Sabine Bauer - Mirror, mirror

Except, you couldn't tell unless you had a watch and knew the time of day. The sky remained unchanged… No, that wasn't true, was it? The sky still was the same stomach-churning stew of reds, but, if anything, it had gotten worse, shot through with cankers of black, menacing and malignant, that belched great forks of heat lightning. A hot, violent wind had risen, chasing leaves, torn-off twigs, and small debris up the mountain before it. She squinted against the dust it whipped into her eyes, thinking that, maybe, the gale at least was a good thing. It might just help disperse the carbon monoxide that had pooled in and around the rift in the earth.

The area was deserted now. As soon as the doctors had confirmed what had killed most of the people trapped in the chasm, a ragtag crew of police, firefighters, and soldiers, together with select volunteers, had cleared a wide strip of ground either side of the fault and declared it off-limits until further notice. Tamed by terror, the crowd had complied with the kind of listless docility she recalled seeing in the refugees from every war or disaster zone she'd ever visited. It was as if, after losing wherever they called home, any further evacuation merely served to numb them a little bit more, make them a little bit more indifferent to whatever misery would befall them next.

They'd struck their camps, inasmuch as they'd had them, or else simply shouldered their belongings and trudged uphill to where they were supposedly safe and settled again. The mountainside was dotted with their campfires, small and struggling to survive in the wind, vanes of smoke slanted sharply. Elizabeth fancied she could feel their stares on her, some hostile, most expectant, hoping that, somehow, the strangers would work a miracle, open the Stargate, and lead them all to salvation. Part of her wanted to yell at them to stop staring and accept the inevitable.

Just as she had to accept it.

She had failed. John Sheppard, for once, had failed. That whole madcap scheme of somehow going back and making it all unhappen had failed. As a child she'd learned the hard way that, if you broke things because you were thoughtless or careless or both, you couldn't just turn the clock back and fix them, no matter how badly you wanted to. Somewhere along the line she'd allowed herself to forget that lesson, and back then it had only been a canary that hadn't withstood a week of I'll feed it tomorrow. This time it was a galaxy, a universe perhaps, and, on a less abstract level, all those people huddled around their choking little fires and their hope.

Elizabeth wanted to scream.

Instead, she whirled around to head back into the tent and almost collided with Radek. "It's getting a little stuffy and circular in there, isn't it?" His smile crinkled unfamiliar lines around his eyes. He was an old man. The realization forced another shudder from her, but if he'd noticed he didn't let on. "Don't let Selena get to you. She can be rather reluctant when it comes to wrapping her head around new ideas. But she's a good scientist. One of the best." A little proprietary pride there.

She returned his smile. "I think anybody would have a hard time wrapping their head around this mess."

"Yes." He fell silent and, just as Elizabeth had done earlier, gazed out at the blistered sky, the Stargate, and up at the refugees' new campsites. Finally he looked back at her. "Suppose we find a way and succeed in reversing Charybdis, what will happen to all these people here?"

And how will you react when I tell you the truth? Like the other Radek in that other timeline?

Stifling a gasp, Elizabeth searched for a palatable answer. It took too long.

"I thought so," Radek murmured. "Selena suspects it, too, which is another reason for her reluctance."

"And what about you, Radek?" she asked carefully, not sure if she wanted to hear his reply.

"You mean will I react as… vehemently as my alter ego?"

This time the gasp tore loose. "Colonel Sheppard told you?"

Radek nodded. "He seemed unusually careful in talking to me. I confronted him. I agree that there was no point in keeping it a secret. That… man… he wasn't me, Dr. Weir."

He could have fooled her, had fooled her, in fact, which was none of this Radek's fault.

"Never mind," she said. "It was a difficult situation for all involved."

"That is one way of putting it…" His eyebrows arched in wry amusement, then he sobered as his gaze wandered back to the evacuees. "I suppose some scientists would argue they're not real. They felt real enough to me for the past thirty years or so. They're good people, you know? The universe will be poorer for their never having existed…" Radek sighed and segued to a seemingly unconnected train of thought. "Approximately a month ago our meteorologists discovered signs that the planet's atmosphere was breaking down at an exponential rate. They were working on finding a way of reversing the deterioration when all the rest of this started. The quakes destroyed most research facilities on the planet, which was when the government decided that evacuation was the only option. Except, they ran out of suitable ships inside a day, with eighty-five percent of the population still stranded here." He turned around to face her. "I guess what I'm saying is that, whatever happens, these people will cease to exist, and that disappearing in a flash is a kinder way to go than slowly suffocating in a toxic atmosphere."

Breathing felt difficult enough even now, though Elizabeth wasn't sure if this was due to objective facts or the oppressive menace suggested by that sickly sky. Even that sliver of hope implicit in Zelenka's words did nothing to improve things. "How long?" she asked.

"If it's going at the rate the meteorologists projected, we've got two days. Perhaps less"

The sliver of hope imploded. "Two days?"

"Perhaps less"

She hated herself for asking, but it slipped out anyway. "What can you possibly achieve in two days that you couldn't in thirty-years?"

Radek smiled a little. "More than you think maybe. Something happened when you and Colonel Sheppard came through the gate. It gave me an idea."

They were wading through bodies or so it seemed, but for all that the city was incongruously quiet now. That runaway train of fury had thundered its way up to the fortress to wreak whatever havoc it meant to wreak up there-or maybe to simply burst into flames, from its own rage or from the blaze that tore through the buildings perched on the hilltop. The fire was plainly visible now, and the water-logged night was lit up by a crimson halo that refracted in the raindrops like a shower of blood.

Very poetic, Rodney. The shower of blood was one of the Plagues of Egypt, if I understand your bizarre mythology correctly. Who is Egypt?

"Not who. What," Rodney replied tiredly. "It's a country. Now shut up "

"Excuse me?" Right ahead of him, Teyla turned around, forcing him to stop. Her head was cocked, face lifted his way, blind eyes gazing just past his.

It was disconcerting. Was she trying to keep up appearances or was it old habit? And just when and how had she lost her sight anyway? He'd never found time to ask.

Maybe it's a topic for a nice fireside chat, Ikaros suggested acidly. Always provided that big brute out front'll ever let us rest, of course.

This time Rodney remembered not to voice his answer. That was habit, for sure. Speaking out loud. Like normal people would. People who didn't have adolescent prodigies stuck in their heads. Why him, dammit?

I said `Shut up!' Rodney hissed silently. And I can't see why you would need a rest. You're not the one doing the walking. Not to mention the acrobatics or the climbing over heaps of corpses.