The Lost Expedition

by chaletian

AU. Like the ‘Lost Colony’ of Roanoke, the mystery surrounding the disappearance of the Atlantis expedition has captivated the imagination of generations, and there has been much speculation about their fate...

The Lost Expedition

by Liss Webster

oOo

"…the Atlantis expedition never found a way to contact Earth. A year after the expedition's departure, the Daedalus reached the Pegasus galaxy to find Atlantis deserted, although the team's equipment, food and personal belongings remained. No evidence of foul play was discovered, and no trace of the expedition members was ever found. Due to the violent nature of the indigenous species known as 'the Wraith,' the Pegasus galaxy was deemed too dangerous, and Earth's governments refused further requests for exploration. Like the 'Lost Colony' of Roanoke, the mystery surrounding the disappearance of the Atlantis expedition has captivated the imagination of generations, and there has been much speculation about their fate…"

oOo

Essie Malcolm – seven years old and the youngest of four siblings – ran valiantly after her siblings. "I wanna be Elizabeth!" she demanded shrilly. "I wanna!"

"You're too little to be Elizabeth," said Alec, the eldest. "She was old and ugly."

"She was pretty!" insisted Essie. "I seen her in the movie."

"That's just Amy Greenland," retorted Nicky. "She's an actor."

"She's hot," said Alec. "Everyone knows Elizabeth was really old, in real life."

Essie set her face mutinously. "Elizabeth was pretty," she said, crossing her arms.

Alec sighed. "Fine. Whatever. You be Elizabeth, and we'll be the Wraith and we're gonna EAT YOU!" He roared and waved his arms, his brothers followed suit, and Essie squealed and ran in the opposite direction, blonde hair streaming out behind her.

oOo

Essie Malcolm – twelve years old and four inches taller than anyone else in the sixth grade – walked slowly to the front of the class, a data sheet clutched nervously in her hand.

"My book report is on Lost in Space, by Helen Myers. It's about the Atlantis expedition to the Pegasus galaxy, which was lost and no-one knows what happened to them. This is a f-fictionalised story about the people on the expedition, led by Dr Weir, and how they meet people from another planet and go to live with them."

oOo

Essie Malcolm – sixteen years old and a little bit high – leant back on her friend Sophie's couch, and waved a hand dramatically.

"It's just so… so… mysterious. Like, we have no idea what happened to them."

"What happened to who?" asked some guy, sprawled out on the floor.

"The Atlantis expedition. They went through a stargate to what they thought was Atlantis – you know about the Stargate Programme, right? – and nothing more was heard from them. After, like, a year or so, the people on Earth figured out how to get a spaceship out there, but when they found Atlantis – and it's, like, so cool that there even was an Atlantis – there was no sign of the expedition. They'd just vanished."

"Yeah, cuz they all died," said Sophie. "I mean, it's obvious, right?"

"Duh," said Essie. "No bodies. And all their stuff was still there – all the equipment, all the food, everything."

"Everyone knows they got, like, eaten by the Wraith or whatever."

"I dunno," said Essie dubiously. "The ship that went, the Daedalus – they said there weren't any signs of violence. But the Wraith were everywhere – the Daedalus didn't stay very long. They left everything there in case they – the Atlantis people, I mean – came back."

"Did they ever?" asked Sophie.

Essie shrugged. "No-one knows. Nobody's been to the Pegasus galaxy since then. I guess the Wraith were total scaries."

The boy on the floor propped himself up on his elbows. "Totally. You never seen Wraith Wars? Or Tomb of Atlantis?"

Sophie looked sceptical. "C'mon, Todd. That's just fiction, right, Ess?"

"No-one knows," said Essie. "Seriously. No-one really knows now what the Wraith were like." She looked wistfully into her glass. "Wish I could go. Wish I could see it. Wish we could find out what happened to them."

oOo

Essie Malcolm – twenty years old and a student at Harvard – came racing into the dorm room she shared with a fellow Historian.

"I got on it!" she shrieked, flinging her arms round Kate. "The Stargate course – I got in!"

"That's ace, Ess!" replied Kate, hugging her back. "Professor Hamilton liked your essay, then?"

"Guess so." Essie crossed to her desk, and her monitor flashed into life. "The Prof said he'd send me the reading list straight away." The comms centre obediently began flashing through messages, then stalled as Essie turned away, disappointed. "Nothing yet."

"I thought you'd read everything ever written on the subject," said Kate, returning to her own work.

Essie checked her messages again. "Well, most of what's available. I mean, all the secondary work, and the Jackson diaries, that sort of thing. There's a load of government and military stuff that's not easy to get hold of, though. That's part of why I wanted to do this course: we get total access to it."

"Did he mention Atlantis?"

Essie looked shifty, and toyed with a couple of old-fashioned books on the edge of her desk. "No. Why would he?"

Kate laughed, and cast her room mate a disbelieving look. "Ess, come on! It's me. Y'know, the girl who sat through the Atlantis film fest in London for you? The Lost Colony and Tomb of Atlantis and that one with Amy whatshername…"

"Amy Greenland. Elizabeth the Warrior."

Kate pulled a face. "Yeah, that one was shit. And that gorefest with Colonel Sumner killing about three thousand Wraith, and that freaky snuff film with McKay and the Wraith Queen and…"

"Fine! I get it! I might have a tiny…"

"Absolutely minuscule, hardly worth mentioning…"

"…obsession with Atlantis. There's nothing wrong with a health academic interest in a subject."

Kate grinned. "Definitely not. So, did he mention it? Atlantis?"

Essie flapped a hand. "Shh. I've got the list." She leaned over her desk, watching the message scroll down. "Ancient history and its connection to the stargates, the first Abydos mission, the Goa'uld, the SGC… blah blah blah… Asgards, Ancients… blah blah blah… yes! Yes, yes, yes! Atlantis!" She looked up, face glowing. "This," she said, "is going to be brilliant!"

oOo

Essie Malcolm – twenty-seven years old and a post-grad student writing her doctoral thesis on the lost Atlantis expedition – rapped sharply on the apartment door, a data sheet tucked in her back pocket. Eventually the door opened and a tousled head appeared.

"Wha?"

"Have you heard the news?" asked Essie briskly, pushing her way inside.

"Wha?" said the man again. Essie rolled her eyes.

"Steve! Wake up! The news about Atlantis!" She brandished the data sheet. Steve rubbed a hand over his eyes, and ambled towards the kitchen.

"What news about Atlantis? Don't tell me Gerry's unearthed some salacious sexual scandal and he's urging everyone to recreate it for historical verisimilitude?"

"No," Essie said, then cocked her head. "But given how much you drank last night, I'm quite impressed you managed to even think 'verisimilitude', let alone say it."

Steve bowed, winced, and demanded coffee from the utility.

"If not Gerry, then what?" he asked, once coffee had appeared.

