2009
Author: BadgerGater
Email: [email protected]
Category: Thoughts, prequel for 2010
Season: Four, sort of. Sometime before the year 2010 as portrayed by the episode 2010
Summary: No one listened to Jack O’Neill
Pairing: None
Spoilers: 2010
Warnings: Very dark, Jack's thinking, so watch the language
Disclaimer: Stargate SG-1 and its characters are the property of Showtime/Viacom, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, Gekko Productions; all the powers that be, not me; This story is for entertainment purposes only and no money exchanged hands. No copyright infringement intended. The story is the property of the author and may not be posted without the author's consent
Author's Note: I don’t blame Jack for being bitter in 2010.
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I admit it, I didn’t see it immediately myself, though there was always something about the Aaschen that itched right there in the back of my brain. Something just not quite right. And the more time I spent around those folks, the worse the itch got.
As the weeks and months went by, the doubt became a certainty. I’d known they were too good to be true. Knew that what they asked for wasn’t enough to pay for what they gave us. Knew there was something creepy behind their bland, humorless manners and soft spoken words.
The others thought I was just being paranoid. Good old Jack, gone a little daffy in his old age, gone a lot daffy, lost it because he wasn’t needed anymore.
Lots of people weren’t needed anymore.
Don’t need the military when the Aaschen are there to protect the planet, and ensure global peace.
No need for wars or conflicts because everyone had everything they needed or wanted.
No need for interplanetary explorers because the Aaschen controlled the gate, the now public gate. Scientists and researchers and diplomats used the gate. Most of them still had jobs.
Doctors weren’t needed either. Didn’t need pilots because why spend hours cramped up in an airplane when you could use one of those nifty Aaschen transportation devices and get wherever you were going in what, 30 seconds? Didn’t need teachers because kids learned with those fancy teaching computer thingys the Aaschen provided. Didn’t need farmers because the Aaschen machines planted, cultivated and harvested. Didn’t need factory workers because Aaschen supplied robots did all the boring jobs.
People were superfluous.
They didn’t need us. I knew it. I knew it a long time ago.
I thought I’d go crazy when no one would listen to me. I *knew* they weren’t what they seemed. I just couldn’t prove it.
Everybody was taken in by them, the noble, benevolent aliens of our fantasies, ET come to life, just not as cute. Even people like Daniel and Carter bought their story, taken in by the publicity, dazzled by the opportunities the Aaschen provided them, because they still had jobs.
Me, I had nothing.
What little I once thought I had, my career, my team, was gone. The first, ended by the dissolution of the Air Force and the SGC. The latter, ended by my insistence that we should all be looking this gift horse in the mouth.
No one believed me.
My team didn't believe me. That hurt the worst of all.
I even got so desperate I went to visit Kinsey at the White House. He couldn’t turn me away. I was the *Famous* Jack O’Neill, intrepid interplanetary explorer, first to meet the Aaschen. I talked the rest of SG-1 into going with me because I said I would behave myself.
I’d lied, of course.
And I’d failed, of course.
*President* Kinsey. It makes me want to throw up just to think those words. Kinsey wouldn’t have listened to me if I’d told him the sun rose in the East and the sky was blue.
Smug son of a bitch. And stupid to boot.
When I tried to talk sense to him and the other bigwigs at that very first awards ceremony they had for us, the one seven, eight years ago, the minute the TV cameras left the room, good old Kinsey had me tossed out of the Oval Office, in fact, had me ‘escorted’ all the way out of Washington, D.C.
So the others think I’m bitter?
Hmmph.
Hell yes.
What else did they leave me?
I’m not half so bitter and angry at the Aaschen as I am at them. They were my team. How many times did I take their word for the unlikely and the incredible? How many times did I risk everything on their say-so, because they said it and I believed them? I trusted them. And when it came right down to it, they didn’t trust me.
Maybe it’s what I deserved, putting on that dense act all those years.
Maybe.
Maybe not.
