Achea

by A. C. Shuler

SG-1 travels to planet inhabited by descendants of ancient Greeks brought there by Goa'uld, now threatened by Ba'al.

Jack O'Neill strolled through the corridors of Stargate Command, heading toward the briefing room. As he entered the home stretch an elevator disgorged Samantha Carter, also bound for the mission briefing.

"Good morning, Sir," she said.

"Morning, Major," answered Jack. He nodded toward the bag Sam was carrying. "Qu'est-ce c'est?"

She pulled out a brightly colored box and turned it so that Jack could see the doll displayed behind clear plastic.

"Combat Action Barbie," read O'Neill. "Very nice, but I don't think you should let the men see you playing with it. Everyone will want their own, and then..."

Sam grinned and slid the box back into the bag. "It's for my niece. I'm giving it to my dad to take with him when he goes to San Diego."

"Ah, Jacob's here?"

Sam nodded. "He says he has information about P6X31, and why we lost contact with the MALPs we sent there."

"I'm sure they're just sulking, but it'll be good to see your father again. And Selmak," he added, entering the briefing room and finding himself pinned by the eyes of that host-symbiote partnership.

Jacob Carter lifted one corner of his mouth. "Selmak says he's glad to see you, too, Jack." He hugged his daughter and they exchanged cheek pecks.

"Here's Janie's birthday present, Dad. Thanks for taking it for me."

Jacob pulled the box from the bag and frowned. "Are you sure this is appropriate?"

"She asked for this one specifically."

"Seems a little violent for a girl her age."

"C'mon, Dad, I was the same way at that age, remember?"

"Yeah, and look what you do for a living. Okay, maybe I'm just old-fashioned. At least explaining this to Selmak will give me something to do on the plane."

Jack, who had been glancing through the folder on the table in front of him, looked interested on hearing this last statement.

"So, what do you guys do, have, like, mental back-and-forth conversations? I thought symbiotes automatically knew everything the host did."

Jacob turned and assumed the expression he usually wore when dealing with Jack, which was something between half-amused tolerance and controlled exasperation.

"In general terms, yes. Selmak has access to my memories if he wants to dig into them. Things that are deeply ingrained, like language or some physical skills, come pretty much automatically to him. But if he wants to know what I think about something, he asks me and I answer. So, yes, Jack, I have conversations with the little voice in my head," he finished.

Jack opened his mouth but Jacob was saved from a further test of his patience by the arrival of General Hammond, chief of Stargate Command.

"Okay, people, let's get started." Everyone found a seat at the table. "Jacob, Selmak, thank you for coming. Daniel," he said, nodding toward archeologist Dr. Daniel Jackson, "has been examining the recordings you sent but Major Carter, Teal'c and Colonel O'Neill haven't been briefed yet. Can you bring them up to speed?"

"Sure, George. The Tok'ra have received word that Ba'al is going to make a run at P6X31, which the people there call Achea. He's tried before but the Acheans have managed to repel his attacks. This time, it looks like he might succeed. We don't know what he's got planned, but he seems pretty confident.

"We know you've sent MALPs there and that they didn't send any telemetry back after arrival. That's because the Acheans are able to assess the nature of anything coming through their stargate before it materializes and stop it if it seems dangerous."

"Cool!" remarked Jack.

"Kind of like the iris we have on our gate," added Sam.

"Not so crude, though," Jacob continued. "They screen out anything mechanical or electronic on the assumption that it might be a weapon. That's why the MALPs never got there. They give the benefit of the doubt to living things, even though they might be Goa'uld or Jaffa, because they might be innocent travelers, instead."

"Nice of them," said Jack.

"Ba'al's sent Jaffa through, but they never came back. Presumably the Acheans killed or captured them." Jacob indicated the folders in front of each SG-1 member. "We don't know much about the Acheans. As you might have guessed from their planet's name, they're descendents of pre-historic Greeks who were kidnapped by the Goa'uld and taken to the planet to work the naquada mines. The planet has rich deposits of naquada, which is why Ba'al wants it.

