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In Search of Possibilities, part 3. (Continued from part 1 and part 2.)
Epilogue Here
Sam and Daniel stood side-by-side next to Colonel O'Neill's infirmary bed, grinning down at their commanding officer. Teal'c stood at the foot of the bed, watching all three of them with that absolutely inscrutable face that meant he was silently laughing.
Colonel O'Neill squinted up at them, his eyes narrowing at their cheerful expressions. "You look amazingly upbeat for two people who fell though a snakehead's vanity mirror and got stuck with yourselves for nine hours," he said sourly.
"Oh, we had fun, sir," Sam said brightly. "We had a lovely conversation with ourselves."
"Our robot selves," Daniel added, sitting down in the chair next to the bed and leaning a comfortable elbow on the colonel's mattress.
"They seemed quite pleasant," Teal'c agreed blandly.
The colonel groaned and thumped his head back against his pillow. "It's bad enough there have to be alternate mes running around all over the universes," he complained. "Do there have to be alternate robot us's, too?"
Sam winced a little. "Actually, sir, your robot self was dead. So was Robot Teal'c." She nodded apologetically at Teal'c, who graced her with a solemn nod of acknowledgement in return.
"...Oh." Colonel O'Neill frowned at this. "And you're so happy about this - why?" he demanded.
"Not about that part, Jack," Daniel assured him. "But they'd been cut off from Earth for three years. I think they might choose to make contact, and that can only be a good thing."
"I don't see why."
"Because they don't deserve to be alone?" Daniel's voice was still light, but Sam recognized the undercurrent of menace that lurked just around the corner of the conversation. The colonel evidently sensed it as well, because he hastily changed the subject.
"So, you two are back in the right universe. What happened in the lab? Have you made your report to General Hammond yet?"
"Yes, sir," Sam replied, slipping into formal mode. "There was very little that we could use from a military or tactical standpoint, but we were able to retrieve quite a bit of information about the quantum mirror itself."
"The quantum mirror that we destroyed two years ago?" the colonel asked pointedly. "And that's useful how, exactly?"
"Well, Jack, there's obviously more than one mirror," Daniel said reasonably. "And getting hold of Atropus' data crystals will keep Sam's division busy for years to come."
"Wait a second." Colonel O'Neill held up a hand, frowning. "I still don't understand how you managed to get in when the two of you messed up the knob thingies."
"It was very simple, O'Neill," Teal'c cut in, smoothly interrupting Daniel's protest before it could be launched. "Once the thunderstorm had ceased, I requisitioned a second winch and generator and the assistance of SG-3. Colonel Reynolds lowered me into the shaft until I was directly above the quantum mirror -"
"Are you crazy?" the colonel demanded.
Teal'c merely cocked an eyebrow at him. "From there," he continued, unperturbed, "it was relatively simple to maneuver myself through the broken wall of the shaft into the laboratory itself. I made my way to the entrance of the laboratory and found a simple locking mechanism, which I released to open the door."
"Huh." The colonel blinked at the prosaic solution. "And the only things in there were the snakehead's research on the mirror?"
"It'll take quite a while to go through the data crystals, sir," Sam offered. "There might be information on other subjects as well."
"No space guns?"
"No, Jack," Daniel said patiently. "No space guns." He grinned at the colonel. "On the other hand, your big honkin' spaceship has big honkin' space guns, so the month isn't a total loss, right?"
"I guess," the colonel sighed, staring moodily at his wrapped knee. "This knee's gonna complicate things, though."
"I understand that Doctor Fraiser plans to release you in time for our mission to destroy Tanith, O'Neill. Is that not the case?"
"Oh, it is." The colonel avoided comment on the way Teal'c chose to categorize their mission to move the Tok'ra to a new base. "But it's still a pain in the... mitka."
"I thought it was the knee, sir," Sam said before she could stop herself. Teal'c's face became even more expressionless, which for him was the equivalent of outright sniggering.
Colonel O'Neill glared at her, then at Teal'c, and then at Daniel, who wasn't even trying to hide his smile. "Explain something to me," he groused. "You two fall through a quantum mirror and come back here without a scratch. Laughing Boy here -" He pointed an accusing finger at Teal'c, who raised both brows this time and didn't bother to refute the charge, "- gets hit by lightning, and keeps right on ticking..."
