The Visitor

Author: Badgergater

Season: S8

Episode: None

Spoilers: S8

Category: Drama

Summary: When the SGC is invaded, is it an alien attack, an overture of peace, or something else entirely? General Jack O?Neill is the one who learns the answers, and really rather wouldn?t.

Rating: Older teens and up

Warnings: Whumpage, nakedness

Archive: www.JacksCabin.net

Disclaimer: 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.

Dedication: Happy Belated Birthday Margo!

Author?s Pledge: This fic, like all Badgergater?s fics, is honestly and accurately labeled. No tricks, no subterfuge, no attempts to lure in readers by omitting or hiding information about the content. Read or not at your own fully informed discretion.

Author's Note: Over five years ago, I wrote a fanfic. And then I wrote another. And now, here I am, posting my 250^th Jack O?Neill fic (okay, I know, I need a life! But I found one online) ? Writing Jack?s story has made my life incredibly richer, leading me to new places, new friends and new understanding about myself and the world. It has been, and still is, an amazingly rich experience that I treasure.

This and all my fics are dedicated to all those who love Jack, and to everyone who has offered encouragement, advice, feedback and friendship; To everyone who has been a part of this wild ride, thank you from the bottom of my heart (and the top, and the sides<G>)?Tanya, Carol, Margo, Corine and family ("and we?re schlossing"); Martina, Anja, Ulrike, Ede<G>, who have joined in my travels; Elizabeth, and the whole Netherlands con group; Jude, Cokie, Sid, Deryn, and all the folks of NoPeskyFish-- Oiy, it?s been fun, and hopefully, it will continue to be fun for a long while. Thank you all!

ß ---------------------à

It was an ordinary morning, if any morning at Stargate Command could be called ordinary.

In the kitchen of the cafeteria, the cooks were making breakfast.

In the infirmary, Doctor Breitman and her nurses were caring for three patients, fortunately all of them on the road to recovery.

In the labs, the scientists were doing whatever mysterious scientific things scientists were prone to doing. Among those already at work was Dr. Bill Lee, in his lab trying to help Felger and Coombs with an experiment relating to ring travel.

Three SG teams were on base prepping for their next missions; another was in the gym working out; and the tired members of SG-16 were typing up their mission reports from the trip to P3F-100 that they?d completed the evening before.

Archaeologist/linguist/ SG-1 team member Dr. Daniel Jackson was in his office, sipping the double extra large sized cup of Arabian Mocha Sanani coffee as he mulled over a possible translation for a piece of ancient text SG-14 had photographed on M7G-958.

Lieutenant Colonel Samantha Carter was in her lab, totally immersed in trying to figure out a way to trim three more seconds off the time the computers required to dial out.

Teal?c was in the SGC gym, giving self defense lessons to a new group of recruits.

Sergeant Walter Harriman, starting his usual day shift in the control room, had just taken his seat in front of the main computer terminal. From his vantage point he could look down into the gateroom, home to the world?s most amazing, and incredibly top secret, alien artifact. His counterpart, Sergeant O?Brien, having just completed the graveyard shift in the same location, was five steps from the elevator, eager to get home to his wife, his kids and some badly needed sleep.

Brigadier General Jack O?Neill, commanding officer of the SGC, was at work behind his desk, reading the report from SG-4?s visit to P3S-797. It was something less than thrilling, since it consisted almost entirely of an analysis of rocks: red rocks, gray rocks, blue rocks, sparkly rocks, and plain old dull brown ordinary rocks.

An ordinary, routine, run of the mill morning that would *not* be leading to an ordinary, routine, run of the mill afternoon.

At 8:38 a.m., without warning, the day changed.

The inner ring of the giant alien artifact known as the Stargate began to turn.

"Incoming wormhole. Unscheduled off-world gate activation," Harriman announced over the loudspeaker. The veteran NCO had handled similar occurrences hundreds of times during his tenure at the SGC, and he knew the standard operating procedure by heart. Without waiting for further orders, he continued typing in computer commands, anticipating a signal either from offworld, or from the general. "Security team to the gateroom," he ordered.

O?Neill, glad to dump the paperwork, dropped the report he was reading and hurried out of his office. Four long strides propelled him quickly across the briefing room. He trotted down the stairs to the control room, taking the steps two at a time. By the time he was standing behind Harriman, the technician was already announcing that the fourth chevron was locked, and the iris was closed.

"Are we expecting anyone?" O?Neill asked, fingers drumming impatiently on the back of Walter?s chair.

"No teams are scheduled to return this morning, Sir. SG-14 should be returning later today, and teams 6, 11 and 12 aren?t due to check in for another two hours at least," the sergeant noted before adding, "chevron five locked."

"Maybe someone?s just a little early. With good news for once, eh?" O?Neill suggested hopefully, despite the worried frown on his face.

"Yes, Sir," Harriman acknowledged, eyes still fastened on the screen. "Chevron six locked."

"What?s up?" Daniel Jackson hurried into the room to stand beside O?Neill.

"Don?t know. Could be ET phoning home," the General suggested. O?Neill was watching with approval as the security team took their places, arrayed around the room, guns up, watchful eyes focused on the Stargate.

"Oh."

"Maybe old friends stopping by for a visit?" Jack suggested, fingers still tapping restlessly.

"We haven?t seen the Tok?ra for a while," Daniel offered.

O?Neill rolled his eyes. "I said *friends*, Daniel."

"Right. Sorry."

The gate clanked, and stopped.

"Chevron seven locked," Harriman announced.

Behind the cover that protected the gate, and the Earth, they heard the explosion of the forming wormhole, reflecting flickering blue light around the room.

Seconds crept by. The brittle silence stretched.

"Walter?" O?Neill?s frown was deepening.

"Nothing, Sir. No codes. No radio message."

"No thumps," Daniel added optimistically.

Harriman typed new commands into the computer and waited. "Still nothing, Sir.

Below them, the SFs shifted slightly, weapons still raised.

A long minute slid past, tension growing with the lengthening silence.

"Walter?" the General asked again.

"Still nothing."

"Nothing at all?" Jack queried.

"Nothing, Sir."

And then something did happen.

"What is that?" Daniel asked, just as Jack noticed it, too. Something slight, ephemeral, like a wisp of steam or mist or fog, escaped slowly out of the flickering wormhole, drifting downward from around the lower edge of the iris.

The SFs took a step back, but kept their weapons raised.

The mist continued to seep slowly out of the gate, dropping down to the floor, pooling and thickening.

"What the hell?" Jack grabbed the loudspeaker to query the SF team leader. "Sergeant?"

"We?re all right down here, Sir," there was a bit of a tremor in the SF?s voice, but it got steadier. "We see-- it. There?s no odor, no--"

Just then, the flow out of the gate became a torrent.

"Get the hell out of there!" O?Neill shouted the command to the SFs. He watched the men scrambling to safety, then turned to Harriman. "As soon as they?re all out, lock the gateroom doors and shut the blast doors," he ordered.

The heavy gateroom doors ponderously swung shut at the same time the control room window?s blast shield slid into place.

The only view of the gateroom now was from the surveillance cameras.

As O?Neill and the others watched, the huge room continued to fill, the mist rising steadily and thickening, already obscuring their view of the gateramp and the lower sections of the gate.

"What is that stuff?" The general turned to Teal?c, who had just arrived in the control room. "Teal?c, have you ever seen anything like this?"

"No, O?Neill, I have not."

Disappointed, Jack turned back to stare into the control room. "Could it be poison? Knockout gas?"

Harriman was busily tapping keys and observing readouts, Jackson peering over his shoulder. "No, Sir. Initial readings aren?t showing anything poisonous."

"Nothing they *know* is poisonous," Jackson amended, pointing at the screen. "There?s stuff here the computer isn?t recognizing."

"Somebody get Carter in here," Jack ordered. "And get me--" he turned and saw the man he was looking for already there. "Sergeant," he paused, reading the SF?s nametag, "Kendleman, you got all your men out?"

"Yes, Sir."

"You?re all okay?"

"Yes, Sir."

"No one feeling sick or odd or anything?"

"No, Sir. Everyone is fine."

"Good. Good. Keep your squad on watch outside the door. Go," O?Neill spotted Doctor Breitman, the SGC?s recently appointed Chief Medical Officer. "Doctor, check those men out. I want to know what they?ve been exposed to. Carter," he spotted the lieutenant colonel arriving, relieved the SGC?s scientific genius was finally on the scene. "Find out what that stuff is--"

"Yes--" she started, only to be interrupted.

"General O?Neill!" Harriman?s normally unruffled voice sounded an octave above normal. "Sir, you better come look at this. I think we?ve got a problem."

O?Neill spun back to look at the screen. Inside the gateroom, the?stuff-- had formed into a thick, dense cloud, already a dozen or more feet high, filling the room like water pooling in the bottom of a bowl, already covering the lower portion of the gate. "What?" he snapped.