"They're relatively advanced, technologically, a bit beyond Earth. We don't think they have FTL capability yet, but they do appear to travel extensively around their own system. They use naquada for power and, judging from their ability to decode incoming wormhole data, they're good with computers.

"That's about all we know. We've listened in on some of their radio communications, so there's linguistic and cultural information in your folders."

Daniel Jackson spoke up. "Yes, well, we've all learned ancient Greek since that's a common language among off-world humans. The Goa'uld never actually ruled Greece but they did take people from there on at least one occasion. Since then, they've spread descendants of the original slave population from planet to planet, so that now Greek is almost as common around the galaxy as ancient Egyptian.

"The language has changed, of course, but from what I've gathered from the material that Jacob has given us, the Acheans speak something that's still pretty close to the original. We shouldn't have too much trouble communicating when we get there."

"So, we're going to this Achea?" Jack asked. "Good. I need a new coffee table."

Everyone looked at him blankly.

"Achea? Ikea? Never mind." Daniel looked pained and Sam grinned. General Hammond and Jacob just waited to see if he'd finished.

When it was clear that there would be no more humor, Hammond said, "Your mission will be to go to Achea, warn the inhabitants of the coming attack and do what you can to help them. You'll also establish diplomatic relations with the aim of acquiring any technology that might be useful in our own efforts against the Goa'uld. These people might make valuable allies, or at least be willing to trade naquada for something we have. Read what's in your folders and brush up on your Greek, people. You leave tomorrow at 0930. Dismissed."

The next day, and several hundred light years away, the locks on the Achean stargate lit up and a wormhole's event horizon gushed into existence across its inner diameter. The members of SG-1 stepped out of it and found themselves confronted by a semi-circle of dangerous-looking machines. These appeared to be robots, bi-pedal, half-again the height of a tall man and equipped with a large-bore weapon at the end of each arm.

Jack stood frozen, calmly assessing the situation. He looked past the big war machines and saw an expanse of concrete stretching away to a berm, also concrete, at the edge of his vision. Towers bristling with large guns stood behind the robots and four aircraft hovered above and behind them, forming a layered defense. He registered movement at the corner of his eye and turned his head slowly to see smaller robots that looked like gray crash-test dummies moving in to his right. They carried weapons that looked like rifles. None of the machines were in the others' line of fire.

Jack was reassured by this display of military competence. They hadn't been attacked the instant they came through the gate, which probably meant they were safe as long as nobody made any sudden movements. He took a chance and slowly raised his left hand, keeping the P-90 in his right pointed downwards.

"We come in peace," he said.

"Place your weapons on the ground and identify yourselves," replied the machine closest to them.

As they complied, Jack said, "I'm Jack O'Neill." Nodding to his left, he said, "This is Samantha Carter and Daniel Jackson." Nodding to his right, "This is Teal'c. We're peaceful explorers from a planet called Earth."

"That one is Jaffa," said the machine, extending its weapon slightly toward Teal'c. "I do not recognize his sect," referring to the gold emblem on Teal'c's forehead.

"I was First Prime of Apophis," answered Teal'c, "but I no longer serve false gods."

Daniel spoke up. "The people of my planet oppose the Goa'uld. Teal'c has joined us in our fight. May we speak to a representative of your government? We would like to establish diplomatic relations."

"A representative is on his way to this location. You will please remain where you are until he arrives."

"All right," said Jack. "I must say, you seem very well-spoken for a robot."

"I am not a robot. The combat units in front of you are operated remotely. Now please remain silent. I will answer no more questions."

The team stood quietly until a low hum alerted them to the approach of an aircraft behind them. They turned in time to see it land. A middle-aged man wearing an elaborately embroidered robe disembarked and walked toward them, smiling.

He stopped at the foot of the platform that supported the stargate and bowed. "I am Okemnon, Speaker to Foreigners. I am sent to accept your statement of peaceful intentions and to welcome you to Achea."

Jack introduced his team and told Okemnon that they'd come to warn his people of a threat to their planet.

"We haven't had any trouble with the Goa'uld for more than twenty years," Okemnon said. "If they're back, they must have something new to throw at us. I had better take you to meet our military planners in Argolis, the capitol. Please, come this way. You may bring your weapons."

