DISCLAIMER: I do not own Stargate SG-1 or any of the characters. The copyright belongs to MGM, Gekko Films, and all those other fine folks. I'm writing this story because I want to. This is for entertainment purposes only, and no money has ever changed hands.

SPOILERS: Well, this takes place sometime in the middle of Season 5, so there may be spoiler potential for anything you haven't seen up to that point.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: I got the idea for Daniel's paperweight from a similar idea in a story by iamdragonrider. I hope you don't mind that I used a similar idea. Let me know if you do mind, though, and it can be edited away...

The Pandora Experiment

1. The Writing On The Wall

Colonel Jack O'Neill, decorated officer of the United States Air Force, veteran of the Gulf War, and explorer of other worlds, was bored. It wasn't garden-variety restlessness that plagued him. This boredom was the kind that was born of forced inactivity; not the kind that came when he simply couldn't think of things to do, but the kind that tormented him when there really was nothing to do. At the moment he was standing beside General Hammond in the control room, watching Walter Harriman dial the Stargate. Strictly speaking, Jack was not supposed to be here but the general must have sensed how he was feeling, because he didn't ask Jack to leave. Watching other teams go off-world when he was stuck at the SGC wasn't exactly Jack's idea of a good time, but it beat wandering the corridors in search of somebody who wasn't too busy to give him the time of day, especially when everyone on base claimed to be too busy.

When they weren't involved in off-world missions, the members of Jack's team were engaged in about a dozen other plans and projects. At the moment, Teal'c was visiting with his fellow Jaffa on Chulak. The last he'd seen of Carter, she'd been in her lab, tinkering with some kind of alien toy that SG-6 had brought back from their last mission. Jack assumed Daniel was similarly engaged, as the young archaeologist had just come back with a collection of stuff from P3X-789 where he'd been poking around some broken down temple ruins with SG-11. Jack couldn't figure out how Daniel could get so excited over a bunch of chipped clay pots and weird-looking stones, but if digging up old junk made Daniel happy, who was Jack to question it?

"Chevron seven is locked!" Walter Harriman announced.

Jack turned his attention away from his own thoughts and back to the view before him. With a loud rushing sound that had by now become familiar, the Stargate engaged and the event horizon appeared. The surface of the event horizon resembled a rippling blue pool of water. Jack stared at it. He knew it was a complex bit of technology that none of them quite undersood, but that was of secondary importance to Jack, as he figured he'd never understand more than the basics anyway. It worked. That was all he needed to know. That, and the thing was beautiful.

The team assembled on the ramp in the gate room was SG-13. Jack would have known, even without the benefit of being told. Jack recognized Cameron Balinsky's unruly red hair. Balinsky made Jack think of Daniel again, and he almost failed to hide his grin. The redheaded archaeologist down there in the gate room was almost as enthusiastic as Daniel when it came to digging up old junk. Jack surveyed the other members of SG-13. Senior airmen Wells and Bosworth stood in military readiness, a reassuring sight compared to Balinsky's obvious, barely-contained anticipation. Colonel Dave Dixon stood a few paces ahead of the other three members of his team, the leader, and clearly in command.

Beside Jack, the general was watching SG-13, too. He spoke to them through the microphone. "SG-13, you have a go. Good luck and Godspeed."

With Colonel Dixon in the lead, SG-13 stepped into the shimmering event horizon and disappeared.

Jack waited until Walter Harriman disengaged the 'Gate. He would have lingered after General Hammond left the control room, but he guessed Walter was probably too busy with his 'Gate diagnostics to have a conversation, anyway. Jack exited the control room and decided to go see if Daniel was making any progress with the weird rocks and broken jars from P4X-789.

