Quantum Mirror Alphabet Soup

[fignewton]

My thanks to the authors who made Quantum Mirror Soup a reality (an inadvertent pun, there!): Thothmes, Ivorygates, Topazowl, Wonderland, Jedibuttercup, Watervole, Sallymn, Fig Newton, Goddess47, Gategremlyn, Anthropos Agnostos, Maddersahatter, Antonomasia, and Eilidh. My deepest appreciation to our regular cooks; a respectful salute of the ladle to our new chefs, Watervole and Anthopos Angostos; and a crisp new linen hat to Ivorygates, Wonderland, Thothmes and Topazowl for their multiple entries. (I wanted to go with gold-encrusted ones, but the Goa'uld swiped them.)

We are, sadly, still five entries short. In the meantime, though, enjoy some 33,000 words of gen Quantum Mirror fic! Stories range from pre-series to post-series, with ratings from G to PG-13.

Please follow the links to offer feedback to the authors!

A is for Angst
by mific

There was a whole lot of excitement after SG-7 found another quantum mirror in an ancient facility, but they soon found it wasn’t a lot of use. In fact, it was mostly just another weak point in their defenses, even after Daniel found the remote and Carter figured out how to program it.

You had to be persistent to the point of obsession to click through an infinite array of universes so as to find anything vaguely promising. Anything that wasn’t hard vacuum, an asteroid belt, molten lava, a cloud of toxic gas or suchlike. Anything remotely Earth-like, remotely similar to their own universe. The scientists plugged away at it for a few weeks, before giving up and locking the thing away in a big industrial safe just in case anything lucked into Earth’s address and tried to come through.

“So that other time with Daniel was what?” Jack asked Carter. “A fluke?”

“Yes, sir. One in a trillion—unimaginable odds. I can get it roughly focused on the right cluster of multiverses, but there are still countless millions of options.”

“Countless, huh? That’s not very precise of you, Major.”

“You want the exact number, sir?” Carter’s politely deadpan insolence with senior officers was coming along nicely, but then she’d learned from the best.

“Nah,” Jack said. “Countless’ll do it.”

The mirror got shunted off to a remote SGC science department storeroom, safely contained, and started gathering dust. Until the night Jack couldn’t sleep.

He never slept much on that night, if at all, not on the anniversary. Sometimes he drank himself into oblivion, sometimes he didn’t. His liver protested more these days, so he was going off that option. Sometimes they were off-world, dodging Jaffa or running for their lives. Those anniversaries were okay, unlike the ones when he was locked in a prison cell or holed up alone in a cave. It was better with the team, but it didn’t always work out that way.

This time Jack decided to spare his liver and hit the sack early, but sleep wouldn’t come. Instead, he started getting dumb ideas, and finally he got up and drove to the Mountain. The SFs weren’t surprised to see him—he came and went at odd hours pretty often. He took the elevator down to his office and found the report with the details, then took the elevator back up to the right level, found the storeroom, and used his passkey; there were a few advantages to seniority.

It was dark, but he didn’t put the lights on; he’d brought a flashlight. He wasn’t sure why, but he was skulking, and you didn’t do that under fluorescents. He entered the combination for the safe and there it was, gleaming darkly. At first he thought there was nothing at all on the other side, then he made out distant stars. One of the universes where Earth didn’t exist, then.

Jack sat on a box and peered at the mirror. It was about half his height and a couple of yards away. He closed his eyes and thought. When he opened them, the view through the mirror showed a suburban house, clearly on Earth. Jack's heart sped up. He'd been right: it responded to his gene.

He waited, and the front door opened. A guy very like Jack, but with fewer lines on his face and a little more padding around the middle opened the door and turned to call back inside. A young man emerged and clapped the older guy on the back.

“C’mon, Dad,” the young guy said, “We’ll be late.”

“It’s just a squash game, Charlie," the older guy said. "What's the big rush?"

The young guy—Charlie—grinned and put an arm around his shoulders, walking him to a nearby car. “Just 'cause I’m gonna beat you, Dad–”

“Don’t get too cocky,” the Jack of a universe where Charlie hadn’t died said, elbowing his son in the ribs. “I may be old, but I'm cunning.”

Charlie laughed and got into the driver's seat and Jack’s alternate got in in the passenger side, and they drove away.

The mirror went dark; he must have thought it off. Jack found his face was wet. After a while, he locked everything up, took the elevator back topside, and went home to bed, then lay awake the rest of the night.

He was going to save it for the anniversaries, but he just wasn’t that strong, and a week later he was back in the storeroom. He didn’t always see Charlie; sometimes he saw no one, and one time he saw Sara as well, all three of them coming home from some outing, Jack in dress blues and Charlie in a suit and tie. The fact that he couldn’t be sure what he’d see only made it more addictive.

“Are you well, O'Neill? Teal'c asked him, one day in the mess.

"What? Yeah, sure," Jack lied. "I’m fine." Teal'c eyed him carefully, but said nothing more.

He pieced together some things about the other universe from the snippets he saw. He was retired there, and Charlie was at college, maybe studying law. Sara taught something, but he hadn't worked out what. He rationed himself to only using the mirror once a week, but it was hard sticking to the schedule. He had to, though, it cut into his sleep and he couldn't afford to be off his game on missions.

He was off his game though, more tired and distracted than he'd realized and so they got ambushed and fell down a cliff. Teal'c sprained his wrist, and Daniel got concussion. Sam was badly bruised and Jack was banged up and scraped, but they all made it; they survived, no thanks to him.

He swore off the mirror after that, but only lasted a few days. That night, Charlie came out the front door with a pretty girl, laughing and talking softly, and they sat in the porch swing and watched the sunset. When they started kissing, Jack switched it off to give them some privacy, then sat here, head in hands, for a long time.

Daniel had been out of the infirmary a few days and Teal'c was pretty much better, when Jack succumbed to temptation again. It was less than a week, but he couldn't stay away.

He was watching Charlie tote boxes of books and junk to the car, maybe for some sort of sale or charity event, when he heard a noise behind him. Jack straightened slowly, then turned.

"He looks well," Teal'c said, watching Charlie heft a big box of books, calling something back to Sara in the house.

"Yeah," Jack said. His throat seemed to have closed up. "Yeah, he does."

He thought the mirror off, went through his usual routine of locking everything back up, and they walked out together.

Teal'c took him to a bar, their usual place, where Daniel and Carter joined them. They didn't discuss it, but it helped that they knew; Jack felt relieved that he wasn't carrying the burden of it alone any more. He didn't have that much to drink, but he fell asleep soon after he got home, without too much trouble.

The next day Walter mentioned they were reorganizing the SGC science storerooms. "Major Carter's idea, sir—it's gotten pretty cluttered on that level. We're shipping some of it out to Area 51 and warehousing the rest. I can give you a manifest of where it's all going if you want one, sir."

"Nah," Jack said. "Doubt there's anything there I'd be interested in. Carry on, Sergeant."

Yes, sir," said Walter.

feedback

B is for To Be or Not To Be
by thothmes

Daniel was playing with his favorite toys, sprawled on his stomach in his favorite place for his game, under the photography table in the work tent. It was sectioned off from the rest of the tent, and surrounded by blankets to be sure that the dig photographer, a graduate student named Dick Morton could control the lighting and get it just the way he wanted it on anything that Daniel's mom or dad brought back from the site at the end of the day to be photographed. Daniel liked Dick. He was the sort of fellow that liked kids and answered all of Daniel's questions without getting cross. He said he liked to see a boy who wanted to learn things, and as long as Daniel did not touch any of Dick's expensive cameras or knock over any of the lights on their heavy stands, they could be friends. Dick said he was a photographer, he said, because in Egypt's bright sun in the desert sand of the Red Lands, a dark tent was the best place for a ginger to be. This confused Daniel until he figured out that "ginger" was just a British way of saying "red head." Daniel's dad had taught him that the Red Land, deshret was what the Ancient Egyptians called the desert, while the cultivated land was the Black Land, kemet.

Daniel had asked the boys in the village school for their help and had collected all the popsicle sticks from the bouza, the mastic flavored ice cream that Magid, the bouza man sold. It took two weeks to get enough sticks. He traded them one for one, giving each boy a hard raspberry candy with as soft center, wrapped in red cellophane and foil that Grandpa Nick had sent him all the way from Belgium. There was a conference there every year, and this year Nick had gone to give a talk about the mystery of the crystal skulls of Central and South America. He had string that he had saved from the packages that came for the dig. Most packages were equipment, sent from a supplier in London, because it was cheaper to get it shipped from there instead of all the way from New York, all the way across the wide ocean.

Daniel knew how wide that ocean was, because it took days and days on the big ocean liner to get to Paris. His mom told him that some day when Daddy had tenure and was a full professor, they might be able to cross the Atlantic on an airplane, and that they would be able to go to sleep in New York and wake up in Cairo, and then only spend a day getting to the dig site by boat. It sounded like a miracle to Daniel, to be able to get so far so fast.

His parents had helped him set up his game. First they told him to make a list on the first page of his notebook of all his marbles, so he knew how many he had of each kind and color, and then they dug a square hole a foot deep under the photography table. Then they put a ragged piece of cloth in the hole, and explained to Daniel that the cloth would be the boundary. If Daniel found cloth, he knew he had gone far enough. That night after Daniel went to bed they took Daniel's marbles, and starting with a layer of the sand they had taken out of the hole, they put down layers of sand, and rich black dirt from the cultivated lands, and even some charcoal from the cook fires used to make tea for the Egyptian workmen who worked on the excavation. As they filled the hole back in, they scattered in the marbles for Daniel to find. The next morning, right after breakfast, they brought over the steel square and a few meter sticks, and showed Daniel how to set his sticks out at regular intervals to mark the edges of his square, and how to run the string from stick to stick to mark a grid on the surface of the sand. They gave him a notebook, and showed him how he could make a grid in the notebook where each decimeter in the sand was only two centimeters on the paper. By then, Daddy had to go off and greet the workmen, and make sure that everyone knew what the plan for the day's work would be, so Mom had stayed for a little while longer to explain about how Daniel could draw in each of the marbles he found on the paper, and that as he found each one, he could locate it on the grid by the number it had on the list of them that Daniel had made, so the big green aggie would be 13, and the solid blue would be 21. then she showed him how to notice where the layers of sand and dirt changed color, and how to mark it in the notebook in side view on something called a profile. She told him the charcoal layer was special and he should keep a sharp eye out for it, because charcoal layers were special to archaeologists. They marked the time when a site had burned. All the marbles above the charcoal were after the burning, and the ones under it were from earlier. When Dick came, Mom new it was time for her to get to the site too, to help the graduate students learn to figure out what they were seeing as it emerged from the ground.

Daniel pulled out his favorite Christmas gift that year, a real archaeologist's trowel, just like the ones his parents had, ordered specially for him, with his name burnt into the handle. He had a scuffed up old meter stick too, one that was left over from last season, where the black and white squares painted on the side to mark the centimeters on one side and the black and white rods on the other side to mark the decimeters were too faint in places to photograph well. That didn't matter to Daniel. He was not going to be photographing his finds, because they were only modern marbles. Mom said that was important, so that if he missed any, no future archaeologist would think they had found something ancient. Anyway, it was the trowel that was really cool.

"When it comes to trowels," Dad had explained, "graduate students are like hungry jackals, just waiting for you to turn your back so they can steal the trowel away. Don't let them convince you to lend it to them, and if it disappears, we'll be able to tell it's yours because it's marked."

He'd thought Daddy was just joking until he had seen the handle of his trowel sticking out of the top of Peter Patterson's tool belt. Later when he himself was in graduate school he had had a moment of regret about how he had stretched out his arm and pointed at poor Pete, and with the best ringing tones he could manage with his boy's voice, as if he were denouncing him before a Revolutionary Tribunal, had cried out "Thief! You have my trowel! Give it back!"

Pete had turned still redder than his sunburn had already rendered him, and handed it back immediately. Graduate school Daniel knew that the man's focus had been on the items in his assigned square, and he had probably reached blindly for a trowel, and gotten Daniel's instead of his own without noticing.

Marble archaeology was a fun game. Every day after breakfast, until it became stiflingly hot and his parents came to get him to eat lunch in the cooler semi-dark of one of the tombs cut into the walls of the cliffs near the dig and then nap through the worst of the day's heat, and again in the late afternoon as the heat was fading, and even after dinner, as the night grew cool, Daniel would dig slowly through his filled in hole, little grid square, by little grid square, being careful to note any changes in color or texture or color, and how far down from the string grid that marked the original surface they fell. He tried to make sure that he wrote down everything he saw right away, because if he didn't, sometimes he couldn't remember exactly how it had been.

"Archaeology is a process of destruction," his Mom had told him. "You have to be sure your records are good, because you will never be able to put it all back the way it was. In a hundred years if another archaeologist wants to know how it all was, your notebook will be the only way for him to find out."

When the whole was all dug out and the marbles were all back in their jar, Mom and Dad would look over his notebooks and asked him questions, teaching how he could tell which marbles were younger, because they had been laid down earlier, and which older, and asking Daniel to explain what he thought the story of the marbles were. Sometimes Daniel made up stories of marble war parties and raids, or marble burial rites (those two bottle caps over and under that one marble sure had looked like they might be intended to be a marble's sarcophagus) but even Mom, who liked Daniel's stories had kept insisting that he show evidence, evidence in the dirt, evidence recorded in his notebook for what he was saying. Then his parents would set up a new arrangement of marbles and layers, and he could start all over again.

Daniel liked digging in the evenings best, and not only because he was full of chicken and saffron rice, pita bread used to scoop up the richly-spiced chickpea and tomato stews, and the cucumber and onion salad with its dressing of yoghurt and dill, but because in the dark of the evening there could be no more digging, so on the other side of the blanket the adults would gather and talk over the events and the finds of the day, and discuss the strategy for the day to come. If Daniel was quiet, and he usually was, sometimes the adults would forget that a child was listening, and use curse words and tell interesting stories. Listening to Grown-Ups was his second favorite game. He learned so much that way.

Today it was quiet though. There was a wedding down in the village, and the head workman's youngest daughter Fatmi was marrying her cousin Rajid. Dad and the graduate students had all gone to the festivities. Last night while listening to the adults, Daniel had learned that it would be very different from the weddings back home in the United States, or even Grandma Judit and Grandpa Nick's wedding in the Netherlands before the War. There would be no champagne or alcohol of any sort, but there would be feasting on lamb, and singing, and drumming, and the women would make the zaghareet, a special "lu-lu-lu-lu" noise women make to honor the bride. People would have designs drawn on their hands, using henna which left a dark color behind after it was put on and rinsed off. They said the designs were intricate and beautiful. There would be dance troupes, and feasting until everyone was stuffed and could eat no more, with plenty of lamb and rice and stews and tightly folded vine leaves full of savory meat and spiced rice, and pastries like bakhlawi, kanafi, and sweet rice pudding garnished with pistachios and shreds of lemon peel, and sprinkled lightly with nutmeg. Only Mom was here because the wedding would last far into the night, and Daniel would need to be in bed before it all ended. Daniel was sad to be missing the food, but missing the special wedding sound, and the henna, and the dancing was almost more than he could stand.

Mom said that she would take him into the village tomorrow right after breakfast, and he might be able to see the henna on the hands of some of the women then. If he asked Umm Nabil to make the wedding noise for him, because he had missed it, she was almost certain to show him. The dancing, though, he would miss. The dancers were professionals, hired just for the occasion, and they would be off up or down the river to another town, to dance for another event come morning. He would be old enough to go to a wedding here in Egypt someday, and surely that wedding would have dancers too.

So Daniel worked steadily at scraping the layers away with his trowel, and the only noise that came from the other side of the blanket was the clink of his mother's tea cup onto its saucer, or the occasional sound of flowing liquid as she refilled her cup from the teapot keeping warm in its nest of sand to one side of her camp chair. The pouring would all be lower than the table that his mother was working at, and the tea cup and saucer would be kept almost out of his mother's reach so if it spilled the drawings she was working on would not be ruined. Sometimes there was the clank of a brush against the water glass as his mom needed to clean her brush. Nothing else, even Mom's breathing, made its way through the thick wall of blankets.

Suddenly there was the sound of crunching sand, and the slap-slap of the sandals that the village workmen favored. Daniel crawled out from under the table to lift up the bottom edge of the blanket. He was quiet, and careful to move slowly and only lift the blanket barely high enough to catch a glimpse of the other side. Listening to Grown-Ups was only really interesting when they forgot you were there. It was Abu Mansour who had entered.

"Marhaba, Hajji" his mother greeted the man. This man, although a poor man, had made his pilgrimage, or haj, to Mecca, accompanying his father and his grandfather when he was a boy, and this entitled him to be greeted with the honorific Hajji all the rest of his days. He was not one of the trained diggers that the village was famous for, but someone who was hired to do the rough digging, shifting the sand, rocks, and debris that the rare Egyptian rains brought down over the centuries in the torrents that ran down the wadis because the dry land was too parched to absorb much water. These rough disorganized deposits needed to be carved away, shovelful by shovelful before the real archaeology could begin, and day laborers would be hired to fill basket after basket with this rough fill which an assortment of teens and older elementary school children would somehow hoist onto their heads and carry off to a dump site nearby. It was wearying, back-breaking work in the hot sun, but the pay was in American dollars, less prone to the galloping inflation of the Egyptian pound, and supplemented the living he scratched out for his wife, his eldest son Mansour, and at least five other children that Daniel knew of, maybe more.

Abu Mansour's voice was rough and grating, and he offered no greeting in return. In his hand was a large knife of thin cheap steel, sharpened and resharpened, with a crude, water damaged wooden handle, wrapped in a scrap of old woolen fabric tied tight around it, ends flapping, perhaps to keep the weathered wood from giving splinters. It was a knife of all work, used for jobs from opening burlap sacks of grain, to cutting back vegetation. Daniel had seen men open the hard hairy shells of coconuts with knives such as these. Like his voice, the knife was shaking.

"The ivory. The ivory hippo." he said in heavily Arabic accented English that showed that most of the digs he had worked on were likely to have been British led. The hippo had been found at the beginning of the week, and had been photographed where it lay, using a clever arrangement of mirrors and some flashlights to bring the right illumination to bear, then carefully brushed free of the dust of millennia, gingerly lifted into a cotton-lined specimen box, given an identifying number, and entered into a ledger of finds, and then photographed again on a piece of green felt right next to a black and white ruler marked off in centimeters to show scale, and then returned to the box, which was closed and placed in the footlocker with its padlock where all the finest and rarest discoveries were kept. In another week an inspector from the Antiquities Department would come, and he would look over the ledger, and check the footlocker to see that the important finds were there and in order. If pieces were missing, The Jacksons would lose their concession to dig there.

"Yes?" said Daniel's Mom. "What about the hippo? It's certainly a beautiful piece. The lotus and the other reeds and the twining flowers on his sides are so delicately carved, and there is even a trace of red pigment on part of his tongue!" She was lost in memory. The night after the find, Daniel's parents had hardly been able to choke down dinner fast enough because they were so eager to finish and return to open the locker and gaze on the finest and most elegant discovery of their careers so far. That so far got a fair portion of repetition, because who knew what the next day could bring.

"You are giving it to me, Umm Daniel." he growled "Imshi!"

This last was a command to hurry. He gripped the knife harder, but it shook still more, and in a wider arc.

Daniel's mother stood.

"No, Abu Mansour," she said, and her voice too quavered slightly and was lower in pitch than normal. "I cannot give you the hippo. It does not belong to me. It belongs to Egypt, to all your people. If I give it to you, what will I show the inspector when he comes?"

"But I must have!"

The knife was raised now, by the man's shoulder, where she could clearly see it. Daniel was scared, so scared. He thought of his mother's head smashing open like the coconut. All his worst nightmares were the ones where his parents died or were lost, He was so scared but he tried not to breathe, and he refused to let himself startle when he heard the so-faint splat of a tear from his cheek down onto a pebble in the sand.

His mother took a step forward, closer to the tense man and the wavering knife.

"No!" said Daniel's mind "Run! Run away! Be safe!"

"Why, Abu Mansour?" she said, in the voice she kept for kittens and skittish donkeys. "The hippo can be of no use to you."

"I will sell," he said. "I know people who buy."

"The hippo is too special," she answered. "There are pictures. The inspectors will be able to tell it is the hippo from here. They will ask the buyer, beat him even, and the buyer will tell them that it was you who sold it. Then they will come for you."

The knife slowly lowered until it was held by the man's side and pointed to the ground. Daniel could see the patches in the man's faded robe, and the place where his left sandal was held together by fraying string. the man's shoulders slumped. He was without hope.

"But I must have money. Miriam, my little one, you know my Miriam, with the big eyes? She is sick, she starts to lose to see in her eyes! Big eyes. So big, so brown! They must see. Doctors in the city, they will not see her without money. I will sell." Now he was pleading. "You lose photographs. you erase the book. Inspector would not know."

"The ledger book is in ink, Hajji," his mother said. "I cannot erase it. The inspector will know. I will not lose those pictures. That hippo may have been made right near here. Some nobleman hunted a hippo in the reeds. Maybe the little hippo was made by one of your ancestors out of the teeth of the hippo, so the nobleman could take a reminder of his successful tomb off to the afterlife with him. You should take pride in the beautiful things your ancestors made. Your children, and their children should be able to go to the museum in Luxor, and see the hippo and be proud."

"You would not sell the hippo if it was your Daniel of the blue eyes that would not see it?"

Now the man folded down into the flat-footed squat that the village women used to work over blankets in homes where space for people to gather was valued over furniture to get in the way, the same posture that Daniel saw the men use hour after hour as they excavated. Daniel's mom could do it for a while, but Daniel's dad, like most European men had lost the flexibility in the hips to do it for more than a few short minutes.

