Jo Graham: Unascended

There was nothing. It might have been a few hours. It might have been years. She had no sense of time, no sense of self.

Nothing.

Floating in near-absolute zero space, trapped in a non-functioning replicator body, days might have passed. Or eons. There was nothing.

“Elizabeth.”

There was a voice, and in some dim part of her she knew that. She knew something. There was a voice, and it said her name.

There was no way she could answer. Frozen synapses and circuits could never respond. She could not even think an answer, not in any conventional way. She knew it was not possible.

She knew. Which should not be possible either. Thought should not be possible. Consciousness should not be possible. She should not hear a voice, or even dream that she heard one.

And at that the part of her that was still Elizabeth Weir leaped, a frail flame trembling in determination. “Who are you?”

There was a net, a golden net that twined around her. For a moment she saw it complete, gold strands formed into knots, each one different, each one tied by hand, “You are safe,” the voice said. It sounded like her mother, like a woman’s voice, but that couldn’t be.

“I am dead,” Elizabeth said.

“Not quite,” the voice said. “You cannot die and you cannot live, frozen in a replicator’s body.”

“Who are you?” she asked, and it felt like her voice strengthened with each word, that her mind strengthened with each thought, herself coming back to her as though her whole being was gathered in by the golden net.

“Ran,” she said, and Elizabeth saw her, a woman two thirds her height with long, raven black hair and pale skin mottled with all the colors of the sea. She could almost have been human except for her eyes, black and wide with no iris or pupil at all, simply dark lenses.

“This is not possible,” she said, for it seemed to her that the woman stood in front of her, and that Elizabeth had a body again, like her own had been when she died, with all its flaws and strengths. It was not possible for her even to imagine this.

The circuits necessary to produce such a delusion should be frozen inactive.

“It is,” Ran said, her voice timbreless. “Are you ready to leave?”

Elizabeth raised her chin. “To die?” Death would be a mercy, compared to eternal nothing. It would be an ending, or perhaps a beginning depending on whose beliefs about the universe were true.

“To live,” the woman said, almost tenderly. There was something vaguely familiar about her, about her long four fingered hands that drew the net in gently.

“Do I know you?” she asked.

“Your people worshipped me once,” the woman said, drawing in the net from infinite space, each strand glittering in her hands. “She who takes the souls of sailors lost at sea. Ran, the Queen of the Deeps. Are you ready to leave?”

“I can’t,” Elizabeth said. “If you thaw me, you will reactivate the nanites. We can’t afford that. Humanity can’t afford that.”

“I meant without your body,” Ran said gently. “There is one way out, Elizabeth. A way that has always been open to you.”

“Ascension.” She looked at her, feeling her brows furrow, and surely that was impossible. Surely she had no face, no body, though she felt it around her, felt her face change expressions. “Are you an Ancient?”

Ran did not smile, though her voice seemed amused. Perhaps those lips were never meant for smiling. “Do you think the Ancients are the only ones who ever learned to Ascend?”

“You’re not human…” There were pieces of a puzzle here, if she could put it together.

“Nor any other child of the Ancients,” Ran said. She held out one long, four fingered hand, and her voice was like the murmur of the sea. “Come, Elizabeth.”

She took a deep breath. “What do I need to do?”

“Take my hands,” she said. “And let go.”

And then there was something.

Rodney McKay frowned down at his coffee, which had grown ice cold since the beginning of an interminable meeting with Radek Zelenka to plan the science department’s schedule. He drank it anyway. There were only a few more hours of lab time left to fill with maintenance and other people’s questionably necessary research, and then at least he could get more coffee.

“So we are on systems maintenance for Friday afternoon,” Radek prompted.

“Friday, right. We can finish testing the power conduits for damage that might have resulted from flying the city, although given that it’s been weeks, any actual significant damage would already have shown itself in the city’s power consumption by now, so ultimately that’s one more pointless exercise.”

Radek pushed his glasses up his nose in obvious frustration. “Tell me, Rodney, is there anything on this week’s schedule that you are in favor of our doing? You are the one setting the schedule, so to complain about it at the same time seems more than a little perverse. What do you want us to do?”

“I think we ought to look for Elizabeth.”

He hadn’t known that was what he wanted to do until he said it, but the words crystallized the sense he’d been having these last few weeks that they were wasting time, letting it pour through their fingers in some way that he hadn’t been able to articulate but that he was sure that they’d regret.

There was a lengthy silence before Radek replied, and when he did he seemed to be choosing his words very carefully. “Rodney, Elizabeth Weir is dead.”

“I remember what happened to Elizabeth. I’m not an amnesiac. Or crazy.”

“Anymore.”

“I don’t have amnesia anymore, and according to Carson, physically I’m in perfect health and almost 100 percent human again—”

“You still have the white hair.”

“I’ve been thinking of dying it, actually, I’ve been considering Grecian Formula for Men — and you know what, never mind the hair, that’s not the point. My point is, I am feeling much better. And I was never crazy, I was brainwashed and medically transformed into a Wraith.”

“You nearly killed me.”

“Yes, but I didn’t.”

“You let the Wraith into Atlantis.”

“Yes, and I’m sure that it will really help me to deal with my traumatic guilt about the things that I did while I had amnesia for everyone to keep constantly reminding me.”

“All I am saying is that you have been through a great deal.”

“I know what I saw,” Rodney said doggedly. “When I was in that puddle-jumper headed into the sun, out of reach of anybody’s transport beams, Elizabeth saved me. She appeared in the jumper and transported me aboard the Hammond. The only way she could have done that was if she weren’t dead, but Ascended. And what do we know is the one rule for Ascended beings?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “They’re not supposed to interfere in the affairs of unascended beings. Or they get kicked out of the higher plane. That’s what happened to Dr. Jackson when he was Ascended.”

“You think she is out there somewhere, having, what … unascended?” Radek shook his head slowly. “Rodney, we all understand that you have been having a difficult time—”

“Fine.” Rodney slammed down his coffee cup with a thud. “I’m going to go get Woolsey to authorize the gate team to do something about the problem. Since you’re not on the gate team anymore, you can finish the maintenance schedule. You don’t need me for that.”

“Yes, because scheduling is not entertaining and therefore does not require your genius,” Radek said. He sounded relieved that they were back to bickering about the schedule.