04 - The Morpheus Factor

by Ashley McConnell - (ebook by Undead)

  The Tall Ones had strong dreams, he was finding. Etra’ain should come and see—but no. Why add to her power when he could keep all this for himself? This place was full of Tall Ones, but it was also full of little rooms and odd corridors, and if he thought about it, he could keep himself out of the awake ones’ dreaming. There was no reason for them to see what they did not expect to see.

  Of course, it was difficult sometimes to concentrate on such a thing when there were so many other things to look at. Boxes everywhere of metal harder than his knife and dark glass that sometimes lit up and showed images almost like dreams. He poked at one such, trying to make it follow his shaping, but it ignored him and went on doing what it wished instead. It was the box itself that made the images, he realized at last, and that frightened him. Inanimate objects were not supposed to be able to Shape. What kind of world was this?

  But there were a number of other things about this world that were worthy of remembering for the future. That raised, hard surface, for example, supported by side panels—that would be good for keeping food clean. Those little sticks that lay everywhere made marks; there might be some use for those too, though he couldn’t imagine what.

  Looking into the sleeping man, he tried to understand what the little sticks were for. But he could not reach in as easily as before; he could see that they were not weapons, and for the time being, that was enough.

  There were little knobs in the walls at regular intervals, and he tugged on them to see what would happen. Sometimes nothing at all; sometimes the wall came away, swinging wide to reveal cabinets or more rooms. One such was stacked from floor to ceiling with thin transparent skins that held row upon row of soft white cylinders. He tried to pick one up, but it was too large for his hand to hold. Moments later the entire pile fell on him, bouncing off his head and body and landing in awkward piles all over the little room, sliding into the hallway as well. Vair scampered away, panicking, and ran down the hallway, dashing in between the Tall Ones who looked startled and shook their heads and sometimes took glass things off of their faces and polished them frantically.

  Weapons. He needed weapons, but he had no idea whether what he saw were weapons or not. He could not make these Tall Ones shape to his command; he had no mor’ee-rai. Merely the ability to follow the Tall One to his home would not impress the Circle. He needed to bring back something spectacular, something that would destroy the Narrai and force Etra’ain and the Kayeechi to recognize him as important.

  Meanwhile, Jack O’Neill dreamed on, an annoyed expression twisting his handsome features as the Kayeechi aliens persisted in showing up in the oddest places.

  Janet Frasier sat back from her computer screen and sighed. It was all very well to connect a vague memory of cerebral stimulation with the various stages of sleep, but maintaining the right level of activity for a lengthy period of time—at least hours, she suspected, if not days—without burning out either the equipment or the brain involved was a tricky proposition. The literature said that the human brain didn’t particularly enjoy being forced to remain in a single sleep stage for a prolonged period of time. Fully realized, vivid dreams could last mere moments.

  The literature described planned dreams: sex, gambling, thrills that the waking subject would never have sought out, thrills made safe by the fact that they were only dreams, and while scientists could say definitively that a person was dreaming, no one could tell the actual content of the dream but the dreamer himself. This led to the unnerving possibility that the whole subject of “lucid” dreaming was nothing more than the subjects’ fantasy, since there was no objective verification possible. Maybe the reports were just vivid imagination, and she was wasting her time.

  “And down that road madness lies,” Frasier told herself. She wasn’t going to allow herself to be drawn into a Moebius strip of arguments trying to prove something that simply didn’t lend itself to the scientific method.

  Still, the literature did specify the type and frequency of stimulation most often associated with self-reported successful lucid dreaming. And she could, in fact, jury-rig such stimulation without much difficulty. She began making notes in a careful, precise hand, listing everything she thought she needed.

