Game Keeper's Chair
Summary
SG-1 found the Game Keeper's Chair on P7J-989. It allowed 'residents' to live in a suspended animation while their minds stayed active in a virtual reality. The SGC later adapted the chair for use as a full-immersion training simulator.
Stargate References
Created on on P7J-989 , the Game Keeper's Chair generated a virtual reality that linked the minds of people in all such chairs. This reality was 'channeled, coordinated and administered' by the Keeper, the creator of the device. His original objective was to provide a meaningful life for the inhabitants of the planet after a chemical disaster made the world uninhabitable outside a single protected dome.
The chairs provided for the residents' bodily needs. Tubes from each chair created small puncture wounds in various parts of the their bodies, namely 'their temples, spinal cords and several abdominal areas.' The chair sustained inhabitants, making sure they were given oxygen, nutrition and that their nervous system was controlled.
While in the chair, the 'residents' interacted with a virtual reality with events created using their own past experiences. In particular, they were able to relive events that they wished had turned out differently.
The Keeper took advantage of SG-1's arrival on the planet to keep them in the chairs against their will, and to extract experiences from them that would make life for the long-time residents more interesting. The Keeper used painful memories of O'Neill and Daniel in separate vignettes that played over and over as Teal'c and Carter looked on. Because of Teal'c's symbiote and Carter's history with Jolinar, Carter and Teal'c's minds 'protected against output' of their memories into the virtual reality system. Eventually SG-1 convinced the residents that the world had become habitable and frightened the Keeper into releasing them, as well as all the planet's residents (2.04 "The Game Keeper").
After presumably returning to a normal life on the surface, the people of P7J-989 modified the chair programming so that only the person in it could shut it off or control it. This was to prevent further incidents like the Game Keeper one (8.06 "Avatar").
The SGC obtained two of the chairs, which they planned to use to train soldiers to fight against the Goa'uld and the Super Soldiers. SGC scientists with little or no field experience had attempted to train the simulation to be realistic using their own knowledge, but after a test run Teal'c declared it was not challenging enough. To remedy this, Teal'c entered the virtual reality to play the game and allow it to learn from him.
The SGC chair remained limited by the adaption that only the chair occupant could control the chair and get out of the simulation. Disconnecting a person from the outside would risk neural damage. This new adaption meant that the scenario would only end if completed or if the internal fail-safe was engaged. This fail-safe was compromised by Teal'c's ethos of never giving up, and the chair would not allow him to leave. Every time he was hurt in the scenario, his actual body received a shock, because of Teal'c's knowledge that in reality, tactics would change if the protagonist couldn't be hurt. The scenario also changed to make it harder for the player, changing the original conclusion of the simulation.
After repeated shocks, Teal'c's health started to degrade, his blood pressure and heart rate rising. His symptoms were managed through adrenaline shots. With no other solution that didn't risk killing Teal'c, the second chair was linked up, and Daniel entered the scenario, only with a new advantage.
Carter and Lee noted that there was a two second delay in between the programming of the chair, and Teal'c's experience caused by the recorder. So they realized that if the recorder were taken out of the new chair, the occupant would know what was going to happen two seconds before it did.
Because of this advantage, Teal'c and Daniel were able to defeat the game and exit the scenario. It is not known whether the SGC ever tried to use the chairs again, for training or other purposes (8.06 "Avatar").
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--Steph 08:08, 8 August 2006 (PDT)