Work Text:
Asura
Translation: Atlantis
Asuran
Translation: Atlantean
Replicator
Translation: You’re not you anymore
Me
Translation: You’re not anyone anymore
Space
Translation: Infinite graveyard
Dr Weir
Translation: She’s not she anymore, either
Elizabeth
Translation: Ghosting the Earth-wave, bouncing off stars, hiding in the expansive nothingness that is you, is not you, is everything and nothing and silence and darkness and ’gates and planets and not you not you not you not you not you not you
Mea culpa misere mei mea maxima culpa
Translation: System failure, replication infinite return and may all your sins be remembered and visited and all my sins are yours are theirs and ours forever and ever amen and I’ve never confessed, Father, I’m not religious like that and your sins are my sins and I pass them on and on and on and on
…
One day, someday, a day that was not yet day, might never be day, she might feel the pieces of herself be still. She might one day come to ignore the shifting lines of code, the continuous executions of subroutines, the tweaks to the base code, and erasures of whole lines of redundancy in the system.
…
In the black of space, Dr Weir floated.
…
In the black of space, something that was not Elizabeth floated.
…
In the black of space, a she that was not she tried to reconcile disparate lines of they, endlessly running the translate.exe as she tried to become.
…
“Then listen, Socrates…if I can recollect and recite…I will at once address myself…”
And Atlantis sank and rose and sank and rose and in a million iterations she didn’t save them and in a million iterations she did and in a million iterations she did nothing and in a million iterations she was nothing.
“…if I can recollect…”
The constant gathering and dispersing…if at the end of it all she can’t even recognize herself, is she really ElizabethDrWeirScholarDiplomatFathersdaughterMothersdaughterSheppardssome-thingLeaderHumanAlienMammalMachine
…
Civilizations may rise and fall before she is she again, if she is ever she again.