A/N: Written for the comment-fic prompt, "Stargate SG-1/Doctor Who, Original SG-1, the team 'inherits' a Tardis (Jack is suspicious, Daniel's intrigued, Sam is ecstatic, and Teal'c is...Teal'c)." Hope you enjoy.
They stand and stare for a few moments, but to be fair, seeing something like this in the middle of a forest on an alien planet is a perfectly good rationale. Finally, Daniel steps forward and stretches out his arm to – "Daniel." Jack barks.
Daniel pauses but doesn't take his eyes away from the object in front of them. "I've seen these in London before," he says.
"Yes, but we're not in London," Jack points out as he takes a firmer hold on his P90 and scans the surrounding area. Perhaps it's a distraction, meant to baffle while some unfriendly local snuck closer. "Carter?"
She shrugs. "As far as I can see it's a box, sir." Then she exchanges a sidelong glance with Daniel that makes her next words completely unsurprising. "If I could examine the interior, I might be able to make a better assessment. This side appears to be a door…"
Daniel scoots forwards a couple more inches; Sam swings out to examine the box from a different angle
"Ach!" Jack hisses, in lieu of releasing his P90 to raise one of his hands. His errant scientists freeze guiltily; Jack ignores them to focus on Teal'c. "How about you? Have you seen anything like this before?" Teal'c tilts his head, taking his time to examine the box from top to bottom. "I have not, O'Neill. Whatever technology this may be, it is not of Goa'uld design."
Jack scowls and checks that Daniel hasn't crept forward any. "I just want to know what a London police box is doing on P89-557."
Daniel meets his gaze and deliberately takes a step forward. "We could always take a look…"
"Daniel."
"Jack?"
"Step away from the glowing box."
"It's not – oh." Daniel gingerly backs away from the box whose windows have begun to glow. "Is there someone in there?"
"It wouldn't be exactly roomy, would it?" Cater steps forward, aiming one of her diagnostic devices at the box. "I doubt one person could fit comfo- well, this is weird."
Jack makes sure his sigh is audible. No matter how many times they try to convince him a piece of alien tech is really totally harmless, honestly Jack he's always proved right. "What?"
"It's just, I've never seen readings like these before. " She taps a few more buttons and whips her head up to look at the box. "It's extraordinary!"
Jack's raised eyebrow encourages her to elaborate. "The energy reading is astronomical for such a relatively small object. I mean, if my readings are correct this box could feasibly power a handful of live Stargate simultaneously."
"That's a lot of power."
"A hell of a lot, sir. And it appears to be extremely efficient as well. I think it might be recycling the majority of its exhaust into more energy, breaking down the fuel in stages. It'd be well worth the risk of further inspection to figure out how it works."
Jack sighs. "Alright," he says. "Go ahead." He and Teal'c take a step back to cover the two scientists as they eagerly but cautiously (Jack likes to think he's taught them some proper behavior) approach the box. Daniel knocks on the door and waits a moment. "Nobody's home, but it feels like wood." Sam scratches off some of the paint, examining it in the sunlight. "Certainly looks legitimate." She flicks it off her finger. "Whatever's creating the energy output must be small enough to fit in here."
"Perhaps they used the box to disguise it?" Daniel says as he runs his hands over a corner of the box.
"Unlikely," Teal'c states.
Jack agrees. "A blue box in the middle of a forest just might be conspicuous."
"Hmm." Daniel reads the sign on the left panel of the door then pulls on the handle, leveraging back as he tugs. "It's locked."
"Well, Duh."
Really, Jack feels honored that Daniel's been able to perfect his glare from Jack's comments alone; the over-the-shoulder squint has really come along nicely. To make a point, Daniel tugs the door a few more times. It doesn't budge. Defeated, Daniel lets go and gently thumps a disappointed fist against the wood.
The door swings open with a soft creak, golden light spilling out eerily from the crack.
The team freezes and stares until it appears that's all the box will do. Finally Jack drawls, "That's odd." The team takes it as a sign to continue their examination.
Daniel opens his mouth, closes it, shrugs, and opens it again; an action that pretty much sums up the archaeologist's approach to most first contacts. "Hello?" he hesitatingly calls out.
No answer.
Daniel carefully sticks out a finger and pokes the door inwards. Then he just as carefully takes a step back. "Jack…" The tone doesn't imply danger, but it's hard to tell what it does imply. Disbelief, curiosity, terror, what?
"What?"
"Just look inside."
"Holy… moly."
Sam isn't far behind him, edging in front of Jack to peer between the paneled door, and then Teal'c is looming behind them all, gazing over their heads into the softly glowing light.
"Oh my God," Sam breathes.
Their box isn't just a box. It's a room. A huge, ginormous room that stretches far beyond the dimensions of the police box it appears to be on the outside with some sort of circular platform dead center and a softly whirring machine moving up and down in a case – and there are at least two staircases in the back of the room which implies this isn't even all that's somehow been crammed into one tiny person-sized box.
"It appears to be larger on the inside," Teal'c remarks. His face might be as smoothly unperturbed as always, but the eyebrow has reached new levels of angularity and he's intensely watching Sam for some kind of explanation. It's as close as Jack's ever seen him get to bug-eyed slack-jawed shock.
Sam, for her part, has taken a step back (and nearly on to Jack's foot, which even in boots ouch) to put the entire front of the box in her field of vision while her brain furiously churns through explanation and counter-explanation. Daniel paces around the box two times, manically searching for any kind of writing that might explain such an impossibility, before she finally comes up with an answer.