Essie beamed. "They've approved it."

"Approved what?" asked Steve blankly.

"Steve! The expedition!"

The coffee slipped from Steve's fingers, and he swore. "You're fracking kidding me. Seriously? They seriously approved it?"

Essie nodded. "Uh-huh. The potential value of Atlantis is apparently, like, major in military terms, and now everything's finally pretty chilled out in our galaxy, apparently the powers that be are more open to it." She shifted closer, enthusiasm evident. "This has been going on for ages, Steve! Gerry says that they've been sending probes through the stargate for months! Last month, they sent a military team." She grabbed Steve's arm. "People on Atlantis, Steve! I mean… God, the possibilities… I don't even…"

"It's not just military, though, right?" demanded Steve. "Tell me it's not just military!"

Essie looked up at him, expression beatific. "Not just military. They're sending an academic team. Scientists, and compubods, and us, Steve."

"Us."

She bounced up and down. "Uh-huh. Yep. They asked Gerry, and he said yes, and he said could he bring his grad students, and they said yes. They said yes, Steve! We're going to Atlantis!"

oOo

"I hate Atlantis," said Steve.

Essie propped her chin on one hand, and gazed absently at her monitor, scrolling almost automatically though the familiar pictures. "Huh?"

"Fracking freezing," grumbled the man sitting opposite her. "Are you going to actually do anything, Ess, or just daydream?"

"Thermostats are all haywire," she replied. "Don't wank, Steve; put on a sweater."

"Who would've thought when we got to Atlantis it would be this fracking cold?" said Steve, reaching over to grab his sweater.

Essie looked around, taking in bold stained glass and earthy-coloured walls. "Who would've thought we'd ever get to Atlantis?" she said softly.

Steve rolled his eyes. "Stop getting so romantic over it all," he said. "What this entire expedition amounts to is rattling round an arctic alien outpost that's been deserted for centuries. Thank God for Aldous Johnson and the invention of the preservable meal, is all I can say. This would have been about fifty thousand times worse if we had to live on those… what did they call them?"

"MREs," supplied Essie.

"Yeah, those. Sounded rank."

"Actually," said Essie, leaning forward, "according to the Jackson diaries, they…" She broke off, a martial glint in her eye as Steve covered his ears and started singing.

"Essie and Jackson, sitting in a…"

She threw the remains of a bread roll at him. "Daniel Jackson's diaries provide the fullest coverage of the Stargate Programme," she said superciliously. "Mickey all you like, doesn't change that."

"It's not even a case of mickeying," objected Steve. "The Jackson diaries are pretty comprehensive, but you can't deny they're subjective. I mean, he talks about the politics of the Programme, but only from his point of view, so it's hard to see what was going on, and given that the government documentation is so limited…"

"…which is entirely in keeping with the destruction of other official records," interrupted Essie.

"… we can only learn so much. And simply in terms of what we're doing here, Ess, you can't deny that the diaries are less than helpful."

Essie shrugged. "Just because he can't give us chapter and verse on…"

"On anything! Admit it, Ess. He was excited about the possibility of Atlantis, but he didn't know a lot of the people going, and other than speculation about the possibility of finding the Ancients…"

"Which seems unlikely given the state of the place," said Essie, waving a hand around the barren, echoing halls of Atlantis."

"…and disappointment at the expedition being lost, he's not exactly a font of information."

"Well, there was that little matter of the war against the Ori," said Essie snippily.

Steve groaned. "Christ, Essie, I'm not criticising your hero, OK? Yes, he's a good source on the Stargate Programme. Yes, he's one of the best sources on the Atlantis expedition, chiefly because he's pretty much the only one. But, firstly, he is only one source, and a partial one at that, and secondly, he ain't that much of a source."

"Fine; you know you're right," said Essie. She scrubbed her hands over her face. "We've been here weeks and we haven't learnt anything new, though." As she spoke, a shudder rushed through Atlantis, and she grabbed at the desk.

"Pier 12 just went," announced a clear voice in her ear. Steve stared across at her.

"Structural integrity's still holding," said another voice. "Recommend we restrict everyone to the central core for the time being."

There was a pause, then another voice, older and gruffer, spoke. "Fine. Hear that, everyone? Central core only. This is a research project, not some kamikaze death run."

There was a ragged chorus of acquiescence, and the comms fell quiet. Essie and Steve stared at their monitors.

"If it was like this," said Steve after a moment, "they probably had to leave."

"They could have fixed it. McKay…"

"Not necessarily. Cho's already proved that Atlantis was underwater when the expedition arrived; they must have raised it. But there was a lot of damage. There is a lot of damage, and us arriving has made it worse."

"If they left," argued Essie, "why didn't they take everything with them? Equipment, food, clothes: it's all still here!"

"We don't know that! We don't know what they…"

"We know they only brought what they could carry. Or, whatever, push on a trolley. Jackson says, 'I stood and watched them go through, one after the other, into the event horizon. The equipment in cases, and every possession they would have on their backs.' We know how many came through, and we've inventoried what's here. There's not much room for manoeuvre. If they did take stuff with them, it wasn't much. And don't forget, we've found a lot of cases, and enough backpacks for almost everyone who was on the expedition. If they left, why didn't they take them?"

"Jackson's open to interpretation! And if they left, we don't know that everyone left. What the compubods've gleaned from Atlantis' systems so far shows parts of the city were disintegrating after the stargate opened and they raised the city from the sea. It's pretty likely that people died. We don't know how many would have been alive to leave."

"Steve, Steve, Steve," a mocking voice came from the doorway, and a man wandered in. "What sort of man argues with our fair Esme?"

Essie flushed and scowled. "Fuck off, Gerry," she said. "I'm not your fair anything."

Gerry – tall, tanned, and heading rapidly towards the 50 year mark – clasped an anguished hand to his chest. "She wounds!" he exclaimed. "My darling, so cruel!"

"Pack it in," said Steve shortly. "What do you want?"

"My dear young Munroe," said Gerry, "what sort of way is that to speak to your esteemed professor? The very man who got you this spectacularly plum job?"

The answer came there none – Steve maintained the chilly gaze on his esteemed professor, though it seemed to have very little impact.

"What is it, Gerry?" asked Essie.

"I just wanted to know if you'd finished inventorying the food," asked Gerry.

"Just now," said Essie. She handed over a slim data sheet, and Gerry started flicking through it, pulling out a similar data sheet when he got to the end. He gave them both to Essie.

"Check it off against this."

"What is it?" asked Steve, curious.

Gerry grinned. "Something we pulled out of that office at the top, by the control room. A complete food inventory for the expedition."

Steve raised an eyebrow. "Wow. That could help."

"You sound amazed, my darling boy. Most of us have done this a time or two."

"Investigated a mysteriously abandoned lost city on a different galaxy?" Steve's voice was sceptical, and Gerry laughed.

