Stranded
Author: BadgerGater
Email: [email protected]
Category: Word A Month
Pairing: None
Rating: PG
Season: Four or Five
Summary: Who will save the day when SG-1 is stranded?
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: Stargate SG-1 and its characters are the property of Showtime/Viacom, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, Gekko Productions; all the powers that be, not me; This story is for entertainment purposes only and no money exchanged hands. No copyright infringement intended. The story is the property of the author and may not be posted without the author's consent.
Authors Notes:
____________
Frustrated.
Frazzled.
Two geniuses on my team, two, count ‘em, two, two certified geniuses with an actual IQ higher than the national debt geniuses, *and* the smartest alien I’ve ever met, and we still can’t get home.
We’d gated here to wonderful little PXG-disaster time because the MALP showed us a room, a plain, ordinary looking room, with a nice DHD right over there in the corner. Nothing looked threatening. Nothing looked dangerous. The MALP reported conditions ideal for human life… air, heat, light, gravity…
What could go wrong?
Everything.
I think I’m going to rename SG-1 as Team Murphy, as in Murphy’s Law, because with us, anything that can go wrong will go wrong. In triplicate.
Yeahsureyoubetcha.
So, fine, what attracted us, or rather Daniel, to the place, was the writing on the wall. Okay, I know, I should have noted that. Anytime you can see the handwriting on the wall, it should be obvious, huh? That should have been a clue, Jack old man. But nope. Daniel got all excited, because he just had to read that writing, and Hammond agreed, and so did Carter, and yeah, right, I’ll tell you the truth, I said okay, too.
Because I believed the geniuses.
Remind me *never* to believe another genius. I should know that after that nifty little space flight Teal’c and I took.
But back to our little dilemma of the moment, which isn’t such a little dilemma.
Okay, so we made a pleasant trip to RoomWorld. The place turned out to be kind of like the planet where the Ancients left their knowledge trap, remember? I sure do. That’s one place I’ll never forget.
Anyway, once we discovered that the gate had taken us to this room, and that there was *only* this room with no exits or anything, the deja'vu gave me the shivers. I tell you, I did a thorough look see around the place to make sure that there wasn’t another one of those fancy doodads hanging on the wall, just ready to snare some unwary innocent traveler and stuff his head full of well, stuff. You know, stuff and more stuff and way too much more stuff.
But there weren’t any decorations on the walls. There was nothing at all on the walls, as a matter of fact. Lots of writing on one wall, writing that Daniel was happily trying to translate, but nothing else. I don’t think he’d even realized yet that we were in trouble, he was so busy drooling over that wall. He said the writing was sort of like the Ancients, but not, though the alphabet looked similar. For a moment there, I thought I was going to have to tackle him so he didn’t start jumping up and down. Anyway, that reference to the Ancients gave me a bit of a start, I’ll tell you, but since there weren’t any people traps snatching at me, I figured I-we were safe. For a while at least.
Which was the case.
We looked around a lot. I looked for Ancient traps, Teal’c looked for Goa’uld traps and Carter looked for, gee, doohickeys. Didn’t find any. Couldn’t even find so much as a seam in the wall. Plain. Smooth. Unbroken. Unscratched. Unscratchable… yes, I tried.
After a futile hour or so, in which we learned for sure and for positive that there was nothing there besides Daniel’s nice little note, that’s when we discovered the problem, the one that had both of my geniuses and my ever so very smart alien all stumped.
The DHD wasn’t a regular DHD.
When we walked over to it to dial home, it didn’t dial.
It didn’t do anything, in fact.
So Carter opened up the panel in the pedestal and made a nasty little discovery. While it looked like your standard issue DHD on the outside, the inside was… something else. Something Carter not only didn’t know how to fix, she didn’t so much as have a clue how to fix, or even where to start.
So for the last 4 hours, we’ve been sitting here, waiting for someone to call. SOP for SG teams is to have an established check-in or return time. If the offworld team misses its appointed time, the SGC calls. We can’t go back on an incoming wormhole, but we can talk back to the SGC and have them send us something helpful, like a portable generator so we can hand dial the gate.
