SG1: Point Five. by John Erik Ege - HTML preview

Chapter 21

Young Jack was sitting at the conference table with SG1. Old Jack was trying to put the paper clip he had bent back into its prior shape.

      “Well, this is fun,” old Jack said.

      “We could begin without them,” Samantha said.

“Daniel?” young Jack asked. “Have you ever read a book called the Holographic Universe?”

      “By Talbot?” Daniel asked. “Yeah.”       “So, it’s a real book?” Young Jack asked.

      “Yes,” Daniel said.

      “No,” Samantha said, simultaneously.

      “Sam, it’s a real book, by a real scientist,” Samantha said.

      “It’s a real book, it exists, it’s not real science,” Samantha said.

      “Do you think if you re-read it now, after all your experiences with SG1, you might reconsider your position?” Daniel asked.

      “Maybe, I don’t know, I’d have to actually read it,” Samantha said.

      “You haven’t even read it?” Daniel asked.

      “Is it good?” old Jack asked.

      “Why do you ask?” Samantha asked, turning to young Jack.

      “It’s in Jon’s library, which means he’s read it, at least twice,” young Jack said. He explained every book that Jon had ever read more than once is there in its entirety. They’ve found some incomplete books.

      “And you ask because?” Samantha said.

      “Well, there’s this partial book here in the library, maybe it’s an abstract, I am not sure, but it’s by a physicist, a Reagents professor and director of the Center for String and Particle Theory at the University of Maryland,” young Jack said. “He claims when you look at the fundamental math governing our Universe, it resembles Internet Code. More specifically, bowser correction code. In essence, he claims we actually live in the Matrix.”

      “And you’re Neo?” old Jack asked.

      “No, Jon is,” young Jack said.       “Seriously?” Samantha asked.

      “How else do you explain the magic?” young Jack asked. “Don’t do that.” Young Jack was referring the face she was making. “Maybe our Universe, the one we are occupying right now is real, but the one Jon, Lakeisha and I were uploaded might be a computer simulation. That would explain everything. Like, why we’re still here, and why we seemed to wake up there when we sleep here. Maybe our bodies there are just avatars for a really sophisticated game. Maybe this is some kind of game, or a test…”

      “To what ends?” Samantha asked.

      “I don’t know,” young Jack said. “The more I know the less I seem to know. But what if we are all in that simulated reality. Maybe that is what Carl Jung tapped into, not the collective unconscious, but a super massive roleplaying game. Maybe we all wake up there all the time but we don’t remember. That would explain why I found and older version of Teal’c. Maybe when we die in one world, our consciousness shifts to another universe. Maybe they’re all real worlds. Maybe everything is an illusions. Maybe we’re all dream characters in someone else’s dreams.

That, too, would explain Jung’s collective unconsciousness…”

      “Slow down,” old Jack said.

      “I am following you,” Daniel said. “Lots of people have been debating this very thing since at least Plato, probably before him. It’s basically ‘the Cave’ concept. One of the problems is that it is virtually impossible to determine if something is real or simulated.”

      “Ha ha,” young Jack said. “The people we helped. They have a legend of a snake goddess that rises up to provide enlightenment. What they shared with me reminded me a lot of the Goa’uld. It appears to be juxtaposed with our creation myth, only instead of tempting Eve, the snake joins with the woman to raise her to a new level of awareness, bringing her all the knowledge that the snake has ever learned. This first human/snakehead called herself Lilith. They call the snake heads here beacons of light because they actually bring light, flashing eyes notwithstanding. The human cartels in charge of the galaxy promote the idea that the snake people are demons trying to destroy God’s creation. This is just one myth the cartels perpetuate to maintain their control. There may be several cartels in play, all fighting for dominion over the galaxy. I suspect none of the planet bound populations have a clue what’s really going on because most of the gates and normal space lanes are controlled by the cartels. Even the population of Earth doesn’t seem to know what’s really going on. There is fleet in the solar system calling themselves Space Warden. Earth may seem like a nice place to visit, in terms of wealth and luxury, but it’s actually a prison planet. Apparently, the humans of the Solar System are really good at making spaceships, and many of the species buy from them. Spaceships and arms.”

      “That’s been a popular theme with conspiracy theorist for a long time,” Samantha said.

      “But what if it’s not a theory. I mean, it doesn’t even have to be happening for real here, but it seems to be happening in that reality. Maybe UFO experiencers are really tapping psychically into that universe. Or, maybe they’re actually there, and their experiences of here are just memories of that other world?”