"I don't know what I would do, Hajji. Insh'alla, I hope I would do the right thing and keep the hippo safe, but I am a mother. I know it is hard. I will write to the people at the University in New York, and I will tell them about Miriam. We can send a picture of her. When they see her big brown eyes and her sweet smile, maybe they will want to help, and if everyone gives only a few American dollars, soon there will be enough for the doctor. I cannot promise, but I will try. And tomorrow, Hajji, tell Umm Mansour, your wife to bring Miriam in the cool of the morning, before work starts. I will show her the hippo so she can see and be proud."

Daniel's mother was crying, silently. Her eyes, as blue as Daniel's own looked intently at the man to read what he was thinking, but ignored that knife, that terrible knife, now pointing down into the sand between the man's feet.

"I am ashamed," said Abu Mansour. "If your boy had been here, I would have frightened you into giving me the hippo. With this." He stabbed the sand lightly with the knife.

"I could not have given it to you," she replied.

"You will still help my Miriam?" he asked.

"She is a child. An innocent," said Daniel's mother. "I will try. Some things doctors cannot fix, but many of the diseases of the eye can be treated. And she will see the hippo. Bukra Insha'Allah. Tomorrow, God willing."

"Shukran! Allahu Akbar! Shukran!" thanking her, and not having the Northern European male's fear of showing deep emotion in public, he began to cry, for the first time letting go of the knife, which stood upright where he let go of it, sunken into the sand.

At last, at long last, Daniel could breathe freely again. He let the blanket fall, and sat up, curling up into a ball and hugging himself. That is what Claire Jackson saw when she came around the blanket to check on him after the man had recovered himself and gone.

She sat down in the sand next to her boy, shoulder to shoulder, and reached across his slender back to pull him in, and almost before she could take her next breath, she found herself with a lap full of quivering seven-year old, and his slender boy's arms were wrapped around her neck like a strangling vine.

She said nothing, but breathed in the sweet scent of his shampoo, and the slightly sharp smell of sweaty boy, and rubbed one hand up and down his back, feeling his warmth, feeling the bumps of his spine, telling herself over and over again that he was here, he was safe, that he was a weight on her lap, a warmth in her arms. He was safe. He was safe.

Finally the boy's silent tears slowed, and he passed into that phase where he occasionally took great shuddering breaths, working off the oxygen debt, but was calmer. He relaxed his stranglehold on his mother's neck so he could wipe one grubby forearm over his eyes to dry them, leaving a scattering of sand across his cheeks that were still pale from his fright. With his small hands he cupped his mother's cheeks.

"Don't die, Mommy!" he said, voice quivering in agitation. "Don't leave me! I was so scared!"

"Oh jonge!" said Claire. "I was never going to die. Yes, he had a knife, but I had words. I stayed safe."

"Promise me? Promise me that you and Daddy won't die?" Daniel persisted. His blue eyes, so like her own were intense, and the hands squeezed tighter on her cheeks.

"I can't promise you that, Daniel mine," she said. "Sometimes things happen. But whatever happens, know this, Daddy and I would never leave you willingly. We would always fight to be with you."

The boy did not want to hear that. He wanted certainty. He wanted a promise. He picked at one of the buttons on her white linen shirt, accomplishing nothing but hiding from the truth she offered, at least for a little while.

"Daniel," her voice was soft and low like a lullaby. "Daniel, my gentle one, look at me."

He looked up and into her eyes.

"Daniel, do you love me?"

He nodded earnestly, his fine boy's hair flopping with the motion.

"Will you ever stop loving me?"

This drew a scandalized "No!"

"There is nothing, Daniel, nothing in this wide world stronger than the love of a mother for her child"

"Not even a father's love?"

"That is very strong too, but not stronger. The love that Daddy and I have for you is so strong, it will never go away, no matter what. Even if we were to die."

"But I would be all alone."

"No, Little One, you would not. Do you know what a will is?"

"Determination," he answered.

"Smart boy," said Claire. "But I mean the other kind. A will is a document that people go to a lawyer to make and in the will they list what they want to happen if they die. A will tells the court what they want to happen to all their money and their things, and it does one more important thing. It names a guardian for their children. Daddy and I each have a will, and it says that if anything happens to us, you should go to live with Grandpa Nick. You will not be alone."

Daniel released a big breath. He did not drop his eyes.

"Okay," he said, and summoned the ghost of a smile.

Her boy was brave.

Something bothered him still.

"If he grabbed me, if he grabbed me with his knife, if he did what he said, would you give him the hippo? You said you couldn't. To him. You said that."

"I said that," said his mother. "That hippo is a priceless piece of the story of this place. If it is stolen away, if it is lost, if it is sold away so that no one who sees it ever again knows where it was found, and what was with, then the story dies. That is a terrible loss."

The boy's eyes, shiny with tears gathering on the edge of falling, nodded. That was terrible.

His mother was not done yet.

"Knowledge is important. I would try to use my words to show Abu Mansour that his way was wrong, to show him a better way. To show him that taking the hippo would only lead to trouble and sorrow for him and for his family when the police came. The police here are not gentle. But Daniel," she said, this time cupping his cheeks in her hands, "people are more precious. A small, valuable piece of knowledge would have been lost, but if you were lost, my best and finest gift to the universe would be lost. Don't make me choose, Daniel, because I will always be a bad archaeologist and choose you. Every time."

Was it because of the intensity of the conversation, or because of the imprinting that comes with terror that this hour seemed so vivid, so real to Daniel, even in memory? Up to his very last hour he could have described the scents, the sharp smells of the sands, the hint of moth balls and cedar from the blankets, the unusual scent on top of his mother's everyday smell that adult Daniel knew to be traces of fear. That day was a permanent part of the fabric of who he was. It never left him.

He stood before the lawyer in the dark paneled office with the lady from Social Services and listened to Grandpa Nick refuse to take him, because the work was important, and he could not forsake the work for a small boy, and he knew he was loved. His parents had made a will, because they loved him. His mother had told him that love would never go away. He might be alone, but he was never unloved.

He looked at the Air Force colonel, so tough, so rigid, and watched him deflate into a man so desperately wounded, so devastated that he yearned to die, setting off a bomb.

"You had accepted the fact that no matter what happened, you would not be going home? Don't you have people that care about you? Do you have a family?"

Even Daniel had family. Nick might not be all there, but he was family. Daniel did not want to die. How could this man want to die?

He looked at the holographic molecules, the knowledge of several ancient races, more knowledge in one place than he, or his parents, or Nick would ever expect to mine from the soil, careful trowel full, by careful trowel full in their four professional careers. This could hold the meaning of life! It must not be lost!

"Come on, boys! We got to go, now!" said Jack.

But even as Daniel dug in his heels to stay, he could hear in his mind, as clearly as if she was in the room with him, his mother's voice saying "I will always be a bad archaeologist and choose you. Every time." So he chose, and almost too late!

In a universe not his own, where Jack was a general, Catherine still worked with a civilian Sam at the SGA, and the Daniel of that world had died in Egypt, Daniel remembered his mother's faith in the ability of her words to persuade, to convince Abu Mansour to do what was right, and used his own words to get his chance to return to where he belonged to be able to save his own world, at a cost to Jack, Sam, Catherine, and the others that haunted his dreams for a very long time. They died for him, because of the power of his words.

And in Egypt, an embittered Daniel Jackson, always fearful of loving, never sure that he was loved, lay among the dead. He was a minor librarian, locating reference materials and archived expedition journals for the archaeologists who still had reputations and could get the grant money. If he regretted having turned down Catherine Langford's offer, telling her she would have to look elsewhere for a gigolo, he was beyond caring now.

Miriam, her husband Wathiq, and all seven of her children, were safe in their small village. With those beautiful, long-lashed, big brown eyes, she had been able to draw the attention of the inspector for the Antiquities Department for the entire region. They lived in the village, and her husband journeyed every day to his office in Luxor, and from there to the individual sites and digs as needed. Her vision was fine, and always had been, because when the infected fly had landed on her eye those many years ago, Mansour, her big brother -- a gift from Allah, that one -- had brushed it away before the trachoma bacteria could get a foothold.

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C is for Consequence
by fignewton

They were setting up the cannon for yet another onslaught against yet another stubborn barrier, almost weary from their relentless barrage against the desperate defenders, when an unexpected sound alerted him. He spun, staff weapon leveled, as a man stepped through the opened door.

"Kree shak!" he barked.

"Don't shoot!" the man said. "I'm unarmed." He pulled off his cap, revealing gray hair. His hands remained slightly raised, proof of his vulnerability. "I surrender."

Teal'c eyed him. He could not be sure of the man's age; he was clearly an elder, but what did that mean for humans, who lived short, pain-wracked lives without the benefit and curse of a prim'ta? Despite his vulnerable stance, something of him breathed command and authority.

"And you are?" he asked abruptly, the Tau'ri language uncomfortable on his tongue.

"General Jack O'Neill. Commander of this base."

A leader, indeed. Why would he choose surrender, when his people had fought with such courage?

"You're Teal'c, right?"

Teal'c sought to remain impassive even as he mentally staggered. How could this human address him so?

"Ha'ka'shak," spat Ral'tac, and Teal'c could see his second-in-command bringing his weapon to bear.

"Ha're kree," Teal'c said sharply, and Ral'tac subsided.

"You'll be wondering how I know your name," General Jack O'Neill added, and Teal'c turned his glower on this confusing human. "I have quite a story to tell you."

"Very well," Teal'c said at last. "I shall listen to your… story."

This entailed following the human to a side chamber. The man strode with squared shoulders, apparently unafraid of the deadly weapons leveled directly at his heart. Teal'c suppressed a fleeting wish to have such a courageous warrior as a companion in battle rather than an enemy.

With careful, obvious movements, General Jack O'Neill extracted a small black box from an inner pocket.

"To explain, I'll have to show you this," he said, inserting the box into a larger one.

Teal'c watched as the human manipulated the controls. Tau'ri technology bore little or no resemblance to the Goa'uld artifacts that Teal'c knew so well, but he quickly understood that this was a device to show recordings. And what it showed…

What it showed was beyond comprehension.

The man was babbling now, speaking of a human intruder during the invasion who spun fantasies of other realities where his life had followed other paths. Teal'c tried to ignore the nonsensical words, but how had the Tau'ri so quickly created this mockery of truth?

"How is this possible?" he demanded, watching with sick fascination as the image of himself – himself! – moved on the strange display. "What sort of deception is this?"

" I know it's a little hard to believe," General Jack O'Neill admitted. "But you guys are pretty advanced. You must know this alternate reality thing is possible, right?"

"I do not," Teal'c answered coldly, but he could not tear his gaze away. The sight of himself as a fellow warrior to the Tau'ri, free of the groaning burden of slavery to the hated Goa'uld…

The human commander was still talking, trying to convince him of the selfsame truth for which he longed and knew was forever beyond reach. "Well, then, how did this Daniel guy know your name? He says the guy in this video – you, I guess, in his world – hates being a slave to the Go'aulds."

"Lies," Teal'c denied automatically, even as he reeled under the knowledge that this human somehow understood that the Jaffa were enslaved both to their masters and their own bodies, their biological needs subverted to Goa'uld service.

General Jack O'Neill, perhaps sensing his turmoil, continued to press his case. He, too, seemed to recognize that it was too late for the Tau'ri; instead, he wanted Teal'c to spare this Daniel, the man who taunted Teal'c with visions of a life he could never have.

"Look, I know this sounds insane," the human leader conceded, "but you have a chance to change things in his world. We just need a little time, that's all."

To change things in another world, in a different reality. To grasp with ghostly fingers at a fantasy of cloud wisps and stardust. What purpose could this serve?

"This guy Daniel says the Teal'c in his world is a good man," General Jack O'Neill was saying. "That he betrayed the Goa'uld for a chance to free his people, to free his family."

Of course that would be the reason. Teal'c barely listened. He had abandoned such dreams long ago.

Then the human added, "Your wife. Your son, Ry'ac."

Without warning, fury swept over Teal'c, drowning the whimsy in the harsh and agonized anger of reality. How dare this man try to use the names of his slaughtered victims for his own purposes!

"We received word from my home world," Teal'c informed the Tau'ri commander, his voice rimed with ice. "You sent a weapon of destruction there through your Stargate. My people – my family – are dead."

General Jack O'Neill closed his eyes in resignation, and Teal'c felt a fresh surge of anger at the human's duplicity. So much for honor. The man knew he had killed the citizens of Chulak, and he still mocked him with dreams of their freedom!

Dreams and fantasies served no purpose. All that mattered was reality, and if other realities did indeed exist, they were unimportant. His own reality was the only one of consequence.

And this man – this human commander, who dangled visions of hope even after destroying every vestige of joy that Teal'c might ever have – must pay the consequences for his actions.

It was a pleasure, Teal'c decided, to aim the cannon and fire at his tormentor.

He left the human body behind without a second glance and ordered his warriors to keep moving. They had wasted too much time already.

Level by level, corridor by corridor, they fought their way to the chappa'ai. Few humans remained to resist them. Teal'c ordered groups of Jaffa to secure different pockets of resistance, directing them as needed, until he alone faced the final barrier to the chappa'ai.

A loud, disembodied voice echoed through the corridor, even as he fired the first blast against the last set of doors. He ignored it, focused instead on the rumbling he could hear beyond the doors. The chappa'ai was in motion. Was his quarry about to escape, to slip from his grasp at the last moment?

He could not allow that. He fired at the doors again, and he stepped forward as they shattered.

There was the chappa'ai, turning.

And there stood a single human, wide-eyed, eyes partially hidden by wires and glass.

This was the man that General Jack O'Neill had called Daniel. The one who claimed he came from an alternate reality, where Drey'auc and Ry'ac still lived and he had joined the Tau'ri to battle for their freedom.

"Autodestruct in thirty seconds." The sound of that elusive voice rang out again, an urgent warning.

The man, Daniel, stared at him wordlessly. Teal'c met that frozen gaze with impassive calm.

The chappa'ai erupted in the blue light that bespoke escape, a journey elsewhere. Yet there was nowhere left for Teal'c to go; his people were gone, his enemy defeated, even as he understood that the Tau'ri sought to snatch his victory away by bringing the mountain down about his ears. Even if this Daniel held the key to another reality, it made no difference. What use could that be?

Daniel – a boy, really – ripped his gaze away and ran forwards, seeking sanctuary through the Chappa'ai… perhaps in his other, mythical reality.

Wielding his weapon with carelessly deadly accuracy, Teal'c shifted his aim just enough so that Daniel would be wounded rather than killed. It was not this human's fault that the true reality was one so bleak: his wife and son killed, himself irrevocably chained to Apophis, the Tau'ri world in tattered ruins, his own death only seconds away. He could choose to follow Daniel through the chappa'ai to escape, but one could not truly flee reality. Better to leave the strange human with a bleak reminder of what reality truly is.

That eerie voice called again, counting down the final moments of his life.

"Autodestruct in ten seconds. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six…"

Teal'c turned away from the taunting shimmer of the chappa'ai, hearing it close down behind him. There was no sanctuary there. He would die, like his wife and son, and hope that Apophis would one day die as well.

"Four. Three. Two."

He wished he could cry, "Dal shakka mel!" but he knew it would be falsehood. He was still enslaved, and only death itself would set him free. In the final instant, he chose to face the truth with a straight back and open eyes.

"One."

The world went white.

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D is for Daniel (What's Daniel done this time?)
by topazowl

With Daniel’s curiosity, Jack wasn’t surprised that he had tried to see the Quantum Mirror before it went back to Area 51 to be destroyed. Jack himself couldn’t wait for it to go. Married to Carter! No way and, although it had been good to see Kawalsky again, he wanted that mirror gone. So, when General Hammond told him there had been an incident and could he come back to Cheyenne Mountain asap, he just knew that Daniel and that dammed mirror were involved.

*****

Daniel had wandered down to the storeroom where the mirror was being kept. He didn’t really know why and, although his first thought had been to go get the controller, he decided against it. He was surprised to see Sergeant Hardy on duty at the door.

“Evening Richard.”

“Hello Doctor Jackson, what can I do for you?” replied the young SF.

“Just came to see that the mirror was secure and it’s Daniel, please.”

“Yes sir, I mean Daniel. You know you can’t go in there, don’t you? General Hammond’s orders and Colonel O’Neill’s too.” Daniel sighed. He knew how dangerous the mirror could be but he really wanted a chance to study it.

“Hello!”

Daniel looked around then at the SF.

“Did you hear something?” he said.

“Hello, is anyone there?”

“There it is again,” Daniel exclaimed.

“Actually, sir, it sounded like you!” Sergeant Hardy didn’t know Daniel well but was certainly aware of his status and importance in the SGC. There was a banging, like someone was hammering on a door along with a voice sounding suspiciously like Daniel, repeating his question and now sounding a little frantic.

“It’s coming from the storeroom, can you open it?” Hardy was already on the phone and Daniel was now having a conversation with whoever was in there, shouting through the door. Suddenly, the alarm sounded and six SF’s came running, followed closely by General Hammond.

“Stand back, Doctor Jackson,” Hammond boomed and he slid his access card to open the door as the SF’s removed the safety catches on their weapons. The door slid open and an alternative Doctor Jackson practically fell though the ensuing gap into Daniel’s arms.

“Oh, thank goodness. Have you got a controller? The mirror is still active and I think I might have dropped mine if I fell through, something I’m not quite sure about.” His eyes swung round the nine people surrounding him and stared as he looked at who had stopped his fall. It was another Daniel, who was gaping back at his doppelgänger.

“Stand down people but stay sharp.” Hammond took an assessing look at the new Jackson then, gathering himself, gave two SF’s immediate orders for the controller to be brought to his office and requested that the two Doctor Jacksons accompany him to said room. He ordered two SF’s to stay with Hardy and to lock the room up again and the other two come with him.

The two Daniels were chattering away by now though neither had an answer to what had happened and Hammond, although looking fondly at them, ordered them to cease. He wanted to know everything that was being said. In fact, he had a good mind to separate them until Jack arrived. They finished the walk to his office in silence then Hammond ordered his Daniel to come into his office for a moment. They both started after him.

“No, I meant just the Daniel of this universe.” Hammond said, gesturing at the one he thought was ‘his’.

“That’s me,” they both replied, in unison, then looked at each other, perplexed. Hammond was confused. Never having known Daniel to lie except in extreme circumstances (and then it was usually by omission), this bothered Hammond. He gestured to them both to sit at the briefing room table; he left the two SF’s with them as he headed to his office. Picking up the phone to contact Walter Harriman, his ever present right hand master sergeant, Hammond ordered coffee for the ‘addicts’. He then told Walter to contact the main gate so he would be apprised as soon as Jack O’Neill arrived. He then sat back in his chair and wiped his brow. Why were things never simple in this command?

*****

Five minutes later, his phone rang with the news that Jack O’Neill had arrived. Wanting to brief him before he was confronted with two Daniels, Hammond left his office and headed towards the elevator to meet his second in command. The elevator opened and Jack did a double take to see his commanding officer meeting him.

“What’s he done now, General?”

“Sorry to call you back in so quickly Colonel and don’t bother to change just yet. I want you to come and meet the Doctor Jackson who has just come through the mirror … and before you say anything, our Daniel did nothing but,” and here Hammond let out a huge sigh, “I don’t know which is which!”

“Riigghht,” drawled Jack. “And this is because?”

“When I got to the storeroom and opened the door, and I took six SF’s with me,” as Jack made to comment, “the alternative Doctor Jackson almost fell out of the room, Daniel caught him and they are identical and I lost track of which is which. Jack, they both claim to be our Daniel!”

OK, where are they now?”

“In the briefing room and I requested they not to talk about this until we got there.”

“Fat chance,” Jack mumbled. “Carter and Teal’c around?”

“Teal’c is in his quarters, Major Carter maybe in her lab.”

“OK. So, do we have a plan?”

“I need you to talk to them both together and separately, Jack. We need to sort this out and we also need to find out why Doctor Jackson came through the mirror. Hopefully the controller has been located now as the mirror remained on after Doctor Jackson came through. I ordered the SF’s to bring it to my office.”

“Right, we need Carter on that,” and Jack picked up the phone, dialled and found Carter in her lab and they arranged to rendezvous quickly in the briefing room.

*****

Carter had shut down the mirror, roused Teal’c from his kel’no’reem and they had talked to one Daniel. Jack and Hammond had quizzed the other but their histories were identical up until one came out of the storage room in which the mirror was kept. Everyone was assuming that their Daniel was the one who was outside but it wasn’t a certainty.

Hammond, SG1 and an extra Daniel then spent the next half hour together in conversation; one Daniel was certain he was “their’s”, the other not so certain and everyone was extremely confused.

Without the Daniels, four of them sat in Hammond’s office comparing notes. Everything leading up to Daniel walking to the store room seemed to be identical in both universes. It was during a contemplative silence that Jack had a thought.

“Did anyone find out what they did when they reached the storeroom?” Silence then Carter exclaimed, “I think you’ve done it again, sir!” No-one had thought to ask which Daniel had used the controller which, they admitted afterwards, was their mistake. Having just dealt with an AU Sam and Kawalsky, where no-one had needed to ask who used the controller, it was, hopefully, going to be the deciding factor.

“I’ll go, sir,” and Jack got up and left the room. He was back in a few minutes. Neither Daniel was admitting to using the controller. In fact, Jack had a distinct feeling that both Daniel’s were pretty scared by now, neither wanting to be sent back through the mirror.

“So, people, suggestions?”

Sam was hesitant.

“Come on, Carter, I know you have a theory.”

“Indeed!”

“Well, the only thing I can think of is that our Daniel thought of getting the controller but didn’t and that was the split off point. The AU Daniel did, opened the mirror and came back to the reality he had just split from as it is probably closest to ours in terms of dialling up the Quantum mirror, sirs.”

Hammond was beginning to feel a headache coming on.

“It seems that the Doctor Jackson of the AU is at fault but I can perhaps understand why after the disorientation of coming through the mirror and meeting an identical form of himself. What do we do now? Unusually for Doctor Jackson, one of them is not exactly lying but is unsure of the situation.”

“I am perplexed,” interrupted Teal’c, itself uncommon. “Daniel Jackson does not lie. This means that one of them is not Daniel Jackson.”

