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This story was first published in Fragments from Pyramids Press.
* TITLE: Rearranging Fate
* AUTHOR: Redbyrd
* EMAIL: redbyrd (at) mindspring (dot) com
* RATING: PG
* CATEGORY: drama
* SUMMARY: Missing Scenes, Tag and Sequel for Point of View
* SPOILERS: Anything through POV
* AUTHOR'S NOTE: What can I say? I set out to write a few missing scenes for POV, because I thought it would be cool to find out what Kawalsky thought of it all, and then just kept writing. About the time I committed the story to Fragments, I broke into a cold sweat over the keyboard, went for the best two falls out of three, and finally wrestled it into submission just short of novel length. Oh, and while I usually try to get things like the spellings of names right, this had already been submitted when I realized it should probably have been Kawalsky instead of Kawalsky.. I guess in this universe, Charlie's ancestor got a different clerk at Ellis Island :).
* DISCLAIMER:
The characters mentioned in this story are the property of Showtime and Gekko Film Corp. The Stargate, SG-I, the Goa'uld and all other characters who have appeared in the series STARGATE SG-1 together with the names, titles and backstory are the sole copyright property of MGM-UA Worldwide Television, Gekko Film Corp, Glassner/Wright Double Secret Productions and Stargate SG-I Prod. Ltd. Partnership. This fanfic is not intended as an infringement upon those rights and solely meant for entertainment. All other characters, the story idea and the story itself are the sole property of the author.
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Kawalsky was just about ready to turn in. He looked around at the gray walls. "Same old government decor." The last several days of the Goa'uld attack seemed like a dream when he looked around at the undamaged and peaceful surroundings of the SGC. He was grateful to hear a knock on the door. Probably someone for the tray. "Come in," he called.
"Major."
Kawalsky turned around at the familiar voice, but it was this universe's Carter, not his own. "Major."
"We've heard back already. They're going to let you stay." Carter gave him a sympathetic smile.
Kawalsky was a bit startled. "That was fast."
"I expect they think you're going to be an asset." Carter said. "I didn't know our Kawalsky that well. We only served on one mission together, but he was a good man."
"Er. Thank you. If that's what I should say." Kawalsky shook his head. "This is weird."
"I bet." Carter's glance was curious. "I've thought it fascinating ever since Daniel found the mirror. But without the controller, we never figured out how to operate it."
"SG-1 found the mirror in our universe in the alien lab. I guess that was the same in your universe. We only did a quick recon. We sent SG-2 back for the followup. They took a couple of weeks to do the survey and clean the place out." Kawalsky said. "A shame, too. The world was contaminated, unsafe. They brought back everything they found, but not before they got too much exposure."
"Oh, god."
Kawalsky nodded grimly. "Yeah. Radiation poisoning. We lost three of them within a couple of months. The fourth one lasted a while longer, but the cancer got him." He hesitated, but he had to ask. "So I take it you guys didn't stay that long."
"No." Carter paused, then went on. "There was a Goa'uld warning icon up by the gate. Teal'c read it and told us it wasn't safe. We'd have been out of there in an hour if it hadn't been for Daniel finding the mirror. As it was, we only stayed for six or seven hours and sent back a different team in hazard suits to quickly grab what they could."
"Teal'c." Kawalsky shook his head. "I see."
"He's a good man, Kawalsky. His people are enslaved by the Goa'uld, just as humans are. He joined us so he could fight against them." The major's tone was certain and sincere. It was evident she believed what she was saying.
"If you say so." Kawalsky said dubiously. "All I can see right now is the enemy who took the mountain and slaughtered most of my friends. Including Jack."
"Ours is different." Carter insisted. She turned toward the door. "I should let you rest. You've had a long day."
"Yeah, thanks." Kawalsky felt like he was coming down off a three-day caffeine high, he was so exhausted. Wait. He was coming down off a three-day caffeine high. That would explain it. As soon as the door closed behind Carter, he shucked off his outer clothes and crawled into the familiar-strange bunk. Thankfully, he went straight to sleep.
#
Kawalsky woke early out of uneasy dreams, finding it hard to believe they were actually safe, that he wasn't going to open a door and find grenade damage and dead bodies from the Goa'uld attack. He met Samantha coming out of her room. She smiled wryly at him. "Guess you couldn't sleep either."
He patted her arm clumsily, wishing there were something more useful he could do. "Somehow, the stress doesn't all go away just 'cause they said we could stay. However grudgingly."
She sighed, "I suppose I can't blame them. They must be kind of weirded out, seeing us. I know I'm weirded out seeing them. Being here."
As they collected breakfast, they spotted O'Neill and Carter sitting at a table with the Jaffa, Teal'c. He didn't see the other unfamiliar member of SG-1. Despite the uniform, they'd called him doctor- another astrophysicist like Carter, he supposed. He wondered why they'd put scientists, even military ones, on a field team.
Major Carter smiled at them politely as they approached, "Good morning. Would you like to join us?"
Kawalsky was trying to decide whether to curtly refuse or more politely point out there weren't enough chairs when the Jaffa rose. Kawalsky tensed. "You may have my seat; I am finished." He said, in unaccented if formal English. The look in his eyes was not unkind. Kawalsky gritted his teeth, ignoring the disapproving look from O'Neill. He sat down as Teal'c disappeared. He supposed that if they were staying, he'd have to get used to the presence of the Jaffa.
Major Carter was asking her double about her early work on the stargate program. Kawalsky gathered that his Dr. Carter had joined the Stargate program earlier than her counterpart had.
"I suppose you got to go on the first mission." Dr. Carter said, a bit enviously. "I wanted to, but it was military only."
Major Carter matched her, envious look for envious look. "I wish. General West had me transferred to the Pentagon just before they launched the first mission. I suspect he thought it was going to be a one way trip and didn't want to have to explain mislaying the daughter of a general."
"Ah, I see." Dr. Carter said, understanding. Kawalsky remembered her father had been an Air Force general on active duty until the cancer had forced him to retire. Jacob Carter had hung on stubbornly, taking far longer to die than any of them had expected. Sam and Jack had buried him three days after they'd found out about the Goa'uld attack being prepared against Earth.
Major Carter was continuing, "But what really made it bite, was when I wasn't allowed to go to Abydos, but Daniel, a civilian, was." The kid was a civilian? Kawalsky wondered more than ever why he was on the team.
His Carter was asking, "Why did they let him go?"
"So he could figure out the address to bring them back. West wasn't going to send a team out without some kind of chance for them to return. And unlike me, Daniel didn't have any family to make a fuss if he didn't make it," the major said.
Dr. Carter looked surprised. "You sent the team through without knowing how to bring them back? It took us three probes and six months of calculation to identify the return address before we could send a team through."
"Really." Major Carter looked fascinated. "Well that could partly explain why the attack came so much later in your world."
O'Neill paused, a spoonful of cereal halfway up. "The Nox," he said.
"Of course." Carter nodded. "We not only killed Ra, we took a shot at Apophis only a few months after we opened the gate. Maybe that also helped moved up his timetable to attack our world."
Dr. Carter started to say something about quantum something-or-other that made Kawalsky tune out instantly. He looked across at his friend-no, not his friend Jack, though the man was certainly very like him. He dropped his gaze as O'Neill looked back at him, seeming uncomfortable. Kawalsky was finding it a bit awkward himself roaming around this SGC, so like and so unlike his own SGA. It had been a trip seeing Ferretti in the infirmary yesterday, though. The friend he'd lost on the first mission through the stargate was still alive and very well here, despite a scar over his left eye and a freshly plastered cast on his leg. "A damned nuisance," Lou had told him. It was his third broken bone since the start of the program. He'd originally had command of SG-2, the other Kawalsky's unit but had been out of action so long with his first injury that his place had been filled, and he'd been reassigned to another unit after he recovered.
"I can't get over seeing Lou again," Kawalsky said to O'Neill. "I never expected he'd be alive here, and I'd be dead. I wonder why that is?"
"This stuff makes my head hurt." O'Neill said. The major couldn't help but grin. It was so exactly what his friend would have said.
Major Carter looked at him sympathetically. That was another thing Kawalsky couldn't get over. He would never have imagined that Dr. C could have joined the military, and yet this woman wore the uniform with a bright, hard-edged confidence, like it was a part of her. As far as he could tell, O'Neill was nearly identical to his own Jack, but he could barely recognize Carter as the same woman. She asked, "Did your Major Ferretti die on the second Abydos mission?"
Kawalsky looked at her, "What do you mean, second mission?"
O'Neill looked surprised. "When Apophis' forces showed up here, didn't you send a team back to Abydos?" Kawalsky started to feel some curiosity. "We couldn't. Didn't you kill Ra?"
Dr. Carter was looking puzzled. "If you didn't kill Ra, why did Apophis attack in your reality?"
"Oh, we killed Ra." O'Neill said. "I guess you managed to tell the Abydonians to bury the gate even without Daniel to translate, huh?"
"Abydonians?" Kawalsky said blankly. "I don't know what you're talking about. The gate was destroyed when we set off the bomb."
O'Neill's eyes narrowed and became very cold. Kawalsky drew back involuntarily. "You set off the bomb on the ground?"
Major Carter's eyes widened and she looked shocked. "Oh, no."
Kawalsky looked from one to the other, "What?"
"There were natives on that planet." O'Neill said.
"We never saw any people." Kawalsky said defensively. "It was desert. Completely lifeless."
"No. It wasn't." O'Neill looked angry, then suddenly very tired. "Don't tell Daniel."
"Why?" Kawalsky thought a little bitterly that the deaths of a billion people on Kawalsky's version of Earth seemed to affect this man less than the deaths of some natives on a planet they'd spent a day and a half on over two years ago. "Anyway, he already knows."
"I asked him about it last night, Jack." The doctor had come in quietly behind O'Neill as they were speaking. He pulled up a chair from an adjoining table and sat, wrapping both hands around the cup he was holding, as if they were cold.
O'Neill looked at him, "Why didn't you say anything?"
A brief flicker of amusement went over Daniel Jackson's face. "Why did you ask him not to tell me?"
The two men exchanged a wry look, seeming to understand one another despite neither having answered the other's question. Even Major Carter looked like she knew what was going on.
Kawalsky felt a pang of loneliness as it struck home again his own world was gone. Before, he would have been the one who Jack shared that unspoken understanding with. He wondered a bit drearily if everyone was replaceable. Evidently, Jack would have been best friends with any guy who served on his team.
Major Carter said, "God, was I wrong." She was staring at Jackson with an expression that was piercingly familiar to Kawalsky. He'd seen it before on Dr. C's face when she had just figured out something that had been eluding her and was kicking herself for not having seen it sooner.
Jackson blinked. "What?"
Everyone looked at her. She turned to Dr.Carter, "When I said yesterday that me being in the military had made a contribution- I was wrong. It didn't. It made almost no difference, or if anything, slowed us down."
"Huh?" Jackson and O'Neill gave her a puzzled look.
"Why do you say that?" Dr. Carter asked.
The major looked at her with chagrin. "Well, you joined the Stargate program earlier than I did. Between flight training and my service in the Gulf, I got here almost a year later."
"But you still opened the Stargate about the same time as us, didn't you?" Dr. Carter asked. "Wouldn't that mean you were right, that being military helped you open it sooner?"
"No. I mean, yes we opened it at the same time, but it wasn't because of me. Daniel figured out the Stargate. Judging by your experience, it would have taken me another year to get it on my own. And if I hadn't been military, West couldn't have transferred me. I wouldn't have lost a year of research, and Daniel and I would have been working together from the beginning." She looked around at the puzzled faces and slowed down. "Look, we both opened the gate three years ago. You kept working at it, but you did it the hard way. Six months to get the return address, and if you never found the map with all the stargate addresses, it was much slower for you to find worlds to explore, right?"
Dr. Carter nodded slowly.
The major gestured at the young man in glasses sitting beside O'Neill. "What I just realized- As far as I can tell, Daniel is responsible for almost every important way that our realities are different."
Daniel Jackson gave her a puzzled look. "I don't think so, Sam. I mean there's no way I could have influenced you to go in the military. We didn't even meet until the stargate program."
"No, Daniel. I know you didn't have anything to do with that, but as far as the course of history goes, it's not a significant difference." She gestured to her twin, "And the proof is right here. Whether I went military or not, I still wound up with the program. The same goes for Colonel O'Neill. And like I just said, my being in the military may well have slowed us down."
"Well, I didn't convince Teal'c to join us." Jackson protested. "That was Jack."
Kawalsky threw a quick look at O'Neill. Jack convinced the Jaffa to change sides? He wondered how. Why? What on earth had made the colonel trust him?
Carter was replying, "But if it wasn't for you being on Abydos, we wouldn't have been there when Apophis attacked, Ferretti wouldn't have seen the coordinates for Chulak, and we wouldn't have gone to Chulak to rescue Sha're and Skaara."
Kawalsky was looking from one to the other like he was following a tennis match. "Who?" He couldn't work out what they were babbling about. "What?"
Jackson was nodding as if he understood that. "Like you said when we went back in time. If we hadn't gone to Chulak, we would never have met Teal'c, and he still would have been first prime of Apophis."
"Exactly!" Carter smiled at him brightly, clearly caught up in the interchange of ideas. "And in their reality, Teal'c still is first prime of Apophis."
Dr. Samantha Carter was still stuck on one of the first revelations. "You opened the stargate?!" she said, staring at Jackson. Then she blinked. "Went back in time?"