"There, General," Harriman was pointing at another monitor, one that showed the corridor outside the gateroom. A tiny white tendril was curling out from under the edge of the door.

"I thought that room was sealed," O?Neill snarled.

"It is, Sir. Or should be," Harriman answered, even as another wisp of the amorphous material emerged from under the closed door.

"Get those people out of that corridor," O?Neill ordered. "I want all non-essential personnel who have not been on this level evacuated from this base. Now. We?re going to lock down the SGC."

"Sir, we don?t know this is anything dangerous," Carter interjected, now seated at a computer, fingers typing rapidly as her eyes skimmed through the rapidly scrolling readouts.

"We don?t know it isn?t, either," he countered. Behind him, Jack heard a clattering noise and spun to see Walter leaping backwards out of his chair as it toppled to the floor. "What?"

"S-sir," Harriman, his eyes huge, was pointing to the edge of the control room?s large window. Despite being covered by the blast shield, there was a thin wisp of white, like a rising curl of cigarette smoke, coiling up along the edge of the glass.

"Out! Everybody out," O?Neill shouted.

Carter threw him a look, her objection written plain on her face. "Sir, we can?t abandon the control?"

"We don?t have a choice, Colonel. Walter, get up to auxiliary control. Now. You, too, Carter. And find Dr. Lee and anyone else who might have a clue what this thing is and how to stop it."

/---------------\/---------------\/---------------\/---------------\

In the end, there *was* no stopping it. How did you stop mist or fog? You didn't. Oh, Carter and the scientists tried a lot of things. They sealed off the lowest levels and deprived it of oxygen, but it didn't matter. They tried to freeze it, they tried to overheat it, they even tried to talk to it.

Nothing they did mattered whatsoever.

Jack O'Neill watched grimly, helplessly, as the alien mist spread, bit by bit, through his base, filling the hallways, seeping into the labs and drifting into the offices, slowly but inexorably consuming the SGC level by level.

/---------------\/---------------\

And then, without warning, without any reason as far as they could tell, it stopped.

Not because of anything they did, so far as any of them could figure. It just seemed to have either reached the end of its abilities to spread, or maybe it found what it was looking for.

It retreated as slowly as it had advanced.

The fog simply moved back toward the gateroom, clearing rooms and corridors, fading away into nothingness. Disappearing. Sort of, O?Neill suddenly realized, because it wasn?t really dissipating, but rather, retreating back toward the gateroom where it was doing something new.

As the general watched anxiously via monitors from the auxiliary control room, the alien substance pooled at the base of the gateramp. Very slowly, it began to change, to swirl and lift. The?stuff-- was coalescing, coming together, compacting. What had been an ephemeral, foggy miasma was now compressing, taking on a shape, forming a tall, thin, rectangular, snow-white obelisk.

"Carter," he said slowly. "What is that?"

"I don?t know, Sir."

A worried frown creased O?Neill?s forehead, his concern reflected in the gruff tone of the next order he issued. "Carter, find out."

/---------------\/---------------\

Twenty four hours later, the snow-white visitor still stood in the middle of the gateroom, doing nothing. The SGC had reclaimed labs, offices and all other areas of the base, except for the gateroom.

"So, Carter, what do you know about that thing?" a weary looking O?Neill asked as he crossed the control room, slumping into a chair next to the one she occupied in front of the bank of computers.

"Not much, Sir." The lieutenant colonel frowned as she intently watched a three-dimensional image of the obelisk rotating on her computer screen.

Jack waved a hand at the object. "Animal, vegetable, or mineral?" At her baffled look, he added, "I can see that it?s bigger than a breadbox."

"Breadbox, Sir?"

"Charades, Carter, charades. You?ve never played charades?"

"Well, I don?t think it?s here to play games, Sir."

He sighed. "I didn?t think that it was. Those are just questions," he paused, sighed again, and went back to square one. "So, what *do* we know about that whatever-it-is?"

"Well, Sir, it?s three meters tall and one meter square."

"Solid or hollow?"

"We?ve been cautiously trying to determine?"

He was too tired and too worried to dance around the scientific mumb-jumbo. "Carter!" he snapped.

"Sir. Well, at this point, we haven?t been able to definitely detect it?s substance, although, from the tests we have been able to run, making sure that we don?t do anything which it might interpret as hostile?"

"Carter," his voice dropped lower this time, filled with unspoken warning.

"We *think* it?s hollow."

"Thank you, lieutenant colonel." He sighed and ran a hand across his face. "Is there anything else we do know?" He watched her inhale, knew what was coming next, and waved a warning finger in the air. "The abridged version, Carter."

"It?s not emitting any radiation, radio waves, sound waves or anything--"

"Ah-hah." Okay. That was a statement he could understand. If only she?d stop there.

"?else that we can measure. Which doesn?t mean, of course, that there isn?t something we can?t measure." She finished, more slowly and more softly. "Like the device that caused us all to see those ?bug-like? creatures?"

Jack sat bolt upright, a look of alarm on his face. "It?s not doing that, is it?"

"As far as we know, Sir, no."

He slumped once again, staring at the alien object. "What is it made of?"

"We haven?t been able?" she saw his warning glare, and amended her sentence. "We don?t know."

"Is it alive?"

"We don?t think so. It certainly isn?t alive in any sense that we can measure. No respiration, no heartbeat, no body heat."

"Where did it come from?"

"We don?t know."

"Why is it here?"

"We don?t know that, either."

"Oiy." Jack leaned back in the chair, looking up at the ceiling, covering his face with both hands. He sat that way for long minutes, then finally brought his hands down and looked over at Carter. "Find out everything you can about it. Get me something to tell Hammond and the President. Anything. Just one single, simple fact."

"Learning more is going to require opening up the doors, and probably going in there, Sir."

"Then do it. I can?t have that thing cluttering up my gateroom. I?ve got teams off world." He stood and walked away. At the base of the stairs, he paused, his weariness taking some of the usual spark out of his quip. "Besides," he waved a hand at the object, "it just doesn?t go with the rest of the décor."

/---------------\/---------------\

Another 24 hours passed. Two SG teams, needing to return from off-world, had been diverted to the alpha site. Jack had ordered the other to stay on the friendly world they were visiting.

The alien visitor didn?t seem to notice the gate activations when the teams called home.

Finally, Carter and the science team sent in the MALP. Nothing happened when it entered the gateroom, or even when it touched the obelisk. The obelisk sat, blindingly white and perfect and totally oblivious to the activity going on around it.

As the scientists worked, the red phone in O?Neill?s office kept ringing. First it was Major General George Hammond, head of Homeworld Security, and then it was the President. General O?Neill had explained what little there was to explain. Mostly, he?d just listened as they ordered him to solve the problem and get the SGC operating again.

For the hundredth time within the past 24 hours, Jack O?Neill deeply regretted being the man.

/---------------\/---------------\

"Sir, we?re ready to go in there." Carter had her best, brightest, happy scientist smile firmly in place, the one that didn?t ever quite manage to cover up the ?worried-at-what-her-CO-was-going-to-say? look in her eyes. "We need to."

"I know we do," O?Neill answered with a sarcastic edge to the words. "This is Stargate Command, where we *explore* the universe, not play ?let?s all sit on our butts and watch the white thing in the gateroom?.

"Going in there could be dangerous, Sir."

As if he hadn?t already realized that. Sometimes, Carter was more than condescending, he thought wearily. "And sitting in here could be dangerous. Hell, being on the same planet with that thing could be dangerous."

"True, Sir."

"I know." He waved a hand. "Go. Just pretend it?s grandma?s fine china."

"Sir?"

"Look but don?t touch." As Carter turned and headed out the door, he shouted after her, "and that goes double for Daniel."

"Yes, Sir."

/---------------\/---------------\

Teams, in complete hazmat suits, went in first. Again, nothing happened.

Two cautious hours later, they stood in the gateroom? O?Neill, Carter, Daniel, Dr. Lee, Siler, and a pair of SFs.

The obelisk had not reacted to their presence. It had, in fact, still not reacted to anything they?d done.

"There?s been absolutely no change, Sir," the SGC?s science whiz summed up.

"Nothing?"

"Nothing, Sir."

"There?s no writing or designs of any kind," Daniel muttered as he walked around it, edging closer and closer. Slowly, he reached out a hand toward the object.

Jack hauled him backward. "Don?t touch it!"

"Jack--"

"Daniel, we don?t know what that thing is. Remember the last time *I* touched something? This could be one of those Ancient head-sucking things, for all we know."

"That?s unlikely. The Ancients have never sent one of their devices to us. *We* found *them*," Daniel reminded the former SG-1 team leader.

"You never know. It could be something else. Ever heard of the Trojan horse?"

Daniel nodded absently, walking around the alien artifact once more. "It looks totally smooth," he mused. Once again, his hand moved forward.

Jack slapped it down, wagging a finger in the archaeologists face. "I said, don?t touch."

"Jack, we don?t even know if it?s real, or solid. It could be a hologram."