“Teal’c, I wish it was a simple as that!” Hammond looked around at his best people. “Ideas?”

“I need to think about this, sir. The AU Daniel is very new, in our terms but he should be subjected to Entropic Cascade Failure eventually; in fact, as it seems that he is a very new creation of Daniel, it may happen sooner than later.”

“Explain, Carter.” Jack was having real problems getting his head around this.

“I can’t really, sir, it’s just that the AU Daniel is so close to ours that the ECF might happen quicker but it’s just conjecture … “ she trailed off.

“Well, one of them is not facing up to the truth!” stated Jack as he leaned forward and thumped the table with his fist, “because neither admits to using the controller. We all know that Daniel wouldn’t lie unless he had a good reason. They seem scared. Daniel had a hell of a childhood and has only recently found stability; this could well be something to do with it.” Showing that he really was far more intelligent and empathetic than most people gave him credit for, Jack sat back in his chair

“People, you are not giving me a solution here!”

“General, might I suggest that we isolate the Daniel Jacksons until the Entropic Cascade Failure ensues. They have no need to discuss strategies if their universes have only recently split from one another. Once the Entropic Cascade Failure sets in, we will know who is not our Daniel Jackson.”

“Thank you, Teal’c! Colonel, escort one Daniel Jackson to VIP 1, Teal’c, you escort the other to VIP 2. Don’t let them communicate with each other anymore or with anyone else. They have spent long enough discussing this and I want them separated to think on their own. Major Carter, see if you can find anything else that will help us solve this problem. Dismissed. Oh, and Colonel, no stopping to talk with a Daniel and please don’t leave, in fact, maybe you’ll go get into uniform once you have delivered your Daniel safely?”

“Yes, sir!”

“I will assign two SF’s to VIP 1 and 2 to ensure no one goes in or leaves. Doctors Jackson will probably demand some work but don’t let them have a laptop or anything electronic. In fact, a novel is about all I will allow or some journals.”

“Coffee, sir?”

“Probably best to organise that Colonel. We don’t want two crabby Doctor Jacksons!”

*****

It was an agonising 24 hours later when the ECF began: if it hadn’t been for the fact that it overtook the Daniel in VIP 2 by surprise (as he wasn’t privy to Sam’s theory that it might happen sooner than 48 hours) and he screamed, they might not have known that early on. The SF on duty had immediately called Hammond who’d found the rest of SG1 and they were now in the corridor contemplating their next move. Wanting to see the evidence face to face, Hammond ordered Jack and Teal’c to sit in VIP 2 with that Daniel and, once they had witnessed an ECF incident, to bring him to the briefing room.

“Neither of you is to comment on Doctor Jackson’s ordeal or his deception,” Hammond ordered.

“We will not,” stated Teal’c and he looked pointedly at Jack.

Luckily, they did not have to wait too long. Sam went to join their Daniel in VIP 1, again theorising that the closer the two were, the more likely that the ECF would happen with greater regularity. Their Daniel was very upset; it took 20 minutes before a further ECF episode occurred and even then he didn’t really calm down: she knew that they were going to be a few trust issues resulting from this incident.

*****

The briefing was loud. People were getting angry. Daniel couldn’t understand why a) they hadn’t know him and b) why his doppelgänger had lied. When AU Daniel started to have ECF incidents only a few minutes apart, a decision had to be made and quickly.

“I suppose if we send him back, he will just to go back to the Universe of the split off point a few hours earlier.” Sam stated as they discussed returning AU Daniel. He was upset and contrite now but really worried about getting back to the correct universe.

“Why didn’t you bring the controller with you?” Jack mused and, at last, the full story came out. AU Daniel had taken the controller with him, gone into the storeroom by sweet talking Sergeant Hardy and immediately the mirror came on. He dropped the controller on the floor and stumbled to the mirror, needing to touch something to regain his balance and he came through. He still denied actually using it; he didn’t realise it was on.

“It would have been so much easier if you had told us this 24 hours ago,” stated General Hammond. AU Daniel was remorseful and apologetic. He put it down to fear as he really didn’t really understand what had happened to him as he had no intention of using the mirror. He had no idea that the controller had been able to activate the mirror immediately and his stumble had left him with frightening consequences. He wasn’t quite sure what had really happened. Then, as often happens with lies, he just got deeper and deeper into the subterfuge and wasn’t really sure he wanted to go back, on his story or to his universe.

“Ahht!” and Jack held up a finger in emphasis, “but you must have realised that this was a split when you met another one of … you … and my head hurts,” he added as an aside. “And, by the way, why didn’t you tell us that you didn’t use the controller?” said to his own Daniel.

“I didn’t have it with me so I didn’t even think of telling you I didn’t use it!” protested Daniel. AU Daniel hung his head which immediately went into ECF.

“We need to get AU Daniel out of here,” and Carter stood. “With your permission, sirs?” They all stood and SG1 plus AU Daniel headed for the storeroom. Returning Daniel to his own universe was completed relatively quickly as, luckily, the controller could be seen on the floor and he slipped back to his own universe, waved and shut down the mirror.

SG1 heaved a collective sigh of relief and Carter, with Teal’c went to return the controller to its locked cupboard. Jack secured the room and warned the SF on duty not to let anyone in at all except General Hammond or himself. He and Daniel then headed up to Hammond’s office to report back as to the success of the mission.

Jack knew he was in for a barrage of questions and statements from his archaeologist but, head down, hurried to the elevator. When Daniel started to speak he asked that they report to Hammond first, then talk. It seemed a team evening was needed.

*****

As Jack suffered the berating by his friend, Carter and Teal’c stood outside Daniel’s office, plucking up the courage to go in and share their friend’s rage. As the shouting subsided, Teal’c made the decision as he had a need to apologise and they went in. A trip to a very nice restaurant in Colorado Springs was definitely on the menu and Daniel wasn’t paying!

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E is for Eight to the Right
by eilidh17

Major Sam Carter theorized that our reality was the impact point of a theoretical stone that was dropped in an ocean of realities, and that the crest of each ripple was a separate reality. The distance between realities represented the possibility of changes, which meant the further apart each ripple was the more likely or obvious those changes would be.

Eight to the right of their reality was what the video playback of the security camera from the warehouse in Area 51 had shown. Eight clicks, making it the ninth reality and further enough away from theirs for there to be some obvious differences, even at a first glance.

Someone had broken in to the complex, bypassed the formidable security protocols, and given themselves a Quantum Leap experience. It had to have been an inside job, but the camera didn’t catch the face of the perpetrator, and whoever they were had erased their digital fingerprint.
SG1 had a go.

~oOo~
Lt. George Hammond had escaped being court-martialed 30 years earlier. According to the database Carter had been able to access at this realities Area 51, his career had quietly died a few months after the events of the August 11, 1969 solar flare, although there was nothing in his file that made any mention of their presence or the reason why he resigned. His last known address was Venice Beach, California.

“Hippy commune?” Jack said, with one eyebrow cocked questioningly. “Hammond?”

A mental image of the general dressed in psychedelic pants and sitting in a drum circle, had Sam fighting to remain composed. “Looks that way, sir.”

“Groovy!”

While Carter checked through the computer for other known base personnel, the rest of SG1 did a recon of the warehouse, only to find the security systems were offline and the compound was abandoned.

“Sir?”

“Leave it, Carter. No-one’s here. This place is a bust.”

They never did figure out who had gone through the mirror.

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F is for Feigenbaum
by sg_wonderland

“Feigenbaum.” Sam said out of the blue.

Daniel peered myopically at his drink. “I thought it was Jack Daniels. You know, like some kind of a joke.”

“No,” she slid sideways until her head was lodged against his arm. “Mitchell Feigenbaum. He worked on the chaos theory.”

“Well,” Jack wobbled back into the room. “He'd have been right at damn home in this one.”

“He proved that the same behavior would occur within the parameters of a single linear parameter....”

“Carter!”

“Until chaos occurred.”

“I don't know about the first part but chaos definitely occurred.” Daniel drained his glass, contemplated getting a refill then shrugged. It all seemed overwhelmingly pointless.

“But it's not pointless!” Sam protested.

Daniel blinked. Either Sam was reading his mind or he'd said that out loud.

“This whole thing makes my head hurt,” Jack nipped the tumbler from Daniel's hand right before he dropped it. “All I know is that it's over. We're all back safe and sound and I don't care what's happening with all those alternates.”

“We are all that matters.” Teal'c was busy tending to the fireplace.

“But it matters to them!” Sam pointed out.

“Do you suppose the other thems are having this exact same conversation?” Daniel speculated.

“There is no Daniel Jackson in that reality nor was there a double of myself. So it is extremely unlikely that such a conversation would occur.”

“But, Teal'c....”

“We have assisted their reality. Everyone returned to their appointed place in the universe. Everyone is unharmed...” Jack interrupted to point at Daniel's bruised cheek; Teal'c acknowledged with a nod. “Everyone is relatively unharmed. If we spend time speculating about realities in which we do not live, we are wasting time in this reality.”

“Well said, Teal'c!” Jack raised his glass. “To chaos. Long may it reign!”

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G is for Gribbles
by mific

When the first one came through the quantum mirror into Carter's lab at the SGC it looked like some sort of weird plant, like a mini-tumbleweed or a giant dandelion.

"Actually, I think it's an animal," Daniel said thoughtfully, passing it off to Carter. Another one had rolled through by then and Daniel picked it up, turning it over in his hands.

"Careful, it might bite," Jack said. It didn't look like any animal he'd ever seen, although it did remind him of something. Kind of like a koosh ball, but bigger, and green as grass.

"I doubt it, Jack, there are no mouth-parts," Daniel said.

"No organs of any sort," Carter added. "It's just sort of . . . squishy."

Jack rolled his eyes and picked up a third one that had emerged from the mirror. "What is this? Lemming season in green koosh ball land?" Carter was right, though, it was soft and squishy, inside the green fur. It didn't seem to mind being prodded.

Jack gave it to Teal'c, who took it dubiously and eyed it with suspicion. "What is the purpose of such a creature?" he inquired, one eyebrow raised, holding it up by the fur between finger and thumb.

"Um, we don't know yet," Carter said. "Have to let the xenobiologists look them over. Another three had rolled in through the mirror by then, and were jiggling about haphazardly in a green pile on the floor.

"And the botanists as well," Daniel said, sounding excited. "I think they might photosynthesize, even though they're animals. Maybe some sort of symbiosis?"

"Look, Carter, you'd better turn the mirror off," Jack said. "I think we've got enough of the things to study." They were rolling about on the floor. He tried to herd a few into a cardboard box, and Teal'c bent to help him.

"It is unclear to me how they move, O'Neill," Teal'c said, picking up the box that was half full of vaguely moving green furballs and frowning down into it. "They have no limbs."

"Yeah," Jack said. "Beats me. Must be the fur, I guess."

Carter was still holding one and stroking it. "They're kind of nice," she said, grinning down at it.

That triggered a memory for Jack, and not a good one. He looked over at Teal'c. "Wait, what if they're . . .?"

Teal'c nodded. "Indeed. The likeness is too great, and the rapidity with which they have gathered." Jack looked down into the box Teal'c was holding. There did seem to be more of them there than there had been a couple of minutes ago.

"Hang on," Daniel said. "You're not thinking . . . ?"

"Yeah," Jack said, glaring at the box. "Tribbles."

"Well, gribbles, actually," Daniel suggested. "Since they're green."

"Gribbles, tribbles, whatever," Jack said. "We've gotta get rid of them."

"But we have to study them," Carter protested. "They’re a new alien life-form."

Jack held up a hand. "Ah! Ah! You have seen that episode, haven't you, Carter? Spread out, everyone, and make sure none of them got away."

"McCoy concluded they were born pregnant," Daniel said, peering into a corner. "That'd explain why these ones are already multiplying."

Teal'c found another three at the far end of the lab under a cupboard, and Daniel located two that had somehow gotten into a desk drawer.

"It's that squishy factor you pointed out, Carter," Jack said. "The damn things can squeeze in anywhere. We're gonna have to lock off this lab and go over it with a fine-tooth comb."

Teal'c frowned. "I do not think a comb will be an effective-"

"Figure of speech, T," Jack said.

"How are we going to . . . dispose of them?" Daniel asked. "Use the backwash of an opening wormhole?"

"Good idea, but it's too risky," Jack said. "We can't let the other SGC personnel see them. You know how that went, on Star Trek."

Teal'c nodded. "They were popular pets, at first. We should not risk exposing them to populated areas in case of . . . souveniring."

Carter was looking crestfallen. "Some might see it as rescuing them," she protested. "I'm sure we can rig up some sort of safe containment, if we just–"

"Nope." Jack shook his head. "Imagine if they got out of the Mountain because some zoologist thought one was cute and wanted to save it?"

"It is already a foothold situation," Teal'c added gravely. He thought for a moment. "Or possibly a furhold situation."

Jack clapped him on the back. "Nice one, T, but we still haven't solved the disposal problem."

"Must be some sort of cremation facility the zoologists use for specimens," Daniel said, looking around vaguely.

"What, alive?" Carter was tight-lipped. "That's inhumane."

"I have a solution," Teal'c said. He set the now brimming box on the floor, drew his zat, and aimed it.

"Oh, jeez," Carter muttered, turning away. Daniel grimaced and averted his gaze.

Teal'c raised a brow at Jack. "Yeah, go ahead, T."

Teal'c fired into the box repeatedly.

"Are they gone yet?" Carter's voice quivered.

"They are gone, Major Carter."

Jack clapped his hands together. "Right. Grid pattern search, starting at the door and working in a line back to the far end. And you'd better lock that universe out, Carter, so we never connect to it again. Last thing we need is a bunch of Klingons coming through."

"Especially if they're green," Daniel muttered.

"But first, Colonel O'Neill, if you will allow me?" Teal'c waved a hand at Jack's shirt.

Jack squinted at him. "What?"

Teal'c reached into Jack's shirt pocket and produced a gribble.

"How did that get in there?" Jack said, embarrassed. "I swear I wasn't-"

"They are, as you said, squishy, O'Neill. They find any hiding place."

"It's probably innate, a survival mechanism," Daniel explained. He pulled a face. "But you know what this means . . ."

"Yeah, yeah, okay, everybody strip," Jack ordered glumly, and started taking off his clothes.
feedback


H is for H-Bombs and Haruspices
by ivorygates

Jack's always liked Area 51. Dreamland. Paradise Ranch. The place where wonks and strategists meet to hone the cutting edge in aviation technology, or to test the best of the best against the best of the rest.

He thinks he might've liked it better before they really started storing alien technology here.

His latest visit started one fine morning with him getting hauled out of bed three hours before his alarm went off and ended up with an Asgard Chariot hovering over Cheyenne Mountain. In an alternate universe, of course, which they were visiting in order to rescue an alternate SGC from a not-alternate-enough Apophis. With one thing and another there were more than a few near-death experiences before Mrs. O'Neill's favorite son could get his people home. So pretty much another day at the office.

(Daniel swore he got them back to the right reality, and Carter agreed, and Carter is one smart cookie. He trusts her.)

The moment they're back and everything's locked down tight, General Hammond ships the Qantas Mirror (he'll never admit he knows its real name; it's too much fun to watch Carter make her "must not call a superior officer an idiot" face) back to Area 51 with orders to have it destroyed. (It's Daniel—of course—who has to ask how Hammond can give an order like that when Area 51 is the civilian side of their dog and pony show. There are times Jack really wishes Daniel would stop asking questions Daniel knows the answer to.)

And then, because nobody is paying SG-1 to rest on its laurels (which would be prickly anyway), they deal with an (alien) bounty hunter and star in a bad remake of an Arthur Miller play Jack's never really liked, and with one thing and another, the memo in his inbox a couple weeks later comes as a complete surprise. It announces that at long last, The Powers That Be are going to actually get around to destroying the alien McGuffin, and SG-1 and General Hammond are invited (in the sense of "ordered") to attend. Details about how Area 51 intends to get this done are scarce, and Carter hasn't been consulted. (What a surprise.) Jack has no idea what the reason for the ceremony is. (Probably above his pay grade.) Bleachers, bunting, brass...it's not that it seems sacrilegious, but somehow maybe a little bit...off. Wrong. Weird. Gonzo. (Nobody he can talk to about it, though. A guy's gotta preserve his air of mystery, after all.)

When they get there, the first part of the festivities is a tour of the facility. Clearly their minders are hoping to bore the visiting firemen into submission so they can be herded in the direction of some transport to take them somewhere else. (Preferably to the reason they're here in the first place.) The tour is long on snake oil (so to speak), short on information, and in addition to their friendly Intourist guides (both civilian), they pick up two geeks (also civilian), a couple of brass (including a three-star), and a smarmy wonk who's an "Administrator" as well as NID (Frank, Francis, Freddy...something like that). There's a lot of "Home World Heroes" crap—something he could really live without, but all that "thin red line of heroes" bushwah is actually useful when it comes to next year's operational budget.

By the time he's nodded and smiled through as much of it as he can stand, he realizes Carter has her "concerned" face on. She's been trying to corner one of the geeks ever since the nickel tour started, but even with Daniel helping, she hasn't quite been able to manage it. (NID wonk (Ferdinand? Farrell?) could have a great career as a sheepdog.) Jack can't get close to Hammond without being noticed, either, so no help there, even if one star trumped three.

There's something hinky in the state of Nevada, and none of them has any idea of what it is. Jack really hopes he can mark all the fuss down to geek inferiority complex and the fact that lab-coats can't stage a decent pissing contest even with home court advantage, except for the fact that his geeks are both looking worried, and Daniel's maybe ninety seconds from going into his snake baiting routine.

Make that zero seconds.

"I'm sorry—" Daniel isn't sorry. (And they say the man can't lie.) "—but the thing I really don't quite understand is what's going on?"

"Doctor Jackson, the quantum mirror presents—" Administrator McSlime is circling back to pour oil on the troubled archaeologist. (Jack is forever grateful that SG-1 never pulled one of those "And Then They All Developed Telepathy" missions, or his hard-honed reputation as a lazy idiot would be toast.)

"An unparalleled opportunity to destroy not just the universe, but all the universes there are," Daniel says brightly, beaming as if he considers that a great idea. "Which is why we're destroying it. We are destroying it, right?" He's got that note in his voice that always reminds Jack of the sound of a buzzsaw about to bite into a nice juicy piece of cedar board. (Not unlike Daniel in this mood.)

"Of course we are, Doctor Jackson!" Labcoat #1 chimes in.

"And of course successfully destroying what is essentially a block of pure naquadaah presents a particular technical challenge—" That's Carter, pouncing on the opening she's been given. (Labcoat is doomed.) McSlime tries to shut Carter down, but he's no match for Daniel's "Scientists Have An Ethical Obligation To Understand The Consequences Of Their Research" lecture. (It's a real crowd-pleaser. Jack's heard it more times than he can count.) By this time, Jack's starting to get spooked. Why them? Why here? What kind of operational speed-bump is something Carter and Daniel would both notice?

Unfortunately, as a last-minute consequence of their native uprising, the four of them are shuffled into one limo while the NID shepherds its vestal geeks off into another. Carter and Daniel look unhappy, which is to say, Carter's wearing her best poker face and Daniel looks rabid. It isn't fair to start with Carter, who isn't allowed to call him names or to (accurately) point out his (many) shortcomings.

"Daniel?" he says.

"Jack?" Daniel answers innocently.

Jack would like to take the time to mention that he, Colonel Jonathan J. "Jack" O'Neill, is on his, Doctor Daniel Melburne Jackson's, side, but there are more important fish to fry right now. "So did you manage to find out why we're here to watch people destroy the...thing?"

"The Quantum Mirror," Daniel says. "Which presents an unparalleled opportunity to study the culture of an advanced alien civilization." From his tone of voice, he's quoting.

"Which we're destroying," Jack says, since he hasn't heard anything that sounds like confirmation yet. "Unless they've decided to bring us here to watch them...not destroy it?"

"Which would make as much sense as anything else the military does."

"And how, Daniel, does one watch something not happening?"

Daniel says something under his breath and slouches back in his seat. "They said they're destroying it," he adds, a little louder. Daniel is the only person Jack knows who can imply footnotes. In this case, the footnote reads: "Not that I believe that, but they're too stupid to lie."

"Well, good." It's his very best "Colonel Oblivious" voice, not that he's likely to receive any appreciation for the performance. "Carter? They told you the same thing, right? Because otherwise we're just here to watch the flouting of a direct order from the Pentagon." And the Pentagon signs off on civilian as well as military paychecks for this project, which gives them a bit of clout here.

Carter gives him a look that reminds him she's both Major Samantha Carter and the daughter of (two-star) General Jacob Carter. (He's just glad he and she are on the same side.) "As you know, sir, the preliminary analysis I was able to perform on the Quantum Mirror after we originally retrieved it from P3R-233 indicated that it was nothing more than a block of pure naquadaah, although since we've seen the Mirror function on multiple occasions, it's clear that it is actually a highly-sophisticated mechanism, possibly engineered at a subatomic level."

("No moving parts?" he asks, just to keep things, er, moving.

"No, Jack," Daniel says with theatrical patience. "No moving parts.")

Carter ignores both of them. "I've theorized that it might even be possible to construct an equivalent nanomachine from a less-durable material; though it's possible that the naquadaah also provides a necessary power source for the Quantum Mirror's operation. Regardless, the destruction of a piece of naquadaah has never been attempted, let alone on this scale, and therefore—"

"Carter. You said "therefore"."

"Sir?"

""Therefore" means the explanation is going to be... long. Do we have time for this?"

"That depends on where we're going," Daniel mutters.

"We are going to the location where the Quantum Mirror is to be destroyed," Teal'c says.

There's a moment of respectful silence. Jack admits (privately) that he's just been put in his place by the big guy, and Carter seems to have gotten her bearings. Daniel still looks as if he wants to make somebody regret knowing him.

