Mathématique: Chapter 31

“Do y’have cooking wine?” Rush asked. “I feel like lighting something on fire.”

Chapter warnings: Stressors of all kinds. Grief. Physical injuries. Mental health challenges. References to torture. 

Text iteration: Midnightish.

Additional notes: None.

Chapter 31

The 1600 sunlight came in slantwise through the open windows of O’Malley’s Bar & Grill, gleaming off the keys of the piano in the corner and off the polished wooden surfaces of bar and barstools. In the back of the restaurant, vacant pool tables waited for the incoming crowd from Cheyenne Mountain.

“This isn’t a thing I usually do.” Jackson’s words were barely audible over the sound of the TV, the murmur of Happy Hour conversation.

Young took a sip of his beer. Checked his phone. “What, happy hour? Leaving work before 1700? Drinking beer? Taking an interest in eccentric mathematical hotshots?” he asked.

“Yeah.” Jackson stared at his bottle of local, limited-edition microbrew.

Young was also drinking a local beer: Coors.

He scanned the room, taking in the slowly gathering crowd of SGC personnel. SG-14 was at the center of an expanding knot of celebration. They wore matching T-shirts that showed a sequence of four items: the number 14, a carrot, a wrought-iron representation of a picket fence, and a worm on a fishing hook.

“These T-shirts are getting really obscure,” Young commented.

Jackson glanced across the room. “Fourteen-carat ‘gate bait’,” he said, without missing a beat.

“You,” Young said, “are lethal at crossword puzzles, I’ll bet.”

“I’m hit or miss.” Jackson stared at his beer. “I’m better with abstruse wall carvings.”

“Wall carvings.” Young sipped his beer. “I believe it. Seems those things rouse a helluva lotta hell around here.”

Jackson smiled faintly. “I should have been a cruciverbalist,” he agreed, his thumb rubbing the edge of the label on his beer bottle.

Unable to take the radio silence, Young texted Rush.

::You’re still on base, right?::

“You heard from him yet?” Jackson asked.

“Not yet,” Young said.

Jackson tipped his beer at no one. “I wouldn’t worry about it. Mandy Perry’s a great conversationalist.”

“I can see it,” Young replied.

The archeologist glanced at him. “How are you doing with all of this?”

“Playing in the big leagues, you mean?” Young took another sip of his beer. “Rubbing elbows with the flagship team?”

Jackson huffed. “I meant the committees. The politicking.”

Young studied the defeated line of the other man’s shoulders, wondering who Jackson was when he wasn’t the place where the galaxy piled its problems and its anger and its injustice.

“Feeling like it’s all going to shit,” Young admitted. “No two ways about it. How are you doing?”

“Me?” Jackson shrugged. “I’m fine.”

“Yeah?” Young said.

“I do hate it though,” Jackson said conversationally. “Their plan. The game. Mathématique itself.”

“What?” Young asked.

“That’s the name of the Astria Porta expansion pack meant to extend the Wormhole X-treme franchise into a whole new era. I hope it fails.”

“Mathématique,” Jackson said, closing his eyes and letting the word wrench its way out of him in an accented cascade. “Not just the expansion pack, but all that comes with it. Icarus isn’t a bad project—but it’s grounded in the wrong place. Not in exploration, but in warfare. In fear. In desperation. The game is another manifestation of the same old problem.”

“I’m getting that,” Young said.

“I should have seen this coming and warned him.” Jackson edged his thumbnail beneath the label on his bottle of microbrew and teased it up. “I would have—it’s just, I don’t pay attention to anything associated with that stupid franchise. I block it out. Purposefully.”

“I don’t think it would’ve occurred to me at all,” Young admitted, “without the guy painting a dramatic, hostile picture for the top of the top brass.” He fought down a smile.

“He’s perceptive.” Jackson peeled a strip of label off his bottle.

“Yep. And a little too much of an impolitic ass for his own good.” Young studied the Scotch and Irish whiskey on a high shelf behind the bar. The glass caught the full fire of the summer sun. No wonder the liquor here tended to taste like shit.

Jackson peeled another shred off his bottle. “You heard what John Sheppard said at his debriefing.”

“Grossly underestimated,” Young said. “Maybe.”

His phone vibrated. The message was from Rush.