"Pocket dimensions," she breathes, a familiar awestruck curiosity in her eyes. "A stable pocket dimension."
Then she steps forwards.
"Carter!" Jack lunges forwards to pull her out, because he has no idea what the hell pocket dimensions are outside of comic books, and who knows what catastrophe will happen?
Jack quickly learns the answer is, apparently nothing. Sam is inside, steps ahead, and Jack catches his balance against a wall after his headlong charge into no danger whatsoever ends. Daniel is quick to hop in after Jack, immediately continuing his quest for some sort of writing or archaeological clue about the civilization that built this, and since the three Tau'ri already hopped in, Teal'c steps through unquestioning after them, pausing to ensure Jack is not in need of assistance before going to examine the pebbled walls.
They remind Jack remarkably of coral, but he can think on that later. Right now, he has an astrophysicist to reprimand. "Carter, what the hell were you thinking!"
Sam is up by the whirring machine, and turns to grin at Jack. The gold light it produces shines off her hair as she explains. "It's a pocket dimension, sir."
Yeah, Jack heard that one the first time. "And that means…"
"Essentially, a small area of space-time has been manipulated into a bubble of area that in our reality appears much smaller than the actual space it takes up. Scientists have speculated over the possibility of pocket dimensions for years, but nobody has ever been able to conclusively prove the mathematics behind it. And here's a real-life, working machine that utilizes pocket dimensions to increase the interior volume who knows how much!"
Jack catches bubbles, lots of complicated numbers, and spiffy new technology. He can do math too: shiny new alien technology plus potable size equals a happy chain of command. "Cool." Then he sits back with Teal'c while Sam and Daniel confer over the console.
"Still unfamiliar?"
Teal'c nods. "I have no doubt a race of this technological level would be well-feared among the Goa'uld. If any interaction did occur, they would be most adamant in destroying all evidence of it."
"Hmm." If there's one the Goa'uld are better at than tacky dress sense and melodrama, it's annihilation. Teal'c resumes his contemplation of the wall pattern, so Jack walks down some steps and starts looking at the myriad gadgets dangling from the underside of the platform.
He's just found a pair of old-fashioned welding goggles that had been kicked into a corner, and is holding them up to his face when lights start flashing and the room echoes with a strange whirring noise.
He must have touched something.
"DANIEL!"
"I didn't do anything!"
"Carter!"
"It activated by itself, sir!"
The room begins shaking back and forth. Jack lunges for the handrail and uses it to haul himself up the steps despite the continued motion. Once he gets up to the level, he can see Sam and Daniel clinging to the bottom rails to keep themselves from sliding about the platform and Teal'c bracing himself against a pillar.
Sam hauls herself up to her feet while Jack makes an all-or-nothing lunge that ends up with him hanging off the console. Then the teeth-rattling shudders of the machine get so bad they prevent Daniel from attempting to get up or Sam from reaching the console herself. It's just Jack. "What do I push?" Jack hollers over the noise of the machine.
"I don't know!" she calls back, voice distorted like she was yelling into a fan. "I haven't had time to study –"
This is not what he wants to hear. He needs to push something, and now, that will stop this machine from doing whatever it's apparently programmed to do. There's another almighty jolt that almost makes Jack lose his grip.
"Carter!"
"I don't know!"
"O'Neill!" Teal'c calls, the strain of keeping himself anchored evident in his voice. "You must act before we are torn apart!"
Jack curses, looks at the lever he's holding onto, and throws it up around the double row of blinking lights. The machine judders a final time, sending all four of them sprawling, before stilling with a heavy thud.
"Oy." Jack rolls away from the bit of metal railing he bruised his side against and staggers to his feet. "We all okay?"
"Ugh," Daniel groans as he stands up. Sam and Teal'c aren't far behind, and Jack feels his shoulders relax as they walk over, rubbing sore spots but otherwise unharmed.
"Good. Time to leave." Sam and Daniel look reluctant but wisely go along without comment as Jack stomps to the door. He' s already planning his report to Hammond: no sir, nothing exciting on that lump of space. Just a shaky wooden box that's bigger on the inside that we can cart to the scientists and let them play around with. Yes sir, I can't believe it either, for once we had a mission that went perfectly according to –
Jack flings open the door. It's not the same forest they left. He takes a step back and looks for the other door they must have come from that still opens up onto the lovely wooded boringness of P4R-992, but no other door appears. He should really learn to stop hoping for that mythical uneventful mission.
Dammit.
SG-1 crowds at the entrance of the box, debating whether to risk the new terrain or stay with the ship. The devil you know or…
Or the faint sound of P90 fire and staff blasts in the distance.
"Sir –" Carter's heard it too and already has her weapon in hand.
Jack takes off towards the noise, gun at the ready and the rest of SG-1 close behind. It's an easy choice to make. They still have no idea where that box dumped them, but P90s means an SG-team, which means an alternative way home than trying to undo whatever it was that box had done. Plus, on an instinctive level, that's one of his teams out there and they need his help. Box and fancy alien technology be damned; he's going to protect his people.
When the abandoned police box starts whirring and groaning and fading in and out of view once more, SG-1 is two valleys over ambushing the Jaffa who've got SG-5 pinned down. They save the lives of all four members.