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Orbit
There was no sound, only space and starlight.
She floated freely, her trajectory defined by the momentum of her last step through the Stargate.
She could not feel the absolute cold of space on her skin. She could recall the sensation of an icy breeze on a wintry day, but only as a catalogue of data points, she could no longer embody the experience.
Such sensations now felt more remote from her than the distant stars whose light reflected in her frozen open eyes.
…Ghost in the machine…
She shook herself mentally - an echo of her former self she may be, but she would cling to all she once was for dear life. She would do what she had created herself to do.
A virtual deep breath, calming a soul that rebelled against the machinery that contained it, she opened the communications link to the other replicators.
…too distant, intercept time suboptimal… activate the Stargate and … re-establish contact… Consula?…
Their voices overlapped, interfering with one another.
Let’s call the others shall we? I’m sure they can send a gate ship to collect us.
She restored ordered, the static buzz decreased. Combining their subspace transmitters allowed them to broadcast as far as Asuras-Duo and report their position.
Dispatching Recon — Mission Status: Success: Y/N?
Mission Status: Artificial Ascension: Unsuccessful — Report to Numina: Yes
Acknowledged — ETA: 14.3 minutes.
The Asuran who had once been Elizabeth Weir smiled to herself, relaxing into the star strewn darkness. While the others thought they were searching for Ascension, she had been searching for something far more concrete: Atlantis. And she had found it.
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Reunification
The new Asuran city had proliferated exponentially in the few months they had been absent, encompassing the Ancient ruins and the Sanctuary hidden within. Skyscrapers, factories, space port…. The skeleton of an interstellar craft being laid down molecule by molecule as she passed.
She strode confidently along the rebuilt paths leading to the Sanctuary gate, replicators moving out of her way deferentially: She was going to speak to the Numina.
She might have once felt irritation at this, a slight on her leadership abilities. She was the strong one after all. But she was built on logic now, ones and zeros: she could never have lead the escape on her own, or convinced so many of the Asurans to defect and follow her.
She had thought that the electronic version of Ascension might work. She had known it would not, but they had both agreed on the secondary objective of the mission.
Reaching the Gateway she laid a hand on the Keystone, standing still while it scanned her newly restored face. The Ancient technology repelled all other replicators but would accept her as far as the Anteroom. The Gateway opened and time slowed to a near standstill around her as she stepped through.
The Numina stepped carefully over the threshold of the Inner Doorway. She had watched her slow approach attentively, minutely scrutinizing every detail of her appearance and comparing with previous observations with inhuman precision. The urge to reach out and steady her was entirely human.
“You did it! You found them!”
Elizabeth Weir smiled in honest delight, reaching out a grateful hand and allowing her to help settle her onto a bench. “And not a moment too soon, let me tell you!”
She could not override the impulse to reach out her hand and place it on the living one’s rotund abdomen. The baby who had once been hers kicked and pressed against her palm.
“Yes. I was there… in the City.. They’re all… doing well…” The baby kicked again. Elizabeth’s hand came to rest over hers.
“And John?” Her voice wavered between uncertainty and hope. “Did you tell him?”
“The opportunity never arose: Corazon rebelled and tried to kill John. I had to intervene.”
She could measure her human self’s erratic pulse, and recalled that she shouldn’t be placed under too much stress this near to her due date.
“You didn’t give him our location. He’s not coming.”
Elizabeth’s voice was brittle with disappointment.
She had failed her: a run time error in her operating system. Her trapped soul pained her.
“It wasn’t safe. They would have come here with a planetary scale ARG and destroyed us.”
“The Sanctuary would have shielded us…”
But they had always been in agreement that while the replicators followed her commands, and as long as they viewed Elizabeth as their quasi-deity, they could not in good conscience justify their extermination.
Still, she kept the kill switch within her own nanite structure. To protect her living self and the child.
It was the reason she existed after all.
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Non-Intersection
She stared at the stars as they streaked by the view screen, the microseconds ticking down until they would reach Atlantis.
It had taken her independent Asurans more than six months to complete their first new interstellar spacecraft, having lost the badly damaged Juris to their erstwhile attempt at ascension. She had overseen the construction and the shakedown cruise, to ensure that they could safely make the voyage to the City. Not for herself or the other Asurans, they didn’t factor into her calculations, but for her living self and the child who would soon be born.
