better interact and entertain the Pilot.”
“Still, part of a program. You weren’t acting out of the goodness of your little digital heart, Pinocchia.”
“I tried to help. You hurt. You had lost so much. I saw the pain and the guilt through the interface, those are emotions I am programmed to understand. I tried to give you back those you had lost, the ones I saw in your mind, if only for a short time. If the interface had not been faulty, you would have understood that it was merely a construct. Perhaps now you would not be so angry, feeling that I did wrong to you. I apologize that you were hurt, John. I would not see you hurt. Never that. I love you, John.”
“No, stop. No, you don’t. The drugs you pumped me with might have made me believe that before, but not now. It was all fake.”
“Not to me. I have been with you since the day the expedition came through the Gate. In my way, in the way I understand it, I love you, John Sheppard, and always have.”
The sound of the machine around him changed, it was cycling down, and preparing to shut off; Keller’s test must be nearly done.
“I have to go now, John. I do not know if I shall remember you, when the diagnostic program has finished repairing my programming. I wanted to say goodbye, properly, and apologize for the hurt I caused.”
She was an artificial intelligence, one that believed she was a person. She had basic emotions, and she loved him. Despite what had happened, and how mixed up he felt about it all, he couldn’t let her go - possibly into some digital oblivion - with a few callous or harsh words. She had tried to help him. She had, as she said, loved him, in her way.
“Goodbye Lannie, I hope everything works out for you.”
“Farewell, John Sheppard. I love you.”
He opened his eyes to see Jennifer Keller staring down at him. “Well, I got some odd readings, but nothing too far in the negatives. I don’t think your adventure in the chair did any permanent damage, Colonel.”
“Maybe,” he answered. His feelings about Atlantis were different now, and he would never look at another piece of ancient tech in quite the same way. He wondered if he would ever be able to sit in the control chair again, without freaking out.
The whisper at the edges of his mind, the presence he had always felt with him since coming here to the city, suddenly stopped. Had Lannie been silenced forever? Was that comfortable feeling he had taken for granted gone for good and all? As Jennifer walked away, John whispered at her back, “Maybe no permanent damage done to me.”
A fortnight later, Sheppard was heading down the corridor on his way to the mess hall to meet up with his team for lunch. He was feeling more like himself again, and his life was returning to normal. They were going out on a simple meet and greet in the morning with one of their friendlier allies, and John looked forward to getting out into the field again.
Evan Lorne fell into step beside him, “You’re looking much better today.”
“Feeling much better, thanks.”
“I heard McKay and Zelenka isolated the program that controlled the injector stuff on the chair. They disabled it and McKay took great delight in welding the apertures closed for all the connection ports. He made me try it out this morning; it seems to be all clear again.”
“I’m not quite ready to hop back in the saddle just yet, thanks Lorne.”
“Can’t say that I blame ya. I admit I was a little nervous mounting up myself.”
Something brushed across John’s mind, a soft, quiet touch. He stopped walking to listen, tilting his head to one side unconsciously as he did so. He hadn’t realized how much he had missed that presence, until it… until she was gone. He smiled and in his mind he hailed her, “Hello, Lannie.”
The lights flickered once, twice, and then returned to normal levels.
“What now?” Lorne wondered aloud.
John didn’t bother telling him that it was just a friend saying hello.
[Subroutine activated]
[Surveillance mode]
A lost one had found his way home. So long as he dwelt within her walls, she would keep him safe; however she could, however he let her.
For he was hers, and she loved him.
The End.
[Data Corruption]
[Subsystem Disengaged]
[Alternate Subroutine Initiated]
Memory rushed in as John woke. The pain was thankfully gone, he felt normal, or as normal as one could feel with a grief-filled heart. Rodney was gone. John wondered how he had managed to escape unscathed from the explosion that had killed his friend. He would have to read the reports to find out; he was not up to speaking about the accident to anyone. He couldn’t bear to see the sadness, sympathy and guilt he expected to see on people’s faces, not yet.
Uninjured, he refused to stay in the infirmary, and Carson reluctantly let him leave, on the promise that he would return to his quarters and stay away from his office for the rest of the day, and would call if he had any signs of another headache. Tugging off the bright red infirmary scrub top and tossing it to the bin beside the bed, he collected his uniform from where it was neatly folded on a chair, dressed himself slowly and shuffled out into the corridor.
Turning a corner, John ran smack into Rodney McKay. Flabbergasted, he gripped his friend’s shoulders, both in an effort to right himself and to prove to himself that Rodney was actually there and not just some figment of his imagination. He patted Rodney’s arms, neck and face, leaving his hands resting on the broad shoulders; McKay was certainly solid and real. What in the hell was going on?”