The party boarded Okemnon's flyer, which lifted silently. No driver was visible.

Teal'c spoke first. "Your mechanized warriors are quite impressive. I would think them more than a match for Ba'al's Jaffa."

Okemnon regarded him with frank curiosity. "Yes, they carry powerful armaments and are impervious to the discharge of staff weapons. I take it Ba'al is the name of the System Lord who is about to attack us?"

Teal'c nodded. "He has become most formidable in recent years."

"And you, Teal'c, you no longer serve the Goa'uld? I was monitoring your conversation with the guards as I approached," he explained.

"Indeed. A number of Jaffa have turned against the System Lords. The successes of the Tauri against them have convinced many that they are not gods."

"Tauri?"

"That's us," said O'Neill.

"Interesting. If you are fighting the Goa'uld successfully, your people must be technologically advanced. We've only been to a handful of worlds through the stargate and all of the humans we've encountered have been rather backward - simple farming societies, mostly."

"We've met a few advanced human civilizations," said Sam. "Usually on planets that the Goa'uld abandoned a long time ago. Most of them prefer to stay uninvolved unless the Goa'uld actually attack them. We've also run across a few non-human civilizations."

"Really? I would very much like to meet a non-human intelligence someday, other than the Goa'uld, that is. We know only a few stargate addresses and those all lead to planets such as I've described. We learned about the Goa'uld from the peoples we met, found some of their abandoned technology, which helped us advance our own, but it also convinced us that we wanted nothing to do with them. We've suspended our attempts at randomly entering addresses out of fear that we might find ourselves walking into a world controlled by them."

"Well, we have a list of hundreds, most of which we haven't visited yet," said Daniel. "Perhaps we could trade information."

"Perhaps," said Okemnon. "Though I begin to wonder if we have anything that you would regard as worth trading for."

"Oh, I think we can find something," said Jack. "Like Teal'c said, those robot guys we saw back there were pretty slick."

"You don't have anything similar on your world? Well, that might be worth exploring, then. But they're not robots, I should make that clear. We have not yet managed to achieve a true artificial intelligence. We have robots that can perform simple tasks, such as piloting this vehicle, for example, but nothing that could function effectively in a complex environment like a battlefield."

"One of them said that they were remotely operated. Some sort of telepresence?" asked Sam.

"Yes, if I understand your use of the term. The control system is intuitive, the operator's movements being mimicked by the machine. We use the same technology in much of our manufacturing, as well as in commercial and social settings."

"Social settings? How's that work?" Jack asked.

"One can go places, participate in sports, do anything one might do in person, but in an avatar, maybe on the other side of the planet from where one's body is located. The illusion of being there is completely convincing."

While they talked the flyer had passed over the military reservation, across a stretch of forest and was now above Argolis, a large city of beautiful white towers set among expansive parks. They descended and landed on the roof of a tall building.

"I've secured rooms for you in this hotel," said Okemnon, as they walked from the landing pad to an elevator. "I hope you will find them comfortable. They contain immersion pods that will allow you to inhabit avatars if you wish to see our planet, though since you don't have the implants necessary for full immersion, the experience will lack depth. You'll be able to move around, and see and hear, but you won't have the senses of smell and touch. And of course you won't be able to participate in a gestalt mind."

"What is a gestalt mind?" asked Sam.

"It's our answer to the artificial intelligence problem. We have computer programs which are almost intelligent in narrow ways, which can perform specific sorts of tasks at a better than human level, but which lack the ability to move past those limits the way a human being can. In short, they lack creativity. It takes a human mind to take that extra step, so we supply that. Human beings work with the program, usually in groups, while the computer program supplies perfect memory, superior modeling skills, and coordinates the efforts of the people who are working with it. It breaks problems down into parts, solves the parts that it can, then assigns the others to human participants. Typically, another smaller group of people oversee the directing program to supply the judgment necessary to keep it from drifting away from the gestalt's purpose."

"That sounds like what we would call a group mind," Sam remarked.

