In a Clean White Room

Jackson sat on a woven blanket, in the midst of a sea of tiny flames. He looked up at Rush and his eyes were the blue of desert sky arced over picked-clean bones.

The Dodge Charger was a man’s car.

“Are you going to look at that?” Vala glanced at the legal-pad filled with math. “Or just stand in your doorway like an artistically disheveled Ambassador of Men’s Dress Shirts?”

Dr. Levant looks at Colonel Danning, his whole mind burning behind his eyes. “You don’t understand,” he says softly.

“Did y’just call me ‘gate bait’?” Rush asked.

Rush hated photons. They were the cheap grief of the cosmos.

There was no escaping the fact Young’s bones were bolted together.

“Hey,” Sheppard says, warm and slow, like death isn’t seconds away. “Close your eyes, touch the floor, and ask the fields to stop, maybe.” He gives Rush the smile that’ll never come when he poses for pictures.

“You think this adorably-cut jacket is regulation?” Vala hopped from the desk and twirled. “Think again.”

“Local Math Professor Who’s Never Seen a DHD Thinks It Looks ‘Wrong’,” McKay said, like he was workshopping headlines for a satirical newspaper.

“The whole world owes me coffee,” Jackson said, and while his delivery was light, those blue-fire eyes were anything but.

Young’s ability to ignore the (admittedly gratuitous) academic barbed-wire masquerading as Nick Rush’s current personality was (endearingly) impressive.

Carolyn Lam changes her direction, spinning on the axis of the naquadah in her pocket.

“ But I’m not dressed for a car-jacking, handsome,” Vala said, faux seduction dripping from her words. “I could use a new shirt.”

“You ever driven a real car, hotshot? Something with more than two ponies worth of horsepower?”

Sam Carter is alone.

“I’m going to make my continued involvement with the stargate program contingent upon you taking a computer literacy class,” Rush snarled.

“Believe it or not,” Vala said, “we’re here to rescue you.”

“Less talking,” Young said grimly, as the sound of gunfire approached their position, “more climbing.”

Quantity. Structure. Space. Change.

“This phone has seen some times. It knows the world now.”

Jackson sighed theatrically. “No one appreciates me.”

“ If seven chevrons take you within the galaxy and eight chevrons take you without, then nine chevrons—”

What did they want from him anyway, this fraternitas sanitas that razed civilizations to the ground with a wink and a smile and obligatorily cheeky commentary?

Just hostile incursions and math.

This was what had driven Schumann insane.

“Dang it,” Mitchell said. “Jackson and Carter are infecting my lexicon.”

One could not disappoint the dead.

How he was gonna unpack all these boxes, he had no idea.

“You said this ‘moving’ was a cultural rite of passage.”

It must begin somewhere.