  Elsewhere in the complex, Daniel Jackson and Teal’C were examining the probe data from the latest venture into P4V-837. The data transmitted back from the brave little machine showed that the planet was still, for the moment at least, in one piece; radiation levels were still consistent with normal background counts for a planet with two suns and not much in the way of heavy metals. The two of them watched, fascinated, as a shadow slid over the probe, and something yanked it up from the ground. For several dizzying moments they got a wildly swaying view of the horizon, the forest, and something that might have been feathers before the probe ceased transmitting.

  “Could that have been another roc?” Jackson asked of no one in particular.

  Teal’C, who was the only other person present in the small conference room they had commandeered for their work, and who had a tendency to be literal-minded, chose to respond. “It is entirely possible. The creature we saw was certainly large enough to take the probe. Although I still do not understand how it can fly. It is too large for that wingspan to be aerodynamically efficient.”

  “I don’t suppose it matters in the long run,” the archaeologist said. “Though if they took that probe deliberately, they may be intelligent. I’d love to study them. Imagine an intelligent avian society!”

  “I am sure it would be interesting,” Teal’C responded politely He could not possibly care less about avian societies. The truly interesting point, as far as he was concerned, was that the probe had given them no indications of any recent thermonuclear detonations on P4V-837.

  “I guess we have what we need for the time being anyway.” Daniel blinked and shook his head. He was used to Teal’C’ sturdy pragmatism. While the Jaffa was willing to humor his human friends on many things, if a topic wasn’t related to the eventual defeat of the Goa’uld and the freeing of their Jaffa slaves, it would never be truly important in Teal’C’ eyes. “I think I’m going to take a nap myself before Janet tries out her theory on Jack. I’m so tired I’m seeing things. Without, please God, any dreams at all. I really, really don’t want to ‘see things’ anymore for a long, long time.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, reminding himself that this room was not filled with stinking corpses and he was not being followed around by a little red-furred alien.

  It had taken a while for it to dawn on Vair that this place was the same that the Tall One had shaped in his dream. It looked very different, of course: no signs of death and decay, no bodies sprawled lifeless in the hallways, no char from explosions or brown splashes of dried blood. This was the place that the-one-who-sees-badly had gone when he walked in the dark one’s dream of conquest. He was seeing it without the filter of the mor’ee-rai, with his own eyes instead of the eyes of the aliens.

  There were many of the Tall Ones here, and many of them dressed in the same way, as if they had no imagination to shape different apparel. They moved purposefully through the halls, as if always in a hurry. Some of them carried the same shapes that the Kayeechi had learned to recognize as weapons, even though they had not seen them used in the dreams. Unfortunately, without the shape of use, they were so many lumps of inert metal to the shapers.

  They had the shape they needed, but Etra’ain wanted more. She wanted to understand the relationship between the lifting-machine and the giant egg and the big explosion—was it a Narrai egg? The Kayeechi had spent many hours debating this possibility. Perhaps this had not been a weapon for them to use at all, but instead one that the Narrai would use against them.

  When the Tall One leader had called in his dreams, Vair had been delighted to hear and to answer. If this was the place of the secrets of the Tall Ones, he was where he needed to be. And the fact that the Tall Ones were obviously at war with someone spoke well for the prospect of finding new shape
s.

  The realization lent a certain thrill to his explorations, and at the same time provided a map, more or less, of the Complex for him to follow. Instead of wandering randomly through the halls, he decided to head directly for the place the Daniel Tall One called the Gate room. There had been many weapons used there in the dream; perhaps some of them would be there now, available for a curious Kayeechi to examine and shape. Taking such power home would be a triumph indeed, and the Narrai would suffer for it—not for long perhaps, but nothing was perfect, was it? And it would not matter if the flying ones could lay death eggs. Dead Narrai laid no eggs at all.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Despite being excluded from the return trip, Jackson and Teal’C opted to observe the “practice run” preparations along with Carter in the infirmary. The three of them made quite an audience as O’Neill lay, still fully clothed, on the bed before them.

  “Sweet dreams?” Jackson cracked as he came in.