He gave her a rather distracted look, "Yeah." and turned back to his own Sam Carter. "You think this was all my fault?" It wasn't at all clear if even he knew what he meant by 'this'.
"No, Daniel." O'Neill put in. "Ra was killed in all three realities. Earth was attacked in all three realities. That didn't change whether you were there or not. Anyway, from what Kawalsky just said, if you hadn't been on the first mission, I'd have set off the bomb, and everyone would have died hideously painful deaths from radiation."
"No, they wouldn't," Jackson protested.
"Daniel, as it was, I almost did it." O'Neill's look was haunted. Kawalsky suddenly was grateful his own Jack O'Neill had never known that he had killed innocent people on Abydos.
"But you didn't." Jackson said, "Anyway, I expect they'd have died more or less instantly."
O'Neill flinched, and Carter said, "No, Nagada was over six miles away; they wouldn't have been caught in the primary blast-"
"Carter!" O'Neill protested. "Can we just not-"
"You're forgetting something, Sam." Jackson ignored O'Neill's protest. "If they detonated the bomb on the ground, it was sitting right next to sixty-four thousand pounds of refined naquadah."
O'Neill and Carter both stared at him. "The stargate." Carter said, sounding stunned. "Oh, my god."
"What are you talking about?" Kawalsky asked.
"I had a lot of time to think about this on Abydos," Jackson said softly. "I wondered why Ra was so convinced that sending the bomb back would strike us a mortal blow, even if it was enhanced. Until I remembered the gate-- I figured he needed the raw ore to make sure the gate blew."
"Naquadah? That's what you call the material the stargate is made of?" Dr. Carter was frowning as she tried to follow the discussion. "But- oh." She looked at Kawalsky. "It's explosive. Theoretically."
Carter nodded, obviously thinking it through on the fly. "Not just theoretically. Roughly speaking, for every couple pounds of naquadah, you can add a force equivalent to another small nuke. I really ought to run some numbers--"
"And that's without factoring in the raw naquadah ore present on Abydos." Jackson said.
Carter nodded, obviously doing mental sums, "At a guess, if the stargate detonated, the explosion would have left a glass-lined crater a couple hundred miles in diameter. There would have been enough debris thrown into the air to change the climate for decades, killing anything left alive outside the blast radius. And that's assuming it didn't simply crack the crust of the planet like an eggshell." She was staring past O'Neill, eyes unfocused while her voice trailed off to a mumble, "Um, no, force directed outward- but it could have ripped away a significant fraction of the atmosphere-"
Jackson turned back to O'Neill with a sort of weary pain behind his eyes. "So you see, Jack, I don't think anyone in Nagada would have had time to feel anything. Even if you had done anything. Which you didn't."
O'Neill swallowed. "Jesus, Daniel."
Kawalsky tried futilely to picture an explosion thirty thousand times as powerful as that of the small nuke they'd taken to Abydos and felt his own mouth go dry. He wondered how many people there had been on Abydos. He wasn't sure he wanted to know. "Then how did you kill Ra, if you didn't use the bomb?" he asked.
O'Neill said, "We sent the bomb up to the ship using the ring transporter. It detonated in orbit. Nothing on the planet was touched." He turned to Jackson. "Carter is right, Daniel. Without you there to start the rebellion, Ra would have sat on the ground waiting for his Jaffa to wipe us out. They had no choice but to use the bomb the way they did. It could very easily have happened the same way here."
"Rebellion. What rebellion?" Dr. Carter asked.
"It's a long story and not very important now." Daniel said. He turned to Kawalsky. "Jack's got a good point. Even if you had known about the people, you'd have had no choice but to use the bomb. And there was no way you could have known." He looked from Kawalsky to Dr. Carter, who were sitting with food untouched on their plates. "I'm sorry. This wasn't a good time for this to come up."
Kawalsky found it vaguely incongruous that after all the horrors he and Samantha Carter had seen, Jackson was trying to make Kawalsky feel better about a bunch of unintended deaths he hadn't even known about. He didn't miss that no one was talking about the number of people. He assumed it had been a lot. Maybe he'd be bothered by it later, but in a world of nightmares piled on nightmares, he found he was numb to the added tragedy.
"When would have been a good time?" Dr. Carter asked. She looked at him intently. "Dr.- Jackson? Why you?"
"Yeah, well, I wonder about that myself," Jackson said. He exchanged a look with her counterpart.
"For want of a nail?" Major Sam Carter said.
"Something like that." Jackson shrugged. He looked at Kawalsky's puzzled expression. "It's a children's rhyme. 'For want of a nail, the shoe was lost, for want of a shoe, the horse was lost, for want a horse, the rider was lost.' Something tiny and ordinary and normal that has an effect all out of proportion to its importance." He turned the cup around in his hands.
"Like a catalyst?" Dr. Carter said. "Something that starts off a much larger reaction, but isn't changed by it?"
He smiled faintly at her. "I wouldn't go that far. Just some weird coincidence-- I was in the right place, at the right time. Catherine Langford offered me a job on a rainy night in Los Angeles. I said yes." He looked up with a self-deprecating gesture.
"And worlds are changed as a result." Major Carter said.
"Worlds?" O'Neill said. "Isn't that a little grandiose, Carter? Abydos, sure- "
Carter shook her head. "No, sir. If we assume Daniel was critical to finding the map room on Abydos, the rest follows logically. Without the stargate addresses we found on Abydos, we wouldn't have visited so many worlds, so quickly. The SGA only had three teams. Dr. Carter figured out the planetary drift problem and then they just dialed at random, looking for hits."
"That's not entirely true." Dr. Samantha Carter said. "We targeted coordinates in parts of the galaxy where it seemed likely we'd find stars with planets. And we got lucky. SG-1 found a handful of addresses on P7C-231."
Major Carter was looking impressed. "Wow, you did well to visit as many worlds as you did, even so." She looked at O'Neill. "Those must be the addresses that SG-5 found last year. They're all on the Abydos cartouche."
'Which we blew up. Great.' Kawalsky thought.
Jackson said slowly. "Think about it. They never visited the Shavadai, the Land of Light, or Argos. They never found Ernest Littlefield or the Keeper's planet. All those places we changed." O'Neill was again looking like it made his head hurt, and he'd rather not think anymore. Jackson's expression was more ambivalent, as if he didn't want to believe his choice had made such a difference.
Major Carter spoke softly. "And that wasn't the only time you tipped the balance, Daniel."
He raised his eyebrows and gave her a quizzical look.
"P3R-233," she said. "Without the information you brought back from the alternate reality there, we would have had no chance of preventing the invasion of Earth."
"I didn't do it alone. I couldn't have. As it was we nearly all died." Jackson looked rather alarmed at the thought of personally determining the fate of worlds. Kawalsky couldn't blame him. He'd seen what had happened when they failed.
#
After the rather unsettling breakfast, Dr. C went off with her twin to look over Major Carter's current research projects, and Jack took Kawalsky up to the range.
"I'm gonna want to review all your training before we let you out with a team." O'Neill warned him. "I don't want some niggling little difference between your reality and this one to come up on a mission and bite us on the butt."
"That makes sense." Kawalsky said. "Uh, sir." O'Neill raised an eyebrow but didn't comment. Fortunately this O'Neill didn't seem to be any more of a stickler for protocol than his had been. Kawalsky frowned and looked at him more closely.
"What, did I a miss a patch shaving?" O'Neill ran a hand over his chin self-consciously. "Celery between my teeth? What?"
Kawalsky grinned and shook his head. "I was just noticing that you've got a scar my Colonel O'Neill didn't."
Jack touched his brow lightly. "This? Everyone's got in in for this eyebrow. First the pseudo-neanderthals of P3X-797-"
"Pseudo-neanderthals?"
"They turned out to have a disease." He grimaced. "A very contagious disease. Fortunately we were able to contain it and find a cure. But the scar was actually a little souvenir of our time travel experience. Got it right here, down in the gate room, in 1969, courtesy of a USAF sergeant who wasn't terribly amused by having us turn up twenty-eight stories below the surface in a high security missile silo."
Kawalsky shook his head. "Man, and I thought we'd seen some weird shit."
They checked out guns and fired them, finding no particular procedural differences, though Kawalsky did notice some of the forms they had to fill out were different. As they were cleaning the weapons, the conversation resumed.
"You've evidently gotten to see a lot more of the galaxy than we have." Kawalsky commented.
"Oh, yeah." O'Neill smiled. "Yeah, we have. Granted not all of it was fun. For example, I cannot recommend the hospitality of Hadante prison. In fact I'd suggest avoiding it like the plague."
"Sounds rough." Kawalsky carefully reassembled the pistol and set it aside.
"We managed." O'Neill seemed to be suddenly struck with a thought. "Say. You wouldn't have had a lot of the same experiences as us, but Hathor shouldn't have changed."
"Who?"
"Goa'uld found locked up in a sarcophagus in central America? Tried to take over the SGC?" O'Neill said.
Kawalsky frowned. "Um, breathed some kind of narcotic mist?"
"Yeah, that's her." O'Neill gave him a funny look. "Guess she wasn't as memorable in your reality."
"No, it's just that she didn't try to invade the SGA. She tried to take over Area 51. There was quite a to-do over it, but they finally sent in a group of all-female troops to take her out. Casualties were low, but they couldn't take her alive." Kawalsky explained. He wondered why she had gone to the SGC in this reality instead of Area 51.
O'Neill nodded. "Ah, you lost the sarcophagus too, eh?"
"The what?" Kawalsky asked.
"Big gold box? Heals people?" O'Neill asked.
"Is that what it does? I think they still have it." Kawalsky said.
O'Neill stared at him. "You do know that that thing will heal practically any injury, don't you?"
Kawalsky's eyes widened. "It will? We knew the Gould have some kind of healing technology, but they're pretty conservative about testing stuff on people until we're sure we know what we're doing."
"Yeah, well, that's it." O'Neill said. "There are some days it would be really nice to have one. But you don't want to use it if there's any reasonable alternative. It's addictive as hell, and there're some squirrelly side effects."
"Ah, that doesn't sound quite so useful." Kawalsky said. "I take it you don't have one?"
"No, ours was destroyed," the colonel said.
"So what happened to Hathor in this reality?" Kawalsky asked.
"I killed her." O'Neill's tone was grim.
"Eh?" Kawalsky wasn't sure whether he should ask for more information or not.
"With my bare hands." O'Neill clarified in a flat unemotional tone stamped 'keep out' in flashing red letters.
The airman paused at the door. "Colonel O'Neill?"
"Yes?" O'Neill said.
"General Hammond would like you to come down to the infirmary. It's Major- uh, Doctor, Carter." The man looked a bit confused. "Something's happened."
O'Neill handed his guns back to the sergent and turned to the elevator. Kawalsky followed. 'Now what?' he wondered.
#
Kawalsky headed toward the door of the infirmary, stomach churning. He had only just started to accept the idea they were safe. Learning that Sam would die if she stayed here ripped open the barely healed wounds. They'd had enough trouble just finding a reality where the Goa'uld hadn't overrun Earth. The chances of finding one where they were both dead and could stay safely must be pretty small. And no way could he let Sam go back alone, not even if it meant they both died. He turned back to ask one of the nurses, "Excuse me, do you know where Colonel O'Neill went?"
"The general called him to the briefing room, sir," the woman reported.
Kawalsky turned toward the elevator, using his brand-new keycard to access it. He was conscious of the occasional curious glances. His miraculous 'return' had been a source of astonishment and pleasure even among the nearly unshockable troops of the SGC. When the elevator stopped, he got out and headed for the stairs to the briefing room. Possibly he could talk them into arming him with something that would at least give them a shot at making it out of Cheyenne Mountain. As he walked quietly up the stairs, he realized their situation was already under discussion.
Dr. Jackson was saying, "-- only way to really help Dr Carter is to stop the Goa'uld in her reality and save whatever's left."
Kawalsky shook his head. Ivory tower, indeed. He wondered again what the scientist was doing on a field team. Then he heard the general answer and realized with some surprise he was actually taking the statement seriously.
"How do you suggest we do that, Dr Jackson? The resources of their entire world couldn't defend against the Goa'uld." The concern in his voice was a sharp reminder of his own Hammond, whom he had left to die when he and Sam had escaped through the mirror. Kawalsky wondered queasily if he was still alive. He'd almost managed to block the man's plight from his mind, the last couple of days.
"What about the resources of our world?" Jackson was asking.
Sam's voice, nearly as familiar as his best friend's, yet crisp and military, "What do we have that they don't?"
Jackson answered readily, and Kawalsky slowly saw that he wasn't just speculating. The man was putting a serious proposal on the table. "Our fate. We made contact with the Asgard." Who were the Asgard?
Jack-- O'Neill-- asked, "So?"
Jackson replied, "So if Dr. Carter can make contact with the Asgard in her reality, maybe their Asgard will be willing to help them."
"Defend their world against the Goa'uld?" Hammond asked.
"Yes."
"And just how do you propose we raise the Asgard, in their reality?" Jack asked.
Kawalsky listened in stunned silence as they hammered at the details of a plan to try and save his world. He regained his senses when the subject of getting Dr. Carter to the stargate came up. He climbed up the few remaining stairs and walked through the doorway. "That's where I come in. Permission to join the briefing, sir?"
#
Kawalsky followed Daniel Jackson to the storage room where they'd left the mirror. "Here it is," Jackson said. They hadn't crated it at Area 51, just put it on a pallet, covered it with a shroud and shrink wrapped the whole thing to hold it in place. Jackson fished out a pocket knife and sliced through the packaging.