The general, still frowning, took a pen out of his pocket, and tossed it at the column. The pen struck with a solid sound and bounced off to hit the floor.

"See, it?s real," Jack answered smugly.

"Okay," Daniel agreed.

O?Neill turned to one of the SFs. "Keep an armed guard around this thing. Don?t let anyone touch it, for any reason, without my express, direct command, given to you in person. Got that?"

"Yes, Sir," the young non-com saluted smartly.

/---------------\/---------------\

Four hours and two more impatient phone calls from the White House later, Jack O'Neill barely recognized the gateroom. The floor around the white pillar was stacked high with electronic equipment of all sorts, techno-gizmos whose purposes he could only guess at. He could ask Carter, if he wanted a lecture on quantum whatsits, but he didn't. He only wanted to know one thing. "So, Colonel, have we learned anything useful?"

Carter, seated on the floor, looked up from the laptop screen she?d been studying. "Actually, Sir, our tests have shown that it has a molecular weight of--"

The general frantically waved a hand in the air, stopping her. "Carter. All I need to know is, have we learned anything useful?"

"Useful, Sir?"

"The basics, Carter. Do we know why it's here, what it will do if we try to move it," he suppressed a shudder at the memory of what another alien object had done to him, in this very room, seven years ago, "or if it's a weapon?"

She shook her head no.

"*Any*thing definite?"

Another negative shake.

"Is there anything new I can tell the President?" he pleaded.

"Sorry, Sir, but no, though we are making progress."

"Really?" he asked skeptically. "Progress?"

"Really," Daniel piped up from where he was sitting on the floor, surrounded by notebooks.

"Has it started talking to us yet?" Jack demanded.

Daniel shook his head. "No, but?"

O?Neill cut him off impatiently. "Look, kids, I know you love a mystery, but the President wants this base back in operation. Which requires moving this thing."

Carter frowned. "Sir, we can't move this. We don't know what it will do."

"I know that. But as things stand, well, actually, as *this* thing stands in the way, the SGC is shut down, out of business, useless, kaput. And the President, who is my boss and your boss," he looked pointedly at Carter, "and your boss," he shifted his look to Daniel, "and your boss," he looked at Dr. Lee," wants this operation back in operation."

"The obelisk may interpret anything we do as an attack." Carter objected.

"Has it shown any hostility to anything we?ve done so far?"

"Well, no, actually," she admitted. "But--"

"Carter, give me an alternative, an option, *something* I can offer the President, anything," he pleaded.

She shrugged.

"Well, then, we have an order from our Commander in Chief. And as officers in the United States Air Force, we are required to obey such orders."

"Even if there?s risk?"

Jack rolled his eyes, throwing her a look that plain as day answered her question. "You?ve got until tomorrow morning. Then I?m calling in the tow trucks."

/---------------\/---------------\

O?Neill returned to his office and tried to concentrate on the never-ending stacks of reports, requisitions and personnel reviews that crossed his desk every day. It never ceased to amaze him the amount of paperwork the SGC generated in a mere 24 hours. Somewhere, someone better be growing one hell of a lot of trees, he thought sadly as he signed off on another report and moved on to the next one.

/---------------\/---------------\

Glancing at his watch, Jack was amazed to discover that it was nearly 4 a.m. He really was drinking way too much coffee these days. And for sure he was spending too much time behind this desk. Standing, he reached his arms upward, stretching his back, ignoring the familiar cracking in his spine. Needing to stretch his legs, he strolled out of his office, crossed the briefing room and trotted down the stairs.

He liked to walk the SGC at night, to listen to it. Like all military bases, it never slept, slowed, yes, but did not shut down even in the wee hours of the morning. There was always a background hum, almost like a heartbeat.

He was surprised, though, to hear noises from the gateroom below.

Stopping at the doorway, he saw that Carter and Daniel were still at work, huddled around a computer that was sending beams of light, at regular intervals, toward the obelisk. Walking quietly up behind them, he finally asked, "Insomnia?"

They both jumped.

"Sir."

"Hi, Jack."

"Any progress? Honestly, Colonel."

"Well, no, Sir," Carter answered.

The General nodded, grimly. "Then I guess we?ll have to get Siler in here in a couple of hours."

Daniel looked as unhappy as Carter. "Jack, I?d like to continue studying this?"

O?Neill sighed. "I know that. Hopefully, we can just move it into one of the science labs and you kids can tinker to your heart?s content."

Jack stepped closer, suddenly noticing that there seemed to be a subtle shifting within the white material, like clouds scudding on the wind. Must be the effect of the flashing lights, he thought.

He took a step closer, trying to figure out if he really was seeing a change, or if the level of caffeine in his system had made his eyes jittery enough to imagine motion within the alien object.

One minute he was standing there, looking into the thing and the next, inexplicably, he was inside it.

/---------------\/---------------\

O?Neill, who had been standing right there beside them, was suddenly gone.

"Jack!" Daniel shouted, leaping to his feet.

"Sir!"

/---------------\/---------------\

Jack was inside the thing.

It was like being inside a blazing white box or on a glacier with sunlight reflecting off the snow. The glare was blinding. He shut his eyes, opening them only a tiny fraction, even that causing them to water.

Blindly he threw his hands out in front of him and hit something, some kind of barrier, smooth, seamless, and cool. He pushed against it, hard, but it didn?t give. Spinning around, he thrust his hands out, hammering on the opaque box that held him. He could hear his heart pounding, his breath rasping in and out of his lungs, the blood gurgling as it raced through his veins.

"Hey! Hey! Let me out of here!" he shouted, but his words echoed around and around him, even as he battered at the barrier that held him inside the small box that suddenly reminded him way too much of a coffin.

/---------------\/---------------\

Jack was inside the obelisk! They could just vaguely see his outline, as if he were obscured by thick fog. Though they could see his mouth moving and his hands battering at the structure that confined him, there was no sound.

Without thought for the consequences, Daniel began pounding on the outside of the white pillar.

Nothing happened. His fists bounced uselessly off the hard surface.

Carter sprinted for the intercom panel on the wall near the door, punching the activation button. "Security team to the gateroom! This is Colonel Carter. We have an emergency in the gateroom!"

"Sam!" Daniel?s shout was frantic.

She turned back to see that the obelisk, now a swirling cloud of white, was sliding forward toward the Stargate; toward the Stargate, where the iris had receded and chevron one was already lit.

"Shut down the gate. Close the iris!" Carter ordered at a shout as she turned and ran for the control room, racing up the stairs. "Close the iris!" she repeated.

"I?m trying, ma?am. It?s not responding," answered the nightwatch technician, Sergeant O?Brien, as his fingers danced over the keyboard. "I have no control over either the iris or the dialing computer."

"What?" Carter was already seated at the computer next to him, typing frantically. "Damn," she muttered. The computer screen was flashing warnings in large red letters. "Unauthorized activation." "Iris malfunction." "Unauthorized activation." "Iris malfunction." "Unauthorized activation." "Iris malfunction."

Daniel was still pounding futilely on the obelisk. Even as he frantically tried to do something, anything, to help O?Neill, his mind was registering the fact that the exterior of the alien object was changing. No longer plain, stark white, lines were beginning to appear, faint thin lines, forming diagrams. He got enough of a glimpse to recognize that the diagrams showed basic human anatomy.

His glimpse was brief. The pillar was moving, gliding forward up the gate ramp as the wormhole kawooshed to life.

It was going off world!

"Sam, stop it!"

"I?m trying, Daniel. Nothing?s working. All the systems are locked?"

And then it was too late.

The obelisk, with Jack inside, entered the wormhole.

Daniel threw himself after it.

He didn?t follow, though; it was as if there was an invisible barrier blocking his way. Daniel hit it, hard, bouncing off to land in a heap on the gate ramp just as the wormhole snapped out of existence.

The alien obelisk, and General Jack O?Neill, were gone.

/---------------\/---------------\

His head hurt, like Mike Tyson had been using it as a punching bag. In fact, most of the rest of his body felt the same. Brittle, like he?d shatter into a million pieces if he moved. Even breathing hurt, it seemed like there were shards of glass in his lungs, jabbing into him with every breath. Maybe it had something to do with the odd taste of the air, the slight, exotic smell that tickled his nose.

Unable to muster the strength to open his eyes, Jack lay unmoving.

/---------------\

"General O?Neill is gone, Sir," Carter was in the general?s office, the red phone in her hand, talking to General Hammond and wishing he was there.

"He?s gone, Colonel? Gone where?"

"Sir, he was taken through the gate by the obelisk."

"Taken how?"

"Somehow, he was transported inside of it, Sir."

"And taken where?"

"We don?t know. Yet. I?ve got a computer program running that is trying to decipher the gate address."

"You didn?t see the address? You *were* in the room, weren?t you?"

"Yes, Sir, I was in the control room as was one of the gate technicians. Daniel was in the gateroom, and so were the SFs on guard. But it happened so fast that we weren?t able to see all the symbols."