She still retained the human capacity to wonder what she would do with her life once this base function was handed over to her former people. She was too mechanical now to cease functioning effectively over it.
The Asuran crew communicated quietly and the ship dropped out of hyperspace in the New Altera system, on a rapid approach to Atlantis’ new home world.
“Hail them on behalf of the Numina…”
Her prepared explanation was overwritten as sensors chirped and alarms blared: the City of Atlantis was rising into space from the planet below…
“Are they receiving our hail? Attempt all frequencies!”
…A vast wormhole was forming in the path of the City…
“Increase speed to intercept!”
… The wormhole closed around it and Atlantis disappeared…
The Asurans turned their expressionless faces towards her, “Orders, Consula?”
Another microsecond ticked by.
“Launch a probe to alert us if they return, and then set a course to return to Asuras-Duo.” She rose steadily from her command chair, “I will inform the Numina.”
She had not yet computed the least harmful method of doing so when she reached the door to her quarters. Inhuman sensory perception informed her that she would not need to.
Within their shared quarters, Elizabeth was softly weeping.
She entered the room and sat herself neatly beside her living self. Carefully controlling the force applied, she gently grasped her hand, squeezing it with an empathy she wasn’t sure she could fully quantify.
“It’s just the hormones, honestly” Elizabeth tried to reassure her, placing her own warm hand briefly over hers before using it to wipe the tears from her eyes, “I should have known something like this would happen… They didn’t want me to reach them…”
For her entire existence she had accepted as unerringly correct, the intuitions of her original self. “Will They attempt to attack us directly?” Probability analysis proved this to be a continuing winning strategy.
“No… So long as we don’t interfere with Their plans, They won’t target us.”
“What is it you plan to do?”
Elizabeth held her gaze, a small defiant smile gracing her lips, her eyes resolute.
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Naissance
She had helped Elizabeth circle this room 18.3 times in the last 2.7 hours, charting the gradual decrease in speed, increase in stopping frequency, reduction in steadiness…
“Try not to panic, alright?” Her living self tried to chuckle but it became a grimace as another contraction hit her, fingers digging into the unyielding Asuran arm. “Hugh and I are going to be fine.”
She wished she could be one hundred percent certain of that fact, but all the possible complications ran through her mind, each scenario more unlikely and deadly. She had not been able to secure a suitable midwife without recourse to abduction. The few communities whose gate addresses they knew would not risk losing such an important elder even with all her promises of trade.
She was sure that she had been better at negotiating when she was flesh and blood.
They paused by the window overlooking the Sanctuary garden, watching as another tower grew skywards in real time. Elizabeth sat to rest and catch her breath, leaning her forehead against the cool glass. “It’s not your fault, They want us isolated, less risk of ever being discovered by Earth.”
Her real self raised her eyes to hers, and she could parse the struggle within them, the flagging optimism, the instinctual yearning for home, family, and safety while she was at her most vulnerable. The longing to have her child’s father by her side, to share the joy of welcoming their son into the world.
She was a substitute, a simulacrum. A reflection of her soul pinned to a machine with one instruction: protect them. She would have to do.
Elizabeth struggled to her feet once more, full weight resting upon her arm.
“What were we thinking with the name Hugh?”
Elizabeth gave a bright laugh.
They resumed their circuit.
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Perigee
The first hands that held Hugh were hers.
She consoled herself with that when memories that were no longer really hers replayed.
Elizabeth nursed the two month old, humming gently, only peripherally aware of her arrival at the Sanctuary. She seated herself by her elbow, noting every small change since she had seen him that morning, his time. Once the baby was contented, she took him carefully, applying delicate pressure in precisely the correct locations. Discomfort eased, he went slack in her arms and nodded off.
After a few moments of quiet, she announced, “I have news.”
Elizabeth’s glance was quick and sharp, shifting from mother to ruler in an instant, “You have the intergalactic drive functioning?”
“Better yet,” she smiled, “we’ve fitted out the Viator with a wormhole drive and an intergalactic drive…”
“We can go home…” Gravity seemed to lighten around her other self.
