It's been two months since the massive fireball entered the atmosphere. Surprisingly there have been no reports of tidal waves or other impact sites. I expected the fireball would be a disaster on par with an extinction level event but strangely enough the fireball just disappeared. I was on a cruise ship when I saw it. I kept quite who would believe me a giant metal snowflake falling from the sky?

I'm sitting in my apartment staring out at the view of the golden gate bridge. It's a melancholy sight, the clouds obscuring the sun everything shrouded in a misty blue grey haze. Something strange is happening out over the water. I look out and see a flash roughly egg shaped maybe. A few seconds later a red beam of light shoots out into the sky. And for a second I glimpse a city on the water.

"I'm imagining things" I tell myself collapsing back into my sofa facing the window. But no the beam of light was there. I look again into the mist. It's hazy and I doubt anyone else is looking for this. But I see lightning flashing in the background. Grabbing my binoculars I go back to the large living room window staring out into the bay.

Holding them up to my eyes I catch glimpses of lightning striking tall towers and a snowflake sitting out on the water. I want to be there so badly. But I don't know how. It's a city I've dreamt about. A story passed down from my grandparents and their grandparents. A city that was far away which was hidden in an ocean covered by the waters in a single instant to protect her from a powerful enemy.

There are few things left from my family, a few priceless artifacts that have been carefully hidden away. I think now may be the time to go inspect some of them.

My grandmother used to tell me stories about how grandfather was a direct descendent of merlin. I enter the room where we kept the family treasure hidden. A small shelf displaying varied objects. A stone black with gold lettering in blocky shapes. I notice one of the objects is glowing. I pick it up and thing about the city. Startled I almost drop it as above the object a holographic map appears displaying the bridge and the bay and just outside a city in the water. I sit and think how do I turn this thing off. The glow suddenly disappears taking the display with it.

'Brilliant' I think what else can this do. Can it get me to the city? Faintly I hear something but I'm not hearing it, it's like it's in my head. Like a whisper from a mother welcoming a long lost child home. I can hear the city calling me, or is that responding to my call. I look at the shelf again there are these matching wrist guards. I put them on and see a button on them I press the one on my left wrist and the world shifts blue for a second then clears. Odd… I look up there's a slight reflection on the glass shelf but I'm not there.

I run to the bathroom and look in the mirror, nothing! I press the button on the wrist guard again and after another weird lighting shift, red this time, suddenly I'm visible again. I wonder what the other one does. I look at it, pressing the button I hear a faint hum in the back of my mind feels like a tickle. Walking to the door I go to open it and my hand goes right through. 'Cool,' I think. I test this out and spend the next ten minutes walking through doors in my home before pressing the button again and hearing the hum die.

I've toyed with all of these trinkets before but none of them ever showed any signs of life. Maybe the presence of the city in the harbor calling my name somehow reactivated or repowered them. I wonder what other devices are on the shelf. I look again and find something that looks like a mouth piece attached to a short cylinder. I don't even want to think about how many relatives over the years have put their mouths on that. The best one I see is something that looks like a head piece it's fairly simple. Consisting of a small glass piece attached to a metal frame that has thus far proven unbreakable, it looks like it fits around the head with the glass piece sliding in front of an eye. I pick it up and place it over my head and surprisingly it fits but then I feel it shift a little and it seems to reshape itself more snugly around my head. The eye piece lights up briefly and it looks like a targeting scanner from a video game.

I look again at the shelf. One more item a small angular device that looks like it fits in the palm of the hand. Pointy end away. I pick it up and the targeting scanner seams to detect that it's in my possession blinking with a crosshair now, and a little display with the blocky letters. I point at a plant in the corner and think stun. A small bluish charge shoots out of the end of the device covering the plant in electrical arcs for a split second before dissipating. Well that was cool.

There is one more device in the room. It looks odd; it's grey and has an opening. There's a light coming out of it now. It never did that before. I've looked into it many times and seen nothing but darkness. But this time it's glowing inside. I step up to the device and look inside and suddenly the thing has my head in a grip I can break and I feel like it's looking through my skull for something. I can't move and I'm starting to panic but then it releases me.

I look at the stone again and words spring into my head almost latin sounding. But it actually means something. I pick up the device. Mentis transitia I get the vague notion of it being a device that can switch consciousness with someone in possession of a similar device. I put it back on the shelf. I'm not in any hurry to experience that particular process.

I'm not rich, but I'm not exactly poor. I spend the next day purchasing a few items. Something tells me the items will last underwater if not left there for too terribly long. So I've made a plan to get some scuba diving equipment. It feels odd being able to walk around without anyone seeing me, even more so walking through things.

There's a door in my head, and every now and then another bit of information slips out into my conscious mind. I went out with the tactical head gear the other day, that's what I'm calling it now. The display showed me the city clear as day. It also showed me the ships flying to and from it. I reached out to one of them with my mind and saw it veer off for a moment before the pilot snatched the controls back. His mind felt simpler; less sensitive I don't think he even noticed me.

