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The study group were all silently and - for once - productively working away, one afternoon, when Britta suddenly shrieked and fell out of her chair. The rest of the group looked at one another.
"Britta?" said Jeff, leaning back to peer under the table. "Did you... lose your balance?"
"What the fuck," came Britta's voice. "What the fuck, you guys! If someone let that – that thing loose in here as a practical joke, it's about as funny as when I tried to prank Chang, okay?" There was a long silence. Britta stuck her head back above the level of the table, widened her eyes, and disappeared with another scream. "What the hell is it?!"
"Okay... Britta, there's nothing there," said Troy. He looked around for confirmation. "There is nothing there – right guys?"
"Have you been getting high before school again, Britta?" asked Jeff, smirking.
"Oh my god, maybe it's a peyote flashback!" chimed in Annie. For some reason this made her bounce excitedly in her seat. "Does peyote give you flashbacks, or is that just LSD? Have you ever taken LSD, Britta?"
"Just say no," Abed advised, or possibly quoted.
"This is NOT FUNNY, OKAY?" said Britta, sounding accusative.
"She's finally gone completely nuts," said Pierce, with deep satisfaction. "I always knew it would happen to someone in this room someday. And you all said it would be me," he scoffed.
"Seriously, Britta, there's nothing here," said Shirley, sternly. "Come out from under the table."
"...You don't see it?" Britta emerged again. Her eyes immediately went to a patch of air, somewhere in the middle of the table. "Seriously, you're telling me you don't see that?" she asked, voice quavering.
"See what? Annie's fuzzy pencil case?"
Britta pointed a shaking hand. "Th-the giant bug," she said. "The giant green bug, with all the tentacles. It's the size of Shirley's purse, you guys." At last she dragged her eyes away from it, and looked around at them, and seemed to register that they were looking at her in genuine bafflement. "You really don't see it?" she asked, in a subdued voice.
Annie and Shirley had moved back slightly from their side of the table at Britta's words, but now Annie leaned forward, and waved her hand through the air. "Where is it?" Britta flinched when she hit a particular patch of nothingness, and Annie eyed her, and brought her hand back to the area, wiggling her fingers. "Here? There's nothing here, Britta."
"You – you put your hand right through it..."
"Okay, time to go to the health center," said Jeff, conclusively. He hauled Britta up from the floor by her arm.
"I'll take her," offered Abed. "I've always wanted to see what a psychotic break looks like from the outside."
Britta sighed. "Okay, maybe I should go talk to someone," she conceded, but gave the patch of air one last fearful glance as she and Abed left.
---
Ten minutes later, Jeff cursed and shoved his chair back violently. Everyone – except Britta, who was having a quiet lie-down in the health center – looked up at him. He dragged his eyes away from where he was staring (the whiteboard), and looked around at the group.
"What?" he snapped, when he realized everyone was staring at him. "Nothing. It's... nothing. Just a cramp. Ow." He waved his hand irritably at them all, but his eyes darted briefly to the whiteboard again, and he paled. "Study!" he said, voice rising an octave.
Over the next few minutes, the others couldn't help but notice that Jeff had suddenly become inexplicably twitchy. He kept flinching, his eyes couldn't seem to stay on his books, and his chair was mysteriously migrating back towards the far corner of the room. They exchanged surreptitious glances with one another, but said nothing as Jeff quivered and sweated and swore under his breath. Whatever it was, it seemed to be getting closer to him, to judge by his increasing nervousness.
Finally he snapped, shoving his chair back and backing away, pointing at a spot on the floor. "Okay, seriously, you don't see that?!"
"I knew it!" crowed Annie. "You're seeing things too!"
"I am not seeing things," he growled. "You're all blind!" He flinched, and took a step backwards, away from whatever it was. "Oh god. Fuck." He looked around at them, and then groaned, closing his eyes. "I am going to fucking kill Britta," he declared, and spun around – and screamed. Apparently there was another invisible creature right behind him. He looked at it, then back at the group, and then defiantly ducked around it and fled the room.
"Okay, that was weird," said Annie. "That was weird, right? They shouldn't both be having the same hallucination."
"Shared psychosis," offered Abed. "Jeff is very suggestible." They all nodded in agreement. "Either that, or it's something catching."
"Uh, let's go with shared psychosis," said Shirley, firmly.