      “Jack,” Samantha said, delicately. “Look. You’re in a strange place. You’re trying to make sense of something, and you’re using incomplete data sets to make sense of it all. Your brain is filling in the gaps with things you know and don’t know, and making correlations…”       “You don’t think I know that?!” Jack said, crossly. He leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms. He felt tears moving in his eyes, but made absolutely no effort to control them. “Alright, I am feeling something. Let me say my peace, even if I say it badly, I am struggling, but this is important. You adults here are missing the big picture. Hell, I was the adult, here, and I was missing the big picture. Let me illustrate this. This is not a metaphor. The first time I went to high school, I was oblivious to the fact other people were suffering. I wasn’t exactly a bully, but neither did I defend anyone from being bullied. Kids are mean. They find a weakness and they attack it or exploit it. Some of this is because we’re young. Some of this is because we are socialized into believing there is a norm and bullying is one way to get people to fall in line with the unspoken but objective social reality. Some of it is just because we are mean and exploiting our environment to make ourselves feel better. I am not saying it’s bad or good or trying to judge it, but I am saying I was a part of that reality and I did not take time to understand the others in my community and how much they were all struggling. There is a chasm between our children and adolescents today that adult humans don’t appreciate or even understand. Adults are making assumptions, and they are becoming more and more aloof as they chase the materialistic,

American paradigm…”

      Jack put a hand up, as he saw the questions or objections coming. “Don’t. I am not dissing America or the dream. I am an adult, in a child’s body, and I am back in high school. I am like an anthropologist in sheep’s clothing. I am not an adult. I am not an adolescent. I have my feet in two worlds. I see kids suffering, and reaching out to each other and to adults, and not getting their needs met. I see adults suffering, not getting their needs met. From my perspective we’re all lost and on this edge of social catastrophe. This fragile balance of towing the line and being self-sufficient, while remaining appropriately socially connected, and I do mean the word appropriately, because if you think about how everyone is defined by who they know or associate with, well, appropriate is accurate and yet doesn’t come anywhere close to revealing the complexity of social life. In my first life, I would have beaten the crap out of Jon if he annoyed me. In this second life, I nearly got the crap beaten out of me by trying to befriend him. Was it the right thing to do? Maybe. Doing so changed my world. And now, I am in a new Universe, and I find that I am dealing with adult humans who have the mentality of high school students competing for resources and for social dominance. I am wondering now, looking back over my first and short second life, if we ever leave high school behind. Maybe we get stuck in high school frame of mind because that’s actually the adult human, and not some middle ground pretend adolescent mode. Seriously, for hundreds of thousands of years, adolescence was adulthood. Maybe a real adulthood doesn’t arrive until we have lived a hundred years, but since most people don’t live that long to figure things out, there isn’t a lot of wisdom to pass around. Even if there was, they’re either too sickly too communicate it, or the kids running the show dismiss them as irrelevant, because everyone assumes they’re in charge. You, adults, dismiss the young and the old, when in truth, we should all be doing this together!”

      Jack raised both hands. “Oh, I am not done yet. That’s just the equation of us. Add aliens to that. Add super intelligent computers. Oh, and they’re coming to a planet near you, and you can’t stop that train. Even if all the governments got together to band AI, you know for a fact, some nerd in a garage like Bill Gates junior is going to use a 3D printer to make a smart chip, and AI will arrive. That, or the Russians or the Chinese will secretly keep the AI projects going, and we will, too, because we can’t trust those bastards, and we want AI first, because whoever gets there first will be literally hundreds, if not thousands, of years ahead of the competition. One week of AI translates into a thousand years of computation time. So, short of blowing up the world, AI is going to be a thing. We have more than enough resources to feed the world, and yet people starve because we’re playing monopoly for real and forgotten this is just a game. If we don’t get out of this game, when aliens and AI show up in a big way, that game is going to explode. We have been fighting the Goa’uld because of their arrogance, and because it’s right, I get that, but we hold that same affliction within us.

      “I will wrap this up with this. I find myself in a place where I am going to have to make some decisions. I don’t want to just arbitrarily decide what to do. In the past, I could defer to my social cultural ideals. High school. In doing so, I was socially rewarded for doing the right thing, even if it was the wrong thing. I traded high school for the Air Force. Air Force was a solid way of life. It gave me discipline, it put food on the table, it gave me structure, and adventures, and purpose. I achieved honor and accolades and respect, because I exemplified the expected norm. Both my culture of origin and my Air Force training is influencing my decisions now, but that may be insufficient for where I am at. The rules of the Earth and country I know are insufficient. I don’t know how I can ethically apply that to any world or culture there. I am sovereign and I

am alone. So is Jon, Loxy, Lakeisha, Alish, Isis… We are alone, together. I can’t tell them what to do. We’re negotiating right now, but we’re also making mistakes. For better or worse, we have engaged the social reality of that galaxy and made a step in a specific direction that is going to have repercussion. This delicate balance of war and peace, love and hate, light and dark, has just become disturbed, and it might settle out in the wash, or it might just blow everything up. Now, having heard all of that, what would you tell me to do? Knowing that I won’t even remember this speech or this conversation, what would you have me do? What you have us do?”       No immediate response came. It turned out, SG1 was deferring first word to General Hammond, who was behind Jack. So was his new aid. So was Janet, Lakeisha, Jon, and Loxy. Lakeisha and Loxy went forward and each touched Jack’s arm in a commiserative way, and then pulled up their chairs to sit next to him. Jon sat down next to Loxy.

