Mathématique: Chapter 84

Eli glared at Rush. “Don’t pretend like this isn’t the best day of your life.”

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

Text iteration: Witchingest hour.

Additional notes: Sorry for the delay, kids. August is eating me alive.

Chapter 84

After a morning of collaborative detail work on the bones of Colonel Young’s plans for SG-68, Rush got his first look at the (troublingly ostentatious) Nautilus Suite. The rooms were expansive and lavishly furnished, full of natural light and breathtaking views of the sea. After the tour (which underemphasized aesthetics and overemphasized security features), they returned to the common area.

Rush twirled Colonel Young’s pen through his fingers as he surveyed the space.

A wall-mounted screen, an attached gaming console, two chairs, two couches (with aspirations toward being divans), and an assortment of end tables filled the space.

Not terribly promising.

“What do you think?” Young gestured vaguely at the suite.

“It needs a board,” Rush said. “Whiteboard, chalkboard, mystical alien crystalboard—doesn’t matter which. Something t’write on.”

Young leaned into his cane and nodded, his expression quietly amused.

“Fuck right off.” The magnetic incongruity of his own words and tone took Rush by surprise. “What are y’smiling about?”

“Nothing.” Young grinned at the tops of his boots, then mastered himself and held Rush’s gaze. “Most people, they get a look at this kind of Alien Prince Suite or whatever? Their first comment isn’t gonna be about its missing chalkboard. Just sayin’.”

“Hmm.” Rush kept a grip on his poise, but Young’s amusement was hard to resist. “I strike myself as difficult to impress.”

“Yeah, that tracks.”

The naquadah balcony beyond the windows gleamed like gunmetal in the shadow of Sanctuary Tower.

“Gotta be weird,” Young offered, “figuring out your personality as you go.” From the colonel’s face, there seemed to be more to the thought, but Young didn’t give it voice.

Rush tipped his head in acknowledgement and spun his stolen pen through his fingers.

A mnemonic block had been difficult to wrangle in Boston, but in this alien city on an alien sea—

//!.!// Atlantis tapped against his thoughts with faint indignation. But at what, it was hard to say. (The mental quality of “alienness” maybe?)

//Y’don’t like what you hear, don’t listen,// he suggested, the sweetest of poisons.

//…(!)…// the city replied, disdain-draped delight.

In this alien city on an alien sea, haunted by the spirit of a long-vanished culture, a pair of ideas offered themselves up:

Machine learning. Recurrent neural nets with their representation of temporally linked events, catastrophic forgetting, stability/plasticity dilemmas, context windows. Might there be some utility found in approaching his mnemonic biochemical block with such principles in mind? There must be severed circuits where personal memory met procedural memory. Could they be identified, isolated, restored?

Myth. The British Isles were full of stories of memory and recognition. Tam Lin. Thomas the Rhymer. Legends of the Celtic tradition often featured stripped memory, stripped context, stripped spatial and temporal tethers. He must know as much because, at some point, he’d heard the stories. Stories from his place of origin. And he had, quite literally, seen Morgan Le Fay walking Atlantis.

At the back of his mind, the city hummed with subdued joy.

“What are you thinking about?” Young asked, standing like missing land in a world of water

He looked at Young. Observation, Rush could say, or Morgan Le Fay and the centuries of warnings against straying into her misted hills lest on be stripped of ground or time. He twirled the pen through his fingers. Relational quantum mechanics, he ruled out as far too close to the concept of superposition.

None of it. He could bring none of it. Even shorn of his past, he was layered in secrets.

And so.

“Where are y’from?” Rush asked, wistful and slow.

The question landed on Young like a blow. Hard. Complex. Penetrating. Young’s face shifted, his stance shifted. His shoulders tensed. His back tensed. Lines of pain came into his face, maybe physical, maybe—

“Wyoming.” The word arrived like stone on stone.

Rush’s self-blind intellect offered up a truly bizarre collection of detailed data on Wyoming. Names of towns. Rivers. Mountain ranges. The population densities of cities. In incredible detail. As though he’d committed such a list to memory. Backing all of it was a bold geography of forested slopes, dry plains, lake and rock and sky. He couldn’t imagine why he’d constructed a functional population density map in his own mind. Every possible scenario seemed improbable, unspeakably tragic.

There was nothing in Young’s bearing to gainsay the gravity of his hunch.

Something terrible had happened to Wyoming.

Mass scale casualties, alien ordinance diverted, a crashing ship—and he’d been part of it. He must have, with this mental map, the territory over which a deadly Poisson Distribution might fall?

“Let’s circle back on Wyoming,” Young said with difficulty.

