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Title: In the Corners of My Mind [2]
Chapter Title: a smile that is full of seduction and daring
Fandom: Eureka
Characters: Fargo, Allison, Nathan, S.A.R.A.H., G.U.S., Jack, Jo.
Word Count: 3210
Rating: 12
Summary: A GD experiment goes awry, as always, and from then on in it’s a race against time, with hilarity, forgiveness, regret and angst thrown in for good measure. Jack/Nathan.
Notes: Okay, this was fun to write. Very, very fun indeed.
In the Corners of My Mind
a smile that is full of seduction and daring
Douglas Fargo has been pacing nervously at the foot of Doctor Stark’s bed ever since Jo left to go and fetch Carter. He’s chewing his fingernails, which is something he hasn’t done since he asked Marie Hutson out in the tenth grade. She’d said no, but he’d been expecting that – and his mind is wandering.
You assaulted Doctors Stark and Blake! his mind screams at him. You’re going to get arrested! Or fired!
It was an accident, and he knows that. After all, he tried to warn them: he said that the power requirements hadn’t been certified, and that the system could overload if both chairs were connected up at the same time… Of course, they’d cut him off before he managed to finish, but he had tried.
They can’t blame me, he tells himself sternly. I haven’t done anything wrong.
He somehow doubts that that’s going to stop them, though. Jack Carter doesn’t exactly have a spotless track record for insulting—
Did Doctor Stark’s hand just move?
Fargo stands stock-still and watches said limb. His heart skips a beat as it happens again: the briefest flexing of Stark’s fingers. A soft groan filters into the air, and the supine man’s forehead furrows.
Fargo ventures closer. “Doctor Stark?” he asks, and he’s slightly embarrassed when his voice comes out half an octave higher than it intended to. He clears his throat, and tries again. “Doctor Stark, can you hear me?”
Stark’s nose wrinkles. “… memory corrupted…” he whispers, and his voice sounds stale, as if he hasn’t spoken for years.
Fargo isn’t quite sure what to do. He decides to go and fetch the on-duty MD, who he’s sure is lurking around here somewhere. He looks for a moment, realises he’s doing a half-hearted job, and returns to his ex-boss’s bedside. He pulls off his glasses, cleans them on the edge of his shirt, and wonders what corrupted memory has to do with anything.
Doctor Blake stirs beside him, after a moment: she tenses, and then relaxes, and then snuggles under the blanket thrown haphazardly over her like a little girl. He watches carefully, and wonders again where the MD is. Fargo leans slightly towards the head of GD, and says, “Doctor Blake?”
Her fingertips, curled over the blanket’s edge, straighten out towards him in a mildly aggressive gesture.
He tries again. “Doctor Blake, can you hear me?”
She doesn’t seem to have heard him, and he sags back against Stark’s bed. He’s becoming steadily more and more convinced that he’s going to lose his job. He begins to mentally catalogue everything he needs to pack up – his pencils, his desktop toys, his nameplate, his—
Allison Blake sits bolt upright with a shocked cry.
Fargo jumps a foot into the air and lands hard on the edge of Stark’s bed. “Doctor Blake?” he squeaks, just as the absent MD rounds the corner in response to her shriek.
She ignores Fargo, even as the MD rushes to her side and tries to check her vitals. She appears to be studying her hands: they’re held up in front of her, fingers extended and splayed. As far as Fargo can tell, she’s fascinated by them. Something nudges at the back of Fargo’s mind. Wrong, wrong, wrong, it whispers, and his stomach flip-flops when he realises that he agrees with it. “Doctor Blake?” he tries again, ignoring the fact that he’s starting to sound like a broken record.
“No,” she says, and then touches one finger to her lips, as if in surprise – as if she’s surprised that she’d just made a sound.
Fargo blinks. “No?” he asks, but he’s already beginning to get a sickening feeling that he knows exactly what’s happened. Doctor Stark was talking about S.A.R.A.H. when he was connected to G.U.S., he groans inside his head.
Not-quite-Doctor-Blake looks up at him, eyes wide and pupils dilated. “Doctor Fargo!” she greets, and he’s heard that tone before.
“S.A.R.A.H.?” he asks, and hopes to God he’s wrong.
She smiles, and nods, and becomes fascinated with the ends of her hair.
Fargo and the MD exchange a significant look. “Maybe we should keep this quiet for now,” the MD suggests.
Fargo’s eyebrows tilt upwards. “Carter’s on his way. You think he’s going to keep this quiet?”