"I was not, in fact, struck by lightning," Teal'c said calmly. "I was merely temporarily stunned by being in close proximity to a lightning blast."
The colonel's voice rose to override this. "And I'm the one stuck in the infirmary with Midget Mengele as my -"
"You were saying, Colonel?"
Four heads whipped around to stare at Janet Fraiser, who had the uncanny ability to move silently when it suited her, despite her non-regulation heels. Teal'c bowed his head in greeting; Daniel sat up a little straighter in his chair, his hand covering his mouth to hide his smirk; and Colonel O'Neill pasted a weak smile on his face, his mind clearly racing in an attempt to salvage the situation. Hiding a grin of her own, Sam murmured something noncommittal and escaped the infirmary.
She wandered back toward her lab, glad to be walking the clean, sterile halls of the SGC instead of sitting in a patch of grass and flowers on the other side of the mirror. She wondered, with a shiver of unease, how much her robot double would have given for the chance to be doing the same.
"Sam?"
She turned at the sound of Daniel's voice, stopping to wait for him as he strode toward her, his face alight with warmth.
"You doing okay?" He seemed to be studying her face carefully.
"Yeah." She eyed him. "Looks like you are, too." That tense undercurrent of unhappiness, which had dogged him from the moment he learned about their doubles' deaths, was gone. She remembered that final exchange he'd had with Robot Daniel on the other side of the mirror, and she understood how much it had meant to him to be able to offer that other Daniel a tangible token of hope.
"Has anyone complained about the loss of equipment?" she asked.
Daniel gave a one-shouldered shrug. "Considering everything else that got lost on the mission? No one is asking any questions." His mouth quirked into a conspiratorial grin. "Besides, Daniel Jackson still has possession of it. It's just a different Daniel, that's all."
"Just a different Daniel," she repeated thoughtfully. "I guess so."
"Anyway, Janet kicked us all out of the infirmary, so I thought I'd join you and see what goodies we got from Atropus' secret lair." He waggled his eyebrows at her for emphasis.
She chuckled. "Sounds good to me. Come on."
She fell easily into comfortable conversation with him as the two of them walked to her lab, making straight for her computer to access the data they'd copied from Atropus' lab. But her mind kept circling back to Daniel's passionate defense of their counterparts, and wondering just where she stood after the day's experiences.
"Daniel," she said suddenly, interrupting him mid-flow. "After what happened today..."
"Yes, Sam?"
The colonel had always asserted that the robots were machines, nothing more. Even after the robots in their universe had... Died? Deactivated? Even then, despite a softening in his attitude, he still insisted that they hadn't truly been alive.
Daniel had been furious at the time. She'd wondered, at that chaotic debriefing after Juna, if his anger was truly over the robots' fate, or a thin mask for his terror at not being there when they were all so close to death. Now, after watching that final exchange between Daniel and his robotic counterpart, she was no longer in any doubt.
"I was thinking about Teal'c," she said, circling around the subject. "I remember your report about what Teal'c said in that other reality, when we were trying to help the SGA contact the Asgard."
She'd been a little taken aback, at the time, to read of his calm, almost ruthless assessment, at the precise definitions of self that allowed Teal'c to fire on his doppelganger without even blinking.
"After he shot the other Teal'c? 'Ours is the only reality of consequence,'" Daniel quoted. He tipped his head down, glancing at her over the frames of his glasses. "It's the way his mind works, Sam. It doesn't have to mean anything else."
Her gaze slanted away from him. He'd understood her oblique reference, all right. Like her, he seemed to assume that in Teal'c's cool mind of black-and-white, friend-or-foe, he considered himself to be the only Teal'c of consequence in their own reality, too.
"So where does that leave you?" he prompted gently, drawing her to look back at him.
Where did that leave her? The scientist who marveled at the workings of an android far beyond their capability to reverse-engineer, the astrophysicist who thought in numbers and absolutes? How was she to think of their robot doubles now - those they'd handed to Harlan in this universe for burial, and those they'd left with a glimmer of hope in a dimension just a few heartbeats away?
"I think..." she started, then stopped.
She couldn't understand the robots, she knew. She couldn't define them, categorize them, classify them as real or not.