Kawalsky studied the scientist curiously. If Major Carter was right, this guy was the difference between the chaos in his world and the relative peace in this one. "So how come you're here instead of helping the doc and the major with the alien power thingy?"
Jackson gave him a mildly puzzled look, starting to peel back the plastic. "What could I do to help them? It's not like there's any writing on the device."
Kawalsky juggled the controller from hand to hand. "Aren't you an astrophysicist, like the doc?"
The man looked startled, then actually laughed. "God, no. I'm an archeologist." He looked at Kawalsky's dumbfounded expression. "I didn't open the stargate by understanding it mechanically. I just read the instructions." He gave Kawalsky a small smile. "Sam says it's the first time in history a guy read the manual."
Kawalsky watched Jackson pulling the covering off the mirror. "You know, if this works out, you'll have done it again."
Jackson gave him a mildly puzzled look. "Done what again?"
"Saved a world." Kawalsky said. He was beginning to see why they'd put Jackson on a field team.
Jackson shrugged, abashed. "Everyone contributed ideas. If I hadn't suggested it, someone else would have."
"You do this often?"
"Travel to other dimensions so we can get shot at again by people we've already killed?" Jackson asked. "That would be no." He pushed his glasses up and peered at the controller in Kawalsky's hands.
Kawalsky ignored the mildly sarcastic tone. "Why are you helping us?"
Jackson gave him a serious look and fell silent for a moment. When he spoke, he started slowly. "When I arrived in the other alternate reality, the Goa'uld attack had been underway for three days." He picked up speed. "They had no idea who I was. At first they thought I was Goa'uld. Then they thought I was crazy. Hell, I wondered if I were crazy. By the time we figured out that I'd come through the mirror from another reality, there were over a billion dead. My counterpart in that reality was dead. Most of the cities of Earth had been destroyed. You know what it was like. You lived it, or something similar."
Kawalsky nodded dumbly. When Hammond had said they knew what he and Dr. Carter were going through yesterday, he'd wanted to protest angrily. For the first time since he came here, he felt like someone did understand.
Jackson paced back and forth in front of the mirror, gesturing in short choppy motions. "There were so many things I could have told them. If I'd been just four or five days earlier, I might have been able to save them all. But there wasn't any time. I watched the Goa'uld mothership land on top of Cheyenne Mountain, watched them kill Sam, Jack, Catherine, other people I knew. And even if they weren't really the same people, it hurt to see them die. They still felt like my friends, you know?"
Kawalsky thought about this universe's O'Neill and Ferretti and Carter. Weirdly different or not, he certainly wouldn't want to see them killed. "Yeah."
"They saved me." Jackson said. "Saved us all, really." He blinked behind his glasses. "Jack- General O'Neill in their reality- he gave his life to buy us time. Sam and Catherine dialed me out, back to P3R-233. The Goa'uld caught them before they could join me. The self destruct was on final countdown when I went through the gate. I was the last one to make it out of the SGA/ and they did it to give my world a chance. To get me back to my own reality with the warning the Goa'uld were coming. "
He smiled a little wryly. "And so I got back- and no one believed me."
Kawalsky said, "If they didn't believe you, how- "
"I didn't have any proof." Jackson said. "Just the mirror, which I couldn't operate without the controller, a stargate address- in my own handwriting, no less- and a really strange story. In the end, Jack agreed to at least check it out. Even though they didn't believe me, if by some chance I was right, the potential consequences were too horrible to be ignored. As it was, we were far, far luckier than we deserved to be. The stargate address really was for Apophis' homeworld, and not for any one of a hundred other Goa'uld planets it could have been. We gated onto one of the motherships only about ten minutes before they left for Earth. The ships were actually in orbit preparing to attack when we blew them."
He looked seriously at Kawalsky. "So you see. The only reason my reality is still here is thanks to another one helping us out. There wasn't any way for us to help them in return once the controller for our mirror was destroyed. But we do have the chance to help you. So-" He waved one hand in a vaguely circular motion. "If we can't save everyone, at least we can try to save something."
"What if the Carters can't get the generator working?" Kawalsky wondered aloud.
Daniel said, "Then we send you both to Cimmeria. The planet itself is protected from the Goa'uld so you'd be safe, and there's an Asgard communication device there. I'll make sure you have coordinates and directions in case you need them. It will take longer than if we send you to the Asgard homeworld though. That's why we're trying that first."
Kawalsky nodded. "Sweet."
Jackson checked the time. "You need to show me how this thing works."
Kawalsky nodded and held up the controller. "Okay, the way Dr C explained it, the controller is not what you'd call an exacting science. You can't just dial up an address like you would on a Stargate. You have to kinda figure out where you are."
#
Kawalsky swayed with exhaustion as he looked around the crowded briefing room. His hand brushed the mirror controller in his pocket. Daniel had handed back to him before they went through the mirror. He really should lock it up somewhere, he reflected muzzily, before he lost it.
It had been a grueling day- more than a day- since they had come back through the mirror and contacted the Asgard. The good news was the casualties, though heavy, were not as bad as had been feared. The miraculous Asgard healing technology that they had used to restore General Hammond had also brought back many of the other dead. In some cases, the damage to the bodies had been too great and the oldest casualties had been dead too long to be revived, but the eventual death toll was expected to be millions lower than was originally reported.
The bad news was while the Asguard had restored many of the dead and most severely injured, provided some food and supplies, and had helped them move things around with their beam-me-up-Scotty transporter technology, they weren't staying long or helping to rebuild. The whole world had a huge task ahead of them, and millions of refugees would probably die of hunger and lack of shelter before the world could be restored to anything like normality. In all likelihood, it would never be the same again.
Despite the incredible devastation, people's spirits were high. The flood of Asgard-orchestrated miracles made a disproportionately huge difference to their state of mind. Kawalsky had felt the biggest grin of his life split his face as a rather confused-looking Jack O'Neill had been beamed down to the SGA, a huge charred and bloody hole in the front of his uniform, but completely unharmed. Samantha Carter had gasped, then flung herself at him and burst into tears.
He looked at his friend now. Jack had sent his wife off to sleep hours ago while they slogged on, helping to coordinate the relief effort. Jack turned around and gave him a tired grin. "Hey."
"Hey, yourself." Kawalsky grinned at him.
"You're staring." Jack said. "What, have I got celery between my teeth?"
Kawalsky's gaze went involuntarily to the lack of a scar on his brow, and his smile faded. "Charlie?" Jack asked.
"That alternate reality stuff, that was some weird shit, Jack," he said.
Jack O'Neill looked mildly curious and leaned back against the table. "Oh? Did you meet me? What was I like?"
"The same." Kawalsky shook his head. "And not. You and Sam weren't together. She was a major in the Air Force."
"Sam?" Jack shook his head. "Go figure. Huh, she told me once she considered going into the military. Thought it would please her dad. But in the end she wanted to be a scientist more."
Kawalsky said, "Oh, Major Carter was a scientist too. Overachiever, did it all. She was really, uh, different." He considered a moment, thinking he should suggest to Dr. C that they not tell Jack about the people on Abydos. And that reminded him of Jackson doing the same thing in the other universe. "I was dead in that reality. Your best friend there was another scientist, guy named Jackson."
"My best friend? A scientist?" Jack looked disbelieving. "Hey, I may have married one, but she's an exception."
Kawalsky smiled. "Oh, this one sort of grows on you." He looked at the map. "I wonder if he's still alive in this reality? We could use him."
Jack shook his head. "If you say so. Another physicist?"
"No, an archeologist." Kawalsky watched as his best friend's eyebrows went up. Daniel had said it was a coincidence, he'd just been in the right place at the right time. Kawalsky wasn't so sure. If the Daniel Jackson in this universe could have the same kind of catalytic effect as the one who'd helped them contact the Asgard, Kawalsky wanted him on their side. "He's got a sort of talent for uh, rearranging fate."
Jack O'Neill rolled his eyes. "Too deep for me, Charlie. Why don't you turn in? You look like shit." He clapped a hand on Kawalsky's shoulder and turned the gain back up on his earpiece.
Kawalsky would normally have made a smart remark, but this time he only smiled at his friend's back and spoke too softly for Jack to hear. "Yeah, buddy? Well you look great." He turned to the stairs, feeling the exhaustion rolling over him in waves. "Not such a bad day after all."
#
Daniel Jackson looked at the woman driving the jeep. "This is far enough, Julie. If the disaster is as big as they're saying, there's probably going to be a lot of theft and looting. We want to keep our transportation as long as possible. We'll come back to the dig or try to send word if there's nothing to be done." From the sound of it, they were lucky their dig had been so remote. The historic sites at Kharnak and the Valley of the Kings had been devastated.
He and David and Colin got out of the vehicle and shouldered their small packs. They'd seen the explosions and the fires that had lightened the night sky for nearly five days before they had abruptly disappeared. The news stories had been wild, unbelievable. David and Colin both wanted to return home. But with the news describing city after city being destroyed by huge alien ships, and the authorities advising everyone to avoid urban areas, they had opted to stay put on the dig until the news had changed for the better. Then the second set of alien ships had arrived and started kicking the butts of the first ones. With the news reporting the cessation of hostilities, David had pushed for a couple of them to venture into Cairo and see what the situation was.
The general feeling of the planet Earth was a resounding 'why us?'.
#
The further they trudged along the dusty road, the more dismayed they became. Cairo was a shambles. Most of the major buildings were flattened, and looters had stripped the ruins. Street vendors had set up shop in the rubble, but the prices were ten times what Daniel was used to seeing. They had to detour around one block which was flooded with what smelled like raw sewage.
David looked around in dismay. "Wasn't that the embassy?"
Daniel said, "Yes." He'd taught a couple of language classes there. "Let's ask around."
It had taken time and patience to find someone willing to talk- the survivors they saw on the street were unwilling to be approached by three obvious foreigners, despite the comfortable light robes they wore over their western shorts and T-shirts. Daniel finally found a woman with a street cart who recognized him. She told him that the best place to look for an official American or British presence would be the refugee camp.
They walked through the city, seeing the signs of life and rebuilding already starting. David looked at the new construction in astonishment. "I can't believe they're already starting repairs. It's only been a few days."
Colin said, "Cities are hard to kill. When the Germans bombed London in WWII, a lot of people thought the city would cease to function, but despite the destruction, life went on."
"This was faster and even more destructive." Daniel pointed out.
"Also over more quickly," the Englishman replied.
The refugee camp was a seething mass of humanity, but there was a rough order to it. People were queuing for food and medical attention. A man with a laptop was taking the names of survivors. They set a time to meet up again, and Colin went off looking for any British embassy officials while David joined the information queue.
Daniel's attention was caught by a woman with a howling baby. A young man in American military uniform was trying to talk to her in broken Arabic, but she clearly didn't understand. He drew closer, guessing from her dress she was probably from outside the city. He came up and asked the woman, "Can you tell me what is your problem?" in first one, then another of the local dialects. Her eyes lit up over her veil at the second, and she explained her baby was sick.
Daniel let her get a half sentence ahead, then began translating. The sweating young man in desert camoflage looked surprised and then relieved to hear Daniel's American accent. After listening to the question, he directed the woman to another table where she could get a doctor to see the baby. He turned to Daniel, looking a bit dubiously at his shabby cotton robe. "Thanks, that was useful. I had no idea what she was saying."
Daniel shrugged. "You're welcome. Though, um-"
"What?" the young man didn't look upset, just grateful for the help.
"Well, she probably did understand some Arabic, but I think she found your accent a bit difficult." Daniel hoped the guy wouldn't be offended, but he ought to know his Arabic was pretty unintelligible. Daniel wasn't sure hewould have understood it if the guy hadn't been muttering what he wanted to say in English as he obviously groped for the Arabic words.
The man laughed. "If she understood anything I said, it's a miracle. My Arabic sucks." He gave Daniel as speculative look. "I don't suppose you have some time to volunteer."
Daniel blinked, "Sure. Whatever you need."
He grinned and stuck out a hand, "Lieutenant Pat O'Brien. Call me Pat. One of the problems we're having getting the relief effort organized is making people understand what we're saying. I couldn't even follow that woman's Arabic."
"I'm Daniel." Daniel shook his hand. "I can certainly translate for you. She wasn't speaking Arabic though. That was a related local dialect."
"Oh." O'Brien looked at him. "So you speak that and Arabic both?"
Daniel shrugged. "I know a few languages."
"Like what?" O'Brien asked.
"I can probably make myself understood in anything you're likely to run across here." Daniel said. He took in the other man's raised eyebrow. "Honestly, it will be easier to let you know if we find something I can't translate."
O'Brien looked dubious. "How about French, Turkish, Greek?"
"Yes." Daniel said. "I speak all those. Really."
O'Brien said. "O-kay, then. Why don't you follow me?"
#
"Stay quiet." Daniel told the injured man as reassuringly as he could. "The doctor is coming." He kept up a flow of speech designed to sooth and reassure.
After their first foray into the devastation of Cairo, they'd gone back and dismantled the dig site. Daniel had helped Julie pack up their supplies with aching regret. It wasn't the first work he'd gotten on a dig since he'd trashed his career with that disastrous lecture in Los Angeles, but it was the first dig he'd been on where he was getting full professional credit. Prior digs had employed him as a cheap but experienced excavator but explicitly prohibited him from conducting research or writing about them.
