Powerhouse part three
"You planning on telling us what happened?" Daniel was still being suspicious and unpleasant, but Charlie ignored him. He wanted to know what Jim had done Outside, too.
"Brackett fitted me up with a video camera, one of those little ones that fits behind your ear, and a mike, so he could hear all I said and see what I saw. I decided not to take a chance - I couldn't leave a note, or get to a phone, not without risking him doing damage to Blair or the other hostages. So I did what he asked, broke into the bank, put the symbols you gave me into the computer, and brought back what came up next."
"Did you take a screen print?"
"No, Brackett said it would trigger alarms. Brackett had me point the video pick up at the screen, says he's going to print out the next screen for you from that."
"Well," Daniel chimed in again, "at least that buys us some time. That is, assuming you have some kind of plan that doesn't involve our giving away state secrets and a couple of billion dollars to this asshole, that is?"
"Look, Daniel, I've cut you some slack because you're protecting Jack and trying to avoid giving away some pretty top secret stuff, and you have to assume that Charlie and I are with the bad guys. But we've got hostages to look out for, too, and we're all worried sick, and having you snarking at us isn't helping anyone, OK?"
Daniel lay back on the bench and sighed deeply and then put his arm over his eyes as if he was going to try to sleep.
"I know, I know. But usually the good guys rescue me before this point, you know? I've already given you one symbol, and you're just going to keep wanting more, aren't you?"
Jim snorted. "Hell, tell me about it. Usually I *am* the good guys. I much prefer doing the rescuing part. But it's Brackett who's going to want more, not us, OK? We're the good guys too, remember. Get some sleep, Daniel. It'll all look better in the morning."
How could Jim sleep? How could any of them sleep? Charlie stressed the chain again, counting the repetitions mindlessly, comparing them to his heartbeat and calculating the time again. Was it day, or night? Slowly Daniel's breathing changed, Jim's too. It felt like night; quiet, dream-like, cold. He could see the symbols from the first screen, arranged in their concentric circles, starting to move this way and that, if you moved the outer ring clockwise till the first symbol from the sequence was at the top… There was something about the final symbol and its placement. What had Daniel called it? The point of origin. Origin of what? The symbols started to rearrange themselves, unbidden, outlined in gold against the blue wall…
Blue?
Blue.
Trees. He was back in the blue jungle again, and the symbols had shrunk to the size of insects and were turning on his hand, as if he had a circus act, a hive of trained bees dancing, the outer ring turning this way, the inner ring that, then moving ninety degrees to the outer ring and revolving around the point of origin and then there was a third circle, a third ring of dancing symbols rotating perpendicular to the other two and…
"Charlie!"
It was Blair again, dressed in feathers and paint, and next to him was Jim, fierce in warpaint and bandanna, carrying a bow and a quiver of arrows, but they were both smiling at him. He looked down at himself. He supposed he did look a bit strange, dressed in paper scrubs, holding out his hand, palm flat, with a menagerie of little gold symbols dancing in rings above it.
"It's all right Charlie. This is a dream walk. I'm a shaman, and I'm connected to Jim, so we can talk here without Brackett being able to overhear us."
"I'm surprised Charlie can get here too, Chief."
"I don't think he's fully here either, are you, Charlie? See those symbols on his hand - last time it was numbers. Where are we, Charlie?"
That was easy. And he liked Blair. "This is where the numbers are," he said. "Only there's never been anyone else here. It's good."
"Numbers?" Jim was frowning but Blair held up a hand and shushed him.
"It's all right, Jim. Charlie, you need to hold on to the numbers, the symbols, and stay here with us, all right?"
"All right," Charlie said amiably. Jim was much taller, out of the cage. Numbers started to climb up his leg and circle his head and he eyed them warily but Blair just laughed and brushed them away like insects.
"Cut it out, Charlie. Look, Jim, I don't know where we are - our physical bodies, I mean - or where you are. We could be in the same building, but equally we could be in different counties - different states - for all we know."
The symbols were dancing on his palm but there were numbers, too, sneaky little ones, working in pairs behind Blair. Measuring! That was what they were doing, dancing together and then splitting apart, one to Blair's ankle and one to his knee, measuring the length of his calf and then coming together again and dancing round each other. A pair measured Jim's bow and he brushed them away impatiently, while another pair danced up and down the length of Blair's braided hair. But there were more of them behind Blair and suddenly Charlie realised why.
