He’d spent the first several hours of solitude really looking into the operating code of the kenos and creating an algorithm for the search they’d perform. Time was essential, he knew that, but to send the kenos out without some kind of logic and the capacity to adapt and learn seemed especially stupid. He’d made sure all of the feeds were funneling through the bridge monitors and were being stored for review, he’d write another program to access the processing cores and data centers of the ship to analyze what was found, so he could watch many of the feeds in real time.

“Rush probably had more access,” he said and stopped with a shake of the head. They say madness is when you start talking to yourself and he wondered if even this period of solitude was leading him down the sanity route.

Probably not. He’d used verbalized self-talk to work through problems since he was a kid. It helped him think and focus. If Rush could access the systems, so could he. Rush had more experience, but he had more raw talent and ability. If nothing else was true, his tenacity was the one thing he knew would help him survive. At this point, setting goals and finding a way to find a way to get home was his main priority.

For the most part, Eli allowed the kenos to do what he’d programmed. He was looking for more stasis pods, equipment, things he could use. Even if that equipment was in areas of the ship that had failed or were decompressed, or whatever. He didn’t know what to expect from a more thorough investigation of the ship.

As he worked, he’d occasionally glance through the force fields protecting him from space. The darkness was getting bigger and harder to ignore. He had no idea what total darkness without star or external light would be like and really didn’t want to find out. While Destiny was in FTL, or faster than light, the darkness was partially mitigated by the interaction of particles with shielding. Though an absence of stars and planets meant considerably less material.

Almost in desperation, Eli hoped the kenos would find something. His other option was to do exactly what Colonel Young and Lt. Scott and others from the military contingent had ordered everyone to avoid, the containers left in waiting by the ancients. Containers that had to have something that could help. And containers that might be dangerous.

Might. As in “We don’t know,” and not, “Certain death through excruciating pain and emotional anguish because the Ancients booby trapped everything.”

Might was a much better option than dead by asphyxiation and hypothermia. He’d do it. Die. But not without trying to live.

Several of the kenos had alerted him to additional storage rooms, equipment, computers - or what passed for them aboard an Ancient ship, and so much more. He needed to check on those and plan how he’d start a systematic review of the available data as well as visual and physical review of the compartments, containers, and other equipment.

His mind working through possibilities, wandering through what he knew of Stargates and Ancients, their language, Destiny, the ships systems, what he’d learned because he had to, when he started seeing brief flashes of light in different monitors. At first, it seemed like nothing, brief flashes of light, possible anomalies, until those flashes increased and a pattern started to emerge. He didn’t know what the pattern was or, for that matter, what it would result in, untimely death by way of a non-corporeal alien presence with a desire to consume him. What he suspected was the light was trying to communicate with him.

***

Having calculated the location of the most recent flash of light, Eli went to check on it. He had his own keno, the one he’d been using to record the crew, his away missions, his video journal, and the bulk of the material for the documentary he was working on. It flew ahead of him, entering corridors before he did, checking to make sure another alien life form hadn’t created a home on Destiny waiting, like in Alien, to lay its eggs in an unsuspecting human only to have the larval form burst out of his chest. That would suck.

On the other hand, getting out of established safe areas and into the unexplored areas of Destiny was kind of exciting. Even though he didn’t have the many monitors to view all of the kenos, he was able to view different kenos through his handheld remote. Most of what he was concerned with was the keno he had ahead of him, though different warnings and preprogrammed messages drew his attention to other kenos as they entered compartments and located technology and possible solutions. For the most part, Eli glanced at what was transmitted and returned his attention to his keno.

When he was well into unexplored parts of the ship, he saw the flash for himself. It was hard to tell what was causing it, though the fact that it was moving really interested him and drew his attention. The second time he saw it, the flash had the distinct appearance of something more humanoid, two arms and two legs and a head. The third time caused him to think he saw Ginn. The fourth time he thought he saw Amanda Palmer. With each appearance, Eli started moving faster, the keno keeping with him and recording everything.

He found a lift and, on a hunch, hit a button. It fell out from beneath him and shifted a little before opening onto another passageway. This one central to the heart of the ship. He stopped, not sure whether or not he should follow, when the form turned and looked at him. It was none of the people he’d thought and was someone completely new, different. The being motioned for him to follow and he did. Walking directly at the being without thinking what he was doing or responding to any of the automated transmissions that were beginning to light up his remote.