Rush nodded.

Young looked away, gathering himself.

Over the blue plate of the sea, the shadow of Sanctuary Quay lengthened as the sun arced the afternoon across the sky.

“I—” Rush began, but an interior door slid open to reveal Eli. 

The child’s expedition jacket was open, his laptop tucked under one arm. He hesitated on the threshold as he scanned Rush and Young. “Hey boss,” he said.

“If you’re so keen to confer a title,” Rush replied with breezed silk provocation, “I suspect ‘professor’ to be the most historically appropriate.”

“Ha. Nice try. I’m never going to college. Not in a million years. Check out the sweet alien palace where I live now. My room has two showers. One for me, one for cool alien plants, probably. Seriously, there’s a sheet of what I think is hydroponics in my bathroom? This place has ruined me for all other places.”

“I find it needlessly ostentatious,” Rush said.

The city pressed indignantly into his thoughts, and, as though opposing an argument with a counterexample, a hills-of-mist and river-under-stars melody echoed somewhere beyond the bounds of his perception, while—

Morgan, he recognizes. Her crushed-crystal mantle sings and amplifies her presence. Echoes of her power hit the walls and stream ceilingward, like a fountain. Her weight presses into the floor, her feet bare, and in electric contact with the plated naquadah. The Nautilus Suite coils around her like it’s protecting a treasure. She is falling water, standing water, waxing moon and starlit mist.

“Deceit,” Morgan says, her voice like his, her mind like his: satin sweet and edged with poison, a black swan erupting from still waters.

“Explain,” replies a man Rush can’t place.

He’s dressed in mud-spattered charcoal. His clothes aren’t Lantean. They’re simple: an undyed tunic over an undershirt of white; a leather belt, hung with crystal tools; trousers with custom pockets for small instruments; mid-calf boots so worn their soles look ready to give way. His hair, dark and streaked with gray, is windblown. Structure arcs through his presence and the wind sings at and through the edges in his mind. He labors over a box of dark naquadah alloy, as if he’d cast it from metal and night. Inset in the lid of the box is a wheel of translucent amber, inscribed with glyphs.

“You cannot mechanize the concept of Truth in a room on Sanctuary Quay,” Morgan says. “Deceit is inseparable from intelligence. You must forever tolerate the treacherous turn. Even Fabrice accepted as much.”

“So you constantly remind us,” the man replies. “Did the Council send you?”

Atlantis ebbed from his thoughts. Rush hauled back against the shredding vision, trying to secure any part of it, but—

“Boss?” Eli asked tentatively.

Rush blinked.

“What the hell was that?” Young growled.

//Yes,// Rush directed the question at the city, //what was that?//

//***// Atlantis purred, pouring tech and beauty into his thoughts like a waterfall of gems.

//Stop,// he snarled, before he lost his whole consciousness to geodesics of rose and blue, amber locks, lavender EM fields, devices glittering like chipped shards of wet aquamarine under equatorial sun.

The incomprehensible images of light-limned tech slowed. In their absence—

“Hey.” The word landed hard. Full of power. Full of command.

Rush looked up.

Young was in his personal space, impossible to ignore, smelling of sun warmed stone and alien herbs. (Athosian soap, Rush decided.) Young held his gaze. Their hands were tangled, Rush realized, and it was only after his fingertips lost their grip on the cortical suppressor at his temple that he understood Young was prying his hand away.

“Pay less attention to the city.” Young growled, The colonel locked his hands around Rush’s wrists. “Pay more attention to me.”

“Right,” Rush breathed. “Okay.”

Young held his gaze. “Pull that shit again and we tamper-proof your technoswag.”

Promise? Rush managed not to say in the soft shadow of a backlit tower as the city rode an outgoing tide in his thoughts. Something rose in him to take its place, wild and delighted at the prospect of conflict with someone as interesting and rigid and bounded as the colonel advertised himself to be.

Rush wanted to drag him over the lines he’d drawn and rip the order out of him just to see if it would come.

It’d be difficult.

He suspected that was how he liked it.

“Uhhh, I’m thinking we do that anyway,” Eli said, right at Rush’s shoulder.

Rush flinched, regrounded, then dug in against his own disorientation with academic poise. “Sit.” He indicated the nearest couch with a stern glance, then glared at Eli over the tops of his glasses.

“The Scary College Professor Routine is gonna work a lot better when you don’t have a Space Colonel actively policing your technoswag.”

Rush lifted an eyebrow at Young.

The colonel made a noise of wordless disapproval, and reluctantly, unclamped his hands from around Rush’s wrists.