"We have no way of destroying an object made of naquadaah other than hurling it into the sun, which might present problems of its own," Carter says. "Doctor Auchtenberger said they're actually planning to render the device inoperable."

"And did he say how he intended to manage this?"

"Not...really. He did mention broad-spectrum irradiation, sir."

"It's not like anyone had time for a cozy chat with the people who actually found the Quantum Mirror in the first place," Daniel snips.

"In fact, they wished to keep you from speaking to anyone here," Teal'c says.

Okay, that's the second time T's spoken up, and Jack isn't stupid. "T?"

"Among the Goa'uld, there are occasions upon which one of lesser status will provide information of use to a superior so that they might curry favor. The Goa'uld who does not keep such an informant close when acting upon his information does not retain power for long."

For some reason, this makes Daniel's face scrunch up like a wet washcloth. "So we're here because we're—in a manner of speaking—the lesser Goa'uld who are currying the favor? Which would make Administrator McGinnis...a System Lord?"

Teal'c manages to frown severely and nod in acknowledgement at the same time.

"But we didn't have anything to do with it—in a manner of speaking," Carter says. "It was General Hammond who ordered it destroyed."

And how many people besides the five of us know the thing even exists? There's a lot of compartmentalization in SCI Top Secret programs. Sure, half the SGC was on 233 looking for Daniel. That's not the same as knowing what the Mirror is. Or what it can do. In fact, Jack would bet his next paycheck that the five of them are the only SGC-side members of that little club.

"They're probably just covering their...assets," Jack says.

"Why?" Daniel asks bluntly.

"Witnesses make things easier when you have to explain to your friends why they can't play with your new toys, Daniel."

"But that doesn't make sense," Carter objects. "General Hammond only ordered it destroyed so people from other realities can't come into ours. We have no way of even turning it on without the controller, and that's in another dimension."

"Ever play "telephone", Carter?"

"So what you're saying is, the idea is that they're doing this because they know we know, and while we know they know we know, we don't absolutely know what they think we know, or what other people will think we know, nor do we know that other people will definitely know."

Jack's impressed. Daniel isn't even drunk.

"I'm sure General Hammond would never consider doing anything unethical, sir," Carter says hopefully.

"Yeah, me too," Jack says. "It's everybody else I'm worried about. Present company exempted."

If General Hammond weren't with them, Jack would be more inclined to think SG-1 was being set up for a "blue on blue" incident, but Hammond has friends in high places.

On the other hand, General Hammond isn't exactly here, is he?

#

Their destination is visible about 15 minutes before they reach it, and Jack can't make up his mind whether or not a hallucination would be preferable. It's a reviewing stand, for God's sake: raw wood, patriotic bunting, the usual folding chairs, and absolutely nothing to review.

They've even run up a PA gantry, which is just surreal. What are they going to announce?

For the middle of nowhere, the place's got a helluva parking lot: several tastefully camouflage-painted trucks, a few white vans, a generator on the back of a flatbed double-deuce and black power cables snaking all over the place. Their driver pulls up at the end of the line, and the car following them pulls up beside them. It's not the car with the brass—that's pulling up at the far end. SG-1 is out of the car before the driver finishes announcing they've arrived.

The air smells like desert, and there's a thin irritating wind. Jack walks away from the car to see if he can spot Hammond. He makes sure to keep his blandest expression firmly in place, though, because there's nothing they can do about any of this right now, and he doesn't want his kids thinking there's anything life-threatening to worry about. Even if he's starting to suspect there is.

Behind him, the second car disgorges geeks in a way that would give rise to the obvious joke about clown cars if Jack weren't so spooked. Administrator McNID hurries them off between the cars as if their virtue was in danger.

Daniel's looking at the reviewing stand with an expression of disbelief. Carter's looking at the trucks as if they're personally offensive. Teal'c, as always, is watching for an ambush. Jack herds the three of them in the direction of General Hammond. McSlime scurries up to them as if he wants to turn them aside, thinks better of it after Teal'c looks at him, and settles for escorting them to the brass. (The geeks have taken the opportunity to flee to the safety of the white vans, and Jack really wishes he could send Carter off after them.)

He gets close enough to Hammond to mention entre nous that Carter has some reservations. The look he gets in return tells him more than he wants to know about the possibility of calling this thing off. At this point, Jack's just hoping that Daniel keeps his mouth shut and they all get home alive.

He's always known Earth is the most dangerous planet they visit.

Once they're all seated (military in the front row, aliens, civilians, and others in the back) there's another welcoming speech from NID Guy (he isn't sure he envies Daniel his ability to remember the names of annoying people), followed by a speech from Project Seven Years' Bad Luck's (it isn't called that, but it should be) lead scientist (aka: another project manager who uses bigger words). Short version: about a mile away, there is a very deep hole in the ground. At the bottom of this hole is a choice assortment of implements of destruction—among them the second cousin of that bomb he took to Abydos not that many years ago—and all manner of recording equipment, the idea being that they can find out a bunch of stuff about their alien toy and blow it up at the same time. Why SG-1 is here for this is apparently to remain one of life's mysteries.

"Sir! A known property of naquadaah is to be able to store and contain energy—" Carter hisses in his ear.

"Boom?" he asks.

"Big one," she says grimly.

"Get to the van and stop it. That's an order, Major." He gets to his feet. "Pardon me, excuse me, sirs, General Hammond, gentlemen and...gentlemen. Major Carter would really appreciate the opportunity to—"

And that's when the countdown starts.

Ten—

Carter runs down the stairs, skittering over the hardpan in those Class A high heels as she heads for the trucks. She's acting on his direct orders and maybe that will save her at the courts-martial, but they have to get there first.

Nine—

Everybody's on their feet now, and General Hammond is demanding to know what's going on. "Shut it down!" Jack shouts at the top of his lungs. "Shut it down!" The three-star's aides are between him and McGinnis, and Jack's not sure who's the ranking officer here, but he knows McGinnis is in charge so he'll have to do.

Eight—

Teal'c vaults over the railing and drops to the ground. He takes off running in the direction of the little flag sticking out of the top of a fresh-poured concrete cap. Ground Zero.

"Daniel! Van! Go!"

Everybody's shouting by now. The three-star's aides grab him before he can get to McGinnis.

Seven—

The countdown hasn't stopped. Please, God, Carter, Daniel, and the van full of geeks can find the "Abort" switch.

Six—

The sound of the countdown is drowned out by a warning siren. He sees McGinnis—followed by Daniel—run for the stairs.

Five—

"You're going to blow us all up!" In about five seconds, but he has to keep trying.

Four—

Teal'c reaches the flag and rips it loose. He stops and turns back. He's shouting something, but he's too far away to hear. If they didn't pull the plug, they're just about—

Light.

#

There's a few moments after an explosion (or after getting hit in the head by something large and unyielding, like the ground), when you can hear, you can feel, and if you're lucky you can even still see, but you have absolutely no idea what's going on, or who you are. (Jack tries not to dwell on such moments.)

"As you should know by now, although I know you don't pay any attention to Sam's briefings, multiverse theory is based on the "many worlds" interpretation of quantum theory, which suggests that a separate universe is spawned by every possible decision—or set of decisions—that an individual makes. Normally these universes are assumed not to intersect—which is confuted by the functioning of the Quantum Mirror—but Brane cosmology not only makes allowance for the intersection of parallel universes, it allows Time to run backward in some of them, which is lucky for you. Or them. Or us."

He has the sense of being indoors, but in a large space. Hangar? Somewhere neither hot or cold. Air breathable, but not fresh. He has an odd conviction that he can see, despite the fact that all he can see is unrelieved blackness.

And somebody's talking.

"You see, Brane cosmology posits that alternate universes cluster in a process similar to consanguinity, which is useful when you add in the theory of observer-created reality, which is not a theory in the same sense as your theory that someday the Cubs will win the World Series."

("Hey!" Jack protests.) (The Cubs are totally gonna nail it. Someday. You gotta believe.)

"You could think of it kind of as if "In the Beginning was the Word", was translated as, "Just before the Beginning there was the Innocent Bystander". Ludwig Boltzmann is actually credited with the original idea, and of course the academic community thought he was crazy. Something I'm very familiar with, actually."

Whoever's talking is behind him. He doesn't know whether he turns or the speaker moves, but now he can see—

"Daniel."

Okay. That's Daniel. Most of the jigsaw falls into place: SG-1, Nevada, Quantum Mirror, Bomb. Daniel was wearing a suit and tie for their little field trip, but now he's changed to a sweater, and he isn't wearing his glasses. But maybe Jack needs glasses, because he'd swear Daniel is...glowing?

"Hi, Jack. Great to see you again. How's everything? But as I was saying, that's good news for you because of the native attraction the parallel clusters have to one another, and I'm pretty sure you aren't listening to a word I'm saying, are you?"

Maybe this isn't Daniel. In fact, it probably isn't Daniel, since while Daniel is capable of lecturing at interminable and tedious length, this sounds more like Carter. And if Daniel could be used as a reliable light source, he'd have noticed some time in the last four years or so.

"I'm all in favor of native attraction," Jack says reasonably. "Who are you, and what have you done with my team?"

"Ah," Daniel says. "Um. Well. You and they...um, we... Us. There's probably no good way to say this, but..."

"So you're saying I'm dead?"

Glowy Probably Not Daniel looks obscurely pleased, and maybe just a little surprised. "How did you—?"

"When people start a sentence that way, the end is usually something like that. And I seem to remember a bomb."

Jack is pretty sure his hands and feet and all points in between are present and accounted for, but he really doesn't want to get into verifying it. He's afraid he might not like the answer. He thinks of that old staple of the sci-fi matinee, the brain in the tank. He doesn't want to try to imagine what it feels like. He thinks he might know.

"Yeah. Really, Jack: you shouldn't try breaking interdimensional nanomachines you don't understand. It gives the multiverse a headache."

"Wasn't me. So. Carter? Teal'c?"

"All four of you were within a mile of each other, Jack," Daniel says gently. "But my point is, like Schrödinger's Cat, you—all of you—are both dead and alive. The "prime" universe—that's the one that embodies co-identical versions of the majority of the decision branches in its local cluster—automatically shifts whenever any universe becomes attracted to a different cluster. And by "shifts", I mean "is consolidated with the former "prime" universe in all ways that don't present an absolute contradiction to the local universe physical laws.""

"I'm dead, Carter's dead, Teal'c's dead, Hammond's dead? So why aren't you dead?" He's dead, he's in Hell, and Hell is listening to Daniel Jackson lecture on quantum states for all Eternity.

"Oh, I am." Glowy Daniel grins at him, inviting Jack to share a joke that hasn't been told yet. "And that lets me travel between parallel universes of the local cluster."

"And we're having this conversation why?" Get whatever information you can, worry about it making sense later. Early lessons, unforgotten.

"Haruspices," Daniel says instantly. "It's the plural of haruspex, one who divines the future by inspecting the entrails of a sacrificed animal. You see, because the "prime" designation can flip from one universe to the next, information can travel between them as well. It's why divination works just well enough to perpetuate its practice, although you'd think people would know better. It's the local cluster bleed-through."

"Should've had this conversation with Carter." Something's happening. Not in a starting-happening way, but in the way you abruptly notice something's going on. Like when you're high. Or really drunk. Or bleeding out.

"I am."

It's as if (Glowy) Daniel is talking, but Jack isn't hearing his words, he's reading them. Maybe on a CRT, or maybe on one of those news tickers that used to wrap around buildings. Whatever happened to those? The words are getting bigger and smaller and changing colors and turning into pictures. He tries to focus on Glowy Daniel, but he can't even remember what Daniel looks like. Or Carter. Or Teal'c. Or his fourth grade English teacher. Or his own face in the mirror.

"I'm hoping all of you will—well, "remember" is as good a word as any—this in the new prime universe. Maybe you'll fix things so Prime won't shift again. It's worth a try."

Now it's as if he's the one lecturing, not Daniel. Or as if he, all of them, are melded together.

As if they're only symbols representing themselves.

Descriptions.

Memories.

Blueprints.

"Goodbye, Jack. Good luck."

There's always a Plan B.

(And darkness was on the face of the deep.)

#

Jack likes Area 51. Dreamland. Paradise Ranch. The place where wonks and strategists meet to hone the cutting edge in aviation technology, or to test the best of the best against the best of the rest.

He thinks he might've liked it better before they really started storing alien technology here.

This time it started one fine morning with him getting hauled out of bed three hours before his alarm went off and ended up with an Asgard mothership hovering over Cheyenne Mountain. In an alternate universe, of course...

Local cluster.

feedback

I is for Imposter Syndrome
by antonomasia09

After the last team had been sent home, and Kvasir had finished packing up his Asgard energy weapon, Sam headed to her lab to do some statistical analysis.

Of the seventeen SG-1’s that were allowed through the gate, eleven had a Sam Carter (twelve if you counted the one where she was temporarily on maternity leave). Thirteen had a Daniel Jackson, ten had a Teal’c, and fifteen had a Cameron Mitchell.

Among the fifty-three teams turned back, there was at least one Vala Mal Doran, two Lt. Elliots, one Robert Rothman, one Sha’re (Daniel wasn’t in the gateroom when her voice came over the radio, and that’s probably for the best), three Jonas Quinns, and two Jack O’Neills.

More than half of the seventy SG-1’s consisted of some combination of three or more members (past or present) of her own team. There was no universe in which SG-1 did not consist of at least one of them.

Of course, Sam knew better than to trust the statistical significance of less than a hundred data points, given the infinite possibilities that existed. Still, looking at her computer screen, she couldn’t help feeling that the fates of those infinite Earths rested on the shoulders of less than ten people.

Daniel would agree with her, she knew; he still felt survivor’s guilt from his first encounter with the quantum mirror. Teal’c would not. Sam envied his confidence.

But back to the math. Sam was an astronaut in five alternate realities, a professor of astrophysics in two, and, bizarrely, a deep-sea diver in one. Teal’c, ever constant, was a former first prime of Apophis or Ba’al or Cronus, but he always turned on the Goa’uld in the hopes of freeing his people.Mitchell’s rank varied, but he was USAF in every reality. Daniel was always an archaeologist/anthropologist/linguist, whose career had had varying amounts of success. She was pretty sure the laughingstock-of-the-archaeological-community versions of him had actively avoided the best-selling author one.

The Stargate program was public knowledge in the universes of nearly half of the teams that had come through the gate. It seemed that people reacted to the news better when they weren’t under imminent threat of attack, but in no reality had there been the riots in the streets that Sam’s commanding officers predicted.

One alternate SG-1 had never encountered the Goa’uld. Six hadn’t encountered the Ori, and now, they never would.

Sam paused and let the data she’d entered so far compile. She wasn’t entirely sure why she was doing this instead of getting sleep like the general had ordered. Maybe it was just that she wanted to see the look on Mitchell’s face when she told him how many realities there were in which he was married to Dr. Lam. Maybe it was that she, alone, out of seventy different versions of herself, could.

There was also the comfort of seeing physical evidence of the fact that there were so many other paths they could have taken throughout the years that did not lead to Earth’s destruction. Ever since her encounter with her alternate self from the quantum mirror, the question had nagged at the back of her mind. What if this is the choice I make that sets in motion the end of the world? What if, one day, I have to beg another Sam Carter for help because I wasn’t good enough?

It wasn’t the sort of thing an Air Force officer should be thinking about. She had a responsibility to her team and her country (and her planet) to be able to make snap decisions, no second-guessing. Sam wouldn’t trade her scientific knowledge for anything, but sometimes, she thought it would be easier to live in the world if she didn’t regularly peer behind the curtain to examine the universe’s inner workings.

The program beeped to tell her it was done running. Sam shook her head to clear it. No more dwelling on what might be. This was her reality, where she belonged, and she would deal with the consequences of her choices.

She printed out a few of the more amusing graphs for herself and her teammates - Teal’c was going to love the pie chart of what pie was being served at the commissary tomorrow in seventy different universes - and then shut her computer down for the night.

Tomorrow, she would go through the information she’d generated, and see if there were any suggestions she could make to the general regarding strategies against the Ori, or security measures for the base. Tonight, though, she was going to go home and think about the things that made her universe so special.
feedback

J is for Just One More Thing
by jedibuttercup

"Just one more thing," Dr. Jackson said, tapping the controller for the Quantum Mirror against his palm.

Behind him, the device that had saved Sam's reality was still in its quiescent state, a dull flat surface just barely taller than the average human surrounded by a rocklike frame that was neither rectangular nor oval in its dimensions. It suggested a culture of origin that viewed aesthetics as being of equal importance to function, something not uncommon among the few advanced alien species the SGA had encountered. She hoped that one day her Earth might still reach an equal level of development-- though if it did, it would owe much to the intervention of the man in front of her and his own team.

"What is it, Dr. Jackson?" she asked.

They had a few minutes before the rest of his team finished briefing Kawalsky and General Hammond on other resources and allies the SGA might want to look for, in cases where the exploration histories between their two realities differed. Dr. Jackson had made a few contributions of his own, but after asking about the fate of Abydos in their reality had volunteered to return to the Mirror to give himself plenty of time to find the right setting. Sam had followed him, both out of curiosity and from a desire to give herself a little distance from the echo of her husband. She'd have to say goodbye to the other Colonel O'Neill soon enough, no need to torture herself unnecessarily with his presence.

"I didn't have time to ask before. Was Catherine, Catherine Langford... was she here when the Goa'uld attack started?"

Sam blinked. "No, why would she be? We evacuated her to the beta site with our most critical personnel as soon as the Goa'uld fleet appeared on the scanners. She's still the closest we come to an expert in the various alien languages we've encountered. Is that not the case in your world?"

"Ah... not exactly," Dr. Jackson replied, with a quick, self-deprecatory smile. "She recruited me into the program in my world, then retired as soon as we got the program up and running. I guess I must have turned her down here, as I did in the other reality I encountered. I can't tell you if that version of me was actually dead, since I wasn't there long enough for entropic cascade failure to have become an issue, but he was definitely in Egypt when the Goa'uld showed up, and I'd guess if he's still alive your version of me will probably be there, too. Anyway, since she's still here... did your team ever visit Heliopolis? PB2-908? ...The meeting place of the four advanced races of the Ancient Alliance?"

Sam's brow furrowed at the list of unfamiliar references. "No, I don't think so. And this is the first we've heard of such an alliance... I assume the Stargate builders were part of it?"

"Exactly," he nodded. "The Asgard as well; though don't bother trying to ask them for any of their tech, they're perfectly willing to protect us but not educate us. Like the Nox... have you met the Nox?"

No, she hadn't; she wished they had more time to exchange knowledge. "The history of your Stargate program sounds so much more colorful than ours; does the makeup of SG-1 really make that much of difference?"

"In this case, I guess so," he replied, pensively. "Now that I think about it, we went to PC3-117 looking for an invisible creature that Teal'c had heard about, so you wouldn't have known to go there. And Heliopolis... I was the one who found its gate address, looking back through old video records. Anyway, how this all relates to Catherine.... There's a chance, I'm not sure how much of one depending on how the variations between our realities affected the weather there, but at least a small chance that Ernest Littlefield is still on Heliopolis, here. Provided he actually went through-- but I can't imagine Catherine would still be working here, still Dr. Langford, if he hadn't."

"On Heliopolis?" Sam walked further into the room and crossed her arms over her chest. "But I just told you I didn't recognize the name or gate address-- and even if we know it under a different string of characters, I don't recognize the name Littlefield either. And I do know the name of everyone who's gone through the gate."

"In modern times. But if he went through in 1945 and never managed to return, and they buried the records afterward...." he shrugged.

"Nineteen when?" Sam's eyebrows flew up; surely that was a difference between their worlds. "But we didn't have a dialing computer, then! Or even any means of powering it up! How would anyone have gone through?"

"The old-fashioned way, like spinning a rotary phone," Dr. Jackson waved that concern away. "And it's close enough that the drift is pretty negligible. It wasn't... anything that huge in the scheme of things, so Jack probably won't think to mention it, though the meeting room there is fantastic and I hope at least one version of me somewhere had a chance to fully explore. But our SGC left a man alone there for fifty-two years, so if there's a chance he's still stranded here, I had to mention it. Just... tell Catherine what I said when she gets back. She changed my life in my reality, and another version of her got killed giving me a chance to escape with vital information. Teal'c says ours is the only reality of consequence, but I couldn't just sit on that knowledge if I could help someone with it."

Sam hadn't been all that impressed by the archaeologist slash linguist at first sight; she'd been too caught up in him not being Dr. Rothman, and there being a Jaffa on the new reality's SG-1, to give him much thought. But despite all the rambling, he was charming when he wanted to be, brilliant, and fairly open-minded, three things not often found in the same person.

"Thank you, Dr. Jackson," she replied. "Maybe I will look our world's version of you up. You think he'd change his mind?"

"Given that all the theories that got him mocked back in academia just came true?" He chuckled. "I don't know why he originally said 'no', so I can't say for sure, but I also can't believe there's any version of me out there that wouldn't listen to a Samantha Carter."

"Well, I hope you're right about yourself, then," she nodded, then glanced at the nearest wall clock. "I'd better go see what's keeping the others... though before I leave you to it, I have just one more question."

"Sure," he replied.

She bit her lip. "...Is the me in your universe happy? I get that she's not with your version of Jack, but...."

He didn't even have to think about his answer, seeming to realize what she was really asking. "Don't let yourself dwell too much on the what-if's; that's an easy road to get lost on. But yes; I believe she is. I think any Sam Carter has the capacity to make the most of the circumstances she finds herself in."

A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. "I admit my sample set is a lot smaller than yours, but just based on our short acquaintance, I would bet the same is true of any Daniel Jackson," she replied.

"Maybe one day I'll find out," he replied, then glanced over his shoulder at the Mirror. "Provided I manage to get us home first."

"Or at least to a reality so close to the original that the differences that do exist are too small to be discernible...." she mused aloud.

"Don't even suggest that!" he exclaimed, adopting the same teasing tone. "If I had a nickel for the number of times I woke up from a nightmare after my first trip through one of these, convinced that I hadn't actually returned to the right reality...."