"A fair comment. Maybe not that."

"It's almost identical," said Essie, cutting into their conversation. "They didn't eat much – or take much. There's barely a week's food missing."

"What was used?" demanded Gerry, and Essie handed over the original inventory.

"I've highlighted the missing food."

He scanned it quickly. "I don't think they took anything with them. This food would have fed the whole expedition, give or take, for about five days. We know from Atlantis' records that they were here at least two days. If they took food with them, why only three days' worth, at most?"

"But if a lot of people died," suggested Steve, "the food could have lasted longer. If they took it to survive, I mean."

"But there's stuff like pineapple on there," said Essie. "I mean, come on. If you're taking food to survive, if you're evacuating, you're not going to take pineapple with you. If you were taking weeks' worth, maybe, but not for a few days' worth. You'd take the basics. Whatever would last longest and provide most nutrition."

Gerry pointed at her. "And the darling girl's got a good eye."

"Maybe they just took what they could grab," argued Steve.

"Well? What do you say to that?" said Gerry, returning to Essie.

"It doesn't work. Most of the cases were still packed, and what was taken went from a load of different cases. If they'd grabbed what they could find in a hurry, it'd be all chilli, or all tuna or whatever. Plus," she added, warming to her theme, "there's no indication that they did leave in a hurry. Nothing was out of place when we got here. No signs of violence, or struggle, or things left unfinished."

Steve nodded reluctantly. "Yeah. I s'pose. Even if they'd been, I dunno, beamed up, there would've been signs that they'd left unprepared."

"So," said Gerry with a cheery smile, "as well as ruling out alien abduction, it's unlikely they underwent an emergency evacuation." He tapped the data sheet. "We should share this with our dear colleagues." He wandered out of the store room, and after they'd gathered together their belongings, Essie and Steve followed suit.

"It's amazing," said Essie, trailing one hand along the corridor wall. "Can you imagine what it must have been like? When people lived here, when it was light and busy and…and had a purpose?" She spun in a circle, arms outstretched. "When the rooms were filled, and the sun came streaming through the windows and…"

"You watched that Titanic film before we left, didn't you?" demanded Steve. "You know it's about two hundred years old and almost entirely fictional, right?"

Essie glared. "Fuck off. Just because I've got an imagination."

"Whatever. Ugh. I feel like we were stuck in that cupboard for about a week," Steve complained, trying to stretch the kinks out of his back.

"Let's go on one of the balconies," said Essie, nodding to a door, which accordingly jerked open gradually as she waved a hand in front of the control panel. Outside the sun shone brightly, reflecting off the sea that surrounded Atlantis. Steve shielded his eyes.

"You forget how bright it is out," he said. "It's like a fracking morgue in there."

Essie pointed at the algae smeared over the windows. "It's all like that. There must be a way of cleaning it after it had been under water, but whatever it was, it didn't wo…" She stopped, stooped. "Hey! Look!" At the edge of balcony, in the space between the floor of the balcony and the bottom of the barrier, something was wedged. She peered closer. "It's…"

"It's a body," said Steve flatly. He leaned out over the balcony. "Look."

Essie stood, and looked over. A skeletal body dangled down the side of Atlantis, its still-booted foot caught in the balcony. Rags of black and grey remained, but not much else.

"God," said Essie.

"Guess this accounts for at least one of the expedition," said Steve.

oOo

Essie Malcolm – thirty-one years old and a member in good standing of the Atlantis Society – headed towards the lecture hall, pausing as she heard the quick beat of footsteps hurrying to catch her up.

"Hey, Ess," said Steve Munroe, kissing her on the cheek. "How are you?"

"Steve!" replied Essie, surprised. "I didn't think you were coming! I'm fine thanks, you?"

They both headed to the big oak doors of the university building. "Are you kidding?" said Steve, "Dr Arnold and his team come back from spending a year in the Pegasus galaxy, and I don't go to the presentation of the main paper?"

Essie laughed. "Guess once Atlantis has got you, it never lets go. What are you up to these days?"

"Uh, Jaffa, mostly. Early history. The sources are pretty good. I mean, they're offworld, so…"

"Lucky," said Essie. "Actual sources. That's like a beautiful dream."

Steve glanced at her as they elbowed their way through the crowd. "You still on John Sheppard?"

Essie nodded. "Yeah, but it's like getting blood from a stone. Jackson mentions him once in passing as having the ATA gene and having lit up the command chair in Antarctica, and there's a suggestion a couple of days later that O'Neill suggested he join the expedition, but it's not a named reference so I can't be completely sure. There's only a censored military record in the archives, not the full jacket, so I can't get much from there."

"Family?" queried Steve, but Essie shook her head.

"Nope. Had a brother, died with no issue. From what I can tell, the family was a pretty big deal – lots of money, you know? Patrick Sheppard – John's father – owned a major company, which went to the brother after Patrick died. David sold it about ten years later; died not long after. Of course," she added wryly, "anyone who wants to know anything about John Sheppard only has to watch Marcus Jones' latest masterpiece."

Steve grinned. "Death Demon of Atlantis? I hear it's doing very well with the 16-24s. Fracking pile of shit, of course."

"Yeah," agreed Essie, "I think we'd have noticed the dozens of blood-spattered corpses dangling from the rafters."

"Still," said Steve, "he did kill those two soldiers, and the personal computer we found in Myers' quarters implicated him in Colonel Sumner's death. It's possible he killed some of the others."

"But not all," pointed out Essie. "Did you read Claire Richmond's paper?"

"On the habitation patterns in Atlantis? Yeah. Didn't she conclude that it was unlikely Sheppard picked 'em all off?"

Essie nodded. "Right. If he'd been preying on them, she reckons there'd be signs that they'd moved inwards, towards the core."

"Circling the wagons," said Steve.

"Exactly. Even if it had been a day or so, there should still have been signs of migration as the expedition members reacted to the threat."

"So, John Sheppard probably wasn't a psycho serial killer," concluded Steve, but Essie shook her head.

"Oh, we can't go that far. Nothing to say he didn't kill the two soldiers on the way off Atlantis, and then – wherever they went – continued to attack the rest."

"Another mystery of Atlantis," said Steve.

"I'm hoping Dr Arnold will have found some evidence as to where they went," said Essie, as they slid into hard wooden seats halfway down the auditorium. "It's a miracle some of the DNA samples from the expedition survived – just a case of whether they found any matches in Pegasus."

"2110 was a fracking curse for historians," said Steve, pulling out his mobcomm and checking that it set itself to autorecorder.

"I'll drink to that," said Essie. She glanced around the hall, nodded towards the stage. "Gerry's here," she added.

"Of course," said Steve. "I think he was liaising their project with the Society. They were nuts over it. Are they…?" He gestured politely.