Rush (wholly caving to his own provocative impulses) patted the colonel on the shoulder with imperious arrogance. He wasn’t sure what he hoped to learn by kicking the frame of Young’s well-ordered professionalism but—

“You’re a lot of work,” Young growled, dark and full of promise.

“Oh my god, he really is.” Eli retrieved Young’s cane from where he’d dropped it at the foot of the couch.

Young accepted the cane and put a little distance between himself and Rush.

Rush glared at Eli. “Sit,” he tried again.

“Still too soon, but I’ll give you this. Out of pity.” Eli collapsed onto the end of a couch, next to his laptop. “Maybe join me before you pass out.”

Rush ignored him and sauntered over to a blank space of wall next to the dark viewscreen. He turned, crossed his arms, and fixed Eli with a pointed stare. “We’re unifying with SG-68.”

“What?” Eli sat up straight. “Dave! No!”

“Eli.” Young cracked the intern’s name like a whip.

“Sorry. Do-over. ‘Nick’!” Eli paused to embellish Rush’s (actual) name with air quotes. “No!”

“Yes,” Rush replied coolly.

“Bad idea. Really bad. Have you never seen a movie? A TV show? If we’ve learned one thing from Dr. Levant over the years—”

“‘Dr. Levant’ is a real person,” Rush broke. “He’s very much integrated with the military and more than a little put out at you, if you’ll recall, after you and Vala forced him into a life of digital knavery?”

“Yeah, and the experience scarred me for life, thanks SO much for bringing it up. But Dave! You can’t put the ‘Air Force’ in charge!”

“Every time you call him Dave you owe me ten pushups,” Young growled.

“No!” Eli said, aghast. “Vetoed!” He looked back at Rush. “So—our plan to be nocturnal and live a life of math and video games is off the table?”

“That was mostly your plan, I think,” Rush said delicately.

“Nocturnal,” Young repeated, a speculative note in his voice as he eyed Rush. “As in, staying on Earth time?”

Rush tried not to look away. Failed. 

He wasn’t sure how Sheppard would feel about his snap acceptance to participate more fully in the training of SG-68, particularly because it’d create difficulties in keeping their sleep/wake cycles reversed. Rush was certain he could get by on irregular sleep. It’d just require a bit of coordination. And there was no guarantee that sleeping simultaneously would pose a problem.

He looked back at Young to find the colonel eying him like he’d keyed into the motive behind Sheppard’s proposed circadian reversal. 

“Well I don’t start before 9 AM,” Eli said, preempting any commentary by Young. “Not with the amount of gaming we’re supposed to be doing. You and I will need to put in several hours per day outside our team-based gaming. Your skills are nowhere near what they should be. We’re gonna get destroyed in Spar Caverns if you done hone your mystical spinning reflexes.”

Rush rolled his eyes. “There are other, more important—” he began.

“You sure about that, Dave?” Eli interjected, flat and powerful, his eyes glinting with the force of what he wouldn’t speak aloud. “Are you sure there are things more important than the game?”

“Twenty push-ups,” Young said.

“No, damn it,” Eli turned back to Rush. “You saw—” Eli trailed off, reorganized his thoughts. Tried again. “You saw what it was like,” the child said fiercely. “How seriously J Shep takes it.”

“I did,” Rush admitted.

“So I insist you learn the fine points of mystical spinning.”

“Fine,” Rush sighed.

“And now I feel like I should have negotiated for more,” Eli grumbled. “Mystical spinning and life weaving.”

A sliding door opened and Ginn emerged, her hair a deep auburn in the sea-toned shadows of the afternoon, the blue stripes on her jacket picking up the blue of the shaded ocean beyond the windows.

Eli squared his shoulders.

“It’s always difficult to negotiate from a state of informational deficiency,” Rush agreed with sly sympathy. “Y’might’ve found a way to argue free of your physical training.”

“My what!?”

“Eleven to noon daily,” Young said, with self-satisfied authority.

“An hour a day?” Eli gaped at him.

“Physical training is important.” Ginn took a seat on the couch next to Eli, her expression grave. “Scientists are valuable commodities.”

Eli gave the girl a strained smile. “Oh. Great.”

Behind a coiled wall a soft chime sounded as the suite’s front doors opened. Greer and James emerged from the curve of the entryway. 

“Sorry we’re late.” Greer looked to Young. “Ran into Colonel Sheppard. He and his team are shipping out for a few hours. He wanted us to let you know, sir.”

Young nodded. “Take a seat, sergeant. Lieutenant. Welcome to the daily briefing, everybody.”

“Daily?” Eli repeated.