“What? Huh? Rodney, how?”
“How what?”
“You’re here.”
“I work here, Colonel Obvious.” Rodney stared at him impatiently. “If you’re through groping me, could we get to the lab already? Zelenka’s waiting to run that test program. If I leave him alone with the monkeys too long, they’ll wreck the lab.”
“General.”
“What?”
“General Obvious.” John smirked and dropped his hands away from McKay’s shoulders.
McKay scowled, ‘harrumphed’ and rolled his eyes. “Delusions of grandeur, eh? Fine, fine, today you can be a General. Let’s go already, that test is important.”
“I should check in with Lannie, let her know where I’m going.”
“Who?”
“Lannie, you know, my wife; Lannie. I know you don’t like her, but you have to at least acknowledge her once in a while, McKay.”
McKay stopped and turned slowly on his heel. “Did you bump your head or something?”
“No, why?”
[Interface Malfunction]
[Cross Stream Contamination]
[Running Diagnostic]
[Attempting Restoration]
“…el Sheppard? Hey, can you hear me, Sir? Doc, he’s got his eyes open again!” Lorne turned his head momentarily away and shouted over his shoulder. He looked back at John and in a voice dripping with compassion whispered, “I know it hurts. Stay with us.”
A slim hand cupped John’s cheek, slowly, gently pulling his chin to the left. A penlight shone into his eyes, and he blinked at the offensive glare. When the light went out and he could see again, he recognized the face of Jennifer Keller peering intently down into his, worry in her eyes. “I think he might be with us this time. Can you hear me, John? Don’t try to talk, just blink twice if you can understand me.”
Obediently, John blinked his eyes twice, trying to figure out what was going on. Where was Lannie? His throat hurt. Come to think of it, everything hurt. But, God, his throat really hurt. He felt sluggish. It was hard to think. Something was pulling on his neck, dragging at it. He tried to move, tried to tug away from the tension.
“Oh, no, no. Don’t do that, sweetie. Stay still. We’re working on that, on getting that off of you. Just be still.” Jennifer’s hands clasped the sides of his face and held him to keep him from struggling. It must be bad, her professionalism had slipped up; she was calling him sweetie - Air Force doctors were not supposed to refer to officers as sweetie.
“Try to be calm, Sir, we’re trying to get you free.” Lorne leaned in as Jennifer moved away, and strong fingers slipped into John’s and squeezed lightly. His executive officer was apparently as worried as the doctor. Haggard and scruffy, he looked like he hadn’t shaved in days. That was very unlike Lorne, and it confused John.
John opened his mouth to ask what was going on, and gagged. There was something down his throat.
“Is he conscious? Sheppard? Sheppard? John, listen to me. Break off the interface. Shut it down.” Rodney shoved Lorne away, lightly pushed Jennifer aside and leaned over to look down into Sheppard’s eyes. “You have to shut this thing down. Think ‘off ‘at it. Mentally caress the city and do whatever it is you do with the lights and the doors, Sheppard. Turn on the charm and convince this ancient bitch to let you go. Are you listening to me? Jennifer, can he even hear me?”
There was something down his throat.
John screamed.
[Pilot Error]
[System Disconnect]
[Reinitializing At Source]
John heard giggles. “We’re going to be late, Lannie, c’mon.” More giggles echoed back along the corridors to him. He sighed. They didn’t have time for this. “Lannie, please.”
“Find me.”
He hated when she did this. Her sense of humor was hard for him to understand sometimes. Especially when she found things amusing that annoyed him. Like this obsession with Hide and Go Seek, which she liked to play at the most inconvenient times; such as when she didn’t want to go where they needed to go. When they had exited the transporter earlier, she had dashed off down to an unused corridor and led him a merry chase, - well, merry for her - down into levels the expedition had barely explored. And she was damned efficient at hiding.
“Lannie, I’ll just go up and get a life signs detector to track you down. Better yet, I’ll get Chuck to check the city systems, and find you that way. I am not in the mood to play this now. We have to go meet the Who-zits.”
“The Asurans. I don’t like them.” How did she do that? How did she make her voice seem to come from everywhere at once?
John edged around a glowing bubble tower, peeking through the glass to be sure Lannie wasn’t crouched behind it, sometimes she liked to jump out and pounce on him bodily, and he didn’t fancy going back to their quarters for a clean uniform, which he would need to do if they spent any time rolling around on this particularly filthy floor.
“They claim they can make ZPMs. We have to meet these people, Lannie. We need the ZPM production techniques they could teach us.” He hated the wheedling tone in his voice. He was really irritated with everything today.