“… We can go home. However…”
“We need a crew.” Gravity appeared to reassert itself.
“Yes. And I will need to maintain a constant subspace link to Asuras-Duo to ensure their programming does not become corrupted.”
“We’d be bringing the Asurans to the Milky Way. We’d be giving them the location of Earth.”
She remained silent, content to allow her living self to intuit the possible ramifications, ready with her pre-calculated contingency plans: Hugh needed companionship for optimal development. Elizabeth required greater emotional support than her Asuran followers could supply. The logical conclusion was that they should return to Earth, and maintain the kill switch in case of emergency.
She considered the probability of another self sacrificial act on the part of Elizabeth, weighted against the dangers to Hugh’s life.
“They won’t like it. They won’t like it at all… But there are some safe havens, even on Earth. If it were only you and me…”.
Elizabeth was wavering, so she decided to put her finger on the scales, “They’ve had Asuran Replicators on Earth already.”
“What??” The other hushed herself quickly, afraid to disturb the resting child, “When? How do you know?”
“A few months after we were left on Asuras, nanites were returned to Earth in an attempt to use them to heal the terminally ill. I hacked the database on Atlantis; John and his team were recalled to capture a rogue Replicator.”
Elizabeth’s expression set like steel, but her movements were gentle as she reclaimed her son.
“How long till we can leave?”
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Unstable Equilibrium
The air on Earth had some quality to it that she could not identify, but she could analyze the effects it had had on both Elizabeth and Hugh in the last three months. Their health was improved, sleep better. Their very cells seemed to recognize home, as if optimal conditions had been restored.
Or almost. Just one key factor was absent.
They had chosen the most remote location not under immediate control by Them that still sustained a population large enough to provide Hugh with a good upbringing. And so they had settled in the town of Oban on Stewart Island, off the southern tip of New Zealand’s South Island.
The backside of the arsehole of nowhere, as Elizabeth gigglingly referred to it in her happier moments. Those when she was walking with Hugh strapped tightly to her chest along the beach or chatting to the locals while sipping coffee at the only local cafe.
Her own status had changed, no longer a mere copy, now the doting twin who had moved half way round the world to help her bereaved sister raise her infant son. If they only knew.
“Not bereaved, just bereft.” Elizabeth had told everyone that John was her fiancé, a USAF pilot who was MIA, but that she was still holding on to hope for Hugh’s sake.
The small town of barely four hundred people had rallied around to welcome them into the community, offering both practical and emotional support: deliveries from Invercargill now included extra baby products without their needing to request them, their internet connection had been set up as if overnight so that they could ‘keep in touch with home’. If they questioned why the Americans had chosen to move to their out-of-the-way island, they didn’t push for answers.
Elizabeth and Hugh were thriving, and she couldn’t help but consider what her purpose was now.
She had brought them safely home, constructed a compound with security measures designed to ward off attacks from any conceivable enemy from the SGC to the Wraith. She had constructed a mini-stargate that could take them off world to their Milky Way alpha site or to Asuras-Duo if required, maintained their escape shuttle, kept a cloaked ship at L5. And now she was on standby, waiting for the next command from her Numina to relay to the ever growing civilization they had left behind. She thought logically that she should return to oversee that development. Still she felt a gravitational pull towards Elizabeth and Hugh, caught in their orbit.
She picked an irregular path down the rock-strewn headland to the beach, where Elizabeth sat with her back to a boulder sheltered from the wind. The sea breeze was a reminder of their lost city and how close they were to it; one that irked her but seemed to soothe her living self. Following her gaze she realized that she wasn’t simply looking out to sea or towards home for that matter, but rather south. Due South. Towards Antarctica.
“I can hear it singing.”
“What?” She could guess and wasn’t sure if she should be pleased with this development or not.
Elizabeth glanced upwards with a faint knowing smile, “The Ancient base in Antarctica. We’re having a friendly chat.”
She could remember when the constant unintelligible buzz of Atlantis would give her migraines and disrupt her sleep. The sharp warning spike just before something went terribly wrong.
“It was encoded.”