  O’Neill glared at him. Carter hid a smile, not very successfully; it was something she would have liked to say, but when it came right down to it, Jack O’Neill was still her superior officer.

  “I doubt it,” Teal’C weighed in. “Even without the incense burning all around, some residual effects may remain.” It wasn’t that Teal’C had no sense of humor—far from it—but he was the most grimly pragmatic of the four of them.

  “I ran some blood tests, but a full tox scan takes more time,” Frasier said. “But what you say is certainly possible. Colonel?”

  Feeling a little self-conscious in his lying-instate position, O’Neill sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed in one smooth movement. His toes curled inside his socks at the chill of the industrial-grade linoleum of the infirmary floor. The military had its own odd ideas about interior decorating. “I had some dreams,” he admitted. “Nothing bad, really. No real disasters, no weapons tests.”

  “That’s a relief,” Jackson said. “Did you know you were dreaming?” All attempts at levity had vanished, and his blue eyes were serious behind the wire-framed glasses.

  “Uh, no. At least I don’t think so. I can’t remember it very well,” O’Neill admitted, running his hands through his hair and cracking a huge yawn. “I feel better though if that makes any difference.”

  “Being aware that you’re dreaming usually means you wake up,” Janet said as the other members of the team arranged themselves in chairs around the bed. “It’s a very, very fine line to walk. I think I can use this technique to help you maintain that line. But General Hammond’s right. We want to make sure before we try it under field conditions.”

  “Whatever the heck those are in this case,”

  O’Neill said, yawning again. “Okay, Doc. Teach me how to lucid dream and we’re outta here.”

  Frasier laughed. “It’s not quite that easy. Normally, researchers look for people who dream vividly—”

  “Not a problem here,” Jackson interjected.

  “And who remember their dreams in detail when they wake up,” the doctor went on, ignoring the interruption. “Since we don’t have the luxury of conditioning the colonel over time, we’re going to take the direct approach.” She pulled out a black box with wires hanging in all directions and set it on a nearby instrument cart, plugging the unit into a wall outlet. A series of lights, dials, numbers, graphs, light-emitting diodes, and other readouts hummed into life. She maneuvered the cart beside the bed until she was satisfied with its placement.

  “Uh, is that what I think it is?” O’Neill straightened in alarm.

  “That depends on what you think it is, Colonel. If you don’t already know, it would take roughly a couple of hours to explain it. What it does—what I’m going to do—is stimulate the dream centers of your brain, reproducing the level of electrical activity characteristic of the lucid-dreaming state and hope that you can take the cue.”

  “We’re not talking actual cutting-in-the-head brain surgery are we?”

  “Well,” she said thoughtfully, “that would probably make for much more precise control. But I don’t think the General would let me try. And there’s all that fuss about human experimentation. So no brain surgery. Nothing invasive. There should be no side effects at all. You’re just going to fall asleep.” She sounded mildly regretful at the prospect.

  “You think I’m going to ‘just fall asleep’ with everybody staring at me like this?” the colonel groused, indicating his fascinated audience. She pushed him back into a reclining position on the bed. After some automatic resistance, he swung his feet back up again and forced himself to relax. The others shifted position to get a clearer view. O’Neill made a face at them.

  “Oh, yes.” She smiled down at him, brushing a military-short lock of hair out of the way of a sticky patch of electrode fixative and freeing up the wire that led from the skin contact patch to the machine parked on the instrument cart. “I’m pretty sure we won’t have to shave your head, either. Much.” She intoned in a sepulchral voice. “You are about to embark on a voyage of danger and discovery to the innermost depths of the imagination.”

  O’Neill looked at her as if she had lost her mind.

  “Sorry. I’ve always wanted to say something like that,” she apologized without a trace of remorse, continuing to place the contacts. “I’m an old Twilight Zone addict.”

  “There’s a lot you haven’t told us, isn’t there, Doctor?” O’Neill groused.