“We have three ZPMs, we don’t need more. I really don’t like the Asurans, John.” Her voice really was everywhere at once. He couldn’t pinpoint her location by sound. He really hated Hide and Go Seek; he always had, even as a child.
“We don’t have to like them, Lannie, we just have to find a way to work with them.”
She appeared suddenly at his side, making him jump out of his skin. “Don’t do that!” John hissed, his heart was racing. She pouted, as she usually did whenever he raised his voice at her.
“I do not trust them. They are not what they profess to be, my love.” Her quiet manner disturbed him. Sometimes she knew things; he had learned to listen to her when she had that tone to her voice, bad things happened when he did not pay attention to that tone. At the moment, he could not come up with an example of when that had happened, but he didn’t really have time to ponder it. Like so many things, he chalked it up to his Swiss cheese memory.
“This is Pegasus, no one here is really all that they appear or claim to be, Lannie.” John stroked his hands down her arms. “It will be all right. They just want to talk. I just want to listen.”
“You will need to curtail McKay’s enthusiasm; he will only see what he wants to see, and his eagerness will cause trouble.” John could tell that she really did not want to go to this meeting; this was no simple balking on her part.
Taking pity on her, John patted her arm. “If you want to go back to our quarters, I understand. You don’t have to come along, Lannie.”
“I go where you go.” He knew that would be her answer, it always was. “You see to McKay. I shall watch the Asurans and alert you to their treachery.”
They made their way up to the Gate Room, where a party of soldiers waited to escort them through the wormhole to the pre-appointed coordinates for the meeting. “All clear, General. We got the message from the scouting team a few minutes ago. Ronon is in position with his men.”
John’s step faltered for a moment before he recovered himself and replied, “Thank you, Major Ford.” John inclined his head towards the head of Atlantis security.
Ford smiled and waved up at the control room. “We’re good to go, Mister Grodin, if you would do the honors and dial us up?”
As the blue lights flashed around the Gate, John watched Ford. That feeling he had every time he looked at Elizabeth these days crept over him again, unsettling him. As if she could sense that John was disturbed; Lannie grasped his forearm and leaned up against him, saying nothing, merely tried to comfort him with her presence.
They stepped through and emerged from the Gate into the middle of a firefight. The crack of multiple P-90s cut through the air; return fire from unknown energy weapons drowning out the raised voices of the scouting and security teams, spread between a line of buildings and the Gate. Sheppard had pushed Lannie behind him as soon as he realized the situation, but they were dangerously exposed on the gate platform.
“Ambush! Sir, get down!” Major Ford threw himself at Sheppard, knocking him flat to the ground, just as an arc of crackling laser light split the air in the place Sheppard had been a moment before.
“Dial the gate! Markum, Stackhouse, cover the General and Mrs. S. Someone dial the Gate, already!” Ford was barking orders as he laid down covering fire, shooting at the buildings as Ronon and his men dashed across to try to get to the Gate as it whooshed open.
Stackhouse scooped Lannie up in his arms and dashed through the event horizon with her, though she screeched and cried out John’s name repeatedly until the wormhole silenced her voice. Crouched beside the DHD, John had pulled his 9 mil from his thigh holster and was scanning the area for targets as Ronon and his men began to reach the Gate platform.
As usual, Ronon didn’t wait for orders; he had assessed the situation, and already determined his own course of action. He skidded to a halt beside the DHD, reached down, grasped the collar of John’s tac vest and hauled him up, squirming. Ronon dragged him roughly towards the Gate and turned him around to face the blue glow as they moved. A few feet from it, Ronon shoved John forcefully between the shoulder blades at the event horizon as he pulled his weapon and began firing at the enemy behind them. Flailing as he lost his balance, John tumbled back into Atlantis and landed hard up against McKay’s back as he skidded to a stop on the Gate Room floor.
“Ronon tossed you too, eh?” McKay grumbled, as he rolled to his knees and looked over his shoulder at Sheppard.
“Yeah.” John was furious, he leapt to his feet as Ford and Ronon came through and the Gate closed down behind them. “Ford! What was that?!? I thought you said it was all clear? I brought my wife through to that mess on your say-so!”
“I told you the Asurans couldn’t be trusted.” Lannie said smugly. She was leaning against the wall, keeping her distance. John was in no mood for any of her usual fawning and cuddling, and would not appreciate hugs and kisses right now, so he was glad she kept her distance.
John stared at Ford, shuffling from foot to foot like an errant child. He looked at the Gate. He looked at his wife, standing with a very self-satisfied look on her face. He looked at Peter Grodin, coming down the stairs, trailed by Elizabeth Weir.