Rush sympathized. He more than sympathized. His mind was a morass of instinct cut down the center and rebelling against itself. He was fair certain that under normal circumstances, he’d have strongly sided with Eli on this one. But these Air Force personnel were pure dead difficult to pin down. Especially Young, with his strong-will, his concealed maverick quality (that Rush quite liked), and his sense of personal responsibility strong enough to break the bonds of space and time.

Beneath that stolid demeanor there was a subversive sensibility about the colonel, as if he was quite happy with the idea of taking galactic politics, subtly, into his own hands.

“We’re integrating.” Young eyed each member of SG-68 in turn. “While this is formally a protection detail, there’s a good chance we’re gonna get deployed into at least one galactic conflict.”

“Is that a metaphorical ‘we’?” James asked, crisp as her fatigues.

“No, lieutenant. That’s a literal ‘we.’ I’m talking about the people in this room.”

There was an interesting, unspoken implication behind all Young had said and omitted earlier in the day. Rush was curious to see if it’d be explicitly voiced, or—

“You’re thinkin’ they may deploy our Planetary Asset, sir?” Greer asked with a calculated indolence.

And there it was. Part of it, at least. Rush spun his stolen pen through his fingers and quirked a brow at Greer.

The sergeant’s gaze was direct, challenging, edged with a wry complexity that made Rush more than a little curious.

“Yes, sergeant, I am. We’ve got some downtime to turn ourselves into the kind of unit that can flex hard enough to stick with him when it happens. Right now, we’re not there.”

“Getting rid of that cane is probably step one,” Eli muttered, glaring darkly at Young.

“Eli,” Rush said, indolent and dangerous. “Enough.”

“Okay okay.” Eli raised his hands.

“No,” Young said evenly. “He’s right.” Young caught and held Eli’s gaze. “Every person sitting in this room has at least one massive deficiency. Some of us have several. But our potential is off the damned charts. So let’s take advantage of the downtime and the friendly territory to sharpen up as fast and far as possible.”

“Yes sir,” Greer said.

“I like it,” James added.

Ginn gave the colonel a solemn nod.

“Oh, so, we’re, like, voting on this?” Eli asked. “Because I—”

Rush knew from experience it was best to cut the lad off before the energetic tide of his rhetoric came in. “You will participate in combat training, physical conditioning, and whatever else the colonel deems necessary for your safety. That or enter the Witness Protection Program while remotely completing your bachelor’s degree. Your choice.”

Eli sighed. “Fine. Combat training it is.”

“It is very easy to die,” Ginn offered solemnly.

“Uh, cool.” Eli smiled wanly at her.

“What’s the plan, sir?” Greer asked.

“We’re taking a leaf outta the Atlantis Expedition’s book. Dr. Rush and I came up with a hybrid training model. It’s got two parts. A Competency Floor and a Skillset Flex. The floor is the easy part. Everyone in this room has an hour of combat training daily. Everyone in this room is working towards the Marine Corp fitness standards.”

“Oh great,” Eli muttered.

Greer made no attempt to file the wolfish edge off his grin.

“Everyone in this room needs to learn enough Ancient to read the Lantean signage and operate consoles and doors. Everyone needs to be competent with Ancient tech and have enough familiarity with Wraith tech to get by. Everyone needs to master the basics of galactic history. We all need context for what we’ll be up against.”

“What about the protection detail for our civilian assets, sir?” James asked.

“Still our top priority,” Young growled. “But I have the feeling we’re gonna need the ability to multitask. When you get your personal schedule you’ll find yourself paired up with Rush or Eli for chunks of the day. Neither of them go uncovered by someone from our team for any length of time beyond the confines of this suite.”

Rush sighed. Young had been relatively circumspect about that particular requirement of the schedule when they’d worked the thing out, but it’d been hard to miss.

“Understood,” James said.

“The Competency Floor is meant to be cleared and not replaced,” Young continued. “Once you’ve met the Marine Corps reqs,” the colonel glanced at Greer, “you’re done with that piece. You spend your Floor blocks learning Ancient and digging into galactic history. Two hours a day go to Floor Compentencies until they’re cleared.”

Greer and James glanced at one another.

Ginn looked like she was memorizing every word out of Young’s mouth.

“Oh god,” Eli muttered.

“You think you’re ready to clear a Floor skill, come to me and I’ll evaluate.” The colonel paused, scanning the room. “Questions?”

“Yeah.” Greer eyed Rush. “Why does the doc look like he’s sharpening his knives over there?”

Casually, Rush arched a brow and spun his stolen pen through his fingers. SG-68 looked stoically terrified, including Ginn, who was, apparently, used to working under the looming threat of literal execution.

(Equal parts satisfying and troubling, that.)