He'd never thought of himself as proud; his upbringing would have been enough to knock a sense of self-importance out of anyone. But he'd learned some new lessons in humility in the last three years, not to mention finding out who his real friends were. Julie and Robert told him he was becoming too cynical. He preferred to think of it as less thin-skinned-- always self-reliant, he'd grown less communicative, dealing with problems alone and turning away concern and sympathy with sturdy independence.
The real silver lining to his academic suicide was the chance to return to Egypt permanently. Dirty, impoverished, thriving and exotic, Daniel had never fallen out of love with the country of his birth. If jobs there paid poorly, rent was still cheaper, and he relished the scenery, the food, the people and the antiquity of the place. Seeing it now made his heart ache.
As soon as they had gotten to Cairo, Julie, David and Colin and the others had started trying to make arrangements to go home, and spending their free time helping the reconstruction crews. Finding his tiny room on the outskirts of Cairo buried under tons of rubble, Daniel had gone back and volunteered at the refugee camp. Between his language skills and his meager training in first aid, he'd been quickly co-opted.
"All, right, what have we got here." The tiny woman with reddish hair wasn't anyone Daniel had met before. She immediately began examining the wound in the man's side. She was wearing a soiled white coat with shiny metal bars pinned to the collar. Military insignia, Daniel had learned. She was a captain, and evidently, also a doctor.
"This is Andreas." Daniel said. "He was climbing around a partially collapsed building when it completely collapsed."
The woman said, "Well, this is going to need more than a bandage." Daniel translated what she told him about the course of treatment. Andreas, a short dark-haired teenager, visibly relaxed as Daniel explained what was happening.
The doctor had given him a surprised, then approving look as she realized she wasn't going to have to communicate in sign language. She quickly sorted out a local anaesthetic, then looked around. "Damn, I really should have a nurse-"
Daniel said, "Because you need a trained medical person, or because you need a second pair of hands?"
"Second pair of hands-" she looked at him appraisingly.
"I can do it," Daniel said.
"You're not going to go all squeamish on me?" she asked.
Daniel felt the first smile in a couple of days flash over his face. "I'll do my best not to swoon at the sight of blood."
"Okay."
Daniel translated easily while following the doctor's instructions. He didn't especially like blood, but he'd never been panicked by it. He did feel a certain queasiness in his stomach when the doctor had him hold open the ragged cut so she could neatly suture some mysterious internal bits, but he concentrated on the dual flow of words, English and Greek, switching back and forth as the conversation demanded.
When she had finished, he wheeled Andreas off to get his medication and retire to a cot where he could rest for the next couple of days. When Daniel returned to the camp volunteer coordinator, he was looking harassed. "Daniel!" he handed over a slip of paper. "Can you go-"
"I'm on it." Daniel nodded, glanced at the note, and strode back off through the now-familiar blocks of the camp. He swiftly found the section he was looking for. "Dr. Fraiser?"
The woman he'd been assisting an hour before looked up from a stack of papers and smiled. "Ah- good. I asked if they'd assign you to me permanently. I hadn't realized how much easier things would be with a translator until I'd tried it. I don't know Arabic at all."
Daniel wondered if he should tell her that Andreas had spoken Greek, then shrugged. It wasn't especially relevant. "Glad I could help. Where to next, doctor?"
"I'm checking up on the condition of a bunch of patients that I've treated over the last several days." She explained, leading him to one of the convalescent areas. At the door of the tent she paused, looking surprised. "I don't know your name."
"I'm Daniel."
#
Daniel looked up as the plane took off from the military airstrip outside Cairo, wondering what David would find when he finally got home. He might be okay. His parents lived in a small town in upstate New York, well away from large cities. Julie was in for a harder trip. Her New York apartment was probably toast; she was planning to head out to Robert's parents' place in New Jersey until she could sort out alternative living arrangements. Daniel turned from the window and waited beside a desk while another group of people headed out to the airstrip, dragging duffle bags and other assorted luggage.
Almost two months after the alien attack, things were gradually assuming a sort of normalcy in the streets. Once they had closed down the dig, everyone started trying to make their way home. Colin had taken a boat to Spain more than a month ago, trying to get to London, but chances were he was still in transit. Europe, being so densely populated, had been hit hard.
David and Julie had waited impatiently in the refugee camp outside the ruins of Cairo until the US military finally had the capacity to start airlifting civilians home.
"Where are you on the list?" the young female airman behind the desk said sympathetically.
He glanced at her, startled and smiled. "I'm not." Evidently his sunstreaked hair and blue eyes were enough to identify him as American, despite his native dress. He waved a hand back toward the city. "I live in Cairo." He'd scarcely left the refugee center since the first day he'd gotten there. He was almost permanently hoarse these days, talking, translating, explaining from dawn until late into the night. And they were so short of medical personnel that even with his modest experience of first aid, he'd been pressed into service helping the injured. Not that he minded. It felt good to be able to help. Funny, there was nothing like an alien attack on your planet to put petty concerns about one's academic reputation into perspective.
He continued easily, "Besides, in some ways I'm fortunate. No family to worry about. A few friends I wouldn't mind knowing were okay but nothing close."
The woman smiled at him. "I can look up your friends for you if you like." She patted the computer. "This is linked in by satellite to the Survivors database back in the US." Daniel was vaguely aware of the database. With so many cities destroyed and millions displaced, the database had been created so people could let their families know they were okay. The distributed structure of the internet had survived the devastation amazingly well. Email was currently the most reliable communications medium on the planet.
Daniel was interested. "Could you?" He took a couple of steps closer, and gave her Dr. Jordan's name, as well as Stephen and Sarah. He already knew that Robert, his sister and his parents had made it. He drew a deep breath as they all came back as alive and checked in. Not extremely surprising-- in the US, they'd had more warning and had managed to evacuate a significant amount of the population from the largest cities. He smiled brightly at the young woman. "Thanks, uh-"
"Gina." She said.
"Gina." He felt unexpectedly relieved and happy knowing his friends had made it. He hadn't realized how much he had worried about them. "Thanks very much."
She said, "No problem-"
"Daniel." He supplied promptly. He hoped he wasn't too obviously admiring her sleek dark hair and trim figure. If he was, she didn't seem to object.
"Daniel." She said, "That's why they've been trying to register all the survivors and identify the casualties. Your friends have been able to see if you're okay ever since you first put your name on a list."
Daniel blinked. "Um, actually I don't think I did. Put my name on a list, I mean. No family to contact, remember."
She said, "Well, you should, so your friends will know too. Look, I can enter it for you now." Unexpectedly, she gave him a mischievous smile. "And isn't that a slick way to find out your name and phone number?"
He laughed, blushing under his tan and didn't mind a bit. "Daniel Jackson." He told her and watched her type it in.
She frowned at the screen. "Um, that's strange. Dr. Daniel Jackson, archeologist and linguist, last known location Egypt?" She asked.
"Yeah-" Daniel was surprised. "Was I already in there after all?" Maybe David had put his name in.
She shook her head, "No, your name has been flagged-- they do that with people they urgently want to locate. It says you should report to the nearest US military facility." She reached for a phone. "I'd better call my CO."
Daniel frowned, tapping his fingers on the counter. That was weird. Archeologist and linguist certainly sounded like him, or he'd have been sure that it was some other guy with the same name. What could the military possibly want with him?
#
Daniel sat freezing in the back of the military transport, packed in like a sardine with a bunch of other military and civilian passengers and scowled furiously at the handcuffs. He'd gone from puzzled as to the source of the message, to irritated at their insistance he come with them and eventually arrived at livid when they had handcuffed him and escorted him to the plane over his vehement protests.
The only explanation he'd received was they'd been ordered to return him to the US immediately. They didn't know anything more or at any rate wouldn't tell him. The other passengers on the plane had checked out the cuffs and then looked at him like he was a pariah. Daniel didn't find that surprising. Routine law enforcement was pretty sketchy at the moment. Actually dragging him out of Cairo this way was bound to give people the idea he had done something pretty bad.
They landed at an airstrip in Scotland. "Used to be, we'd have gone to Germany", one of the MPs said. "Or Mildenhall in England. But they both took a pasting from the aliens." They waited for all the other passengers to disembark before helping Daniel to his feet. He supposed he should be grateful for their professionalism. They certainly had treated him politely enough.
Daniel climbed awkwardly down the steps, feeling cold, stiff and uncoordinated. It was overcast with a light mist in the air, and the icy breeze cut right through the light cotton robe and the frayed cutoffs and T-shirt underneath. "Damn, it's cold." Daniel said. He glowered at the sky. "Bad enough I've been arrested for no reason I can determine, couldn't the sun have at least been out?" They walked across the tarmac into a drafty metal building that was no warmer than the outdoors.
The guard laughed. "In Scotland? Not a chance." He looked down at the miserable archeologist. "You really have no idea why you're here, do you?"
Daniel raised his brows and looked back. "No. I really don't. Does that mean you're gonna tell me?" he asked hopefully.
The man shook his head, "Sorry, sir, I don't know. But you're not under arrest."
"Really?" Daniel held up his cuffed hands. "Could have fooled me."
"You're in custody."
"Oh, how could I have been confused? The difference is so noticeable." They did get to stand in a slightly warmer room for half an hour, and Daniel managed with some difficulty to use the men's room despite the cuffs. Then a different pair of guards escorted him out to another plane.
The previous guards seemed to have told the new ones Daniel had no idea what was going on, and they were reasonably friendly from the start. He peered at their name tags; Anderson and Wilkins. Or perhaps they were just happy to get a trip back to the States, he thought as he settled on the hard seat of the plane. By this time, Daniel had gone from cold and hungry to actively shivering. One of the MPs escorting him noticed his attempt to curl into a tight ball and threw a heavy blanket over him. He mouthed a grudging 'thanks' back over the engine noise. With the warmth he finally was able to fall asleep.
He awoke as the plane touched down with a bump, feeling stiff and confused and half sliding out of his seat. He tried to put out a hand to steady himself and briefly panicked at the restraints on his hands, but the pain as he struggled against them quickly brought him the rest of the way awake. He awkwardly pushed his hair out of his face with his bound hands. "Where are we?" He asked the guard groggily as the punishing noise finally lessened.
"Petersen Air Force Base," the man told him. "Colorado Springs. You slept right through our refueling stop."
"Why Colorado?" Daniel asked, trying to stretch as they got out of the plane.
The man shrugged. "Damned if I know. Someone wants you badly though. This plane was only supposed to go as far as Bangor, Maine. It was retasked in flight to refuel and go on to Colorado."
"That's insane." Daniel shook his head. "I'm nobody. There's no imaginable reason for the military to have any interest in me. What on Earth is going on?"
The man wordlessly handed Daniel a cup. "I know, I know. You have no more idea than I have." Daniel inhaled the welcome aroma of coffee and took a large gulp, recklessly ignoring the danger of burning his mouth. "Wow. But it might have been worth it for a cup of coffee." Luxuries like coffee had been in short supply over the last months.
Sergeant Anderson actually smiled. "Actually sir, I've been told to escort you to NORAD."
Daniel shook his head. "Look, are you absolutely positive you have the right Daniel Jackson? It's not that uncommon a name, you know-" Anderson looked sympathetic but led him to the car. He sighed, "I know. You have orders."
At the gate of the Cheyenne Mountain complex, Anderson turned him over to another similarly uniformed guard, who unsmilingly led him into the depths of the mountain. They went down 11 levels, walked a short ways and into yet another elevator. Daniel was surprised to see him press a button labeled 28. He whistled as the elevator started to sink. "All the way to the bottom, eh?"
The man ignored him. After walking through a bewildering maze of corridors he was finally led up a staircase to an unexceptionable-looking conference room, stuffed with computers and chattering people. As they entered, several men turned. The tall gray-haired man and the bald one regarded him dubiously. The third man, who had a long nose and an interesting lived-in face, looked at him with recognition and a sort of interest.
Daniel looked back with a certain belligerence. "Isn't it time somebody told me what the hell I'm doing here?" he demanded. Answers. These people had to be the ones with answers, and Dr. Daniel Jackson was more than ready to hear them.
#
"Isn't it time somebody told me what the hell I'm doing here?" the young man demanded irritably.
Kawalsky looked at him with interest. He'd wondered how the Jackson of this universe would be different. It was clear that this one had never submitted to military discipline. In place of the military haircut and uniform he had seen on the other Daniel, this one had shaggy long hair, lightened by the desert sun and rounder glasses, broken and mended with frayed adhesive tape. He also was thinner and filled with a sort of restless energy Kawalsky didn't remember the other Jackson having. From his grubby state and day's growth of stubble, it was clear he hadn't been given time to shower or change. Kawalsky's eyes fell on his wrists. "Why is Dr. Jackson handcuffed?" he asked the guard.
The guard looked like he wanted to say 'he was handcuffed when I got him' but managed a neutral and professional, "I believe Dr. Jackson objected to accompanying the MPs, Major."
"Well, take them off." Kawalsky ordered. This was going to be hard enough without having already pissed off Jackson on top of it.
He looked at the young man, who said, "About time," flexing his shoulders as he was at last allowed to move freely. He muttered something under his breath in an unfamilar language. Kawalsky realized he must have been handcuffed all the way from Cairo and winced in sympathy. He had to be pretty stiff. But he seemed to take it in stride and turned an enquiring blue gaze on Kawalsky.
"Um, hi." Kawalsky said. "Dr. Jackson. You don't know us, but actually, we sort of know you. I'm Major Charles Kawalsky. These are General Hammond, Colonel Jack O'Neill."