"Funding me?" asked Essie, raising her eyebrows. "Yeah, some. I get some money out of the Stargate Society as well, and NYU gives me a grant. And a teaching position, but I like the grant better." She sighed. "It's gonna get pulled, though, if I don't find anything worthwhile soon."

"That's too…" began Steve, then stopped as Gerry stepped up to the podium to introduce Caleb Arnold, late of the Pegasus galaxy.

After the applause, Dr Arnold, a short, stocky man with red hair fading to sandy at the temples, stepped forward.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said portentously. "I need not tell you of the mystery of the Atlantis expedition. We all know the story, how a group of soldiers and scientists from the Stargate Programme stepped through the Earth stargate, hoping they had found the legendary Atlantis, only to disappear from human history. Three years ago, Atlantis was rediscovered, adding greatly to our store of knowledge about the men and women who made that journey. And yet still," he continued, leaning forward, emphasising his point, "still, their fate remains a mystery. Were they abducted by the Wraith, the violent aliens who roamed the Pegasus galaxy? The evidence suggests not. Were they, like the two poor soldiers discovered three years ago, killed by one of their own expedition, Major John Sheppard, a late and mysterious addition to the team, who, some evidence suggests, also killed the military commander, Colonel Sumner? Or did they step further into the Pegasus galaxy, to explore? To survive? We do not know.

"And that is why we decided to do what the Atlantis expedition may have done. We stepped further into the Pegasus galaxy, and using DNA samples taken from some of the original expedition team, we attempted to identify any surviving descendants of Atlantis in the indigenous communities of Pegasus."

"How did they fix Atlantis?" whispered Steve. "It was about to collapse into the ocean while we were there."

"Still is, I think," replied Essie softly. "They travelled through the stargate, then decamped to a landmass. You know we found that transporter? They used that to fly to a spacegate about ten hours away from the planet; explored Pegasus from there." She looked wistful. "That must have been fantastic."

"Didn't you apply for a place?"

"Yeah, but it was basically anthros and geneticists. No space for a straight historian."

"Shhhhh!" came a piercing whisper from somewhere behind them, and they fell silent, listening as Dr Arnold outlined the projects findings.

oOo

Essie Malcolm – thirty-six years old and currently technically homeless – knocked impatiently on the door. "Mer, I know you're in there. Open the damn door!"

"Go away, Ess!" called a voice from inside. "I'm not going through this again with you!"

"Stow that!" she called back. "It's not about us. I found it. My missing piece."

There was silence, which stretched to a minute, then two, then the door slid open, and Meredith Gaskell stood there, arms crossed, expression guarded.

"Well?"

"Can I come in?"

"If you have to." Apparently Essie did have to, and she stepped past him, holding out a data sheet as she went by. "What is it?"

She grinned; very much the cat who got the cream. "Transcript."

Meredith glanced down. "Of what?" She didn't reply, just watched as he started reading, absently backing up till he reached the couch.

"It's John Sheppard's court martial," she said, perching on the arm of a chair. "I found a paper copy in the old archives at Arlington. Took me months, all told."

"So this…"

"…is why he got posted to Antarctica in the first place, yes. The 'black mark' on his record? This is it." She jumped up to demand tea from the utility, and sat drinking it as Meredith read. Eventually he looked up.

"Not much of a black mark," he commented.

"Well," she started, and he nodded.

"Yeah, for the military, fine," he allowed. "But not really convincing for a serial killer."

"Zackly." She stabbed a finger at the data sheet. "He went back to save a fallen comrade. They may have sent him to Antarctica but at least a couple of the people on that panel sympathised with his actions. You know," she continued, "the thing that made me wonder, right from the start? O'Neill asked him to go. O'Neill. I mean, come on, do you seriously expect me to believe that Jack O'Neill couldn't tell a decent officer from a serial killer? But this…" she rifled through a pocket, produced her mobcomm. "Check this out. It's in the Jackson diaries. I didn't pick up on it before. About three months after the Atlantis expedition left, Jackson wrote: 'I wonder how Weir and the rest are doing on Atlantis. I still wish I could have gone, though I guess it was right to stay. Anyway, Jack says one unnaturally intelligent geek (his words) and one hotshot pilot are enough for any galaxy.'"

"Geek and pilot being Jackson and O'Neill in the Milky Way," said Meredith.

"And your namesake (probably) and Sheppard in Pegasus," completed Essie triumphantly.

"Could mean Sumner."

Essie laughed. "Seriously? That's the best you can come up with? Mer, Sumner was a Marine, you know that. No, the person O'Neill was most likely referring to was John Sheppard – trust me, I went over the expedition list with a fine tooth comb. Best interpretation, he approved of Sheppard. Maybe saw something of himself in him."

Meredith nodded. "That's valid, I guess."

"Honestly? We know Sheppard killed those two soldiers. The forensics were conclusive, barring some freakish act of the universe. But I don't see him as a serial killer. I don't think he's the reason the expedition disappeared. I don't think he was the fracking death demon of Atlantis."

Meredith looked at her intently. "What do you think happened to them? Seriously?"

She shrugged, crossed her arms. "Sometimes," she said after a moment, "sometimes, when it's late and I can't sleep, I think: you know what? They died. One way or another, they died. Elizabeth Weir, who was determined to keep the mission a scientific one. Meredith McKay, who wanted to unlock the mysteries of the universe and win a Nobel. Carson Beckett, who was freaked out by having the gene. John Sheppard, who got talked into an alien mission, and took War and Peace with him – which, by the way, totally made me think he wasn't a serial killer, because who takes a book that's gonna take about a year to read as their one possession if they're planning to murder everyone as soon as they get there? But anyway, they're all dead now. The soldiers, the scientists, the doctors. Either the Wraith killed them, or Pegasus natives, or illness, or injury, or old age. That's what happened. They died."

They sat in silence.

"Wow," said Meredith. "Morbid."

"Yeah. I need to work on that." She stretched out and rubbed her eyes. "I'm so tired. I've been looking at bits of paper all week, and my lease ran out and I've been living on Steve's couch, and term starts next week, and I've got freshmen to teach, which sucks. I think they left Atlantis and went somewhere else in the Pegasus galaxy."

"Your freshmen?"

"Har. The expedition."

"Arnold's research only found one trace of DNA, and given the numbers involved, the confidence interval was too great for it to be meaningful."

Essie was shaking her head. "In an entire galaxy of people, what's a hundred people and their descendants? You've seen the population studies. The feeding patterns of the Wraith disrupted everything. Entire planets were depopulated. Communities moved from planet to planet. Some stayed shielded by old Ancient technology. Some are probably still hidden. It's impossible to draw any real conclusions when you take all that into account. And there are the stories."

Meredith shook his head. "There are always stories. Arnold said the Genii defeated the Wraith centuries ago. Hero myths are common by-product of that."