Young glanced at Rush, then did a double take, likely at the academic villainy that oozed from Rush’s entire bearing. “I put him in charge of the Flex blocks.”

Eli, outraged, said, “I won’t go to college so you made one!?”

“If y’want to frame it that way I won’t stop you,” Rush said lazily.

Eli huffed. “Don’t pretend like this isn’t the best day of your life.”

“It’s up there,” Rush admitted, “but the colonel gives me far too much credit—”

“I really don’t.” Young spoke with enough overt appreciation that Rush had to work to retain the cool flow of his own sentence.

“—in that,” Rush continued, back astride his academic cadences, “while the Flex Tasks are my design, they were heavily informed by the colonel’s assessments of individual strengths and weaknesses. Flex Tasks are problem based. Peer-based mentoring and partnerships are encouraged, as is exceeding or deepening the scope of the task you’ve been set.”

Eli raised his hand. “Is it too early to say I hate this?”

“Far too early,” Rush confirmed. “Eli, Sergeant Greer: the pair of you have been partnered. You’ll be training with and ultimately serving as part of Dr. Zelenka’s roving technicians. You’ll be dispatched to various points around the city and responsible for repairs of Ancient tech.”

“I don’t know the first thing about Ancient tech,” Greer said.

“Which puts you in a better position than Eli,” Rush said smoothly, “who believes he’s well versed, but in fact has been trained on a video game with very little bearing on reality.”

“Hey,” Eli said weakly.

“Sergeant, you’re doubling as Eli’s security while you’re deployed.”

“Got it,” Greer said.

“Next pairing will be Ginn and the colonel, who’ll join a Lantean historical team and working to assemble and categorize the breadth and depth of Ancient responses to civilization-scale threats.”

“Um what?” Eli said. “Excuse me? I object. That is so cool. I want that one.”

“Crawl enough alien ductwork and I’ll consider it,” Rush said, like pouring poison into porcelain. “Meanwhile, the lieutenant and I will be making a study of electrostatics.” 

“What…is that?” James asked tentatively.

“The place where math meets energy shields.” Rush kept the explanation purposefully vague. “But you have demolitions training yes? You’ve some ability to assess structural weaknesses? In literal architecture?”

“Yes,” James said, telegraphing uncertainty. “The math though—I haven’t done math since high school.”

“Yes well. No time like the present,” Rush said.

 

After the evening meal, Rush stood on the balcony outside the opulent room he was meant to occupy. The distant stars shone overhead. Wisps of cloud near the far horizon gleamed faintly, heralding the coming rise of the moon.

Young had spent twenty minutes explaining the security features associated with the windows, glass doors, and balcony. Rush made every effort to focus his thoughts, especially given the colonel’s rather inspiring take on competency in the face of galactic-level threats, but it’d been a bit of a day.

He’d tried to sleep in the midafternoon.

Impossible in rooms meant to collect and hold the light.

Atlantis, limned with its own energy, pressed against his thoughts.

//If I had my memories, would I know what to make of you?// he asked the city.

A nuanced, curious sympathy pressed against his thoughts. The image of the active gate slid beneath whatever barrier his cortical suppressors provided, penetrating deep and painless. Maddeningly, just beyond the range of hearing, he could sense the vibrations of music, patterning through the air and through his mind with a quality of span, of structure, a high arc into the wind and pressure of a living atmosphere.

He understood, intuitively, that Sheppard was home. Boots to naquadah.

He shivered. The night breeze cut through his expedition jacket. His cortical suppressors felt warm against his temples. Working hard, perhaps.

Behind him, glass doors patterned with a nautiloid spiral slid open.

Young stepped into the night. “Shep’s team just got back.” He pointed at the in-ear radio they’d all been issued after the evening meal.

(His was on his nightstand.”

I know, Rush didn’t say. He nodded and looked out to sea.

Young crossed the balcony to join him at the rail. “Asked him to meet us here.”

“Why?”

“Because,” Young said evasively. “He needs a talking to.”

Rush smiled faintly. “His usual state, I think.”

Young snorted. “Yup.” He swept his eyes over Rush. “You look exhausted.”

“I’m a bit porous t’this place,” Rush admitted.

“Meaning?” Young asked.

“Meaning I knew Sheppard was back, somehow.” Rush heard the dreamy cast to his own voice but couldn’t sharpen. Distantly, he felt himself trace the line of a cortical suppressor, working a thumbnail between it and his skin—

Young tangled his fingers with Rush’s and gently pried his hand away from his head. “Seems like a problem.” Gently he gave Rush’s hand a small shove, as though purposefully returning it.