A shiver went up Sam's spine at the thought, and a Jack-ism slipped out. "For crying out loud; now I'm thinking about it," she admitted, wryly.

He thumbed on the control device as they both chuckled.

But not too loudly. Because his friend Teal'c was right.

No matter how damaged one's own reality, there really was no place like home.

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K is for Kaleidoscope
by sg_wonderland

“Colonel Carter, I hate to drag you away...” Landry paused at the door.

“Another team?” Sam finished typing in the numbers and hit save.

“This one is yet another variation. The leader of SG-1 is asking for you.” She followed Landry out the door.

“Is it someone I know?”

“He seemed to think you'd recognize him.”

And she did recognize the man rising to his feet. “Major Kawalsky.”

“Captain Carter! What the hell is going on?”

“Major, although this may look a lot like your SGC, it isn't.” She gave him the brief explanation she'd perfected over the day. “So you're leading SG-1 instead of General O'Neill?”

Kawalsky lost all his facial color. “General? He's a general here?”

“There are differences. In this reality, you were killed very early in the program when you were infested with a Goa'uld.”

“Well, that didn't happen in my reality. Jack...”

“Did something happen to the general in your reality?”

“Daniel....Dr. Jackson got sick. The docs said it was schizophrenia and they shut him up in mental health.”

“Oh god,” Sam gasped. “Daniel got infected on one of our missions. Did your SG-1 find the Linvris chamber, with nine dead Goa'uld?”

“Yeah, right before the doc got sick. Was that...?” Kawalsky dropped his head into his hands. “We never figured it out.”

“What happened?” Sam asked quietly.

“Jack, he'd go to see the doc and he just got to where he couldn't stand to see him locked up and drugged like that. Daniel would cry and Jack blamed himself, said he should never have let Daniel talk his way onto a team. So one day, Jack persuaded them to let him take Daniel out into the grounds. And then he sprung him from the hospital.”

“Oh no.”

“We found the truck three days later at the bottom of a mountain. Jack had been killed instantly in the wreck. It took us two more days to find Daniel. It looked like he had tried to go for help but he didn't have food or water and he was off his medication and he didn't know where he was going.”

“I'm...I don't know what to say.”

“At least the doc found some peace. He wasn't locked up anymore. I liked to think he was out there bouncing off a star somewhere. And Jack was with Charlie so...” Kawalsky shrugged. “It was tough but we managed to push on.”

*

Daniel was just thinking about getting a coffee refill when Sam came charging in and wrapped her arms around him. “Uh....hi?” Daniel ventured.

“Just, hang on for a minute, OK?” She whispered.

Daniel wrapped his arms around her and hung on.

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L is for Lost
by goddess47

Sam sighed as the glass she had been hand grinding cracked. She needed better lenses for a microscope and this was the last, and most difficult, of the lenses she needed.

"Dammit!" she said, frustrated and tired.

She looked around and saw that it was getting later in the afternoon. With the shorter winter days, she didn't get as much done in the lab as she would like. There was power rationing everywhere, and the incandescent lighting was poor on a good day.

Closing down her workstation, Sam looked around for anything else that needed cleaning up. The Pabrian people desperately wanted what she could do for them, but they begrudged every resource she requested -- from a lab assistant, to raw material, to equipment.

Pabria was at the Earth equivalent of about 1900. There was basic electricity, simple electronics, and -- relatively -- crude scientific equipment. Microscopes existed, but the best microscope available was about 50X. Anything more than that, she needed to build herself.

Hence, grinding her own lenses.

An embedded gender bias added to her difficulties. There were three genders on Pabria -- males, females and bearers. Children were born without a gender, and raised in state run creches. But only a small number of children presented as female, and an even smaller number as bearers. But a trio of three was required to create new babies.

As a result, Pabrian society was almost one hundred percent male. Females were cherished and kept at home. Bearers were essentially government property and only seen when needed to procreate.

Sam had tried to talk about DNA and the problems of inbreeding, but that wasn't a welcome topic and she had to give it up as a bad deal. She couldn't afford to lose the little support she had.

Because the Pabrians really didn't know what to do with her, they gave her a laboratory space and... left her alone.

Back in her room for the night, Sam blew out the oil lamp that lit her room and climbed into bed, wondering why she even tried.

They -- herself, Jack, Daniel and Teal'c -- had come through the Mirror, more than a year ago now, and Daniel had actually found the information they needed to defeat the Ori. There was a 'Merlin' in this reality that had helped Daniel build what they needed, and explained in detail how to use that against the Ori.

Device in hand, they were at the Mirror, Daniel paging through realities to get them back home, when disaster struck.

The Pabrians had been mild-mannered and seemed to have no attachment to the device that now rested on the dresser in Sam's room. Yet, a young man had strolled through the crowd, raised a gun, and started shooting.

Sam had to admit that what happened was as much her fault as anyone's. Not encountering resistance to their mission and, about to bring hope to their own world, SG-1 had become lax. Only Teal'c had been standing guard, but he was only one man, watching the wrong direction.

Before anyone could do anything, the young man had shot Daniel and Jack, ignoring Sam in his gender-blindness. Acting on reflex, Sam drew her own weapon and shot the man dead. But, by then, the damage was done.

Daniel and Jack died before Sam even drew her weapon. Head shots took them both out, snuffing out their lives in an instant. Their bodies lay motionless in front of the Mirror that was to take them home.

The Mirror that had shattered in that shooting rampage.

Sam could only watch in horror as the 'glass' in the frame turned to mirrored shards that tumbled almost silently to the ground. An empty frame that reflected nothing stood there in the moments that followed.

Murmured apologies had carried a stunned Sam and Teal'c -- who would not be moved from Sam's side -- away from the Mirror, back to the home they had stayed in the previous night.

The next day, Sam and Teal'c returned to the Mirror, gathering whatever they could find and demanded a laboratory to be able to work on restoring the Mirror.

Teal'c helped as he could, but Sam had to soon turn her energy to attempting to synthesize Tretonin. Having neither larval goa'uld nor the sophisticated equipment needed to perform the needed DNA sequencing, Sam was forced to watch her remaining team mate die in front of her eyes.

"Do not give up, Samantha Carter," Teal'c told her as she held his hand that last time. "I believe that you can do it."

Tonight, Sam was tired and depressed, so she simply went to bed.

Tomorrow as another day.

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M is for Mirror World
by maddersahatter

With a hasty glance over his shoulder, Daniel dodged the blast of a staff weapon and dove for the Quantum Mirror, his heart pounding. The others had made it through, he was sure. He was the last. He just hoped that this time they were returning to their own reality. He’d lost count of the alternate worlds they’d travelled to, trying to get home. He felt like Sam Beckett from Quantum Leap.

Emerging on the other side, Daniel instantly realized they were not home at all. This new mirror appeared to be mounted atop a high brick wall. He barely had time to think, Stupid place to put a Quantum Mirror, before he fell headlong to the foot of the wall, knocking himself out…

… Regaining his senses, he found himself surrounded by a hundred soldiers on horseback. A hostile force about to take him into captivity? He didn’t think so. They looked friendly. Even concerned.

“Looks like Jack’s sent in the cavalry,” muttered Daniel groggily.

“Actually, I sent them,” a familiar voice informed him.

“Jacob?” Daniel struggled to focus. It seemed that in this reality, Jacob Carter was in charge of a regiment of very old-fashioned looking horsemen. Jacob himself was dressed all in dazzling white, and had a crown on his head.

“I had hoped we could help,” Jacob told him, his voice melancholy. “I’m sorry, but there’s nothing we can do. Your body is just too badly broken.”

“I uh, I’m dying.” It was a statement rather than a question. Daniel was surprised, given the prognosis, that he felt neither pain nor panic. He guessed that after all this time death was becoming pretty routine. He only hated that it was such a senseless waste of a death.

He felt himself fading into blackness, followed swiftly by a blinding light. Then a sensation of weightlessness, of rising upward. He was ascending again. Yes, as he looked down, he was sure he could see Oma Desala. She was dressed head to foot in red, and was running swiftly across the vast landscape, which took the form of square fields mown alternately in different directions to resemble a chess board.

Scanning the countryside from his elevated viewpoint, he could see all his friends and colleagues, not to mention a few enemies too. Yet they were all but unrecognisable in their garb and manner. This was a strange reality indeed.

On the other side of the wall, behind him, stood Teal’c and George Hammond, who wore strange school uniforms with peaked caps, that appeared to be two sizes too small. Nothing like the proper SG attire at all. They seemed to be arguing with each other, while a black crow flew around over their heads. Nearby, just visible as he lay under a tree, Jonas Quinn was snoring loudly. He was dressed in the same shade of red as Oma, and, like Jacob, he had a crown on his head. So too did Oma, now he looked again. Curious.

Further behind, the fields gave way to coastline. On the beach Sgts Walter Harriman - sporting a walrus moustache that really didn’t suit him - and Siler were sitting eating oysters, which Siler was breaking open with his chisel, seemingly without a care in the world.

There was a brook near the wall, and next to it was a small shop. Why would anyone put a shop out in the middle of the countryside like that? Standing outside it was Sam Carter, dressed in a white bobbly woollen outfit. She was shouting at Cassie, who was struggling to control a small rowboat. Cassie was wearing a pale blue dress with a white apron, which made her look far younger than she was.

Looking forward again, to ‘his’ side of the wall, Martouf had appeared, and was speaking earnestly with Jacob, pointing a short distance to his left. Following his gesture, Daniel could see Nirti locked in battle with Anise of the Tok’ra, who was defending herself with a long crystal shard shaped like a Unicorn’s horn.

Daniel blinked and, in the time it took him to do so, he realised that Cassie was now at the edge of the forest some way beyond the fighting. She was in Ba’al’s red-robed clutches, struggling to free herself. Daniel tried to come to her aid, but his ascended powers had not engaged yet. To his relief, Jack appeared, riding a horse as white as his armour. He fell off, but in doing so knocked Ba’al over so that he released his hold on Cassie. Running away, she collided with Oma and started shaking her, as if insisting she do something.

At this point, Jonas woke up from his snooze under the tree, and simultaneously Daniel’s vision blurred. He felt himself falling again, plummeting toward the ground…

…And he awoke with a start.

He was in the SGC infirmary, surrounded by his friends looking down at him with concern. Janet Fraiser was taking his pulse.
“He seems to be calming down now,” she announced, relieved.

“You had us worried there,” Jack informed him. “You took quite a fall on that last world. We had to carry you through the Mirror to get you home.”

“We’re home? Home-home?” Daniel asked hopefully.

“Yeah, where did you think we were?”

“We were in an alternate reality, and you were all there but…”

He frowned, as if working out some puzzle.

“Oh my God! I think I must have been dreaming. Jack, you were the White Knight, and Sam, you were the White Queen, and Teal’c – uh, Teal’c and Hammond were Tweedle dum and Tweedle dee and…. Cassie was Alice! I dreamed we’d all gone Through the Looking Glass.”

“And who were you then, Dr Jackson?” Fraiser asked.

Jack looked at Sam and they both broke out into identical grins.

“Let me guess,” Jack offered. “You were Humpty Dumpty.”

“Well, I suppose it was only logical, seeing that he gives Alice lessons in semantics and portmanteau words.” Daniel reasoned. “And I’m a linguist.”

Jack patted Daniel’s arm. “Yeah, sure thing, Daniel, that’s why you’re a natural fit for an egg-head who falls off a wall!”

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N is for Not Quite
by fignewton

Sam's fingers ached from her tense grip on her weapon. She stared with burning eyes at the quiescent Mirror, willing it back to life.

The rest of her team had stepped through that not-quite-reflection and vanished from the SGC's reality. It felt even worse than being lost off-world without a working Stargate, stranded somewhere light years from Earth. DHDs could be fixed, and vast distances could always be somehow bridged; no matter how remote the chance, the possibility of rescue, either by the Tok'ra or the Asgard or even the Nox, would always be there. But her teammates had walked through the Quantum Mirror, a different kind of event horizon, three hours ago... and when the Mirror went blank to become an empty, stolid frame of naquadah mocking her solitary vigil, her hopes of ever seeing her teammates again seemed to wither into dust.

But she stayed there, waiting. Watching. They would get back if they could.

She tried to choke down her despair and frustration at being left behind like this. Yes, they'd learned the hard way that doubles couldn't co-exist in a single reality without catastrophic results. Matter versus anti-matter, one of the scientists had suggested with dark humor. Or antibodies converging on a foreign intruder. Chaos theory having the last word. Teal'c and the others, at least, knew their counterparts were dead. She'd tried to argue that the alterations to her DNA due to Goa'uld possession might trick entropy into thinking she and the Samantha Carter of the other reality were different people, but Janet had gently insisted that a former host and a current host were just too similar to take the risk.

Current host. She swallowed hard against the thought. Jolinar had been bad enough.

While Sam was honest enough with herself to admit that she didn't want to endure that kind of suffering, that wasn't why she'd reluctantly agreed to stay behind. It had been horrifying to watch the alternate version of the colonel seem to shake apart, agony etched on those normally stoic features. But it wasn't her fear of the pain of dissolution that stopped her from going through - at least, not the pain itself. It was the danger it represented, turning her into a potential weak link. Even if she could somehow pull a bait-and-switch - which itself seemed doubtful - the risk of being incapacitated at the worst possible moment would be a betrayal of her team. There would be no way to explain why the other reality's version of Amaunet was suddenly literally shaking herself apart. Jaffa were blindly loyal, not stupid; they would know that something was wrong. And the slightest hint of what they were trying to achieve would destroy their desperate plan to find the alternate reality's Asgard and beg them to help liberate the Earth.

Time dragged by, long minutes crawling like bugs. Tension and monotony, she knew, could be a dangerous mix. Taking a deep breath, Sam carefully eased her arms and legs, one muscle set at a time, so she would remain limber and ready to act. She had to have faith in them, she told herself sternly. They'd been warned that they would lose their lock of reality if the connection had to be broken, and there were dozens of reasons why it might have been necessary to shut down the Mirror. It might take a while, but she had to trust that her CO would find a way to discover their reality again and bring the rest of the team home.

There was no flash, no chime, no warning - the Mirror, quiescent for so long, was suddenly and abruptly alive. Instead of an empty frame showcasing the wall behind it, the Quantum Mirror now reflected both the strange reality and the person she'd so desperately hoped to see again. There was the colonel, standing in the storage room of the SGA, holding the Mirror's remote and squinting at the SGC reality where she'd been waiting all this time.

Her relief made her want to leap to her feet, but she straightened cautiously, eying the vision of her CO from behind the sandbags. Yes, he seemed all right: alert, unharmed, his own face lightening at the sight of her. She smiled in return, stepping forward.

"Colonel," she called, forgetting momentarily that sound didn't seem to carry across the realities. "Are you all right? What's going on?"

He blinked at her, then his shoulders seemed to droop. He said something she couldn't hear.

"Colonel Jackson?" she said again, taking another step.

He gave her a sad smile, raised a hand in farewell...

And vanished.

The glimpse of the alternate universe through the Mirror simply winked out.

Sam stared, frozen, at the empty frame of the Quantum Mirror. What... Why...

"Captain?" crackled a voice over the intercom. "What's your status?"

Her mouth worked, but she couldn't speak.

"Captain Carter, we registered an energy spike, but it's gone now."

"Gone," Sam repeated numbly, forcing the words through stiff lips. "Yes. It's gone."

Gone.

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O is for Occasional Opportunity
by topazowl

Daniel sat down next to Jack on the roof, unwanted beer in hand. He was very unsettled by the events concerning the quantum mirror and was in desperate need of some reassurance; he also knew that Jack was disconcerted by the events, especially the married to Dr Samantha Carter bit. That had to be distressing as Jack had confided in Daniel that, although he was very fond of his 2IC and she was a great woman, he had no desire to become involved with her, USAF regs notwithstanding.

They sat quietly, each lost in their own thoughts until Jack bumped Daniel’s shoulder.

“Penny for them,” Jack asked.

“They’re not worth even that,” replied Daniel. “I was only thinking about the mirror and how useful it might be occasionally to gather intel. I know, I know,” he said as Jack tried to interrupt. “It’s not a safe thing to use for that; we could get into all sorts of trouble but just think of all the places we could go and all the info we could exchange. We wouldn’t have to do it regularly but it is such an opportunity even if only used occasionally.” Daniel sighed; he knew what Jack’s retort would be.

Jack sighed too, knowing that Daniel’s curiosity and desire to help all and sundry was the reason he was musing over this. Unfortunately, Daniel’s insatiable inquisitiveness was about to be quashed as Hammond had ordered the quantum mirror destroyed and Jack wholeheartedly agreed.

“Daniel,” he began, slowly. Daniel tucked a leg under him as he scooted round on the floor of the roof to face Jack full on.

“Yes Jack?”

“You know we can’t use the mirror like that, dontcha?”

“Yes, Jack, but just think of ….” Jack stopped him with an “Ahht” and a finger held up.

“Daniel, we can’t, it’s far too dangerous. What if we went to an earth that was in the middle of a Goa’uld invasion and we couldn’t get back. Apart from the cascade whatsits, we could be killed, captured, tortured, you name it so the whole venture would be not only a complete waste of time but also a dreadful loss to the SGC.”

“I know, Jack, but we could gain info to help us in our fight against the Goa’uld!” Daniel was showing too many signs of enthusiasm and excitement over the whole idea. Jack took hold of him by the shoulders.

“Daniel, look at me. Who opened the gate?”

“I did,” Daniel mumbled.

“Who’s the most important person in the SGC?” Daniel hesitated and did a double take.

“Why, you of course, and Sam and Teal’c and General Hammond – I could go on.”

“Ah, but you missed one, YOU!”

“Jack, I’m not important. Anyone similarly qualified could do my job!” Daniel frowned at Jack.

“But that’s where we find the stumbling block, Daniel. There is no-one else as qualified to do this job as you, is there? Name me one professor who could speak and translate 23 plus languages, act as a diplomat to alien worlds, run as fast as you do and work 20 hours a day and still come up bouncing!”

“Um, Robert?”

“What, Rothman? Come on Daniel, he’s an intelligent guy but diplomat he is not! Think again.” Daniel thought and, five minutes later, he conceded that there was no-one else that he knew.

“So, what have we learned today, Space Monkey?”

“No mirror, not even as an occasional opportunity and that I’m quite important to the SGC.” Jack sat back, letting go of Daniel’s shoulders before he started shaking him as he started to make what he hoped would be his final points.

“No, no quite, substitute very. I fact, you opened the gate, you do most of the negotiations, you do a huge proportion of the translating and I’m seeing Hammond tomorrow about getting you some more staff and you are irreplaceable. That’s why were are not using the mirror again. Comprendez?” Daniel sighed yet again; he was doing that a lot this evening but he understood where Jack and General Hammond were coming from.

“OK, Jack, I concede this one. Do you mean it about getting me some more staff, I sure could do with a bit more help. Can I come with you to see the General in the morning? I can give him some suggestions.” Jack smiled.

“Yes, Daniel, we’ll go see Hammond first thing tomorrow. Now, drink your beer.” Daniel looked at Jack askance.

“What beer?”

“Well, you had a bottle in your hand a minute ago.”

“Didn’t.”

“Did.”

“I did not!”

“Yes, you did.”

“Jack, I think I’d know …” He trailed off and followed Jack to the railing on the roof edge.

“There it is!” Jack pointed to a smashed bottle in his yard. “I’ll go get you some wine!”

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P is for Precognition
by sg_wonderland

“Daniel Jackson.” He jolted, clearly not expecting to see Teal'c standing in the doorway. “Did not General Hammond grant the team sufficient time to rest and recover?”

“Yeah, Teal'c, I was just getting some stuff to take home. Then I'll be off.” Daniel started shuffling papers indiscriminately, hoping to satisfy his teammate. Teal'c stepped into the office. “Was there something else, Teal'c?”

“During the debriefing, you became very quiet and withdrawn. Is there something amiss, something with which I may assist you?”

Daniel opened his mouth to deny Teal'c's statement, then sighed loudly. “When I was....over there....on the other side of the mirror...” He stopped, unsure of how to continue. “My parents died when I was just a kid.”

“That is unfortunate, Daniel Jackson.”

“It never occurred to me...when I was there...”

“You did not seek to determine if your parents still lived?”

“NO!” Daniel exploded out of his chair. “I never even thought...never . It would have taken five minutes to look it up....I mean, I checked if I was alive! Why didn't I even think...give it even a passing thought?”

“Daniel Jackson, how easy would it have been to ascertain their status?”

“Teal'c”, Daniel slumped back in his seat.

“How long were you trapped in this alternate world? Would you have had sufficient time to retrieve your parents and bring them through the stargate?”

Daniel sighed. “No, probably not. If they were anywhere but Colorado Springs, there wouldn't have been time.”

“So, if you had discovered that your parents still lived, you would have had no recourse but to have lost them once again.”

“Teal'c.”

“And if you had been successful? Succeeded in bringing them to this world? What would have been their fate? Their alternate selves had already passed from this world? How would they have been integrated into this world? How would Senator Kinsey have treated them?”

Daniel's face paled. “My God, can you imagine if I'd said my parents were dead and then they showed up...not dead? Kinsey would have lost his mind.”

“I fear he would have imprisoned them and experimented on them.”

If possible, Daniel paled even further. “You're probably right.”

“So leaving them to, as you say, 'rest in peace' was the kindest act you could have committed. Perhaps your brain is capable of precognition.”

“I don't know about that but, thanks for the pep talk.”

“You did the only thing you could have done, Daniel Jackson. I confess that I do not fully understand this 'alternate reality' concept but I do know this. Our reality is the only one in which we may live. You cannot, and should not, punish yourself for actions committed in other realities.”

“I suppose you're right, Teal'c.”

“You will find that is often true.”

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Q is for Quantum
by watervole

"Events are discrete in nature. Either I go on holiday to Peru or I don't."

Carter's voice was kinda soothing when she was in monologue mode.

"Fascinating mummies in Peru," Daniel chipped in.