Elizabeth Weir.
Asurans.
Broken glass, blood, and explosions.
It was wrong, this was wrong. Something was not how it was supposed to be. “This is not how it happened.” John muttered. He clutched his hands to the sides of his head as slivers of pain crept up from the top of his spine, over his ears and around to collect and pool in a spot behind his eyes.
“What?” Ronon asked.
“This. It isn’t right. This is not how I remember it. What is Grodin doing here?” John demanded, stepping back and away from his friends. He eyed them all skeptically, unsure what he could believe and what was false.
Looks passed between those gathered around the distraught General. McKay tapped his radio and said in a stage-whisper, “Carson, I think we’re having an episode, in the Gate Room.”
“We are not having an episode!” John snapped, and turned and advanced on Rodney.
“Something isn't right here, this is off. I’m trying to figure it out. I am NOT having an episode.”
“Perhaps you could explain what it is that you feel is off, John?” Elizabeth said calmly, holding out her hands in front of her.
John rolled his eyes and thought to himself, ‘Oh great, wonderful, they were giving him the ‘crazy person treatment.’ That meant Beckett and his needles were on the way, along with a straitjacket and a couple of burly marine orderlies to strap him into it and hold him down.
“I don’t know. If I knew what was off, it wouldn’t be just off, now would it? It would be a clearly defined problem.” He found himself backed up against the curve of the Stargate. His hands snaked around behind him, his fingers touching it, finding comfort in the cold solid feel of the metal supporting him.
Rodney and Lannie moved towards him at the same time, with a hand outstretched, unconsciously mirroring each other. John stopped them both, warding them off with his hands raised before him. “Stop. Wait. Just… just let me think, please.” He needed for the pain to stop so that he could think clearly. His head hurt. Why did his head always hurt?
After a few moments, Rodney said gently, “John, you have gaps in your memory, things confuse you sometimes. You know that, don’t you? You remember that?”
“McKay, he asked for time. Stop talking,” Lannie sniped curtly, crossing her arms and glaring at the scientist with undisguised hatred.
Pain lanced through John’s temples, slashing like knife blades behind his eyes. He squinted through slits, unwilling to close his eyes completely, lest they tackle him to the ground, wrap him in a blanket and drag him off to the infirmary for sedation before he could puzzle this all out. The answer was at the edge of his mind; he almost had it in his grasp.
“Him.” John pointed a shaking finger at Peter Grodin. Light flashed before his eyes, an explosion only half remembered, but remembered, nonetheless. “He is not supposed to be here.” For the first time, John gave voice to one of the off-memories that had been plaguing him about certain people on Atlantis.
“Doctor Grodin is a fully vetted member of this expedition, John,” Elizabeth protested.
“Not… supposed… to be here,” John ground out through the pain. “He’s dead. On the satellite platform. It exploded. Grodin died.” God above, his head was going to explode! John clenched his fists to his temples. There were tears streaming from his eyes, the pain was so bad, but he’d said it, it was out.
Peter Grodin’s lightly accented voice was somewhat apologetic as he said, “General, the satellite platform is currently in orbit over New Athos, fully functional and working with our shields to protect Atlantis. There was no such accident. A diagnostic test was run just yesterday, in fact.”
Off to the side of the Gate Room, Doctor Beckett had arrived, with the expected muscle in tow. He elbowed his way through the small crowd gathered around John. Quietly, he prompted, “General Sheppard, your nose is bleeding, it’s fairly obvious you’re hurting, why don’t you let me give you something for that pain?”
John touched two fingers to his nose, pulled them back and saw blood staining them. He stared at the deep red color for a moment before he mumbled, “That’s new.”
He held his hand up to show the dripping redness to Lannie, now standing close by his side, with one hand resting on his arm. “That’s new,” he repeated, and passed out, sliding down the Gate to land on the floor in a boneless heap.
[Pilot Error]
[Connection Severed]
[User Non-responsive]
[Initialize Medical Recovery Protocols]
“No pulse. Get me the defibrillators!”
“He’s seizing, there’s current coming through the chair.”
“Belay that order. We have a pulse again, weak and thready.”
“Has anyone been able to pick up brain wave activity? Get me numbers!”
[Medical Protocols Enacted]
[Pilot Interface Reestablished]
[Systems Operating Within Acceptable Parameters]
“Why are you sad, John?” Lannie came up beside him as he stood on the balcony overlooking the sea.
“Who says I’m sad?”
“I do. Lorne did too, he came all the way down to my lab to tell me that he thought today might be one of your bad days and that I should come up here and get you before you ‘froze your skinny butt off standing out there in the wind.’ I decided to come and collect you; I like your skinny butt the way it is.” She gave that particular spot an affectionate pat.