“Can’t say I disagree,” Rush replied, “though I’d appreciate it if y’didn’t treat it as one.”

“That’s a tough ask, hotshot.” Young looked over the sea as the first of the planet’s two moons slid above the horizon, bright and gauzy behind thin clouds.

“Why?” Rush asked.

“Why?” The colonel gave him an amused once-over. “Because you’re a cute mathematician with alien amnesia. That’s why. The city doesn’t belong in your head. Shep doesn’t either.”

“Hmm,” Rush said, smiling faintly.

“You’re covering for him” Young turned serious. “And you’ve got some quantum multiverse bullshit on the back burner. I don’t like it.”

“Don’t—” Rush turned away from the sea, studying Young’s strong profile. “Don’t wade into quantum fuckery before it’s time. Don’t try an’ force Colonel Sheppard to corroborate whatever you’ve—”

“So he knows,” Young said, dangerous and quiet.

“He doesn’t,” Rush snapped.

“You’re a bad liar, hotshot,” Young growled.

Confused, Rush paused. Everything in him rebelled against the colonel’s statement. Instinctively, natively, came the conviction that he was an incredible liar. Skilled. Proficient. The treacherous hills-of-mist melody of Morgan Le Fay, enchantress, deceiver, sang in his blood. He could almost hear it. At his temples, his cortical suppressors pressed against his skin like something alive.

Young’s expression changed. “You okay?”

Rush took a breath, steadied himself. “Don’t press Colonel Sheppard for detail.”

“Shep doesn’t need you looking out for him,” Young said stubbornly.

“Are you familiar with Bayesian priors?” Rush asked.

“Priors,” Young repeated, a grave note in the word.

“Yes. Priors reflect an assumed probability distribution before new information has been taken into account?”

“So—a math thing,” Young said.

Rush frowned. “Yes, a ‘math thing’. I suppose you’ve answered my question. Y’aren’t familiar?”

“With math priors? Uh, no.”

Behind them, the door slid open.

They turned to see Sheppard, lit by the light of the room he was leaving. His hair looked as though it’d been crushed beneath a helmet and only half-heartedly accepted whatever re-spiking he’d tried to encourage. He had a faint streak of dirt over his cheekbone and his fatigues were damp and patterned with dust.

(Fuck. He’d’ve liked to make his case to Young before Sheppard arrived.)

“You summoned him,” Young said, as though thinking along the same lines.

“Summoned?” Sheppard crossed the deck.

“With math,” Young clarified.

“What kinda math?” Sheppard drawled.

“Bayesian priors,” Rush sighed.

“Best kind of priors,” Sheppard said.

“Are there other priors?” Rush glanced between them.

“Yeah. Religious ones,” Sheppard said. “Alien religious ones. They’re an Ori thing. Bad News. Never met one.” He looked to Young. “You?”

“Not in person,” Young said. “I don’t hear good things.”

“Bayesian priors though.” Sheppard leaned into the rail like it was a bar. “Those I have met.” He gave the pair of them a suggestive look.

Rush and Young stared at him.

Sheppard cleared his throat and, awkwardly, straightened.

“Were y’flirting?” Rush asked, deliberately torquing the conversation away from whatever Colonel Young had planned.

“What!? No.”

Young looked away with a crushing mix of amusement and sympathy.

“It’s very difficult to charm multiple parties simultaneously,” Rush pointed out helpfully. “Almost never works.”

Sheppard stared mutely at him.

Young couldn’t wholly throttle his laughter, though he made a heroic attempt. “You got some kind of internalized flirting dictionary we should be aware of, hotshot?”

“Actually, I think so, yes,” Rush admitted. “The depth and organization of my thoughts on the subject suggest dedicated study.”

“Explains why you’re so damn good at it,” Young said.

“Flirting, as a communicative medium, is underrated and needlessly tethered to sexuality,” Rush informed them.

“Well I don’t know about ‘needlessly’,” Sheppard muttered.

“Certainly it can be employed in that direction,” Rush allowed, “but it’s an all-purpose interpersonal tool to deepen connection. Look at Vala’s application of it. It’s impossible to say no to the woman.”

“Seems like a talent you kept a pretty tight wrap on, though,” Young offered.

“Yes well.” Rush hesitated, torn between the advantages of diving into a new conversational track versus returning to defending Sheppard with a step-function argument built on a foundation of Bayesian priors. “Charm without heart,” he said, “reads as paper-thin manipulation.”

He looked over the sea, shining with the light of the rising moon, inviting his own instincts home.