She never would be able to, either.
With a sudden lightening of her heart, she realized that she rather liked it that way. Difficult challenges were good things, after all.
"I think it's time for chocolate," she announced. Opening a drawer, she drew out two Snickers bars from her private stash. She handed one to Daniel and saluted him with the other. "To absent friends," she said, a wealth of meaning in her eyes.
He took the proffered candy bar gravely, and saluted her in return. "To absent Sams and Daniels," he agreed, and tore the wrapper open.
***
Epilogue There
Stars were appearing in the sky, and the moons were rising, when Sam and Daniel returned to the power plant, some six hours before their power reserves would drop to dangerous levels. They greeted Harlan, then went to their resting area for some privacy. They sat down and simply looked at each other for several minutes.
"We have a decision to make," Sam said, finally breaking the silence. "Major Sam and I spent a lot of time discussing the Air Force side of things. Daniel, if that Presidential order for our... dissection was never revoked, we could find ourselves literally under the microscope."
"An argument for our sentience wouldn't help?"
"I'm honestly not sure which way would be worse, Daniel - if we really are the original SG-1, or if we're not."
He gave her a level stare. "But you do agree that we're fully sentient - fully real - whether or not events here were the same as events there. Don't you?"
For three long, agonizing heartbeats, Sam didn't answer. Then she straightened her shoulders, and returned his steady gaze. "Yes," she said simply. "I do."
He breathed again. "I'm glad," he told her.
Quiet descended again, until Sam returned to the burning topic of the moment. "So. Do we want to try to make contact again?"
"I agree it's a risk." Daniel shifted restlessly. "But the other Daniel pointed out that if everything in both universes is the same, except for Jack and Teal'c surviving and our discovery of the switch at the very beginning, then Juna is now suffering under Cronus' rule, and the SGC has no idea."
"The SGC would want to know about Cronus' movements," Sam said, considering.
"And maybe they can help liberate the people of Juna again."
Sam smiled at him. "Yes. There's that, too."
"Well." Daniel shifted again. "I gave me - I mean, I gave myself..." Sam had started snickering at his fumbling attempts at coherency, and he picked up one of his spare shirts and lobbed it at her. She caught it and primly started folding it with military precision.
"Okay." Daniel took a deep breath and tried again. "The other Daniel gave me something. Two things. He thought we might want to use them."
He pulled the two items out of his pocket, and saw Sam's eyes widen with surprise. The first was a folded slip of paper, but it was the second object that made her gasp and drop his shirt.
A radio.
"We can try to dial Earth again." Daniel licked his lips. "There won't be any visual, of course, but we can at least communicate via the radio. Find out if anyone is home. And this -" He unfolded the paper and showed Sam the symbols that SG-1 Daniel had hurriedly scribbled down right before his departure. "The SGC in their universe established something they called the 'Alpha Site,' although the other me did add that a different universe called it the 'Beta Site.' That's... probably not very important."
"No," Sam agreed, her voice almost dream-like. "So if we can't get through to Earth, we can try the Alpha Site instead?"
"If we want."
If we want.
They didn't need their internal radios to communicate. The look in each other's eyes was more than enough.
As one, they rose and made their way to the section that housed the Stargate. It was dark here now, as they slowly continued to shut down everything in the plant that wasn't either directly connected to the power source or used for their living quarters. That didn't matter, though. Thanks to Harlan, they had no trouble seeing in the dark.
But now, there was a glimmer of light. And no matter the outcome, Daniel knew he was glad they'd come this far.
He stood in front of the DHD, Sam at his side. His fingers skimmed lightly over the glyphs, then poised over the first one for Earth. He hesitated and turned Sam, raising his brows questioningly.
She nodded, her smile a little shaky. "Do it," she said.
Daniel pressed down hard on that first glyph, seeing it light up. With his gaze fully focused on the DHD, he heard the first chevron on the Stargate lock into place.
Auriga.
Cetus.
Centaurus.
Cancer.
Scutum.
Eridanus.
He hesitated once more at the point of origin, looking up at Sam. She nodded again, her smile no longer tremulous and her eyes bright and clear.
He hit the final glyph. The seventh chevron lit.