"Almost. There's no loss of individuality, though the humans in the system use artificial techniques to improve their concentration and amplify their interest in the task to the exclusion of everything else while they are participating. In effect, they become autistic idiot savants, working seamlessly together as a team with the coordinating program.

"It's a very powerful tool for solving certain types of problem, such as the design of new machines or weapons, monitoring or modeling complex systems such as power distribution or the weather, and so on. There is one highly respected gestalt, called Arcos, that runs constantly, monitoring social trends, its members rotating in and out of the system as they become fatigued. It watches everything from public opinion on political issues to clothing fashions to the level and types of religious beliefs to the kinds of products people are buying. Its conclusions are used by our government for making all sorts of decisions."

"Wow," said Sam, "I'd like to learn more about that."

"I'll see if I can get you access to our public information system, though I'm afraid we'll need to get to know your people a bit better before we can allow unrestricted access."

"Well, part of our purpose in coming here, aside from warning you about the Goa'uld attack, is to establish diplomatic relations. Will we be able to meet with your government soon?"

"Yes, I've started the process already," he said, opening the door to a comfortably furnished room. "Our dealings with other cultures so far have been limited to contacts with the primitive societies I mentioned earlier. Frankly, we didn't have much to do with them even before we decided to limit our use of the stargate - they just didn't have anything to offer us. Now that we've made contact with your people, we need to reinvent the institutions and procedures that were used before our planet was united under a single political system. That will take some time, I'm afraid. In the meantime, allow me to acquaint you with the avatar system." He crossed the room to a plastic box that looked like a sensory deprivation tank and opened its lid. Inside, it was half-filled with what looked like tar.

"This is an immersion pod, a remote presence control point. I've arranged temporary accounts for you all on one of the commercial communication services, so you can use the ones in your rooms to explore our planet while our bureaucracy figures out how to deal with the diplomatic realities. Major Carter, since this room is registered to you, the pod is already set up for you. Would you care to give it a try?"

"Yes!"

"All right, just lie down in here - that's right - now don't be startled - the sensor gel will close over you, except for your face." As he said this, Sam sank into the "tar" till only her face showed.

"You OK there, Carter?" asked Jack.

"Fine, Sir."

"Good," said Okemnon. "Now when you close the lid, several things will happen. First, a viewscreen will come down to within a few inches of your face. It won't interfere with your breathing. Next, electromagnetic effectors will manipulate the parts of your brain that control balance, so that you will feel like you are standing upright. Since you will not yet be connected to an avatar, the screen will display a neutral view, so you will have the sensation of just standing in an empty room. Speak the words 'education nexus 35 beta'; this will put you into an avatar in a learning and recreation area for small children. I've chosen this location for your first excursion because the avatars there are designed for children who have not yet received the cranial implants that allow adults to use the full range of senses and capabilities of a standard avatar.

"Once you are 'remote', as we say, just move around normally and explore the environment. The sensor gel in which you are suspended will intercept and neutralize the nerve impulses that would normally move your muscles, so you needn't worry about your arms and legs hitting the sides of the pod. It will also supply feedback, so as the avatar's limbs move, you will have the sensation of your own doing the same. When you want to 'return', just use the default exit sequence, which is 'home back home.' Ready?"

"Uh huh."

"Then just make three rapid squeezing motions with each hand."

Sam did so and the pod's lid closed over her.

She was standing, just as Okemnon had said, in a white room. She looked around and saw featureless white walls all around her with no doors or windows. Looking down, she saw herself, standing with her arms at her sides, her olive uniform rendered just as it was in reality. She found that she could more her arms and head, but that her feet seemed to be stuck to the floor.

"Education nexus 35 beta."

The room dissolved away like mist clearing and Sam found herself in a large, brightly-colored room filled with small children who were chasing each other around or playing with toys. A big stuffed animal, like a cross between a bear and a dog, stood to one side watching them.

She looked around and saw that she was standing in a niche set into one of the room's walls. She stepped forward and saw that the niche was one of a number of such, several containing crash-test dummy avatars similar to the ones she'd seen at the military base, most of them much smaller than the one she occupied. Glancing down, she saw herself just as she'd appeared in the white room. She looked up to find the bear-dog approaching her.