There was a paradox behind and beneath the mnemonic veil that separated him from his life. For all the agreeable facility he displayed toward these Air Force personnel he didn’t truly know—still, Vala had called him sad. Seen the unhealed thing within. Coral McClure had worried for him constantly. For all Eli’s posturing, the child had turned fiercely loyal. Unnaturally loyal?

It occurred to Rush, suddenly, how willing he’d been to go with Dale Volker. How gently the man had turned him down.

McKay. McKay could see something in Rush. Something upsetting.

And Young had called him a bad liar. Moments back. Under these very stars.

The Greeting, Dale Volker had called whatever had done this.

Atlantis slid into his mind, coiling around mental architecture the way an animal might seek warmth or light. It illuminated the lines of Morgan’s influence, a flicker of structure where he’d not known to look for it.

Sheppard watched at him. Silently. Urgently. Eloquently. As though the man could feel the interaction between the city and Rush’s mind. As though worried Rush would speak of it aloud.

Young’s gaze flicked between them, then settled on Rush.

“It is mine,” Rush said absently, his gaze back out to sea, his focus internal. “It must be.”

“What?” Young prompted.

“The flirting. The charm. I’ve a mix of posh and working-class vocal tics and a strong RP gloss on a Scots accent that foregrounds itself in academic settings. There must’ve been a time I worked for those things. The flirting has t’be the same. I don’t see how something like that gets conferred by a pharmacologic agent.”

“Conferred.” Sheppard stood like a human offering to the Gods of Neutrality.

“It’s definitely yours,” Young said, slow, confused, whatever plans he’d had for this conversation shredding beneath Rush’s compelling redirection. “It has to be yours.”

“Yes,” Rush agreed. “But the foregrounding, the relative gain—”

“No,” Sheppard said, too quickly. The man was quick, full stop.

“You understand what he’s talking about?” Young demanded.

“No,” Sheppard said again.

“I’m speaking about what a Lucian Alliance drug called ‘The Greeting’ might do to the minds it’s used on.”

“You think it made you charming?” Young asked. “Try again. You were always charming.”

“This charming?” Rush pressed.

Young’s expression turned evasive. Uncomfortable, he looked out to sea.

“Yes,” Sheppard turned fierce. “This charming. I object to your framing.”

Rush arched a brow. “T’my framing?”

“Your hypothesis, succinctly stated, is that the LA drug is somehow foregrounding prosocial neural pathways. Whether that’s a natural downstream consequence of the mnemonic block or a second, engineered feature—either way, to falsify your claim we’d need to solve the hard problem of consciousness.” Sheppard faced him down, breathless and more than a bit appealing with alien dirt streaked over his cheekbone.

“You seem to’ve thought about this with enough depth to imply you consider it a real possibility,” Rush said.

“The whole thing can be explained by the lack of personal memories,” Sheppard continued passionately, “leading to a deintensification of grief which results in more available charm. It’s the most parsimonious explanation and should be afforded a higher Bayesian prior than any other option.”

“Now that,” Rush said, zeroing in on Sheppard and leaning into the rail with a small smile, “is flirting.”

“Shep,” Young drawled, “he’s tryin’ to throw you. Don’t let it happen.”

Sheppard steeled himself and square off with Rush. “This is a costly hypothesis to chase down,” he said. “It’s gonna upset everyone and it doesn’t have a solution we can lock onto. Don’t—”

“I think it’s true,” Rush cut in, smooth and even. “All your objections are valid and reasonable, but only within a specific context window. And I think you’re aware of that.”

“This,” Sheppard whispered, all broken edges and night wind, “isn’t charming.”

“Anyone wanna translate into English?” Young growled.

Rush flicked his gaze to Young. “The context window is the one in which my memories are missing forever. If I get them back, new data will be introduced and conclusions will be easier to come by.”

“Was I supposed to understand that?” Young cut an increasingly statue-like silhouette against the sky.

Sheppard sighed. “He thinks the LA drug is making him likable. And he’s accusing me of being disingenuous about the way I’m framing my arguments against the idea.”

Young leaned into his cane and scowled at Rush with meta-irritation, as though he knew Rush had dragged them into an existential morass of his own choosing with the express purpose of ducking a confrontation about quantum mechanics.

Deal with it, Rush suggested with the lift of an eloquent eyebrow.

“I object to the whole premise,” Sheppard said, looking miserably into dark water. “The self isn’t a fixed entity. You lock into the idea that the LA drug did some indefinable thing to you—some thing you can’t measure or quantify or verify? It’s a dead end and a great way to make yourself miserable. It’s also a way of attacking the foundations of your own mind, something I’m sure you did before that drug got dropped on you. You’re likable. How do I know? I liked you. That’s how. You don’t need to come up with a magical pharmacologic agent to explain a thing that doesn’t need explaining.”