"But they talked about descendants of the Ancients! It's logical to assume…"

"Incorrect," said Meredith, holding up a finger. "They talked about descendants of the Ancestors, which, true, is what we call the Ancients, but the 'Ancestors' also hold a place of religious significance in Pegasus. What could be more natural than heroic myths being comingled with religious history? Doesn't mean they're talking specifically about people who came from Atlantis."

Essie set her mouth. "I want to know," she said harshly. "Mer, I want- I have to know what happened to them."

Meredith stared for a moment. "OK," he said eventually. "You know, don't you, that you're straying into crazy territory here?"

"Mer! I'm not j…" She broke off, relaxed slightly. "Yeah. You're right. Christ. I need to get a life."

"Start with a good night's sleep." He tossed a cushion at her, big and puffy. "You know where the guest room is, right? Stay for a couple of days. We'll watch shit moves about sunsets and pixies, and next week you can get back to New York and your students and your latest, ground-breaking, paper on Atlantis."

"I thought you were freaked out that I was only dating you cuz you were descended from Jeannie Miller?"

Meredith shrugged. "Hey, it's just sunset movies."

She smiled. "Fine. Sunset movies it is."

oOo

Essie Malcolm – thirty-nine years old and a newly tenured professor at Princeton – glanced up from the essay she was marking as someone tapped on her office door.

"Yeah?" she called out, giving up happy fantasies of pretending office hours didn't exist.

"It's me," said Meredith unnecessarily. "I was just on campus for that compsci thing. Look, I had a thought."

"Is your thought better than Jennifer Holloway's thoughts on the Stargate Programme as a reflection of twentieth century American foreign policy?"

Meredith considered the matter. "I honestly don't know. How are Jennifer's thoughts?"

Essie cracked a smile, jiggled her eyebrows suggestively. "Derivative. Are your thoughts naughty thoughts?"

"Well, they are now."

"Cool. Can we make out? One of my students might walk in. I think it would definitely help my reputation."

Meredith held up a hand. "Wait. No. My thought."

"Fine. Tell me."

"So, John Sheppard wasn't a serial killer, we're all down with that."

"Right."

"But he killed those two guys."

"Right."

"But he's not a killer. Per se."

Essie looked mildly confused. "Right?"

Meredith leaned on the desk, eyes alight with enthusiasm. "So why'd he kill them? He's an Air Force officer. They're Marines. It's not like they were there long enough for a mutiny or anything. If he was killing subordinates, he'd have to have a reason."

"But they were squeaky clean. Tomlins and Masterson: their records were perfect."

"And yet, for some reason he killed them. You can't have it both ways, Ess. You can't have Sheppard be a good officer and the Marines be beyond reproach, because it doesn't make sense."

Essie looked determined, and flicked Jennifer Holloway's essay off the monitor. "You know what? You're right. You're absolutely right. I can't believe I missed this before." She jumped up and began pulling archive discs off her shelf. "I'll need to check their records again, see what else I can pick up in the official sources…" She trailed off, already intent in her research, and Meredith grinned.

"I'll be heading home," he said.

"Yeah," said Essie.

"I'm guessing you won't want dinner."

"Mm."

"Professor Malcolm?"

"There's one of your students here. I'll just… office hours are over, kid."

"Um. Okay. Sure. Bye, then."

"Yeah, bye. Ess – don't make your brain melt, okay?"

Essie didn't answer. She was already mentally going through Daniel Jackson's account of the Atlantis personnel he had known.

oOo

Essie Malcolm – forty-three years old and extremely sleep-deprived – propped herself on the window sill of Gerald Sommers' living room.

"Hey," she said quietly.

Steve looked up. "Essie! Hey! It's good to see you."

"You too." She gestured into the room with her glass. "Maybe not under these circumstances."

"Yeah." He gave a short laugh. "Cancer, huh? It's weird, you'd think with all the advances over the years, we'd have cracked that by now."

Essie looked at him curiously. "You sound… I never thought you liked him that much. Gerry."

"I guess… I guess he was one of those guys, you know? Besides, he may have been a dick, but he was brilliant. He- he got it."

Essie nodded. "Yeah. I know what you mean." She sighed. "But the timing sucks. Kinda unfair."

"He was psyched about going." He glanced across. "And that's all down to you." He tipped her a salute. "Your research into the dead soldiers, discovering the NID connection. I mean, that's what gave the compubods the clue to Atlantis' system failure. S'why the Atlantis project became viable again. Wonder who they'll get to go now to head the historical research side of things."

"You?" asked Essie speculatively, but Steve just laughed.

"You're kidding, right? I haven't done any solid research into Atlantis in over a decade! No, I'm elbows deep in a joint project with the Nox at the moment. What about you?"

"Me!" She chuckled. "Yeah, I'm a little tied up right now." Steve looked at her, confused, then his expression cleared.

"Of course! You and Meredith procreated! Congratulations – girl, isn't it? What's she called?"

Essie looked shifty. "She's going by Nell."

"Going by? What did you…" He broke off, then laughed, almost in disbelief. "Oh! Oh, tell me you didn't!"

"I'm not saying anything." Steve was laughing harder now, and they were attracting more than one censorious glance. "Shut up! Jesus! We'd just heard the news, OK, and I was excited and high on the drugs and the registrar came round and… it just happened."

"You called your kid Atlantis."

"Yes!" Essie was defiant, an attitude that quickly crumbled. "OK, yes, I'm not proud."

"You know you're actually disturbed, right?"

"Fuck off."

"I mean, really, on a scale of one to ten…"

"I will hurt you, Steve. Seriously. I've had, like, no sleep in a month."

oOo

Essie Malcolm – forty-seven years old and a world-renowned authority on the Atlantis expedition – was scrabbling under her desk when someone knocked at the door.

"Professor Malcolm?"

Her head popped up, and she blew a lock of silvering blonde hair out of her eye. "Peter! Hi!"

He bobbed his head in greeting. "Hey, Prof. I just came to give you the latest draft of my thesis. Also," he gingerly withdrew a data sheet from his back pocket, "I wondered if you'd seen this."

Essie held up a hand. "Don't tell me. Dury's article in this month's JSR?"

"Yep."

"Yeah, I've read it. That," she said definitively, "is a man who watched Death Demon of Atlantis a few times too many as a kid."

"He calls you a, uh, romantic revisionist hack," Peter said with a twinkle in his eye, and Essie laughed.

"Yeah, well, Jasper Dury can kiss my as-yet unwrinkled ass. I'm trying to work out if it's worth my bother to write politely to the journal and point out that his entire argument is based on the Myers PDA, which is a single, completely unsupported, piece of evidence about Sheppard killing Sumner."

"I wish we had the records of what happened those few days they were on Atlantis," said Peter wistfully. "The city kept the first 24 hours, but then…" He waved a hand.