"What about the computer?"

"It was offline, somehow, Sir. That?s why we couldn?t stop the iris from opening or the gate from dialing out."

"How did it dial out then?"

"We don?t know that either, General. We have seen the Nox use handheld dialing devices, and several Goa?uld had them as well, so we know it is possible to dial out?"

"And override our own system?"

"Apparently so, Sir."

"Well, keep working on this, Colonel. I?m on my way to Andrews right now. I should be in the air within the hour."

"Yes, Sir. Thank you, Sir. It will be good to have you back here."

"I wish it were under better circumstances, Colonel."

"Me, too, Sir."

/---------------\/---------------\

He didn?t know how much time had passed. His eyes felt stuck shut but finally O?Neill managed to pry them open.

Mistake.

All he saw was blinding whiteness, like he?d been exposed to full noon sunlight after being held in a dark room for a month or someone had turned on all the lights in the middle of the night. Pain erupted inside his head, reverberating around inside his skull like a ping pong ball gone mad. He slammed his eyes shut once more, moaning, curling up into a fetal position.

That?s when he discovered another unwelcome bit of knowledge.

His fingers touched his own bare skin as he wrapped his arms around his stomach-- his shirt was gone. Slowly, he let his hand slide further down his side, toward his hip, and confirmed the rest.

His pants were gone.

His underwear, too.

And so was everything else he?d been wearing.

Rolling his head so that his eyes were pointed straight down at the floor, Jack once again eased his lids open in minuscule increments. That made the brightness more bearable, but only slightly so. Still, it was enough to learn another thing about his present circumstances.

The good news was that he was no longer confined inside the tiny coffin-like box he?d been transported in, but was now in a room.

The bad news was that it was as bare naked as he was.

/---------------\/---------------\

"So why did the alien device take General O?Neill?" Carter asked the group of scientists assembled in the briefing room.

"Because he was standing closest," Bill Lee suggested.

"At that moment, yes. But the rest of us had stood that close, or closer, many times," the Colonel countered.

"Maybe the General touched it?" Siler suggested.

"I?m sure he didn?t," Daniel answered, looking slightly distracted, as if he was thinking about something else.

"So what was different about that particular moment? What prompted the obelisk to react?" Carter looked around, hoping someone at the gathering of military and scientists had an inspiration.

"Not what, but who," said Daniel, looking up suddenly. "It wanted Jack."

"It specifically came here to kidnap General O?Neill?" Carter was skeptical. "Why?"

Daniel sat up straighter, his voice in rapid-fire mode. "It wasn?t necessarily after *Jack*. But what?s different about him? No, wait. Let me rephrase that. What unique characteristic does Jack have?"

"O?Neill possesses the Ancient gene," Teal?c answered.

"Bingo!" Daniel smiled.

Carter was shaking her head. "But that doesn?t make any sense. Why would the Ancients kidnap?"

Daniel shook his head. "Sam, it doesn?t have to be the Ancients who took Jack; probably it isn?t. Maybe that thing was some sort of probe, sent by an alien race that?s looking for people with the Ancient gene."

"Why?" Carter insisted.

"I don?t know. Maybe they have Ancient technology and no one with the ability to use it. Maybe they need people with the gene to study. Or to breed them. Or who knows--"

/---------------\/---------------\

Jack was absolutely certain that the creatures didn?t enter the room in any normal sort of way. They just appeared out of thin air.

Okay, so that really shouldn?t freak him out all that much. He?d used ring transporters and those Aschen travel pads and the Asgaard beam technology, but this was different.

One minute, he was alone and the next, little wisps of smoke or cloud or fog appeared, thickened, solidified and turned into?snowmen.

That was the best description that he could come up with for them, in part because of their color, but because of their shape, too. He couldn?t call them human, because they were no more human than the Asgaard were. Hell, they made his old friend Tyler the reole look like Hulk Hogan.

They were pure white, except for their eyes, which were a deep purple. Their faces were flat, with no nose and no ears.

Ghost was another word that came to mind.

Their bodies were like something a child would draw. Their arms and legs were pencil thin. Their chests and abdomens were bulbous, rounded, they really did look very much the shape of a classic Frosty the Snowman.

There were a dozen or more of them, he couldn?t really count because his eyes were watering from the still too-bright lights. Hands, teeny, tiny hands, their touch abnormally warm, almost hot, clamped onto his wrists and ankles.

They were surprisingly strong.

Or maybe he was just that weak.

It didn?t matter. He fought them as hard as he could, kicking, twisting, trying to throwing punches, but they simply overpowered him, pulling him into a spread-eagled position and holding him in place.

For a long moment, they held him there, as if they were waiting for something. At that thought, he began struggling again, but with the same futile result. Sweating, gasping for air, shouting curses at them, Jack fought, and gained nothing except a deep ache in his chest and muscles that burned with fatigue.

Suddenly, the floor beneath him moved. He was being lifted.

The floor turned into a table.

Straps materialized and fastened around his wrists, ankles and neck, and then his captors stepped back.

Growling curses, O?Neill tugged and pulled, feeling the skin tear on his wrists and ankles, but he was held tight.

Helpless.

Exposed.

Vulnerable to whatever they wanted to do to him.

That thought prompted another attempt to free himself, without result.

Don?t waste your energy uselessly, he ordered himself, pushing back the rising wave of panic. Having a heart attack while you?re here is not going to be helpful, O?Neill, nope, not at all. He forced himself to relax, to quiet his ragged breathing and calm his racing heart. Think zen. Think serene. Think peaceful. Remember, Teal'c taught you once to kel no'reem, or at least, he tried. Think Minnesota and clear blue lakes and fishless ponds. It seemed to be working; he felt some of the tension leaving his body, his muscles relaxing and he was finally able to pull in more of the odd tasting air.

And then, in an instant, he lost his focus and his whole body went into panic mode again as the whole group of aliens, as one, stepped toward him, completely surrounding him. The ghostly white figures stopped, joined their little stick hands, closed their eyes and bowed their heads.

Nothing happened for an endless moment.

Jack suddenly had a really, really awful image of the Thanksgiving turkey, unwittingly sitting on a platter in the center of the table, the family gathered all around, praying silently just moments before carving up the unfortunate bird.

He shuddered.

He oh so didn?t want to be dinner.

He wasn?t going to be dinner, was he?

As quietly as they had begun, the aliens abruptly ended their meditation/séance/prayer session, their arms reaching out toward him.

Jack struggled, writhing uselessly, on the verge of hyperventilating, as their hands touched him.

There was nothing bad in the touch, not really. It wasn?t painful, it was just?weird. Their hands were too warm and too soft, wispy, like feathers almost, brushing against his arms, his legs, his ribs, his face. They ghosted across his skin like a puff of air, exploring the shape of his bones and flesh, pausing over each of his many scars as if they didn?t know what they were.

It was creepy.

And then it got creepier. The touches stopped, all at once, as if on some silent signal.

Jack took a deep, shuddering breath of the odd alien air.

Okay, then.

Seemed like phase one was over, and he was still in one piece.

Maybe this wouldn?t be so bad after all.

He wasn?t dinner. Yet.

/---------------\

The aliens began moving. They were so thin-skinned and ghostly, he would swear he could almost see through them. Odder, he couldn?t hear any sound. There should have been sound, some sort of noise, at least the shuffling of their feet or their breathing. Maybe the room was some weird acoustical sink, absorbing all sound. Carter would be proud of him for thinking of something so scientific, he told himself, trying to watch the aliens as they moved to cluster behind his head.

He didn?t like it. Unable to move his head more than mere fractions of an inch, he couldn?t see them, couldn?t tell what they were doing. He rolled his eyes but he still couldn?t get much of a view of what was happening.

Jack shuddered as the too-warm, alien hands touched his head and gently ruffled through his hair. His whole body tensed as the hands continued moving, almost massaging his scalp.

Suddenly, there was a sharp, painful tug. They were pulling on his hair, pulling out his hair! "Hey, don?t! Just ?cuz it?s gray! Ow!" Another painful pull. "Stop that! Guys my age lose enough hair just brushing it. Ow!" he protested as more of his gray locks were yanked out by the roots. "If I end up bald, ow!, so help me! Ow! Just cut some if?ow!?you need some, for cryin? out?ow!-- loud."

When the hair pulling stopped, the aliens moved again, this time taking up positions along his sides. There at least he could see them, which made him feel better, even if there was nothing he could do about whatever the hell it was they were going to do next.

"Okay, that was not nice, you know that?" Maybe they didn?t. They didn?t have hair, how could they know pulling it out would hurt? He tried to inject a reasonable tone into his voice. "Look, you guys are *really* not making a good first impression for your people, you know that?"

The aliens were just standing around him, staring blandly down at him. At least, it seemed blandly. He couldn?t read their eyes or their expressions, er, lack of expressions.

He had no clues about what they were thinking or planning.