Stepping through the hatchway of the compartment, he stopped short of committing to the compartment. Sitting in the middle of a large, round room was an Ancient chair similar to - and different from - the one Rush had discovered and used. This one didn’t seem as ominous or dangerous, though why he didn’t know. There was less of a Friday the 13th, Freddy Kruger kind of thing going on and more of a modern Ancients interface.

The being was standing on the opposite side of the chair and was motioning for Eli to sit down.

“Yeah. I don’t think so,” he said. “The last chair we found did not pretty things to the people who sat in it. Ugly actually. Rush got stuck in a hyper-virtual-reality that kind of got stuck in a loop and it took quite a bit to get him out.”

Again, the being motioned for Eli to sit down.

“No, really, thank you. I think I’d rather take my chances fixing one of the stasis pods and seeing what happens when I wake up. Mostly hope that only three years have passed, but if a thousand, or more, you know, figure out what’s happened on Earth. Check out some new video games. Maybe read up on the World Series. That kind of thing.”

“The ship requires a custodian,” the being said. “It requires a living custodian. One who can take command and control the systems.”

“In that case, why don’t I go wake up Colonel Young or Rush or one of the others ....”

“No. You,” the being said. “It has to be you.”

“I don’t know anything about the ship or Ancients or, you know, stuff. Plus, there are other people more qualified to lead and control and do whatever needs to be done.”

He tried to ignore this new reality, focus on what had preceded everything up until this moment. Leaving home after completing a computer game no one else could figure out. Being transported onboard one of the several deep space ships the Air Force operated between solar systems that allowed access to planets without Stargates ... and some with, finding himself escaping through a Stargate billions of lightyears from Earth into a ship, the Destiny, sent on a mission almost a million years before.

Prior to the day he was recruited, space exploration or travel was an abstraction found in fiction and movies. Both of which Eli enjoyed, but nothing he thought he’d be a part of. After leaving MIT for personal reasons, he’d floundered and was unable to keep a job down. Not that he was incapable, but out of boredom. He knew, even if he refused to admit it to himself, there was more out there than he was letting himself grasp and hold on to.

Now he was on the Destiny billions of light years from home with no way of leaving the ship and, quite possibly, no way he would be alive in two weeks time.

In truth, his choice to remain out of stasis was one of necessity. The choices were limited to Rush, Colonel Young, and him. For Colonel Young to remain outside of stasis meant death, not that Colonel Young wouldn’t attempt to do something. Ultimately a power play by Rush to solidify his place as leader. If Rush had stayed outside, there was no guarantee he’d fix a stasis pod or allow life support to turn off, leaving Destiny to float in the void for a thousand years. If the loss of three years seemed too much for Eli and the rest of the crew, the loss of a thousand or more was completely unacceptable, impossible to understand.

When it came down to it, Eli felt he had no choice. He didn’t feel more qualified or capable, nor did he think himself smarter or better than anyone else - even though that seemed to be consensus. The reality of sacrifice or the Hail Mary pass at the last seconds of gameplay was him. If Destiny and the crew were going to survive, then he had to be willing to sacrifice himself.

He’d worked through those thoughts again and again. His mind wondering if he’d screwed up. Rush was selfish, that was true, but he wasn’t evil. Was he? Colonel Young was an officer with lots of experience and very capable, though how capable in terms of ancient Ancient technology was up in the air. Could he save himself?

At each question and in each scenario Eli hazarded, he realized the same thing. He had to be the one to try. No one else could do it. From the very first moment on board until now, it had been Eli who’d Macgyvered a fix or found a workaround. He’d almost taken them home, only later to discover that he’d sent the entire crew back in time and Colonel Telford back to Earth. The paradox of time travel was more than he wanted to conceptualize and after trying he pushed it aside.

There was only one thing he could do, one thing that would save his life, and that was to find the materials needed to fix the stasis pod.

He refused to consider the alternative.

***

For Eli, there was a process that allowed him to work through problems. Unlike most people, he guessed, he didn’t look at things in a strict progression and, instead, looked at the conceivable ends while working the problem from the middle out. His method wasn’t foolproof, though it often led him to solutions like a keno sled or dialing the ninth chevron with Earth as the origin. Things like that were the kinds of problems that lent itself to his kind of thinking.

A stasis pod, while both simple and complicated, was entirely different. It was a stasis pod. They were built with materials that were available throughout the universe and assembled and programmed with very specific purposes in mind: to keep individuals perfectly preserved for an indeterminate length of time. Someone had to come up with the technology and logic and programming, just not him. In truth, before finding the stasis pods, he’d never considered the possibility outside of a handful of science fiction novels.