"Nothing," agreed Essie. "Last I heard, the compubods still don't know whether to blame the NID agents, the Atlantis expedition themselves, computer degradation – though they say that's unlikely – or some other factor we don't know about. What we do know, now, is that McKay had a laptop that's not accounted for on Atlantis."

"Professor…" started Peter, then paused.

"Yeah?"

"We find information, piece by piece, but… do you think we'll ever get the full picture?"

Essie didn't answer for a moment.

"Professor?"

"You know what I have nightmares about, Peter?"

"Uh – no?"

"Sand."

"Um…"

"You ever watch the tide come in? I do sometimes, if we've taken Nell to the beach. You know, we build sandcastle, we write in the sand, we dig holes, we… we do all at that stuff people do. And the tide comes in, and washes it away. It's a tabula rasa. You go to the beach a couple of days later, when the tide's been and gone and been and gone, and you can't tell what we did. We did it, it happened, in that time it was there, but then time moves on and wipes away what was past. There's nothing there, there's just… instinct."

"Instinct?"

"I saw this play once. Two characters are talking about the past, and one of them says there is, 'a certainty for which there is no back reference. Because time is reversed. Tock-tick goes the universe and then recovers itself, but it was enough, you were in there and you bloody know'. I've always felt like that in a way. When I walked through the halls of Atlantis, when I read about the people there, when we talk about them… that you could walk around a corner and meet them. I think that's why Sheppard's always fascinated me: because there isn't that feeling of familiarity.

"Since 2110, our official archives are a mess, but the SGC survived that. Its records are in pretty good shape, and apart from that, its history is written into hundreds of worlds across our galaxy. Almost all the Atlantis expedition came out of the SGC. Some of them had been working there since the beginning. McKay published widely before he joined the SGC, and after that his research survived almost completely. His memos, his files, his research notes: they're all there. You can get a real sense for who he was. Elizabeth Weir is the same; and the same goes for many of the others. But Sheppard – he wasn't one of them. We don't really know anything about him, about what sort of man he was. There's so little information. According to Jackson's diaries, he didn't even know about the Stargate Programme until he flew O'Neill out to the base at Antarctica. We know he had the ATA gene, and that's probably why he was asked to go. We know he was a pilot who was court martialled after going back to rescue a comrade against orders. We know he had a brother, and that he came from a privileged background. We know he planned to read War and Peace while he was on Atlantis. We know he killed two NID agents who were on the expedition as Marines. And we know he liked Johnny Cash."

Peter looked confused. "Wait, what? Who?"

Essie grinned, and reached into a drawer. "Johnny Cash. Mid-twentieth century singer. Here." She tossed him an old-fashioned photograph. It showed a bare box of room, with a single bed, a desk and chair, and looming over all these, a large poster in black and white of a man in a greatcoat. At the edge of the photograph, was a back side profile of a man with a slightly pointed ear and a dark shock of hair.

"Is that…?"

"John Sheppard. Uh-huh."

"I-I've never seen this before. Where did you get it?" He looked up, eagerly, questions tumbling over themselves. "How do you know it's him?"

"I got it from a woman in Indiana. I met her a few years ago when I was researching Sheppard's court martial. She was descended from Captain Holland."

"The man Sheppard tried to rescue in Afghanistan?"

"Uh-huh. She still had a load of family stuff. She found this recently; sent it to me. Meredith ran a facial pattern scan, comparing it to the official photo of Sheppard, and it was a 92% match, which is fair, if not conclusive, but the thing is this photograph was included in a letter sent by Holland to his wife about four months before he died." She tapped the monitor on her desk, and a scan of a letter appeared. "Read the highlighted section," she invited, and Peter leant forward.

"'Quarters aren't so bad, though you wouldn't think so from looking at Shep's – thought I'd send you a photo so you could see how the poor damned bachelors have to live when they don't have wives to send them stuff. Shep says he's happy when it's just him and Johnny, but I can tell the sorry sob is lying.' Sob?"

"Son of a bitch, apparently."

"Ah. Gotta love the military."

He stared at the photograph for a while. "It makes it more real, you know?" he said eventually. "I mean, before, studying Atlantis, and him? It's all official pictures and text books and stories, but this? It makes him real. Just a guy with a friend taking pictures to send his wife."

oOo

Essie Malcolm – forty-eight years old and a terrible mother – sat on the couch, and watched her daughter playing.

"It's not a problem, Ess," Alec Malcolm was saying. "We'd be happy to take care of Nell for a while."

"But you don't think I should go."

"I didn't say that. I know how you feel about Atlantis. And this is – well, it's quite an opportunity. Didn't they ask you before?"

"Yeah, when Gerry – Gerald Sommers – died. But I'd just had Nell; it was out of the question. They got Terence Sawyer instead, but he… well, reading between the lines, he wasn't the best fit. They approached me then, but Nell was still just a baby, really, so they went to Eva Mensch, and then she went and dropped dead from an aneurysm."

"So they've come back to you. What does Meredith think? They offered him that compsci post, right?"

Essie nodded. "You know Mer. He's quite the genius."

"Does he want to go?"

She shrugged. "He says it's up to me."

"Do you want to go?"

She looked up sharply. "Do I want to go? Alec, it's Atlantis! Of course I want to go!" She bit her lip. "It's been over twenty years, you know? Since we went. And I still remember it. I still see it in my dreams. It-it was so cold. And dark, because all the windows were covered in gunk from the sea. Noises echoed in the halls. And it was amazing."

oOo

Essie Malcolm – forty-nine years old and sick with anticipation – glanced across at Meredith as he took his hand in hers, and they both stepped across the event horizon, feeling that intense cold for less than a moment, before stepping out onto the other side. Essie had described Atlantis to Meredith many times: the cold, the dark, the wonder. But this… this was something else.

"I…" she began, and fell silent, as she was gently pushed to the side by an anonymous hands as more people and equipment followed behind her. Atlantis was not cold, now, nor dark. The embarkation room was brightly lit, the sun dazzling through stained glass windows at the top of the steps leading to the control room. Everywhere people bustled to and fro, and an announcement was being made over an open comms system.

There, right there, tock tick went the universe for Essie, and she could see them all, Weir and McKay, Sumner and Sheppard, Grodin and Beckett, all the men and women who had made up the Atlantis expedition, could see them in this city that, however briefly, had been theirs.

oOo

Essie Malcolm – fifty-one years old and highly suspicious – tapped her chin with her index finger.

"Don't you think that's odd?" she asked suddenly, and Peter, her former grad student, looked over.

"What's odd?"

"What Jenith said, about the gene therapy."

Peter sighed, and leant back. "OK, I'll bite, Prof. What's odd about it?"

"He said that they'd had the gene therapy for the Ancient gene for hundreds of years, right?"

"Yeah. So?"

"So why'd they need it?"