"I see them, too," said Pierce, unexpectedly. "Giant bugs. Everywhere. Green and purple. There's a big red one with wings flying through that wall right now." He pointed.
"Sure there is," said Shirley, and rolled her eyes.
"Pierce, stop being a copycat," said Troy. "Just because you think it's cool now that Jeff—"
"I've been seeing them all morning!" declared Pierce. "I saw them first! I saw them before Jeff and Britta!"
Everyone sighed, and got back to work.
---
"Oh, this is interesting," said Abed, eyes widening. "It really is something catching."
The remaining study group members looked at him. He was staring in fascination up at the air above the table.
"Abed?" asked Troy.
"It appears to be passed on by touch," said Abed. "I wonder if they're actually a hallucination, or if it's some kind of psychic awakening?" He reached out a hand, and passed it experimentally through the air. "I can't feel it. That's so weird." He looked back down. "Annie and Shirley, you should be seeing them shortly. I touched you both when I realized what might be the mechanism and that I was next."
"What? Why would you do that?" demanded Annie.
"Abed, that's not nice!" Shirley looked around nervously.
"Why not me?" asked Troy.
"You and Pierce are my control subjects," explained Abed coolly. "Unless Pierce really is seeing them already. He may be the Typhoid Mary in this situation."
"Blue bug with kind of wriggly suckers," said Pierce, waggling his fingers to illustrate. "It's been flying around the table for the last ten minutes. I think it's attracted to the lights."
Abed gave him the finger guns. Everyone else turned to glare at Pierce.
"You mean you really can see them?" asked Annie, accusingly.
"I told you! I saw them first," Pierce said, smugly.
"You brought this ungodly affliction upon us?" said Shirley, dangerously. "So help me, Pierce, if I have to be quarantined, I'm going to shove—"
Annie interrupted with a scream, and scrambled back from the table. Shirley glanced at her, followed her eye-line, and then also screamed, clutching her purse close to her chest. Everyone in the room was now staring at the blue bug that was fluttering above the table. Everyone, that is, except for Troy.
"Oh, I wanna see it," he complained. "It's not fair!"
"We need to keep you pure, Troy," began Abed, but Pierce smacked his hand down on Troy's arm.
"Ow!"
"Pierce!" scolded Annie. Abed and Shirley glared at him.
"Oh, let the kid have some fun," said Pierce, dismissively.
"He might have been the only one who could save us," said Abed, frowning. "Now you've ruined it."
"Guys, there really are invisible bugs!" said Britta, bursting excitedly back into the room, followed by a grumpy-looking Jeff. "We can both see them! There's one—"
"Blue bug, wings, over the table," summarised Abed. Shirley, Annie and Pierce nodded, and Britta deflated. "I got it from you," explained Abed. "You probably got it from Pierce. Has he touched you at all this morning?"
Britta glared at Pierce. "You put your arm around me," she said.
"I was trying to escort you back from class!"
"It was creepy and now I can see giant bugs!"
"I can't," said Troy, mournfully.
"Okay, Britta, Jeff and Pierce, you need to remember if you've touched anyone else in the school since you got infected," said Abed. "We need to figure out how far this contagion might have reached. I've only touched Britta, Shirley and Annie."
"Contagion?" asked Britta.
"One of the nurses," said Jeff. "No one else outside of this group. Britta?" He glared at Pierce. "Pierce?"
Pierce shrugged. "How should I remember?"
"Guys, contagion? What exactly do you mean by 'contagion'?"
"Well, great, so how are we supposed to know how far this has—"
Troy screamed.
---
"So what's the situation?" asked Jack, converging with Teal'c, Sam, and Jonas on the tac team in front of the college. He glanced at his teammates, and Sam and Teal'c nodded back. Teal'c, like him and half of Cheyenne Mountain, had been out dealing with the contagion by touching as many people as possible, and Sam and Jonas had been chasing down loose ends. The final one seemed to be this community college outside of Denver. Somehow, some infected person had escaped detection, and then – inexplicably – had actually gone to school the next morning. If there was ever a good reason to skip class it was seeing giant bugs everywhere, was Jack's personal opinion. Someone either really, really loved school, or was already crazy.
He hoped it was the former.
"We've shut down the school, and dealt with most of the students," said Major Dubcek, leading them to where he'd set up a makeshift command center out of the back of a truck. "There's just one group remaining, holed up in the library." He gestured to some blueprints, and a sheaf of brief dossiers that someone had compiled on the students in question. Sam took the blueprints, and Jonas and Teal'c divided the dossiers between them. "Seven people – four men and three women – all students at the college. They've barricaded themselves in and are refusing to come out. We don't know if they have weapons, or if they're all there of their own volition. Apparently they're a study group."