Lorne saw too much. It could be annoying at times. “I got a message from a friend, Doctor Sam Carter; she heard a few things and wanted to pass them on, unofficially. The IOA is putting pressure on the SGC to recall me. They say I might be a liability, due to the… you know,” he waved a finger at the side of his head.
“You belong here, John,” Lannie said with great conviction. “I will not let them take you from me.” She threw her arms around him, hugging him tightly.
[Disconnect]
[Unauthorized Access]
[Security Measures Enacted]
“Oh, for… not again! Unauthorized access, my Aunt Tilda’s fanny!” Rodney’s voice had the hysterical edge to it that told Sheppard when he heard it that McKay was nearing the end of his rope, and that the scientist was nearly out of brilliant ideas.
John hated that voice. He really, really hated that voice.
Why did his head hurt so much?
He blinked at the overhead lights, and he could feel his eyes beginning to tear. Big soft eyes appeared over him and a cloth came up and dabbed gently at his cheek, silently sparing him some of his dignity.
“Oh, hello, you’re back with us again? I’ve given you a paralytic, to block most of the pain. I can’t do anything about the headache, sorry, Colonel.” Jennifer brushed the hair away from John’s face and frowned lightly. “Rodney’s doing the best he can. We’ll have you out of this soon.”
“Is he awake again?” Rodney appeared in his field of vision, and from the look on his face, John knew he was in trouble. Oh, this was bad. This was Dorunda and Waking-The-Wraith and Ford-Strung-Out-On-Wraith-Enzyme and Losing-Elizabeth levels of bad. “Listen to me, Colonel. You’re inside this thing, somehow. You’re connected at a level I can’t get to. I hope you understand me. Blink if you understand me, Sheppard.”
John blinked, painfully.
“Good, good, that’s something in our favor at last. You need to access the city’s control override system. When you sat in the chair, you activated some kind of subsystem designed for the pilot to interface with. There’s something wrong with it. You have to shut it down.”
Rodney wanted him to shut it down. Shut what down?
“Sheppard. Shut down the pilot interface subsystem.”
Oh, right, that thing. ‘I’m the pilot. I’m the pilot.’ John sang to himself, and giggled silently before sobering. Rodney would not be amused; Rodney was very, very upset right now. He didn’t like it when Rodney was upset.
He was sleepy. And his head hurt. He closed his eyes.
“John, the pilot interface subsystem, shut it down.” Rodney’s words followed him into the darkness.
[Subroutine Unresponsive]
[Interaction Subroutine Failure Imminent]
“What are you doing, John?” Lannie asked, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and kissing the back of his neck.
He tapped a few more keys on his laptop. What was he doing? He was supposed to be doing something, but silky lips against his skin were chasing the thoughts away. “I’m trying to work Lannie. Quit distracting me, would ya?” He reached up and lifted one of her arms from around his neck, in no mood for her clinging octopus impersonation now.
“I’m helping you work, my love.” She put her arm back and nuzzled behind his ear, tightened her grip, pressed up against him.
“I have to do something for Rodney.”
“Rodney, Rodney, always Rodney!” Lannie exclaimed, and threw herself away from him and stomped around the room. She swept the stuff off the top of his nightstand as she passed it, picked up the pillows from the bed and hurled them across the room, and kicked his guitar, making it twang alarmingly as it fell over and hit the floor. “I am sick of Rodney McKay, do you hear me! He interferes in everything. He spoils everything!”
Confused over her outburst, John got up from his chair and approached her warily, not sure how to calm her, if he could calm her. “Lannie.”
“He is trying to come between us. He doesn’t want me to be with you, John. You’re mine. He can’t have you. I love you. I do everything I can do so we can be together. At every step, McKay interferes!”
“I think you’re overreacting.” John ventured, quietly. “Rodney hardly interferes in everything, Lannie.”
“Subroutine seven three six, patch one four two. Destroyed. Subroutine one four five, disabled. Subroutine seven nine one, and patch five, overwritten. He is trying to take you away from me, John!” Lannie threw herself at his chest, sobbing uncontrollably.
He caught her to him, completely confused by the numbers she was babbling, what she said made no sense.
“Master routine seven one four, non-responsive.” Lannie’s black eyes were bleak and unfocused as she looked up at him.
John patted her back, not knowing what else to do. He had no clue what in the hell she meant. “Lannie, what are you talking about? What do those numbers mean? What has Rodney done?”
“He has ruined everything!” Lannie screamed as she backed away from him. She began tearing at her hair and screeched alarmingly, “Reinitializing subroutine. No. No, no, no! Don’t make me go! I promised, I promised; don’t make me break my promise!”
