Mathématique: Chapter 50

Young spent the day on his couch, staring at the ceiling, imagining what the end of the world would look like from the sidelines.

Chapter warnings: Stressors of all kinds. Grief. Physical injuries. Mental health challenges. Panic attacks. Mentions of torture. Depression.

Text iteration: Midnight.

Additional notes: None.

Chapter 50

Lying on his couch, Young tangled his fingers in his too-long hair. Dust glittered in the lateral rays of afternoon sun streaming through half-shut blinds.

The silence was oppressive.

Young’d spent two weeks ignoring Mitchell’s calls and waiting for his deconditioned muscles to turn themselves to bone while he imagined all the ways the world might end.

The light was clear, the air was cool, and the season was turning.

He tried not to let anything bother him.

Life was full of loss and pain. Intentions went to shit. Terrible things happened to remarkable people. Those people kept living. Not because of or in spite of those terrible things, but because that was what living things did. They damn well lived.

He oughta get on with things.

He’d planned to go to the store. It’d get Mitchell off his back and out of the headspace where the guy felt pressured to show up every few days no matter what he was doing—flying to California to track down a lead on Vala, inserting himself undercover into enclaves of Ori worshippers, worrying about Carter, who’d been cleared to reenter the field, worrying about Jackson, who was worrying himself into an early grave.

He’d planned to show up to physical therapy. His muscle mass was on a downswing, his flexibility had gone to shit, his pain was gaining ground. He didn’t want to be permanently reliant on his cane, but at this rate, he would be.

He’d planned to make himself dinner last night and lunch today. That’s what people did. He hadn’t cooked for himself in a while; he didn’t care for it.

He’d planned to do a lot of things.

He hadn’t done any of them.

Young spent the day on his couch, staring at the ceiling, imagining what the end of the world would look like from the sidelines.

It would be Jackson who would tell him. As a courtesy. Maybe a call. Maybe a text message before deployment offworld. Something short. “Another supergate.” Or maybe just,
“Something’s up, shipping out. Keep an eye on the news.”

And Young would wait.

Someone, maybe Emily or one of his brothers, would call and tell him to turn on the TV.

He’d watch hell unfold from his apartment, torn between reporting for duty that wasn’t his and driving across town to Emily’s place, dragging her to the car. Driving north, away from the Mountain, outta food, outta resources, looking to start or join whatever grass-roots resistance might survive the coming Ori Plague, waiting to die beneath the spread of pines in the Pacific Northwest, from disease, from starvation, from a hundred preventable causes, miserable and full of regret.

He pictured Emily with windblown hair, weeping under trees.

Young shut his eyes against the clear, autumnal light coming through his windows.

He didn’t think the way he’d die would be any worse than the way Rush had died, or, if the man was unlucky, was currently dying. That was what haunted him most—not Rush’s death in hours, not his death in days, but what had and would happen if Kiva hadn’t killed him, if she, by some miracle or statistical mischance, had left him his cortical suppressors.

He’d heard coercive persuasion ruined LA scientists. Ruined them all. It was why LA science was shit.

Riding the dark edge of humor that came at the nadir of hope, Young pictured them together: Rush and Telford in matching dark leather. Perhaps Telford had some larger plan. Maybe he’d let Rush in on it. Maybe Rush, sitting in the front seat of that Acura NSX, had defected. Maybe they’d escape the cultural implosion the Ori were bent on bringing to the Milky Way. Maybe they’d live free of it, opening galactic doors and lighting the universe on fire.

It was as close to cheerful as his thoughts came these days.

A knock on his door, short and sharp, pulled him back to the present.

Young pressed his hands over his face, tempted to pretend he wasn’t home.

Mitchell’d probably break down his door.

He eased his bad leg off the couch and sat. As he flexed his left hip, his nerves struck up a chorus of white-hot rage. He got his feet beneath him and stood, breathing through the pain.

Another knock sounded, more insistent this time.

“Yeah yeah.” He grabbed his crutch made for the door, and opened it.

Jackson stood in the frame, wearing a denim jacket and khaki pants fifteen years outta style. He had a messenger bag over one shoulder. His eyes were red rimmed. He had coffee in one hand, and a six-pack in the other.

“Wow,” Jackson said.

“Jackson.”

“You look awful.” Jackson took a sip of his coffee.

“Like you’re one to talk.” Young motioned the man inside.

“I knew if I brought beer you’d let me in.” Jackson scanned the apartment, taking in the mess, the blankets on the couch, the writing on the walls.

“Jackson, I’d let you through my door any day,” Young said. “You don’t have to bring beer. Mitchell’s a different story.”

