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WARNING MAJOR SPOILERS for my previous story MOTHER'S DAY in the first chapter of this story!
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Eli Wallace's father walked out on his wife and his son when Eli was twelve years old. As a consequence, Eli had never celebrated Father's Day. He hadn't really minded much. After all he wasn't the only kid in his school who didn't have a dad. To him Father's Day was always a day that he spent with his mother, getting up early to make her breakfast (at least that was always his intention; he never quite managed to actually do it) and spending the day doing whatever she wanted to do together. Sort of a bonus Mother's Day if you will.
He hadn't expected Father's Day would even be noticed on Destiny. After all the only fathers on board were trillions of light years away from their kids. "Well most of them anyway", Eli thought, catching a glimpse of Colonel Young sitting cross-legged on the floor playing peek-a-boo with his four month old daughter Evie. Eli stopped to watch the simple game, almost absent mindedly pulling out a kino to record a few moments to add to the home movies he was already working on for the crew's Christmas party.
He had considered Colonel Young a sort of sudo-father figure since he came on board, he'd even felt a little jealous of the baby for taking up so much of Young's time, but he certainly seemed to be much happier now that he and Rush (Rush!) were raising their child together. Dr. Rush had even changed quarters, moving in next door to Colonel Young in order to be closer to baby Evie. As for big Eve, she had moved in on the other side of Young with her own baby, who just happened to be a clone of her father, one doctor Nicholas Rush, for whom she had come back in time about twenty years to save his life, making the six of them, Young, TJ, Rush, baby Nicky, big Eve and baby Evie, all one big, happy, weird family unit. Eli kept trying to pump big Eve for information about the ship's future or at least a date, but so far she didn't seem interested in supplying either. She'd just shrug and say some variation of, "What happened then doesn't matter now because the future hasn't been written yet." Then Eli would roll his eyes and walk away. Doesn't that woman understand how valiable it would be to know which planets have are friendly and lush and which are full of deadly dangerous alien stuff?
Young and TJ appeared to have patched up their relationship quite nicely despite the insanity of the last year with Young being accidentally impregnated with Rush's baby by an Ancient medical device they'd discovered on board, a baby Tamara Johansson herself had to deliver via caesarean section (a kino movie that Eli will never forget). Strange as the situation had been, it had managed somehow to bring the two of them back together, TJ clearly doted on Evie (though she had been seen to wipe away a few tears while she held her, no doubt thinking of her own lost baby) and she and Young had married several months ago, and Eli suspected, that they were trying to have another child of their own. The regular way he hoped.
The only other baby on board at the moment was Volker's baby girl, Agnes, whom he was raising mostly by himself, with some help from Dr. Lisa Park who had a soft spot for both babies and Volker. Though Agnes was technically speaking also the biological pairing of Rush and Young, it had been decided that Volker, having carried the baby would damn well get the privilege of raising her as his own. Rush, Young and TJ seemed pleased to consider the two children as cousins of a sort rather than as siblings, though as TJ pointed out they were really very much like fraternal twins in a way. Personally Eli found the whole thing more creepy than awesome, but he was trying to get used to it.
As Eli stood to one side of the door, silently recording Young playing with his baby daughter, grown up Eve walked up and picked 'er… herself up and tossed herself in the air eliciting squeals of delight from baby Evie and as always, creeping Eli out enormously. He still half-expected the universe to implode whenever grown-up Eve touched her younger self. "I suppose if it was going to happen it would have happened already" Eli muttered.
"What was that?" Young asked, as he rose slowly from his cramped seated position and stretched.
"Nothing, I'm just late for my Earth trip" Eli said, hastily putting the kino away and retreating back the way he'd come, suddenly anxious to go home and see his mother, even if he would have to do it in someone else's body.
Young nodded, turning back to his daughter(s), when a voice called from Colonel Young's hip, "Colonel Young come in".
"This is Young, what do you want Rush."
Thinking back this should have been Eli's cue to leave. After all the Colonel probably wouldn't have pulled him back from Earth, once he'd already 'left'. But curiosity got the better of him and he chose to stay and hear what Rush had to say.
"We've found a strange device in the Ancient storage room we've been exploring" Rush said, over the Colonel's radio. "It appeared to be dead without any power until we dropped out of FTL, but it is now emanating trace amounts of radiation and registering some faint power readings".
"And I suppose you want permission to play around with the thing, don't you Rush?" the Colonel said.
"I did say I would keep you informed" Rush replied, ignoring the idea that he needed permission.
"Rush! You better not start pressing buttons until you're sure what they're supposed to do … Rush?!" Colonel Young yelled into his radio, but the Scottish scientist was clearly no longer listening. Frustrated once again by Rush's general disregard for authority, Young turned to Eli, who was finally getting the hint that he should take off NOW before Young asked him to check up on Rush, and asked, "Eli, would you please go check up on Rush and see to it that he stays out of trouble for once?"
"What?! No!" Eli replied, positive that this is not how he wanted to spend his day, "I'm scheduled to visit my mom. She's expecting me!"
"Don't worry I'll have someone go over and tell her you'll be a little late. She'll understand" Young said, making it clear to Eli that this was not a matter for debate.
"Fine" Eli muttered, as his plans for a nice day with his mother baking cookies transformed into a day of getting yelled at by Rush on one side for not letting him push buttons and by Young on the other side for letting Rush push buttons.
Eli headed into the Ancient storage room, a room he'd been avoiding for over a year. Ever since the unfortunate series of incidents with the last machine they'd discovered in that room.
As he walked reluctantly towards the storage room, Eli brushed by Scott as he came out of the stone room. Eli remembered that Scott had just been on Earth to see his son for Father's Day. The boy still didn't know him, even if he had been able to visit in his own body, but Scott kept up regular visits to Earth to watch him from afar and see to it that his mother had enough to live on, after all it wasn't like Scott would be using his salary in the near future.
