Recruiting Jim

Written by Anakin McFly

Sometimes, silence can be deafening. The vast, empty darkness of space; the pressing loneliness that sometimes threatens to overwhelm him, where the presence of Aurora and the android Arthur are no substitute for the billions he once shared a planet with. There are times – perhaps while having dinner together, the viewing panels awash with stars – when every lapse in conversation drives home the void that exists where others should be. There are no other voices to fill the gaps, to interrupt, to enliven the atmosphere. Just them, alone, perhaps forever, living out their lives in what would one day be their tomb. Jim sometimes remembers that he'll never again see the sky, or the grass, or a city, or wake to a news report on the television screen.

Stagnancy. Prolonged past its life, them living in a loop where every day starts after a while to seem just like the one before. Nothing changes, and no one cares; there is on one to care, no one to complain that they are not behaving as proper productive members of society, no one to kick up a fuss if he and Aurora spend the entire day playing video games in fruitless attempts to beat their last high scores garnered months ago after a particular combination of alcohol that they'd never again managed to recreate.

In sleep, they lose themselves. For several hours they can forget, and travel back to a world outside the good ship Excelsior, and take comfort in the simulation conjured up by their minds. Two still bodies dreaming between the sheets; the steady sound of their breathing a firm reminder that, for now at least, life still remains on the ship.

So they sleep; and Excelsior sleeps, and cruises on in the freezing vacuum of space.

The door slides open.

Two figures creep in. One stubs his toe and lets out a quiet curse. Aurora stirs slightly but does not move. Jim sleeps on, oblivious to the hushed conversation that proceeds:

"How do we wake him without waking her?"
"We could hit him with a rock."
You crazy? He'll wake up screaming."
"Okay. But why can't we wake her too?"
"She's not one of us. If her friends come they can deal with her. We're just here for James. No point getting more people involved."
"We could-"
"What?"

Silence. The bathroom light flickers on. The tap gushes water out into the sink, then stops; footsteps pad back out of the bathroom, and shadowed fingers flick water onto Jim's face. Reflexes kick in; he turns his head aside, and when his eyes blink open and he raises a puzzled hand to wipe the wet away, he sees only the last of a silhouette slip away outside.

There shouldn't be anyone else moving about on the ship. He has to be imagining things. Wishful thinking, a tired mind, the middle of the night.

Jim gazes at the ceiling. Perhaps a leak...

He hears voices.

A chill runs down his spine. Suddenly alert, now, he sits up slowly in bed, ears straining against the dark-

No, not dark. There's light coming through the door from the hallway. He's sure that door was shut when he went to bed.

But they're alone. They're alone, right?

Jim pushes down the covers and gets out of bed, fearful excitement semi-paralysing his body. He takes a moment to regain his composure, check his breathing, assure himself that he is not dreaming, and then he starts towards the open door. He edges along the wall, hiding in shadows, inching towards the sound of the voices, getting stronger and clearer with every step-

And then he realises with another chill that the voices are identical.

And they sound just like his.

A little different from what he is used to hearing echoed inside his head when he speaks, but he remembers times from a different world with home videos and voice recordings on answering machines, and the recognition clicks. Jim rests his head back against the wall, his eyes shut. He wets his lips and tries to steady his shaking breaths, his pulse racing now.

The doorway is just next to him. The voices are coming from just outside...

Jim opens his eyes. He has to know. He turns slowly, and peeks out the doorway.

Two men in the corridor. Dark hair, same height, both kind of scruffy-looking. One has on a really cool leather jacket and is pacing restlessly around; the other is calmer, clad in an old T-shirt, and watching the ground as he speaks:

"They got Adam. James'll be on our side, at least-"

His friend momentarily stops pacing to jab a finger at him. "You don't know that. Hey, he lives in space. Maybe he likes creepy aliens who stare a lot-"

Jim walks out into the doorway. The conversation ends.

Both of the strangers are almost his exact doppelgangers, varying only in age and general presentation. Jim tightens his grip on the door pillar.

"Hi," says the one in the leather jacket tersely.