“Ah,” Jackson replied. “Good to know that nearly killing you will get me apartment admittance, if not consistent first-name privileges.”

“You seem like a ‘Jackson’ to me, Jackson. What can I say?”

The other man exhaled, short and sharp. “And yet, I try so hard to cultivate my Danielness. Danielity? Danielism. You know a third of last year’s recruits are calling me ‘Jackson?’ I blame you.” The archeologist made for Young’s kitchen table.

Young followed. “I don’t even know any of the new recruits.”

“Does the name ‘Ronald Greer’ ring a bell?”

“I worked with the kid for a day.”

“Well, you’re the source of this surname contamination, and Greer was the carrier.”

“You’re a nerd,” Young replied. “Like, really a nerd.”

“There are worse things to be.” Jackson sank into a chair and pointedly relocated an empty pizza box.

“Don’t I know it.”

“There are worse things I’ve been.” Jackson plunked the six-pack on the table.

Wincing, Young lowered himself into a chair. “I shouldn’t give you these openings.”

“Probably not, no.”

“You doing okay?” Young asked.

“Yeah,” Jackson said.

Young shifted, resolutely ignored the grinding ache in his lower back, and raised his eyebrows at the other man.

Jackson toasted Young with his coffee. “Some day this war’s gonna end.”

Young reached for a beer, tearing a muscle or two in the process. “Quoting Apocalypse Now isn’t exactly reassuring.”

“You’d rather I quoted what?” Jackson asked, “Shakespeare? Saint Augustine, maybe? I just finished The City of God. Saint Augustine’s a little shrill about the theatre and the pagans, but I’m trying to read him with compassion. He was writing during the fall of Rome. That was a tough time. He died weeping over David’s Penitential Psalms as the Vandals lay siege to Hippo. When the city fell, they burned everything but his library.”

Young sighed. “Jackson, you ever think about watching sports in your free time?

“No.”

“Be a stand up guy and find me a bottle-opener, will you?”

Jackson nodded and vanished into Young’s kitchen

Young inspected the bottle he’d pulled from pretentiously unassuming cardboard packaging. Its label was a mess of interlocking pastel shapes that looked like they took themselves and the blue glass bottle they decorated very seriously. He sighed.

“I see you judging my beer.” Jackson reemerged from the kitchen.

“It seems very impressed with itself.”

“It’s a wheat beer.” Jackson slid back into his seat and opened a hand.

“Ah.” Young passed him the bottle.

Jackson pried up the cap and handed it back to him with enough of an eyebrow lift to imply he was wise to the subtext behind Young’s single syllable. Then he opened a bottle for himself.

“Double-fisting, huh?” Young asked. “You must’ve had a bad week.”

“Well,” Jackson said, setting his beer next to his coffee, “you’re right, but only because all the weeks are bad these days.”

Young snorted.

“However.” Jackson hauled his bag from the floor to Young’s tabletop. “There’s a silver lining.”

At first glance, Young had assumed the bag was a hipster accessory. But it wasn’t. It was an SGC-issued bag, used for transporting sensitive documents that existed only in hard copy.

“Jackson,” Young growled, “don’t even think about opening that. I don’t have clearance, and you’re on thin ice as it is.”

Jackson paused, halfway through punching in the combination that would unlock the bag. “Didn’t you know?” His hands were still. “I won.”

“What?”

“I was right,” Jackson said softly. “About all of it. Following your testimony, my bureaucratic clout couldn’t be higher.”

Young took a swig of his beer. It was crisp and cool, like the end of summer. “Because you were right about Telford.”

“Yes,” Jackson confirmed. “I used all that institutional capital to hire a pair of expert consultants on the Lucian Alliance. They’ll be tasked with assisting the search for our lost Fields Medalist and astrophysicist.”

“Who’d you tap?”

“The defector who shot Sam in the chest and—”

“Bold,” Young broke in, full of dry disapproval.

“Her name is Ginn.” Jackson gave him a small smile. “You’ll like her.”

“I’ll what?”

Jackson’s smile gained a little wattage. “The other consultant is you.”

There wasn’t a thought in Young’s head.

“Desk work only,” Jackson continued, “until such time as you’re restored to active duty.” He pulled a stack of paper from his bag, flipped to the end, and passed it to Young. “Sign on the dotted line.”

Young stared at the paper, uncomprehending.