"Wh- I'm confused."

"Well, you know what the Genii homeworld is like. We've both been there. And we've commented before on the fact that they were the race that managed to defeat the Wraith, when…"

"…when they were one world that the Ancients didn't leave much tech on."

"Exactly! Props to them, they developed all their own technology. There's no pre-existing Ancient infrastructure like there is on some planets. So why'd they need the gene therapy?"

Peter shrugged. "Pegasus is littered with remnants of Ancient tech, a lot of which needs the gene in order to be activated. Maybe they just wanted the edge. Or, I dunno, for using the Gateships or something. We know the Ancients had those; you found one on Atlantis."

"But only one; I've never seen any anywhere else. And Meredith says Genii space travel isn't dependent on any Ancient tech. And, I mean, yeah, I can see it being used but… look, we know how goal-oriented the Genii are. I just find it weird that they must have spent such a lot of time developing a genetic tool that can only be of very limited use to them. And there's another thing."

Peter rolled his eyes. "Of course there is."

"Peter, my darling, I am bigger and uglier than you, and moreover I have the power to send you back to Earth if you don't adopt an appropriately fawning expression."

"Esteemed professor, pray tell me what divine insight you have about the Genii?" He bowed slightly, and Essie kicked out at him lazily.

"Brat! You've read Caleb Arnold's work, right?"

"Of course – it's on all your reading lists. He was really the first one to do any research into the Pegasus people."

"Did you see when the Genii defeated the Wraith? When they aligned up the calendars?" She paused, but Peter just frowned and shook his head. "Bad student! It wasn't ten years after the Atlantis expedition came through the stargate."

Peter's expression turned sceptical. "So, what, you think…"

"Who's thinking what?" came a new voice, and the two historians looked up. Standing in the doorway was Tony Penney, the Atlantis expedition leader.

"Essie thinks the Atlantis expedition were actually the ones who defeated the Wraith, not the Genii," said Peter, dodging the pencil pot that Essie threw at him.

"I didn't say that!"

"Well, make damn sure you don't say it to the Genii! They wouldn't take kindly to it," said Penney, warningly.

"They're defensive," observed Peter. Penney nodded.

"It's not surprising. They've been top dogs in Pegasus for a while; our presence has the potential to be a threat to that. The city of the Ancients is still a big deal here and we're more than their match technologically speaking. What makes you think the original Atlantis expedition had anything to do with the Wraith, Professor?" he asked.

"Timing, partly," said Essie. "And I've been collecting the Pegasus folk stories – there's a few that seem to have cropped up around the same time, stories that don't fit with the Genii. Like the Athosian warrior princess."

"She loves the Athosian warrior princess," put in Peter.

"She's a legendary figure – a woman who was both diplomat and warrior. A leader of her people. I'm not saying it proves anything, but there's an unarguable similarity to Weir. But it's just legend. The Athosian people come up in stories occasionally, but they finally dispersed years ago, and so much of this history is oral, that it's…." She stopped, shaking her head.

"Sand through our fingers," said Peter. "Then there's the Runners – men hunted by the Wraith. There are stories about them fighting back, um… one in particular…" he turned to the desk monitor, tapped a couple of times. "From a planet called Sateda. Destroyed by Wraith centuries ago. It's all rubble, apparently."

"We're planning to send a team," said Essie, "but it's on a very long list of planets to visit."

"Well, your next one just came up," said Penney, cocking his head towards the corridor. "P4X 992."

P4X 992 turned out to be another planet in a medieval stage of development with the lingering remains of Ancient technology, and Essie and Peter sat in a local inn and listened to the stories, heard, in this particular instance, another story about a giant called Lucius who had held his land in the cradle of his hand and protected it from all threats.

"I don't remember there being a giant on the Atlantis expedition," said Peter facetiously, when the story teller returned to the bar.

"Remind me again why I brought you?" Essie replied. "You know as well as I do that 'Lucius' is probably an amalgam of half a dozen different people." She checked her watch and stood up. "Come on, time to meet back at the stargate."

The planet was home to a busy marketplace, and they had to wait in a line with Captain Moore and Lieutenant Simon before they could use it.

"Apparently he could cure any illness known to man, and knew every story every told," Peter was telling the soldiers as Essie looked around the people waiting to use the stargate. "Oh, and he was invulnerable to any attack." A group of three men had gone up the stone steps as the watery event horizon steadied itself, dressed in clothes suggestive of a more advanced society. But there was something… "That could come in handy," Moore was saying. "Maybe we should be looking for something like that, right, Prof?" Essie ignored him, taking a few steps forward, trying to see past the bustle of people. There was something about one of the men – what was it? Then the crowd cleared, and one of the men, a step out of sync with his companions, glanced back over his shoulder, his eyes meeting with Essie's, and for a moment she took in dark hair and a pointed chin before he, too, vanished through the stargate and the wormhole stuttered out of existence.

"Hey, Prof, what're you… what the hell's she doing? Prof!"

She raced up to the boy taking payment for the stargate use, position next to the DHD. "Those men who just went through, who were they? Where were they going?"

The boy took in the soldiers standing behind her, and swallowed visibly. "I-I do not know. They directed the path of the Ring themselves."

"They ever been here before?" demanded Essie, but the boy shook his head.

"I do not know. I think, perhaps? We have many visitors here."

"Lt, you can get addresses off a DHD, right?"

Lt Simon nodded. "Well, yeah, but not in any order. Given how many folks come here, well – the words needle and haystack come to mind."

"Hey, Prof, what is it?" asked Moore, placing a hand on her arm and pulling her away slightly.

Essie shook her head. "I don't- probably nothing. I don't know. Can we go back? To the market, I mean. I want to try something."

Moore nodded. "Sure. Simon, go back with them. I'll radio Atlantis."

The three of them walked back to the marketplace, and Essie headed straight for the stall that sold remnants of Ancient technology – crystals, some damaged, some not, bits of cabling, control panels. She tapped her mobcomm, and held it up for the stallholder.

"You ever see a man like this?"

The woman peered at it. "Maybe. Not quite, but there was a man a little while ago. He looked a bit like that."

"Has he been here before?"

She nodded. "A time or two."

"Do you know who he is? Where he came from?"

The woman shook her head. "No, he comes, he goes."

"The next time he comes," said Essie, "could you find out? Let me know?" She took a slate and chalk from the stall, and scribbled the symbols to dial Atlantis. "This is where we are. If you dial that, and then… Lt, give me your radio… ask for me – my name's Essie – that would be wonderful. Oh, and we can totally pay you."

"It requires no payment," said the woman indifferently. "If he comes again, I will ask."

As they walked back to the stargate, Peter glanced at her. "The picture you showed her – that was John Sheppard," he said.