Jack felt his heartbeat accelerate, his blood begin racing. Taking a deep breath, he quelled his rising sense of panic, trying to regain control of himself and the situation. So, they had their hair samples. Maybe they just wanted to clone his hair and undo their baldness. Maybe this was just the Intergalactic Hair Club for Aliens donation center, and gray was the color of the month.

Maybe they were done, he told himself hopefully.

Yeah, right, Jack, wishful thinking, buddy.

Wishful thinking, indeed.

Minutes passed slowly and just as he started to relax a little, one of the creatures standing on his left reached toward him. With a small metal tweezer-like thingy held in its tiny hand, it reached into his exposed armpit and yank! pulled out a hair. "Ow! Crap! What the?" one of the aliens on his left side repeated the action, with equally painful results?"Ow! would you just stop? Ow! Okay, so I don?t?ouch! damn it?shave there but guys?ow!?Earth guys don?t?hey, that hurts! Stop, before I snap- ow!- your scrawny little arms and legs and necks?Ow!"

They stopped. Jack was quite sure it had nothing to do with his threats, since they appeared to be entirely oblivious to anything he did or said.

O?Neill let out a groan when once again an alien hand reached out, the pale skinny arm extending, growing, like the fog had done back at the SGC, elongating until it was reaching out and hovering over the center of his torso. Wielding the tweezer-thingy again, it reached down and latched onto one of his chest hairs. "Ow!" The creature extracted a curly gray hair, and then another. Was this how a chicken felt, being plucked? "Okay, you've got your samples, now that?s enough. Stop! Hey, that hurts?" Two more painful pulls, two more chest hairs removed, leaving little dots of bright red blood pooling on his skin.

If they wanted hair, they'd got what they wanted. Losing a little hair wasn?t so bad, not really, except?oh no. No. Definitely not. Not there-- Jack thrashed helplessly as the alien hand moved toward his groin.

Crap. No way. No bleepin? way.

"Hey no, stop right now, stop, damn it!" and then he felt another sharp pain as a pubic hair was ripped out by its roots, "ow!" followed by a second hair extracted from his skin and a third one torn from his flesh. "That hurts! Hurts! I?m *not* having fun here, kids," he shouted. They ignored him completely, as if he didn?t exist.

More hairs were pulled from his groin, and when the snowmen were done there, they went to work on his arms and his legs. Finally, they yanked several hairs from his nose, which stung worst of all, making his eyes water.

At last, they stepped back, seemingly done with their hair removal.

Jack sucked in a deep breath of the odd smelling air, and forced his racing heart to slow. Okay, so these weirdos were fascinated with his hair. Understandable, since they didn?t have any of their own. He could live with that, literally. Not exactly fun, but he'd survived worse, for damn sure.

The aliens made more odd chirping bird sounds, and then they disappeared, gone as eerily as they?d arrived, like smoke dissipating on the wind, leaving him alone in the bare room.

/---------------\/---------------\

He was left alone for a long time.

Though the table wasn?t exactly hard, it wasn?t a feather bed, either. Jack tried to shift positions, but he was held too tight when what he really needed was to move, to get the circulation going. He could feel his shoulder muscles beginning to cramp, his calf muscles spasming, and a deep ache was building in his lower back.

By the time the snowmen returned, he almost welcomed the distraction.

"You could let me go now," he started, conversationally. "This isn?t very comfortable. Maybe you think so, maybe this is the ultimate spa treatment here, but for a human, it?s no Serta perfect sleeper."

The aliens were huddling around him once again, crowding around his feet rather than his head this time.

Without warning, something stabbed him in the big toe of his left foot. "Shit, ow!" They weren't tickling anymore, damn it. What the hell were they doing? Jack managed to raise his head, what little he could lift it considering how tightly he was restrained. It was just enough to see that there was something small, needle-like, a metallic silvery color, sticking out of his toe. Before he could glimpse it well enough to know what it was, one of the aliens jerked it back out. "Crap!" Jack could see bright drops of red blood pumping out slowly, and rolling down his foot. Ow! Now they were skewering him in the calf. "Hey, stop. Really, I don't believe in acupuncture?ow! Hey, you could be doing damage there--" He swore and raged, but that didn?t stop the aliens from sticking the nasty needle-thing into his thigh, his stomach, and his chest. By the time they were done, he was sweating and panting from a combination of pain, anger and spiking adrenaline. "If I ever get my hands on your scrawny little stick arms and legs you are so gonna be sorry," he snarled.

They didn?t give him any opportunity to do anything to them. Instead, ignoring his threats, they moved back down toward feet.

There were, thankfully, no needles or tweezers this time, just their hot little hands touching every inch of his toes. O?Neill could see half a dozen of the aliens clustered around his feet and feel their tiny little hands stroking his toes, rubbing the worn skin and callouses on his feet, kneading the tendons and bones.

Sara used to massage his feet sometimes, when he was really tired. That had been soothing, relaxing, not at all like this. He could feel his blood pressure climbing with every touch.

Despite his restraints, Jack tried to jerk his feet free. "Damn, that tickles!"

The hands continued massaging his feet.

He was sweating, gulping in the odd tasting air, angry. Pissed, actually.

The hot touches ranged past his instep now, up to his ankles and then his calves. The hands methodically moved up his legs, exploring his skin inch by inch. Soon they were working their way toward his knobby knees, the alien digits radiating warmth wherever they touched him. It didn't hurt, it was kind of nice, actually, like a deep massage, or like his skin was being exposed to heat lamps or something.

They were touching all the surfaces of his legs, feeling the roughness of every scar, tracing the outline of each muscle, probing the bony joints. Slowly, they worked their way up his thighs, the alien hands stroking every inch of his skin, hands slipping over his hips and sliding along the sensitive flesh on the inside of his thighs.

Oh crap! He had a sudden vision of where, if they kept moving, their hands were going

No no no no. They were not, so not, going *there*, were they?

Jack squirmed, tugging at the bindings on his wrists and ankles, shouting at them to stop, cursing, threatening, raging at them.

Jack tried to damp down the panic as he realized exactly how helpless he was and *exactly* where this was going, very, very soon. "Okay, I've been Mr. Nice Guy, but this is it. Stop now. You can't go there, you can *not* go there," he was talking fast, babbling, words pouring from his mouth in torrents because it was the only defense, feeble as it was, that he had. "I mean, maybe this is hello and a handshake in your corner of the universe, but on my planet, among my species, it's considered rude, more than rude, more like assault, really. The kind of thing you could get sent to jail for, for a very long time." He was writhing now, the heat of their hands on his skin, getting closer and closer to his groin, awakening sensations he really, really didn't want awakened. "We humans call those private parts, and private?damn, you do know the meaning of private don't you? I don?t know any of you well enough to be letting you touch?"

And then the probing alien hands reached the delicate spot he was worried about. "Don't! I mean it, damn you, don't," he was shouting now, angry. "Get your grubby little hands the hell off my ?aaaaaaaahhh."

He couldn't help it. All that heat, all that contact, in a very sensitive spot was about to lead to unwanted consequences. Sheesh, his privates were being massaged, for cryin' out loud. "Don't, don't, don?t you dare," he demanded, ordering his own body as much as the alien hands.

Neither listened to him.

His flesh twitched.

The aliens jumped back, heads shaking. They made tiny little squeaking noises, like mice or birds.

Finally, one of them stepped forward again.

"Oh, don't really, don't. No!"

It did anyway, both the alien hand and his own rebellious, aroused flesh.

/---------------\

Oh God.

So, he could survive embarrassment, right? It usually wasn't fatal.

And there wasn't another human around to watch, right? After all, if a tree fell in the forest, and no one was there to hear it, there was no noise, right? Right? So if a certain part of a human?s anatomy, ah, inflated, while no other human was there to see it, there was no inflation, right?

Their twittering voices droned on, commenting, he imagined, on this odd human appendage.

He bit his lip, he gritted his teeth, he counted backwards from 8,432, by threes. None of it worked of course. He couldn?t make his body not feel the groping hands or the hot stroking touches.

When they were done, he was throbbing, painfully aroused and thoroughly pissed.

He did, though, think the worst was over.

He was oh so wrong.

.-------------------

"So where is General O?Neill and how do we get him back?" the just arrived Major General George Hammond demanded of the SGC personnel gathered around the briefing room table. "Colonel Carter?"

"We?re working on the gate address, Sir, but it?s slow going. The computer was shut down, almost like it was frozen. There?s no record at all of the dial out when General O?Neill was taken. However, from witness accounts including myself, Daniel, the SFs and technician O?Brien, we?ve been able to piece together at least five of the symbols in the address, and we think we know the sixth. However, we?ve been unable to pinpoint their exact dialing sequence."

"That shouldn?t be so hard to try them all, Colonel," Hammond suggested.

"Actually, General, the number of possible combinations of those six symbols, plus the 38 possibles for the one we don?t know, is, well, very large."

"How large?"