The other holds out a hand. "Jjaks Clayton."

His friend gestures vaguely at himself. "Conor."

"How'd you get here?" Jim asks.

Jjaks awkwardly withdraws his hand.

"We teleported," Conor said. "Uh, is there... somewhere else we could go to talk?"

Jim glances back into his room, Aurora still asleep. "Sure," he says, and leads the visitors into the next room.

It's another suite, one of the untouched ones. Jim turns on the lights and turns to face the visitors, still not quite sure if they are really there or if they exist only in his imagination. He waits, not knowing what to do, and the other two appear seemingly indecisive.

"Tell him," Jjaks says.

"What do we tell him?"

"This was your idea!"

Conor nods reluctantly. "Yeah... Uh." He gazes at Jim, searching for inspiration and finding none. "Okay," he says anyway, "Important... things first. What do you think of aliens?"

Jjaks looks at him incredulously. Conor doesn't notice.

"Because we've gotta know what side you're on," Conor continues.

"Aliens," Jim repeats. The mental slider in his mind shifts the situation a little from 'this is real' to 'definitely a dream'.

"Forget he said that," Jjaks interrupts. "He's not very good at this."

"Hey!"

"Aliens?" Jjaks demands in reply.

"Yeah," Conor says. "What if he decides he likes planning... social experiments with creepy aliens and seriously disturbed dentists? It'll kind of ruin things, wouldn't it?"

"C'mon, Conor, we're not creating an army-"

"Then what are we doing here, huh? You said so yourself, if we get him, he'd be on our side-"

"What side?" Jim asks, when he manages to get over the sight of two versions of himself yelling at each other.

It manages, for the moment at least, to get their attention; they seem to remember that Jim is standing there.

"Sorry," Jjaks says. "We..." He pauses. "Okay. I'll start from the beginning. There's this thing called the multiverse. It's full of worlds, different worlds. Maybe they go on forever-"

"We don't need a science lesson," Conor mutters.

"...and in one of these worlds, none of us exist," Jjaks continues. "A few of us got brought over there sometime ago. And we're all, uh..."

"Fiction, same actor, you're one of us," Conor breaks in. "Will be. That's the problem. We're not supposed to know who you are. We're not supposed to be here. We might be disrupting some... future... timeline... history thing. But-"

"How many of you are there?" Jim asks.

Conor shrugs. "Thirty, forty... Eddie and, uh, Neo found a way to predict who's next. Some kind of pattern in the multiverse or something. And then some people decided to go check them out. And they've been telling them about us, and some of the new guys are seriously fucked up in their heads. Like this chef. He locked a few of us up in a room and forced them to discuss baking recipes."

"..." says Jim. Definitely a dream, he decides, and is about to relax as a result and just let things go on, when he realises that this is exactly what he thought those months ago when he first woke up on this ship.

"And so we're trying-"

A sound in the hallway. The door opens. Jjaks looks terrified.

"You two," comes the accusation, dripping with contempt.

"Hi Tom," Conor says, eyeing the newcomer.

"Don't hi Tom me," Ludlow mutters, glancing briefly at Jim and then back at Conor and Jjaks. "What are you doing here? Trying another pathetic attempt at robbery?"

Conor glares at him.

"This world is out of bounds," Ludlow says.

"Looks like you're in trouble, then."

Ludlow raises an eyebrow. "Trying to be funny, O'Neill?"

His gaze sweeps over Jjaks. Jjaks turns pale and attempts to hide behind Conor. Ludlow glares at him, just because he can.

"You're leaving. Now."

"What about him?" Conor asks, pointing at Jim.

Ludlow gives Jim a second dispassionate glance. "Sorry for the inconvenience," he says.

"No problem," Jim says, kind of confused.

Ludlow casually grabs Conor and Jjaks. He presses a button on some device, and the three of them vanish, leaving Jim alone in the empty suite.

Jim gazes at the spot where they had been and struggles to make sense of it all. Who they were, where they came from, and the aching loneliness that had deepened at their departure...

Sometimes, silence can be deafening.

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