Tomorrow I'm going to try my plan I bought scuba equipment and a waterproof pack. I'm going for a swim.

4 am. I woke up early, no, really early. Guess I'm nervous. I've put on my wetsuit. The tactical headgear informs me that it will be capable of operating underwater for a day without damage, and if it gets dried off properly afterwards it will be able to do so again.

I slip on the cloaking and walk through stuff gauntlets and activate them, and after clearing my way through obstacles I deactivate the walk through walls wrist guard, awkwardly walking out to the bay with all my equipment I jump in. I've got a short amount of air in the tank probably 2 hours but it should be enough to get me there. I swim along the tactical display in front of my eye showing me what to avoid.

There are other scuba divers, and a few ships the display paints them all. After about 50 minutes of swimming and avoiding I reach the edge of where the display tells me the city is. I start swimming up and finally passing through an invisible line the city becomes visible to both eyes instead of just the tactical display.

I press the phase button when I'm a short way away. There are some doors or something on the end of this pier underwater. It's interesting. They look recently repaired. I pass right through the wall and find myself a flooded ship dock. My brain tells me the ships are navicula porta. I swim to the control room passing through the door and then falling as the other side is empty of water. I disable the phase then activate the control to drain the bay. It's stuck but there goes that door again telling me how to fix things. The dock begins to drain. I'm still cloaked. And the city is louder than ever. I can hear these people some of them expertly asking the city questions other not so expertly kludging their way through its systems.

Atlantis, I breathe stripping off my gear I put on the clothes I brought with me in the waterproof bag. Strange clothes I've never worn anything like them but the head sucker in my hidden room made them after I queried about the city. Seems the only way I'd get on at this point is if I could legitimately convince them I was an Alteran, it helps being of Alteran descent but the device had to rewrite some of my dna to bring me back to full Alteran status. There is one more thing I pull out of the bag, it looked like a strange stained glass ornament of some sort but now I know what it is. It's a potentia. A fully powered one, actually more than that it's an experimental model that Merlin fixed up before disappearing. It took him 20 years in front of a black hole with some rather sensitive equipment doing fine calibration to do this. The potentia is blue with white and red crystalline shapes around the edges.

The device in the wall at my old home had told me this was the equivalent of three orange ones, I quickly made my way to the power room and almost laughed at the reactors they had powering the device. I tapped a few controls ejecting the depleted potentia. There is one that still had some power but the other two were completely gone. I pull them out and replace one of them with my blue one, pushing it in grinning. This will be a nice surprise for the cities new guardians.

Using Moros' personal command code I gave myself a command code and ID with root access as a city administrator. Then pulled up the schematics of the potentia or ZPM as they'd taken to calling them and forwarded the necessary instructions to the one the city told me was called Rodney.

I look down at my white Alteran robes and the Alteran phaser for lack of a better term. Well time to become visible.

I press the button on the cloak reappearing. Almost grinning as the alarm sounds to inform the city that I'm in the power room. I press the button to walk through the wall as the door closes then I do just that walking through the wall I proceed to the control room. An interesting side effect of the walk through things wrist guard is that bullets and energy weapons pass right through me. This will be fun I think. I walk up to the stargate. Just last month I would never have dreamed such a device existed. Now I would be claiming some portion of my inheritance. As I reached the gate I asked the city to raise the control pedestal. Placing my hand on it, I cleared my throat.

"Who's the current leader of the city?" I called out.

"I am," a most irritating balding man leaned over the balcony. "What are you doing?"

"Sorry about this interruption to the normal routine, I'm just checking with atlantis on a few things." I replied, while this was going on the city had gleefully welcomed me opening up in my mind like a little kid welcoming a best friend but also like a mother welcoming a child at the same time. It told me of the last time this pedestal had been activated, how annoying the others where how they kicked out her new friends. It also told me their names.

"and who are you?" he demanded glaring at me.

"I'm sorry about my relatives Mr. Woolsey. You've done a remarkable job of keeping Atlantis safe. She wants to thank you. Ten thousand years of sleeping beneath the ocean made her restless."

"Oh sorry," I paused, thinking, the database had given me a list of Alteran names. I was going to shed my earth name and identity, but I hadn't really picked a name, I asked the city to pick one for me, it obliged less than a millisecond latter gleefully christening me, Aikino son of Moros. "I'm Aikino son of Moros"

I instructed the city to plant records of a stasis pod holding me in one of the hidden labs. "I'm staying on the city. It would rather kick all you off before letting me go. But I've assured her that it won't be necessary. I've been in a stasis chamber upgraded with a time dilation field in one of the hidden labs." I lied smoothly.

"You can have control of the city back now." I said stepping away from the console telling the city to hide it again.

The others were understandably upset over my sudden appearance, especially a few of the marines who seeing me had tried to shoot me after I hadn't stopped.