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Rachel was distinctly unimpressed when she opened her door to find a woman dressed in what looked to be a military uniform. If by "distinctly unimpressed" she meant "annoyed and weirded out and also scared," that is. She wanted nothing more than to shut the door in the woman's face, but she figured that wouldn't exactly be the sensible thing to do. Instead she pulled herself together and said, "Can I help you?"
The military woman smiled at her and said, "Yes, I'm looking for Rachel Toews; would that be you?"
"Yes," Rachel admitted grudgingly.
"I'm Colonel Carter. May I come in? I have a confidential matter to discuss with you."
"Yes," Rachel said, even more grudgingly, but unwilling to refuse the military – she couldn't help but be afraid of an organization whose main purpose was violence. She opened the door wider, and stepped aside to let Colonel Carter in.
Rachel led the way to her living room, debating with herself over whether to offer coffee. On the one hand, doing so would be the polite thing. On the other hand, she wanted the military out of her apartment as soon as possible; it was making her skin itch. It didn't take long for politeness to win out, though -- it's what Nana would have done, she thought -- so soon the two women were seated and cradling mugs of coffee.
"Have you heard of Atlantis?" Colonel Carter said, breaking the silence.
Rachel's eyebrows both went up and she very nearly said something rude about why on earth the military would be interested in classical myths, but she schooled her expression quickly and tried to calm her thoughts. Polite, be polite, she thought. "Of course I've heard of it," she said. "Who hasn't? Atlantis is a rather well-known myth."
Colonel Carter moved on, completely failing to explain why she'd brought up the subject of Atlantis. "Have you heard of the Ancients? Or of Stargates?" When Rachel confirmed her complete ignorance of the subjects, Colonel Carter had a look of vindication on her face. "Good," she said.
Rachel stared down into her coffee, and made no response. She was reminded of the restless, awkward, stretching silence of a classroom after the professor has asked a question of the uncaring students. Rachel could tell what Colonel Carter was trying to do: make Rachel uncomfortable enough to start talking, get Rachel's interest piqued to the point where she'd start asking questions and being interested. But she was not inclined to do the military any favours. Finally, like a weary professor aware of the unbreachable walls of apathy surrounding a class of undergrads, Colonel Carter sighed and spoke again.
"We have reason to believe you received a certain item from your grandmother after she passed away," she said.
Rachel said nothing.
"It's a box, about this big -- " she gestured with her hands " -- and a sort of blue-green in colour. Not glass, not plastic, but an odd material that's reminiscent of both. It would have something like a stained-glass pattern on the top. Likely you couldn't open it."
Rachel said nothing.
"Did you receive such an item?"
Rachel said nothing. Then, as the silence stretched again, she gave a slow nod. Hold yourself together, she reminded herself. Then, "Yes," she said. "It was left to me in Nana's will. I keep it on my bookshelf; it reminds me of her."
Rachel watched as Colonel Carter's face relaxed into a smile. What was so important about the box that she'd be so relieved over it? Rachel had always assumed it was a jewellery box, rusted shut after decades of disuse, kept for its own intrinsic beauty.
"May I see it?" Colonel Carter asked, startling Rachel out of her thoughts. With a nod, Rachel stood up, and gave a stay-there gesture. She went to her bedroom and sat down on her bed, looking up at the bookshelf. Then slowly she stood again, reached out, caressed the jewellery box lovingly. What could the military ever want with a family keepsake like that? But she picked it up and carried it back out to the living room, and placed it in Colonel Carter's waiting hand.
Rachel sat and sipped her coffee while Colonel Carter turned the jewellery box over and around in her hand, over and over again, stopping to look closely at this detail or that, a look of reverence and joy upon her face. The silence continued for so long this time that Rachel had almost forgotten about the possibility of words. Then, "I hate to ask it of you, but may I take this?" Colonel Carter asked. "With reimbursement, of course."
Horrified, Rachel nearly dropped her now-empty mug. "What do you want with it?" she burst out, unable to hold herself in any longer. "It's mine! Nana gave it to me, and it's mine, and I don't want to lose what little I have left of her! You can -- you can take pictures, or build a model, or whatever, but it's mine!" And then, to her complete mortification, Rachel burst into tears.
Much of the rest of the conversation was a blur to Rachel, who was thoroughly occupied in wrestling her emotions back under control. The loss of Nana had been so recent, so sudden, and she still couldn't quite bear to think of the world without Nana's strong, loving presence. But by the time Colonel Carter was going back out the door, Rachel had at least figured out that Colonel Carter knew her way around an argument, because somehow Rachel had been convinced to take herself and the jewellery box somewhere with Colonel Carter the next day.
* * *
Wow. Rachel wasn't able to summon up more than that in her mind. Apparently she'd been paying even less attention than she'd thought, the day before, when she'd mindlessly agreed to this scheme. And now here she was boarding a sleek, fast-looking, definitely non-commercial airplane, preparing to fly nearly 2,000 kilometres to somewhere in Colorado. She clutched the jewellery box to her chest, and resolutely didn't think about what she was doing. She had the time -- it was almost the weekend and she didn't have any class on Fridays anyways, and she didn't have anything major due on Monday -- and that was all that mattered.
She kept her mind carefully blank for the rest of the flight too, staring at the inside of her eyelids and ignoring any attempts at conversation from Colonel Carter. Colonel Carter apparently got the impression Rachel was afraid of flying, and soon left her alone with a reassurance they'd be there soon. Rachel didn't bother correcting the assumption.