"Speak for yourself," O'Neill said. He looked around the swarm of people in the busy room and turned to the bald man. "May be we should take this in your office, sir?"
As they turned toward the office, Jackson's gaze fell on the two story stone ring outside the window of the room. He stopped dead. "Wow. What's that?" He nearly pressed his nose against the glass, trying to make out the symbols. "Those symbols, I've never seen anything like them."
Kawalsky put his hand on Daniel's shoulder. "C'mon. You're about to find out."
Inside the office, Jackson put his curiosity about the ring on hold and said, "Okay, what am I doing here? And what do you mean, you know me?"
The three men exchanged a glance, then Kawalsky pulled out the piece of paper from his pocket. He handed it to Jackson. "Can you read this?"
Jackson unfolded the creased yellow sheet and squinted at the heiroglyphs. " 'Beware the destroyers'? Melodramatic. What's going on? I can't imagine anyone going to all this trouble to play a practical joke." He handed the paper back. "Where did you get this?"
Kawalsky grimaced. "Well, that's where the story gets a little weird. See, you gave it to me." He'd asked Daniel for sample of translated Goa'uld writing when they had transferred the supplies and computer files from the SGC. He'd thought the linguist would have to find an example in his files and photocopy it. Instead he'd just grabbed a convenient pad of paper and written out the phrase.
"I gave it to you?" Jackson repeated skeptically. "Really."
Hammond grunted. "Oh, it gets better, son. That writing? It's Gould. The alien language."
"No, it isn't." Jackson contradicted instantly. "It's an early form of ancient Egyptian hiero-" His voice suddenly trailed off. "Alien?" he looked a bit wildly from one to the other. "But, but, but...the dig at -" he started mumbling as his mouth couldn't keep up with his brain, "-Khufu's pyramid- Giza-pre-Old Kingdom. Damn it." He stopped dead, eyes blazing with excitement. "I was right!"
Hammond smiled, Kawalsky grinned and even Jack looked amused. "Yes, Dr. Jackson. You were," the general said. He pointed in the direction of the gate room. "The big stone ring is an alien artifact we call a stargate. It was found at Giza in 1928. We use it to travel to other planets."
The young man's mouth dropped open. "Wha-" He visibly floundered for a moment, then got a grip on himself. "Okay, so all this is really, really fascinating, and I'm dying to hear more. But it doesn't explain why I'm here."
Kawalsky spoke again. "Well, in addition to traveling through space, we also have a device we call a quantum mirror. It lets us travel into different alternate realities- parallel worlds with all the same people and places as our own, but where things turned out a bit differently." He paused but he couldn't tell whether Jackson was buying any of this or not. "I recently visited a different reality, one quite similar to our own. You were there-"
"No, I wasn't." Jackson contradicted stubbornly.
"Well, not you, of course, but the Daniel Jackson who belonged in that reality."
Jackson didn't look like he was finding this especially plausible. Kawalsky was relieved to hear a familiar voice at the door.
"Dr. Jackson." Samantha Carter said warmly as he came in.
He gave her a rather wary look. "Let me guess. You know this 'other me' too."
She smiled. "We've met, yes. I'm Dr. Samantha Carter. In that reality, my counterpart and yours were good friends. I must admit I've been looking forward to meeting you."
"Ri-ight." Jackson looked from one to the other. "You do realize this all sounds more than a little, um-"
"Nuts?" suggested Jack O'Neill.
"Thank you. Good word." Jackson said.
"As I was saying," Kawalsky continued. "Dr. Carter and I visited this alternate reality. It was a lot like ours, only in that reality, they stopped the alien invasion before it happened. They stopped it because in their reality, you were a part of the Stargate Program."
"M-me?!" Jackson couldn't have sounded more incredulous than O'Neill was looking. "What did I do, ask the aliens nicely in ancient Egyptian to leave us alone?"
O'Neill was shaking his head. "Charlie, this is crazy. Just because this guy was magic in this hocus-pocus other reality of yours doesn't mean Jackson here is going to be the same. I mean look at him." He waved a hand at the archeologist's disheveled appearance.
Jackson gave him an unfriendly look. "I'd like to see how good you'd look after being hauled halfway around in the world in handcuffs without so much as a clean shirt."
"Come on, guys." Kawalsky said. "Look, Jackson can read Gould. He's just shown us that much." That was the only thing that had persuaded Hammond and O'Neill to put out the high-priority order to have Jackson brought here. Well, that and finding out the scientific team who translated the Giza coverstone had extensively referenced Jackson's research. "If he never does another thing, that will be invaluable."
Jackson crossed his arms across his chest and muttered, "Assuming I want to read Gould-". Despite this, there was an increasingly curious look on his face.
Samantha Carter nodded. "Look, the other Daniel Jackson opened their stargate in two weeks. It took me three years- more if you count working out the return addressing for the trip back."
"Opened the stargate?" Jackson looked at her in disbelief. "Look, I'm just an archeologist. I don't know anything about alien technology."
"See-" O'Neill started. His wife gave him an irritated look, and he shut up.
Jackson said abruptly, "And for that matter, what's the big emergency? Why is this such a big deal you had to haul me out of Cairo by the scruff of the neck? The bad aliens kicked the crap out of us; the good aliens rescued us. Did we only have a one-time, get-out-of-the-alien-invasion-free coupon?"
O'Neill raised his eyes at the astute question and Kawalsky replied, "Something like that. The Asgard are powerful but spread a little thin right now. There's no guarantee they'll be around the next time we need help. We badly need to be able to defend ourselves if necessary."
Kawalsky knew Hammond was more than half convinced. But then he'd met the other Daniel Jackson, seen him face Apophis in the control room. Kawalsky figured there was no real point in going into the whole SG team thing now. His own people were skeptical, and the other Jackson had told him that anyone enough like him to be useful was going to jump at the chance of going through the gate when it was offered. "Look, give us a chance," Kawalsky said. "We know you're not him. But you're close. You're one of the few people on the planet who can read this language. We need you. Your planet needs you."
The appeal to his sense of duty was obviously reaching this Jackson, though Jack was rolling his eyes at Kawalsky's hyperbole. Jackson gave him a wary look. "If I stay, I get to learn about this stargate thing?"
Kawalsky nodded. "Yes."
"And no more handcuffs?" Jackson asked.
"Of course not." Kawalsky said.
"And if I want to leave, you give me transport back home." Jackson pushed.
"Sure." Kawalsky promised recklessly.
Jackson met his eyes for a moment, then nodded briskly. "Okay then." He looked around the room. "So now what?"
They all stared at him. Then Hammond said, "How long has it been since you had a square meal, son?"
#
Daniel had opted for the hot shower and change of clothes first, rescuing his journal before the clothes were taken away. It was a good thing he'd made a habit of carrying it with him since the attack. He couldn't remember when he'd last had a hot shower. Not since before the dig preceding the alien invasion, that was for sure.
The locker room brought back vaguely unpleasant memories of high school gym, but he ignored it and reveled in the luxury of being clean. He even shaved the two days' worth of stubble, the mirror being an unaccustomed convenience. His reflection was oddly normal. He'd have thought the last three years would have shown on his face, but he couldn't actually pick out any detail that was different from when he had left California. Even the sunstreaks in his hair and the tan that made his eyes look startlingly light were no different. It was almost as if the years in Egypt were a meaningless interlude, an unwarranted interruption beween his old life and his destiny.
'Superstitious nonsense,' he thought, splashing cold water on his face with unnecessary force. For sure, a military base twenty-eight stories underneath a mountain was nowhere he was ever intended to wind up. Daniel Jackson had never believed in fate.
Kawalsky was waiting for him when he came out, looking surprised to see the stitches along his arm. "What happened?"
"Guy with a knife." Daniel said economically. The doctor had looked looked him over and said Daniel should be able to handle it on his own. He'd been cleaning a wound in the man's leg when his patient had regained consciousness and pulled a knife. There had been some inevitable confusion before he had talked the man into lying back down and letting him finish. Janet had shaken her head over the gash the man had put in his arm and insisted on stitching it herself.
"What did you do?" Kawalsky asked.
"Told him to put the knife away and let me finish treating his wounds." He saw Kawalsky's puzzled look and relented. "I was helping in the big refugee camp in Cairo."
"I thought you weren't that kind of doctor," the major asked.
"What, there's something about me you don't know?" Daniel said. "No, I'm not a medical doctor. I just know some first aid is all. People with real medical training have been spread a little thin lately." Daniel had found himself treating all sorts of minor injuries, delivering babies- though at least he'd had prior experience there- and even setting the occasional simple fracture.
Kawalsky nodded as he tied his boots and led him out the door. In the commissary, the food was classic institutional, but it couldn't possibly have looked better to Daniel. Two months of inadequate nutrition plus an eighteen hour trip from Cairo had left him feeling decidedly hollow. He glanced at Kawalsky. "What's the ration system?" he asked.
The major's eyebrows went up. "None, really. There are some things that are hard to buy right now, but you can eat as much as you want of what's here."
Daniel nodded and wondered if things were really that close to normal here, or if the military just had priority. Regardless, he was going to have enough to eat for once. Despite his hunger, he didn't take huge portions. After three months on short rations, it would be a while before he'd be able to eat normally sized meals. Colonel O'Neill joined them as Daniel wolfed down a pair of sandwiches. "Been a long time since I've seen anyone that enthused about military food," he remarked.
Daniel washed the sandwiches down with a gulp of coffee. "The food situation has been a little rough in Egypt," he said. As a relief worker, Daniel could have been better fed. Like most of the others, he'd gotten by on the minimum to leave more for people who really needed it. "How long have you been traveling to other planets?" he asked.
Kawalsky answered, "Oh, a little over two years. We deciphered the gate three years ago, but it took us a while to figure out how get the teams back once they'd gone out."
Daniel froze with his cup halfway to his lips. "Two years? Did you know about these aliens before they attacked?"
"Yeah," O'Neill said. "We tried to stop them, but we couldn't."
"How long?" Jackson asked.
"How long what?"
Jackson looked suspiciously at the tall colonel. "How long did you know they were coming before they showed up?"
O'Neill met his eyes levelly. "Six months."
"Six months." Daniel said. "And you couldn't warn anybody? Evacuate the cities?"
"We thought we knew." Kawalsky said. "But we could have been wrong. It could have been six years instead of six months. The president decided creating a panic ourselves was as bad as the aliens attacking. There was nothing we could do."
"Forget it, Charlie." O'Neill said. "This guy was digging in the dirt, not here trying to defend the planet. What does he know?"
"Nothing." Jackson said. "Obviously. If I'd had any idea there was a threat, let alone that I might be able to do something to help, I'd have volunteered." He glared at O'Neill.
Kawalsky laughed.
"What?" O'Neill and Jackson asked simultaneously, then gave one another a nearly identical startled look.
That only made Kawalsky laugh harder. "He's got a point, Jack."
#
Sam pulled up a picture of the stargate symbols. "So, a stargate address consists of six symbols, defining a point in a three dimensional space, plus the symbol for the originating point." She pointed to the inverted V with a circle that he'd seen on everyone's sleeves. "That's the symbol for Earth."
The stargate symbols had puzzled Daniel from the first moment he'd seen them. He couldn't relate them to any Earth language he'd ever seen. Now he realized what they were. "Oh, I get it. They're constellations."
"What?" Sam said. "No, Daniel, it's just a symbol."
Daniel shook his head. "Not the Earth symbol. The others." He traced the outline of the one that had just jumped out at him. "See? It's an idealized version of Orion."
Sam looked from the symbols back to him, pulled the keyboard toward her and started typing furiously. "You know, I've spent years wondering why they assigned the coordinates they way they did. I mean, they seem to be completely random. The distances between coordinates are different, coordinates adjacent on the gate are on opposite sides of the galaxy." Star charts were flashing by on the screen. "Now I finally get it." She typed in strings of numbers. "The coordinates' absolute location is roughly equidistant from the major stars of the constellation. Or they were before we had to account for stellar drift."
"Oh. Interesting," Daniel said politely. It didn't seem very important, though Sam appeared to be excited.
She gave him a warm smile. "I wonder--"
"What?" he asked.
She rummaged through a file drawer and extracted some photographs and a copy of a hieroglyphic inscription with a translation. "I'm just wondering what else we might have missed. This is a picture of the cover stone that was found on top of the stargate."
Daniel looked at the picture of the artifact, then down at the rough translation, winced and picked up a pen. "Well, this is wrong," he said. "I'm amazed you even got 'stargate' translated right." He crossed out a phrase. " 'In his sarcophagus?' Try 'sealed and buried'. " He crossed out several more portions of the translation, writing in corrections. "You know what this means?" he asked, looking up at Sam.
Sam shook her head.
"I'm going to need to see every piece of translation you've ever done. I can't trust any of it."
She nodded. "I think I have something that will help." She turned to her computer. "This is a database of reports that Major Carter in the other reality gave us. The Major sent it through just before they destroyed their mirror," she told Daniel. "I'm only sorry that she didn't give us more, but what we have is amazing. Plans for a prototype naquadah reactor that could revolutionize power generation. And the part you'll be interested in-- There's a dictionary, grammar and pronunciation guide for both ancient Egyptian as it's spoken in the galaxy today, and Goa'uld. And we've got abstracts of the mission reports for all the planets that they have visited."
Daniel watched her create a security profile and login for him, and test it. "Hey, what's this?" Sam said, as a note popped up on her screen. She looked at Daniel. "Looks like a personal message for you. Encrypted."