      “That’s some speech, son,” Hammond said, taking his seat.

      “A bit heavy on the emotions,” old, Jack said.

      “Yeah, well, blame it on the youth,” young, Jack said.

      “I didn’t say it was invalid,” old, Jack said.

      “Why are you sitting on technology that could literally free the world from using fossil fuels?” Jon asked. “Even if global warming isn’t the result of human activity, wouldn’t it be in our interest to reduce our footprint, or, I don’t know, maybe actually influence the environment back the other direction?”

“Jon,” Lakeisha said. “That seems like a secondary issue, a distraction from what Jack was talking about.”

      “Is it?” Jon asked. Loxy took his hand.

      “That is a good question, Jon, and above my pay grade,” Hammond said.

      “Well, that’s just it, isn’t,” Jon said. “Who’s grade is it?” Jon turned to young Jack. “You are not alone. We voted before we left the station we were a team.”       “You remember?” young Jack asked.

      “Sort of,” Jon said.

      “We have discovered that Loxy can hypnotize Jon and he can recall things if asked the right questions,” Janet said. “If Loxy can do this in both Universes, then we have an alternative way to stay in touch in the event they lose access to their gate.”

“Do you recall that you arbitrarily went off on your own initiative to save that girl,” young Jack said.

      “It was the right thing to do,” Jon said.

      “That’s not the point. You decided. We didn’t decide,” Jack said. “You nearly got us all killed. You nearly got the whole lot of them killed.”

      “So, just sit back and do nothing?” Jon asked.

      “No! What I am saying is, it could have gone much worse. Maybe, if we had departed, that one girl would have died, Brisk would still be doing bad shit, but we would have been able to come back at a later time and convince them to bury the gate. One death versus the half dozen that did die,” Jack said. “I am not your commanding officer, Jon. But if we continue on excursion and you put our lives in danger like that again, right, wrong, indifferent, I might shoot you.”

      “So, we need to figure this out,” old Jack said.

      “You think?” young Jack said.

      “Yes, that’s what I do,” old Jack said back, equally sarcastic.

      “Given what I’ve heard, I wouldn’t change a thing,” Lakeisha said.

“Well, that’s because you’re not remembering the emotional fall out of killing someone,” young Jack said.

      “Sounded like an asshole to me,” Lakeisha said.

      “Yep, he was,” young Jack. “And, if I know assholes, they usually have family. Brothers, children. Hell, he might even have a dog that likes him somewhere. What if he’s just a bad guy on the weekend, because he’s paid to be a bad guy, but he returns home during the week, and is actually nice to his wife and children? Do you think those kids deserve being without a dad?”       “He was a bad guy, Jack,” Jon said.

      “Yeah! I get that. Jake, back in high school. He’s not a nice guy. But that also might be because his dad beats up on him, and he and his siblings fight amongst themselves in order to win their dad’s affection, and he knows he is losing the game, so he dominates in the school arena, and he gets accolades because his immediate peers need that perceived strength because they’re also struggling. See, this is exactly my point. My first time through high school, if you were a dick, I just thought it was because you were dick. I didn’t take time to sort out all the possible explanations and permutations.”

      “So, you’re saying we shouldn’t have killed him?” Lakeisha asked.

      “Not what I am saying, but this is the complexity of the situation,” young Jack said. “Jon, you advocate peace, no killing. I admire that, especially knowing you will fight to till the death, your own death, to do that. On the other hand, I have evidence to believe you held back. You could have killed Brisk and been done with it, but you chose not to, and in doing so, other people died. That’s another level of complexity to this mess.”

      “Let me be clear, Jack,” Jon said. “I will not intentionally kill anyone.”

      “And that philosophy will get the rest of us killed,” Jack said. “So, either you’re sitting on your ass at home, watching from the sidelines, or you’re stepping up your game, learning some fucking magic missiles, and taking out the bad guys.”

“Jack’s report said you acquired a Zat gun,” old Jack said. “Would you be willing to use phasers, set for stun?”

      “Of course,” Jon said.

      “Apparently, Zat guns are a rare item,” young Jack said. “Per Isis. Apparently the humans are scavengers, and if they find technology, they use it to their advantage, but they aren’t trying to backwards engineer it. The ships they sell are sophisticated, and the weapons they sell are basic projectile and explosives.”