  “Don’t worry. I used to date a neuropathologist in med school,” she said cheerfully. “I think I remember how to do this.” The electrodes were attached to the black metal box, and the readouts began to flicker wildly. She checked the readings and then sat on the bed beside him, addressing the rest of the team as well as O’Neill.

  “Before I came into the debriefing, I did some quick research to refresh my memory on the important points,” she said. “Getting the colonel to sleep isn’t going to be the problem. Getting him through the various stages of sleep into the REM state, where he’s dreaming, isn’t going to be difficult either. The problem is that the human mind tends to seek safety from its dreams by waking up. We need dreams for reasons we don’t understand, but once we realize that we’re dreaming, the mind shuts down the dream and we regain consciousness.”

  “And a good thing too,” Carter remarked.

  “Usually it’s just before you hit the ground or something.”

  “There are several stages of sleep. The first stage when you’re just dozing, we call alpha. The second, beta, is REM sleep, when you dream. That’s the one we want. Humans have to get REM sleep in order to get any rest. Then there are deeper stages, some of which almost approximate complete unconsciousness. Not everyone experiences those.”

  “You sounded a lot more sure of yourself when you were talking to Hammond,” O’Neill said suspiciously. The contact cream for the electrodes itched, and he lifted his hand to scratch at one and then changed his mind, deciding to suffer manfully instead.

  Frasier gave him an approving, if absent-minded, smile; she was focused on his comment. “The theory is sound. It’s even been tested. But every subject is different. The more strong-willed they are, the more they have to work to let themselves continue dreaming.”

  “I realized I was dreaming on P4V-837,” Carter said. “But I didn’t wake up. The dream just kept going on and on.”

  “Same here,” Jackson said.

  “And I,” Teal’C confirmed. “I attempted to awaken and could not. Does that imply we are weak of will?”

  “No, but you said that the aliens interacted with you in the dreams. So they may have used their abilities to keep you in that state. Your problem,” she was addressing O’Neill directly now, “will then be not letting them know you know what they’re doing and not letting them prevent you from carrying out the mission.”

  “And how exactly am I supposed to keep myself from waking up once I figure I’m dreaming?” he asked, wiggling the skin of his forehead against the itch of the adhesive. “And
if I do stay asleep, how do I make the dream go the way I want it to? I couldn’t do that before. I just kept trying things that didn’t work, but none of them were really my idea.”

  “It sounds as if on P4V-837 the natives were providing the stimulation to get the response they were looking for. What we’re going to do now is beat them to the punch and provide our own stimulation.”

  She reached for the controls on the box. “I’m not going to bother trying to hypnotize you or give you suggestions. Let’s just see where it takes you. I’ll only run this for a couple of minutes. Two minutes exactly, in fact.” She checked her watch.

  “I hope that thing’s battery power—” The sentence was interrupted. O’Neill’s jaw slackened. His eyes were closed.

  “Is he asleep?” Carter whispered. “Already?”

  “Oh, you don’t have to whisper,” Frasier said in a normal voice. The others flinched, looking at the unchanged relaxation on O’Neill’s face. “He’s not going to have a problem staying asleep. In fact, he isn’t going to be able to wake up until the impulses stop. What I’m trying to do now is bring him into a beta state where he can dream and—we hope—realize he’s dreaming.” She touched the controls delicately.

  Field of butterflies. Bright sunshine, warm, just a little breeze, enough to keep the brightly colored monarchs in the air, not enough to blow them away. Blue flowers in the field, blue and yellow against the green, green grass. He reached out a hand, and an inquisitive butterfly landed on his fingertips. Bringing the hand closer to his face, slowly, slowly, he studied the gently waving wings, the elegant antennae.

  It felt funny somehow. He looked at the butterfly, and the butterfly looked back at him. He felt as if he were pushing up against something, some barrier, but there was no barrier here. There was only himself in a summer field surrounded by butterflies, a soft warm breeze on his face.