"Right. Is there anyone here who knows them?"
Major Dubcek sighed wearily. "There's the dean," he confirmed. "He says he's their best friend, and that they're 'essentially harmless'." Jack raised his eyebrows, and Major Dubcek thinned his lips. "If I may offer my personal opinion, sir, I don't think he's a reliable source of information. Everyone else we've spoken to says this group is notorious for their erratic behavior, that they're insular and they instigate trouble... I'm concerned that we may have accidentally activated some kind of splinter cell."
"Options?"
"I could try talking to them," suggested Jonas, flipping through files. "We have an elderly man, a housewife, someone who's been arrested for nonviolent protesting, three young people barely out of high school, and a former lawyer. They don't exactly sound like trouble."
"They are only seven," said Teal'c. "And they are college students, not soldiers. The only one with any training is this one," he held up a file on a young girl. "She is a purple belt in judo. There is also the former quarterback." He held up another file of a young man. "But I do not doubt we can subdue them."
Jack looked at him. "Keep it simple, just stroll in there and take them down?" Teal'c nodded, and Jack pursed his lips, considering. It wasn't exactly the worst odds they'd ever faced – but there was always the risk that some idiot had decided to pack a weapon that day.
"The building isn't exactly secure. We could just drop stun gas through the air vents," suggested Sam, pointing them out on the map.
"Okay." Jack clapped his hands together. "We'll try talking first. No offense, Jonas, but this is Earth, so I'm coming with you." He caught the wince that Sam tried to hide, and gave her a glare. "All I really need to do is touch them, right?"
Jonas nodded, with only the tiniest hint of reluctance. "They should stop seeing the bugs almost instantly."
"Piece of cake." He caught Teal'c's eye, and nodded. "And if they're still crazy after that, you have my permission to go to plan B," he told Sam. "Gas if they've got weapons, Teal'c's plan if not."
"Yes, sir," said Sam, and smiled brightly. "Hopefully it won't come to that. After all, it's just college."
Jack rolled his eyes. "Just college," he repeated. "Spoken like a true genius. The rest of us, Major, were usually one exam shy of a nervous breakdown at all times." He glanced at the building. "Let's hope these are some of the more stable students."
---
"Uh, hello in there," called Jack, from his crouched position outside the study room door. The blinds were drawn, and he could see that heavy things – shelves and a table, he thought – were piled up against the door. There was another door around the other side of the study room, and the whole thing was glass windows – really not a good defensive spot at all. Honestly, what did they teach in school these days? "Can we come in?"
"What do you want?" called a male voice, after a moment.
"We wanna talk. Okay?"
There was the sound of quiet debate. "Are you here to kill us?" came another (younger?) male voice.
"Shut up, Abed!"
"It's a valid concern."
"Are you here to get rid of the bugs or anyone who sees the bugs?" called a woman.
Jack and Jonas exchanged glances. "We're not here to kill you," called Jack. "We are here about the bugs, and yes, we should be able to get rid of them."
There was a lengthy silence, and then the shuffling of furniture. The door cracked open, and an eye – blue, paranoid – peered out. "Okay. But just one of you." It was the owner of the first voice.
Jack shook his head, holding the gaze. He tried to resist the urge to squint in sympathy. "Both, or not at all."
The eye paused, and swivelled from Jack to Jonas and back. "Alright," he conceded. "But no weapons."
"No weapons," agreed Jack, who was pretty sure he could take down anyone in that room with his bare hands.
The door cracked a little wider, and Jack got to his feet with a silent groan, and led the way in. Behind them, the door closed firmly, and when he glanced back, a tall, muscular man was dragging a shelving unit back in front of it. The man stood up and brushed his hands, looking a little sheepish. "Sorry. Can't be too careful."
"No, sure," said Jack. "I get that." He turned to make a quick survey of the room. The furniture was in complete disarray – shelves and couches all over the place, tables on their sides to make barricades. Everyone but the tall man seemed to have hidden themselves around the room.