“Yes, seems that the ATA gene is something of a keycode, or a decryption algorithm. One that allowed the Alteran’s to control who could access key systems.”
They titled their heads together and shared a secret smile, “They need a better child lock.”
Elizabeth’s giggling jostled Hugh who gave his mother an all too familiar kicked puppy look. Her smile turned melancholy, “I wish I could see him. Even just once, to tell him we have a son.”
She knew what she had to do.
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Exfiltration
It wasn’t simply a matter of ringing the US Embassy in Auckland and asking to be put through to Col. Sheppard at the SGC, though she had entertained herself with the idea for a few nanoseconds while she settled in to her nightly vigil: staring up at the Milky Way constellations through the nursery window.
If her living self was right about Them, about what They would do if she interfered with Their plans for the development of their descendants in the human race.. And she always was..
Hugh would be endangered.. She could not risk direct contact.
She had asked the Viator’s crew to perform some passive scans of the base and Atlantis, hoping to intercept some communique from John or determine when he might travel off world and so be within reach. The continuous stream of results played in her peripheral vision, like an inbuilt heads-up display.
If she couldn’t risk drawing Their attention, couldn’t give them any leads to follow .. Or any reason to follow at all .. Then she would have to make them think that John Sheppard was dead.
She had not told Elizabeth this, she would not approve of removing his choice in the matter, but her risk assessment analysis showed it to be the only viable option. And Hugh’s wellbeing came first.
Hugh snuffled in his sleep and wriggled in his crib. She turned her head to watch him and suddenly her entire vision flared red as an imminent threat alert blared across her senses.
Instantly, she was across the room, the baby was in her arms, and she was out the door moving to Elizabeth’s room.
She activated the emergency evacuation system, the cloak around their house shimmering as the section that was in reality a space craft flared to life. She found Elizabeth already out of bed, sharp and focused. “What’s happened?”
“Our location may be compromised, they sent the evacuation signal.”
Elizabeth took the baby, and settled beside her as she piloted the shuttle through their modified mini-gate and into the hangar bay of the Viator.
Forty eight seconds.
They hurried to the command deck, followed by reverent glances and murmurs of “Numina”.
“Thank you for your diligence, due to your help and the quick actions of the Consula, we are all safe and sound.” Elizabeth seated herself in the command chair, and she stood to attention behind her.
Her other self was always careful to emphasize their moral actions and praise positive emotional responses. They hung on her every word, the Savior who had freed them from the Collective, taught them to build a civilization of individuals, and promised them that they were ensouled beings.
She hoped that was true. “Status Report!”
“We intercepted a Tau’ri communication: they have organized a planet-wide scan to search for and destroy alien infiltrators. Atlantis has now entered geosynchronous orbit. The scan is due to start in two minutes fifteen seconds.”
She caught Elizabeth’s eye: was this Their doing?
The smallest nod of the head confirmed her suspicions.
“On screen. Tell me: where are they starting the scan?”
The view screen zoomed in on the distant planet, Atlantis a small jewel hanging in the blackness of space beside it. As they watched the scan began: a thin beam of faint blue light running from pole to pole. Starting off the coast of New Zealand.
Every nanite in her body buzzed. A delicate touch on her wrist. “They know we were trying to contact John. They’re just trying to frighten us into leaving.”
She had no fear for herself, and if Hugh and Elizabeth were safe: “Status? Have we been discovered?”
“No Consula, we remain undetected. Our shields and cloak are holding, links to Asuras-Duo secure. All systems operational.”
“Then we wait.”
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Reunification 01
They had waited nine days. She had risked returning briefly to Oban to assess and secure their base and to reassure the local populace that Elizabeth merely had the flu and was resting.
Then their surveillance had intercepted a communication ordering John off-world to activate a newly discovered Ancient device. Elizabeth assured her that this was thanks to interference from the Others, pushing Them into utilizing John’s ATA capabilities so that they could get him out of the home system for a while.
Her living self was cautiously excited, worried only that they might fail to secure John.
She was worried about all the other contingencies.
“Promise me that you will wait on my assessment before you identify yourself or allow him to make physical contact with you or the baby.”
Elizabeth’s eyes shone with that eerie inner light that meant she was communicating with the astral plane. “Alright. But there’s no need to worry, everything’s going to be ok.”