::No, I’m catching a lift to the fucking Andromeda Galaxy::

Young rolled his eyes, trying not to smile.

Jackson gave him a speculative side-eye.

“What?” Young said.

“Nothing.” The other man smiled faintly.

Halfway down the bar, SG-14 knocked back a round of tequila shots and cheered.

“You ever think,” Young began cautiously, “that we should let the man do what he wants to do? Let him be who he is?”

“It’s already too late for that.” Jackson peeled away another colored strip of label. “He didn’t want this. He said no. When I approached him, he said no.”

“Yeah, but he changed his mind.”

“When they see the gate,” Jackson said, “they all change their minds. I did. Sam did. Lam did. Dale Volker did. No one has ever said no. Telford showed him the schematics. The software and the hardware.”

“I remember,” Young said. “It was in the files.”

“I think Telford may have shown him the cypher set. Before he signed the NDA.”

“That,” Young heard the grind come into his tone, “wasn’t in the files.”

Jackson worked his thumbnail beneath a wide swath of label. “How well do you know him?”

“David?” Young asked.

Jackson nodded.

“I wish you hadn’t come,” Telford whispers, choking on ash. “God, I wish you hadn’t.”

“Well,” Young said. “Very well.”

“Do you think there’s any chance,” Jackson paused, steeled himself, then said, “that Telford is the leak?”

“No,” Young said. “David?” His throat closed. “Do you know,” he rasped, regrouping, “how much he hates them? Do you have any idea? I’ve never met anyone who hates them so much.”

“He’s not the one who came back with a broken spine,” Jackson said, penetrating. Steady.

“There are worse things than a broken back. Things much, much worse.”

“I know,” Jackson said. “I know.”

Young looked away, flustered, half in flashback, his mind full of ash, confused by the vehemence of his own response.

“I know what they did to him,” Jackson continued. “I’ve been tortured. I’ve been murdered. I’ve been brought back to be tortured again. I’ve been toyed with. I’ve been manipulated. I’ve been forced to act against my will. And I know that hatred, that real hatred—” Jackson stopped himself. Shook his head.

Young swallowed in a dry throat.

Jackson peeled another strip of label away from his beer bottle. “I’m sorry. I had to ask.”

Young nodded.

“Or, I should say, I had to ask someone who would tell me.” Jackson gave him a small, uncertain smile.

“I’ve known David a long time,” Young said.

“So have I,” Jackson replied. “David is a consequentialist, meaning he judges the morality of an act by its downstream effects and I can’t—” he paused, shredding another strip of label, “—I can’t, categorically, say he’s wrong to do that. Not now. Not when we can’t trust ourselves, our motives, to truly be our own. And even if we could, I’ve made similar choices, I—I—I’ve weighted outcomes, I can’t claim any moral high ground, I can’t know anything for sure, I can’t—” Jackson fixed on the half-empty bottles above the bar.

“Jackson,” Young said gently.

But Jackson plowed over him. “I’m no better than anyone. No more trustworthy. No less selfish. Deontology is the provenance of blind ideologues and wishful thinkers. David is right about me. I created the situation we find ourselves in. I attracted attention. I indirectly made your neighbor the resource he is. I see a box labeled: DO NOT OPEN, and what do I do? I open it. That’s what I do. You know where the word ‘sin’ comes from? Old English ‘synn’: transgression against divine law. Where did ‘synn’ come from? A Proto-Indo-European root deriving related to ‘being’ itself.”

“You did what we all do,” Young countered. “You opened a door. That’s it.”

“He’ll unlock it,” Jackson whispered. “Your neighbor. It’s coming.”

“I don’t think we can stop him,” Young said, “and I don’t know that we should.”

“One day we’ll open the box that’ll unmake us.” Jackson shredded the peeled remains of his label. “It’s happened before. In other realities.”

Young took a sip of his beer, deliberately trying to drain some of the intensity out of their conversation. “We’re a box opening people. It’s what we do. I’d rather people like you and Carter and McKay open those boxes than anyone else.”

Jackson shrugged.

“Don’t go looking for a sword to fall on. They’re all over the damn place.”

“The trick,” Jackson said, toying with his pile of shredded paper, “is picking the right sword.”

Young’s phone vibrated. He flipped it over to reveal another text from Rush.