A personal message from an alternate reality. Daniel didn't have to wonder who it was from. He leaned over her shoulder and typed in a password. The screen cleared instantly to display the message. "Apparently, I'm predictable," he said. He glanced over the message, and chuckled. "It's in a code I made up as a kid. I used to keep my journals in it, so other kids couldn't read them."
Sam asked, "Well, what does it say?"
Daniel quickly scanned the brief note, then summarized without going into specifics.
Hey,
If you're reading this, I guess you aren't dead. Congratulations. You've also joined the stargate program. That means the whole staying alive thing is about to get a lot more complicated. Sorry. For what it's worth, it's a hell of a ride, and I don't regret it.
I could write volumes, but I know Sam's making up a list of planets where we found bad stuff, so I'll just pass on a little personal advice:
Always memorize gate addresses. You never know when you'll need to go back somewhere. You'd figure that out soon enough on your own but I figured the additional hint couldn't hurt.
Don't get in the sarcophagus. There are extenuating circumstances, like being dead or about to be dead, but I don't recommend it for anything less. It's severely addictive, and repeated use will destroy your mind.
Don't eat cake on Argos, especially if it's 'only for you'. Don't let anyone else eat it either.
Don't help people fleeing Taldor.
Don't let Jack juggle artifacts (at least not any you care about).
Good luck. You'll need it.
~DJ
Daniel made sure to translate the last piece of advice verbatim. Sam laughed. "Okay, he's got Jack's number." She frowned. "I wonder how he knew? The Asgard hadn't revived Jack yet when the other team left."
Daniel shrugged. "They had already revived some people, right? He probably just assumed the colonel would be healed in due time." He'd assumed some other things too, Daniel realized with a frisson of excitement. Major Kawalsky had said the other Daniel Jackson was on an exploratory team, and went through the gate regularly. His alternate seemed to think he was going to get that chance too.
"I guess," Sam said. "But that's awfully short. I'd have thought he could have said something a little more, um, useful."
Daniel felt surprisingly pleased with this message from his other self. "Oh, I don't know. I expect there are going to be a few times I really wish he'd been more explicit, but for the most part, it's kind of like he's saying I'll be fine." He looked at Sam. "If he'd given me a ton of advice on how to behave or something, I'd probably try to second guess it. Instead I think he's only warning me about stuff where my natural instincts would have given me the wrong answer."
#
When he came in, Kawalsky was surprised to see Daniel sitting at one of the control room consoles wearing a headset, babbling away in what sounded like Russian. "What's going on?" he asked Jack.
"Kid's making himself useful," O'Neill said. Charlie thought he looked unwillingly impressed. "You know how much trouble we've had coordinating on the international side? Well, if there's a language that guy doesn't speak, we haven't found it yet." The whole world knew about the stargate these days, and while the Cheyenne Mountain location wasn't a matter of public record, it was an open secret among the other nations of the world.
Charlie nodded approvingly. In between marathon sessions of translation, reading through the information forwarded by the SGC and reviewing writing systems the other SGC had discovered out among the stars, Daniel pitched in wherever he was needed, usually with cheerful good humor and an automatic courtesy that had gone a long way toward winning him acceptance among the military personnel.
Jack lowered his voice. "Tell me something, Charlie."
"What?" Kawalsky asked.
"Was the other guy this- this- peppy?" O'Neill asked.
Charlie chuckled. Jack was in no position to criticize people for peppiness. When things calmed down, Charlie fully expected to see his friend bouncing on his toes, looking forward to the next trip through the gate. But it was true Daniel also seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of energy. He started groggy in the morning, hit full speed ahead after his second cup of coffee and then threw himself into whatever he was doing with impressive concentration. "Not that I recall. The other one was more, um, focused." Charlie said. Also more quiet and somehow sad. He found himself hoping that whatever bad shit the other Jackson had been through, they'd find a way to protect theirs.
#
Daniel brushed his hair out of his face to shave and, reflected, not for the first time, that it would be more practical to cut it. Not to mention he would stop getting critical looks from the military. Daniel thought the military preoccupation with hair length was fairly silly, but decided he didn't like it long well enough to keep it just to spite them. He fetched the pair of scissors from the other room and looked at them dubiously. Sharper would have been better, but this was what he had. He hacked his hair off an inch above his collar.
He thought he'd gotten it pretty straight, but when General Hammond's assistant saw him, she started laughing and sent him to Sergeant Thomson, the unofficial base barber. The man seemed to have two cuts, stubble and short. Daniel went for short. Looking in the mirror afterward, he wasn't entirely sure how he felt about the result. At least it was neater and would help him to fit in.
When Charlie walked in, he did a classic double-take. "Daniel?"
Daniel winced, "That bad, eh?"
Charlie shook his head. "It's fine. It's just uncanny, between the uniform and the haircut you look so much like-" he broke off.
"Him?" Daniel looked chagrined. "Let me guess, he wore his hair short?"
When Hammond and O'Neill walked into the briefing room ten minutes later, the general looked nearly as astonished as Charlie had. "Dr. Jackson?" he asked incredulously.
Charlie started laughing at the look Daniel turned on him. "Yes, general. It's me. No, I'm not him. If you know what I mean."
O'Neill gave Kawalsky and Hammond an I-don't-know-these-people look, and told Daniel, "Nice haircut, Jackson."
Daniel muttered something extremely rude under his breath in Arabic. It only occurred to him that he shouldn't assume he was the only one who spoke other languages when O'Neill looked briefly amused.
#
After a protracted search, Kawalsky found what he was looking for and collected Jack. "Come with me," he said mysteriously. "You're going to want to see this."
O'Neill said, "What is it?"
"Wait and see," he replied. Charlie led him to Sam's lab carrying the tape, Jack half a step behind him. "Hey, Doc. You'll never guess what I found?"
"What?" Sam turned from the mysterious device that she and Daniel had been poring over.
"Where's the video player?" Charlie asked.
Sam looked from Charlie to her husband.
O'Neill shrugged, "No idea."
Sam pointed suspiciously at it, and said in an ominous tone, "If this has anything to do with either the Simpsons or sports, you two are history."
"Not me," Jack protested grinning. "This is Charlie's show." Daniel watched the byplay with amusement.
"I'm tired of having my veracity maligned," Charlie said mock-indignantly. "So I went looking for proof."
"Proof of what?" Sam asked.
"It turns out that not all the security cameras were disabled during the invasion," Kawalsky explained, feeding in the disk and turning on the monitor. "The control room one was still recording, even though it wasn't showing on the monitors upstairs." He clicked the controls. "Watch."
The screen lit up with the image of Sam, being escorted into the control room by a huge Jaffa. Jack stiffened. "That's the guy who killed me."
"No, it isn't," Sam told him. "That's the other Teal'c, from the alternate reality."
"Kel Apophis," Teal'c said.
The goa'uld replied, "Teal'c. Who is this?"
"She was captured attempting to escape, my lord."
They watched the other Teal'c order the guards to attend the goa'uld, leaving him alone with Sam and Hammond.
Hammond faced his new supposed tormentor bravely, "You might as well kill me."
Teal'c responded in a respectful tone, "I would never do such a thing, General Hammond."
The pictured Samantha reassured the general, "It's okay. You're not hallucinating. He's from an alternate reality."
Charlie fast forwarded past Sam's explanation of what they were doing and skipped ahead. They saw the gate begin to spin in the corner of the frame, Sam in fast forward kissing Teal'c's cheek and heading for the stairs, Teal'c staring into the control room and barking orders. As the shimmering event horizon died away, Apophis returned and Hammond was forced to surrender his weapon.
"Teal'c." Apophis was staring at the Jaffa in bewilderment and dismay. "Why do you betray me?"
The Jaffa stared back contemptuously for a long moment. "You are no god. I no longer serve your kind."
Apophis turned to one of his guards and barked something in Goa'uld. Daniel cocked his head curiously. He'd only had a few days with the Goa'uld materials, but he was already starting to get the sound of it in his mind. "He's calling for someone named Shak'l- Teal'c's second in command, I guess." Kawalsky fast forwarded again until they saw the Jaffa warrior come in, pushing three men ahead of them. One of them was Kawalsky. The other two-- Jack and Daniel leaned forward in narcissistic fascination.
Sam and Charlie looked back and forth curiously from the alternate versions on the screen to the ones in front of them. "Uncanny," Charlie said. "Jack is all but identical. Our Daniel is a little thinner and a few shades lighter in hair color, but still--"
On the tape, Jack was mouthing off to the Goa'uld, and the Jaffa guard hit the back of his legs with a staff weapon to force him to his knees. The other Jack winced in sympathy. Teal'c and Hammond were forced to kneel beside them. The Jaffa said something to Apophis. Daniel said, "Um- he's saying Teal'c is an imposter."
"Teal'c killed his counterpart," Kawalsky said. "They found the body."
The other Daniel looked up at the security monitor. "Deja vu," he said, staring at the image of the Goa'uld mothership descending on Cheyenne Mountain.
Apophis was staring at Jack. "Who are you? My First Prime killed you before my very eyes."
"I'm feeling much better, thank you," O'Neill replied.
Apophis turned to Teal'c, "Then who are you? What magic is this?"
Daniel said, apparently unafraid, "Well, you should know better than anyone, there's no such thing as magic."
An order from Apophis and a zat gun was raised behind Hammond. "I will ask you one more time. How could you have risen from the dead without a sarcophagus?"
When no one answered, Hammond was zatted.
O'Neill said to Kawalsky, "All right, I'm guessing the second shot kills in this world too, huh?"
"Tell me what I want to know!" Apophis demanded.
"Hey. I'd love to," O'Neill responded jauntily. "But I don't understand it myself. He does," And he nodded to Daniel.
"Some friend," the O'Neill watching the screen said sarcastically. They watched Daniel gamely try to explain the improbable to the impatient and get zatted for his trouble.
"That looks like it hurts," Daniel said.
"Oh, yeah," Charlie and Jack answered in unison. On the screen, Apophis and his guards started looking around in apparent consternation, then they disappeared in a blur of light.
O'Neill glanced at Jackson. "Okay, I'm guessin'-"
"Asgard," Daniel said.
O'Neill said enthusiastically, "All right!"
Charlie stopped the tape at the image of the two men frozen in perfect amity, with Kawalsky grinning beside them. Daniel glanced at the other Jack O'Neill curiously and caught him staring back at him in a disconcerted fashion. "So--" Charlie said firmly. "I don't want to hear any more comments about my sanity, or Sam's."
"I have to tell you, Charlie, " Jack drawled, "we have known all about your sanity, or lack thereof for quite a while now."
#
Charlie found Daniel in the briefing room, staring at the gate. "Penny?" he offered.
Daniel raised his eyebrows and smiled. "Oh, just admiring what passes for a view around here."
Charlie realized with some chagrin that Daniel had been here nearly two weeks, keeping a gruelling schedule of translating their backlog of artifacts, studying Goa'uld, and mundane translations of Earth communications. But as far as Kawalsky knew, he hadn't been off the base once. "Come on. Let's get out of here."
They met Sam and Jack at the elevator. They looked surprised to see Daniel. "I've invited Daniel to join us for dinner," Charlie said firmly. "He hasn't been out of the mountain since he got here."
"Great idea." Sam smiled at him.
"Yeah." Jack didn't look nearly so enthused.
Daniel looked at him and said, "Uh, Charlie. Maybe tonight isn't such a good time. I just remembered there's another piece of translation I need to get done tonight." He smiled brightly at Sam and Charlie. "Sorry, I'll have to take a rain check." He turned back toward the labs.
Sam and Charlie turned an identical accusing look on Jack. "What?" he said defensively.
Charlie shook his head. "Look, Jack, I'll go out with Daniel for a burger instead. I'll see you some other time."
Jack gave him an irritated look. "No, don't do that. Wait here, I'll go talk to him." He went down the hall after Daniel.
#
"Hey."
Daniel ignored the colonel calling behind him and swallowed the disappointment at not getting out of the mountain. Charlie was a good guy. He'd make the offer again.
"Hey, Daniel."
O'Neill never called him Daniel, always Jackson, military style. He almost stopped but didn't. He'd grown a shiny hard shell the last few years. Nothing stuck to it. Nothing penetrated. He didn't hear the footfall behind him, only felt the hand on his shoulder. He jumped, spinning around warily. "What?"
"Daniel." The colonel looked uncertain, for the first time that Daniel had seen. "Come to dinner."
Daniel shook his head. "Look, you just want a quiet dinner with people you care about, not to entertain a stranger. I get that. It's no big deal. Some other time, colonel." Nothing personal, no hard feelings, no harm done. Daniel had told himself this sort of thing for years. His childhood had made him an expert at dealing with rejection, and he was good at it. Convincing. Most times he even convinced himself. A pity today wasn't one of them. He liked Sam and Charlie a lot, probably more than he ought to. Heck, he even liked Jack O'Neill.
"Well, you're not completely wrong." O'Neill said. "But you're not right either. Look, I'm not a social butterfly. I leave that to my wife. But aside from the little lapse when she married me, she's a great judge of character. So's Charlie. They both like you a lot."
Daniel watched him thoughtfully, "And they gave you grief for being unwelcoming, and you don't want to disappoint them." Daniel wasn't a half-bad judge of character himself, when he paid attention.
O'Neill's face twitched slightly, and Daniel knew he'd read the man right. Now the question was, would he give up or keep pretending he went for this idea. But O'Neill surprised him.