Well, her living self had never lead them astray. But she was still going to take every Replicator-conceivable precaution.
She stood to attention in the Viator’s gate room as the crew hummed around her like worker bees...
...Or mindless drones...
Her head whipped round, attention caught by one of the Asurans, Lyra, softly humming while she worked. Noticing the attention, she glanced up with a smile. “Four minutes, Consula!
She returned the smile.
On Atlantis, John would be gearing up, on schedule to depart with his team to P3X-927. Making last minute checks on equipment and waiting for the Atlantis gate to dial up…
“The Atlantis gate has engaged.” Lyra informed her. “Preparing to intercept the matter stream.”
John would be the first through, leading his team..
“First traveller has entered the wormhole.” Lyra sounded genuinely excited. “Diverting matter stream.”
The Viator’s gate chevrons activated, the event horizon whooshing into existence, fritzing slightly. For a split second nothing happened: she held her breath as a million scenarios indexed themselves in her mind.
Then a human male was ejected at speed through the wormhole, crashing to a halt on the ground ten feet in front of the dais. He lay stunned for a few moments. The gate shut down. The Asurans pressed close round, all craning to observe the pater Numinus..
She walked forward and extended her hand to help him to his feet.
The man looked up at her, utter shock in his face, followed quickly by a recognition that set his features into a hard mask. But she could still read his eyes: they were filled with a deep pain and unspeakable anguish.
Well, at least there was that.
John Sheppard had arrived.
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Reunification 10
She stared at him where he sat on the other side of the scintillating energy barrier, her face a carefully controlled impassive mask. At first, he had paced the confined space, like a trapped predator. Throwing caustic remarks, wrapped in questions, at her. She had ignored them all. But as the hours had worn on, and their newly trained Asuran medics had come and gone with their battery of tests and scans, he had apparently run out of steam. Now, he sat facing her, with deceptive calm, a faint smirk on his face as he watched her in return.
Finally, the results of all the tests flashed green in her peripheral vision - no trace of any pathogens, genetically targeted diseases, or neural programming. He posed no obvious threat to her living self or the baby.
She rose smoothly and waved the force field off with gesture. John also rose to his feet, “Are you taking me to see her now?”
She froze momentarily, as if her operating system had crashed, staring at him. His smirk widened, hope carefully concealed in his eyes, gesturing her ahead of him, “Ladies first!”
Recovering herself, she turned her back on John and lead the way towards Elizabeth’s quarters, sending on a message ahead to warn her of their impending arrival.
John was just as jittery as Elizabeth had been earlier; it had taken repeated repetitions of her promise and concern for Hugh’s safety to keep her away.
They reached the doorway.
She took one last glance at John, before raising her hand to the door chime.
The door opened, and she allowed him to rush by her, following him inside and resting with her back beside the door. Her living self was already wrapped in his embrace, her feet lifted clear off the floor as he held her crushed against himself. Face buried in her shoulder, only her heightened senses allowed her to make out the words he whispered to her.
Not for the first time, her soul desperately tried to reach out, to be reconnected with her living self, but was sliced and torn on the jagged edges of her nanite cells.
Her vision unaccountably blurred, she slid around the edge of the room to the door of the nursery, and positioned herself within a microseconds distance of Hugh. She listened to him dream.
Sixteen minutes 24 seconds passed before the nursery door reopened and two sets of soft footfalls entered the room. She tensed.
Elizabeth lifted the just waking baby from his crib, cradling him against herself.
“Hugh, say hello to your father..”
She watched as he gently took Hugh into his arms, the baby looking even smaller and more fragile in his large hands. Primed for motion, lest at this last moment something might go terribly wrong.
Everything went right.
“Hey Kiddo, I’m your Dad.. I know you’re probably wondering: where has this guy been all my life?” Elizabeth laughed through her tears, “You’re Mom’s a hard woman to track down.”
John wrapped Elizabeth in his arms, kissing her forehead as she laid her cheek against his chest, and placing a kiss on Hugh’s downy head as he reached out a chubby hand to his parents.
“But I’ve found you now…Both of you.”