"What's that?" he said. It was like a rope, coming from Blair and leading off into the distance, and there were numbers dancing up and down it, pairing up and making clusters but every time making the same number, 47.5.
Blair and Jim slowly turned around and Charlie saw there was a golden rope attached to each of them, Blair's leading off into the distance, Jim's thicker and more solid, leading down into the ground at his feet.
"Jim! That's it! Think about it! We're connected to our bodies - you and Charlie are right here, in one cell, and I must be connected to mine - we could just follow the connection and see how far away we are."
"Woah there cochise, let's not go anywhere just yet. This isn't the usual blue jungle."
"Well, maybe it's because there's someone else here, too. Charlie brings something to the deal too. Don's been telling us about him; he's some kind of math genius, right? So that would be why the numbers are flitting around."
Charlie wondered what the blue jungle looked like when he wasn't there. And where were the numbers, when they weren't in the blue?
"What about the others? Can we get Daniel and Jack and Don here too? If they're asleep, dreaming maybe? Then we could all get together, maybe work something out. Jim, this could be it! We could come up with a plan and Brackett would have no way of overhearing us."
"Daniel was asleep like Jim," Charlie offered. He wasn't asleep, he knew. But Daniel was.
Jim was in charge, it seemed. Blair looked at him and he slowly nodded, giving permission. Blair stood up straighter, closed his eyes, stretched out his arms and… reached.
Suddenly they weren't in the jungle but back in the room. It was still blue, and Jim was still standing upright like a warrior, but encased from his thighs downwards in the cage where his body lay sleeping. Charlie found he was back in his chains, sitting on the bench by the wall. Blair was fainter, somehow, like a ghost, a shadow, still with his hair braided and his face painted.
And in the corner, where Daniel ought to be, there was a giant glowing spider. No, not a spider. An enormous glowing thing, twice the size of Jim or Blair, and golden, with a mass of golden tentacles. Blair backed away from it, panicked, and yelled "Jim!"
Charlie woke up, panting for breath. Jim was back in his cage, yelling "Blair!" And they both turned and looked at Daniel, who had sat up abruptly. His hair was standing on end and he was looking at them as if he'd never seen them before.
"What the… What… What ARE you?" Jim said.
***
"It was just a nightmare," Charlie said urgently. "Jim. You just had a nightmare. You woke us up, that's all. Go back to sleep."
Daniel looked at them both and opened his mouth to say something but Charlie tugged at his ear and looked at Jim.
"Just a dream, OK Jim? You need to go back to sleep. We should all try and get some sleep, right?"
"Right. Sorry." The bars rattled as Jim adjusted his position in the cage, trying in vain to get comfortable. Daniel turned his face to the wall and either went back to sleep or at least pretended to be asleep. And Charlie lay very carefully down on the bench and closed his eyes. Pi, he thought, watching the ratio turn itself to numbers. Calculate the digits… fifty… a hundred…
Blue. It was getting easier. And Jim was there, frowning, his bow strung, an arrow pointing towards the glowy spider-thing that represented Daniel.
Blair walked through the wall, each hand holding tight to the wrist of another man, one on either side of him: Don! And the other one must be Jack.
Blair carefully handed Don's wrist to Charlie. Charlie noticed he and Don were both still wearing the blue scrubs that their real bodies were wearing, while Jim and Blair were both in jungle gear, camouflage and paints, and Jack was wearing some kind of uniform. "Keep hold of Charlie and concentrate, Don."
Don looked Charlie over critically. "You OK, Charlie?" Charlie shrugged the question off. Don looked fine but of course this was only his… what? Out of body experience? Soul? Don's hand in his felt real. But Charlie knew he wasn't really here: Don's body was still beaten up and hurt, back in the cell with Blair and Jack.
Jack, however, took one look at the glowy spider thing and said "oh for cryin' out loud, Daniel, you're dead AGAIN? What did I tell you the last time? I'm telling you, you wind up naked and amnesiac in my office one more time and I'm going to turn your goldfish into sushi."
"I don't think he's dead, Jack," Blair said calmly. "He was alive when Charlie and Jim were with him in the cell, right guys?"
"Right."
"Yeah."