“I’m sorry,” Jackson said, bizarrely apologetic. “But without Rush, with Telford gone to the LA, Icarus is looking like a risky bet. Development’s on hold. Sam and our best math guys have been looking at photos of Rush’s work on cypher nine for a month now, but—” Jackson broke off to gesture at the wall behind Young, “—they can’t make heads or tails of wherever he was going with this.”

Young raised his eyebrows. He’d known the SGC had been in his apartment, known that photos of his mathematical wall art had been part of the investigation, but he hadn’t spent much time thinking about the cypher, and what would happen to it now that Rush was—

Not here.

“Does Carter have the eight he cracked?” Young asked.

“She does,” Jackson said, “but the whole project’s in chaos—financially, logistically, personnel-wise—I don’t think I could’ve gotten your command back, even if I thought it was a good idea, which I—”

“Jackson,” Young growled. “Are you kidding me? I expected to be reading the personal statements of new recruits for the rest of my life. Hand me a pen, damn it.”

The other man dug around in his bag, pulled out a pen, and slid it to Young.

Young leafed through the consulting contract, signing and initialing where appropriate, while Jackson alternated between drinking his coffee and his limited edition microbrew.

When Young was done, he slid the papers back to Jackson.

“You ready for this?” the archeologist asked, grinning.

“Hit me.” Young shifted forward, feeling the sharp pull of muscle as he moved.

Jackson, too, leaned in. “Two days ago we got a break. Our orbital communications platform picked up a flurry of transmissions, in a band we know the Trust uses. We were able to track it down in real time.”

“And?”

“And we forced down a cloaked Tel’tak operated by the Trust,” Jackson said. “We captured an operative.”

“And?” Young growled.

“We got a real lead on Vala. And on Rush. There’s reason to believe they’re still on planet.” Jackson grinned, wild-edged and elated.

“Both of them?” Young breathed. “How is that possible?”

“The Trust teamed up with on-world LA personnel to facilitate a combined abduction of Vala and Rush. Vala was successfully turned over to the Trust, but we know, for sure, that Rush and Vala were together on the Tel’tak. They both received a rare LA psychotropic agent. Vala was surrendered to the Trust for a renegotiated price, because she caused a problem.” Jackson’s bluefire eyes burned. “Speculation amongst the Trust is that she let Rush go.”

Young stared at the other man, his beer halfway to his mouth. “No,” he said. “Not a chance in hell, Jackson.”

“Why not?” Jackson leaned forward, his fingertips pressed against the table. “She could have done it. I’m sure she could have. She knows her way around a Tel’tak.”

“If she let him go, if she somehow ringed him down, we would’ve detected it. We monitor for ring transport, and—”

“Not if the Tel’tak was equipped with stolen Asgard beaming tech—which it was!”

“Transport logs?” Young asked.

“Erased!!!” Jackson grinned, unable to contain his enthusiasm. “By someone who knew what they were doing! By her, maybe. She could’ve done it. For sure.”

“Jackson, if he’s been on planet, then why—”

“Maybe he’s hurt.” Jackson began to worry the pastel edge of the beer label with a determined thumbnail. “Maybe she transported him to Russia with no ID and he can’t get back. Maybe he’s confused about who he is. We’ve never gotten our hands on half the substances the LA’s synthesized or engineered or grown or otherwise cooked up over the years.”

Young rubbed his jaw, every rumor he’d ever heard about LA psychotropic drugs clamoring for space in his head.

“There’s been a lot of LA activity on planet in the past few weeks,” Jackson continued. “They hit a data center in Washington—at least, we think it was them. Maybe they’re looking for him, like we are.”

“What about Vala? You said you thought they were both here?”

“Yes, it was the Trust that wanted her, not the LA, and they’re based on Earth. According to the source that we picked up, she escaped their custody weeks ago.”

Young took a sip of beer, wanting to believe, not allowing it. “It’s a nice story, Jackson, but do you really think it’s anything other than that? Anything other than some desperate, low-ranking Goa’uld, stuck on this rock, feeding you whatever he thinks you wanna hear so you won’t kill him, or turn him over to Ba’al, or the remains of the System Lords?”

“I think Vala could have done it,” Jackson said stubbornly. “I think she’s every bit as resourceful as Sam or Teal’c or Mitchell. I think she could have rescued him, yes. Even drugged herself, I believe she could’ve done it.”

“Maybe,” Young said. “I hope so.”

“There’s enough here for you to get started.” Jackson brought a hand down on the messenger bag. “You’ll be reporting directly to Landry.”

“Me and the defector?”

“Yes,” Jackson said. “Ginn.”

“Sure.”

“Give her a shot,” Jackson said. “She strikes me as trustworthy, astute, and glad to be rid of the Lucian Alliance.”