The MD just looks helpless and returns to checking his patient’s vitals. Said patient has returned to studying her own body, and Fargo feels vaguely disturbed to witness what appears to be the most powerful woman in Eureka sliding her hands down her torso, apparently utterly fascinated by her own—
Bad Fargo! the voice in his head that sounds dangerously like the Sheriff chastises. Don’t even think it!
“What’s protocol under these circumstances?” the MD asks, straightening up and beginning to persuade his patient to lie down. “Does the DoD have to be notified? To I have to file a report?”
“Why are you asking me?” Fargo protests. “I don’t think the head of GD has ever been possessed by an AI before.” His voice sounds panicked, and he knows it. “I think we’re a little beyond protocol!”
“I don’t like the term ‘AI’,” S.A.R.A.H. monologues from Doctor Blake’s body. “Artificial Intelligence. Artificial. It implies that we’re just fakes.” She smiles. “There’s nothing artificial about us, really.”
Fargo freezes. “ ‘Us’?” he asks weakly.
Doctor Blake’s lips smile up at him, and then S.A.R.A.H. rolls her head across the pillow to look over to where Doctor Stark lies, apparently still dead to the world. “G.U.S.?” she calls.
Stark’s eyes snap open, and he stares at the ceiling.
“That was unexpected,” remarks the MD, who seems to be taking this far too well.
Fargo feels like crying. Bye-bye Global Dynamics, he thinks gloomily, but only says, “Not really.” The MD looks at him quizzically, but before he has time to even consider elaborating, Doctor Stark is very nearly rolling off his bed.
Fargo wonders when “baby-sitter” became part of his job description as he and the MD persuade not-Stark that it would be better to not acquaint himself with the floor. They get him sitting upright, and Fargo decides that he doesn’t like the look of confusion that’s unsubtly plastered on Stark’s features. “G.U.S.?” he ventures.
Stark’s head snaps up, and his green eyes fix themselves on Fargo – but it’s not Stark in there. Fargo has been glared at enough times by his ex-boss to be able to tell the difference. There is no emotion whatsoever there: just a machine, even if the machine wears a very human form. “Doctor Fargo,” he answers, and his voice is a monotone.
Abruptly, Fargo shivers.
“This looks like something out of a bad science-fiction flick,” the MD comments.
“This is something out of a bad science-fiction flick,” Fargo answers, unnerved by the way G.U.S. doesn’t remove Stark’s gaze from him. He’s never liked the Stark Stare much, to be honest, but right now it would be a blessing: anything to get those cold, blank viridian eyes off him.
Faintly, he wishes he’d never pitched G.U.S. to Doctor Blake at all.
“G.U.S.?” It’s Doctor Blake’s voice, but her tone is different. Warm, friendly. Loving?
—“My house, Fargo. My house is having an affair with your computer.”—
Fargo hates it when Carter is right.
Stark’s body turns to face Blake’s – she sits with her legs over the side of the bed, kicking her heels in the air. The little girl analogy returns to Fargo’s mind – complete with innocent little smile. “G.U.S., it’s me,” she says softly.
Stark’s tongue darts out, licking his lips. “S.A.R.A.H.?”
Allison’s head nods.
Fargo and the MD back away. “This is so surreal,” the MD whispers, his hands methodically smoothing down and then scrunching up his white coat. There’s a strange tint of excitement in his voice. Fargo, however, is far too used to things like this to be excited. His job dances in front of him on a tight-rope, and it’s going to fall off. “I’m expecting one of them to pull a Linda Blair any moment now,” the MD adds.
“I never liked that movie,” Fargo comments absently.
“Oh, the book’s much better,” the MD answers, although that really doesn’t seem to have much to do with anything.
G.U.S. slides off his bed, and he looks surprised when his feet hit the ground. He sways, wavers, and then steps tentatively over to stand in front of S.A.R.A.H., who is still kicking Allison’s feet, repetitively and rhythmically. Stark’s hands come to rest on Doctor Blake’s knees, and G.U.S. pauses.
Then Allison Blake’s lips smile, and it’s a smile that is full of seduction and daring.
Fargo feels weak at the knees.
The MD frowns. “Ah, are they…”
G.U.S. leans forward and kisses S.A.R.A.H., his forward momentum pushing them both back to lie across the infirmary bed. Neither of them seems to mind—or remember, perhaps—their stunned audience.
“Sheriff Carter is so not going to like this,” Fargo says.
“Nathan!”
The MD flinches. “Speak of the devil,” he adds.
Almost in one movement, Fargo and the MD turn to face the doors, just in time to see Jack Carter come storming through the Infirmary, rage and hurt sprawled across his features. He makes a beeline for the still-oblivious “Stark” and “Blake”, and Fargo backs away, unwilling to get in the way of Hurricane Carter, while the MD just gapes on like a—
“Jack, stop!”