"Very large, Sir." Carter clicked the remote and a new slide appeared on the briefing room?s view screen. "We?ve been cross referencing the possibilities against the list of planets we?ve already visited, and we have been able to narrow down the number considerably. However, there are still far too many to determine any likely possibility."

"Can we not try them?" Teal?c interjected coolly. "Send through a MALP to look for signs of life? We have done this before."

"I?d like to do that, Teal?c," Hammond answered. "But, if we manage to find the correction address, we have no way of knowing what sort of retaliation such an action might provoke."

"We didn?t provoke them to start with, General," Daniel countered.

"Actually, son, to be honest, we don?t know if we did." Hammond sighed, and stood, the military personnel around the table jumping to their feet in response. "Carry on people. Figure out a way to find that *thing*, and retrieve General O?Neill."

/---------------\

The fact that the alien hands were moving again, leaving his groin at last, was a relief.

Momentarily.

Until O?Neill discovered what they were going to do next.

Apparently, not only were they interested in hair, the family jewels and movable appendages, they also had a body orifice fetish.

Okay, so he'd been subject to physical exams before, many, many times. He was a middle aged military man who?d probably undergone more medical tests than anyone else on Earth, considering the pre- and post-mission exam requirements imposed by gate travel. And while he'd never welcomed such medical attention, he'd at least always figured the doctors and nurses involved in checking out such, ah, intimate locations knew what they were doing.

But someone, anyone, sticking something there, where the sun didn't shine, was so not his idea of fun. Not to mention the risk of damage to rather delicate body regions when folks who obviously didn?t know a whole whoppin? lot about human anatomy were wielding the instruments. "Don?t you dare stick that up my?aarrrgghhhh," he thrashed against the bindings. "Stop that you sick son of a ---"

Fortunately, the probing didn?t go too far. Literally.

Relieved that it was finished, or so he thought, he sighed heavily when the aliens set aside the metal device and moved on, the hot little hands sliding upward to probe around his belly button, his abdomen and his ribcage.

The exam arrived at last at his neck, the alien?s massaging digits poking at his Adam?s apple provoking a violent paroxysm of gagging and coughing that caused them to jump back. They immediately started making their odd little bird noises again.

Quickly, though, they quieted and were back, the alien exam moving on, hands searching along his jaw and chin, feeling around his ears, tiny fingers probing his ear canal while he tried, and failed, to shake his head.

Suddenly, the hands were gone from his ears, and the silver probe was back in front of his face. A horrible thought struck him. "Oh, please tell me that's not the same one you used before. I'm gonna upchuck here, and you *really* won?t like that--"

The metal wand was moved closer to his face. Jack clamped his mouth shut, tight as he could, grinding his teeth together in sheer desperation.

The metal device touched his lips, and pushed past them.

It was cold and tasted metallic, lying there inside his cheek.

His jaw began to ache.

The aliens made little noises, and then the metal thing zapped him.

His mouth went numb, his jaw unlocked, and, unable now to resist, the alien?s used the device to push his teeth apart. Their small hot hands soon joined the cold metal probing inside his mouth, feeling his tongue and his teeth, the roof of his mouth, the back of his throat. Jack gagged, but they persisted.

The metal was pushed down and deeper inside his mouth. For a horrible moment Jack thought it was going to cut off his air and choke him, and he retched violently. The hands drew back, taking the probe with him.

Jack lay still, gasping for breath.

And then another metal thing was back in front of his face.

They weren't aiming at his mouth this time. He felt the thin silvery probe, cold metal, cold so intense it burned as it touched his nostril and slid inside his nose. The first contact was more like a tickle than anything else, and then pain erupted, a spike of pure agony so intense he thought his brain was freezing inside his skull. Tears streamed from his eyes, he saw spots, his whole body spasmed, his back arching up off the table, the skin on his wrists and ankles tearing as he fought the bindings that held him. Despite his determination not to open his mouth, he couldn't hold in the scream.

Immediately, he felt a hot gush of blood from his nose flow wetly down his cheek, dribbling across his lips and into his mouth like warm salt water.

Was this how he was going to die, as an alien?s guinea pig? That was Jack?s last thought as the darkness inside his head claimed him.

/---------------\

Surprise was Jack?s first emotion, and his second.

The first surprise was that he awakened at all, because honestly he really hadn?t expected to be aware of anything, ever again, not after they?d shoved that whatever the hell it was torture device up his nose. A nose that, for the record, was still dripping blood and aching worse than the time he?d broken it sparring with Frank Cromwell.

The second surprise was that he was free. Well, not exactly free. He was still in the blindingly bright white room, but he was no longer strapped on, or into, the table. He was lying flat on his back, arms and legs akimbo, as if the table had just melted into the floor and left him lying in the same position he?d been in before. Which, come to think of it, was quite likely, the table melting into the floor scenario since, after all, it had seemed to form itself up out of the floor to begin with. He wasn?t going to question the how, though, he was just glad of the fact that he was no longer strapped to it.

With a groan, he summoned up the last dregs of waning energy and rolled onto his left side. Curling up into a fetal position, he could only hope that would somehow ease the all-encompassing ache that pulsed through every inch of his body, every muscle, bone and nerve.

Changing position did help, a little, maybe just a teeny, tiny bit.

His head still hurt though, and his nose burned with a nasty, bitter scent/taste/feel that made his stomach clench into a painful knot.

His whole body felt brittle.

Violated, actually.

O?Neill had no way to tell time, but, unable to sleep, it seemed like he?d dozed for several hours when he saw it begin, the thin vaporous mist seeping through the walls. "Shit!" Jack lurched to his feet, staggering as he retreated toward the far corner of the empty room only to find the stuff was entering there, too. He looked around frantically, but there was nowhere to go.

The stuff was sliding across the floor now, gathering around his feet, then his ankles, and soon up to his knees, filling the room. It wasn?t cold and clammy like fog, though, but warm and dry. The material quickly rose past his waist and up to his shoulders until it swirled around and finally over his head.

O?Neill held his breath as long as he could, but in the end, on the verge of passing out, he was forced to inhale.

Funny, the stuff had no smell and no taste, but there was a wrongness about it. As it filled his lungs, they felt clogged, like they were slowly being stuffed with cotton.

"This isn?t nice!" he yelled at the walls. "Not nice." His voice was fading, as was his control of all his muscles. "Not ni---".

Damn, the stuff was some sort of-- Jack crumpled to the floor, vanishing into the swirling blanket of mist.

/---------------\/---------------\/---------------\

It was starting again.

"Unauthorized offworld gate activation!" Walter shouted into the intercom, not turning around at the sound of familiar footsteps hurrying up behind him. "Security team to the gate room."

"Who is it?" Hammond demanded.

"No IDIC, sir."

"Then close the iris!"

"I?m trying, General, but there?s no response."

"No response?" Hammond repeated.

"No, Sir."

"Just like the last time, General," Carter ran up the stairs and slid into a seat in front of one of the computer stations. Her fingers raced across the keyboard. "The computers are locked up."

"Well, get them unlocked, Colonel!"

"Trying, Sir, but I?m not having any?"

"General," Walter?s normally calm voice had risen an octave.

Hammond spun to look at the Stargate just as something white and boxlike slid out of the shimmering blue haze. "What the?"

"It?s the obelisk!" Carter shouted.

"Or at least a similar obelisk," Daniel, who?d just arrived, commented, eyes glued to the object as it drifted down the ramp and settled gently onto the gate room floor.

"Security team, clear the gateroom," Hammond shouted into the mike.

With a clatter of booted feet on concrete, the men exited.

As soon as they were safely out, "Shut the blast doors," Hammond ordered Walter.

The doors closed. Long moments of silence followed, broken only by the wail of the warning klaxons.

In the gateroom, the alien object stood silent and unmoving.

And then, without warning, the obelisk disappeared. In the blink of an eye it dissolved like smoke whisked away by the wind, leaving behind on the cold hard concrete the crumpled body of one very pale, very naked, very unmoving, General Jack O?Neill, splattered with the bright red of blood.

/---------------\/---------------\

Daniel moved first, turning to run down the steps toward the gate room.

"Emergency medical team to the gateroom, stat," Hammond shouted into the mike, turning to follow Dr. Jackson, flinging an order over his shoulder as he moved. "Colonel, get that iris closed. I don?t care how you do it, but do it. Now."

Daniel was quickly at the door, sliding his card through the scanner. "Open, damn it, open, come on, come on," he muttered impatiently. Slowly, the massive door began to slide back. Not waiting for it to fully open, the young man turned sideways and scooted through, racing to the base of the ramp. Peeling off his long sleeved shirt as he ran to the motionless figure on the floor, Daniel skidded to a halt, dropping to his knees as he draped the cotton material over Jack?s body.

"Jack?" Daniel cautiously reached out a hand, touching his friend?s shoulder, nearly recoiling from the heat radiating off the pale, pale skin. "Jack?" There was no sign of any wounds, just the trail of bright red blood that had flowed from his nose, across his face and down his neck.

