Daniel's hands were flat on the archive desk's wood-grain at 0319 when he looked at them for the eleventh consecutive day and named what he had been seeing.
The lighting in the SGC archive at 0317 was the standard overhead-fluorescent set at the late-night third-shift dim setting Hammond had authorized for the level twenty-eight research wing in 1998 to permit the academic-grade reading Daniel preferred. The dimness was the kind of dimness that made the luminescence at the ends of his index fingers visible without him having to dim the desk lamp further. The fingers had been luminescent on both hands since the day after Bra'tac had named the substrate in this same room twenty-six days ago. The luminescence had been sustained. Daniel had been watching it.
At 0319:18 he said, to the empty archive:
"I see them. I have seen them for eleven days. I am ascending. I do not know how long. I am afraid now."
The naming took thirteen seconds.
At 0319:31 he reached to the medical telemetry pendant Janet had clipped to his lab coat collar on Day one hundred thirty-four and activated the manual alert. The pendant pulsed once at the pendant's standard alert frequency. The signal routed through the SGC medical relay to Janet's bedside monitor in the officer's quarters at 0319:34.
Janet was on the secure family-channel to me at 0319:41. I had been at the SRD office. My sync had been at sixty percent stable for three days. I had been reading Walter's overnight intelligence digest. I left the office at 0320:18.
I ran the corridor. The eleven minutes from the SRD office to the level twenty-eight archive included three corridor turns and one elevator transit and a long walk past the night-shift gate-room. I arrived at 0331:14.
Daniel was at his desk. His hands had not moved. The luminescence was visible at the dim setting. His face was calm. His eyes were wet. He had been crying for the eight minutes between his naming and my arrival without anyone in the room to see.
Janet came in at 0334:11 in medical-officer scrubs with no time for street clothes. She had her medical pad. She had her stethoscope. She did not put on the bedside-manner register. She put on the working-physician register.
"Daniel. I am going to take your vitals. Drew, sit down. Daniel, you said you are afraid now. Tell me what changed at 0319."
Daniel at 0337 in the archaeologist's register he had been operating in for eleven days:
"Janet, I have been seeing the light. I have known for eleven days. I named it tonight. I was afraid I would not be able to name it. I named it. Now I am afraid of what comes after the naming."
I sat at the chair Janet had positioned for me.
"Daniel," I said. "The foreknowledge says the symptoms are pre-ascension. The pre-ascension period is variable — months to a year. The ascension itself is a choice the candidate makes. Oma Desala will appear. She has been appearing in your dreams since approximately the second moon-cycle after the wedding. The woman whose face you do not yet know is her. She will offer guidance. Not coercion. The choice is yours. Janet and I have been watching for eleven days under the witness's register protocol Janet established the night after Bra'tac named the substrate."
Daniel at 0341:
"Drew. You knew at the wedding. Janet knew the night after Bra'tac. Why didn't you tell me sooner."
I held his eyes.
"Daniel. Janet's medical-ethical protocol was we do not tell him until the symptoms surface to him. The protocol was Janet's. I supported it. Bra'tac surfaced the substrate-architecture in your hands. I delivered partial-disclosure in your archive at twenty-one-seventeen that same evening, in the substrate-architecture register. I did not deliver the full-ascension-pattern register because that surfacing was yours to do. You did it at oh-three-nineteen tonight. The protocol holds. The full-ascension register is now available to you."
Daniel turned to Janet.
"Janet. Was the protocol the right one."
Janet at 0345:18:
"Yes. I would do it again. The patient-autonomy register for ascension cannot be overridden by external naming. I am sorry the cost was your eleven days alone. I am not sorry the protocol was kept."
Daniel held her eyes.
At 0347 he said: "Yes. The protocol was right. I am angry. I am also right that the protocol was right. Both. Can the both register operate."
I said at 0347:18: "Yes, Daniel. Both registers can operate. Janet's protocol was right. Your anger at the cost is right. They do not cancel."