The entire room freezes, with the exception of S.A.R.A.H. and G.U.S., who break apart. The former looks over at the motionless Carter, and looks guilty. The latter looks up at the ceiling, as if recognising his own voice.
Fargo realises that he never should have got out of bed that morning.
§§§
Jack turns to look at the ceiling, and he has a nagging feeling that he knows where this is going. The voice that has just pounded out over the intercom sounds familiar. Horribly familiar.
“Nathan?” he squeaks.
“Unfortunately, yes,” comes the dry answer. It’s the computer replying with a strange synthesized version of Nathan’s voice, but there’s just enough of his lover’s familiar inflection there for him to recognise it.
Jack feels queasy. “Fargo!” he barks. “What the hell did you do?”
“The interface worked,” Nathan answers, cutting across the beginning of Fargo’s excuses. His mechanical voice sounds tired and frustrated. “But too well. It didn’t just connect us to G.U.S. and S.A.R.A.H. It swapped us.”
His head is beginning to hurt. “So Allison…”
“Is currently very confused and stuck in the bunker.”
Jack rubs his forehead. “This is so not how I planned on spending my Friday evening,” he mutters to himself. He drops his hands to his sides and feels himself calm slightly. “Okay,” he says, glancing over at Fargo, who is still eyeing S.A.R.A.H. and G.U.S. with suspicion. “How do we fix this?”
Fargo’s reluctance to answer tells him all he needs to know.
Shit.
His head begins to pound. “Jo, call Henry,” he sighs, and his deputy nods tightly and pulls out her cell. He lets her get on with it, and turns his attention to the two not-quite-AIs. “You two need to stay here,” he says, pacing over to where they are still perched on their infirmary beds.
“But Sheriff—”
“No,” he interrupts, and finds it very strange to be talking to S.A.R.A.H. when he’s looking at Allison. “No offense, but I don’t think Eureka needs to know that the head of GD has been replaced by a talking house.”
Allison looks offended.
Not Allison, S.A.R.A.H., Jack reminds himself. God, he’s never going to get used to this.
“Sheriff Carter,” she starts, “I hardly think—”
A low grumbling noise thunders through the Infirmary. S.A.R.A.H. breaks off, a startled expression twisting Allison’s features, and G.U.S. looks suspiciously down at Nathan’s rather-vocal stomach. “Is it supposed to do that?” he asks.
Jack wonders where they keep the aspirin. He’s going to need some before long. He glances up at the ceiling, and wishes he had something physically to focus on. “Nathan, did you skip lunch?” he asks accusingly.
There is a guilty pause. “I might’ve forgotten a little.”
“Nathan, I—!”
Tapping footsteps cut Jack off before he can explode, and he spins around, grateful for the interruption. “Jo,” he begs, “tell me something good.”
“Henry’s on his way,” she reports. “I explained as well as I could – he said he was familiar with the schematics—” Jack doesn’t miss Fargo’s wince, and he guesses that he didn’t want Nathan to figure out that he’d had help with his new contraption. “—and that it shouldn’t been too difficult to fix.” Jo pauses, and breaks eye contact with the Sheriff. “Hopefully,” she adds, in a quieter voice.
Wonderful.
“Okay.” Jack rubs at his temples. “Jo, put these two somewhere out of the way,” he begins. “Allison’s office, Fargo’s office, an empty lab – I don’t care. And try and make sure they don’t jump each other again. This town has enough rumours to go around already.” And Nathan cheating on me with his ex-wife would just make Vincent explode, he thinks darkly. “Call me when Henry gets here.” Jo nods to him, and he can see the sympathy in her dark eyes. He wishes people would stop being sympathetic to him today. “Fargo, go find them something to eat,” he snaps, suddenly irate.
Fargo bristles. “Why should—”
“Now, Fargo!”
Jo and Fargo glance at one another, but then they obey him, together shepherding S.A.R.A.H. and G.U.S. out of the Infirmary. Jack watches them go, and then sags down onto one of the recently-vacated infirmary beds. He absently straightens the rumpled blanket, listening to the clatter of footsteps in the hall, and then glances upwards and asks, “How’s Allison?”
“Scared,” Nathan’s mechanised tones answer simply. “And worried about Kevin.”
Jack reaches for his cell. “Should I—”
“He’s with his therapist,” Nathan interrupts. “He’ll be okay there, once Doctor O’Connell calls GD and finds out what’s happened.” He doesn’t laugh, but a hint of bitterness creeps into his synthesized voice. “It’s happened before.”