"You're right," he admitted. "And I don't like getting reproachful looks from either of them. So you want to help me out here? There's a trip out of the mountain and a home-cooked meal in it for you. And I'm thinking you don't want to disappoint them either."
Daniel was amused and somewhat apalled at O'Neill's devastating honesty. The man was right. He didn't want to disappoint Sam or Charlie. And in a bizarre way if they lost some of their faith in O'Neill because he was being prickly about accepting this invitation, it would be like Daniel was the one hurting them. Not that he was getting attached or anything. "Okay."
"Great, so you're coming...okay?" O'Neill looked at him suspiciously. "Just like that?"
"Trip out of the mountain, home cooked meal, not disappointing Sam or Charlie. I'm sold." Daniel said. "Are we going, Colonel, or what?"
"Okay." O'Neill looked surprised, but less unhappy with the outcome than Daniel expected. "Why don't you call me Jack?"
#
Kawalsky was genuinely surprised when Jack reappeared only a few minutes later with Daniel at his side. "Changed your mind?" he said.
Daniel gave him a perfectly opaque look. "Jack convinced me the translation could wait."
"Good." Sam smiled at her husband. Kawalsky watched in amusement as he seemed to stand a little straighter. Maybe he shouldn't wonder why Jack was inspired to be persuasive.
On the drive down, Daniel chatted easily with Sam and Jack, talking about some of his travels. Seeing Jack and Daniel together, Charlie felt like they should be polar opposites, but in fact, they were surprisingly similar. Both good-looking, with that touch of charisma that made them attractive to others. Both guarded. Charlie was suddenly struck with the observation they both had emotional armor about a mile thick. Well, Jack's was melted through in a few spots that had Sam written all over them. Daniel, though-
Charlie tried to remember what background they had on file for Daniel; no family, brought up in foster care. Moved more often than some people changed shirts. The bare facts were surprisingly pathetic. Not an adjective he would have associated with the intense, energetic and competent young man beside him. He waited for a lull in the conversation. "So, Daniel, where're you from? Originally, I mean."
Daniel said casually, "Don't you have all that in a file somewhere?"
"Probably." Kawalsky said. "But I don't remember." He waited.
"Cairo." Daniel said after a moment. "I was born there, lived in Egypt as a kid."
"And after that?"
Daniel shrugged. "I moved around a lot. New York metro area mostly. Nothing exciting. How about yourself?"
Kawalsky found himself talking about growing up on military bases around the world, traveling in the wake of his army officer father. Sam chimed in with some military brat references of her own and by the time the subject turned, Kawalsky had forgotten his curiosity.
Dinner eaten, Daniel was sitting crosslegged in the armchair beside the hearth, as close to the fireplace as he could get. Jack looked at him enviously. "Young knees." He pointed out to Kawalsky mournfully. "I used to be able to do that."
Daniel took off his glasses and hung them on his shirtfront, leaning forward to stare into the fire. Without the glass lenses, he looked younger. At least ten years less than his actual age, Kawalsky estimated, given how young he looked with them on. "That's cause we're old, Jack." Charlie told him.
"More like old fakers." Daniel suggested. "I've seen the mission reports. They don't say anything about you tottering out with your canes to do battle with the Goa'uld."
Charlie laughed and Jack said, "That's because the canes aren't standard military issue, and so we can't mention them in the reports."
Sam came out bearing bowls. "Ice cream?"
Daniel accepted a bowl. "Chocolate. Wow. I haven't had this in a while." Sam gravely passed him a bottle of chocolate syrup to go over it, and he poured it on. "Yum." He ate it with an uninhibited enjoyment that took another decade off his age.
So Charlie was doubly surprised that Jack chose that moment to lean forward and broach a subject Charlie hadn't yet dared mention. "So, Daniel. Would you be interested in going through the gate?"
Daniel licked the chocolate off the back of his spoon. "Yes."
Charlie was a bit taken aback at the bare answer, but Jack seemed unsurprised. "Just yes?"
"Hell, yes?" Daniel offered. He set down his bowl to polish his glasses and put them on so he could see O'Neill's face. "Look you wanted me to read Goa'uld writing. I've read and translated as much as I can of we've got. You want me to translate other ancient languages you might find- no problem. But you really need someone on the spot to talk to people, and who can tell what's important and what's not." He waved a hand at Kawalsky. "Charlie's told me about a hundred times that my counterpart was a member of SG-1." He shrugged. "It made sense that you might ask. And sure, I want to go. Any scientist would."
Charlie looked up and met Sam's eyes, standing in the doorway. "He's right about that," she said casually. "I really envied Major Carter." She and her husband exchanged a private look.
Kawalsky gave O'Neill a speculative look, "You know, Jack, if Hammond is going to relax the rules about civilians going--"
"No!" Jack said immediately.
"The Carter in the alternate universe--"
"The Carter in the alternate universe was a major in the Air Force." O'Neill said.
"Now wait just a minute," Sam said. "Charlie has a point. Daniel's not in the Air Force--"
"And he's not going through the gate without getting some training, you can bet on that," Jack said.
"I could do training," Sam said.
Jack's knuckles were white on the rim of his bowl. "You're needed here."
Sam scowled at him, "And I may be needed out there, too, but you won't know that until it happens."
Jack waved a hand impatiently at Kawalsky. "Charlie thinks if our SG-1 was the same as this wacky other universe of yours, that things would go better for us. But we aren't the same people. You aren't the same person. And there's no way you could serve on SG-1, even if Hammond was willing to let you go offworld. There are rules about people in a chain of command not being married."
"I know that," Sam said. "But one of the new SG teams is going to be an engineering team."
"Hammond will never approve it." Jack predicted grimly.
"He already has, Jack." Sam looked at him a little wryly. "We agreed I should be the one to break the news." She shrugged. "I was going to wait until later, but since Charlie brought it up--"
Charlie noticed the expression on his CO's face and decided discretion was the better part of valor. "So, guys, thanks for dinner, but it's getting late, and Daniel and I should be getting back to base."
Sam gave Charlie a reproachful look. Jack said tightly, "Yeah, pal, why don't you do that?"
Charlie didn't need to prompt Daniel, who was scrambling up. Charlie realized he'd sat through the whole argument in unnatural stillness, managing to look completely insignificant without moving at all. When the front door had shut behind them, Daniel let out a sigh of relief and said, "Okay-- I hate to bring this up, but Jack drove. How--?"
Charlie nodded to the curb. "My car's parked over there. I rode in with Jack and Sam the other day. Gas rationing."
Daniel nodded. He knew that gasoline was one of a number of critical things in short supply. "And how about--?" He jerked his head back in the direction of the house.
Charlie grinned, "Oh, they'll be fine. Jack just needs some time to get his protective streak under control."
"Ah." Daniel said curiously. "So you and Sam set him up?" he asked.
"Not exactly," Charlie said. "We'd talked about it before, and I knew Hammond was going to be assigning personnel for an engineering team. I didn't realize they'd already talked about it. But Sam's worked harder than anyone on the program. She deserves the chance to go through the gate. Jack will be worried about Sam going offworld, but he's not going to screw this up for her."
"You think Sam's going offworld then?" Daniel asked.
"I think this planet isn't going to be big enough for the both of them if Jack tries to convince Hammond to ground her," Charlie predicted cheerfully. "She'll make it onto a team."
#
Daniel was looking forward to meeting their fourth. Two of the original SG-1 team members, Warren and Casey, had been killed in the Goa'uld attack on the mountain. Unlike Jack, their bodies had been crushed by falling debris and could not be revived. As he waited with the others in the conference room, he admitted to himself he was also relieved to be released from the grinding routine of military training. Having seen what the Goa'uld could do, he accepted the necessity, and he wanted to go through the gate badly enough to suffer the endless repetition of hand-to-hand and marksmanship drills. He suspected Jack and Charlie, exchanging cheerful sports banter beside him, were just as relieved. Daniel hadn't realized just how klutzy he could be until he had to run obstacle courses with men who'd done this sort of thing for a couple of decades.
He wondered how the other Daniel had dealt with it. Ironically, the one mission they had no information on from the alternate reality was the first one. He knew that the other Daniel had stayed on Abydos and found the cartouche that had given the SGC their gate addresses. He supposed they hadn't included any more information on Abydos since they knew that its stargate had been destroyed in this reality. His attention snapped back to the woman who had just entered the room.
"Captain Clare Tobias, reporting for duty, sir!"
The woman was his own age, with straight blond hair. Daniel wondered what she'd be like under the military facade.
"At ease, Captain." Jack returned her salute and motioned her to a chair. "Come and say hello. Major Charles Kawalsky."
Charlie nodded to her. "Captain."
"And Dr. Daniel Jackson."
Daniel smiled and reached over to shake her hand. "Hi."
Tobias gave him a curious look and turned back to O'Neill. "Sir."
"Welcome to SG-1."
A flash of pure incredulity went across her face. "You mean he is a member of SG-1?" She shot an angry look at Daniel.
Daniel was puzzled. That had sounded almost personal, but he was pretty sure he'd never met this woman before.
"That's right." O'Neill said, coolly. "Is there some problem, Captain?" The sharpness in his tone evidently told the woman she was overstepping.
"Sir. No, sir." Her face went blank and unrevealing.
O'Neill's full attention was on his new subordinate, but if he was coming to any conclusion, Daniel couldn't tell. After a few seconds, he turned to Daniel and Charlie. "Tobias has spent the last two years at the Groom Lake Facility."
"Area 51?" Charlie said to her, smiling.
Tobias turned to him a bit cautiously. "Yes, sir." Daniel remembered Area 51 was the facility in Nevada where alien tech was analyzed and reverse-engineered.
"She distinguished herself and helped save the facility when they had a Goa'uld attack there a year and a half ago." O'Neill continued.
"A goa'uld attack?" Daniel sat up straight. "I hadn't realized there had been any before the invasion. At least in modern times."
"Hathor." Charlie said, with an expression like he was trying to remember something.
"Yes." Tobias answered after a moment. "She had been in stasis on earth for centuries, apparently. A couple of archeologists dug her up in Mexico, and she killed them."
Daniel realized who they had to be talking about. "Kleinhouse and Cole," he said. He remembered reading a notice of their deaths and thinking that Nick would be sorry. He was pretty sure Kleinhouse had once worked with his grandfather years ago. With a flicker of shame, he realized he hadn't tried to check on his grandfather and make sure he was all right. He hadn't even thought about him. The knock-down drag-out argument they'd had the last time they'd seen one another had led Daniel to turn his back on the man along with his academic career and many of his former friends.
"Yes, I think so." Tobias said.
Daniel answered her unspoken question. "I didn't know them, but I heard about their deaths. I'm also an archeologist."
"And linguist," Charlie put in. "He's already been a big help in deciphering some of the stuff we've brought back. "
"Oh," Tobias gave him a slightly apologetic smile. "We could have used you in Nevada. We never had enough linguistics people. Too few people in the military with the right skills, and it was hard to get civilians cleared."
"That's one thing that's gotten easier," O'Neill said. "For some reason, the President doesn't seem to think we need to keep the aliens a secret anymore."
#
Daniel walked up the ramp beside Charlie, trying not to grin like a maniac. He'd gritted his teeth through the physical conditioning Charlie and Jack had insisted on. He'd been dumped repeatedly on his ass in the gym. He'd practiced tedious hours on the shooting range with the handgun that still felt unnatural at his side. He had passed with respectable marks in every area, even if his grades had not been especially stellar. And now they were stepping through the gate. They'd chosen to try and meet a race that their counterparts had alienated. Their world was rich in trinium, a metal not found in any quantity on Earth, but which Earth could use. UAV footage had located the small village where they planned to start.
The gate was every bit as disorienting as they had said, and Daniel stumbled down the steps and fell flat on his face after stepping out of the wormhole. He staggered dizzily to his feet before Jack or Charlie could give him a hand and swallowed hard against the urge to puke. He was too curious about his first new planet to pay much attention to his stomach. Tobias exited the wormhole with considerably more grace but a pale green complexion. She'd looked ready to hurl but gritted her teeth and followed him down the steps in a rather more controlled fashion. O'Neill raised an eyebrow, but didn't comment. Daniel decided they both owed a debt to Sam, who'd quietly warned them not to eat much before their first time.
As the wormhole shut down, Daniel started sneezing. It was spring in Colorado, but he'd hardly left the base since the pollen hit. He'd finished his physical training just in time and then managed to arrange his only off-base excursion with Charlie on a rainy evening when the pollen was too damp to bother him much. On this world it was evidently mating season for trees. He fumbled out a tissue and blew his nose.
"You coming down with something?" Jack looked at him suspiciously.
"No, it's just allergies," Daniel confessed. "It's no big deal." He'd minimized his allergies to the medical staff as much as he could. It wasn't like they were life-threatening, after all, just uncomfortable. And he hadn't wanted to give them any excuse to keep him off the team.
Charlie gave him a funny look. "I never noticed you having trouble at home."
"At home I live and work twenty-plus stories underground, breathing heavily filtered air," Daniel pointed out. "I just get a little stuffed up in the spring is all." And the summer. And the early fall. And any time plants were reproducing. But he could live with it. O'Neill had evidently accepted the explanation and was motioning them to move out, Charlie in the lead, followed by Tobias, Daniel and O'Neill bringing up the rear.
Daniel hiked along after Tobias, looking around avidly, wishing the place looked a little more alien. He caught a glimpse of something shiny and veered off the trail toward it. "Daniel!" O'Neill barked.