      “And you only have access to the Zat gun, and five staffs,” Hammond said.       “For now,” young Jack said. “Isis still won’t unlock weapon manufacturing options. I have intel on a world that has a bazaar, and so I might be able to buy a P3 and some ammo.”       “Jon, how do you feel about Jack or Lakeisha killing?” Hammond said.

      “I hate it,” Jon said. “And, I am conflicted. Contextually, I can see an argument for killing. Like the Byrd’s said, “To everything, turn, turn, turn, there is a season…”       “That’s the Bible,” Lakeisha said.

“Bottom line, I would prefer no one kill,” Jon said. “I have wanted to learn magic so that

I could have options to defend myself without inflicting harm on others. I want to know magic so

I can heal, not destroy.”

“I share that,” Loxy said. “I will not kill. I also, will not run away from a fight. I will stand with Jon till the end. Our mission there is to bring a message of peace, love, and prosperity to the worlds.”

“You believe that?” Daniel asked.

“I know that,” Loxy said. “That is the fundamental message in Jon’s subconscious. He and I share that subconscious. We are one.”

“So, whether you have Jack and Lakeisha’s help or not, you intend to visit other worlds,” Hammond said.

“Yes,” Jon said. “I have to know. I have to learn. I have to interact. I am trying to find my way back home.”

“Jack has all the memories of being an esteemed officer in the Air Force,” Hammond said. “You’re open to him advising you?”

“Of course,” Jon said. “I love Jack. I love Lakeisha. I don’t want them in harm’s way. I also do not feel comfortable giving them orders. I feel responsible for their presence in my Universe, and so they will always be welcome in my home, for as long as they want to stay. I think we can agree that Tranquility Base is a safe place.”

“For now,” young Jack said. “If we keep having conflicts with the local, galactic militias, well, who knows? We’re going to explore some other worlds with gates. If we find one that isn’t being utilized, we’re going to set up a second base of operation. Isis assured me she can manufacture an iris, which we can control remotely, whether we’re on planet or off.”

“That’s kind of cool,” Samantha said. “I wouldn’t mind having one of those for our

Gate.”

“You want to put Davis out of a job?” old Jack asked.

“I am confused,” Jon said. “Jack said that the kawoosh destroys anything it comes into contact with. Why doesn’t the iris get destroyed every time there is incoming wormhole?” “Well, that’s really kind of technical,” old Jack said.

“No, it’s not,” Samantha said.

“It’s classified,” old Jack said.

“Well, that’s true,” Samantha agreed.

“But you’re going to teach us how to do it?” Jon asked.

“I know how to do it,” young Jack said.

“So, why don’t you do it for every world you visit?” Jon asked.

“It’s a really expensive?” old Jack said.

“More expensive than losing Gates to the other team?” Jon asked.

“Not everyone has access to a replicator like we do,” young Jack said.

“Oh,” Lakeisha said. “So, theoretically, we could go and capture everyone’s gates by attaching our own irises and locking them out.”

“Actually, we could,” Jack said. “It could take a while.”

“How long of a while? How many planets in the galaxy could there be?” Lakeisha asked.

“Upwards of a hundred thousand billion,” Samantha said. “Assuming your galaxy, like ours, has two hundred thousand million stars…”

“There are two hundred thousand million stars in the galaxy?” Lakeisha asked.

“And over a billion, billion galaxies,” Jon said.

“And over a billion, billion universes,” Loxy said.

“I am feeling rather small,” Lakeisha said.

Anita arrived carrying sodas, followed by the new tech carrying four boxes of pizza. A guard brought a tray with ice and cups. Loxy said “OMG, yes! I am starving!”

“I figured you guys might like something to eat while you’re discussing your lives and new protocols,” Anita said.

“I will be 18 in two and a half years, if you’re still single,” young Jack said.

“I will let you know,” Anita said.

“Seriously, Jack,” old jack said. “She’s a bit young for you.” “It’s not like Samantha’s going to date me,” young Jack said.

“Not directly,” old Jack said.

“Sir?” Samantha said.

“It was a joke, Carter,” old Jack said.

“I don’t get it,” Jon said.

      “Oh, well, there’s a lot of gossip that Jack and Samantha hook up,” Daniel said.

      “What gossip?” Samantha said.

      “I, too, have bet a good some of money on this gossip,” Teal’c announced.

      “There’s a pool?” Samantha asked.

      “They have a pool on my longevity, what do you think?” Anita asked.       “You know about the pool?” old Jack asked.

      “Am I disqualified from the pool if Anita leaves because I marry her?” young Jack asked.

      “Yes,” old Jack said.

      “Excuse me?” Lakeisha said. “I thought you were marrying me?”       “You’re going to change your mind,” young Jack said.       “In what Universe?” Lakeisha asked.

      “Interesting,” Daniel said. “There is already divergence?”