There was a slight inhalation, as if he hadn?t breathed in a long time, and then slowly Jack?s legs pulled upward, toward his chest, his arms reaching out to wrap around the knees.

"Jack, hey."

"Mmmm," the thick eyelashes fluttered and then snapped open, revealing glittering, confused brown eyes.

"Jack." Relief flooded through Daniel.

Jack was looking around. "How?d I get here?" he asked softly.

Daniel smiled, reassured that Jack was talking. "I don?t know. Where were you?"

"Someplace I?d rather not have been." The General suddenly realized that there was a green shirt draped across his body. "Oh please don?t tell me I walked through the gate naked," he mumbled.

"No. You didn?t exactly walk through the gate, but yes, you were naked."

"Oh crap." The brown eyes drifted shut.

"Jack?"

The eyes stayed shut and the voice was very low. "You know, this floor is damn cold. I?m putting heaters in the next budget request."

/---------------\ /---------------\

"General?" Dr. Brietman greeted the blanket-swathed O?Neill as the orderlies wheeled his gurney into the infirmary and transferred him to a bed. "How are you feeling, Sir?"

"Tired," Jack admitted.

"Where?s the pain?"

"Everywhere. Just-ache pretty much all over. And a headache. Bad headache."

The doctor raised her gloved hands to his face, touching it gently. "What happened here? Why the nosebleed?"

"They--" he stopped, frowning as he looked around at all the nurses, Daniel, Teal?c, Carter, even General Hammond who had followed him. "Can't we-" he waved a hand at them, "do this without an audience?"

"Yes, General." Breitman turned to all of those who stood waiting. "I think General O?Neill needs some privacy here, people. I'll call you when there's something to report."

"Doctor-- " Daniel protested.

"Dr. Jackson, I'm going to be examining and treating the General. He, like everyone else who comes in here, will get our very best medical care. I will let you know when he?s ready for visitors." She watched as they left, then turned back to her patient. O?Neill was lying back on the bed, eyes closed, tight little lines around his eyes revealing what he wouldn't say. "Okay, Sir, they've gone. Now, what happened?"

He sighed, opening his eyes, his gaze meeting hers momentarily before drifting upward to fix on the ceiling. "I think I was their lab rat."

"Lab rat?"

"Guinea pig. Experimental subject. Whatever you want to call it. They took all my clothes, strapped me down and proceeded to, ah, take samples. They seemed fascinated with," he hesitated, then went on softly, "with examining my body. They pulled out hair from pretty much every place hair grows, head, arms, chest, armpits, even," he waved a hand at his groin.

"What about this, Sir?" she was touching a red inflamed looking spot on his chest, and then another on his forearm. "And this? These look like incisions."

"Excisions, actually. They stuck this big oversized needle-like thing in me, lots of places." There was anger in his voice.

"And the nose bleed?"

"There was this probe thing. " He shuddered at the memory of it, just the thought of what they?d done making his still sore nose twitch. "They stuck it, ah," he waved at the middle of his face.

"That was unpleasant, I imagine." She was trying to keep him talking.

There was no humor in his dry chuckle. "Oh yeah, just a bit beyond unpleasant, all the way to nasty in fact. I passed out."

"How long were you unconscious?"

"Don?t have a clue."

"What else did they do?"

He licked his lips and let his gaze drift upward toward the ceiling. "Nothing."

O'Neill was always hard to read, but she didn?t miss the change in tone, and knew his answer had been a lie. "So, the aliens took hair samples, skin and tissue samples, inserted a probe into your nasal passages, and that's all, correct?" she summarized, looking down at him skeptically.

He must have heard the doubt in her tone, because he opened his eyes and fixed her with a glare. "That's what I said." The words were cold and hard.

"Whatever you say, General," she answered, quietly. "We'll get the usual tests we give anyone who's been offworld, just to be sure there's no damage." She paused, adding "Anywhere," deliberately.

He didn't say anything, just threw an arm across his face and lay back.

/---------------\/---------------\

The wailing of the alarms woke him. Sitting up groggily, the headache still pounding inside his skull, he glanced up at the clock. He?d slept an hour at best.

Pushing aside the covers, he swung his legs toward the floor.

Everything, walls, floor, ceiling, bed, his own body it seemed like, spun, swirled, flip-flopped and wobbled sickeningly back into place.

"General!" What are you doing?" He didn?t know how she?d gotten there, but Dr. Breitman suddenly appeared at his side, gripping his arm and quite probably preventing him from crashing to the floor.

He swallowed back the urge to retch and answered "The gate?"

"Sir, they?ll call if you?re needed."

He threw her a look that had been known to make airmen, even officers, quake in their boots. "I?m?"

He didn?t need to finish. The phone at the end of the hallway rang and a moment later a nurse ran in, breathless. "General, they need you in the control room, Sir."

This time, the look O?Neill tossed at the doctor was smug, well, as smug as he could make it, considering the fact that from his point of view everything in the room was still sliding around.

The nurse was handing him blue BDUs. He pretended not to need her help in getting into them, and thought he mostly did a pretty good job of it. Once he had the shirt on and the pants pulled up to his knees, he slid off the bed, catching his balance by grabbing the side of the bed with one hand. Pulling up the trousers, he found buttoning, zipping and buckling took a lot of concentration.

By the time he was done, Breitman was standing in front of him, pointing at the wheelchair she was holding.

He ignored it, and her. Concentrating carefully, he *could* find the floor with his feet. Keeping on an even keel as he walked was harder; his body, he noticed, had a distinct desire to list several degrees to the left.

Somehow, Breitman following behind, he managed to make it to the control room.

/---------------\/---------------\

One look, and he knew what the problem was.

White mist-smoke-fog was sliding out of the gate.

They-it- the stuff-was back.

Again.

Crap.

Jack flopped down in one of the control room?s swivel chairs, hoping his action conveyed frustration rather than utter exhaustion. From the look he got from Walter, he was pretty sure he hadn't managed to fool the sergeant at all.

"Sir?" Walter waved a hand at the general?s face.

Jack touched his fingers to his face and felt something warm on his chin. Swiping across his lip, he saw that bright red liquid smeared his hand. Even as he contemplated the blood already on his hand, he felt another drop slide warmly from his nose down toward his lip.

Not now, not now, not now, he didn't have time for this.

"Sir!" this time it was Carter, sounding alarmed.

He looked over at her, but she wasn't looking at him, she was staring into the gateroom.

There was something different about the fog this time, even Jack, wretched as he felt, could see it now.

Yes, like last time, the ghostly substance was flowing out of the gate, but it was slow and tentative. Unlike the flood that had poured through the gate on its previous visit, this time the flow remained only a trickle.

And instead of spreading out across the floor, it was pooling at the base of the gateramp and thickening there, growing denser, thicker, as it slowly swirled upward, forming- Well, it wasn't quite human, but it didn't very much look like the snowmen, either.

Carter turned around to stare at him in surprise. "Sir?"

"I got it, Carter."

The form that was coalescing in the middle of the gateroom floor had the pudgy, rounded body of one the aliens, but there was a face taking shape this time, a pure white, ephemeral, but definitely recognizable likeness of General Jack O'Neill.

/---------------\

Maybe he was that white, too, Jack thought dismally. He felt like he could be. He felt shaky and exhausted and absolutely not up to this.

Staring down at the ghostly thing that bore his face, "The gateroom's sealed?" he asked.

"Yes, Sir," Walter answered. "SFs are in the hallway, awaiting further orders."

Jack took a deep breath. "Keep them there. Let's just wait and see what it wants this time."

"Sir, it looks like you," Carter finally stated the obvious. "Except?"

"I am *not* that fat, Carter." Jack saw a shadow of a smile flit across her face.

"No, Sir, but-"

"I know, I know, they say white adds ten pounds."

The snowman O'Neill stood tall in the gateroom.

""Greetings,"" the voice sounded odd.

"It doesn't sound like you, Sir," Carter observed.

"Thank goodness for small favors, huh?"

""We are seeking O'Neill.""

Oh for crying out loud. Why oh why oh why were the aliens always looking for him? Was he sending out intergalactic 'come and get me' signals?

""We are seeking O'Neill.""

Daniel had just joined them. "You aren?t going down--?" he waved a hand at the gateroom, and the new visitor.

"No, I'm not going down there to talk to it." He wasn't getting that close because he for damn sure wasn't going back. He wasn't up to it. He doubted, actually, that he could get up out of the damn chair. In fact, he wasn't at all sure he could even stay in the chair, to be honest. "And neither are you."

""We are seeking O'Neill.""

"Seek and ye shall find," the General muttered, rolling the chair over so that he was seated in front of the microphone and turning it on. "I'll speak to you. But that's it. No closer than this."

Snowman O?Neill nodded. ""We are pleased to have found you, descendent of the Ancients.""

"We?re all descendents of the Ancients. Sort of. I guess," Jack answered.

""But you, O?Neill, you have communed with them.""

"Communed, ah no, not *exactly*."

""You have the scent of the Ancients?""