"If you're into dead children," Jack said, leaning back in his chair.

Daniel stared at him with amazement. "You read my paper!"

Jack blinked rapidly. "Saw it on the Discovery channel."

"If I go to Peru," Carter continued firmly, "then that is a discrete event."

"What necessity makes you require secrecy?"

"Secrecy?"

"Why do you need to be discreet?"

"Discrete, Teal'c." Jack drawled. "Means 'separate'. Carter's saying that something like a photon either is or isn't. You can't have half a photon. Quantum theory really pisses off people who think in terms of light waves."

"You read my article?"

"It's amazing what you can learn from the back of cereal packets."

And Carter was off again, explaing how the Quantum Mirror could only show an Aleph-naught number of infinite universes, because each universe was created by a decision made by an individual and the number of decisions was an integer not a real number.

Maybe, somewhere, there was an alternate universe where Jack O'Neill didn't find this stuff fascinating.

He yawned. "Time to call it a night, kids. Think I might do a little star-gazing before I go to bed." Half an hour's observation, then he might complete that article for 'Astronomy Monthy.' Under a pseudonym, of course.

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R is for Refuge
by agnostos_aner

With the klaxons blaring all around him Daniel ran through the hallways, silently cursing Murphy all the while. Of course President Kinsey would make an unannounced visit to the SGC on this specific day. Of course he would bring his security detail with him. And of course they would notice that a certain special patient was missing from the infirmary. Why wouldn’t they? After all, when have things ever gone according to plan when SG-1 is involved?

Slowing at a junction, the archeologist carefully peaked around the corner to see a group of soldiers approaching, weapons drawn & gleaming in the hall’s light. For most people in Daniel’s situation, it would be a sign to flee in the opposite direction. Unlike most people, Daniel simply stayed put, letting the SFs pass by him harmlessly as they searched the corridors. Once they were out of earshot, the man adjusted the precious cargo on his back and continued on his way to Sam’s lab.

At this rate he could-

“Dr. Jackson! Stop or we’ll shoot!”

The former member of SG-1 whirled around to see Harry Maybourne and two other black-clad NID goons pointing TERs at him, rendering his cloaking device completely useless.

Screw you, Murphy!

“Drop your zat-gun,” Mayborne barked. “Kick it over. Do it slowly!”

“You don’t have to do this,” Daniel pleaded even as he complied with the demand. “You know it is wrong. Kinsey can’t-”

The archeologist never got a chance to finish: as soon as Mayborne grabbed the zat he fired it twice. The two goons crumpled mindlessly to the floor as the electric discharge arched through their bodies.

Jackson’s eyebrows climbed to his forehead in surprise. “Wow, I never expected that speech to actually work.”

The NID colonel smirked as he holstered his weapon. “Let’s just say a certain Jack O'Neill now owes me. Big time. Now, I believe Dr. Carter wanted you to grab this from her office?” Harry pulled a device from his tac-vest and tossed it to Daniel.

Catching it, Jackson examined the key component of their escape plan. An amalgamation of Nox biotech, a portable Goa’uld gate-dialer and the remnants of the device from P3R-233, the contraption wasn’t elegant by any means. The iconic red button at the center of the palm-sized DHD was replaced with what looked like sloppily-cut obsidian while twigs & vines jutted out from random spots on the device, giving the whole thing the appearance of a child’s arts-&-crafts project.

“You better get a move on,” Mayborne emphasized. “I’ve made sure the gateroom is unguarded… but it won’t stay that way for long.”

Daniel hesitated. “What about my friends?”

“Safe, Dr. Jackson, safe. They’ll contact you again when things are clear on this end.” Seeing that the scientist wasn’t fully convinced, the NID Colonel gave a rather predatory smile. “Don’t worry – my people will make sure they stay alive. Can’t cash in on that big favor Jack owes me now if he’s dead, can I?”

O-O-O-O-O

“How did he get past security?!” Kinsey raged as he stormed into the control room “And where are the guards?!”

A scrawny political aid materialized out of the sea of NID spies, gate-technicians and Secret Service who were all shouting & trying to find someone to blame. “W-we don’t know, sir!” the man replied nervously. “He just appeared from thin air in the middle of the gateroom. The guards were sent up to help with the surface sweep half an hour ago – the nearest ones are 5 minutes away.”

“So send someone here to get him! It’s not like he can escape – he can’t dial the gate from down there.”

A Secret Service agent shook his head. “We tried that, sir. Seems Dr. Jackson booby-trapped the entrance with small, autonomous weapons turrets.”

“Tacluchnatagamuntorons!” the aid piped up, happy to show off that he remembered the device’s complicated Goa’uld name, though quickly wilting under the glares Kinsey and the agent gave him for that remark.

“We have no choice but to wait for the guards,” the serviceman continued. “We don’t have the manpower to take these things on alone.”

Growling under his breath, Kinsey approached the bulletproof glass to observe the gateroom below. To his great surprise, the archeologist was busy using green vines of all things to attach a strange device to the Stargate. The politician would have laughed at the absurdity of the situation if he didn’t see the gate start to spin as Daniel activated the contraption.

O-O-O-O-O

“Dr. Jackson!” the intercom crackled through with Kinsey’s voice, “What you are doing is treason! Not only against this country, but this whole planet. For the first time the secrets of the Goa’uld – their technology, their tactics, their entire history – are at our fingertips. This is our one and only shot at defeating the System Lords. Are you really going to take it away from us? Are you ready to doom this planet – this whole galaxy – to their reign of terror?”

Daniel only shook his head. “That was an inspiring speech, Mr. President. It really was. Unfortunately for you, I can’t let such power fall into your hands. Not that I’d ever allow some NID scientists to try extracting that information in the first place.”

“We will find you! Mark my words: if you step through that ‘gate there is nowhere in this galaxy where we won’t follow you!”

“I know.”

The dialer’s glass-like gem glowed brilliantly as Daniel touched it. Instantaneously, the ‘gate’s event horizon sprang into existence without the signature “kawoosh”. Wasting no time, the archeologist removed the quantum mirror shard from the portable DHD and plunged through the wormhole without a second thought.

O-O-O-O-O

Emerging on the other side, he noticed the little differences first. The color of the uniforms being slightly off. A concrete ‘gate ramp instead of a metal one. A bewildered General Hammond with a full head of hair looking down from the control room.

It took a moment longer to register the big differences. Like the presence of a dozen soldiers all around him responding to an unscheduled gate activation.

Raising his hands in the air slowly, he took the first cautious steps down the ramp. “I’m unarmed. I’m here to-”

“Oi, mate, halt right there! That be far enough, you hear?!” The lead soldier commanded, bringing his rifle to bear. To Daniel’s surprise the speaker was none-other than Col. Chekov, though the Union Jack on his uniform sleeve clearly showed he wasn’t the Russian military liaison Daniel was familiar with. “Show us wot you be carrying why don’t ya?” The Cockney-Chekov gestured at the pack on Daniel’s back.

Gasps and shocks rippled throughout the room as the archeologist slowly turned around to reveal the baby carrier strapped to his back and the sleeping child within.

“My name is Dr. Daniel Jackson. I have come here with my son, Shifu, to seek refuge.”
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S is for Splintered
by sallymn

No one in this or any other reality owned up to breaking it, of course.

The quantum mirror was finally stowed away in Storeroom 1313 on the lowest level of the mountain, along with other alien artifacts that no one had a current use for. Jagged cracks across the surface, oddly like a demented spider web, cut across the view into what, most of the time, looked like an ordinary reflection of the storeroom, in a place, a time, a possibility that looked just the same. Or sometimes, looked just slightly... not.

If you touched it, it would shatter and splinter into a myriad of empty little cracked panes.

The main thing was, the splinters and jagged cracks meant that no one could use it to travel to another universe, or to come from their universe to this. It was safe that way - useless, so the scientists said, but safe. People suggested more than once that they should get rid of it. Send it back to the empty planet it was found on. Throw it out into space. Just get it off this planet.

But being the military, they never did. It was just a broken-up, spiderweb view of a storeroom, after all. What differences could there be in other storerooms that really mattered?

***

I tell folk here to call me Schutz, never mind the rest, I'm just a cleaner. So okay, cleaner for the military in the most top secret of all possible top secret posts imaginable (or un imaginable, to be honest) and have a background check, a non-disclosure agreement and a paycheck to go with it. Beats any other military base I've cleaned in hands down... though sometimes the weekly 'do not touch' list handed out to all of us - military, support, medical, scientific, pretty much everyone, can get a bit off-putting sometimes.

So this mirror-thing in Storeroom 1313 isn't on the list, or at least it isn't this week. Some stuff - usually in the labs, where you need to be dead careful mopping up after the latest disaster - is there for weeks, then vanishes, maybe forgotten, then two weeks later is back in big black letters and triple-underlined. After a repeat of the disaster, usually.

Anyway, it isn't on the list this time but Braxton and me, we're giving it the side eye and a wide berth anyway while we're giving a rare clean-up to all of the lower storerooms and avoiding getting barged by the folk from the archeology labs who don't care much how clean it's not. Listening with half an ear, I gather they’re searching for something for Doctor Jackson, not that I’d understand what it was or why he wanted it, but he does and that's enough for most of them. Honestly, no one outside the labs and the teams quite knows why - not much to look at, our Head of Science, seems as mild and quiet as they come, floppy-haired, spectacled, badly dressed, so deep in his work or his thoughts you could run into him and he'd barely notice.

I mean, what do I know? It's not like he goes offworld and does all the exciting stuff like the teams. He just seems to read and study and talk a lot, talk to the General and the bigwigs and the teams and the other scientists and... not really do anything that I can see. He stays in his office, or wanders round with his books, his papers, his old stuff, and his people tagging along and getting in each others' way - and mine too, more than once. His people include those two aliens, Master Teal'c - when he's not offworld - and her.

I don't much like aliens, but she's okay. She's sort of in charge right now, looking for whatever it is Doctor Jackson has to have right this minute. Anyway, they don't even see it. You’d think they would, you'd think they'd notice that the reflection through all those cracks, may be the same room but... there's no one there.

None of them are there, though the shelves and the collection of stuff on them show up just like a reflection should. And me and Braxton and our equipment, we aren't there either. What is there is several muddy footprints heading towards and then between one of the shelf units, footprints that aren't here on this side. Creepy. I mean, not horror-movie creepy, more like... leading up to horror-movie creepy. Especially with all those cracks like a spiderweb.

And there's suddenly not no one there anymore.

He must have come out from the shelves, he's carrying books and papers and something that looks Goa'uld - I've cleaned around some of them, I know what they look like - and he's talking - though we can't hear it - to someone out of sight. He's waving one hand in a way that all of us who work here know so well, because we see it every day in the labs and corridors and Gateroom.

He's... Doctor Jackson. Definitely Doctor Jackson. Except that he's just as definitely not the same.

For one thing, he's in uniform, an off-world team uniform, with an SG shoulder patch and all, instead of his usual white coat and rumpled civvies. And he looks like it's his , like he's used to it, like he's worn it in. Like he - our civilian Head of Science - goes offworld.

There's other things about the Doctor Jackson in the mirror-thing that are wrong. He's wearing glasses, yes, but smaller, wire-framed ones. His hair is not as short as Air Force approved, but definitely not floppy; his face is different somehow, leaner, maybe a little harder, a little stronger, with blue eyes that seem to gleam with the same passion but an added.... darkness? Yeah, darkness. I don't know why - just a cleaner, remember? - but he seems sadder and colder than our Doctor Jackson ever was, like he's lost something... something important.

So yeah, he's the same and totally not the same at once, and now he's staring back straight at us in our room with its people and disarray and cleaning kit and all and no muddy footprints and... and I don't think he sees any of that. Because he's staring straight at her.

Doctor Jackson's wife. Our Doctor Jackson's wife, the alien Sha're, and probably his wife too, why not? - except there is something in his face, in those eyes that makes me not want to know...

He drops everything he's holding and they clatter to the floor, but we don't hear it. His lips move, we still don't hear it.

"Danyel -?" Sha're Jackson breathes, though anyone can see he is not her Dan- I mean, Doctor Jackson. Except that he is.

Or not. It can't be.

He reaches out with one shaking hand. So does she, though a little slower... and then freezes. It's not him , and she knows it. We all know it. Then as he touches the glass, and as someone appears behind him - oh god, it's Colonel O'Neill, and isn't he, well, dead ? - it fritzes , and sparks and shoots blinding light, and the surface breaks...

The mirror-thing will be back on the 'do not touch' list by morning, I'd be willing to bet... but what do I know? I'm just a cleaner.



"Sha're?" Daniel stared with blind, unbelieving eyes at the mirror, at another universe, fragmented by the web of cracks on the mirror's surface. He'd known - he'd always known - that there had to be some realities where she did not get taken, did not suffer, did not die..

Which was good, and helped, and softened the pain that was still raw somewhere deep inside... but not much. Not now.

He reached out, unthinking, but even as his fingers touched the icy surface it sparked and shimmered and spat light, and that place, her lovely face, her lovely living face, dissolved into a myriad of instantly-there-and-gone might-have-beens. He knew it would, he knew it always did when anyone touched it. He needed to wait and see... but he knew it, and she, wouldn't come back.

"Daniel?" Jack sounded wary, but then he hadn't seen, that much was clear. "Whatcha doing? That old thing's broken, you know that."

Daniel paused, staring at the surface as it slowed and settled... and all he could see was a storeroom like this one. And there was no one there anymore.

***

Name's Sam Sotomayor, Sergeant Sam Sotomayor, US Marines. That's right man, a jarhead, not paid to think - leastways, not till I make it to an offworld team. That's where the action, and the alien crap, and the thinking, goes on.

It doesn't go on in Storeroom 1313, anyway. So how the hell Sandoval and I are gonna explain this one to the brass is anyone's guess.

But hey, I've heard weird things about that damn mirror-thing before it got busted and shoved down here out of the way... and a few things just as weird afterwards. And equally weird things about half the stuff on this level. Some of the wussier types around here won't set foot on this level, and that's a fact.

Okay okay, some of our geeks - and damn it, this project has a lot of them - ain't wusses either, but most are civilian and supposed to be nerdy brainiac types, and yeah, they're mostly wusses with degrees and authority. Or they're just too damn lazy to come down here themselves when they've got us Marines to call on, which is why me and Sandoval get sent down here to fetch and carry some Goa'uld crap for one or another of them.

Fetch and carry. Escort in and escort out. Watch and guard. Occasionally shoot up the Gateroom. It's a living.

So here we are fetching and carrying, and god only knows what the geek in question wants with this whatever-the-hell-it-is, but Sandoval drags it out from the corner and wants me to help him carry it. I give him crap about being too puny to take it himself and wait for the usual smartass reply and...

He drops it. On his own foot. And doesn't even curse the pretty damn mandatory blue streak. Mandatory because hell, it musta hurt, mustn't it?

The fact that both of us are looking at a dead man looking out from the splintered mirror image of Storeroom 1313 probably isn't much of an excuse. I mean, I was there when the gate overloaded and Siler - and his wrench - got barbecued before anyone could even say a word. Siler's dead, man. Deader than dead. But there he is, as much emotion as the wrench in his hand, the same one that was melted to a massive blob of metal. Yeah, it's creepy, but jarheads aren't supposed to get creeped out.

He looks at us.

We look at him.

And these two jarheads? - yeah, we're officially creeped out.

But Sandoval, he's not creeped out enough that he doesn't have to go and reach out and touch the thing, is he? We're not paid to think, true, but we're not paid to be idiots either. It sort of explodes into a million sparks and lights like the Gate did before it overloaded and did for Siler...

We're not paid to get killed (at least not without orders) so we scramble back and it fades. Dead or alive, he's not there anymore.

And me, I'm not paid to think up how to explain this to the brass and make sense.



Siler stared at the broken surface of the mirror for a moment, then shrugged and turned to leave. With any luck, he wouldn't have to make an official report, which would take far more time from his work than warranted, on seeing two piss-scared marines staring back at him from one of the alternate worlds Doctor Lee had told him about... in detail, since he'd been foolish enough to pass a comment when working.

He hefted his wrench - he would find out who borrowed and left it here later - and set out for the Gateroom, deciding as he did to mention it to someone in authority later. Much later. After all, the mirror was safe, broken but safe, and the Gate did need his attention right now, it kept threatening to overload one of these days...

***

I'm Doctor Shumate - Doctor Shania Shumate - and yes, I do like to emphasize the 'Doctor'. All that study and work and titles got me here, after all, a place where I work with the best and biggest scientific minds around, and with the biggest and best - if alien - toys, and maybe make a difference even if I can't see it.

And I sort of owe it to her, don't I? She recruited me, persuaded me that working on the first Gate project so long ago was not a waste, and just taught me so much. She then made sure I was contacted when it started up again, had the chance to say at least say no, at least at first. She was the main reason I didn't say no, I left comfortable, oblivious academia and came here.

She was the brightest and the best, and it's hard to know she's gone, vanished, as good as dead, and the people at the SGC don’t remember or miss her or even really care .

Oh, no one says it, but I guess they don't think they really remember her anymore, it's been too much time and pain and bad memories. They don't see who she was . Even Daniel doesn't, though to be fair he barely knew her. But a few of us did, and a few of us still do.

As I said, I owe it to her.

Oh well, all that study and work and titles, they don't save us from gruntwork round here. I'm down in the lower storerooms searching for something mentioned in an early SG-1 mission report, something Colonel O'Neill vaguely called 'a sort of Goa'uld doohickey' and which Major Ferretti even more vaguely implied might be some sort of weapon. Or a medical device, or even the equivalent of a household appliance. (And then there was Daniel Jackson's alarmingly serious suggestion, an alien sex toy). None of them wanted to talk about it, given that it was a 'souvenir' of their encounter with Amonet, and the hatred there is... well, I can understand it. I share it, even if I've never met the Goa'uld queen. But each and any 'doohickey' has to be studied, has to be exploited if possible, has to be...

I turn to start on a fresh set of cluttered shelves, and all at once I know - oh yes, I know - that the mirror is doing what O'Neill calls its 'party trick'.

Mostly, it's not much of a show, but then it never is. Just this same storeroom, filled with the same artifacts, alien and ancient objects - though I can see - and am pretty sure a little part of my brain is cataloguing - things that aren't. Artifacts, on shelves that are bare here, that we don't have and can't use, and empty shelves where our finds we can't use sit and wait. That little part of the brain wishes we could just reach out...

The rest of me is in shock, staring, wanting to cry or scream or run, because the rest of me is staring straight into Amonet's blue eyes. Amonet's there , she's in their reality, she's on their base, she might for all I know have attacked and conquered and killed and destroyed and...

She's wearing fatigues.

That's not right. That can't be right.

Amonet wouldn't be seen dead in fatigues, even if they were dripping gold. We all read the mission reports, see the mission footage. Amonet's a typical Goa'uld, she almost drips gold and silver and jewels.

But there Amonet is , standing in this SG1 storeroom looking at me. She's not done up in all that overdone Goa'uld qeen makeup, her golden hair is short and neat, she's relaxed, alert, curious, maybe a bit wary; those eyes are clear and questioning, and she's saying something and of course I can't hear the words but somehow I know if I could it wouldn't be with that awful, overlaid symbiote echo. And she's wearing fatigues .

She looks at me and I look at her. Not at Amonet, at Sam. Captain Sam Carter. Somewhere - well, that somewhere - she must have made it through that first mission, not been taken, not been lost. Not just be seen though eyes that just see the Goa'uld and hate her for it.

I cried when they came back, and I think I'm going to cry now. What did they do to save Sam from this that our people didn't? What might they have that we don't because they did bring her back when we didn't? Who did they lose that day, was it someone else important, or no one who counted? Or no one at all?

She tilts her head and her fingers reach out to brush the mirror. Big mistake, that small part of my brain says, maybe they don't know if but even as I go to say a warning she won't hear.... she touches it. Light and jagged flashes and a millions spinning tiny realities, one for each tiny pane in the web of cracks...

I close my eyes and wonder if anyone here in my reality would care if I reported it. She's Amonet here, even if she's still Sam in other realities. She's an enemy here. A lost colleague. As good as dead.

Gone but not gone.

So I will tell them, I will tell them that maybe they didn't have to lose our brightest and best. After all, I owe it to her.



Sam shook her head; that had been a newbie, a novice blunder, touching the glass like that, and with that touch, she'd lost...

No, lost nothing to be honest. She was a scientist; she'd studied the mirror when whole and then broken, and knew as well as anyone that just being able to see a broken and distorted alternate relativity was no good if you couldn't contact it, interact with it, learn from it.

If you couldn't see something other than that same storeroom, what difference could it make?

Though... Sam paused. The woman in the lab coat, who had stared at her with... what? Fear, horror, anger -? she vaguely recalled her - Doctor, what was it, Shumate? - from the original gate program, before they'd got it working. She'd tried to bring several of her staff from that time into the SGC, with mixed results.

She remembered that Doctor Shumate had been good, really good, but hadn't seen a reason to leave the comforts of academia for a military project. Obviously that reality's Sam had come up with a better reason, a better way to convince her and maybe the others.

Whatever.

She would think about it later.

Right now, she still needed to find the Colonel's alien 'doohickey' - that 'souvenir' of an early encounter with Apophis - and see if it was a weapon, a medical device, a household appliance, or as Daniel had suggested...

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T is for Teal'c and the Qunatum Mirror
by topazowl

“How could I have still been serving Apophis?”

SG1 were in Jack’s living room, contemplating the close call they had all had after the events of the past day. Another alternate universe and this time Jack was married to an alternate Sam. He’d found that very difficult to get his head around.

“Teal’c, that wasn’t you. You are the one that says the only reality of consequence is our own!” Jack was finding Teal’c pity party a little tough to handle. Sam had finished very quietly munching on pizza and Teal’c and Jack himself were constantly trying and failing to put the whole shenanigans of events behind them; in fact, this time, it was Daniel who had suffered the least in terms of blows to the psyche and well-being although he was still berating himself for allowing the Jaffa to capture him whilst guarding the mirror. It was time the morose feelings were dissipated!

