millefiori didn't like the idea of other people being able to see Rodney's holo-cinations (ha, I just made up that word, isn't it great?), so I deleted the entire scene of Radak meeting his own double, but I still like the scene, so I'm doing the 'Directors Cut' version and including the scene here. It does really change a lot of what the story feels like, but I agree with her blindly and without thought, so I deleted it from the original.

I think this changes a lot of the concept of the story, not having this scene in, and it cuts down on the 'Oh no, someone will walk in on them while they're having sex and it'll be so embarrassing!' expectation that readers may have. I would never write that, though. I hate humiliation in stories. So yeah, less expectation of embarrassment when the idea that other people can see the holo-cinations has been downplayed.

START DELETED SCENE (first few paragraphs the same as in story, then it changes.)

The day he returned to work Rodney abandoned the notes Zelenka had left regarding turning the jumper cloak into a shield. It was the kind of thing Rodney could work out in his sleep, and since Zelenka hadn't typed it up into a real report and had written it mostly in Czech, Rodney wasn't that interested in working on it just yet. Not while he still had an unrelenting headache anyway.

Beckett said the headache would fade soon, and had tried to pull Rodney off duty until it did. Rodney, on the other hand, felt he was perfectly capable of working, as long as people were perfectly prepared to listen to him whine about it. So far, just about everyone was. He'd given them all a major scare, although not as much as he'd given himself, and they'd all been happy enough to listen to him regale them with stories of his bravery and ingenious plans to escape. And most importantly they'd just sat with him, Teyla and Sheppard and the rest, taking the time to visit and talk, or just listen to him talk, and once the visits had thinned out he'd whined at Becket to discharge him so he could return to his lab, the hub of the busy busy of Atlantis. Surrounded by people and sound, and well above the ocean. High and dry.

Now he was alone again, and it was a nuisance; he really could use another pair of hands. All the tiny fibres he was trying to put back together needed smaller hands than his own, and the work would go more quickly. Not that he needed anyone else, but it would be useful. Tiny keyboards, tiny fibres, sure, they were space saving, but they were not user friendly.

"Here, pass to me," Zelenka leaned over and Rodney looked up in surprise before passing some of the torn and twisted pieces over.

"I thought you were in the mess?" Zelenka had been avoiding him a little since Rodney's unexpected dunking, although Rodney was definitely not pointing out how the whole thing had been Zelenka's fault in the first place. He was making some effort to trust the others, to honour the memory of the woman he'd left at the bottom of the ocean. Even if she'd just been a product of his concussion.

"Yes, yes, but the food was, er, banos, crap. You missed nothing. So I came back. Pass to me, you can't do this by yourself, let me help."

"I don't need your help," Rodney grumbled. "I can do this perfectly well by myself… but if you have nothing better to do…"

"No, no," Zelenka gave him a twisted look. "Of course you need no one, but it's easier, yes?"

They made juvenile faces at each other and worked quietly for a while, until Rodney felt the need to point out that Zelenka wasn't making much progress and what was the point of him being there if he was only going to distract Rodney from what he had to do anyway, when the door behind them opened and Rodney heard a short sharp scream.

He spun on his chair to see a very shocked looking… Radek Zelenka.

"Zelenka, what are you…" he turned, but the man who'd been working beside him was gone, the fibres he'd been working on abandoned.

Zelenka walked into the room, pointing a finger at the blank space, "I saw… I saw… it was me. There was me. There. Rodney?"

"You saw you?" Rodney put a hand to his head, he felt a little dizzy. Head wound, it had to be the head wound, it was making him dizzy, making him confused. He should go to the infirmary, Carson must have missed something. He stood up, then sat down again - on the floor - holding his head and staring at Zelenka. "I er… so that wasn't you, then?"

"Is what?" Zelenka still pointed at the blank space as he came closer. "Is Atlantis hologram? Is Wraith illusion? Is what?" His voice rose in pitch and Rodney wondered if they were going to have matching panic attacks.

"I think, er, I think it was a hallucination, Radek."

"No, no, I saw! I saw another me there, you were talking to him."

"Yes, but-"

Zelenka was tapping his earpiece, "Dr Weir? Dr Weir? We have a problem, yes. Doppelganger or Wraith ghost, I think. Yes, yes, sounds crazy. Please come to Rodney's lab, I explain there."

Rodney got back onto his stool, and couldn't help but check surreptitiously for the one he realised was another creation of his own mind. And why Zelenka this time? Why not Colonel Carter? Sam might have taken her top off again, even if she was wearing a very matronly bra underneath. He gnawed at his thumbnail as Zelenka twitched nervously, and decided it must have been because he knew it was Zelenka he most needed at that time, not Colonel Carter.

Elizabeth came into the room at a trot, followed by Colonel Sheppard, who already had his hand on his sidearm.