I’m just a cynical old hermit living among the trees next to a fishless pond. I tell myself that whatever happens to the rest of the human race doesn’t matter a rat’s ass to me. The only child I ever had is gone, gone so many years now no one but me remembers him. Sara’s long departed, married to someone else. Sam’s gone, married to fancy schmancy Joe the Ambassador with his proper shoes. Doc lives in D.C. and Cassie’s in college somewhere, Teal’c’s back on Chulak, Hammond is dead, and Daniel, Daniel bought into their lies.
Why can’t anyone else see that they’re lying?
There’s no such thing as a free lunch, and the Aaschen have given us breakfast, lunch and dinner, plus a midnight snack.
They want something from us, something they can’t get because it’s something we won’t give them, no matter what, at least not honestly. The only way they can get whatever the hell it is they really want from us is to steal it, sneak it out from under our noses in the dead of night. They’re patient, these Aaschen, they’ll wait and wait and wait, bide their time, and when they spring their surprise on us, it’ll be too late.
I can see it coming, plain as day.
Why can’t anyone else?
They’re shifty. I know it. There’s something about good old Melon that sets my teeth on edge. I *know* the bastard’s lying. I *know* it. Maybe it’s the soul-less eyes or the emptiness of their words, the barrenness that lies behind every statement. There’s this little sly, calculating gleam behind their eyes that says they’re up to something.
I spent a long time trying to do something about humanity’s complacency, and then I realized that beating my head against a wall was just giving me a headache. So I said to hell with it. You can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved. I should know.
What does it matter to me if the whole human race goes down the tubes? I did my duty. I saved the world over and over again. What more could I do? Would any of them care what happened to me?
Most days, I don’t even feel human anymore.
I live here, in my own quiet way. My pension is generous, covers what little I need, food, beer, bait. I don’t need much. If the rest of the human race disappeared, it wouldn’t matter. It wouldn’t. I gave them everything I had, gave them my health, my youth, my marriage, my child, the best that I had, and it was never enough. I saved the world, at the price of my own soul.
It wasn’t worth it.
I have nothing left, nothing at all, not even the memories. I’ve buried them deep, because to try to think about the good times only conjures up the bad times, and the bad outweighs the good so completely it overwhelms me. I don’t have a past, that’s what I tell myself. I have today, that’s it, that’s all. Live for today, Jack. It’s all you’ve got.
So, yeah, I’m a lonely, bitter, crusty old man. Not even fit to own a dog. Not that I don’t want one, but I don’t think I could bear to have even a dog dependent on me. And I know I couldn’t bear to lose one more thing I loved, not even just a dog.
I suppose that’s it. Getting a dog, you see, would mean I had to care about it. I couldn’t do otherwise. And caring would mean feeling, and feeling would mean thinking and thinking would mean remembering and remembering would mean hurting...
I can’t do hurt anymore. I’ve had my soul flayed bare far too many times.
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No one listened to me.
They all walked away, shaking their heads, mumbling about a ranting old fool in need of a good anti-depressant or the Aaschen’s new anti-Alzheimer’s drug. Get a life, Jack, you’re free, no more responsibility, no more worries, no more duty. Enjoy the good life you earned.
Don’t worry. Be happy.
Couldn’t do either one.
‘Jack finally went off the deep end’, they said. ‘Lost it. Wouldn’t even take the anti-aging drugs. Won’t use the Aaschen technology. Lives up there in the woods like a hermit from a hundred years ago. Unfit company for man or beast.’
But I’m right, and I know it, and sooner or later this cobra humanity has embraced will turn around and bite us in the ass.
And then they’ll come running to me looking for help, and I’ll tell them to go to hell.
Because I listened to them, and no one listened to me.
You made your bed, now lie in it.
Don’t expect me to save the planet one more time.
I’ve done that, and now I’m done with that.
Forever.
You have to care to save anything.
And I don’t care anymore.
I’m just an inconvenient reminder of the way things used to be, the way they will be someday for all of you.
Poor old Jack.
Sad case, really.
He used to be somebody, once.
Before the Aaschen came.
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Finish