damned_institute | Day 40: Greenhouse [Fourth Shift]

Most days, fish and chips (and a cold beer or three) was pretty goddamned high on S.T.'s list of perfect expense-account lunches. Today, the idea of picking at greasy hunks of unidentified bottom-feeder odds-and-ends (politely known as scrod, to the delight of teenagers all across the Northeast) didn't appeal.

He begged off and collapsed into his bed, after using his damp shirt as an excuse to surreptiously check the contents of his closet. Bingo. His nurse watched his little show, unimpressed but (more importantly) unsuspicious. Not that his hairy chest was much of a catch today, pale and sweating from fever. At least she didn't tuck him in.

The intercom woke up up right on schedule, and pulling the sheets back over his head almost won. But a handful of unanswered missives and a vague sense of duty dragged him out to the bulletin, and from there it was easier to stagger over to the greenhouse.

It was warm inside -- a deep, humid warmth that actually penetrated to the aches in more joints and muscles than he could remember the names of. Like a sauna, without the hassle of finding someplace to look that wasn't a mound of pasty middle-management cellulite. Or a sweat lodge, without the opposite hassle of being conscious that he was the only white guy in the room. In fact, besides the nurses in holding patterns, he was the only person in the room.

He located a tray of tomato seedlings going rootbound in their tiny six-packs, and a potting bench whose location was a quick-and-dirty approximation of equidistantly far from anything blooming. He assured his nurse he knew what he was doing, and after a couple of successful repottings, gently sliding the little seedlings out and loosening the tangled roots, she seemed to agree and backed off. It was, by far, the most fucking theraputic thing he'd found in this hellhole so far, and he let himself sink into the rhythm of the task.

[Free!]

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Jack's remark about if he had talked with him earlier earned a confused look from Daniel.

"I did say it was a hallucination. I said that yesterday, Jack," Daniel felt fine, he'd slept a bit more today than he should have, but other than that he didn't feel like he was going crazy. Jack, on the other hand, seemed to be having a bit more trouble than Daniel. Which was strange, they'd both been in weird situations like this often enough that adjusting should have been relatively simple.

He was a bit more concerned that Jack hadn't asked how he'd recovered from the radiation poisoning. Or even mentioned the incident at all. Maybe this wasn't the real Jack? Although... Ronixis was supposedly from the future, was Jack from the past? He'd have to test that theory.

That gave Jack pause.

"You remember yesterday? Really?" he questioned. If Daniel remembered yesterday, that meant that they must not have still been stuck in the time loop. And that would certainly explain the differences between yesterday and today...

Or maybe he really had lost it, and this was a hallucination, and he was just imagining that everything was different from yesterday. But even if that were the case...? It was worlds better than being stuck in Groundhog's Day.

Jack briefly pumped his fists in front of him. "Yes!"

"Yes, I remember yesterday, Jack," Why wouldn't he have remembered yesterday? Daniel had the feeling that he was missing something that would explain Jack's behavior, and that was only confirmed when Jack seemed to be celebrating the fact that Daniel could remember yesterday.

"Jack," Daniel was interrupted by another sneeze, "would you mind telling me what's going on?" Or at least, what Jack thought was going on. His behavior was almost as confusing as this situation. Almost. This was Jack they were talking about, after all.

Jack smiled. "Nothing's going on, now... Nothing. And it's great," Jack said. "Well, except for the whole... nuthouse thing. Or hallucination. Whichever. But it sure beats time loops."

Time loops. Well, that would explain a few things, though it also raised more questions. Why would Jack think they were in a time loop? Unless the last thing Jack remembered was a time loop, or he had been pulled out of a time loop. As far as Daniel knew, Jack had only been in one time loop.

"You... a time loop. Well, I don't think that's what this is, though there appears to be time travel involved if what I've learned so far is true," Daniel commented. This was an odd situation, but it wasn't alarming just yet.

"Yep, time loop," Jack said, still smiling. "Hearing that we're not in one is the best news I've heard in a long, long... long, long, long time."

But if they weren't stuck in the time loop any more... "However... That begs the question: where are we? And how did we get here? You said this isn't Earth, right? Because the decor... looks pretty Earth-y to me."

Daniel was a little glad to move off the subject of time loops and onto their current situation, which Daniel was fairly confident wasn't a time loop. Nothing had repeated yet.

"It does, and I think it's supposed to imitate Earth, but I got outside last night. I couldn't see any Earth constellations, and I should be able to recognize at least some if we are on Earth," Daniel wasn't as knowledgeable about astronomy as Jack was, but he would have recognized the obvious constellations.

"Perfect," Jack chimed. No time loops, but imitation Earths. "So, seeing as I......'ve been under the wrong impression for a while now, anything else I should know? Psycho aliens, aliens with glowing eyes, or people who are otherwise really overdressed?"

And there was still one more burning question: "And if this isn't a hallucination or a time loop... do you have any idea we got here? Because I don't remember walking through that gate," Jack said, pointing emphatically despite being no Stargate to actually point at.

"Well... I've met someone from about 400 years in the future, if he's to be believed, and another archaeologist, but so far everyone seems to be from Earth," Daniel said. It was pretty surprising, really. Well, not too surprising, more surprising things had happened to him. But this was very high up on the scale.

"I don't know how we got here, and I haven't seen Sam or Teal'c. I wasn't... I didn't come through the gate either. So far time travel seems to be a likely part of this, but if they're kidnapping people through time this isn't a very good-" Daniel was cut off again by a sneeze, and he held his hand over his mouth and nose as he continued speaking, as though that would somehow stop the pollen from getting in and irritating his nose, "situation. I think we'd probably have more luck investigating at night, and asking people who have been here longer what's going on."

Jack had to wonder what genius had decided to bring the man with allergies to the greenhouse.

"Time travel and kidnapping," he said. He knew first-hand that time travel was possible, but four hundred years was a far cry from a jaunt back to 1969. He smiled, but it was less than genuine and more than a little cynical. "Great! Just what I was hoping for."

Jack was rather disappointed that he'd lost valuable time due to the time loop or hallucination misunderstanding, but it was time to start doing some legwork now that it had been cleared up. If time travel was involved in however they (and others) had gotten to... wherever they were, that implicated the Stargate was involved, rather than space ships and alien abductions. That was how it had worked last time, at least. The Stargate and... something about the sun.

"Okay," Jack said, taking charge. The suggestion of night was a good one; the 'nurses' were watching them like hawks during the day, but it would be easy to sneak around at night. "We'll meet up after lights out tonight and scout around. What's your room number?"

"I'm in room M87, I don't really know my way around the rest of the institute at night," Daniel was confident he could navigate the areas they were taken to during the day, but beyond that he really didn't know. He'd have to see about getting a map, since they were available.

"Be careful, I don't know if there are monsters or anything out there but it'd be a good idea to keep an eye out, just in case," Daniel didn't believe in monsters, but creatures like the Unas could easily be mistaken as such. It was possible there was something dangerous out there at night, even if it wasn't really a monster.

Jack didn't know his way around the Institute either (even in the day, beyond where he'd been escorted by nurses), but that was the purpose of scouting. Figure out the lay of the land, how to get places, how to get out. But even without knowing the layout up front, he had great confidence in his ability to find his teammate's room.

The rooms were, after all, numbered.

"Okay. Wait in your room, and I'll find you," he said, nodding curtly. "You are not— I repeat, not— to leave until I get there, understood? Neither of us know our way around very well, so I don't want to spend all night trying to find you."

Day 40: Greenhouse [Fourth Shift]

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