Sam's hand squeezed his shoulder, and he reached out to press the central globe.
end
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niamaea wanted: (Our) Daniel and Sam in an alternate universe (quantum mirror or however else it could happen), friendship.
She didn’t want: Character death, noncon, excessive angst (some is fine), Jack/Sam.
Some characters died, but not not the ones Niamaea meant. And some angst turned out to be inevitable. I hope Niamaea will forgive me. :)
Sam and Daniel stood side-by-side next to Colonel O'Neill's infirmary bed, grinning down at their commanding officer. Teal'c stood at the foot of the bed, watching all three of them with that absolutely inscrutable face that meant he was silently laughing.
Colonel O'Neill squinted up at them, his eyes narrowing at their cheerful expressions. "You look amazingly upbeat for two people who fell though a snakehead's vanity mirror and got stuck with yourselves for nine hours," he said sourly.
"Oh, we had fun, sir," Sam said brightly. "We had a lovely conversation with ourselves."
"Our robot selves," Daniel added, sitting down in the chair next to the bed and leaning a comfortable elbow on the colonel's mattress.
"They seemed quite pleasant," Teal'c agreed blandly.
The colonel groaned and thumped his head back against his pillow. "It's bad enough there have to be alternate mes running around all over the universes," he complained. "Do there have to be alternate robot us's, too?"
Sam winced a little. "Actually, sir, your robot self was dead. So was Robot Teal'c." She nodded apologetically at Teal'c, who graced her with a solemn nod of acknowledgement in return.
"...Oh." Colonel O'Neill frowned at this. "And you're so happy about this - why?" he demanded.
"Not about that part, Jack," Daniel assured him. "But they'd been cut off from Earth for three years. I think they might choose to make contact, and that can only be a good thing."
"I don't see why."
"Because they don't deserve to be alone?" Daniel's voice was still light, but Sam recognized the undercurrent of menace that lurked just around the corner of the conversation. The colonel evidently sensed it as well, because he hastily changed the subject.
"So, you two are back in the right universe. What happened in the lab? Have you made your report to General Hammond yet?"
"Yes, sir," Sam replied, slipping into formal mode. "There was very little that we could use from a military or tactical standpoint, but we were able to retrieve quite a bit of information about the quantum mirror itself."
"The quantum mirror that we destroyed two years ago?" the colonel asked pointedly. "And that's useful how, exactly?"
"Well, Jack, there's obviously more than one mirror," Daniel said reasonably. "And getting hold of Atropus' data crystals will keep Sam's division busy for years to come."
"Wait a second." Colonel O'Neill held up a hand, frowning. "I still don't understand how you managed to get in when the two of you messed up the knob thingies."
"It was very simple, O'Neill," Teal'c cut in, smoothly interrupting Daniel's protest before it could be launched. "Once the thunderstorm had ceased, I requisitioned a second winch and generator and the assistance of SG-3. Colonel Reynolds lowered me into the shaft until I was directly above the quantum mirror -"
"Are you crazy?" the colonel demanded.
Teal'c merely cocked an eyebrow at him. "From there," he continued, unperturbed, "it was relatively simple to maneuver myself through the broken wall of the shaft into the laboratory itself. I made my way to the entrance of the laboratory and found a simple locking mechanism, which I released to open the door."
"Huh." The colonel blinked at the prosaic solution. "And the only things in there were the snakehead's research on the mirror?"
"It'll take quite a while to go through the data crystals, sir," Sam offered. "There might be information on other subjects as well."
"No space guns?"
"No, Jack," Daniel said patiently. "No space guns." He grinned at the colonel. "On the other hand, your big honkin' spaceship has big honkin' space guns, so the month isn't a total loss, right?"
"I guess," the colonel sighed, staring moodily at his wrapped knee. "This knee's gonna complicate things, though."
"I understand that Doctor Fraiser plans to release you in time for our mission to destroy Tanith, O'Neill. Is that not the case?"
"Oh, it is." The colonel avoided comment on the way Teal'c chose to categorize their mission to move the Tok'ra to a new base. "But it's still a pain in the... mitka."
"I thought it was the knee, sir," Sam said before she could stop herself. Teal'c's face became even more expressionless, which for him was the equivalent of outright sniggering.