::15 min::

“You ever think about talking to someone in Psych about any of this?” Young asked. “I’ve spent some time with James MacKenzie, he’s not so bad.”

Jackson wrapped his arms around himself, hunched his shoulders, and dropped his gaze. Almost as soon as it happened, he seemed to realize what he’d done. He straightened, reached back into his pile of shredded label, and tore a strip. Then another.

“Haven’t you heard?” Jackson asked. “I don’t talk to psych. Not ever.”

“Got it,” Young said.

“Don’t suggest that again,” Jackson whispered.

“Okay,” Young taken aback, “I didn’t mean to—”

“I know,” Jackson said, still shredding. “It’s all right.”

Young found Rush in Perry’s office, his feet propped on her desk, gesturing at a midair display. The pair glanced at him when he appeared in the doorway, but didn’t interrupt their discussion. 

The topic of conversation seemed to be fluid turbulence, but they were smirking at each other and delivering the lines like mathematical innuendo.

Or maybe just mathematical puns?

Hell if he knew.

Whatever they were discussing, it was pretty clear that Rush and Perry looked less upset than they had earlier in the afternoon. Young shifted, trying to take his weight off his left side.

“I realize your schedule is somewhat chaotic,” Rush said, “but I’d appreciate a partial differential of the available solution sets that might fulfill the defined criteria for turbulence in the event horizon.”

“Oh I’d be Stoked to contribute,” Perry replied. “My schedule may be chaotic but I Navier said it wasn’t fluid.”

“Atrocious.” Rush’s smirk escaped into a grin. He glanced up at Young. “I have t’go. Do try an’ streamline things for me, won’t you?”

“I’ll work on it continuously. I’m sure it will all go smoothly.”

“Yes I’d hate for you to run into any kind of turbulence.”

“Oh I doubt that will happen,” Perry said. “I know how it goes. Big whirls have little whirls that feed on their velocity, and little whirls have lesser whirls and so on—”

“To viscosity,” Rush finished, settling his bag over his shoulders. “Write me a textbook on wormhole physics, won’t you?”

“Why?”

“Because I want t’read the thing.”

“Go write a formal proof and win another medal. Leave the practical applications of fluid turbulence to the real scientists.”

“Y’realize that mathematics is the apex of the quantitative hierarchy, correct?”

“But physics is cooler.” Perry shifted her gaze from Rush to Young, her smile turning a little brighter. “Am I right, colonel?”

“Uh,” Young said, “I prefer ice hockey, myself.”

Rush and Perry looked at him in disappointed silence.

“Besides,” Perry continued, her focus back on Rush, “it’s not a hierarchy, it’s a pendulum. Pure math swings back around to land next to abstract art.”

“It most certainly does not,” Rush said, affronted.

“And on that note,” Young pushed away from the wall, “I think we should get out of here. Before you guys start punning about pendulums.”

“Please. We only periodically pun,” Perry proclaimed. “Besides, pendulum puns are pretty paltry. I mean, you can’t do much with a ‘massless rod’ or a ‘rigid body problem.’ Nowhere to take those.”

“And let’s keep it that way, shall we?” Rush eyed Perry over the tops of his designer glasses, then stepped past Young and into the hall, heading for the elevators.

“Bye, I guess,” Perry called after him.

Young looked after him, but didn’t immediately follow. “He’s not much for pleasantries, is he?”

“No.” Perry cleared her throat. “But I’m not complaining.”

“You think he’s okay?” Young asked.

“I don’t know,” Perry replied, serious and still across the clean expanse of her desk. “That project…I had no idea.”

“Are you okay?” Young asked. 

“I don’t know,” Perry whispered.

“I get that,” Young said.

“You’d better go.” Perry tilted her head in the direction of the elevators.

Young nodded and peeled himself away from the doorframe. He limped through the halls, narrowly avoiding a collision with a stressed civilian kid who’d no doubt translated his first civilization-level death threat. He caught up with his neighbor in front of the central elevators. Rush had one hand pressed to the side of his temple. The other was digging through his messenger bag.

“How’s it going, hotshot?” Young asked. “You get all your stuff done?”