The glowy spider thing shimmered and shrank into itself and then slowly turned into Daniel. A golden glowy Daniel, admittedly, wearing a cream v-neck sweater over some chinos. He ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. "I'm not dead, Jack. I don't know what or where I am, but I'm pretty sure I'm not dead."
"That's so cool," Blair said. "How many times have you been dead, anyway? I only died once… so far, anyway."
"It's not a contest," Jack and Jim said simultaneously and Charlie laughed.
"We're in a kind of alternate reality," Blair explained. "Like a dream. A shared subconscious. Jim and I have access to it because I'm a shaman and he's my… partner. Charlie has access to it because his mind works a slightly different way from the rest of us, because of the numbers. And either Charlie or I seem to be able to anchor the rest of you - Don, Jack - here. But Daniel, I have no idea."
There was a moment's silence.
"Oh Daniel?" Jack said in a sing-song voice.
"Jack?"
"Would you be so kind as to unlock the cell door, please?"
"I…"
"Ah-ah-ah-ah. No. You're not dead. So you're not glowy all the time. So the rest of the glowy people aren't going to come and stop you if you actually USE your stupendous powers this time, for crying out loud."
"Jack…"
"Daniel. Open. The damned. Door."
Charlie saw Jim's lip curl in amusement, and Blair seemed to be hiding a smile, too. Daniel dropped his head and seemed to look inwards and then slowly shrank back into the glowy spider thing. He - walked? Flew? Levitated? - anyway, the spidery thing drifted over towards where the door ought to be, and then there were numbers outlining the door frame, and there was a clunk!
Then it was a door again, and it was open.
They drifted, all six of them, towards the open door.
"Bodies!" Blair said suddenly.
They all turned back, and saw the golden threads anchoring Jim and Daniel and Charlie. Then Daniel reached out with his tentacles and Charlie felt something, something cold, pass through him, and he could feel the bench under his backside and feel the cold chains encircling his wrists, and while he could still see the blue jungle and the ghostly forms of Don and Jack and Blair, he could also see their real bodies. He stood up and the chains fell away, and the cage door opened and Jim stood up, and Daniel was still there, faintly, with the glowy spider thing kind of sitting in his chest with its tentacles spread out.
"Now you're talking," Jack said. "Let's book. Blair, you take point - we need you to follow the thread and take us back to wherever our bodies are, and I can't believe I just said that. Charlie, keep a tight hold of Don till we get back to our bodies. Then Daniel. And stop glowing. Jim, watch our six."
"Who put you in charge, flyboy," Jim growled, but they formed up as Jack had said.
It wasn't, in the end, all that difficult. The golden threads that linked them to their bodies led Blair back towards the cell where he and Jack and Don were held, and after a few yards Charlie didn't even think it was strange any more, to be seeing the world twice, the dreamworld overlapping with the real.
They came to another door, and Daniel reached out with his tentacles and frowned, but the door still went clunk! like the last, and popped open.
A siren started to sound.
"Took you long enough," Jack said irritably. Suddenly he and Don weren't there by his side, Charlie saw, but were fully back in the real world, sitting on benches, chained like he and Daniel had been. Only the real Don - and the real Jack, and the real Blair - looked different from their glowy selves.
"Don!" Charlie rushed to his side. Don's jaw was black and blue and his eye was cut and puffy where someone had hit him, and there was something wrong with his arm, something that looked painful and maybe serious.
"I'm OK Charlie," Don said. "I can walk, OK? Leave it, let's just get out of here."
"Daniel?" Charlie said. But Daniel wasn't paying attention. He was sitting on the bench next to Jack and looking at Jack's knee.
"It's shattered, OK," Jack was saying. "Like I said, let's book. Come on, do your thing, tentacle boy, and then let's get out of here."
Daniel dropped his head again and closed his eyes, and once more they could see him, his real body kind of superimposed on the glowy spider thing that represented his spirit or soul. The glowing tentacles reached out and encompassed Blair and Don and Jack in golden light and there was another chorus of clunk! noises and Don and Blair stood up. But the golden light stayed in a halo around Jack and he suddenly sat back and closed his eyes and then the gold was brighter and brighter and…
"Well *that* was different," Jack said acerbically.
"I'm just sick of hearing you whine about your knees, that's all," Daniel said.
"I do not whine."