Colonel O'Neill glared at her, then at Teal'c, and then at Daniel, who wasn't even trying to hide his smile. "Explain something to me," he groused. "You two fall through a quantum mirror and come back here without a scratch. Laughing Boy here -" He pointed an accusing finger at Teal'c, who raised both brows this time and didn't bother to refute the charge, "- gets hit by lightning, and keeps right on ticking..."
"I was not, in fact, struck by lightning," Teal'c said calmly. "I was merely temporarily stunned by being in close proximity to a lightning blast."
The colonel's voice rose to override this. "And I'm the one stuck in the infirmary with Midget Mengele as my -"
"You were saying, Colonel?"
Four heads whipped around to stare at Janet Fraiser, who had the uncanny ability to move silently when it suited her, despite her non-regulation heels. Teal'c bowed his head in greeting; Daniel sat up a little straighter in his chair, his hand covering his mouth to hide his smirk; and Colonel O'Neill pasted a weak smile on his face, his mind clearly racing in an attempt to salvage the situation. Hiding a grin of her own, Sam murmured something noncommittal and escaped the infirmary.
She wandered back toward her lab, glad to be walking the clean, sterile halls of the SGC instead of sitting in a patch of grass and flowers on the other side of the mirror. She wondered, with a shiver of unease, how much her robot double would have given for the chance to be doing the same.
"Sam?"
She turned at the sound of Daniel's voice, stopping to wait for him as he strode toward her, his face alight with warmth.
"You doing okay?" He seemed to be studying her face carefully.
"Yeah." She eyed him. "Looks like you are, too." That tense undercurrent of unhappiness, which had dogged him from the moment he learned about their doubles' deaths, was gone. She remembered that final exchange he'd had with Robot Daniel on the other side of the mirror, and she understood how much it had meant to him to be able to offer that other Daniel a tangible token of hope.
"Has anyone complained about the loss of equipment?" she asked.
Daniel gave a one-shouldered shrug. "Considering everything else that got lost on the mission? No one is asking any questions." His mouth quirked into a conspiratorial grin. "Besides, Daniel Jackson still has possession of it. It's just a different Daniel, that's all."
"Just a different Daniel," she repeated thoughtfully. "I guess so."
"Anyway, Janet kicked us all out of the infirmary, so I thought I'd join you and see what goodies we got from Atropus' secret lair." He waggled his eyebrows at her for emphasis.
She chuckled. "Sounds good to me. Come on."
She fell easily into comfortable conversation with him as the two of them walked to her lab, making straight for her computer to access the data they'd copied from Atropus' lab. But her mind kept circling back to Daniel's passionate defense of their counterparts, and wondering just where she stood after the day's experiences.
"Daniel," she said suddenly, interrupting him mid-flow. "After what happened today..."
"Yes, Sam?"
The colonel had always asserted that the robots were machines, nothing more. Even after the robots in their universe had... Died? Deactivated? Even then, despite a softening in his attitude, he still insisted that they hadn't truly been alive.
Daniel had been furious at the time. She'd wondered, at that chaotic debriefing after Juna, if his anger was truly over the robots' fate, or a thin mask for his terror at not being there when they were all so close to death. Now, after watching that final exchange between Daniel and his robotic counterpart, she was no longer in any doubt.
"I was thinking about Teal'c," she said, circling around the subject. "I remember your report about what Teal'c said in that other reality, when we were trying to help the SGA contact the Asgard."
She'd been a little taken aback, at the time, to read of his calm, almost ruthless assessment, at the precise definitions of self that allowed Teal'c to fire on his doppelganger without even blinking.
"After he shot the other Teal'c? 'Ours is the only reality of consequence,'" Daniel quoted. He tipped his head down, glancing at her over the frames of his glasses. "It's the way his mind works, Sam. It doesn't have to mean anything else."
Her gaze slanted away from him. He'd understood her oblique reference, all right. Like her, he seemed to assume that in Teal'c's cool mind of black-and-white, friend-or-foe, he considered himself to be the only Teal'c of consequence in their own reality, too.
"So where does that leave you?" he prompted gently, drawing her to look back at him.
Where did that leave her? The scientist who marveled at the workings of an android far beyond their capability to reverse-engineer, the astrophysicist who thought in numbers and absolutes? How was she to think of their robot doubles now - those they'd handed to Harlan in this universe for burial, and those they'd left with a glimmer of hope in a dimension just a few heartbeats away?