“Pointless meeting? Check. Chess tutorial? Check. Fluid dynamics consult? Check.” Rush pulled Young’s sunglasses out of his bag and immediately swapped them for his glasses. “Do y’have cooking wine? I feel like lighting something on fire.”

“Um,” Young said.

“Rum would work.”

“I have rum,” Young admitted, “but I don’t think my kitchen is the kind of kitchen where you can go lighting pans on fire—”

“Yes; I’m sure you do think that.”

Young considered pressing Rush into talking about what’d happened that afternoon, about what he thought of the SGC and its institutional cruelties and kindnesses, what he thought of Jackson, what he thought of Telford, what had happened to his wife, why he was here rather than on Atlantis, which seemed like the only place in the universe where he might have a chance of a normal life.

But he said none of those things.

“Headache?” he asked.

“Yes,” Rush sighed.

“You get an awful lot of headaches, hotshot. You ever get anyone to look at that?”

“Yes,” Rush said.

“And?”

“I’m prone to headaches.”

“Maybe if you’d sleep on a regular basis—”

“Excuse me, did I solicit your advice then suffer a memory lapse?” Rush asked politely.

“Not really, no,” Young said.

“Well, given we’ve set a precedent of unsolicited advice, I suggest y’content yourself with silent contemplation of your incipient dinner, or ‘ice hockey’, or whatever you think about when not speaking.”

“Young seven, Rush four.”

“I didn’t say it.” Rush shot him a sharp look.

“Hate to break it to you but, ‘I suggest you content yourself with silent contemplation’ is ‘shut up’ with some verbal window dressing. I’m wiping the floor with you here, hotshot.”

“Paraphrased, bastardized, or otherwise altered versions of the words ‘shut up’ were not covered under your initial description of the rules of this game and if you want to implement them, I’ll need fair warning.”

“Fine,” Young said. “Consider yourself warned.”

“Noted.”

The elevator opened.

“So,” Young said. “Lighting things on fire. Why do I get the feeling this is a longstanding hobby of yours?”

“I can’t imagine,” Rush replied.

After the drive home through the scorching remains of the day, after the Steak Diane and the minefield of dinner conversation with Rush, after the phone call to Mitchell and the three shots of Jack Daniels it took to lull his mind into sleep—

After all of that, he dreamt of David Telford.

Telford leans into the skimmer’s door, smeared with his own blood. His hand, trembling, presses against his face as they speed over the ash-choked surface of the city outskirts.

Telford doesn’t speak. Maybe he can’t.

“I came to get you out,” Young rasps, too loud in the small craft.

“I know.” Telford’s voice is a ragged smear.

The engines whir.

The ash flies thicker. Faster.

Red light casts a dark city in chiaroscured relief.

“I’ll never be able to thank you.” Telford swallows in a dry throat. “To repay you.”

“Things aren’t like that between us,” Young says. “This falls outside the bounds of debt. Outside repay.”

The defenses on the city limits activate.

The skimmer’s dash turns gold. Goa’uld script flows beneath his fingers as he directs the craft. Behind him, a swarm of drones and speeders fades in and out of ash-thick air. He stays ahead of them, a deft hand atop the bright controls. The only person who can match him as a pilot is Sheppard. He’s light years, thousands of flight hours, and endless Earth-based simulations ahead of the best the Lucian Alliance can offer.

But he’s low on fuel.

And there are so many on his tail.

His sensors choke with ash.

Telford coughs. “Wasn’t supposed to happen like this.” Shaking, he sits forward to study the Goa’uld controls.

Young glances at him. Sees the bleeding insignia of the Sixth House of the Lucian Alliance, cut crudely into the other man’s chest before Telford shifts the remains of his jacket to shield it from view.

It’ll scar.

It’s meant to.

“I know.” Young watches the sensors, flying by instrument and instinct. “They give you the drug?”

“I don’t think they did,” Telford replies, “but…how would I know?”

The whir of the small craft becomes a whine as thickening ash begins to choke the engine. It struggles hard, like it has a determined heart somewhere beneath all that gold. The controls turn sluggish. 

The forces of the Sixth House begin to fire.

“Where’s your Tel’tak?” Telford’s tone turns bravely conversational. As if he’s merely curious. As if this is a walk in the park, and nothing crucial rides upon Young’s answer.

“Nearby.”

Telford smiles, but his eyes are haunted. One hand presses against the brand cut into his chest.