Jack stood up from where he had been lounging with Daniel on the couch.

“Right you three, on the couch!” Sam complied immediately, programmed to follow the colonel’s orders. Teal’c looked quizzically at Jack then slowly moved to seat himself between Sam and Daniel. The resultant tableau made Jack smile, Sam and Daniel lounged at each end of the couch with an upright, slightly irate Jaffa poised on the edge of his seat, back upright, hands in his lap.

“OK, kids, time to stop with the self-flagellation. Yes, it wasn’t the most successful of missions but it was a success. We rid an alternative earth of that scum Apophis and his lousy Jaffa and that earth got its Carter, Kawalsky AND Hammond back, gotta love those Asgard. There are three very strong and capable people on that world now and they will help to rebuild it. We are back here. Nothing else is of consequence to us and we need to get past this or it’s gonna affect our own performance in the field.” Jack paused and looked at his team, his friends.

“As pep talks go Jack, you’re improving!”

“Thank you, Daniel. Now, whose fault was it that you got caught by the Jaffa?”

“Mine?”

“Aaaahhhhttt.” Jack raised his finger. “No, Daniel. If it’s anyone’s fault it’s mine; I shouldn’t have left you there alone. But I did and I made a conscious necessary decision so it is not your fault, just unfortunate but it worked out OK so stop blaming yourself.”

“Yes, Jack.” Daniel’s reply was hesitant.

“Daniel? You could at least try to sound convincing!”

“Yes, sir, Jack, sir.”

“OK, enough with the theatrics. Carter?”

“Yes sir?”

“You did a tremendous job with alternate you with that power thingy.” Jack held up his finger again as she went to reply. “You have nothing to be concerned about. Your behaviour and actions were exemplary so we will have no more pity partying from you. OK?”

“Yes sir.” Sam, who had sat upright as the colonel addressed her, fell back into the sofa.

“And you Teal’c, once again, I say to you, ‘ours is the only reality of consequence’. Your words. Circumstances were different for the alternative Teal’c. He hadn’t had the pleasure of meeting us. He might still have rebelled, had he lived, at a later date but, in this case, he didn’t. He is nothing to do with you. You are here and you are a valued member of my team. Are you back with us and on top form?”

Teal’c sat up even straighter, if that was possible. “Yes, O’Neill. Ours is the only reality of consequence.”

“OK. As you were.” Sam and Teal’c moved off the sofa and made to head out, Sam dropping Teal’c off at Cheyenne Mountain on her way home. After seeing them both out, Jack and Daniel sank back into opposite ends of the sofa.

“That was a good evening, Jack, despite the morose atmosphere at times.”

“Yeah. I’m worried about Teal’c though. Carter’ll come through but she didn’t have to kill herself like Teal’c did.”

“True, but as pep talks go, it was one of your better ones. Just hope you take it on board too” Daniel ducked as Jack threw a cushion at him.

“I thought it was my best so far?” Daniel looked at him over his glasses.

“Nor peppy enough?”

“Yes, Jack, it was just right. Don’t let it go to your head!”

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U is for Unknown
by gategremlyn

Daniel ignored the knocking at the door. His leg... his stump ached. It often did after a day of walking the streets. The prosthetic gave him mobility, and he was thankful for that, but it didn't stop him from feeling relief when he finally took the damn thing off.

The knocking became more insistent. With a sigh, Daniel grabbed his crutches from beside his bed. He was going to rip apart the person on the other side of the door. No doubt it was a lost pizza delivery person or the crazy neighbor three doors down who insisted that Daniel stole his paper every morning. Whoever it was, they wouldn't be standing there long.

The knock was almost a pounding. “Hang on,” Daniel yelled. “I'm coming.” The pounding stopped. He hobbled his way the door, cursing at his own clumsiness. He opened the door, fully prepared to lay into the poor victim in the hallway. What he saw struck him dumb. “Jack?” he said when he finally found his voice.

Jack—Colonel Jack O'Neill—stood on the other side. It was the Colonel Jack O'Neill who was a stranger to Daniel, the Colonel Jack O'Neill who had a wife and a son, the Colonel Jack O'Neill who had all put ignored him and his team: he stood with his hands in his pockets and an eyebrow raised. “Don't you ever check to see who's on the other side of the door?” Jack asked.

“I live in a secure building,” Daniel answered on autopilot. “I'm lucky the military didn't decide to put a guard on my door.” The voice was so like his Jack. So were the hands in the pockets and the raised eyebrow. Even the scolding sounded like his Jack. Finally, Daniel realized that his unexpected guest was standing in the hallway, waiting. “Come in,” he said. He stumbled back in an effort to move aside. The crutches caught on the door frame, and he almost fell. Only Jack's hand reaching out to hold his elbow kept him upright. The touch was worse than the voice, and for a minute Daniel thought he might cry. His Jack, his friend, was dead. On this Jack, Daniel saw the overlay of a man dying, urging them to get out, to get to the Stargate, to leave him behind.

Daniel pulled himself together. Jack let go and stepped back, giving Daniel his space.

“I'm sorry,” Daniel said. “You remind me of....”

“I know.” He shuffled a little, not as confident and at ease as Daniel first thought. Jack's eyes flitted over the apartment, looking everywhere but at Daniel. “Nice place,” he said, “if a little... sparse.”

“I'm not really one for collecting stuff,” Daniel lied. It wouldn't make a difference if he told this Jack that he no longer had any desire to collect the ephemera of human existence. The things he loved were a universe away.

After he remembered his manners, he led them both to the kitchen, and while Jack sat, made coffee. The familiar act steadied him. He took down cups, pulled some milk out of the fridge, and sat a secondhand-store sugar bowl on the table. By the time he sat down, he had some control back.

Jack sipped his hot coffee, then spoke: “I thought you might have questions. For me.”

Questions? Daniel ran through a slew of them. How are Sam and Mitchell? Where's the Stargate? What the hell happened to Ba'al? When can I go home? He didn't ask any of them and stared at his coffee instead.

“You said that the other O'Neill was a General. Was he any good?”

Daniel smiled. So this Jack O'Neill had a competitive streak as well. “Yes,” he said. “He was very good.”

“But he didn't have a family.”

“No.” Daniel tried not to be defensive for his Jack. This Jack was similar... but not the same. “We were his family, Sam and I, and Teal'c. We'd been together a long time.” He wondered how much to give this stranger with his friend's face. “He never stopped missing them, you know. He never got over Charlie's death and losing Sara.”

Jack winced at the painful reminder. “I'll bet it damn near killed him.”

“Yes.” Daniel didn't elaborate. Even now with Jack dead and the timeline shot all to hell, he wasn't about to share that story with anyone. It belonged to Daniel alone, now.

“Well.” Jack drummed his fingers on the table. “Would you like to see a picture of my Sara and Charlie?” He didn't look up when he said it, afraid, maybe, of being rejected.

“I'd like that,” Daniel said.

For the next 15 minutes, Jack pulled pictures out of his wallet. One of them showed a serious young man who was Jack's double except for the light hair. Daniel remembered the picture in Jack's locker and he saw the resemblance.

“Is he in college?” Daniel asked.

“Majoring in computers,” Jack said, “obviously a talent he inherited from his mother because I hate the things.”

One picture showed the Sara that Daniel remembered from many years ago. She looked older,. Her face was more lined, but she looked happy, content.

“You know her?” Jack asked.

“Yeah. I met her once. She and Jack stayed friends.”

Jack nodded but didn't press.

One picture showed Jack and Kawalsky. It was taken at a stadium somewhere. Each of them had a baseball cap, a beer, and a stupid grin.

“You know him, too?”

“Yeah. He's dead in my world.”

Jack stilled. “It sounds like your world was a rough place to live.”

In the carefully neutral tone, Daniel heard the condemnation. A Jack of any universe couldn't hide that from Daniel. “Most worlds are,” he said mildly. This Jack didn't know anything about Daniel's world or Daniel's life. He didn't know anything about the Jack O'Neill who mattered to Daniel, nothing about his world or his life or the man who had earned Daniel's respect for more than a decade.

As Jack put away his wallet, Daniel felt an ache, not only for what was but for what could never be.

“I shouldn't have come,” Jack said. “I thought it would help if I stopped by to see how you were doing, to tell you something about someone you sort of knew, but I see now that I was wrong.” It wasn't an apology so much as a simple statement of fact.

“You meant well,” Daniel said. “My Jack would have done the same thing.”

“You two were close.” Again, it wasn't a question but a statement of fact.

“We were very close, best friends, in fact.” He'd said it before from a hospital bed on a submarine somewhere in the Arctic. He'd been in pain, drugged to the gills, and desperate for someone to listen to him.

This time Jack seemed to believe him. Then he pushed aside his cup and stood. “I won't come again,” he said.

“I know.”

Jack stuck his hands in his pockets. “You didn't ask about Mitchell and Carter.”

“You may not be my Jack, but I knew him, so I know you well enough to know you won't tell me.”

Jack nodded “I can't tell you where they are. I can tell you they're fine. They're both worried about you. I'll tell them I saw you.”

Daniel wanted to say, “Tell them I'm fine,” but it wasn't true, and that was one lie he couldn't tell.

He reached for his crutches, pushing himself to stand. He was so tired, so worn by such a short visit. He missed home, Jack, Sam, Teal'c, Mitchell, Vala, all of it. He ached, and for the first time in months, the ache in his heart overrode the ache in his leg.

At the door, Jack stuck out his hand. As they shook, Jack said, “I wish I could do more, Doctor Jackson.”

“I know,” Daniel said.

Jack turned and walked out. Without looking back, he strode down the hallway, turned the corner, and was gone.

Daniel shut the door. He stared at the empty cups on the table, at the shabby couch, at the half-empty bookcase. He dropped his crutches and leaned against the door until grief overwhelmed him and he couldn't stand. He slid down the door, landing on the floor with a sob. The sobs continued long into the night.

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V is for Variations
by fignewton

Unlike the Alterans, the Nox were scrupulous about leaving the universe as they found it. Even as their comprehension of the multigalaxies and existential planes expanded, they themselves retreated, reluctant to meddle with the workings of the Infinite. In later millennia, this reluctance translated into a strict policy of non-interference with anything outside their immediate surroundings, until the Nox lived in harmonious tranquility on a single planet, their very existence intertwined with flora, fauna, and atmosphere in a perfectly balanced symbiosis.

But long ago - long before the Alterans started abandoning half-finished projects for later beings to find to their detriment, before the Asgard turned to cloning and accelerated their own inevitable demise, before the first feral Goa'uld symbiote stumbled upon a naquadah-carrying host that could allow it to escape its birth planet, before the Furlings began the research and experimentation that would lead to what they perceived as the logical conclusion to commit species suicide - long before all that, three Nox pioneers explored the nature of quanta and decoherence and uncertainty. They fashioned a device that would be wholly isolate to allow them to observe and unobserve, to see both wave and particle and supersymmetry.

The device worked well - too well. The unexpected results, when they first activated it, so alarmed them that they ceased operations immediately. After a brief, hurried discussion, they destroyed the device, incinerated their notes, and resolved to never create the like again.

But they were too late. The smallest observed measure of time (a fraction of an instant? a nanomoment?) would have been too late. Once the uncertainty of its existence had flashed into place, the device... perpetuated itself, in all its potentia. A mirror, echoing itself into infinity, each reflection set just slightly out of what might have been true. The Nox scientists had no way of knowing that even as they carefully dismantled the delicate mechansim, alternate versions were already - in fact, had always been - winking endlessly into being. Some took advantage of existences that already occupied a place in time and space. Others twisted nothingness into realities, creating matter in which they could reside.

And through the apparent paradox of quantum states, each device took on its own perception and function, retaining the essence of its original nature even while mirroring a reality it either created, invaded, or invited.

In one universe, a white-garbed woman (or kitten, whose name was never Schroedinger) used the attributes of the device to perceive the future, even as her claim to precognition and the questions of dream and reality were never quite answered. A different dimension saw an immortal woman of immense age and power, well-versed in the nature of external influences, exercise her long-gained wisdom to use the device with delicate care, observing possible futures while never quite trusting in what she saw. Another woman in another elsewhere, who also longed for power but lacked the patience to seek it in a more natural fashion, seized the device's power to endlessly reflect her own thoughts and gaze, to probe and to manipulate, until she so obsessively followed its dictates that she ended up trapped within it, an endless circle of winking reflections, shards of falling glass (or otherness) locking her away from a sister and a city.

The device's nature shifted, rippled, twisted. Some mirrored appearances rather than exuding power. A woman, focused on such an altered version, so needed its validation that she was driven to attempted filicide to satisfy it. A man in a different reality allowed the device to absorb every narrowed gaze, every curl of the lip, until the vision it imbibed no longer matched the external it reflected.

More devices, mirroring infinity, reflecting twisting realities and functions. One did great damage, reflecting longed-for implausiblities that could theoretically occur - and can't all possibilities become reality, after all? Still others offered gateways, twisting matter and anti-matter until the slightest contact threatened mutual annihilation. Others warped time as well as space; one even achieved a form of sentience, allowing it to consciously interact with other beings, while another rippled into multiple portals, arcing from world to world with heedless risk to universal causality.

And in the Nox's own reality and plane of existence, the scrupulous scientists never knew that even as they destroyed their own, original device, something else had shimmered into existence. It sat quietly, awaiting activation, a portal to what was never real until it was encountered.

"Ours is the only reality of consequence," a Jaffa would say uncounted generations later.

He never learned that on the deepest, most quantified level, he was wholly, precisely correct... and, at the same time, completely wrong.

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W is for Waiting
by goddess47
Walter had long ago set up his own security system on that room. He had heard the arguments, not that he was deliberately listening, but he knew General Hammond would never allow the Mirror to be destroyed. There were two guards on duty at any time, but Walter had his own video feed that he could keep an eye on.

So Walter watched, and waited.

It was almost always a fractional part of SG-1 that came through their Mirror. Most often only one, sometimes two. Never four.

It was like they were drawn to this world, this reality. Daniel came most often, with hope in his eyes, searching for Colonel O'Neill or Major Carter. Sometimes, he was searching for Jack... or Sam. Occasionally, he looked for himself, but that was rarer.

Walter would watch as Dr. Jackson would beg for help for himself, help for his team, help for his world. General Hammond would guide the not-theirs Dr. Jackson away from the Mirror for coffee and a meal, to listen and do what little he could. Occasionally, the General would be able to provide information or small resources, but he most often sent Dr. Jackson away empty handed.

When it was Colonel O'Neill, it was easier -- and harder. Walter had listened one day as General Hammond explained their own reality to a variation of the Colonel. Colonel O'Neill understood military decisions, and ruefully accepted what little help or information there was to be had. There was more coffee, and almost always a request for pie, but there was little else they could do.

Colonel O'Neill would sigh, then straighten to offer a crisp salute to General Hammond. He would quietly leave without looking back.

Teal'c came, but only once. Walter knew there were many realities where SG-1 never met Teal'c, or never convinced him to help them. They were able to provide this Teal'c with information about tretonin, to give him a chance to free the Jaffa from the symbiotes.

Teal'c was one of the few times someone left with good news.

One time, it was Colonel Carter and Major O'Neill. General Hammond didn't act too surprised, but Walter heard him stumble over those ranks more than once.

They couldn't help them, either.

Very rarely, it would be someone not from SG-1, or even the SGC. Those visitors would be held at the point of a zat -- less danger of doing damage to the Mirror if there were no bullets -- and quickly convinced to move on. Or zatted once and pushed back through the Mirror, to be someone elses problem.

General Hammond didn't let anyone stay more than a couple of hours. Some travelers knew of the Cascade Effect but many did not. The General would lay out the dangers of staying too long, and had developed a deft skill in guiding a traveler back through the Mirror in a relatively short time.

Travelers who came through injured would be assisted to the infirmary. One time, the Major Carter that stumbled through the Mirror was badly injured, and they all watched helplessly as she died before she could tell them anything.

Others were efficiently patched up, provided needed drugs, and sent on their way.

For their SG-1 had walked through the Mirror -- and had never came back. Dr. Jackson had unearthed a clue to defeating the Goa'uld, and had convinced Colonel O'Neill that he could find what they needed. SG-1 had geared up, and Walter had watched as the four team mates walked not through the Stargate, but through the Quantum Mirror.

In the two years since, there had been too many not-their SG-1 team members. Many talked about wandering through dimensions in search of a new home, wanting to escape from the horrors of their original dimension. A few were in search of their own true homes, hoping to find it on their next walk through the Mirror.

General Hammond sent them all on, to go elsewhere.

He held out hope that his SG-1 would find their way home, and he was 'saving their places' for them. As a result, no alternate versions of the team could stay long enough to realize that the Cascade Effect would never kick in.

So they played host to a multitude of variations of SG-1 -- and they waited for their own team to finally come home.

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X is for X-treme Changes
by thothmes

Ours is the only reality of consequence
--Teal'c

The day after Christmas was snowy and not too cold, but Jack's mother had insisted on enough layers to make moving a struggle, and the scarf, which covered all but a thin strip of his face across the eyes was the most annoying thing of all. He was suffocating under all the sweaters and the thick woolen coat and snow pants, and he felt like if he fell he would really battle to get up. He looked at his shiny new Flexible Flyer sled, with its fire engine red runners, a gift the O'Neill aunts and uncles had gotten together to buy him, and realized that sledding, at least as done by big boys of ten, involved a lot of rolling and picking themselves up out of snow banks. This would not do. He went back inside, to emerge a full inch thinner all around, and minus the itchy scarf. Now he was ready for some action! He set off towards Hill Street, where Uncle Jimmy said the best sledding was.

He didn't get there. He was only two blocks from his goal when he fell afoul of some big boys. There were four of them, all at least a head taller than Jack, and they wanted to take his sled. Jack considered letting them go ahead and take it, because he knew that after New Year's when he and his parents piled in to their old Ford station wagon with its wood trim on the side and drove all the way back to from Uncle Jimmy's place near Chicago to their house in Minnesota, the brand new sled, with its smooth finished and coated wood and the runners without a lick of rust would be useless. Minnesota kids didn't use sleds like the Chicago kids did. Except in the very beginning of the season, when the first few inches fell, most of the winter the snow came too deep for sled runners, and the best sledding was with a toboggan. Besides, what would Uncle Jimmy think if he came home without it? Jack's ears got red just thinking about explaining to his hero that he let the big boys take it without a fight.

So Jack held the tow rope for the sled tighter, and put both hands on his hips. He looked the toughest looking one, the one with the greased, slicked-back hair, wearing only jeans, sneakers, and a fake leather bowling jacket, right in the eyes and said "No!" and did not look away. He was on the edge of crying, but the wind was whipping him in the face, and he hoped the big boys would think his eyes were tearing from the wind. The tough boy narrowed his eyes and the other boys pushed in around Jack, surrounding him. Jack pushed his fists harder into his hips and hoped the boys would not see his legs were shaking and his knees were wobbly.

"My Dad's a State Trooper," said Jack. "He has three brothers, and two of them are Chicago policemen, and the other one is a fireman."

His voice was shaky, but he didn't look down, didn't look away. The tough kid looked away first, looking at his buddies for their reaction.

"Okay, pipsqueak." He said. "We'll make you a deal. We were on the way to O'Hara's grandpa's place to clear his driveway. You come with us to old man O'Hara's place, and if you have the guts to sled down his driveway without bailing, and we'll let you keep it. You bail, and that beauty is ours."

"There a tree at the end?" asked Jack.

"Smart pipsqueak!" said the red headed kid Jack figured was O'Hara. "Nah. No tree. Just a four foot drop off to my back yard."

The big boys laughed, and turning away from the way to Hill Street, they drove Jack before them, trying to decide whether Jack would piss himself or barf up his toes when he saw that driveway. What made Jack really mad was that the consensus opinion was that he would instead run crying home to his mama. Jack hadn't even done that when he was five and he fell on the ice and another kid did too, and sliced Jack's chin open with his sharp skate blade., even after the ice started getting covered with blood.

Three blocks later they were there. The driveway was not too short, but it was pretty steep, with a garage off to the side at the bottom, and Jack was sure that even with the extra steering he could get from pulling on the crossbar of the sled, there was no way he was going to be able to make the turn into the garage like a car would. Maybe after a few years when the sled was broken in, but now the runners were new and stiff, and the sled would be hard to steer. That landing was going to hurt.

"Had enough pipsqueak?" said the tough kid.

Jack noticed that the kid was shivering now, and the boy's ears were no longer red from the wind but starting to look white. He might be tough, but toughness didn't keep him warm like Jack's thick tan winter coat.

"My name is not Pipsqueak!" he said. "It's Jack. Jack O'Neill."

If it was going to hurt, Jack wanted to get it over with. He started to line the Flexible Flyer up with the center of the driveway.

"Jesus, Gary!" the stockiest kid said, "He's gonna go through with it! What are we gonna do if he breaks something? We're gonna catch it for lettin' him do it! He's just a little kid, and the sled's brand new! Don't make him, Gary! Let the kid go."

The tough kid must have been Gary, and was immediately logged as Gary the Greaser in Jack's mind.

"That's why I want it," said Greasy. "It's new, and I figure we can sell it for some cool cash."

It was going to hurt. Jack needed to get it over with. He gripped the crossbars with both mittened hands and threw himself down onto his stomach.

And because life liked to laugh at Jack O'Neill, he went nowhere. The slope right at the top was not enough for his small weight to set him sliding, but just as he was making the decision to get up and try it again, pushing off harder, one of the big boys kicked the tail of the sled, and off he went, picking up speed as the slope got steeper.

The wind was rushing over his face, cold and clean. The runners made a sibilant hiss as they ran, and Jack was filled with delight by the speed, as he held himself tight against what would come.

Oh, God! No more driveway! Out over the edge, and Jack and the sled were flying through the air! Out! Out! Over the snowy ground of O'Hara's back yard, silent and free, until gravity won, and with a mighty whack that drove every last ounce of breath from Jack's lungs, they were earthbound once more.