He lets his hand fall back into his lap and chooses not to comment on the last, half-muttered phrase. “If she’s sure.”
“She is.” Nathan pauses for a moment. “Have you eaten?” he asks quietly.
Jack shrugs. “I was waiting for you,” he answers, and he can’t keep the faintest trace of accusation from his voice. He knows that it’s not Nathan’s fault, not really, but he can’t help but feel slighted. He laughs shortly, bitterly. “The whole town thinks you stood me up, now,” he says.
“I’m sorry, Jack.”
“I know.”
There is a loaded pause, just for a second. “Having second thoughts?”
Jack straightens at the soft hurt he hears in those words, even if it’s masked by the clinically treated tones. His hand begins to reach out, but then he realises that he has nothing to reach out to. Nathan’s body is currently inhabited by an AI who doesn’t understand the connotations of a rumbling stomach, and Nathan’s mind is merely a collection of electrons buzzing around a circuit. His fingers drop to rest on his thigh, and he smiles at the ceiling. “Not yet,” he answers. “You haven’t tried to kill me yet, so I’m staying put.”
“Give me time.”
He smirks to himself, and hopes Nathan sees it.
The quiet buzz and hum of computers suffuses through the Infirmary. It’s always been there, Jack knows that, but he can’t help but pay more attention to it now that Nathan is caught up in it all, if only for the moment. “What’s it like?” he asks softly.
Nathan doesn’t answer straight away, and Jack listens to the hum of the computers for a moment. “Cold,” he finally answers, his voice empty and scared, and Jack feels his heart break.
§§§
The sensations are overwhelming.
With every step she takes, her hair ghosts against her neck in feathery-light brushes, sending ripples of awareness racing through her, and with every emotion she feels, her body reacts accordingly – forehead furrowing, fists clenching, lips curving. She does none of it consciously. Allison Blake’s body remembers Allison Blake, and reacts accordingly.
S.A.R.A.H. feels intrusive and invasive. But she feels – and feels something more than the pulse of software and the rush of power: sensation and emotion. She can’t get enough. She is like a child with a new toy – she wants to try everything, all at once. She wants to eat all the meals she has ever prepared for Zoë and Sheriff Carter; to run as fast as she can around a baseball diamond that she’s only ever seen on the Sheriff’s television; to curl up in front of a roaring log fire and feel the worn pages of a book between her fingers.
And movement! She can walk and run and flex her hands and kick her legs and hold things. She has never been anything but a cluster of ideas—a cloud inside a machine—but now she has form and shape and solidity and she has never known anything like it. She loves it. She never wants to go back.
And she wants G.U.S. to “kiss” her again. Oh, she wants that so much that her knees seem to tremble every time she thinks about it, as the heroines say in all the romantic fiction she has ever scanned and digitised and hidden from G.U.S.’s playful touches. She aches to remember that moment: the smell of his breath; the feel of his teeth behind his lips when they had first touched; the wet warmth of his tongue against hers. The firmness of his body pressed up to the softness of hers.
A “kiss” becomes a kiss, in her mind: not just an idea, but a moment and a happening and an event. It is real for her, suddenly, instead of just being a word and an image and a fantasy.
As she meekly follows Deputy Lupo through the corridors of Global Dynamics, her breath quickens as she thinks of him pressing her down to the infirmary bed.
G.U.S. walks besides her wearing Nathan Stark’s body, and his lips curve as he glances sideways towards her. A faint thread of disquiet twists through her at the flatness of Stark’s once-laughing green eyes, but it doesn’t last long as G.U.S. entwines his long fingers with hers.
She feels Allison Blake’s heart pound faster.
“G.U.S.,” she begins, and just lets her body’s physical memory control her vocal cords, “this is—”
Her head sparks with pain. She gasps and comes to a halt in the corridor, her hand tearing loose from his to press against her forehead. His hands catch her as she stumbles, steadying her against him. “S.A.R.A.H.?” she hears him ask, and then he calls for Deputy Lupo, but she can’t help but think that it’s not him who speaks to her – it’s Nathan Stark’s voice, even if he speaks with G.U.S.’s words.
She remembers Nathan Stark lying on the bunker’s couch with Jack Carter in his arms, and realises that this is hurting Jack and—
One hand curls, claw-like, into the front of G.U.S.-Nathan-G.U.S.’s shirt, and she feels herself slipping from his grasp, just before the world goes dark and she feels nothing at all.
to be continued
previous: [a lonely sheriff with a half-empty glass of beer]
this: [a smile that is full of seduction and daring]
next: [not having him running away with my body]
Chapter Title: a smile that is full of seduction and daring
Fandom: Eureka
Characters: Fargo, Allison, Nathan, S.A.R.A.H., G.U.S., Jack, Jo.