A well-placed shot by their pursuit kills the overburdened engine. Rock formations, backlit in red, fill his field of view. He fights to keep the craft aloft. He’s losing control. It’s bucking. rolling, twisting. With a sweep of his hand, he fires half his thrusters, putting a spin on the crash that’ll protect David when they meet the side of the looming mountain.

He comes to, on his back.

In the dust.

“Oh no.” Telford kneels next to him. “Oh Christ. Oh shit. Oh fuck.” Ash falls like snow atop the rock, the metal. It settles over the dark of Telford’s hair. “They’re coming.”

The sky is red. Like rust. Like ancient blood.

Young grips Telford’s wrist.

Telford collects himself. Calms. Hardens. “They’re coming,” he says. “Where’d you leave the ship?”

Young spits blood into the reddish dirt and swallows. “Where do you think?” He grins, his teeth stained with blood. He looks up the steep slope of the active volcano above.

Telford follows his gaze, shaking, bloodied. But he huffs a laugh, then looks down at Young with fire in his eyes. “You priceless son of a bitch.”

Young laughs. Pain shoots from his spine to his toes.

“Which way is it gonna be?” Telford asks, not looking at him. “The hard way, or the hard way?”

“The hard way,” Young grinds out. “It’s always the hard way.”

“Yup.” Telford braces his shoulder against the twisted wreckage of their downed craft. “Good answer.” He pulls out an LA med kit.

Young shakes his head. “No.” No use, is what he doesn’t say.

Telford hauls him up. The pain is unbearable, past endurance. He can’t stand. He can’t speak. He can only dig his hands into the shreds of Telford’s jacket. But Telford, injured, tortured, pushed past any ledge that words might name, can’t even support himself.

They’re back on the ground.

“Sorry.” Telford chokes and coughs on ash. “I forgot. We’re doing this the hard way.”

“Thought that was the hard way.” Young tastes blood and sulfur.

“The hard way,” Telford rasps, getting his hands and feet beneath him, “is the struggle in the dirt. Clawing, crawling your way to an objective.”

Young’s fingers dig into loose earth. He drags himself up the steep slope. Their progress is slow, hand over agonizing hand. His bad leg trails behind him.

“I wish you hadn’t come.” Telford, ahead, has a grip on his jacket. He hauls Young over a few feet of ash and stone. “I wish to God you hadn’t.”

“Too late,” Young rasps.

The air is turning hot. It hurts to breathe..

Telford coughs. His fingers close around gray dust, trying for traction. Failing. “We’re not gonna die here,” he says.

Young coughs. “No?”

“No,” Telford replies. “I won’t allow us to die here.”

“Not looking good,” Young says.

“Yes it is,” Telford snarls. He shielding his face from a blast of heated air.

Young has never been in pain like this.

He’s cold.

He’s hot. 

He can’t breathe.

“I think Sanchez has a crush on me.” Telford finds a ledge beneath the ash. He braces a foot, and hauls Young a few more feet up the slope. “Agree?” He coughs in the acrid air. “Or disagree?”

“Disagree.” Young spits a mouthful of blood, trying to find enough leverage with his good leg that he can help Telford. “You wish.”

“What do you mean ‘I wish’?” Telford asks.

“Everyone—” Young shudders with a wave of pain, “—wants to date a combat engineer.”

“Yeah,” Telford breathes. “Short though. Don’t know about the hair.”

Young inhales slowly, easing air past blood. “Dick.”

“I save your life, and this is the thanks I get?”

“Still a dick,” Young rasps.

Telford coughs.

“If you make it back,” Young begins.

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Look out for Emily, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Telford gasps, “but no. We’re both going back. That’s the deal.”

“That’s the deal, is it?”

“That’s the deal.”

Young sat, gasping for breath. His back hurt, deep and hot. He pressed a hand to his chest and tried to convince the ache in his lungs that he was fine, that the air was clear, not filled with ash.

All that pain. All that struggle. It was nothing more than memory.

He’d survived. He was here. On his couch, covered in a cold sweat. He could smell the lingering traces of the dinner Rush had made hours before. Caramelized brandy. Shallot and browned meat. 

Emily’s absence was more unbearable than it’d been for months.

He buried his face in his hands.