As for what Rodney has to say, actually, I believe him. At least, I believe it’s possible that he could have talked to someone who was Ascended. When Daniel was Ascended, he showed up to talk to Teal’c when Teal’c was really badly wounded. Teal’c was sure that it was really Daniel, and Daniel eventually remembered enough about it to confirm that it really was him.
So, yes, it’s definitely possible that if Dr. Weir were Ascended, she would show up to try to help her friends. And that’s certainly what got Daniel kicked out of his higher plane of existence. He wasn’t supposed to interfere to help anybody he knew, but when people he cared about were in trouble, he had to try to help. I’d probably do the same thing, although I don’t think I have the right kind of mindset to Ascend in the first place. I’ve never been very good at meditation or anything like that myself.
What I bet you’re wondering right now is whether it’s possible for Dr. Weir to have Ascended in the first place, given that she was frozen with no brain activity. And that’s where it gets interesting. I don’t think it’s possible that she could have Ascended on her own. But whatever it is that Ascends — our consciousness, or neural pattern, or however you want to try to put a scientific name on it — exists outside of normal space and linear time. I think it’s theoretically possible that another Ascended being could have communicated with Dr. Weir even though at a particular moment in time, her body was frozen with no ability for her neurons to fire.
I don’t know if that’s what you wanted to hear. It’s all a bunch of maybes, and I get the impression you’ve heard enough of those from Daniel already. But if you want to know if I think it’s possible — yes, I do. And I know if there’s any chance of finding her, you and your team will do everything you can. Because that’s what we do.
Wave at the Pegasus Galaxy for me, will you? I still miss it sometimes.
Sam
John sat there looking at the email. He wasn’t sure what to do about it, or how to even start thinking about it. It had taken him a long time to give up hope for Elizabeth, but he’d finally managed to do it around the time that she’d walked through that gate into empty space. He’d tried hard to reach a place where it wasn’t one of the things that featured in his nightmares.
And now he had Rodney and Sam both saying that there was some chance that she might have found a way out, that she might be out there somewhere waiting for them to find her. They were back to the only answer to whether she was alive being “maybe.”
He balled his fists. He hated “maybe” as an answer. Especially when it was still possible that the whole thing was a delusion brought on by hypoxia and the trauma of having been forcibly turned into a Wraith and then mostly turned back.
He thought about talking to Dr. Robinson about it, but he figured she wasn’t going to tell him whatever Rodney had told her. Instead, he walked down to the infirmary and found Carson preparing a set of syringes.
“Am I interrupting someone’s appointment?”
“Actually, these are for Rodney’s cat,” Carson said. He looked a little sheepish. “Not that I’m really supposed to be practicing veterinary medicine, but that cat’s not much more than a kitten, and he still needs his vaccinations. I had the lot sent to me from Earth, but as I’m allergic to the beasties, I’ve told Rodney he’s going to have to handle giving the injections himself. If he were planning to be squeamish about that kind of thing, he shouldn’t have signed up to be a cat owner.”
“That should be interesting for everyone concerned,” John said.
Carson looked amused. “Maybe he can get Ronon to hold Newton for him.”
“Maybe he can get Ronon to stun Newton.”
“I can’t recommend stunning a cat, medically speaking. You might try wrapping him in a towel, assuming that Rodney ropes you into helping.”
“I plan to be busy,” John said. “Whenever he’s planning to do this.” He sobered. “Actually, I wanted to talk to you about Rodney.”
“Aye, what about him?”
“Has he told you he thinks he saw Elizabeth?”
“Aye, he has,” Carson said more slowly. “He wanted to talk to me as a friend, mind you, not in any professional capacity. Or I wouldn’t be able to talk to you about it.”
“I understand that,” John said. “I was just wondering… ”
“Whether I think he’s completely mad?”
“As a friend,” John said. “Not in a professional capacity.”
Carson let out a slow breath. “I know how Rodney felt about Elizabeth. How we all did. I can only imagine how everyone must have felt when she died. When you found me in Michael’s lab and I heard that she was gone… it was a tremendous blow, I can tell you.”
“You think this is just some kind of delayed grief reaction.”
“I didn’t say that,” Carson said. “I think it isn’t like Rodney to say such a thing if it didn’t happen.”
“There was the time in the submerged puddle-jumper.”
“There was,” Carson agreed. “But afterwards, Rodney knew perfectly well that Colonel Carter hadn’t really been in that jumper with him. And the things she told him were really things he was telling himself. He just needed to hear someone else say them at the time.” He shook his head. “Rodney’s been through a great deal with this business with the Wraith, but he’s back in perfect health. And yet he still maintains that he saw Elizabeth, that she tried to help him, and that she told him she was Ascended.”
John shook his head. “I thought we knew for sure what had happened to her. It sucked, and we all hated it, but at least we finally knew.”
“Aye, that’s the hard part around here, isn’t it?” Carson said. “After so many close calls and miraculous reappearances — my own included — it’s hard to ever be really sure that anyone’s gone for good. If I were Dr. Robinson, I expect I’d have my hands full with people saying ‘but how can I get any closure when I’m not sure that the person we just had a sad funeral for this week isn’t going to turn up as a clone or a robot or an amnesia victim next week’?”
“And what would you tell them?”
“Thankfully, that’s not my job,” Carson said lightly. “And from where I’m sitting, I think we’re blessed with good fortune to have had so many people who we’ve given up for lost one way or another turn up safe and sound. Or something of the sort. I can’t say that Rodney was exactly safe or sound, for instance, but he’s back with us, and that’s more than any of us thought was likely for a while. I’ll deal with any number of complicated feelings if they come from knowing there are reasons to hope.”
“Do you really hope we’ll find her?”
It took Carson a long time to answer that question. “I do,” he said finally. “It doesn’t cost me anything to hope, so, yes, I do.”
“I don’t know about that,” John said. He shook his head abruptly. “If Rodney comes in looking for me to help him wrestle with his cat, I was never here.”
“Mum’s the word,” Carson said with a sympathetic smile that might not have been entirely for John’s chances of being mauled by a Siamese cat in the near future.
He found Rodney in his lab, and waited until Rodney finished criticizing the way one of the other scientists had graphed some function that might have represented anything from deep-sea temperatures to the city’s power consumption curve, for all John knew. “McKay, can I talk to you?”
“I’m a little busy,” Rodney said.
“I’ll keep it short.”
“Sure,” Rodney said after a minute. He followed John out into the hall and stood looking at him with a belligerent expression. “I already talked to Dr. Robinson,” he said. “So if you’re worried that I’ll go round the bend and you’ll be held responsible for it, you can stop worrying.”