Essie hunched her shoulders. "It was probably nothing. I just thought I saw… it doesn't matter. It was probably nothing. I mean, what are the odds…" she trailed off, and they walked in silence.

oOo

Essie Malcolm – sixty-seven years old and extremely frustrated – narrowed her eyes at her daughter.

"Honestly, Nell," she began, "the military?"

Nell Malcolm rolled her eyes and carried on cleaning her pulse weapon. "Jeez, Mom, get over it already."

"What about intellectual curiosity? What about discovering the unknown? What about…?"

"What? This is about discovering the unknown! You know what, Mom, it turns out freelance adventuring isn't actually a viable career, and there's no way I'm going anywhere near academia." Her voice softened. "I'm here, aren't I? Atlantis is my home. Pegasus is my home. Has been ever since you and Dad came to your senses and rescued me from Uncle Alec and Aunt Susie. But if I want to explore it, I have to provide something to be on a team. And if that means military training, so be it. Anyway, I kinda like it."

"Provide something!" said Essie querulously. "You know more about the Pegasus galaxy than most of these so-called experts put together! Did you see that paper Chen wrote about the Hoffans? Pure fiction! I mean, the history of this place…"

"I don't care about the history!" exclaimed Nell loudly. "Mom, please… I don't care. I'm interested in the here and now. Let's just – change the subject, OK?"

"Fine," said Essie. "Fine."

"Didya hear about the Genii trying to colonise Latira? Apparently that's their new thing these days."

"It's not surprising," replied Essie. "The Genii have always been ambitious. Still, I suppose we have them to thank for getting rid of the Wraith."

Nell snorted. "Yeah, apparently that story got embroidered on with time."

"What?" Essie looked at her daughter sharply. "Where did you hear that?"

Nell stopped cleaning her gun, surprised. "Just some guy on a planet somewhere last year. Uh – he just said something about the Genii being happy to take all the credit but they'd have blown themselves up if they hadn't had any help."

"What guy?"

Nell threw up her hands. "I don't know! Just some guy. With… really, really blue eyes. He was kind of a douche," she added dismissively, and picked up the gun again.

"But if he said the Genii…"

"Mom! Quit it! What does it matter who defeated the Wraith? Who cares if it was the Genii, or the mysterious first Atlanteans, or, I dunno, the Ancients coming back down and smiting them? Why does it matter so much?"

"I- I don't suppose it does," said Essie, sounding a little lost. "I've never been able to lose this place, you know. One of my friends, years and years ago, said I was obsessed. I suppose it was true then, and it's true now. I see them. All the time. Actually, you know, once, before you were here, I saw someone on a planet who I thought looked just like John Sheppard. I thought, ah! A descendant! Maybe we can find him, maybe we can find a community that is made up of their descendants, and maybe they'll have the stories of why they left Atlantis, and what happened to them. Maybe they'll know. But the man was a stranger there. I asked a woman – a stall holder – to tell me if he came again."

"Did he?"

"Not that I know of. Maybe he never went back. Maybe she couldn't work out how to get the message to me. Maybe he asked her not to. I don't know." She sighed, and felt old. "So, tell me about the Genii. I'm surprised it's taken them this long to consider colonising other planets."

oOo

Nell Malcolm – twenty-eight years old and weighed down with grief – stood stiffly next to her mother's coffin, feeling the itch of woollen dress uniform rubbing against her skin.

"My mother loved Atlantis," she said abruptly. "She loved the city. She loved the stories. She loved the people. I know some of you thought she was… obsessed with the first expedition, but her curiosity extended beyond that. She just wanted to know. To understand." She paused, bit her lip. "She had this book she loved. It said something about the universe going tock tick, about being able to just see the past. That was what she wanted, and I know she was always sorry I didn't feel the same way. I found the book. I found this in it." She pulled a piece of paper from her pocket, the textured surface unfamiliar. "'We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind.' It doesn't matter that we don't know what happened in the past. The first Atlantis expedition may have been lost, their mission never achieved, but we're here now, and we're carrying out that mission. Atlantis is even becoming a colony, and we have our role to play."

oOo

Nell Malcolm – thirty years old and covered in mud – glared at her companion. "That is the most unhelpful thing I've ever heard, Toran," she said bitterly. He shrugged.

"Take it or leave it. If you want to stay caked in mud…"

She sneered at him, and followed what was apparently the official advice for ridding oneself of the local mud, as disgusting as it was. A couple of hours later saw her and Toran holed up in a shack just inside the woods that lined the northern continent of Versall.

"When are the Genii due to arrive?" she asked, checking her mobcomm.

"In about six hours," said Toran, not even looking up from the book he was scribbling in.

"And why did we come so early?" she demanded.

"Case they got here early. Are you going to keep talking, Malcolm, only I'm trying to work?"

"Meh," said Nell, and fell silent. Which lasted about ten minutes.

"Hey, you know what? I told my mom about you once. Remember the first time we met, on… wherever it was?"

"Still working."

"Well, I told her about what you said about the Genii almost blowing themselves up. What was that?" There was no reply, and she kicked at his book. "Toran! How did you know about the Genii?" He scowled at her.

"By the Ancestors, you're annoying! I don't know, it's just a story I heard when I was a kid. Look, I just don't like the Genii. And I like them less now they're trying to take over the galaxy. Which is why I'm here."

"Huh," said Nell contemplatively. "Hey, did you hear about Atlantis, too, when you were a kid?"

"What? Why? Yes, of course. City of the Ancestors and so on. Sabotaged by spies or whatever. I really didn't pay- Wait – what's that?"

They peered through the small window. "Shit!" said Nell. "It's the Genii."

"And this is why we came early," pointed out Toran. "OK, let us remain stealthy. Ancestors willing, this meeting of theirs may give us some crucial information."

They crept out of the shack, and Nell followed Toran's trail, frowning as they headed towards the treeline. "The Ancient hologram didn't say anything about spies," she murmured to herself, but then she cast it from her mind. The Genii seemed to be of a mind to exert their dominance over the entire Pegasus galaxy, and she had a mission to prevent it.

oOo

Lilia Ewinson – eight years old and the youngest child of the Elector of Olesia – chased after her elder siblings. "I wanna be 'Lantis Nell!" she shouted. "Let me!"

"You're too little," objected Alif, her brother. "'Sides, Atlantis Nell was an alien."

"I don't care," said Lilia stubbornly. "In the holo, she was nice."

"That's just holos," said Alif. "You're too little to understand."

"You don't understand," said Lilia. "She was a- a desessant of the Ancients, and that means she was good."

"Look, let her be Atlantis Nell," said Desta, the eldest. "I'll be Toran and the rest of you can be Genii, and we'll have a battle." He grabbed Lilia by the hand, and they ran behind the garden bushes, while the others scattered.

"When we go home," Desta told Lilia, "I'll find you a book about Atlantis Nell, and you can learn all about her."

THE END