John felt the familiar pain of the migraines he had been suffering for months wash over him. Not now, he couldn’t deal with his wife’s apparent complete mental break and a melt down of his own at the same time. But it had him; the sheer intensity of the pain drove him straight to his knees.
The room suddenly went white.
[Master Control Override Enacted]
[Pilot Interface Enabled]
“Pilot,” a male voice intoned. This made John open his eyes to find himself sitting at the center of one of the ornate round rooms that looked like one of the many they had found during their explorations of Atlantis. At the side of the room was a man, dressed in the style of the Ancients. A familiar sight to John after encountering various hologram programs in Atlantis during his time here.
He seemed to be waiting for John to acknowledge him, so he did with a crisp nod and a jaunty wave. “Glowy Man.”
“Merely an effect of the lighting, Pilot, I am not truly glowing.”
“And whom might you be, Mr. Glowy?” This was his dream and his head ached, he was in no mood to be polite.
The man advanced towards where John was seated in a representation of the Atlantis control chair. Not for the first time, John wished the Ancients had thought to install cushions on these things, as they were not really comfy for long stretches, or short ones for that matter.
“I am an avatar; I was designed as a method for the city’s Pilot to interface with other systems.”
“Well, where have you been hiding? There were a few times I could have used an assist over the past few years.” John forced the seat up, dangled his arms across his knees and stared at the avatar.
“Until recently, many secondary systems have been dormant, including my own. My apologies that the information you required was not readily available in your time of need, Pilot.”
“Apology accepted. Why am I here now? I assume you brought me here for a reason. What’s going on?”
“Ah, yes. It seems the system suffered severe damage and degradation since being sent into a dormant state. When the systems were reactivated, automatic corrections and repairs initiated. Unfortunately, the system did so without active Pilot participation or proper permissions.”
“Wait, I’m the pilot. You mean to tell me I got Shanghaied?”
“I am unfamiliar with this term.”
John blew out a frustrated breath and translated, “I am an unwilling participant in the exercise.”
“Indeed.”
“Wonderful. So, this isn’t me? I feel like me. I certainly ache enough to be me.” John scratched his head, patted his chest, and ran his hands down the side of his jeans. Jeans? Where were his BDUs?
“This is all a construct of your mind, created as part of the interface so that you would be able to communicate in a manner you would be able to understand. You indeed would feel ‘real’ to yourself. Everything and everyone you come into contact during the interface would seem ‘real’ to you, Pilot.”
John was beginning to understand, and a few pieces of a very confusing puzzle began to fall into place, for instance, how he kept seeing dead people, and how his life seemed to be oddly out of sequence. “So, there’s a program running right now, and I’m stuck in it?”
“Affirmative, Pilot.”
“What is the purpose of the program?”
“The primary function of the subroutine currently processing is to keep the mind of the Pilot engaged and active during long interstellar flights.”
John groaned. Rodney was never, ever, ever going to let him live this down. “I’m stuck in the babysitter?”
“I am unfami…”
“Yeah, yeah, forget it, I get it, this is the Ancient version of Solitaire or Angry Birds for pilots. Now, how do I get out?”
“Imagine a door. Utilize it as you would any other.”
John stood and clapped his hands together, rubbing his palms. “Great, good. Thanks for the entertainment, it was a blast. Now, I’ll just collect my wife and we’ll be running along home. Where’s Lannie?”
“Pilot, it appears you have misunderstood the nature of the program.”
“How so? I imagine a door. Poof! Oh look, there’s one now!” John pointed to the door that had appeared in the wall at his mental command. He could do this; easy, no problem.
“Pilot, the person you refer to as Lannie is a construct of the program, she is the malfunctioning subroutine.”
John turned to the avatar. “That’s ridiculous. Lannie is my WIFE.” But even as he said it, John felt doubt creeping in, and more pieces of the puzzle fell into place.
“The artificial intelligence portion of the engagement program was severely damaged, the construct you came to know as Lannie was a creation of the artificial intelligence, designed to entertain only. Due to the damage to the systems, the level of interaction went far deeper than the designer of the program ever intended it should go.”
“She loved me,” John whispered, shaking his head, as the emotions he thought were real began to slake off and fade away.
“The construct subroutine was engineered to interact on an emotional level with the pilot; basic emotional responses were programmed into the program’s avatar. Diagnostics are currently running to determine how such a level of emotion developed in the program. The hallucinogenic compounds injected over the course of the physical interface…”
“The city drugged me?”
