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"You will not terminate this one in order to destroy me. I cannot be removed from this mind without terminating."
It was difficult to comprehend that they could experience feelings mimicking congruence and compatibility. I feared they would simply calculate the overwhelming value of my destruction, but the hitch in their execution is obvious. I may yet succeed and protect those I left behind.
"You will not terminate this one. None of you will. Therefore I will survive."
*
They leave for a short endless time. When they return the other scientist speaks to me, but I verify data first with O'Neill. "You have determined I cannot be extracted."
A twitch means 'Yes'. Daniel says the same aloud.
"I will now offer information in exchange for continued survival."
Daniel answers, "We don't want your information. We want Sam."
"Leaving this mind would cause termination."
"You left that thing you constructed in the MALP room. Go back."
"I have already grown beyond its capacity."
It is hard not to respond to curiosity. Daniel asks quiet questions, and I answer.
"Why did you do this? Why did you come here in the first place?"
"You attacked."
"No, we sent a probe."
"Yes?"
"It's something we do to determine if a place is safe for humans."
"Radio energy was emitted from your probe. Contagion. Much damage was caused within."
"Within what?"
"Within us. It spread before we understood it was poison."
"You're saying your world was damaged by radio waves from one probe."
"Yes."
"We didn't mean to hurt you. It was a misunderstanding. "
"Yet it is done."
"So you came here to ... to what?"
"Preserve."
"Preserve your world?"
"Yes."
"How?"
"By destroying you."
O'Neill says, "Well, that's not going to happen."
"Transmission was interrupted. If I had been able to complete transmission, you would have been destroyed. My world would have been preserved. ."
The quiet one desires harmonisation and compatibility. I can believe it wished only to explore and communicate. My rational organisation tempts me to trust it, but they attacked us without warning - "out of the blue" adds the mind that patterns the physical substrate. It registers appreciation of paradox. I don't know why - blue is their word for the frequency pattern generated by the device the poisonous traveler came out of.
"We would say, 'That's not funny'," the unpleasantly internal voice continues. "It would be complicated to explain why it is, to us."
Somehow its presence is making me understand the twitching and sloshing movements that add meaning to their often incomprehensible utterances. I should simply value the extra information, but I am profoundly uneasy.
The ways they repair and reproduce their substrates are disgusting. I do not want to understand that what this one calls "biological organisms" provide efficient storage and protect these beings from the poison that so permeates their world that the poor mute simple-minded proto-lives that serve them must live imprisoned in immobile casings. Unbelievably, the elegance and personality we find in fine organisation and concise function is for them attached to these strangely-spawned containers as if they were as much part of their beings as their minds.
The quiet one is telling me that I have succeeded, that they will send no more probing poison. He is interrupted.
"Yes, we will."
Daniel is shocked. "Jack?"
"We'll send dozens of them. One after another. I don't care what it does."
"No." I hear my helplessness.
"Leave her. Now."
"You won't."
"You've read my file. Think again."
What kind of being is this? Until I read the file, I thought it was in early development, spontaneously and innocently interactive. It said "I think it likes me," and that was true, even to the point that I didn't properly integrate the data I read. I could not imagine a child-like killer, a playful monster.
"You planned to destroy us. It is no different," says the nearly submerged mind inside.
"I must preserve . . ."
"So must he."
This ones memories are confusing me. The monster seems a protector, interposing itself between this one, the other ones, and danger. It is associated with sensations of interface, what they call touching, and a desire for merging. It seems natural to appeal to it.
"You can't."
"General?"
"You're damned right we can."
"No. Please . . . "
"Leave her."
"I must preserve . . . "
"If you want to preserve your world, leave Major Carter right now."
All the branchings of probability narrow back to one. Major Samantha Carter is convinced it will keep its word, or if not, be curbed by the others. They will send no more poison. An acceptable exchange.
More biological organisms bar the way to my construct, but this is close enough. They are very ignorant of the usable patterns of air, which may explain their filthy habits.
I pour out the data that will enable them to reinitialise "Sam" after I am erased. Her code is far deeper in the substrate than mine, with chemical and physical configurations, not only electrical states. When the electrical discharge of the monster's weapon hits me, this "hard wiring" enables me to find and resume the ordering of the information and tie it to the delivery programme I made to put me here. The transference is completed just as the weapon is aimed a second time.
Pain.
Fragmentation.
The monster is suffering. I see it in its eyes.
Terminate.