"Hello," said the creature. It gestured toward the children. "Is one of these yours?"

"What? Oh, no. I'm just a visitor. My name is Samantha Carter."

The bear-dog's face displayed a comically exaggerated expression of surprise. "What an unusual name! I'm Klenestra, one of the teachers. May I ask why you're here?"

"A group of us came through the stargate a little while ago. The official who's been showing us around, Okemnon, suggested I come here to get used to using an avatar."

"You're from another planet? How fascinating! Is this the way you're actually dressed?"

"Um, yes. Why?"

"Women don't usually wear pants on Achea. Or boots. Except maybe if they're going camping or mountain climbing or something."

"It's a military uniform," said Sam, beginning to feel self-conscious, "designed for practicality. I'm a major in the United States Air Force. The United States is a nation-state on my planet, Earth. Um, pardon me for asking, but are you a human being?"

"What? Of course! Oh, the morax!" she said, patting her sides. "Yes, the minders here all assume this appearance. It's fun for the little ones."

Several of the children had noticed Sam by this time. They came over and stared curiously.

"Why do you have yellow hair?" one little girl asked.

Sam grinned and bent down to talk to her. "Well, I'm from a long, long way away, and where I come from lots of people have yellow hair. What's your name, sweetheart?"

"Iphyenia," said the girl. "I never saw anyone with yellow hair. You look funny."

"Iphy, be polite. Children, this is Samantha Carter. She's come to Achea from another planet, called 'Earth'. How do we greet our guest?"

"We greet you and bid you welcome, Samantha Carter," the children chanted.

"Very good! Major, is it all right if the children ask you some questions?"

"Certainly. Can we walk around while we talk? I'm supposed to be getting used to being in an avatar."

"Of course."

Sam spent the next quarter of an hour wandering around the play area being peppered by questions from the children. Finally, she decided that she should be getting back to the hotel. Klenestra told her that she could just exit from where she was and the avatar would return to one of the wall niches by itself, though it was usually considered good form to walk it back to storage so as to maintain the illusion of actual presence. Sam said goodbye to the children and Klenestra, then backed into an empty niche. She spoke the exit sequence and found herself back in the immersion pod. The cover lifted and she floated back to the top of the sensor gel bed.

Teal'c helped her out of the tank. Jack asked, "How was it?"

"Interesting," she replied. "The experience was very realistic, though if I thought about it, I could still feel the gel around me and I could tell I was looking at a picture of my surroundings rather than seeing them with my own eyes."

"That's because of your lack of implants," put in Okemnon. "The direct stimulation of your brain that they provide would have suppressed the dual sensations and helped make the immersion more convincing."

"Well, it was convincing enough. The children looked perfectly normal, facial expressions, clothing, everything. The giant teddy bear was a little strange, though."

"Teddy bear?" said both Jack and Okemnon.

"A large stuffed toy animal," she explained to Okemnon. "The teacher looked like one," she informed Jack.

"You know," she continued, "I'd kind of like to go there and see it in the flesh, just to compare impressions."

"I'm afraid that wouldn't be possible," Okemnon said. "The environment you were in was not full-size. All the avatars, the toys, the facility itself are at one-fifth scale. The avatars were all about this big," he finished, holding one hand a foot above the other.

"Really?" marveled Sam. "Well, it makes sense, I guess. There's no reason that avatars in a closed environment have to be as big as real people. It would certainly save space and building materials. But then, why not just create a completely virtual environment?"

"We have those, of course, but they simply don't have the resolution of the real world."

"So you play in dollhouses instead?" Jack asked.

"Dollhouses?"

"Never mind."

"I think I take your meaning. Yes, in a way the small avatars are like dolls. Artists, architects, or just hobbyists create places for them to work or have fun in. The fact, as you pointed out Major Carter, that they don't require much in the way of building materials, plus there's no need for them to be weatherproof since they can be constructed inside larger structures, means that just about anyone can create a palace in a spare bedroom."