So we’re waiting.
And waiting.
And waiting.
Have I ever told you that I’m not good at waiting?
“So, Carter…”
“Twenty minutes yet, Sir.”
“Major, are you sure your watch is working?”
“Yes, Colonel, it is.”
“Okaaaaay then.” I turned to SG-1’s archaeologist, linguist and all around trouble magnet. "Daniel…”
“No, Jack, I don’t have this translated. Yet.”
“Right, alphabet boy. Thought maybe we’d find a clue there or something,” I waved a hand at the wall.
“Jack, these things take time.”
“You’ve had hours.”
“I don’t have any base or reference to start with. This could be anything.”
“Or nothing.”
“Well, it is something. It’s here.”
“Maybe they just let the little kids scribble on the walls?” I suggested.
“Or the Colonels,” Daniel muttered under his breath.
“I heard that, Daniel.”
“Jack, there are languages on Earth that have *never* been translated, even after decades of study.”
“Well now *that’s* really comforting. Thanks for sharing.”
“Maybe the writing has nothing to do with the DHD, Sir,” Carter interjected.
“We can hope,” I snapped disgustedly, and got up to pace.
---------
I paced.
Carter watched me pace.
Teal’c watched Carter watch me pace.
Daniel sat by the wall, looking like he’d had prunes for breakfast.
Which made me start worrying about practical things, like the lack of a bathroom. Or a kitchen. Or anything else.
This was *not* a good place to be stranded. No, it was not.
“Carter…”
“Seventeen minutes, yet, Sir.”
So I paced around the room for seventeen more endless minutes.
“Time’s up, Sir.”
I sighed in relief. “It’s about time.”
“Yes, it is, Sir,” Carter smirked.
I smirked back.
Nothing happened.
No, not with the smirking. With the gate.
No turning. No lighting up. No kawooshing.
We waited a bit longer, just to make sure.
Still nothing.
Finally, I turned to my team. Carter’s eyes were about the size of dinner plates. Teal’c raised an eyebrow, and for a scary moment I thought he was going to raise the second one. Daniel turned around to look at us.
I gulped, and deciding to take a leader-like pose, made the awful pronouncement. “Houston, we’ve got a problem.”
Nobody laughed. Tough audience, I guess. Seemed like no one was in the mood for humor.
“Carter? What's going on?”
“I don’t know, Sir.”
“Well, guess then.”
“Sir, it could be something wrong with the gate on this end. Maybe it only can be activated once within a certain time period and it’s too soon.”
“Maybe it can only be activated once from any one location?” I suggested.
She blinked. “That’s a possibility, Sir.”
“One we won’t consider.”
“It *was* your idea, Sir.”
“Okay. Bad idea. I withdraw it. What else?”
“Maybe the problem’s not on our end,” a worried frown creased her forehead.
“What?” I tilted my head to look at her.
“We know there have been occasions when the SGC was unable to dial out or receive an incoming wormhole. When we were caught in the grip of the black hole. When we had that computer failure caused by the alien ‘bugs’ from that probe. Again, during the foothold situation, and when Sokar was after Apophis and tried to burn through the iris. Then…
“Enough, Major!” I waved a finger in front of her face. “Enough. I get the picture.”
“The problem is, Colonel, we don’t know which is happening.”
“Perhaps neither,” intoned Teal’c.
“Oh, great.” I looked around at my teammates. “So what do we do?”
Carter shrugged.
“Well, if it’s on that end,” I waved my hand toward the gate, “there’s nothing we can do. So maybe we should take another look at the DHD, huh, Carter?”
“Sure, Sir, although I can’t imagine…”
“Carter, if you say the word ‘can’t’ one more time, I’m going to demote you to airman and make you work for Lt. Simmons…”
“Sir, you wouldn’t…”
“Oh, yes, I would…”
“I’ll get right to work on the DHD then, Sir.”