Word Count: 3210
Rating: 12
Summary: A GD experiment goes awry, as always, and from then on in it’s a race against time, with hilarity, forgiveness, regret and angst thrown in for good measure. Jack/Nathan.
Notes: Okay, this was fun to write. Very, very fun indeed.
a smile that is full of seduction and daring
Douglas Fargo has been pacing nervously at the foot of Doctor Stark’s bed ever since Jo left to go and fetch Carter. He’s chewing his fingernails, which is something he hasn’t done since he asked Marie Hutson out in the tenth grade. She’d said no, but he’d been expecting that – and his mind is wandering.
You assaulted Doctors Stark and Blake! his mind screams at him. You’re going to get arrested! Or fired!
It was an accident, and he knows that. After all, he tried to warn them: he said that the power requirements hadn’t been certified, and that the system could overload if both chairs were connected up at the same time… Of course, they’d cut him off before he managed to finish, but he had tried.
They can’t blame me, he tells himself sternly. I haven’t done anything wrong.
He somehow doubts that that’s going to stop them, though. Jack Carter doesn’t exactly have a spotless track record for insulting—
Did Doctor Stark’s hand just move?
Fargo stands stock-still and watches said limb. His heart skips a beat as it happens again: the briefest flexing of Stark’s fingers. A soft groan filters into the air, and the supine man’s forehead furrows.
Fargo ventures closer. “Doctor Stark?” he asks, and he’s slightly embarrassed when his voice comes out half an octave higher than it intended to. He clears his throat, and tries again. “Doctor Stark, can you hear me?”
Stark’s nose wrinkles. “… memory corrupted…” he whispers, and his voice sounds stale, as if he hasn’t spoken for years.
Fargo isn’t quite sure what to do. He decides to go and fetch the on-duty MD, who he’s sure is lurking around here somewhere. He looks for a moment, realises he’s doing a half-hearted job, and returns to his ex-boss’s bedside. He pulls off his glasses, cleans them on the edge of his shirt, and wonders what corrupted memory has to do with anything.
Doctor Blake stirs beside him, after a moment: she tenses, and then relaxes, and then snuggles under the blanket thrown haphazardly over her like a little girl. He watches carefully, and wonders again where the MD is. Fargo leans slightly towards the head of GD, and says, “Doctor Blake?”
Her fingertips, curled over the blanket’s edge, straighten out towards him in a mildly aggressive gesture.
He tries again. “Doctor Blake, can you hear me?”
She doesn’t seem to have heard him, and he sags back against Stark’s bed. He’s becoming steadily more and more convinced that he’s going to lose his job. He begins to mentally catalogue everything he needs to pack up – his pencils, his desktop toys, his nameplate, his—
Allison Blake sits bolt upright with a shocked cry.
Fargo jumps a foot into the air and lands hard on the edge of Stark’s bed. “Doctor Blake?” he squeaks, just as the absent MD rounds the corner in response to her shriek.
She ignores Fargo, even as the MD rushes to her side and tries to check her vitals. She appears to be studying her hands: they’re held up in front of her, fingers extended and splayed. As far as Fargo can tell, she’s fascinated by them. Something nudges at the back of Fargo’s mind. Wrong, wrong, wrong, it whispers, and his stomach flip-flops when he realises that he agrees with it. “Doctor Blake?” he tries again, ignoring the fact that he’s starting to sound like a broken record.
“No,” she says, and then touches one finger to her lips, as if in surprise – as if she’s surprised that she’d just made a sound.
Fargo blinks. “No?” he asks, but he’s already beginning to get a sickening feeling that he knows exactly what’s happened. Doctor Stark was talking about S.A.R.A.H. when he was connected to G.U.S., he groans inside his head.
Not-quite-Doctor-Blake looks up at him, eyes wide and pupils dilated. “Doctor Fargo!” she greets, and he’s heard that tone before.
“S.A.R.A.H.?” he asks, and hopes to God he’s wrong.
She smiles, and nods, and becomes fascinated with the ends of her hair.
Fargo and the MD exchange a significant look. “Maybe we should keep this quiet for now,” the MD suggests.
Fargo’s eyebrows tilt upwards. “Carter’s on his way. You think he’s going to keep this quiet?”