"If anyone's planning on trying to get to us through the air vents, I should warn you that there's a monkey in them, and he's pretty vicious," said the tall man. "It's possible he's got rabies." Jack narrowed his eyes at him, but the man appeared to be perfectly sincere – although it was possible he was just insane. "Jeff Winger," he introduced himself. "Welcome to Greendale." He gave a weary little smile.
"Jack," said Jack, and pointed. "Jonas." He eyed Jeff up and down. "So, Jeff... whaddya bench press? Two-fifty?"
"Three hundred," said Jeff, confused but a bit smug.
"Uh huh." Jack glared at Jonas, who looked a little embarrassed. "Former lawyer," he said, irritably. "No trouble at all." At least it was gym rat muscles, all for show. The guy had probably never been in a real fight in his life.
Someone popped up from behind one of the upturned tables – a kid that Jack recognized as being the former quarterback. "Uh, hi, Troy Barnes, and I don't know how much I bench press but I don't work out all the time like Jeff does because I'd rather play video games," he said. "Did you bring pizza?"
"No, sorry."
"Aw." Troy looked honestly disappointed, his whole body drooping, and Jack felt a little guilty.
"I haven’t taken one of those situation negotiation classes in a long time," he said in explanation. At least, not the ones designed for dealing with Earth cultures. Hammond liked to send him to SGC-run courses on how to negotiate with aliens all the time, for some reason.
"It's okay," said Troy, disconsolately.
"Troy, we've only been here four hours," said a blonde woman, peering out from behind a chair. "It's not even dinnertime!"
"I know, but that's what you do, right?" Troy appealed to Jack. "Pizza – it's traditional."
The kid had a point. "We could send out," suggested Jack, with the feeling he'd found a kindred spirit.
Troy brightened. "Could we?"
"Sure."
"Cool!"
"Troy! Don't listen to his blandishments!" A young woman – jeez, she was only a girl – stood up and shot Jack a glare, grabbing Troy's arm. "Bugs first. And no being killed. Then pizza. Remember?"
"Uh, we're really not here to kill anyone," offered Jonas. The girl eyed him suspiciously. "You're Annie, right?" He dimpled at her.
In a second, Annie transformed. She blushed, and twirled her hair. "Maybe," she said, coyly, and fluttered her eyelashes at Jonas.
"Annie! No flirting with the enemy," snapped the blonde, staying down behind her chair.
Jack shot Jonas a look that said, 'keep flirting with the enemy'. "Um, hi," said Jonas. "Are you Britta?"
"So what if I am?" responded Britta, belligerently. "I'm not friends with the Man."
"Oh good," said Jack. "Me neither."
The top of Britta's head, as far as her eyes, appeared. "You are the Man," she accused, glaring at Jack.
"Am I? I always thought I was stickin' it to the Man."
Britta rose a little, so her whole face was visible. "You did?"
Jack shrugged. He kinda had.
"From inside the system." Britta nodded, and stood up, making a fist. "Hardcore," she said, approvingly.
Annie, beside her, gave a discreet eyeroll.
"Oh, for goodness' sake!" Another woman exploded from behind the barriers. "Can you get rid of these bugs or not?" she demanded, waving at where – Jack guessed – one was visible to them. "I want to get home to my kids before dinnertime!"
"That's not how you negotiate, Shirley," said another young man – Arab, thin as a stick – reprovingly, as he stood up. "You've exposed a point of weakness." He looked warily at Jack. "I'm Abed," he added. "I'm half-Polish. You know, for your internal monologue."
"Ah," nodded Jack, wondering wildly for a second if the kid was psychic. "Thanks."
Abed shrugged.
Jack looked around, doing a quick count. Jeff, Troy, Annie, Britta, Shirley, Abed... one missing...
"Is Pierce in here?" asked Jonas, unknowingly earning himself a little gold star in Jack's book.
Jeff nodded to the couches. "He fell asleep," he said. "We try not to wake him up for these things until we have to."
Jack made a mental note of 'these things', as if being locked in the library was a regular occurrence. Maybe the rumors about this group were true.
"Riiiight. Okay, so, uh, about this chemical spill..."
There was a general round of scoffing. "The military has no imagination," said Abed. "They really should hire better writers. I could come up with a better plot in my sleep. It's nearly as clichéd as 'training accident'."
Privately, Jack agreed with him. He'd been offering brilliantly creative suggestions for years, if he did say so himself, but no one ever listened. "Yeah, well... okay, you got us, the chemical spill story is a lie. But here's the thing: I can't actually tell you the truth." Which was a shame, because he kind of thought these kids would get a kick out of it.