Colorado arrived sooner than she expected, and she stepped out of the plane into heat and bleakness, mountains rising nearby into the vast sky. Soon she was in an armoured vehicle -- which despite its relatively prosaic appearance felt far more military than the plane, and thus freaked her out far more -- and was being driven up a mountain, beyond security guards, into a tunnel.
Nondisclosure agreements were put in front of her to sign, and she read them through carefully, looking for any tricks, afraid of what she might be accidentally agreeing to. But she couldn't find any problems, and after one last searching glance she took up the pen and put down her name, blue and bold below the endless tiny black print.
She found herself eventually in a conference room, profession and intimidating, and felt vastly out of place in her jeans and t-shirt. But then, she was a student, for god's sake; it wasn't like she actually owned anything formal or business-like. She shrank down into a large chair, the jewellery box in her hands, and she ran her fingers across its familiar surface, grounding herself in the feel of it.
Only two other people were in the room with her, Colonel Carter and someone who was introduced to her as General O'Neill.
They explained to her what was happening, in what had to be a vastly abbreviated summary: there were aliens, they were trying to take over the world, and Rachel's Nana's jewellery box could be a powerful tool in the fight against the aliens. The jewellery box was in fact an alien artefact, belonging to a people they called the Ancients. The jewellery box, they were almost sure, was a necessary component in making something called a ZPM, a vastly powerful energy source.
To prove what they were saying, General O'Neill said, all she had to do was let him touch her jewellery box. Hands shaking, mind whirling, Rachel placed it on the table in front of her, and pushed it an inch or two in General O'Neill's direction. She kept one hand on it, afraid to lose contact with what felt like her only connection to sanity.
Then General O'Neill's hand came gently down on it, and even that last bit of sanity was lost, because at first contact it began to glow. Rachel snatched her hand back and resisted the urge to bring her feet up onto the chair so she could hug her knees to her chest.
"I'm sorry," General O'Neill said, and withdrew his hand from the box again, his fingers moving instead to tap a restless rhythm on his leg. The glow died and it became Nana's jewellery box once more, but she didn't reach out to it. It could never be the same in her mind again. It was tainted with this knowledge. It was alien, it was dangerous, it was no longer a comforting reminder of Nana.
"Have it," she said, her voice trembling. "Have it, have it, have it. I don't want it." And as she pushed her chair back from the table and was just about to run out of the room, she saw General O'Neill's eager hands stretching back towards the box, and a thought occurred to her. This wasn't just about her own feelings. "Wait. Ignore that. I didn't mean it." And she sat back down, snatched the box, and placed it directly in front of her on the table.
"I don't think I can, in good conscience, let you have it," Rachel said, then stopped: her voice was shaking. But when she saw both General O'Neill's and Colonel Carter's mouths begin to open, she hurriedly began to speak again . "I don't want it, not any more, but I don't want to let it go out in the world and cause death and destruction. You said you were going to use it to fight aliens. I'm -- I'm a pacifist." She looked up, eyes despairing. "I'm Mennonite. That means that I can't condone violence for any reason, even if you think it's just."
Inwardly Rachel's mind raced. She was no theologian. How was she to explain this, when she hardly understood it herself? She'd never been in a situation where pacifism had really come up as an issue! She had a sheltered childhood, she'd gone to a Mennonite high school, she was an undergrad at a Mennonite university. Exposure to violence had never happened; pacifism was an untested ideal for her. And yet she had to stand up for it. She took a deep breath and continued.
"We're only human. We can't know everything. How are we to judge whether someone truly deserves to die? You might think you have an excuse, but that's just it – an excuse! And the lines blur, and move, and soon more people are dying, and that's just wrong!" Her voice was growing stronger, louder. "I don't care if the people you're fighting are aliens. They're still sentient. They're still God's creatures. They still don't deserve to die at your hands. Who are you, to think you – the military! – can decide for the whole world the right way to interact with aliens?"
Rachel stopped, aware that she was nearly shouting now, and panted for breath. Oh god, had she really just done that? Told off high-ranking military officers, when she was under their complete control, in a secret underground base? Hysterical giggles fought free, and bubbled out her mouth, and as she fought to get herself back under control, the General and the Colonel moved to one corner of the room and began to confer in urgent undertones. The shapes in the air sketched out by the General's arms grew more and more sharp until he looked about ready to punch in a wall, and the Colonel stood firm with an expression of determination -- tinged with something Rachel couldn't quite identify -- on her face as she argued. Rachel's giggles burst free once more. She was so doomed.
* * *
Rachel sat in the sleek airplane, the not-a-jewellery-box in a bag at her feet. Apparently she wasn't doomed after all. Colonel Carter and General O'Neill had waited for her to calm down, had talked to her for a while, had tried to convince her of the necessity of the fight. She'd refused to back down, refused to listen, still lost in disbelief at what she'd had the guts -- or the stupidity -- to do. And eventually they'd realized they weren't convincing her, and now here she was going back home again.
Victorious.
She didn't feel victorious though, not really. The jewellery box wasn't a jewellery box any longer, would remind her of this insane day instead of reminding her of Nana. And her argument.... She exhaled slowly and tried not to shiver. She'd done the right thing. She had.
But she knew that for the rest of her life she'd have to live with the fear that she'd made the wrong decision, and that the world would burn for her presumption.