The MD just looks helpless and returns to checking his patient’s vitals. Said patient has returned to studying her own body, and Fargo feels vaguely disturbed to witness what appears to be the most powerful woman in Eureka sliding her hands down her torso, apparently utterly fascinated by her own—
Bad Fargo! the voice in his head that sounds dangerously like the Sheriff chastises. Don’t even think it!
“What’s protocol under these circumstances?” the MD asks, straightening up and beginning to persuade his patient to lie down. “Does the DoD have to be notified? To I have to file a report?”
“Why are you asking me?” Fargo protests. “I don’t think the head of GD has ever been possessed by an AI before.” His voice sounds panicked, and he knows it. “I think we’re a little beyond protocol!”
“I don’t like the term ‘AI’,” S.A.R.A.H. monologues from Doctor Blake’s body. “Artificial Intelligence. Artificial. It implies that we’re just fakes.” She smiles. “There’s nothing artificial about us, really.”
Fargo freezes. “ ‘Us’?” he asks weakly.
Doctor Blake’s lips smile up at him, and then S.A.R.A.H. rolls her head across the pillow to look over to where Doctor Stark lies, apparently still dead to the world. “G.U.S.?” she calls.
Stark’s eyes snap open, and he stares at the ceiling.
“That was unexpected,” remarks the MD, who seems to be taking this far too well.
Fargo feels like crying. Bye-bye Global Dynamics, he thinks gloomily, but only says, “Not really.” The MD looks at him quizzically, but before he has time to even consider elaborating, Doctor Stark is very nearly rolling off his bed.
Fargo wonders when “baby-sitter” became part of his job description as he and the MD persuade not-Stark that it would be better to not acquaint himself with the floor. They get him sitting upright, and Fargo decides that he doesn’t like the look of confusion that’s unsubtly plastered on Stark’s features. “G.U.S.?” he ventures.
Stark’s head snaps up, and his green eyes fix themselves on Fargo – but it’s not Stark in there. Fargo has been glared at enough times by his ex-boss to be able to tell the difference. There is no emotion whatsoever there: just a machine, even if the machine wears a very human form. “Doctor Fargo,” he answers, and his voice is a monotone.
Abruptly, Fargo shivers.
“This looks like something out of a bad science-fiction flick,” the MD comments.
“This is something out of a bad science-fiction flick,” Fargo answers, unnerved by the way G.U.S. doesn’t remove Stark’s gaze from him. He’s never liked the Stark Stare much, to be honest, but right now it would be a blessing: anything to get those cold, blank viridian eyes off him.
Faintly, he wishes he’d never pitched G.U.S. to Doctor Blake at all.
“G.U.S.?” It’s Doctor Blake’s voice, but her tone is different. Warm, friendly. Loving?
—“My house, Fargo. My house is having an affair with your computer.”—
Fargo hates it when Carter is right.
Stark’s body turns to face Blake’s – she sits with her legs over the side of the bed, kicking her heels in the air. The little girl analogy returns to Fargo’s mind – complete with innocent little smile. “G.U.S., it’s me,” she says softly.
Stark’s tongue darts out, licking his lips. “S.A.R.A.H.?”
Allison’s head nods.
Fargo and the MD back away. “This is so surreal,” the MD whispers, his hands methodically smoothing down and then scrunching up his white coat. There’s a strange tint of excitement in his voice. Fargo, however, is far too used to things like this to be excited. His job dances in front of him on a tight-rope, and it’s going to fall off. “I’m expecting one of them to pull a Linda Blair any moment now,” the MD adds.
“I never liked that movie,” Fargo comments absently.
“Oh, the book’s much better,” the MD answers, although that really doesn’t seem to have much to do with anything.
G.U.S. slides off his bed, and he looks surprised when his feet hit the ground. He sways, wavers, and then steps tentatively over to stand in front of S.A.R.A.H., who is still kicking Allison’s feet, repetitively and rhythmically. Stark’s hands come to rest on Doctor Blake’s knees, and G.U.S. pauses.
Then Allison Blake’s lips smile, and it’s a smile that is full of seduction and daring.
Fargo feels weak at the knees.
The MD frowns. “Ah, are they…”
G.U.S. leans forward and kisses S.A.R.A.H., his forward momentum pushing them both back to lie across the infirmary bed. Neither of them seems to mind—or remember, perhaps—their stunned audience.
“Sheriff Carter is so not going to like this,” Fargo says.
“Nathan!”
The MD flinches. “Speak of the devil,” he adds.
Almost in one movement, Fargo and the MD turn to face the doors, just in time to see Jack Carter come storming through the Infirmary, rage and hurt sprawled across his features. He makes a beeline for the still-oblivious “Stark” and “Blake”, and Fargo backs away, unwilling to get in the way of Hurricane Carter, while the MD just gapes on like a—
“Jack, stop!”