“Points for style, I guess.” Young replied.

“You’d better get reading. Unnamed Committee #6 is scheduled to meet this coming week to review the current state of LA insurgency and counterinsurgency.”

“We’re at #6 now?” Young asked. “What happened to #5?”

“No idea,” Jackson said dryly. “I’m not on Unnamed Committee #5. I think it might be about me.”

“Don’t get cocky, Jackson.”

“I would never.” The man took a sip of beer, met Young’s eyes, and said, “There’s one other thing I came for.”

“Yeah?” Young pulled files across the table with a depth of relief he hoped didn’t show on his face.

“Sam asked me if I’d take another look at Rush’s apartment. See if I could turn anything up that the internal investigation missed.”

“You’ve got his laptop,” Young said, “and you’ve got pictures of the stuff on my walls.” He gestured at the wall behind him. “What else are you looking to find?”

“Oh y’never know,” Jackson replied. “I’ve been useful, here and there, when it comes to finding things. You wanna tag along?”

Young took a swig of his beer then said, “I’ll grab his key.”

The walk down the hallway felt long. The cast of the fluorescent lighting overhead seemed to bring out the red in the rims of Jackson’s eyes. Young leaned into his cane, gritting his teeth against the tearing sensation in his back. The key he held was cool in his palm.

They stopped in front of Rush’s door.

The only sign that anything had changed was the addition of a secondary lock, bolted to the exterior door. The thing wouldn’t keep out anyone determined to get in, but it wasn’t meant to. The interior hallways of this building were under surveillance by the junior officers in the basement, and the place was guarded by signal scramblers.

In the absence of a coordinated operation by the LA, Rush’s apartment was as secure as it was gonna get, extra lock or no.

Young suspected the superfluous bolting mechanism had been put there mostly to dissuade him from entering. Him, and anyone else Rush might’ve given a key. The guy hadn’t exactly been handing the things out, but Vala might’ve had one.

Jackson unlocked the ad hoc bolt-job, then waved Young forward.

“Y’know,” Young slid the key home, “I’ve never seen the inside of his place.”

“I hadn’t either. Not until the investigation got underway,” was all Jackson said.

Young swung the door wide and stepped into quiet, dust-scented darkness. The faint creak of metal hinges, the tread of their shoes against the floor, the dim unbroken lines of an uncluttered room all came together at once: the space was too empty.

The small hairs on the back of Young’s neck prickled.

The lights were off. The shades were drawn. Young limped into the dim, unfurnished room and stopped.

I’m staying here, Rush had said, short and sharp in Young’s kitchen. Temporarily. I do not live here. 

And he’d been right.

No one lived in this room.

“Lights,” Jackson said, a quiet warning.

Young ducked his head, narrowed his eyes against the coming glare, and braced to see a thing he didn’t want to look at.

The room was empty. Around its periphery were piles of books and notebooks stacked in academic cairns, trapping loose papers beneath them. A desk lamp rested on the floor near the far wall. Charging cables trailed from outlets, their cords curling around books, tangling with one another. A crumpled blazer he’d never seen Rush wear lay against the wall, beneath the light switch. Atop it was a pile of unopened mail. A can of paint and a brush stood at the base of the far wall, a vague menace to the scripted black marker covering the wall above it.

Young turned a slow circle, shoes scuffing the dust-covered floor, blindsided by this testament to human misery.

Opposite the door was the bullet hole he’d put in the mathematician’s wall at the height of summer.

“Damn it, Rush,” he growled.

“Yeah,” Jackson said. “This hits as pretty bleak.”

At the wall near the window, Rush’s angular hand stretched over a five-foot vertical span, extending from slightly above the man’s eye-level down to eight inches from the floor.

Jackson stepped around Young. He faced the wall, wrapped his arms around himself, and considered the math.

Young left him to it.

He couldn’t reconcile this empty set of barely lived-in rooms with the man who’d pulled his books outta boxes and alphabetized them.

Young made his way to the kitchen. He stopped in the doorframe and flipped on the light, eyeing the bare shelves, the dust-covered counter. He opened a drawer. Found nothing in it. He opened the man’s fridge, the cupboards, the cabinets beneath the sink, but the only thing he found was a set of frozen dinners covered with ice crystals, a plastic container of protein mix, and a bottle of scotch.

“You are kidding me, hotshot,” he whispered, pulling the protein powder from the shelf it had been sitting on. “God damn.”