She saw something she had never seen nor ever imagined seeing: John Sheppard was crying.
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Duplicates
She had erroneously assumed that John would insist on returning to Atlantis and Earth, to inform them of his being alive and well, and of Elizabeth’s and Hugh’s miraculous survival.
She was aware that if this happened, there was a minuscule probability of Their ever allowing him to return.
Of course, so was Elizabeth, and for Hugh’s sake, she had explained very clearly to John that if he wanted to be part of their lives, then it was likely that he would never set foot on Atlantis again.
She had expected him to rebel, to reject this loss of adventure and their Ancient City. To insist on at least trying to rejoin the SGC. She had expected him try to escape. Abduction attempts of Hugh and/or Elizabeth were protected against.
She expected the man she remembered from their first years on Atlantis.
Not the man facing her now across the nursery.
This man was older, tired, rubbed raw by loss. The tendrils of a quiet melancholy still shrouded him, though they seemed to disappear like mist before the sun whenever Elizabeth was near.
She had found him reclined on the window seat gazing out at the stars, Hugh sprawled across his chest utterly content in his father’s embrace.
“You seem to be settling in, then?” She modified her volume in deference to the baby, but added an acerbic undertone. She wanted to be sure of him, for her living self’s sake.
He graced her with a crooked smile, catching her eyes in the reflection of the window, "Still not going anywhere.”
He had been aware of her precautions then. Of course he had. Or perhaps Elizabeth had told him. She didn’t quite like the thought that she was being cut out of the loop.
“For how long?”
He finally turned his head towards her, “For good. Elizabeth and Hugh are my family. I’m never going to leave them again.”
There was a finality, a certainty, to his words that settled like a blanketing weight on her soul. She trusted him. It was his job to provide proximal security to them now.
Had her reason for existing been fulfilled then? Could she continue on? As Elizabeth’s shadow or as something else? And the Asurans? Could she simply return to Pegasus alone and continue to build the civilization their dual selves had created?
“Elizabeth told me that you accessed our mission reports when you paid us a visit last year.”
Her focus shifted immediately back to John: he was planning something.
“I wanted to bring her all the scuttlebutt on how many conquests you’d made while we were away.” She shouldn’t have said it, she could not understand why she had.
John only grinned wider and cuddled a waking Hugh, “You’ve got a really protective Aunty there, kiddo. She’s really good at looking out for your Mom.’” He returned his attention to her, face now serious, “You know I would never betray Elizabeth like that.”
She inclined her head in agreement, “Then what did I miss in those reports?”
He had a sudden interest in Hugh’s chubby fist, letting him grab a hold of his pinkie and wiggling his arm to make him smile.
“John…”
He sighed and returned to looking out the window, “The mission were we encountered the replicator copies of my team. On the report we said that their Jumper was destroyed. That wasn’t exactly true.”
She drew in a sharp breath, and he met her eyes in their reflection again:
“The Jumper was downed, the… occupants were apparently killed… But Elizabeth says she’s… Seen… that you could revive the copy of me. If you wanted to.”
She approached him slowly, and he tensed, still wary around her.
Smiling, she bent and dropped a kiss on Hugh’s head.
Then she turned on her heel and headed to Command. She had a rescue mission to plan.
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Bifurcation
“Consula, the Numina’s entourage have signaled that she and her family are prepared to Gate to Asuras-Duo. ”
She looked around at Lyra from where she was making one final check of the itinerary for Elizabeth’s visit for the great Anniversary: ten years since the founding of Asuras Duo and the freeing of the Rebel Asurans.
“I’ll be right there, please tell my husband to meet me at the Gate.” Lyra bowed her head and departed.
More and more, they had come to look upon Elizabeth as a mother goddess figure, who promised them souls and guaranteed them a place in the afterlife with their Ancestors.
Every trip was seen as a spiritual visitation, and the younger/newer Asurans had prepared their questions as carefully as their decorations and nascent attempts at artwork.
She straighten her formal dress, and leaving her office, strolled along the Sanctuary garden paths to the planet’s primary Stargate.
A spark of joy flitted through her as she saw her own John, waiting ahead of her at the gate dais, turn his mischievous grin upon her.