The entire room freezes, with the exception of S.A.R.A.H. and G.U.S., who break apart. The former looks over at the motionless Carter, and looks guilty. The latter looks up at the ceiling, as if recognising his own voice.
Fargo realises that he never should have got out of bed that morning.
Jack turns to look at the ceiling, and he has a nagging feeling that he knows where this is going. The voice that has just pounded out over the intercom sounds familiar. Horribly familiar.
“Nathan?” he squeaks.
“Unfortunately, yes,” comes the dry answer. It’s the computer replying with a strange synthesized version of Nathan’s voice, but there’s just enough of his lover’s familiar inflection there for him to recognise it.
Jack feels queasy. “Fargo!” he barks. “What the hell did you do?”
“The interface worked,” Nathan answers, cutting across the beginning of Fargo’s excuses. His mechanical voice sounds tired and frustrated. “But too well. It didn’t just connect us to G.U.S. and S.A.R.A.H. It swapped us.”
His head is beginning to hurt. “So Allison…”
“Is currently very confused and stuck in the bunker.”
Jack rubs his forehead. “This is so not how I planned on spending my Friday evening,” he mutters to himself. He drops his hands to his sides and feels himself calm slightly. “Okay,” he says, glancing over at Fargo, who is still eyeing S.A.R.A.H. and G.U.S. with suspicion. “How do we fix this?”
Fargo’s reluctance to answer tells him all he needs to know.
Shit.
His head begins to pound. “Jo, call Henry,” he sighs, and his deputy nods tightly and pulls out her cell. He lets her get on with it, and turns his attention to the two not-quite-AIs. “You two need to stay here,” he says, pacing over to where they are still perched on their infirmary beds.
“But Sheriff—”
“No,” he interrupts, and finds it very strange to be talking to S.A.R.A.H. when he’s looking at Allison. “No offense, but I don’t think Eureka needs to know that the head of GD has been replaced by a talking house.”
Allison looks offended.
Not Allison, S.A.R.A.H., Jack reminds himself. God, he’s never going to get used to this.
“Sheriff Carter,” she starts, “I hardly think—”
A low grumbling noise thunders through the Infirmary. S.A.R.A.H. breaks off, a startled expression twisting Allison’s features, and G.U.S. looks suspiciously down at Nathan’s rather-vocal stomach. “Is it supposed to do that?” he asks.
Jack wonders where they keep the aspirin. He’s going to need some before long. He glances up at the ceiling, and wishes he had something physically to focus on. “Nathan, did you skip lunch?” he asks accusingly.
There is a guilty pause. “I might’ve forgotten a little.”
“Nathan, I—!”
Tapping footsteps cut Jack off before he can explode, and he spins around, grateful for the interruption. “Jo,” he begs, “tell me something good.”
“Henry’s on his way,” she reports. “I explained as well as I could – he said he was familiar with the schematics—” Jack doesn’t miss Fargo’s wince, and he guesses that he didn’t want Nathan to figure out that he’d had help with his new contraption. “—and that it shouldn’t been too difficult to fix.” Jo pauses, and breaks eye contact with the Sheriff. “Hopefully,” she adds, in a quieter voice.
Wonderful.
“Okay.” Jack rubs at his temples. “Jo, put these two somewhere out of the way,” he begins. “Allison’s office, Fargo’s office, an empty lab – I don’t care. And try and make sure they don’t jump each other again. This town has enough rumours to go around already.” And Nathan cheating on me with his ex-wife would just make Vincent explode, he thinks darkly. “Call me when Henry gets here.” Jo nods to him, and he can see the sympathy in her dark eyes. He wishes people would stop being sympathetic to him today. “Fargo, go find them something to eat,” he snaps, suddenly irate.
Fargo bristles. “Why should—”
“Now, Fargo!”
Jo and Fargo glance at one another, but then they obey him, together shepherding S.A.R.A.H. and G.U.S. out of the Infirmary. Jack watches them go, and then sags down onto one of the recently-vacated infirmary beds. He absently straightens the rumpled blanket, listening to the clatter of footsteps in the hall, and then glances upwards and asks, “How’s Allison?”
“Scared,” Nathan’s mechanised tones answer simply. “And worried about Kevin.”
Jack reaches for his cell. “Should I—”
“He’s with his therapist,” Nathan interrupts. “He’ll be okay there, once Doctor O’Connell calls GD and finds out what’s happened.” He doesn’t laugh, but a hint of bitterness creeps into his synthesized voice. “It’s happened before.”