"I think..." she started, then stopped.
She couldn't understand the robots, she knew. She couldn't define them, categorize them, classify them as real or not.
She never would be able to, either.
With a sudden lightening of her heart, she realized that she rather liked it that way. Difficult challenges were good things, after all.
"I think it's time for chocolate," she announced. Opening a drawer, she drew out two Snickers bars from her private stash. She handed one to Daniel and saluted him with the other. "To absent friends," she said, a wealth of meaning in her eyes.
He took the proffered candy bar gravely, and saluted her in return. "To absent Sams and Daniels," he agreed, and tore the wrapper open.
Stars were appearing in the sky, and the moons were rising, when Sam and Daniel returned to the power plant, some six hours before their power reserves would drop to dangerous levels. They greeted Harlan, then went to their resting area for some privacy. They sat down and simply looked at each other for several minutes.
"We have a decision to make," Sam said, finally breaking the silence. "Major Sam and I spent a lot of time discussing the Air Force side of things. Daniel, if that Presidential order for our... dissection was never revoked, we could find ourselves literally under the microscope."
"An argument for our sentience wouldn't help?"
"I'm honestly not sure which way would be worse, Daniel - if we really are the original SG-1, or if we're not."
He gave her a level stare. "But you do agree that we're fully sentient - fully real - whether or not events here were the same as events there. Don't you?"
For three long, agonizing heartbeats, Sam didn't answer. Then she straightened her shoulders, and returned his steady gaze. "Yes," she said simply. "I do."
He breathed again. "I'm glad," he told her.
Quiet descended again, until Sam returned to the burning topic of the moment. "So. Do we want to try to make contact again?"
"I agree it's a risk." Daniel shifted restlessly. "But the other Daniel pointed out that if everything in both universes is the same, except for Jack and Teal'c surviving and our discovery of the switch at the very beginning, then Juna is now suffering under Cronus' rule, and the SGC has no idea."
"The SGC would want to know about Cronus' movements," Sam said, considering.
"And maybe they can help liberate the people of Juna again."
Sam smiled at him. "Yes. There's that, too."
"Well." Daniel shifted again. "I gave me - I mean, I gave myself..." Sam had started snickering at his fumbling attempts at coherency, and he picked up one of his spare shirts and lobbed it at her. She caught it and primly started folding it with military precision.
"Okay." Daniel took a deep breath and tried again. "The other Daniel gave me something. Two things. He thought we might want to use them."
He pulled the two items out of his pocket, and saw Sam's eyes widen with surprise. The first was a folded slip of paper, but it was the second object that made her gasp and drop his shirt.
A radio.
"We can try to dial Earth again." Daniel licked his lips. "There won't be any visual, of course, but we can at least communicate via the radio. Find out if anyone is home. And this -" He unfolded the paper and showed Sam the symbols that SG-1 Daniel had hurriedly scribbled down right before his departure. "The SGC in their universe established something they called the 'Alpha Site,' although the other me did add that a different universe called it the 'Beta Site.' That's... probably not very important."
"No," Sam agreed, her voice almost dream-like. "So if we can't get through to Earth, we can try the Alpha Site instead?"
"If we want."
If we want.
They didn't need their internal radios to communicate. The look in each other's eyes was more than enough.
As one, they rose and made their way to the section that housed the Stargate. It was dark here now, as they slowly continued to shut down everything in the plant that wasn't either directly connected to the power source or used for their living quarters. That didn't matter, though. Thanks to Harlan, they had no trouble seeing in the dark.
But now, there was a glimmer of light. And no matter the outcome, Daniel knew he was glad they'd come this far.
He stood in front of the DHD, Sam at his side. His fingers skimmed lightly over the glyphs, then poised over the first one for Earth. He hesitated and turned Sam, raising his brows questioningly.
She nodded, her smile a little shaky. "Do it," she said.
Daniel pressed down hard on that first glyph, seeing it light up. With his gaze fully focused on the DHD, he heard the first chevron on the Stargate lock into place.
Auriga.
Cetus.
Centaurus.
Cancer.
Scutum.
Eridanus.