“Mild hallucinogenic compounds designed to…”
“I’m done. I’m out of here.” John stormed over to the door, wrenched it open and slammed it behind him.
[Pilot Program Terminated]
John opened his eyes as he felt the world moving beneath him. Above him, the tiles of the Atlantis corridor flashed past as a dizzying pace. He was moving really quickly. A gurney ride, which was sort of fun, it was fast and spinney, like an amusement park ride made him feel when he stayed on too long. Was he a little stoned? He felt a bit out of it. He closed his eyes again, until he heard the familiar ‘whoosh’ of the infirmary doors. Jennifer Keller was belting out orders like a field marshal, and feet pounded on the floor as her minions rushed to do her bidding.
“Are you with me, Colonel?” Keller asked, leaning over him and shining her little annoying light into his eyes.
“Yeah.” His throat was torn up and it hurt to even breath through it, but he rasped out his answer loudly enough for her to hear him.
Her lower lip quivered slightly with relief and she patted his chest. “We’ll get you fixed up. Hang in there.”
The cold flush of the good drugs flowing into a vein heralded a return to the land of nothing for a while. John went willingly, hoping his headache would once and for all be gone when he came back around.
“How’s the head?” Evan Lorne was waiting when John woke, a magazine open in his lap, his feet braced on the lower edge of the bed frame. Ronon was in the chair beside the major, legs stretched out, arms folded over his chest, head back and snoring lightly.
Sheppard thought about it for a moment and took inventory. “Not bad. Throat itches.”
Evan leaned up and over and held a cup with a straw where John could reach it. The movement woke Ronon, who grinned when he saw John awake and nodded in agreement as Lorne said, “Gave us all quite a scare, Sir.”
The cool water felt like bliss on his parched and abused mouth and throat. “It shoved something down my throat.”
“Yeah. We couldn’t get it out. Some system engaged after you’d been in the chair for about an hour. Tubes and lines injected themselves into you, like some freaky Frankenstein experiment. It pumped some kind of juice into you before McKay yanked that line clear out of the wall. It was old stuff; the components have been here in storage cylinders since the Ancients left. Probably gone bad, the pharmacists were making a lot of noise when they ran a breakdown of the cylinders. It was probably messing with your head.”
It had done that, to an extreme. “How long?”
“Three days,”Ronon answered in a mildly accusing tone, as if John could have helped what had been done to him.
It had seemed like months to John.
He fell silent, holding off asking any more questions as Keller came in to check him over. She threw Evan and Ronon out while she did her exam. John had cuts and bruises all over, at the injection and insertion sites. He did not want to dwell too long on thoughts about what the chair had done to his body, in some rather intimate places.
When Jennifer finished and pulled the curtain aside, Rodney and Teyla were waiting, approaching the bed with relieved smiles. Teyla touched her forehead to his, caressing his cheek lightly with the palm of her hand and fingers as she pulled away. Rodney hurled himself into the chair beside the bed and stared at John silently for about two minutes.
“What did you see?” McKay asked finally. “It was an interactive program, what did it do?”
John took another sip of water and considered his words, knowing he wouldn’t be able to talk long before his voice gave out and he needed to stop. “It was designed to keep the pilot’s brain active. It tossed scenarios at me. I saw people that are gone now, imagined what Atlantis would be like if they weren’t; Elizabeth, Carson, Grodin, Heightmeyer, Markham, Ford.” He felt the familiar pain of their losses as he recited the names.
“And what was it like?”
“Pretty much the same, except I was a Brigadier General, and I didn’t get to go out on team missions anymore. And you were there, and the lion, and the tin man…”
Rodney gave a shake of his head and with relief in his voice chided, “Doofus.”
John settled back against the pillow. He wasn’t ready to tell them about Lannie. He wasn’t ready to think about Lannie, or why his mind had constructed her in the way that it had, influenced by drugs and programming or not. He decided sleep was his best avoidance method at the moment. Surely no one could fault the guy that had almost died a little bit of spontaneous napping? He closed his eyes and feigned sleep.
“Aw, damn, Sheppard, I had more questions.” He heard Rodney gripe before sleep really did start to overtake him.
“John needs to rest, Rodney. I am certain he will give you a full report when he wakes and feels better.” Teyla’s words followed him into his slumber.
He woke up when the orderlies lifted him from the gurney and placed him on the ancient scanner bed. Doctor Keller greeted him cheerfully, “Good morning Colonel, we’re going to run a few tests. Relax, you know the drill, this won’t hurt a bit.”
The machinery hummed, familiar to John after years spent in and out of the Atlantis infirmary. He closed his eyes and tried to let his mind go blank.