"Oh Eli" said Scott, the Colonel's message just came through, don't worry, Dr. Morrison will deliver your message to your mother. He's just going to Earth now."
"Great …Morrison" Eli said, rolling his eyes. If there was one scientist on this ship who was more difficult to work with then Rush, it was Morrison. Eli wondered if Morrison would even bother with his message since the order came from the military. Not that there was anything Eli could do about that now.
Eli arrived at the storage room and headed for the pool of light in the dim room, "What was it with the ancients and lights anyway? Were they part bat or something?" he assumed Rush would be there,messing with yet another device that would probably try to kill them by the end of the day.
This device didn't look too scary. It looked like a big picture frame standing strait up in the middle of the room, with Rush beside it twiddling one of several dials that ran up the side of the machine.
"Hey!" Eli said as soon as he saw was Rush was doing, "The Colonel said NOT to press any buttons!"
"Well as you can see, Mister Wallace, I am not pressing any buttons, I am turning a dial."
"You know what he meant!" Eli said, crossing his arms and trying to stare Rush down.
"Yes, well, the Colonel worries too much. If we are going to be on this ship for the next several decades, as it seems we are, if Eve is any indication, then we need to search Destiny from top to bottom and discover all her secrets. Any one of these devices could be the key to our sustained existence on this ship".
"Or a way to get home" Eli said, noting that Rush didn't mention possibility.
"Of course" Rush said, sounding annoyed that Eli still wasn't as committed to the mission as he was, "It could also be a source of power, or of water or food…"
"A replicator?"
"Are you referring to the fictional devices from Star Trek or the factual machines that attacked Earth a few years ago?" Rush asked.
"From Star Trek" Eli replied, surprised that Rush actually got a reference for once, "What do mean machines that attacked Earth a few years ago?!"
"You should really find the time to watch the rest of those videos Mister Wallace" Rush said, smiling. "Now if you want to help me, please monitor the devices' power readings as I 'play' with the dials and tell me when the readings change" he noticed Eli hadn't moved and added, "or you can just stand there and report back to Young if I blow something up" as he spoke Rush turned a new dial and suddenly a picture shimmered to life in the picture frame. It looked like a green hillside in springtime.
Eli decided helping might be a good plan after all. He and Rush spent the next several hours toying with the device, while monitoring the power levels and watching to see what the various dials would do to the picture. They'd discovered that one of the dials seemed to control the overall power level of the device while the others apparently controlled what was displayed in the frame. They'd also discovered that depending on the power level the picture would either be quite hazy and almost gaseous to the touch, while increased levels of power gave the picture a more solid look, to the point it almost seemed real. At the highest power setting Eli could swear he'd felt a gentle, flower scented breeze coming out of the frame! They'd now seen not just an idyllic hillside, but also a riverbank, a rock quarry and even a reflection of the same room they were in, except they apparently weren't there, "Weird" Eli said, "Looking at this room, but not being able to see us in it".
"I'm not certain that we are looking at this room at all" Rush said, "At least not in this current time period".
"What are you saying we've discovered a time machine?" Eli asked.
"Not necessarily" Rush answered, "The device may simply be an early version of the stargate… or a latter version. I'm not certain"
"Wait, so you think if we just step through the frame we'd travel to the place we're seeing?"
"If the power level is at its highest, yes, I think so" Rush replied, "Though I don't know how you would return. Unless these windows lead to identical devices on the other side, much like the stargates themselves, we'd be stranded."
"Why don't we send a kino through and see what we can find?!" Eli said, excited now by the possibilities.
"Excellent idea, Mister Wallace"
Unfortunately the kino was a bit of a disappointment. As soon as Eli flew it through the 'picture frame' to the hillside, it disappeared from the room and they could see it hovering on the other side in the picture, but no readings appeared on Eli's pad and he could no longer control the kino, which continued to hang there, like it was waiting for orders and just wasn't receiving them.
"Well I guess we'll never know where this really goes" Eli said, frustrated.
"Perhaps" said Rush.
"We can hardly just step through and trust that we'll be able to get back!" said Eli, "That's insane!"
"Well, yes" said Rush, "It would be insane to travel to an unknown planet, with unknown conditions and no known means of returning, but what if instead of the hillside or the quarry you stepped through into this room"
"What do you mean, 'you step through' " Eli gripped, "Why does it have to be me?!"
"It doesn't" Rush said, "I'd be willing to try it first myself. If I'm right, there should be an identical device on the other side, since we will in fact only be traveling from this room to this room".
"But what if that isn't this room at all?" said Eli, "What if it's a nearly identical room on a completely different ship?"
"Then we will have discovered an easy way to replenish our supplies and find the new parts we so desperately need." Rush replied.
"What if the almost identical ship just doesn't happen to have a giant picture machine on it?"
"I'm certain it does Eli, the room looks identical to this one".
"What if it leads back in time or something! You could be stranded a million years in the past on an empty ship!"
"Well then at least I'd have peace and quiet" Rush quipped, "besides once on the other side, all I should have to do is dial in the same sequence and step back through to our own time."
"But how can you be sure?"
"All scientific discoveries come with risk Eli and the men who make those discoveries, do you know what we call them, Eli? …heroes."
"You're trying to make me be the one to test it. Again!"
"Eli… where's your adventurous spirit? After all those video games, wouldn't you like to try and be a real hero for once?"
Eli glowered at Rush, he knew he was being manipulated, but he also knew he was going to end up doing it anyway. "I hate you" he said to Rush, as he stood in front of the picture frame, closed his eyes and prepared to step through…