Jack was still trying to work out exactly how breathing worked, and whether this airless feeling was what grown-ups meant when they spoke of collapsed lungs, when he realized that the big boys were cheering him. At least by the time they got down to where he was, Jack had managed to suck in a couple of big breaths, and was pretty sure nothing was broken, not even the sled. Probably best if he didn't let his Ma see him without his shirt on though. It felt like there might be bruises.

"Jack, You're not a pipsqueak," said the stocky kid, patting him on his back with more force than Jack deemed pleasant. "You're brave."

Jack didn't think so. Jack thought he was just desperate, but he didn't say so.

Uncle Jimmy was brave. Uncle Jimmy flew jets for the Army Air Corps during the war. Uncle Jimmy said flying was the best way for a man to feel free. For a few slippery seconds Jack had felt that freedom. He had thought he wanted to grow up and be a cop like his dad, but not anymore. He was going to grow up and fly jets and be free.

He turned to Gary the Greaser and held out the tow rope.

"Wanna have a turn?" he asked.

Gary looked at his toes.

"Nah" he said. "I'm not nuts!"

"Oh, and I am?" asked Jack, as he began dragging his sled forward, towards the front of O'Hara's house and the shortest path home. He'd considered flying again, but decided not to press his luck. Landing on those bruises was sure to hurt, and if he went home, Aunt Grace was sure to have some hot cocoa waiting for him.

I'm sorry, I keep thinking I'm gonna step on a bug and change the future.
--Lt. Col Samantha Carter

But there is a world out there, several actually, where Jack O'Neill did not go flying on his sled during that Christmas visit to the Chicago suburbs. Let's visit one.

There is a meeting in the briefing room of the SGC between the producer of the canceled TV show Wormhole X-Treme. Colonel Mitchell is giving advice on how best to write his character on a putative revival of the show. The line that Martin Lloyd has suggested sounds wrong to him. Martin is waiting for him to finish speaking so he can puncture the man's pretensions. Lloyd knows that the heroic Colonel Danning is in fact modeled on himself, although even in Hollywood the land of massive egos, it would be impolitic to say that. Perhaps he will coyly let it slip to the interviewer for TV Guide, or whatever publication is covering cable television for fans by then when they are doing the Wormhole X-Treme 25th Anniversary cover story, but until then, he needs to puncture the young man's misapprehension that the character that stars in Martin's show has anything to do with this flyboy.

"How many times do I have to tell you?' says Martin. "It's not you Colonel Danning is based on Colonel Kawalsky."

And where is Jack O'Neill? Seated on a floral sofa, in St. Paul, Minnesota, next to his boy who is home from college for spring break. He has this show he's excited about and wants to share it with his dad. The thing is called Wormhole X-Treme. Jack thinks it's rather silly, although he can understand how for a kid Charlie's age all the scantily clad alien babes would have a certain allure, but Gracie likes it too, and he's pretty sure that's not a draw for her. He ponders for a moment whether if he had a chance to go through a big ring to another planet whether he would take the chance. It might be fun, but he has an architectural firm to run, and what would Sara do if something were to happen to him? He has a good life. He's hoping that someday, if he plays his cards right, and so far things are looking good, the sign by the elevator in the lobby of his office will not just say O'Neill Designs. It will read O'Neill and Son and Daughter. Then a few years later, when the kids have their feet under them, he'll retire, and he and Sara will do some traveling and see the world.

It's a fine life he has. He likes the challenge of turning the client's words into a finished space, riding the contractors to be sure that it comes in on time and on budget, no matter what unexpected challenges arise. The best jobs are the ones that keep him on his toes. Still, lately he's been feeling a little stale. Maybe it is just moving from middle age to ever more often facing the indignity of being asked whether he wants the senior discount, but lately he's been feeling like something is missing, like life should hold a little something more. He feels a restlessness. He and Sara will go explore the world. He wants to see giraffes at sunset. She wants to see the sort of places Jane Austen wrote about. They both want to taste the lagers and ales of Europe. He wants to see if the Great Wall of China really is all that great.

The show is over.

Jack tells Charlie that on the whole he prefers Poochini, but that Wormhole X-Treme is fun, and wonders aloud what's up with the weird spelling. He isn't terribly impressed, but the idea of being able to travel the galaxy like that kind of grows on him, and some years later When the box set comes out, Jack orders all ten seasons, and when Charlie suggests that they dress up in costume and go to a convention, he actually considers it for a full five minutes before turning him down.

"You know, much as I'd kind of like to meet Nick Marlowe, I'm betting that actually doing it would be a bit of a letdown. He'd probably be shorter than I expect or something. You take Ashley and make a date out of it, and your mother and I will look after the pipsqueak."

"He has a name, Dad! It's Brantly."

Who names their kid after their wife's maiden name, anyway? Brantly

"Oh, I'll probably get it down before he starts college," says Jack. But he's not in a rush.
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Y is for Y Not
by ivorygates

Daniel Jackson is sitting in the passenger cabin of a military transport flying at 30,000 feet.

Daniel Jackson is living on Abydos with his wife and children.

Daniel Jackson died on Apophis's battleship. On Kelowna. On (in) a Replicator spaceship. On a dozen planets whose algorithms all blend together in his mind, a meaningless jumble of numbers and letters.

Daniel Jackson was never born.

Daniel Jackson has, is, and will be doing these things and many more. The number of things he is doing, and the number of people he will become, propagates exponentially across the multiverse. Except in those where he is dead, of course (probably), and even there the branching continues—God is a Redditor—but he isn't involved.

It's depressing. It's exhausting. It's the reason he's flying to Washington, because the head of Homeworld Security needs to be updated on the SGC's latest exciting adventure, and Daniel is best-placed to do it (he wants a vacation). He might have been called upon to do it sooner, but Congress takes its year-end holidays seriously. (And a happy 2006 is not to be had by all.)

When you think of "military transport" you think of exposed bulkheads and cargo nets. They have names like Galaxy, Pegasus, Starlifter (the US Air Force has a sense of whimsy, who knew?) This particular transport (however) is barely distinguishable from a private jet: beige bulkheads, neutral carpet, leather seats. The back half of the cabin holds a bar and a conference table (and a potty). The front half contains four rows of seats, each of which can swivel 360 degrees.

The tray-table in front of him holds a crystal tumbler with two fingers of Scotch. It's as pale as Russian amber because all the ice has melted. In the seat nearest the cockpit, an airwoman sits primly, awaiting his next request. Daniel looks down at his hands. Scrubbed and manicured, French cuffs, discreet cufflinks, shark-grey designer suit and very shiny shoes. He wonders which avatar of Daniel-ness he is: the lunatic, the lover, or the poet? It hardly matters, because be he any or all of them, he's also the public face of Disclosure (whenever it comes). The increasing pressure to take a desk job is irritating, but from the viewpoint of The Powers That Be, it's reasonable: should Doctor Jackson get himself killed during one of his happy-go-lucky jaunts to save the universe, their second runner-up will not be nearly as soothing to the American public. Or the Anywhere Else public, because nobody likes to hear that their government gave a war and didn't invite them. (This is probably why, in three out of the five universes where Disclosure has already happened, Earth is being run by a global military dictatorship. In one of the others, the Wraith have invaded. The last of the five is close to being an Earthly paradise—if you leave out the fact that the Tau'ri Empire is on a collision course with the Free Jaffa and the two powers will clash sometime within the next decade.)

Daniel thinks of the impoverished grad student he once was; the starving professor (the multi-millionaire author of "ancient aliens" bestsellers, motivated not by experience or scholarship but by an eye for human gullibility). In those ancient (but not Ancient) days he would have snarled about the military-industrial complex, the society that so often chooses neither guns nor butter but instead the dumbing-down of its captive populace. Doctor Daniel Jackson, champion of Truth, Justice, and...

Well, Truth and Justice, anyway. Maybe. The only thing the last decade has really taught him is that Truth is shifting sand and Justice is impossible. (Mercy is overrated and comes back to bite you in the ass.) They're probably all just as well off that he didn't know that when he first went to Abydos: they'd all still be there.

Dan'yel of the Tau'ri still lives on Abydos with his wife (Beloved!) and children. Daniel Jackson never met Catherine Langford; she recruited her niece Sabrina instead and sent her to Abydos. Daniel Jackson's body rules the Goa'uld Empire, and Great Lord Ra gazes out through his eyes.

So. Washington. At least Jack can be counted upon to make the inevitable "Evil Mirror Me" jokes. At least there's that. But after that is going to come the extensive and inevitable debriefing (alone and in praise chorus), because each of these Roads Not Taken provides both hints and cautionary tales about how to handle their own future. Or futures. Whatever. Daniel finds it increasingly difficult to care, especially in the wake of absolute proof that no matter when and where and how he (his friends, his enemies, Earth, the Universe) dies, there are uncounted other universes in which they go on. (If the Ascended were aware of this—and they undoubtedly are—it goes a long way toward explaining their infuriating detachment. Who cares about one anthill when there are a billion more?)

He can't really be upset by knowing about all the possibilities. At some level, he's known them since his longest death. Once his feet were shod in stardust and he danced to the music of the spheres. (It's not that he chose to come back—which he didn't—but that his new peers disapproved of research methods. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, Selah.)

Homeworld Security and the Joint Chiefs of Staff are amazingly indifferent to possibilities that they consider irrelevant. Even Jack (we few, we happy few, we band of brothers) isn't really very interested in the inapplicable theoretical. What Jack is willing to discuss over a few drinks and what Jack makes a part of his working day are often poles (worlds, light-years, universes) apart. In the end, the vast sweep of human possibility that occupies Daniel's thoughts is reduced to a simple set of questions: What can we spend our budget on, and how can we get a larger budget to spend? (Staying alive to acquire and spend said budget is presumed to be a given, all evidence to the contrary.) At the moment, those persons in the know are interested in exactly three things: The Ori, the Lucian Alliance, and Disclosure. The chance to talk about any matter outside those three subjects is going to be a really hard sell, whether or not Daniel knows there are things that are more important—if not more urgent—and whether or not Daniel thinks it's worth the trouble to try to persuade them.

(There are beautiful planets out there. Serene, untouched, paradisiacal. A three-star general could surely get permission to go and look, if only Daniel could talk him into it. They could bring along some friends; make it a really big party. Jack is the stalking horse. Daniel is the tethered goat. They've got a whole imaginary menagerie right here, just waiting for someone to draw a lion in the sand.)

He glances out the cabin window (cabin'd, crib'd, confin'd). Far below, the untrammeled sweep of the Great Plains appears through peepholes in the intercessory clouds. It's interesting to see how uninhabited the landscape looks, even though the world is said to be grappling with the tragedy of overpopulation and all its attendant horrors. He wonders how many of Earth's poor and starving would leave for otherwhere if migration were as simple as walking through a doorway. He wonders if the landscape below him would be changed at all if they did.

He's doing his best to distract himself. Daniel knows that. The briefing he is yet to give had been prepared within his mind even before the problem that led to its necessity had been solved. He's always been a quick thinker. (And nothing sharpens the mind so much as the possibility of extinction.) The trouble is, the news from the multiverse is bad. No one is doing any better than they are here against the Ori. (Many of them are doing far worse.) The best he can offer up is a catalogue of dead end strategies. Maybe it will be enough to save their reality. (Maybe not.) The same goes for the Lucian Alliance, successor in interest to the Goa'uld Empire: in every universe where the Tau'ri and the Alliance are aware of each other, their relationship is adversarial. It doesn't matter if Cameron Mitchell started the war, or if Earth was pulled into it because of its alliance with the Tok'ra, or if the Alliance simply doesn't like competition: they're at war. And the enemy has more soldiers, more ships, and possession of the ultimate high ground. (What it doesn't have is true organization, which is why the multiverse of SGCs still have Gate Teams to send across the universe.)

That leaves Door Number Three.

It's very depressing—really very depressing, actually—to think that he's living in the best of all possible worlds. At least of the ones he knows about, which (adding in those he experienced before last week) is just about two dozen. Logic and physics both indicate that far more exist. Surely, in one of those, things are better than here?

Doesn't matter. "Here" is what he's got to work with, providing reports and advisories glimpsed through the looking-glass. Now, when it's too late, he contemplates the possibility of something he wouldn't have done anyway: in an infinity of Daniel Jacksons, what difference would it have made if one, or two, or a dozen of them switched places? It would give the problems he (they) face the illusion of novelty, at least. Perhaps he did. Who's to say? Daniel thinks he remembers standing at the foot of the ramp watching the last of his doubles pass through the Gate, but his memory has been more than a little pliable since he took up dying as a hobby. With a little work, he can probably convince himself he was the one on the ramp, and this is some other Eden.

Medieval theologians wondered how many angels could dance on a pin, as if the answer to that could make any difference to their vision of the world. On the other hand, perhaps it would have. Who knows? That's the real question that has to be asked: Who knows? (And its streetwise cousin, Cui Bono? aka, "What's in it for me?") And here they are again, back to the eternal truth. The only interest is self-interest, and self-interested people are rarely interested in anything else.

He sips his Scotch. In another hour they'll be wheels-down at Bolling (soon to become Joint Base Anacostia–Bolling, so saith the rumor-mill; Jack's idea of small-talk can be military and labyrinthine) . Another hour more and he'll be at the Pentagon. Preliminary debrief. Daniel, how ya doin? I leave, and look at the mess you get yourself into. Well, whadda we got?

And the answer is never going to change. I've got nothing, Jack. Possessions, inspiration, hope. Empty hands and empty pockets. No Plan B. In the cosmology of second acts and second chances, Daniel has at last become an atheist. The trick is not to let anyone know. (They won't take it at all well.)

The clouds have vanished, and the landscape outside his window has sprouted cities; vast sprawling urbanisms that spill into one another like water (like blood), and which (if this were night) light up the darkness like branching arteries, a simulacrum of the metacosm (macro meet micro meet meta). They'll be landing soon. Jack will know everything the moment he sees him, but Jack's greatest strength has always been forgetfulness.

("I'm the opposite. I'll never forgive myself. But sometimes I can forget... Sometimes.")

Jack will pretend to know nothing, will coax declarative statements out of Daniel, will shuffle them like a magician's deck of cards, willing them into a more sanguine sanguinary order. And thus they will be presented to the other featured players: fiats accompli and deii ex machina, and really, guys, it's not as bad as it looks, we've got some good ideas going here.

Ideas, maybe, but not answers. (It will probably be time, soon, to admit, if only to himself, that he knows how this hand plays out. Threes and eights, Dead Man's Hand, and it's no surprise, because it hasn't been a surprise for a very long time.)

Perhaps he's come to Washington not to make a report, but to say goodbye. No one would admit it (or believe it), but Jack was always the optimist of their sacred band. Sam saw entropy and Teal'c saw revenge. Daniel saw the dust of empires and knew that all things must die. But Jack always saw the possibility of another sunrise. Maybe he still does.

The blurt of the air-brakes startles him. Daniel wonders if he's been dreaming. If somewhere in that hypnagogic reverie there are answers, or at least conclusions, but...nope. It's the same as it ever was. None of his multiverse doubles told him anything to surprise him, because the universe is a chessboard and they're down to the final moves. Whether the board is set up again is something that won't matter to him. He won't be here to see it.

His attendant bestirs herself to whisk away his glass and tell him to tighten his seatbelt. They're coming in for a landing.

(Jack always liked to play out the endgame.)

(Threes and eights.)

(Sha'mat.)

#
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Z Is For Zucker, Zeitgeist, and Ground Zero
by ivorygates

Master Sergeant David A Zucker had an impeccable service record. He had checked off all the important boxes since enlisting in the Air Force at the ripe old age of 21: Overseas Deployment, Jump School at Benning, AFSOC Special Tactics. He was ambitious, but not for money and power: when a whiff of a more elite unit appeared on his radar, he did everything possible to get into the pipeline. Since he was as stubborn as he was highly-trained, he made the cut.

So what was he doing guarding a warehouse in Lincoln County, Nevada? (Hey, at least his wife liked living in Vegas.)

People in his line of work didn't get detailed explanations, and asking questions could be a career killer. While the task seemed senseless, he took comfort from the knowledge that he was an extremely expensive piece of government property, and they wouldn't have him doing rent-a-cop shit if it was as far below his pay-grade as it seemed.

And after all, the warehouse—one of three—was at Area 53 in Paradise Ranch. And the Ranch was at Groom Lake.

Groom Lake tested, among other things, the warfighting capabilities of enemy aircraft, so Zuck was familiar with the location in a more than pop cultural way, but he'd never seen this particular sub-installation: an office building, two warehouses, a hangar, and a line shack where security could sign in, sign out, and get coffee on their breaks. It was an eight hour shift, which—in practice—boiled down to three two-man, two-hour patrols (Perimeter, Site One, Site Two, and if he was a really good boy he'd get to guard the hangar or even the office building), with a 20-minute break between them. The total on-site security force was roughly twenty people each shift (those numbers alone were enough to tell him Area 53 was Big Juju), and all of them very well armed. (ROE said "lethal force at shift commander's discretion.") Shift assignments were rotated in a three to six week window: Zuck was currently pulling the 2300-0700 slot, which had the advantage of being peaceful. Whoever it was that worked in the building sometimes worked late, something he only knew from the chatter, as the building never showed lights.

In fact, nothing here ever showed lights.

It was, of course, possible that he was guarding a weapons cache of particular interest to the Bad Guys, but if so, the stuff had the best camouflage he'd ever seen, because it all looked like it came out of a junk shop of some kind (at least the stuff that wasn't crated). There were big silver balls, all kinds of weird things that looked more like chairs than they did anything else, racks of weird costumes, and—most inexplicable of all—rocks. Big rocks, little rocks, tall rocks, flat rocks.

Rocks that glowed.

The first time he saw it, Zuck put the glow down to "new guy" hazing. Nobody talked about personal stuff—places they'd been and things they'd done—but that didn't mean they didn't talk. Rumors and legends about the which and why of the here and now, because that was common knowledge and it didn't give anything away. So before Zuck had been on-site even a week, he'd learned that Site One and Site Two were haunted, or full of things that were haunted, or maybe used to belong to CIA-NID-DIA-NSA-ONSI or even 25 AF (Zuck had won the pool for naming the most US intelligence agencies; he had a good head for trivia). Things happened. People vanished. Zuck decided not to think about the first one until he saw it, and the second one never. A lot of people vanished in his line of work.

The two-man security teams were assembled at random. The night Zuck saw the rock glow, he was partnered with Dave Kalanithi, aka Nits. Nits was a six-months veteran; he said the max tour here was 18 months before you got moved on up to the Big Job. Or else washed out. Zuck had his own thoughts about who was going to make that cut, and Nits wasn't on the list. It stood to reason this duty was the last stage of the screening process, and there were times he wondered what they were looking for. He was pretty sure it wasn't guys who gossiped with New Guys about why they were all here. Zuck kept his thoughts to himself.

Site One and Site Two covered an acre or so, and there wasn't any climate control, so it was a lot like doing a shift in an oven. By the time two hours were up, you were glad to get outside. There was a door on each side of the building, and you went in through a different one each time. Then it was a walk around the inside walls, then a walk up and down each aisle, then another perimeter check. The teams patrolled about half an aisle apart, so that one would catch what the other one missed. It was actually possible to get turned around on patrol, so Zuck had picked out landmarks and memorized them in order. He gave them names, too. Octopus Coffin. Piggy Bank. Zombie Tree. Things like that.

Black Rock was just shy of seven feet tall, about five feet wide, and roughly a foot deep. It looked like a slice of geode (Zuck's youngest was a rockhound) except for how it didn't: a couple of the interior angles were straight-edged, and it had a flat solid back. It still looked more like a rock than it looked like anything else, though.

The first time he saw it glow, he was at the North Door. Black Rock was halfway down the north-outside aisle. He'd been just about to ask Nits which of them should go first when there was a flash of light—blue like the lights in a swimming pool at night—and in their glow he could see Black Rock outlined in their glow, as if the light was coming from the far side.

Both of them headed for it at a dead run, but by the time he and Nits reached it, Black Rock was dark again.

He glanced at Nits. Nits looked at him. "We will never speak of this again," Nits intoned solemnly, and Zuck nodded.

Black Rock wasn't the only thing that glowed, or even the only thing that did something. Some times he'd hear snatches of music and even voices. The big balls would light up a little and then fade out, and once—when the power went out and the backup system hadn't come on line yet—he'd stood in the pitch dark with Airman First Class Ryan Paltrow and watched what looked like ball lightning dance along the top of the racks. But Black Rock did it most. When it lit up, it was visible from a couple of aisles away. Just Zuck's bad luck never to be on the business side of the thing when it switched on.

He had not yet gotten to the point of deciding whether or not he actually wanted to get a better look at Black Rock's glow when the thing happened.

His CO had told him that his performance review would probably be a bit more hands on than he was used to. Zuck thought that was great, because it meant a step closer to the program he was actually interested in. So maybe he didn't have his head in the game as much as he should have when it happened.

He was just turning down the next aisle when Black Rock lit up again. The blue lights flared red, and he could hear—impossibly—the sound of gunfire. As he and his partner headed back the way he'd come at a dead run, Site One lit up with its own red lights and sirens.

There were two people in North Aisle who hadn't been there thirty seconds ago.

"Drop your weapons! Do it now!"

One of the tangos was somebody's mom—blond hair and a white sweater—but the other one was a grunt in full rattle. Zuck could hear the Armed Emergency Response Team burst through the North Door and close up behind him just as Blonde Mommy turned around and carefully laid something on the floor before straightening up and raising her hands. She looked more pissed off than scared.

"I'm Dr. Samantha Carter from the SGA. This is Major Kawalsky. We need to speak to your commander."

#

Four hours later, Master Sergeant David A. Zucker, Blonde Mommy and Grunt—along with a few other people, were wheels-up for Peterson.

Three hours after that, Master Sergeant David A. Zucker got a first-hand look at his next post.

#

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