“If I’m so natively likable,” Rush said, twisting the knife of his argument with delicacy, sympathy even, “where’s my family in all of this? A friend that predates my involvement with the Air Force? Anyone at all from the whole of my life?”

“Intergalactic travel makes it hard.” Sheppard didn’t look at him.

“Ugh this is the most ‘you guys’ thing I’ve ever seen,” Young growled. “Knock it off.” He eyed Rush. “Stop hunting your own personality for sport.”

“I can see how such an approach might lead to recursive instability,” Rush admitted.

“That’s what I’m saying.” Sheppard’s eyes caught the starlight. “I’m also taking the metaphysical position that the self is a function that evolves over time and is, by its nature, not stable.”

Rush hesitated.

There was a deep inconsistency in Sheppard’s position. Or, at a minimum, a well-concealed hedge. Because if the man really believed what he was saying, he wouldn’t have placed a moratorium on exploring a romantic relationship. But he had. From the beginning. Rush was tempted to call him on it.

But the moment opened, faded, passed.

And Rush let it go.

“McKay thinks you’re too nice,” Sheppard whispered.

Young jumped in before Rush could speak. “Yeah, and Jackson thinks you’re evolving away from trauma triggers that aren’t accessible and Vala thinks you’re her platonic soulmate regardless of the state of your brain and Eli thinks you hung the moon. Keller’ll have her opinion. But that’s all any of this is ever gonna be. Opinion.”

“Mind sharing yours?” Rush asked.

Young looked out to sea. “I’ve been on the receiving end of an LA drug. Not the one you got. A different one. Also a memory stripper. Also, maybe, meant to engineer some goodwill toward a particular individual.”

Sheppard looked up sharply. The rising moonlight gleamed in his hair.

“And I’ll tell you this: it held hard. For a good long while. But, eventually, it started to come loose. Like my own brain was looking for a truth it could sense. Jackson had to—Jackson was the one who ripped the veil away. Even now—” Young shook his head. “Maybe it’d be the right thing to see the whole incident the black and white of its facts. But I can’t. There’s no correct position. And even Jackson,” Young stopped, his words seeming to fail. “Even Jackson, just last night, talked about David Telford like he—” Young broke off.

“Everett,” Sheppard said.

Young shook his head. Gathered himself. “Fact of the matter is, hotshot,” he continued, “for whatever reason, you do present a little differently, carry yourself a little differently. I’m not gonna dismiss the possibility that the LA drug has something to do with your charm-forward style. That being said, when it hits, it’s pretty on brand. Like everything else, we’ll keep an eye on it.”

Rush motioned back and forth between himself and Sheppard. “We’ve already decided you’re the reasonable one,” he said, as cool as the falling starlight. “There’s no need t’continually reapply for the position with such bloody-minded tenacity.”

Sheppard snorted.

“My opinion,” Young said softly, “is that a real attempt should be made to get your memories back. We shouldn’t let it slide. If your charm pathways got a boost? For my money, the purpose of that boost is to convince you and everyone around you that you’re fine. That it’s better to leave you as you are.”

No one spoke.

The sea breeze sang around the edges of the balcony.

“I should go.” Sheppard turned his face into the wind. “Get cleaned up.”

“I’ll walk you out,” Young said mildly.

Rush, exhausted, paced his cavernous living quarters in the depths of the night, trying to see into his own mind, having little luck.

Starlight and moonlight streamed into the room.

His mind ached with an injury he couldn’t sense. He wanted to pour himself into a piano until he disappeared. He wanted Sheppard to weaponize his rationalism and deconstruct him into nothing. He wanted to provoke the commander of SG-68 into some loss of control, any loss of it; he wanted to unlock something, he wanted to understand why he’d wept when the superpositioned aspect of Everett Young had appeared on that rooftop. He wanted to split himself along that particular line; he wanted to look at his own mind from a vantage point of quantum privilege and if destruction was the price— he’d pay it. Gladly.

He wanted, more than anything, to speak with that alternate version of Young again.

He’d known nothing on that Au Coeur rooftop. And now—Dr. Jackson was here because Morgan Le Fay had sent him. Rush himself had seen her. In simultaneous local aspect and superpositioned aspect. He understood more. He was brimming with questions. Strategies. Competing theories.

Atlantis curled itself against his mind, soothing, content, dense with presence, showing him no edges.

He stopped next to the floor-to-ceiling glass that opened on the balcony overlooking the sea.

“I could use some perspective,” he whispered like an invocation.

But the world offered nothing but sea and sky and waves to the line of the horizon under the high, full moon.