He hesitated once more at the point of origin, looking up at Sam. She nodded again, her smile no longer tremulous and her eyes bright and clear.
He hit the final glyph. The seventh chevron lit.
Sam's hand squeezed his shoulder, and he reached out to press the central globe.
end
niamaea wanted: (Our) Daniel and Sam in an alternate universe (quantum mirror or however else it could happen), friendship. She didn’t want: Character death, noncon, excessive angst (some is fine), Jack/Sam.
Some characters died, but not not the ones Niamaea meant. And some angst turned out to be inevitable. I hope Niamaea will forgive me. :)
Tags:
no subject
“Well, I’d offer to help, Daniel, but it’s all–”
“Don’t say it, Jack. Please.” Daniel gave a long-suffering sigh. “You’re still by the door, right?”
“Yes, Daniel.” The drawl sounded amused. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me where to go.”
“Jack, if you keep feeding me straight lines like that, I’ll –”
Hee! I completely loved this... I can *so* see this in an ep. (a good ep..) And Jack's suggestion (possibly not entirely serious?) that they blow open the door with C4. And Teal'c being reasonable.
And the puzzle was excellent...nice bits of detail, working in the Linear A from Pelop's world (Dang, I always forget that ep title, because of the 'hundred days' reference which *should* have been the ep title, but which they didn't use there but for the S3 ep..)
And I love it that they get the *data* off Chronus' ship- it makes no sense whatsoever that there wouldn't be data stored in the ship's memory, and it's really never dealt with.
Getting back to the puzzle- we really don't see anything like that after the space mine episode, though it shows up more than once in earlier seasons(I'm thinking of S2 Message in a Bottle. And S1 Cold Lazarus.) I love Sam and Daniel babbling at each other when they start to unravel it- wonder twins indeed!
And I love *weather* (something we see very little of on the show!), and of *course* they can't just solve it, and if they hadn't been under the gun timewise and wet and stuff, no doubt they'd have stopped a few minutes and thought about it. And the base 8 was a nice touch.
Lightning.. um. I think I'd be a tad happier if we'd seen the end of Sam's cable melt, but it is a very SG-1ish thing to have happen. No doubt the rain loosens whatever they used to anchor the generator initially. I have to handwave this one a bit. No doubt the winch normally has a mechanical failsafe that is also damaged by lightning. Okay, the probability of the generator falling, that's clever, and I don't think I've ever seen it used before.
Love, love, love! the robots, and this being really Harlan's world. That leads me to an interesting question...I can't recall- did the quantum mirror ever show the original alien lab as one of the options in POV? I don't think we've ever established in canon that it can be used to travel to different worlds in different dimensions. (Though it's certainly common enough in fanon.)
Love the argument about movies- it seemed a tad odd at first- but once I realized they were robots, I figured that they would have talked about movies they had seen as well as lots of other things over the years they were together on Harlan's world. And Sam pulling Daniel out of the way of the mirror *g*.
*giggles* Love Sam and Daniel rolling around trying to get unclipped. Like, before they have to get married.
Oh, and I figured out the robots pretty much instantly at the 'bleeding' line.
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And Sams and Daniels- I love AUs anyway and this is great fun. I love the unfolding comparisons of the two AUs. And wonder mightily if the 'real' SG-1 *does* get to go home in the second AU, and the robots just weren't told. (And *hearts* Alt!Hammond for warning them.)
I like the real Daniel so fiercely defending their humanity. I had to be sold on that one, but you convinced me. (At first, I was a bit startled at his vehemence, but you made it very real.) A nice foreshadowing of Reese, as well.
Oh, yes, LOVED: SG-1 Daniel frowned, thinking. “We must have,” he said doubtfully. He raised his voice. “Did we get into trouble, Sam?”
SO like Daniel to not notice being in trouble! (This leads me to a digression on teenage!Daniel, where he probably often got into trouble through inattention, and was completely bewildered when eventually the consequences were brought to his attention...)
Ooh, and you tie in the time loops from Window of Opportunity! How gorgeously ironic that they should try to dial just then!
Grumpy!Jack in the infirmary *g*- 'Midget Mengele!' Ouch! He's going to pay for that, for sure. More seriously, this must have been fairly stressful for Jack- getting injured and having to let someone else go rescue his team? Yeow. He's probably been driving the SGC folks crazy.