"Hey, I bathe," he protested. "Daily."

The being stopped speaking, tilting its head in an eerily familiar gesture. ""We have come seeking O?Neill?s help.""

"Well, you have a funny way of asking." A bit, okay, more than a bit of his anger and frustration leaked through.

""We knew no other way to communicate with you. We are sorry. We were not aware that our inquiries could harm you. It was very long ago that we had corporeal bodies like yours, O?Neill."

"Corporeal means physical, Sir. Real," Carter noted.

"I know that," O?Neill snapped under his breath at her. Pausing, he massaged his temples, which didn?t help his headache any, but did give him a moment to think. "So, who are you and what do you want?"

"Jack, that wasn?t very diplomatic," Daniel whispered.

O?Neill threw him a look. Putting a hand over the mike, he whispered back at Daniel. "What they did to me wasn?t very diplomatic either. And I don?t need any more cracks from back seat drivers, okay?" As soon as he said it, he regretted it, but damn, his head still hurt from what the nasty alien SOBs had done to him. He wasn?t ready to forgive and forget just yet.

Daniel, seeming to understand, simply waved a hand in acquiescence.

""We are the Komanye, a very old race.""

"You don?t look old."

Did the snowman Jack smile? ""Over the centuries, our minds became our focus, rather than our bodies, until we left them behind.""

"You ascended?" Daniel suggested.

""Not in the way of the Ancients. We are caught in between, still able to interact in your dimension, yet not fully into the next. That was how we were able to bring O?Neill to our world, and study him.""

"They?re like Anubis, then," Daniel whispered.

Jack put a hand over the mike again. "Is that good or bad?"

"Well, Anubis was evil to start with, it wasn?t the partial ascension itself that made him bad. So if they were good to start with, I don?t think they?d be changed. Necessarily."

Jack grimaced. "That?s helpful. Not." Turning back to the mike, he removed his hand. "So, what do you Comanche folks want?"

""We would like your assistance, to regain our old forms.""

He was tired, he supposed that was why he let the anger slip into his tone. "You want my help? After kidnapping me? That?s a novel approach to gain someone?s help."

"Sir," Carter spoke up softly. "They obviously have very advanced technology. They could be valuable allies."

At what price, he wondered. "I know," the general whispered back, then turned back to the visitor. "So, you want our help?"

""Yes. We require your bodies.""

"Ah, no, no bodies. We humans tend to be rather fond of our bodies. Imperfect as they are, we like to keep them for ourselves."

The white swirled within the shape, like clouds blowing before the wind. "You misunderstand. We do not need to take from you your bodies. We need templates, so that we may grow our own."

"Make clones? We?ve been down this road before, Comanche. With the Asgaard."

The swirling mist within the ghostly form in the gateroom suddenly changed, taking on an almost blue hue. There was an unmistakable tremor in the voice. ""You know of the Asgaard?""

"We?ve met them a time or two," Jack answered cautiously.

""The Asgaard are our long lost brethren.""

Daniel leaned over to speak into the mike. "You know the Asgaard?"

""They were our Brothers. Brothers lost long ago.""

Daniel covered the mike. "Jack, maybe they could help the Asgaard with their cloning problems."

"Daniel, these guys are worse off than Thor and company. The Asgaard at least *have* bodies, even if they are butt-ugly gray ones."

"Jack, remember, Thor helped your clone," Daniel reminded. "Maybe the Asgaard could help these Komanye."

?Okay." Jack turned back to the microphone with a sigh. "We aren?t averse to helping, in our own limited way. What we can do for you is pass a message along to the Asgaard. We can?t promise how they?ll respond, or if they?ll respond at all, but we can give ?em a call. If you?d like."

The white image swirled and shimmered. ""We would like. We would be indebted to you. Thank you, O?Neill.""

"Well, you could clear up a bit of that debt by asking next time, instead of just snatching people," Jack snapped.

""We are sorry.""

"Oh I bet you are," O?Neill mumbled under his breath, then spoke up. "And maybe you could even share some knowledge with us?" Jack waved at Jackson. "Daniel here just loves to talk and talk and talk. At a *safe* distance, mind you. And Carter, she isn?t happy unless she?s learning how to operate some fancy new alien doodad, if you have any doodads," he added, remembering how doodadless the place he?d been kept had been.

""We are happy to share what we have, with our friends."" There was a short pause. ""We are sorry for the disruption we have caused, and the damage inadvertently done to O?Neill.""

"Yeah, yeah, apology accepted."

""You will call the Asgaard now?""

"Yes." Jack made shooing motions at the gate. "As soon as you?ve gone home."

The ghostly image tilted its head. ""I am able to remain.""

"Ah, but I can only talk to one alien at a time. Gives me a headache otherwise."

The image nodded, bowed slightly, and turned to the gate, which sprang to life.

"We?d sure like to know how you do that?" the General called after the ghostly white figure, waving a hand at the open gate as the mist swirled, the pure white face and form disintegrating into a churning fog that slipped into the wormhole and was gone.

Jack slumped back in his chair, his last reserves of energy suddenly gone. "Carter, give Thor a call would you?"

"Me, Sir?"

"I think I need a nap," he mumbled, and slid bonelessly out of the chair and down to the floor.

/---------------\/---------------\

O?Neill woke in the infirmary, glad for once to be there, considering where he?d awakened the last time. Compared to the oh so unfriendly confines of the snowman?s planet, the infirmary was heaven, even if he did still feel tired. At least he wasn?t serving as some alien?s show and tell project.

"Sir?" someone asked. "General O?Neill?"

It was a human voice at least. With a groan, the General opened his eyes and peered upward into Doctor Breitman?s worried face, finding it took work to focus. "Doctor?"

"Glad to have you awake, Sir."

He tried to sit up and realized he wasn?t glad to be awake, not at all. His muscles still felt pretty much like melted jello and his headache was still there, eating away at the back of his brain. Maybe a few more hours of sleep would help.

"How are you feeling, General?"

"Fine," he lied, squinting as he tried to focus on the clock on the wall behind her. Was the little hand pointing at the 9? He waved a hand at the clock. "AM or PM?"

"AM, Sir. You slept for nearly 24 hours."

"Twenty four hours?" He was wide awake now, fumbling as he threw back the covers to get out of the bed. "Have we heard from Thor? Or the aliens?"

Breitman was offering him a steadying hand. "They?ve been waiting for you to wake up, Sir."

"What?"

"They?re waiting in the briefing room, General. If you?re up to it, I?ll tell them you?ll be right down."

/---------------\/---------------\

For cryin? out loud, hadn?t he just done this? Crawled out of an infirmary bed, feeling lower than a slug, and struggled into clean BDUs? Well, it seemed like it had just been a few minutes ago, but apparently he?d been sleeping for a whole day and a whole night. It was about time he got out of bed before he turned into Rip Van Winkle or something.

Freshly dressed, though under the circumstances he skipped the shave and left the stubble, O?Neill hurried to the briefing room.

"Sorry to keep you all waiting," Jack announced as he stepped into the room, and stopped short.

There, arrayed around the table were Daniel, Teal?c, Carter, Thor and at least a half a dozen pure white, smiling aliens.

Aliens, all of whom looked just like him except for one glaring difference. Each one was ghostly white, an albino O?Neill, with pure white, spikey hair. They even, to his amazement, had his long, slender fingers and odd-shaped thumbs. The only color was the chocolate brown of their eyes.

He?d been copied by Harlan, and that had been creepy. He?d been cloned by Loki, and that had been even creepier. But this, he shuddered, this was?creepiest. Jack shook his head and took his place at the head of the table, still staring. Finally, he waved a hand at the aliens, "So, do you all look like, like--?"

""Like you? Yes, yes, like the legendary O?Neill,"" answered one.

"And just how many of me-you are there on your planet?"

""Our race numbers six million, seven hundred eighty-four thousand, six hundred and fifty-two," the same one answered.

""Yes."" They all echoed. ""Millions.""

""Many millions.""

"And you really all look like--?" Jack waved a hand in the air.

""Yes,"" they answered enthusiastically.

"But wasn?t there some safeguard thingy the Asgaard put in my DNA so I couldn?t be Xeroxed?"

""The Asgaard assisted us.""

Oh, he was so gonna have to have a chat with Thor about this.

""We are grateful to the Asgaard.""

""To them, and to you.""

""Most grateful.""

""Very grateful.""

"You got the colors wrong," Jack pointed out peevishly.

""The color is perfect.""

""Delightful.""

""We are pleased.""

""Very pleased.""

""This form *is* pleasing.""

"This form is mine!" O?Neill protested.

"Not anymore, Jack." There was a hint of a grin on Daniel?s face.

"They *are* cute, Sir," Carter added.

"Indeed, O?Neill, I have seen nothing else like them."

Jack glared at SG-1, and their smiles faded. He turned back to the aliens and sighed. "Six million, huh? So has anyone explained to you guys the concept of royalties?"

/----------x----------\

THE END