“Go for it, Carter. I’ll be right here, waiting. I’m not going anywhere.”
---------
More time passed. Carter peered into the open panel of the DHD and babbled on endlessly about crystals, matrixes, mathematical progressions, and multiple interdimensional whatchajiggies, as if I’d understand.
Right.
Daniel stared at the writing on the wall and mumbled to himself, writing copious notes in his notebook, rattling off the differences in the alphabets of vanished ancient civilizations like the Aztecs, the Toltecs, and the Pyrotechs, as if I’d understand.
Right.
Teal’c kel’ no reemed and thankfully said nothing. Now that I understood.
I fidgeted, my only alternative to pacing.
-------------
More time passed.
I was not getting any happier, or closer to home, so I strolled over to talk to Daniel.
“So, solved the puzzle yet?”
“Well, if this language is related to the Ancient’s language, and I think it is,” he was so excited the words were tumbling out of his mouth in a rush. Daniel gets a little excited, you know. “Then this word is power.” He turned to me in triumph, flashing a brilliant smile, you know, the one that makes all the young nurses in the infirmary faint.
“Power? That’s it? Power? Power what? Powerful? Power pack? Power play? Power Rangers? Power to the People? Give me something to work with here, Daniel.”
He shrugged. “Sorry, that’s it. Power.”
I threw a glance over at Sam. “Power. Maybe like power to the DHD?”
“It is possible, O’Neill,” said Teal’c, who’d just awakened, or whatever one does when one is done doing one’s daily kel no reem thing. “If the DHD is not getting power, it cannot work…”
“Gee, why didn’t I think of that?” Okay, so I get more sarcastic than usual when I’m trapped in a bare room on an alien planet with no way home. You would too, believe me.
I walked over to the DHD, bending down to peer past Sam’s blonde locks and into the DHD’s pedestal, recognizing nothing. “Find anything yet?”
“Sir, these things take time…”
Why did I have the feeling I’d had this conversation once already today?
“…Although, I think this might be the initializing capacitor…” she pointed at a bundle of twisted wires.
“And that means?”
“It means the DHD should work, but it doesn’t. Sir.”
And for that she went to school for how many years? 20? 30? 40?
Oiy.
“What’s that?” I pointed to another thing that looked sort of like a Swiss Army knife with all the little blades and scissors and cork screws sticking out, every which way.
“I don’t know, Sir. That’s one of the things I haven’t seen before.”
But I had.
I got up, knees creaking, and walked back to where Daniel was working. Sure enough, there beside Daniel’s ‘power’ was a little drawing of a thingamajig that looked just like the doohickey in the DHD. Mulling over the idea, I walked back to the DHD. “Carter, let me look a minute, would ya?”
“Sir?” her head snapped up and she looked at me, her eyes getting big and round like she was scared. “*You* want to look at this?”
“I’ve got an idea.”
Now she really looked scared. “You, Sir? An *idea*?”
“What could it hurt?” I shrugged.
“I don’t think you want me to answer that, Sir…I mean…”
“Move, Carter.”
She moved. I looked into the DHD. Okay, there was the little Swiss Armyknife thingy, and there was that, and then that, and okay, so yes it was stupid, although in the end it wasn’t stupid but smart, but what the heck, maybe some stuff from the Ancients was still in my head. Because before I could stop myself, my hand reached out and took that piece from the Swiss Army Knife doohickey and plugged it right into the little thingy that looked just like the power outlet behind my refrigerator.
The DHD started to hum.
I jumped up, cracking my head on the edge of the pedestal, but thankfully, nothing reached out to grab my head. Whew. Scary for a moment there.
“Sir?” she was looking from me to the DHD. And when she touched the first glyph on the DHD, the gate began to turn. Carter looked positively spooked. “Sir, what did you do?”
I grinned. “Well, Carter, I just followed the directions..” I waved a hand at Daniel’s writing, “and plugged it in.”
====================