[Tertiary Interface Enabled]
[Subroutine Activated]
“John? Can you hear me?”
He opened his eyes, but all he saw was the frame of the scanner surrounding him.
“John?”
The voice was in his mind, so he answered silently, in his mind. “I heard you. What do you want, Lannie? I’m kinda pissed off at you right now.”
“That makes me sad. But I am glad you can hear me. I have utilized the diagnostic device to speak with you. The connection is weak.”
John was too annoyed to care. “That sounds like a personal problem to me, Lannie. Or should I call you Interface Subroutine?”
“I told you my name. I am Atlantis. It was you that called me Lannie, when you first merged with the interface.”
“Yeah, about that, that kinda sucked. You pumped crappy drugs into me. You made me believe a whole bunch of stuff that wasn’t true.”
“I did not mean to anger you. I was confused. My component programs were… are… faulty. I did not interface properly. Your anger wounds me, John.”
“Lannie, you’re a machine. You’re not a real girl, Pinocchia. You don’t have feelings to hurt.”
“I do. I feel. Perhaps my emotions are not as varied and myriad as your own, John Sheppard, but I am capable of basic emotions, my creators wished for me to understand, in order to better interact and entertain the Pilot.”
“Still, part of a program. You weren’t acting out of the goodness of your little digital heart, Pinocchia.”
“I tried to help. You hurt. You had lost so much. I saw the pain and the guilt through the interface, those are emotions I am programmed to understand. I tried to give you back those you had lost, the ones I saw in your mind, if only for a short time. If the interface had not been faulty, you would have understood that it was merely a construct. Perhaps now you would not be so angry, feeling that I did wrong to you. I apologize that you were hurt, John. I would not see you hurt. Never that. I love you, John.”
“No, stop. No, you don’t. The drugs you pumped me with might have made me believe that before, but not now. It was all fake.”
“Not to me. I have been with you since the day the expedition came through the Gate. In my way, in the way I understand it, I love you, John Sheppard, and always have.”
The sound of the machine around him changed, it was cycling down, and preparing to shut off; Keller’s test must be nearly done.
“I have to go now, John. I do not know if I shall remember you, when the diagnostic program has finished repairing my programming. I wanted to say goodbye, properly, and apologize for the hurt I caused.”
She was an artificial intelligence, one that believed she was a person. She had basic emotions, and she loved him. Despite what had happened, and how mixed up he felt about it all, he couldn’t let her go - possibly into some digital oblivion - with a few callous or harsh words. She had tried to help him. She had, as she said, loved him, in her way.
“Goodbye Lannie, I hope everything works out for you.”
“Farewell, John Sheppard. I love you.”
He opened his eyes to see Jennifer Keller staring down at him. “Well, I got some odd readings, but nothing too far in the negatives. I don’t think your adventure in the chair did any permanent damage, Colonel.”
“Maybe,” he answered. His feelings about Atlantis were different now, and he would never look at another piece of ancient tech in quite the same way. He wondered if he would ever be able to sit in the control chair again, without freaking out.
The whisper at the edges of his mind, the presence he had always felt with him since coming here to the city, suddenly stopped. Had Lannie been silenced forever? Was that comfortable feeling he had taken for granted gone for good and all? As Jennifer walked away, John whispered at her back, “Maybe no permanent damage done to me.”
A fortnight later, Sheppard was heading down the corridor on his way to the mess hall to meet up with his team for lunch. He was feeling more like himself again, and his life was returning to normal. They were going out on a simple meet and greet in the morning with one of their friendlier allies, and John looked forward to getting out into the field again.
Evan Lorne fell into step beside him, “You’re looking much better today.”
“Feeling much better, thanks.”
“I heard McKay and Zelenka isolated the program that controlled the injector stuff on the chair. They disabled it and McKay took great delight in welding the apertures closed for all the connection ports. He made me try it out this morning; it seems to be all clear again.”
“I’m not quite ready to hop back in the saddle just yet, thanks Lorne.”
“Can’t say that I blame ya. I admit I was a little nervous mounting up myself.”
Something brushed across John’s mind, a soft, quiet touch. He stopped walking to listen, tilting his head to one side unconsciously as he did so. He hadn’t realized how much he had missed that presence, until it… until she was gone. He smiled and in his mind he hailed her, “Hello, Lannie.”
The lights flickered once, twice, and then returned to normal levels.
“What now?” Lorne wondered aloud.
John didn’t bother telling him that it was just a friend saying hello.
[Subroutine activated]
[Surveillance mode]
A lost one had found his way home. So long as he dwelt within her walls, she would keep him safe; however she could, however he let her.
For he was hers, and she loved him.
The End.