For Eli, it was entirely possible he could sideways-engineer a solution to the problem, but that would require resources that weren’t available, obvious. At least, not immediately. Instead, and without the discretionary efforts of Colonel Young and the military, or even Rush, he had the run of Destiny. He could explore in ways that were forbidden until now. After all, logically, if a stasis pod existed and the Ancients built the ship, then other systems had to work on the same principles and it was also possible there were other areas of the ship with stasis pods.

Until now, the crew had focused on remaining alive and keeping the air flowing, starting a hydroponics farm, and not blowing up. They’d focused on getting home or finding, under truly desperate circumstances, a habitable planet to call home. What they didn’t focus on as much was a complete understanding of Destiny and the compatibility of systems as well as parts to other systems and areas potential replacement storage. Under rules of conservation, it made sense that the number of spare parts would be reduced to a bare minimum with many of those replacement parts working across many different systems.

All he had to do was find those spare parts. Or a stasis pod. He wasn’t all that particular.

The ship was definitely old and nearly derelict. A relic of times long forgotten. In truth, Eli had no understanding of the Ancients or their ways and only had a rudimentary grasp of their language. That’s to say, he could read it and understand the underlying meaning, but would be seriously hard-pressed to communicate properly in Ancient. Which didn’t mean he couldn’t, he simply lacked experience. A commodity Colonel Young had insisted Eli acquire. A commodity Rush tried, very hard, to keep out of everyone else’s hands.

When his mind started working the problem and figuring out the steps to solve it, Eli turned from the view on the observation deck and went straight to the bridge. What he wanted wasn’t going to be easy, nor was he immediately hopeful, but if he didn’t try he was going to die. And for Eli, having come so far, dying wasn’t really an option. If he could fix and solve other problems, then this one would be a cakewalk.

***

Rush had found Destiny’s bridge and hidden the fact for weeks. He’d claimed he was studying it, getting ready to reveal it to Colonel Young and everyone else. Eli had his doubts. That wasn’t Rush’s style. He knew that from the moment he’d laid eyes on the man, and General O’Neill. Rush bordered on psychopathy and yet he was the mind behind most of the major accomplishments and understanding leading up to Destiny and the Icarus Project.

To Eli, Rush was more the trickster god, a malicious being that got its jollies out of tormenting and torturing its victims. For Rush, that meant the crew of the Destiny and, especially, Colonel Young. Those two men were locked in mortal combat and even when they agreed on things, underneath was a churning fire waiting to explode once again.

Finding the bridge had allowed the crew to stop forcing consoles and operational systems to do things they were never designed to do. Good thing too, since that was the point when they really started running into other races. None Terran in appearance or anything even close to human, which meant none of the Ancient seed ships had been occupied or even carried the seeds for human-like life.

The closest they’d come to taking control of the situation, getting ahead of the reality of being separated from Earth and Stargate Command was the bridge and now it was the only thing connecting Eli to the crew and life. With no help from Earth possible and no reprieve from the crew, he did what he’d been wanting to do for a very long time, use the bridges consoles and the underlying data processing power, to control the kenos and search the ship.

With Rush and Colonel Young asleep, the ability to experiment and really see what they could do seemed like the most logical and reasonable use of time and resources. After all, he couldn’t explore the ship alone and he’d had his own close encounters with failing shields and compartments exposed to the vacuum of space.

My plan is, for now, to post some of my old writing: fiction, poetry, essays, opinions, and parenting and autism content.

I will start with the parts to a piece I wrote about ten years ago: Eli Ascending, a Stargate Universe fanfic. It’s not complete and to be honest it may never be complete.

When Syfy and MGM canceled Universe, or SGU, I was frustrated. For me, at the time, this was perfect storytelling. I loved the show more than I’d lived SG1 or the original Stargate movie. And I was never a fan of Stargate: Atlantis. I’ll explain why another time.

With Eli and Colonel Young and Rush and so much potential, Destiny - the starship, I felt there was so much to be explored and it followed that if the Ancients had planned enough to launch this scout ship and prepare for people to gate in, they’d prepared for damage, for the very problems the crew were going to face.

Well, maybe not those exact problems. But things like the ship being in need of repair. Aliens attacking. The seed ships purposes and eventual outcomes. Others boarding Destiny and working toward the same goals as Rush et al.

Destiny had a bigger story and a more robust constitution and toward that end, I felt there needed to be something that at the very least got the crew from one galaxy across the divide into the next without killing Eli and without losing years of their lives.

Eli Ascending is the beginning of my attempt to answer those questions.

Stick around for those posts to come and others. As it says up top: Essays, Fiction, and Observations from the Homefront.