"Oh, stop panicking, you two," Rodney growled. "There's nothing to be scared of. Zelenka's just panicking over nothing."

"Nothing? Nothing!? There was another me, there!" Zelenka pointed at the blank stool. "Rodney was talking to another me! I walked in and there was a me sitting there, working on that!"

Rodney leaned over to look at the work he'd pushed to the phantom Zelenka; there actually had been no work done at all.

"Rodney? Do you have an explanation for this?" Dr Weir patted Zelenka on the shoulder, obviously trying to calm him.

"I, yes, well, when I was in the jumper, at the bottom of the ocean, I did tell Carson, it wasn't a big thing, really, nothing to get all worked up about-"

"Rodney," Weir snapped, getting his attention again.

"I … hallucinated."

"You hallucinated?" Colonel Sheppard repeated, eyebrow raised.

"Yes, I saw… things. A person. Colonel Carter. I just…" Rodney struggled to find a way to put this without sounding utterly crazy. "I talk to myself all the time, as you know, when I work, it helps me work things out, puts things into perspective, and it's difficult to find someone to talk to who can match my intellect anyway, so yeah, under the ocean, I saw Colonel Carter and we worked out things together. I mean, she was just a figment of my imagination, an obvious hallucination, I knew that at the time, it's not like I was seeing things or anything, I mean, I was, yes, seeing things, but not in a crazy way-"

"Rodney, no one's calling you crazy."

"No, well, no, not if Zelenka can see them, too." Rodney waved his hand at Zelenka, looking for a sanity lifeline. "It, I mean, if other people can see it, if I'm projecting… what? What am I projecting? Solid hallucinations?"

"Why me?" Zelenka said nervously, as if Rodney was trying to steal his soul.

"Because I had to get this done and it would have gone faster if you'd been here to help, but look," he waved at the undone work, "You didn't do a damned thing anyway…"

"McKay," the Colonel interrupted. "Are you telling us you can create… holograms? With your mind?"

"Yes, yes, well… I'm not sure I'd call them holograms – those are more of a technical issue. I didn't know anyone else could see them. I mean, that's… unexpected. But if you can see them," he nodded at Zelenka, "then that means I'm not crazy, right? I mean, I knew I wasn't, even though hallucinations don't usually come on that strong. There was this one time, I was in hospital, kicked in the head by a donkey, of all things, which serves me right for trying to help my sister, but I was on these drugs, not morphine, something else, I forget, and I remember asking the nurse, how did they get the roses in the wallpaper to bloom and close again, it was really pretty, and she just gave me more drugs, and when I next woke up… the walls were all just plain white, and that's what a hallucination is usually like, it's not someone you can see and talk to and touch, is it? I've never heard of that, anyway, have you? I suppose Carson might know if there's ever been-"

"Rodney, you're babbling," Sheppard interrupted again. "Calm down. Are you telling us you can touch these hallucinations?"

"I thought it was just… they're just projections of my unconscious mind, right? So… unconsciously, if I touch them, then it's some kind of… placebo affect. I'm convinced I can feel them, too."

"You were … feeling … Colonel Carter?"

"Yes, well, I mean, not like that! She wouldn't do that! I couldn't make her do anything I didn't think she wouldn't already do, nothing inappropriate! It's just that I could feel it if she touched me while we were talking. She was solid."

"And was… er, Holo-Radek also solid?"

"I don't know, I didn’t touch him, I'm not in the habit of feeling up my staff, but he didn't do any of the work I thought he was doing."

"And you didn't realise he wasn't real."

"I, er, no. Not until the real Radek walked in."

"Rodney, that's not good," Elizabeth interjected. "If you're creating… these things, and you can't tell if they are real."

"I'll get him back to Carson, Elizabeth," John said, taking Rodney's arm.

"I'm fine, honestly, it's just… yes, Carson should probably check my head again. MRI, or a cat scan, that's what I need. Oh dear, do you think I'm… bleeding in my brain? Or… is it something to do with the exposure to the Atlantis relics? Oh god, it's cancer, all the radiation, I know it, I've got a tumour in my brain!"

Sheppard gave Rodney's arm a squeeze, "I'm sure it's nothing that serious. Like you said, it's probably something to do with the ancient Technology. The city is riddled with holograms, you've probably plugged yourself into something without realising it."

"Yes, but the holograms in the city, they are obviously holograms. You know, all floaty and ethereal, what I'm seeing… creating… they're solid. They look and sound just like real people. I can touch them and they act like the real people would act."

"Like you think they would act?"

"Yes, but I can't make them do things they wouldn't do. Or that I think they wouldn't do."

"Oh? What did you try to make Samantha Carter do?"

"Nothing! What do you take me for? I wouldn't… Carson!" saved from embarrassment by reaching the infirmary. "I need an MRI! I think I have a tumour!"