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Daniel Jackson was fascinated. The temple ruins on P4X-789 were a veritable archive of information. He and the members of SG-11 had collected several artefacts which they'd brought back to the SGC with them. Daniel had videotaped the site and taken numerous pictures of the inscriptions on the walls and pillars, too. Everything had been indexed and catalogued for further study, which was what Daniel was absorbed in, at that very moment. The writings on the walls and the etchings on the artefacts from 789 were written in a dialect Daniel had not encountered before, though he was reasonably certain the characters derived from ancient Greek, so he had decided to proceed from there. He was sitting at his work table, laptop open in front of him, viewing some of the pictures he'd taken of the walls. The pictures were good, but he would have liked to spend more time with the actual stones themselves. Of course SG-11 would eventually get to return to the planet, which was largely unfair in Daniel's view. Maybe he'd ask General Hammond if he could be temporarily assigned to SG-11 for that study mission. If nothing else, it would get him away from Jack O'Neill for a while. It wasn't that Daniel disliked the colonel. It was only that the archaeologist did not see eye-to-eye with the soldier, and Jack did have an annoying propensity for being, well…annoying.

Daniel shook his head. He reached for his coffee and took a long, satisfying swallow of the hot liquid. He wouldn't think of Jack, now. Jack was not here, after all. Besides, the ruins on 789 were much too engrossing for him to allow himself to dwell on anything other than them for too long. Daniel carefully set his coffee on the worktable again and turned his attention back to the computer.

No sooner had he settled his gaze on the pictures before him, Daniel heard an all-too-familiar sound. Someone was tapping on the doorframe. Daniel didn't want to look, but he forced himself to pull himself away from the his work.

He did this just in time to see Jack O'Neill stroll into the room. Daniel sighed.

"Hey, Daniel. What's up?" the colonel said.

"I'm working, Jack," said Daniel. "Incidentally, isn't that what you should be doing? Last time I checked, pens hadn't become sentient and learned how to do paperwork on their own."

"Very funny."

"Jack, did I happen to mention that I'm busy?"

"Yes. Yes, you did."

"Why don't you go and bug Sam for a while?"

"Oh, I was doing that, earlier," Jack said. He picked up a small object from the surface of the work table and peered at it quizzically. "Carter told me I should leave her alone and bug you for a while."

Daniel sighed. "Great."

"So, what does this thing do?" Jack asked. His tone was conversational, even casual. He was still holding the thing he'd lifted from the table. The object was almost completely spherical, except for the round, flat facet on which it had been resting before he'd picked it up. It looked like a rock, and there were symbols etched on it. "Some kind of fancy alien artifact thingy, right?"

"Actually, it's a paperweight," said Daniel.

"Ah. I knew that. But it's a Goa'uld paperweight, right? These little symbols here—"

"They're Chinese."

"Oh. So, not Goa'uld, then?"

"No."

"Well, what does it say?"

"Just put down the paperweight, please."

Jack raised his eyebrows. "It says that, huh?"

"Jack—"

"Okay, Daniel. Okay. This is me, putting the paperweight down already." He returned the stone to the table, then backed away from it with his hands raised, palms outward. "So, whatcha working on?"

"Translating some of the writings we found on the walls in those temple ruins on P3X-789."

"Makes for good reading, does it, the writing on the wall?"

"I could let you know all about it, if I had a chance to work on figuring out what it says," Daniel told him. He hadn't meant to let so much irritation creep into his tone of voice, but he tried to convince himself he really couldn't help it, under the circumstances.

Jack, evidently, had missed the exasperation. Either that, or he'd noticed and was choosing to ignore it. The colonel leaned against the edge of the work table and touched the object nearest him, which happened to be a clay pot. "What about this other stuff? Translated any of these treasures, yet? This fine piece of earthenware, for instance?"

Daniel was beginning to give up hope of getting any more work done until he'd humoured the colonel for a few minutes.

"No, I haven't translated the writing on that container, yet." Daniel said. "And to be honest, I don't know what it's for. I haven't gotten a chance to translate the writing yet, but judging by where we found it in the temple it might be some kind of artefact that was used in a religious ceremony of some kind. We found it on what we think might have been an altar, and—"

"Cool. What about this one?" Jack ran his fingertips over the surface of a cube-shaped object. "It doesn't look like the other stuff. Hey, the top part of this thing moves. Did you know that?"

"Jack, don't—" Daniel began.

He did not get the chance to finish his sentence before the room was filled by a blindingly bright light.