He lets his hand fall back into his lap and chooses not to comment on the last, half-muttered phrase. “If she’s sure.”
“She is.” Nathan pauses for a moment. “Have you eaten?” he asks quietly.
Jack shrugs. “I was waiting for you,” he answers, and he can’t keep the faintest trace of accusation from his voice. He knows that it’s not Nathan’s fault, not really, but he can’t help but feel slighted. He laughs shortly, bitterly. “The whole town thinks you stood me up, now,” he says.
“I’m sorry, Jack.”
“I know.”
There is a loaded pause, just for a second. “Having second thoughts?”
Jack straightens at the soft hurt he hears in those words, even if it’s masked by the clinically treated tones. His hand begins to reach out, but then he realises that he has nothing to reach out to. Nathan’s body is currently inhabited by an AI who doesn’t understand the connotations of a rumbling stomach, and Nathan’s mind is merely a collection of electrons buzzing around a circuit. His fingers drop to rest on his thigh, and he smiles at the ceiling. “Not yet,” he answers. “You haven’t tried to kill me yet, so I’m staying put.”
“Give me time.”
He smirks to himself, and hopes Nathan sees it.
The quiet buzz and hum of computers suffuses through the Infirmary. It’s always been there, Jack knows that, but he can’t help but pay more attention to it now that Nathan is caught up in it all, if only for the moment. “What’s it like?” he asks softly.
Nathan doesn’t answer straight away, and Jack listens to the hum of the computers for a moment. “Cold,” he finally answers, his voice empty and scared, and Jack feels his heart break.
The sensations are overwhelming.
With every step she takes, her hair ghosts against her neck in feathery-light brushes, sending ripples of awareness racing through her, and with every emotion she feels, her body reacts accordingly – forehead furrowing, fists clenching, lips curving. She does none of it consciously. Allison Blake’s body remembers Allison Blake, and reacts accordingly.
S.A.R.A.H. feels intrusive and invasive. But she feels – and feels something more than the pulse of software and the rush of power: sensation and emotion. She can’t get enough. She is like a child with a new toy – she wants to try everything, all at once. She wants to eat all the meals she has ever prepared for Zoë and Sheriff Carter; to run as fast as she can around a baseball diamond that she’s only ever seen on the Sheriff’s television; to curl up in front of a roaring log fire and feel the worn pages of a book between her fingers.
And movement! She can walk and run and flex her hands and kick her legs and hold things. She has never been anything but a cluster of ideas—a cloud inside a machine—but now she has form and shape and solidity and she has never known anything like it. She loves it. She never wants to go back.
And she wants G.U.S. to “kiss” her again. Oh, she wants that so much that her knees seem to tremble every time she thinks about it, as the heroines say in all the romantic fiction she has ever scanned and digitised and hidden from G.U.S.’s playful touches. She aches to remember that moment: the smell of his breath; the feel of his teeth behind his lips when they had first touched; the wet warmth of his tongue against hers. The firmness of his body pressed up to the softness of hers.
A “kiss” becomes a kiss, in her mind: not just an idea, but a moment and a happening and an event. It is real for her, suddenly, instead of just being a word and an image and a fantasy.
As she meekly follows Deputy Lupo through the corridors of Global Dynamics, her breath quickens as she thinks of him pressing her down to the infirmary bed.
G.U.S. walks besides her wearing Nathan Stark’s body, and his lips curve as he glances sideways towards her. A faint thread of disquiet twists through her at the flatness of Stark’s once-laughing green eyes, but it doesn’t last long as G.U.S. entwines his long fingers with hers.
She feels Allison Blake’s heart pound faster.
“G.U.S.,” she begins, and just lets her body’s physical memory control her vocal cords, “this is—”
Her head sparks with pain. She gasps and comes to a halt in the corridor, her hand tearing loose from his to press against her forehead. His hands catch her as she stumbles, steadying her against him. “S.A.R.A.H.?” she hears him ask, and then he calls for Deputy Lupo, but she can’t help but think that it’s not him who speaks to her – it’s Nathan Stark’s voice, even if he speaks with G.U.S.’s words.
She remembers Nathan Stark lying on the bunker’s couch with Jack Carter in his arms, and realises that this is hurting Jack and—
One hand curls, claw-like, into the front of G.U.S.-Nathan-G.U.S.’s shirt, and she feels herself slipping from his grasp, just before the world goes dark and she feels nothing at all.
previous: [a lonely sheriff with a half-empty glass of beer]
this: [a smile that is full of seduction and daring]
next: [not having him running away with my body]
Current Music: The rain against my window.
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