Oh, nice. I can definitely see Sam practicing avoidance on this one. And chocolate is always a good thing! Fics ending in chocolate = good!
And I definitely can see Robot Sam and Daniel trying to go home. *g* Sequel fic! Sequel fic!
Okay- from the rather disjointed commentary, you can see that yes, I loved it! Very well done, and really, longer fics are so satisfying. Listen to the sound of my voice. You love writing long fics. You want to write more long fics...
Very very lovely! Thank you!
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To be honest, I don't know. I'm not so sure I want to know. I did know, as soon as I had the robots' backstory, that I wanted to end it with Daniel activating the Stargate, but without us discovering if it worked. I leave it up to the reader to decide if they get their happy ending.
*hearts* Alt!Hammond for warning them
George Hammond rocks in absolutely every universe, doesn't he?
Oh, yes, LOVED: SG-1 Daniel frowned, thinking. “We must have,” he said doubtfully. He raised his voice. “Did we get into trouble, Sam?”
Heh. I think even later season!Daniel didn't notice that kind of thing half the time! And I can just see a teenaged Daniel taken utterly aback when someone yells at him: "...What?"
Ooh, and you tie in the time loops from Window of Opportunity! How gorgeously ironic that they should try to dial just then!
Actually, I needed to do it that way, or they would know. This way, we only know the Earth still existed as far along as Secrets, but nothing beyond that. I'm glad it worked for you!
this must have been fairly stressful for Jack- getting injured and having to let someone else go rescue his team? Yeow. He's probably been driving the SGC folks crazy.
Well, yeah. Why else would he be so grumpy? And coming up with a new name for Janet was kinda fun. :)
Fics ending in chocolate = good!
Everything ending in chocolate is good!
Sequel fic! Sequel fic!
Whew! And wow. And erm... I'll just extend the same invitation I gave Abyssis. You're welcome to write it yourself, if you'd like!
Thank you so much for this deliciously detailed review! You've really made my day. :)
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It's one of those universal constants that transcends dimensions. Like blue jell-o, in a way.
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Oh, dramatically, I think it was *absolutely* the right choice. But if I didn't want to know anyway it wouldn't have worked. If you know what I mean.
I'll just extend the same invitation I gave Abyssis. You're welcome to write it yourself, if you'd like!
Oh, I couldn't possibly steal her fun. I mean, didn't she say she only has a measley five or six WIPs? I've got ..::counts::.. Eeep! over 50.
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I went for the Linear A of Brief Candle for two reasons: it's Greek, and Robot!Daniel would at least have some familiarity with it. I kept getting caught on the limitations of dealing with a Sam and Daniel who were only around for 18 eps of the show.
I'm utterly charmed at your ability to pick out details, like the data from Cronus' ship and the weather and the base eight, because that's how you write, so I'm taking it as a huge compliment! :) And yes, such love for Wonder Twins moments, and we really didn't see it after S4.
Awww, everyone loves the robots! And I toyed with making Atropus' world Harlan's world in our dimension, too, but it would've gotten too messy. As for POV - no, they never saw 233 in the mirror. Daniel saw a beach once, but not the original alien lab. In my never-used backstory, I considered that Atropus had taken the mirror from Harlan's world in the first place, and that she or some other Goa'uld had caused the disaster that drove Harlan's people underground; but as I said, it got way too messy, and too much backstory instead of - well, story. :)
Yeah, Sam pulling Daniel out of the way - she's still Captain Doctor, after all!
Love Sam and Daniel rolling around trying to get unclipped. Like, before they have to get married.
Hee! One of my personal favorite bits, and another snippet that just wrote itself for me. Very considerate of them, I must say!
I expected most people to get it by the bleeding thing, but I didn't have any specific need for the reader to realize it at any particular point.
On to your next post, and wheeeee! for such lovely detailed feedback! :)
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Heavens yes. I can see how that would have been challenging- though also in some ways helpful, since at least it limited the amount of research somewhat. It was something I wrestled with constantly in Rearranging Fate- once you pick your point of divergence, there are just so *many* things to keep track of.
And it's the details that *really* make the universe :). You did a great job winding them through your story, so that it feels real. That's one of the things I really love in AUs, so I definitely notice them!