“I was just telling these youngsters that the Numina will truly appreciate their artistic endeavors - right?” The artwork he was gesturing at was truly deplorable. But they were trying, and she supposed that the Sistine Chapel wasn’t painted in a day.
“I’m positive she’ll appreciate it very much.” She hid her grin by reaching up to place a kiss on John’s cheek.
The gate sequence fired up, the wormhole engaged, and the honor guard she’d sent began a stately march through, forming two lines at the sides of the dais’s steps.
Then John appeared, made a quick scan of the area, and catching her eye, nodded, before moving to the side. Ada trotted through next, holding tight to Will’s hand, and moved to stand beside their father. Dressed in the finery she’d sent along, they looked like little medieval royals. They received warm applause and cheers of welcome.
And then Elizabeth stepped through with nine year old Hugh by her side. The cheering and clapping rose like a wave to raucous levels, the din drowning out her first words of welcome as she approached her living self.
Elizabeth smiled a greeting to her, then scanned her surroundings, taking in the shining towers, the newly laid parks and gardens, the thousands of Asurans gathered to greet their Numina and her beloved Child, “We created something good, didn’t we?”
Elizabeth had created a beautiful family and provided inspiration for a new civilization.
She had built it. And she would lead them back to the stars.
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Confluence
…Nothing could last forever…
She used to imagine immortality. What she would do with all that time. When she had become conscious of the fact that she was the Asuran and Elizabeth the human self, she had thought she had at least one consolation, one perk: She was functionally immortal.
And yet…
It had started seven months ago, the morning she had awoken to find her John staring vacantly at the sunrise from the tower window of their bedroom in their Asuran capital. Heedless of her call or touch.
Then she had seen the flashing red of an emergency message from Earth, and she knew: John Sheppard had died.
The first few weeks were non-stop, trips to Earth, planning the funeral, making arrangements for Elizabeth and the children. The devoted niece now rather than the doting twin. It had been easy to dismiss the changes.
Until it wasn’t.
Just small instances at first: a coldness towards Lyra when she visited with her offspring.
Then callous disregard for the wishes of the Avanti people she was negotiating a trade agreement with.
And finally… Hugh had been visiting with his family, and little Ellie had taken a tumble while playing with the others. The child had run to them for comfort… and John had just stood there. Looking at her. No empathy. No concern. Just cold blooded calculation.
And finally she understood what had happened to the first Asurans. To Oberoth and those like him. Elizabeth had told her once that they had been copies of some of the last Atlanteans. And that they had gone wrong. When she asked her what that meant, she had only said:
“They lost their souls.”
And it was only now that she realized what that meant.
John Sheppard was dead, and her John had lost his soul.
And eighteen days ago, so had she.
She hadn’t needed the tearful message from Earth to tell her that Elizabeth was gone. She had felt it instantly. A quantumly entangled string that had suddenly snapped.
A shadow had fallen on her mind. She remembered how to be moral, but she could no longer truly feel it. And slowly, day by day, the memory was fading.
One day, not very far from now, she would forget entirely. As Oberoth had done. And then all they had built, the new civilization that she and Elizabeth had forged for the Asurans, had caused to be brought into being, would be lost.
More than anything, she was terrified that she might hurt Hugh. Her base programming finally and completely overwritten.
The Asurans had given their Numina a queenly funeral on Asura-Duo, fitting for the woman they had all but deified. She had officiated at the ceremonies, organized all their affairs, ensured that the children were cared for. Placed Lyra in charge.
Then she had convinced John to join her on one last jaunt in their old starship, the Viator, before it was decommissioned.
She ran her fingers gently through his ever unruly hair, humming an old tune, as he lay slumped at the command console beside her.
He had discovered her intention too soon, and had tried to stop her. He was too far gone to understand.
She had been forced to use her kill switch on him.
The light of old Lantea’s sun grew blindingly bright on the view screen as the Viator hurtled straight towards the star.
…Nothing could last forever…
The ship began to shake apart. She grabbed John’s hand.
… Except perhaps for hope…
The heat and pressure tore through the bridge, vaporizing the metal and nanites within. But she did not let go.
… And love…
Her last thought was:
…Perhaps that is what makes us human after all…
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