Sleeping Handsome by Betty Bokor
Sam/Daniel. Daniel is working with an alien artifact and he gets into big trouble.
Spoilers: All seasons of Stargate and Atlantis, plus the movies.
Disclaimer: The Stargate original characters belong to MGM/Showtime, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Film Corp. This was written strictly for the purpose of entertainment. No attempt at copyright infringement has been made.
Sleeping Handsome
Chapter 1
A.N.: This is the fourth of a few stories I am going to introduce this week and I will look at what kind of reception they get from the readers in order to decide which one to finish posting first, right after I am done with Memories of the Heart. They are all finished. I just need to choose what to post first. Thanks for reading!
Daniel turned the box in his hand for the tenth time. He mumbled a few words and then softly passed his fingers over a line of hieroglyphs. He scribbled a few lines in his notebook and looked back at the box. He mumbled some more words and kept moving his fingers along as he translated. He suddenly put the box on top of the table and looked at Sam.
"I think I might have just figured out how to open it, Sam, but I'm still not certain of the meaning of the signs on this other side. I've never seen anything like this before."
"Wow, if you haven't seen it…" Sam smiled.
"Doesn't mean much. It's just that it doesn't make any sense. I think the markings on the right side say the same thing as the ones on the left side; they're simply written in different languages. Maybe this was an artifact shared by two different cultures and they wanted to make sure both of them understood it. Almost like a Rosetta Stone."
"What do the ones in the frontal face mean?" Sam asked. She left the object she was working with on top of her workbench and got closer to Daniel.
"Besides the instructions on how to open it, there seems to be a warning and it's in a third language. This one I recognize; it's an ancient form of Goa'uld. It talks about the punishment that will fall upon those who defy the gods. It could be something like a curse. Probably the Goa'uld put it there to scare or dominate the other two cultures. The signs I recognize on the left face tell me that there's a different message on the sides. Perhaps a way to escape the curse or an explanation of the consequences of the curse itself."
"You said you think you can open it," Sam suggested.
"Yep, as long as you're sure there isn't a Goa'uld larvae ready to jump up on us," Daniel said half-seriously.
"We X-rayed it and checked it in every way we know. There isn't a Goa'uld in there or anything that could be dangerous as we know it; the object inside seems to be metallic."
"Okay," Daniel said, still uncertain of how wise it was to open a box that included a curse on its surface.
Sam knew his curiosity would win over his common sense and a few seconds later she saw him following the instructions to unlock the mechanism that kept the box tightly closed.
"There we go," Daniel said as the lid opened as if moved by a spring.
He had kept the box slightly away from his face as a precaution, but as soon as he noticed that nothing was jumping out of it, he moved it closer and looked inside.
Sam got closer and looked into it, too.
Daniel touched softly the mechanism and the conical piece of metal immediately turned blue. He rapidly moved his hand away. "That's interesting," he said.
They both looked at the object that was turning back gray as when they had opened the box.
"Perhaps it reacts to the touch." Sam speculated.
"We should touch it again, then," Daniel said and started moving his hand toward the object.
"Let me do it this time," Sam said and touched it. It instantaneously turned red. "Wow! It changed colors again," she exclaimed as she took her hand away.
Before she got to say anything else, Daniel moved his hand closer and touched the mechanism again. In a second, the cone elongated and a thin needle tip emerged from its top and hurt Daniel's finger. He looked at Sam in confusion and fell unconscious to the floor without a word.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...
"His state has me completely baffled," Carson Beckett explained to the group assembled in the briefing room. "If we look at the results of his EEGs, he's sleeping. He's followed the normal pattern of the sleep cycle many times today, but we've been completely unable to arouse him from sleep."
"Isn't that a sign of coma?" Cameron asked him.
"Yes, but he doesn't have any of the other symptoms. He responds to certain stimuli. His eyes reacted to bright light when I examined him and he's certainly aware of any painful stimulus. His brain waves clearly demonstrate that he should be able to wake up. We just can't get him there."
"Did you find anything else?" asked General Landry.
"Yes, there's an unknown drug in his system that probably entered his body through the puncture wound the artifact caused. We don't know exactly what it is, but we believe it's a powerful narcotic that has caused his present state."
"That would explain why he doesn't wake up, then?" Landry tried.
"We've used every known drug to counteract the effects of the narcotic and none has produced any results. We don't know of any other methods to help him. As long as the drug is in his body…"
"Wouldn't it be naturally eliminated from his system after a certain period of time?" Sam wanted to know.
"We hope so, but there's no way to know. So far, the levels have remained steady."
"Have you put the damn thing away?" Landry asked.
"Yes, sir. It's locked in my lab," Sam answered.
"Good." He looked at the young linguist sitting by his right. "Dr. Adams, have you had any success with Dr. Jackson's notes?"
"Well, sir, we've reviewed all his notes, but we haven't learned anything new from the artifact itself. Dr. Jackson translated all that was known to us. The rest is completely undecipherable, unless we found someone with knowledge of the other languages included in the box."
"What do his notes say?" Cameron asked.
"In the front of the box there's a warning that explains that those who defy the gods –probably referring to the Goa'uld– will be severely punished. The symbols that Dr. Jackson recognized on the right side of the box are the ones that represent love, dream, eternal, true, and kiss. We haven't been able to understand the rest of them; therefore we don't have a context to use the ones we know. It doesn't make sense, especially if we're talking about a curse."
"Daniel suggested that it could be a way to escape the curse, like an antidote," Sam remembered.
"Well, people, I've heard many we don't today. What about you go back to work and bring me some we do? Or Dr. Jackson will spend the rest of his life sleeping."