"Is it aliens?" asked Abed, immediately.
Jack scoffed, but his heart wasn't in it.
"Experimental drugs," said Troy. He turned to Abed and they began rapidly spitballing ideas.
"Mind control."
"Supernatural creatures from another dimension."
"Advanced technology."
"Alien technology."
"Alien technology that will be used for the next Jaws movie."
"Oh! That'd be so cool!"
"Okay, okay," said Jack, holding up his hands. "Look, no, it's none of that." Oh, it so was – well, except for the drugs, the mind control, and the part about Jaws. "But if it was, do you think I'd be able to tell you?"
Six pairs of eyes regarded him with various levels of suspicion and appraisal.
"No," conceded Abed. "You're compelled to toe the line, by a combination of ingrained military training and love for your country."
"Uh, yeah. Something like that. But if it was aliens, it'd be love for my planet," said Jack, casually.
Abed's eyes widened. "Right," he said, almost uncertainly. "Your planet."
"But, of course, aliens don't exist."
"Oh, come on," said Jeff, impatiently. "Are you really trying to imply that it's aliens?"
"I just said that it's not aliens," Jack pointed out, reasonably.
"Jeff, you've seen the creatures, do you really think they come from our planet?" retorted Abed, waving in the direction of (Jack assumed) one of the invisible creatures. "Look at them. If they existed on Earth, don't you think we'd know about them already?"
Jeff stared uneasily at the patch of air. "Why couldn't it be a chemical spill?" he asked, a little plaintively. Britta, standing closest to him, patted his arm comfortingly.
"They're completely harmless," offered Jonas. "You seem to have figured out that they can't interact with us."
"Um, yes, we worked that out eventually," said Shirley, looking around at the destruction of the room.
"So anyways, the good news is, we can stop you from seeing them," said Jack, briskly.
"But would the creatures still be there?" asked Abed, shrewdly.
"Well, you wouldn't be able to see or touch them, what does it matter?"
"It matters to me."
"Okay, yes. Yes, they'd still be there," admitted Jack. "Technically, they always were there," he added. Shirley and Annie made little noises of distress. "It wouldn't be any different."
"But we'd know," said Annie, with a little shudder.
"Yeah..." Jeff really couldn't think of anything comforting to say. He kind of wished he didn't know the bugs were there, too, but he figured he'd just have to get over it.
"Invisible and untouchable?" said Shirley, narrowing her eyes at him. "We won't know they're there?" Jack nodded. "That's good enough for me. Okay, what do you need to do?"
"Well, it's kind of like an electrical charge," said Jack. "It's transferred by touch."
"Same as how we caught it in the first place," nodded Abed. They really had figured a lot of this out. "Logical, if a little bit anticlimactic."
There was a quick, silent consultation, and then Jeff stepped forward, hand held out. "I'll go first," he said, and Jack recognized and approved of his protective instinct. Feeling a little silly, Jack shook Jeff's hand. "That's it?"
"That's it. It should work in a—"
"They're gone!"
"—moment." Jack nodded in satisfaction. "You can..." he said, waving vaguely to indicate that they could do one another, now.
Jeff tentatively touched Britta, who looked around and then smiled broadly. She reached out her hands to Shirley and Annie, who came forward and put their arms around her – triggering a group hug. After a moment, they all looked up.
"It's done," said Abed, nodding. There was a snorting, snuffling noise from behind the couch. "Except for Pierce," he sighed.
Annie left the hug and ducked behind the couch to gently touch the sleeping man. "Done," she said, smiling up at them. "He probably won't even remember."
"So, this was fun," said Jack, clapping his hands together. "Let's... not do it again sometime."
"Just think, that may have been my only chance to see aliens," said Annie, wistfully. Then she turned to Jonas, and smiled flirtily. "It's so sad," she said, hopefully.
Jonas smiled back. Jack still hadn't figured out if he was oblivious to the effect he had on some women, or if he did that on purpose. "Can I ask, why did you lock yourselves in the library?"
There was a collective shrug, as if it was just a thing that had happened somehow. "Trust no one," said Britta, darkly.
"Apocalypse scenario B," said Abed.
"It's Greendale," said Jeff, as if that explained it. He caught Jack's expression, and smiled wryly. "You kind of have to live it to understand."
You know, Jack kind of got that. "Sounds like my life," he said.