"Look at this!" Daniel stopped in front of a large carved pillar, examining the fine carving. Parts of the pole were in a silver metal he presumed was the trinium they'd come to negotiate for. Daniel scanned it, recalling the Salish Indian legends he had read to prepare for this mission. "Look, it's a clan crest." he said, pointing up. "It tells the story of the clan's origin. This one talks about how they were brought here from a distant planet by evil rulers. Now, according to this figure, uh, the evil rulers were probably Jaffa, taking them from Earth." He turned to the three soldiers, who were all looking around uneasily.
Jack said, "Kawalsky?"
"I know." Charlie said.
Tobias looked from one to the other, "I have this feeling that we're being watched," she said.
Daniel gave them a puzzled look. "Well, yeah. The Spirits of the Salish are probably all over us. We could just talk to them, I suppose. But it seems only polite to go talk to the villagers first unless the Spirits show themselves."
Jack muttered something under his breath that could have been, "Civilians!" and led the way toward the village.
They hadn't traveled another hundred yards when a man with long black hair stepped out of the shadow of the trees into their path and regarded them silently. Daniel took a couple of steps forward. "Hello. We are peaceful explorers. My name is Daniel."
The man spoke, "For peaceful explorers, you sure carry a lot of weapons, Daniel."
"The weapons are only for defense," Daniel said. He personally thought they were rather heavily armed considering they were visiting a peaceful planet inhabited by aliens whose technology far outstripped their own.
"We sometimes meet people who try to harm us," Jack put in.
"We do not mean you harm," The man said. "I am Tonane."
"These are Jack, Tobias and Charlie," Daniel said. "We come in search of an ore called trinium. I think you would call it ke."
"You would need to talk to the Spirits about that," Tonane said.
"We would very much like to meet the Spirits," Daniel assured him.
"Come." Tonane turned and led them into the wood.
#
SG-1 returned from their meeting with Zales and Takaya. Jack and Charlie were practically swaggering as they came down the ramp.
"Mission, oh-so-accomplished," the colonel said. "The aliens really, really don't like the Goa'uld-- kicked them clear off their world several centuries ago. They're going to share some basic scientific theory with us, as well as help us build some simple devices to get us started. They're going to help us mine trinium using clean environmental techniques in quantities that will not affect the native population. And best of all, they are willing to join us for joint military actions against the Goa'uld, at least on a limited basis." He gestured broadly, "They can do this really nifty disappearing thing with their arms--"
Hammond nodded, "Very good, Colonel. And good job SG-1. We'll debrief in half an hour."
#
As they got in the elevator after the debrief, Charlie said, "So, anybody for lunch?"
"Sure, meet you down at the commissary in five?" O'Neill said. He looked at Tobias and Daniel. "You in?" They nodded. He gave them a second look as they got off at the same floor he did. "Where are you guys going?"
"I was going to get the translation I left in Sam's lab yesterday," Daniel said.
"I was wondering how the naquadah generator testing was coming," Tobias said. "They were supposed to be firing it up today."
"Oh." O'Neill started down the hall toward the lab.
"How about you, Jack?" Daniel asked.
"I was going to invite Sam to join us for lunch," he admitted.
Daniel shook his head. "Five bucks says she blows you off for her new toy."
"You're on, Jackson."
Daniel glanced back at his teammate. "C'mon, Captain. You're my witness."
Tobias caught up with her longer-legged teammates with a rather reserved expression. As they approached the door of the lab, the ground seemed to heave under their feet, and a shiver went through the air. Daniel staggered. Alarms started to blare, and they could hear yelling from inside the lab. "What was that?" he asked.
"An earthquake?" suggested Tobias.
Daniel shook his head. "No way. I used to live in California. That wasn't like any earthquake I ever felt."
Jack had taken two long strides to the lab door and yanked it open. Sam and a bunch of the engineering crew were whooping in triumph. One of her new teammates, a tall good-looking major, was standing next to the generator wearing safety glasses and grinning from ear to ear.
"What was that?" O'Neill asked.
Sam was going to answer the phone and held up her hand.
The major said, "The reactor works, sir."
On the phone, Sam was saying, "Yes, sir. We're fine. Yeah, it was just the reactor. No sir, just an initial energy pulse. There's no threat to the base." There was a pause, and she said, "Yes, of course, General. It won't happen again." She put the phone down. "Ian, in future, before we activate any device that includes the word 'reactor' in it, General Hammond would like to be notified." She grinned.
"Oops," the major said, but he couldn't stop smiling.
"Howard, have you met Captain Tobias?" O'Neill asked.
He shook his head, and O'Neill continued, "She's another engineer. Tobias, Major Howard."
"Pleased to meet you, sir," Tobias said politely.
O'Neill invited both Sam and Howard to join them for lunch, but they were too keen to continue working on the reactor. Tobias gave the machine a slightly wistful look as they left. Daniel suppressed a smirk until they reached the hall. "Well?"
Jack handed him the five sourly. "Smartass."
Tobias' lips twitched at her CO's discomfiture. He noticed. "You too, Captain."
"Sir."
"Hey, at least the captain didn't blow us off for a good-looking reactor," Daniel said. "Though I must say you looked tempted."
Tobias gave him a slightly uncertain look at the gentle teasing, "It's very interesting. I hope I'll get a chance to see more later."
"Just remember, Tobias. SG-1 is a field team," O'Neill advised. "If you really prefer to play in the lab, you're in the wrong place."
"I'm very happy to be on SG-1, sir," Tobias said. They joined Kawalsky in the food line.
O'Neill said, "We've been making an effort to integrate scientific expertise with the first contact teams. Hence you and Daniel. Our original team makeup was more heavily slanted to special ops skills. You have both alien tech experience and special ops background, which makes you a natural for a field assignment. Unlike Howard, for example, who's pretty much exclusively a techie."
"Thank you, sir," Tobias seemed both surprised and flattered. Daniel was a little startled himself, he hadn't realized Tobias had a special ops background.
Kawalsky grinned, "Yeah, but Howard has one of the best stories from the invasion of anyone on the base." He chose food from the line and went to grab a table in the back.
When they had all settled, Daniel asked, "So what happened to Howard?"
"He's one of our NASA guys." Charlie said. "He was on Columbia."
"Oh!" Tobias looked surprised and respectful. "One of them."
"One of who?" Daniel said curiously.
"They sent five astronauts up in the shuttle Columbia to attack the two Gould motherships that were attacking Earth," Kawalsky said. "They had a couple of nukes, but that was about it. They set course for one of the motherships, who just ignored them. Until they ran into her shields. Then the shuttle broke up. They had nothing that would detect the shields, of course."
Daniel said, "Uh, wow. I hadn't heard anything about this."
"In Egypt, I guess you might not have," Charlie said. "It was a pretty big deal. Four of the five astronauts survived the collision; they were all suited. They decided to go EVA - well, or already were EVA, but they tried to get the bombs onto the motherships. The Gould used their ring transporter to pick them up. And then of course they were taken prisoner, and that was the end of that."
"How did they survive?" Daniel asked. "Did the Asgard set them free?"
"That's right," Charlie said. "At least the two who survived interrogation. They apparently got a lot of credit for bravery and fortitude. See, the Gould kept asking them questions about the stargate. Which they of course denied knowing anything about because they never worked here."
"They must have been pretty surprised when they were transferred to Cheyenne Mountain," Tobias said smiling. "I believe that Major Lewis was also assigned to the SGC after he recovered?"
"That's right," Kawalsky said.
"I think I know him," Daniel said. "One of the anthro guys, right?"
"That's him."
Daniel shook his head, "Sitting on my butt in the desert listening to the radio sounds pretty tame by comparison."
Tobias laughed. "Funny, that's what I was about to say. Different desert of course."
"Speaking of dessert," O'Neill said, "Are you going to eat that Jello, Charlie?"
#
SG-1 lined up at the foot of the ramp, O'Neill grousing. "I can't believe this. We're being sent bargain-hunting. "
Daniel couldn't help but be amused. "You know, Jack, many of the great explorers of history had mercantile motivations. Spices from the east, beaver pelts from north America--"
"Trinium from the Salish and a virtual reality machine from the Keeper?" Charlie finished. "You gotta admit, Jack, it's exotic."
"Exotic?" Jack's eyebrows went up. "We're negotiating to hook our people's brains to a machine because the government is too cheap to buy ammunition."
"Actually, based on the report, getting them to hook us to the machines is not going to be a problem," Daniel riposted cheerfully.
"And that doesn't bother you, just a little, Daniel?" Jack demanded. The huge stone ring was just starting to turn.
"I think it sounds fascinating." Daniel wasn't joking. It did sound fascinating. The report had said the machine could pull out memories and replay them with with astounding realism, and even create realistic scenarios that had never happened based on the user's own experiences. It was that last capability that interested the SGC. They were hoping to arrange to do training missions in the virtual reality. The huge expense of rebuilding after the alien invasion had put the government under pressure to cut costs wherever possible.
With the whole base now drawing power from Sam's naquadah generator, the complex had drastically cut its operating costs. Being able to train SGC personnel in a very realistic virtual reality with no expenditure of rations or ammunition would be another enormous bonus to the budget. Every little bit helped. Best of all, the Keeper might let them do it for no other fee than letting his Residents watch.
Daniel had noticed the report summary hadn't said anything about what memories were replayed for the other SG-1, but it did say the Keeper had wanted them to provide entertainment and new experiences for his Residents. Daniel wondered what they'd find interesting in his mind. He'd really enjoy showing the Residents some of the places he'd traveled.
"It's not surprising government resources are rather strained right now, " Tobias put in. She'd been quiet and a little reserved on the mission to the Salish. Daniel wondered a little guiltily if she was feeling left out of the growing camaraderie between the three men. He resolved to try and make more of an effort to include her. Though she'd opened up a bit over the last couple of weeks.
He ought to find it more surprising he got along so well with Jack and Charlie, Daniel thought. Though with Charlie, he sometimes had the uncomfortable feeling that he was receiving a respect a different Daniel Jackson had earned. But he and Jack just seemed to be tuned to the same wavelength, scary as that sometimes was. Already the three of them were developing a comfortable rapport. Whether Tobias would find a place in that or not was too soon to tell.
"Seventh chevron is locked," the sergeant announced over the intercom, and the gate did its amazing whoosh. Daniel watched it, rapt. As often as he'd seen it from the control room or the briefing room window, it still filled him with awe.
"SG-1, you have a go."
#
Charlie walked down the steps from the gate, looking around at the beautiful garden. "Nice," he commented to Jack. He wasn't knew his friend was not looking forward to voluntarily subjecting himself to mysterious alien machinery, but the place certainly didn't look malevolent.
"Yeah, but where's there's a garden, there's snakes." Jack turned to look at their two newbies, exiting the gate.
'At least this time Daniel managed not to fall on his face', Charlie suppressed a grin. Daniel had done a great job of presenting their case, both to the Salish and their Spirits, even if he'd spent most of the mission too excited to stay still. Charlie and Jack had exchanged seriously dubious looks as Daniel had gravely addressed the wolf and raven with respect. Even having read all the reports, Charlie wasn't sure he could have kept a straight face. But it had paid off for them in spades.
This time Daniel didn't even get off the ramp before he started sneezing thunderously. Charlie winced. "Have you talked to a doctor about that?" he asked.
"It's not serious," Daniel insisted, mopping his nose.
Charlie wasn't so sure. Daniel had been stuffed up for hours after their last mission, and his reaction this time was if anything worse. Charlie looked around at all the flowers. Not that that was any surprise. "Don't they have medicine for that sort of thing?"
"Antihistamines," Daniel said. "I have some, if I need them. But they make me too dopey to take all the time."
Jack was obviously exercising heroic restraint not to pick up on that straight line.
"The Dr. Jackson in the other universe took antihistamines," Tobias said.
They all stopped and stared at her. She looked a little defensive. "It's in one of their reports. The planet with the neanderthal disease. Jackson wasn't affected because of his medication."
"Well, if we go there, I'll consider taking something," Daniel said, with a stubborn set to his jaw. He was sometimes a little touchy about his alternate, something Charlie was afraid was largely his fault. Daniel pointed to the dome. "Our virtual, not alternate, reality awaits."
The dome was exactly as it had been described: greenery everywhere, the still forms of the Residents locked into chairs, organic looking tubes piercing their skin. Daniel tapped the symbol on the door. "This is supposed to be the symbol that marks the exits inside the program." The others nodded, and walked cautiously forward. They came to four empty chairs near the back.
O'Neill looked at them without enthusiasm. "Okay then." He looked around at his team. "Remember we aren't here to play games. We tell the Keeper that as soon as we see him, and try to find one another. Keep in mind that any SG-1 person you find is just as likely to be part of the virtual reality as not, so don't trust any of it. Ah-" He shook his finger warningly at Tobias, who had just opened her mouth. "I read the report, Captain. Keep in mind there are differences, and we could have one bite us on the butt at any time. We can only trust the reports to a point." He looked around at his team-- Charlie and Tobias standing alertly, and Daniel blowing his nose again. "Okay, let's do it."
There really wasn't any trouble getting into the virtual reality. As soon as they moved close enough, the black tubes whipped out and dragged them in. Charlie could see a tube approaching his temple and then everything went--
#
Daniel wasn't conscious of any transition at all. One moment he was being dragged into the chair, the next he was-- "In a museum?" He looked down at his unfamiliar civilian clothes, then looked around delightedly. Daniel couldn't help grinning. He'd have thought the Keeper wo