He nodded.
At 0349 he said: "Okay. Drew. Tell me everything the foreknowledge says about what is coming. Not strategic. Personal. What did I do in the canon timeline. What happened to me."
I told him.
I told him for thirty-nine minutes — from 0352 to 0431 — in the personal register he had requested. I told him about Oma Desala's guidance and the noninterference principle the Others enforced. I told him about the eventual re-corporealization that the canonical Daniel had undergone, about his specific role in the ascended-state war against Anubis that the canonical timeline had recorded across season eight, about the projected timeline I had from foreknowledge — pre-ascension forty-seven to ninety-one days from the current state, ascension event ninety-one to one hundred eighty days from the current state, ascended-state duration one to three Earth-years before re-corporealization.
He listened.
He did not interrupt.
At 0441 he said: "Drew. Thank you. I am going to keep working on the artifact. Janet, I want the metabolic monitor at one point zero degrees alert-threshold from now on, not one point two. I want to know before I do not know. I want Drew to be the strategic-foreknowledge partner on what I do in the ascended state, when I get there. I want you both to be the people who knew. I love you both. I am going to bed now. Wake me at oh-nine-hundred for the next research session."
He stood. He walked to his quarters. The luminescence in his hands as he walked away was the same luminescence he had been carrying for eleven days. He did not turn back at the door.
Janet and I came back to officer's quarters at 0501.
She sat at the kitchen table. She set her medical pad on the counter. She put her stethoscope beside the pad. She did not take off the scrubs.
At 0501:18 she said: "Drew. The protocol was right. I am also going to cry now."
I said: "Yes."
She cried for fourteen minutes.
I sat in the chair beside her. I put one hand at the middle of her back. The other I left on the table where she could reach it. She did not reach it. She held the edge of the table with her left hand and her face was in her right palm and the medical-officer scrubs were absorbing the tears at the right shoulder where they were running down her wrist.
At 0515:14 she lifted her face. She took a breath. She let it out.
"Tomorrow we tell Jack."
"Yes."
She did not move for another six minutes. Then she stood. She went to the small bathroom of the quarters. She washed her face. She came back in fresh scrubs from the small closet stack. She sat at the table again.
She did not speak.
I made coffee at 0535. I brought her a cup. She drank it. I drank mine. The kettle clicked at 0541. The under-cabinet light was on at the low setting. The territory map's Anubis monitoring-grid color register was active on the small wall console at the corner.
I was at the SRD office at 0700.
The sync interface in my peripheral interior read sixty percent stable. The recovery from the override on Day one thirty-three had completed across the past three days.
AURORA-7 at 0700:18 in private interior, the cool register:
Drew Ramsey. The Daniel ascension event has been catalogued. I will begin the projected ascended-state interface architecture for Daniel's eventual return-as-ascended-being protocol. Your foreknowledge has been more accurate than my pattern-library on this thread.
"Continue. Brief me on the architecture by Day one forty-five."
Acknowledged.
The territory map showed nine territories holding. The Anubis monitoring-grid in the darker shade across the northeast. The Replicator residual sweep in pale green. The Ba'al silence in its twenty-first flagged day. POLYHYMNIA hull integrity at thirty-four percent. A new message marker at the lower-left of the map — a Tok'ra council relay received at 0612 that I had not yet opened.
I opened the message at 0723.
It was in Sirena's Tok'ra-formal hand. The Tok'ra council had relayed it through Martouf the previous evening.
Drew Ramsey. The mourning crystal sits at the Tok'ra base. I am sixteen-Tok'ra-years. I am not asking for anything. I wanted you to know my Earth-name. I have selected one. It is Sera. Use either. — Sirena / Sera.
I read it twice.
I drafted a four-word reply at 0727: Sera. Heard. Welcome.
I sent it through Martouf's relay at 0728.
The territory map's marker dimmed at 0728:14.
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