"Do so,"
"Do not,"
Jim coughed, pointedly. "Sirens, gents? Brackett? Ring any bells at all?"
They ran.
This time Jim and Blair went first, Charlie followed, helping Don who - now that Jack seemed to positively glow with health - was the most beat up of the party. And Jack and Daniel, each with a slightly golden light playing around them, brought up the rear.
"Brackett!"
Jim almost made it, but Brackett wasn't alone and, before Jim could pounce, once of the others - henchmen, Charlie thought - had grabbed Blair while the other held his gun on Don and on Charlie himself.
"Daniel?"
Jack's voice came from behind them.
"Jack."
"Now would be a good time?"
"A good time for…?"
"A good time for glowy things to come to the aid of the party. Tentacles and whatnot."
"Tentacles?"
"And whatnot."
"Ri-ight."
But it wasn't tentacles, it was light. Charlie's eyes were suddenly blinded by a fierce golden light and, when he could see again, Brackett and his men were on the ground and Jim, Jack and Donnie were the ones holding the guns.
"Now *that's* what turning into a giant glowing energy spider is good for. In my somewhat humble opinion," Jack said.
***
"I'm just saying," Don said, "Kidnapping is a federal crime. Kidnapping Charlie and me is enough to put him away. I never saw any glowing spiders, blue jungles or shamen. Charlie here has a security rating that will get Mr Brackett some serious attention from a number of interested agencies and as far as I'm concerned Charlie and I were alone in our cells until…"
Don's energy seemed to run out.
"Until Brackett went mad and decided on a revenge kidnapping of a cop and his partner from Cascade as well, and we teamed up to take him out?" Blair improvised. "And the cop was kidnapped on his way to process a couple of punk drug dealers and - although they got away - he still happened to have the evidence about his person, so we concocted a cunning plan to dose Brackett and his men by putting the confiscated drugs into their water supply… and, no, we have no idea what they were, but they must have been hallucinogenic, because Brackett started screaming about spiders and unfortunately we forgot to have him blood tested when we booked him and his friends?"
"And - Jack who? Daniel who? There was never anyone else here. A star-what?"
The six men smiled at each other, content. The good guys had won, and the bad guys were going down, and the secrets were all safe. Not a bad result, considering.
"Hey Charlie," Daniel said. He had stopped glowing, and they had found him some ordinary jeans and a sweater that just about fit. "Do you really think we could have broken those chains?"
"In another two weeks," Charlie said.
"Give or take?"
"Give or take."
***
Epilogue
"That was some wild ride," Blair said, tilting back his third beer. "I liked Charlie, didn't you?"
"Yeah, but then I have a long-standing well-known tolerance for long haired geeks."
Peanuts went flying but Jim expertly caught three in succession in his open mouth and batted the others back with the back of his hand.
"And the glowing numbers thing…"
"Humph."
"Not to mention the glowing spider…Did you just say 'humph'? Seriously?"
"I may have - inadvertently - made a 'don't go there' noise which might - if you were particularly slow on the uptake - have been mistaken for the word 'humph'. If there is such a word."
"Jim! I think that's the longest speech I've ever heard you make."
"Humph," Jim said carefully. And reached for the peanuts.
***
"Um… ?"
"Charlie?"
"I just wondered… did you ever come across a woman called Samantha Carter?"
Jack looked at Daniel. Who looked back.
"Um…" Daniel said helpfully.
"Only I did some consulting work with something called the Stargate project. Something like ten years ago."
"Ten years ago?" Daniel counted back. "That was before my time. Jack?"
"Search me. So. You know Sam? You must have been…"
"Oh god yes. I was fifteen years old. Math prodigy, thought I knew everything. And at the same time, a walking hormone factory. And I'd been skipped grade after grade till I was the seven or eight years younger than my peers. I don't think I'd even met a girl who would talk to me, let alone one as smart as Sam."
"Made quite an impression on you, you could say?" Jack was already envisaging the blackmail material he could get out of this.
"Well, it certainly wasn't the other way round. She didn't want me on the project in the first place, and when I was brought in I took one look at her and - hubba hubba. And my brains melted out of my ears, and I don't think I said one coherent sentence in her presence."
"Never heard of her," Jack said firmly. "But you and Don must come out to Colorado some time. We'll barbeque. Me and Daniel. Won't we, Daniel? And introduce you to the rest of our team…"