No wonder the man had constantly looked like hell. He hadn’t been living here, in these unfurnished rooms, he’d been living in his own head, in whatever places he had left to him that his dead wife didn’t haunt, or Ancient cities hadn’t co-opted. “Should’ve made you let me in,” Young murmured, rotating the protein mix so its label faced outward. “Stubborn bastard.”

He shut the cabinets and left the kitchen.

Jackson was staring at Rush’s wall, one arm across his chest, a closed fist pressed to his mouth as he studied the math and Ancient laid down in black marker over white paint.

Young passed into a short, dark hall. He glanced at the bathroom, then opened the bedroom door with a high-pitched creak of an unoiled hinge.

The room was a solid wall of boxes, stacked shoulder-high and as deep as the room itself. A few of them had been pulled out and cluttered the space near the door, resting at odd angles, torn open. Clothing was draped haphazardly over cardboard.

“Where did you sleep?” Young muttered. “Did you sleep?”

He shut the bedroom door and went to find Jackson. 

The archeologist was kneeling, his gaze fixed on the math near the floor.

“What do you think?” Young came to stand next to the man.

“This is the ninth cypher.” Jackson reached up to trace a horizontal line that bisected the wall. “Above this line is the seventh. Perry cracked the eighth, once he teed it up for her.”

“Yeah.” Young leaned into his cane. “He said as much.”

Jackson exhaled, slow and measured. “Sam thinks this is the beginning of the ninth,” the other man said, running his fingers over the math on the lower half of the wall. “The stuff in your apartment is more progressed. He was working with crystal harmonics; Perry figured that out.”

“He said it was tonal,” Young said.

“I know.” Jackson brushed fingertips over a set of symbols near the floor. “He told me that as well. Weeks and weeks ago.”

“He had a rough time with it.” Young tried not to choke on his own understatement.

“His wife,” Jackson murmured, “was a violinist.”

“I know,” Young said. “He told me.”

“Did he.” Jackson smiled a small smile. “Good.”

Young watched the archeologist study the wall.

“This,” Jackson said, running his fingers again and again over a set of five parallel lines, “this, I think, is the key.”

“How do you know?” Young asked.

“I don’t,” Jackson said. “I’m not a musician. But he’s evolving something here. The standard way of representing tones in the western canon is five parallel lines. He’s moving away from that, working out ways to represent tones, maybe. And the angle of this—relative to the rest of what he wrote—this came after. He’s sitting on the floor to write this low. This is where he shifts to his own notation for the crystal harmonics. If anything here is a primer, this chunk is as close it gets.”

“You don’t think someone’s already looked at this?” Young asked. “Come up with all this stuff?”

Jackson looked at him, his eyes red-rimmed and exhausted and good humored.

“What?” Young demanded.

“Nothing,” Jackson said, looking back at the wall, smiling faintly. “You make me feel young, Colonel Young.”

“You are young,” he growled.

“I’m not.” Jackson brushed his fingertips against the mathematical and musical notation. “But I was, once. In other universes, maybe, I still am.” He looked up at Young. “There’s gotta be a few where I’m a naïve, well-intentioned archeological hack.”

“You’re a drama queen, a little bit,” Young said. “You know that?”

Jackson huffed a laugh and pulled out his cracked phone. He aimed the thing at the wall and took a picture that was nothing but cracked color on a shattered screen.

“You’re not as bad as Rush,” Young growled, angling his head, “but you rate.” He offered the archeologist his hand.

Jackson shot him a wry look, shifted his gaze to Young’s cane, and then pushed himself to his feet under his own power. They stood together, looking at the abandoned spread of math.

“Didn’t picture it this way,” Young admitted.

“You mean uh—” Jackson waved a hand, taking in the empty room.

“He unpacked my apartment for me,” Young said.

“Really?” Jackson gave himself a hug. “Somehow I can’t picture it, even though I suggested it to him.”

“You did not,” Young said, certain he had.

“Much as I’d love to take credit for the altruistic impulses of your neighbor,” Jackson replied, “even my mythic hubris has limits. If he was gonna do it, he was gonna do it. I doubt I made a difference either way.”

“You get what you need?” Young asked.

“Maybe.” Jackson knelt to pull a leaf of paper from beneath a red-bound book titled: Physical Chemistry: a Molecular Approach. “Anything strike you?”

Too many things struck him too deeply. He could imagine the window, weeks ago and open to the summer air, stirring loose papers, depositing them at the bases of walls, where Rush had weighed them down with whatever was at hand. 

Empty rooms, empty life.

If they ever got the guy back, Young was gonna need to do a little better.

“No,” Young said. “Nothing strikes me. Let’s get outta here.”