"The possibilities for entertainment seem endless," said Daniel. "And I'm sure the same would be true of work, as well. You must use avatars extensively for dangerous or strenuous jobs, like the military units we saw."

Okemnon nodded. "Yes, certainly for hazardous occupations, as well as most physical work. Not only can one do a full day's work and expend very little of one's own energy, but it frees workers to live wherever they want; if a factory closes or sheds some of its workforce, the surplus employees can almost always find similar work elsewhere on the planet in a very short time. This also allows most of our production facilities to be at some remove from population centers, as well as freeing them to be near raw materials. If you were to visit one of our factories, and I'd be most willing to arrange that if you're interested, you would probably not see a single human being in the flesh."

"I would be interested, very," Sam said, turning to Jack. "Sir?"

"Sure, why not," he replied. "Teal'c, why don't you and Carter go check out a factory? Daniel and I can talk to the government people."

"Excellent," said Okemnon. "I have an assistant standing by who can accompany you on the factory tour. Teal'c, Major Carter, if you will go back up to the roof, he'll meet you there. Colonel O'Neill and Dr. Jackson, if you'll come with me, we'll go downstairs and secure ground transportation to the capitol building."

The two parties went their separate ways. On reaching the roof, Sam and Teal'c stood for a few minutes enjoying the sun.

"This is one of the things I like best about being off-planet," commented Sam. "Almost every place we go seems to have a better climate than Colorado Springs. I almost didn't make it to work this morning with all the snow."

"Indeed," agreed Teal'c. "The Goa'uld usually settle their human populations in the most temperate regions of the planets they control, unless there is reason to put them elsewhere. This is for their own comfort, of course, not out of any consideration for that of their slaves."

They continued their discussion of the weather until a flying car, smaller than the one that had conveyed them from the stargate, landed. A dark blue avatar climbed out of the vehicle and walked over to them. The name Demophon was displayed across its chest over a numerical designation that meant nothing to the two visitors. Its flat face was occupied by the smiling visage of a young man.

"Good afternoon," he said. "You must be Teal'c and Major Samantha Carter. My name is Demophon, Assistant to the Secretary for Industrial Relations. Speaker Okemnon asked me to guide you on a tour of one of our manufacturing sites."

Everyone exchanged bows and Sam thanked him for giving them his time.

"Not at all! I'm delighted to meet visitors from another world. Government work is generally pretty boring, and gods know I'll never get rich doing it, so this is a real treat for me. I'm at your disposal for anything you'd like to see, and, if time permits, I hope you'll be able to tell me something of your own world. Or worlds. I understand you're not from Earth, Teal'c?"

"That is correct. My home world is called Chulak."

"Wonderful!" Demophon enthused. "Well, hop in and we'll get started. Did you have a particular industry that you were interested in?"

"No," said Sam, "we just wanted to see how your avatars are used in manufacturing."

"In that case we can visit an aircar factory that's not too far from here, the main Talaria Flyers plant." The group boarded the car and Demophon took it up a few feet, spun it on its axis, and accelerated hard toward the edge of the city.

"By the way," he said, "I hope you don't mind my showing up in an avatar. I was told you don't use them on your planet, or planets I should say, but I'm off on the other side of Achea inspecting fish farms and couldn't make it here in person in a reasonable time."

"No, not at all," Sam reassured him. "I like the color."

Demophon patted the avatar's chest. The foamed plastic covering it made a soft thumping noise. "It's the official color of the Achean government. It's supposed to echo the color of our birthworld's Great Ocean, the Aegean Sea. Is it true that you're from that world?"

Yes. We call it 'Earth' in our own language, though people there speak many other languages and each has its own word for the planet."

"But you call yourselves the 'Tauri', rather than 'Earthians' or something?"

"That's actually the Goa'uld word for us. We use it off-planet since more people recognize it."

They continued to talk as they flew. Eventually, the aircar plant appeared in the distance. It was a rectangular concrete building, indistinguishable from any large factory on Earth. A large, red, winged sandal adorned each of its walls. They landed and walked in.

Inside, the similarities continued. Flanking an assembly line, stationary robot arms lifted car parts, sprayed paint and welded. The only difference was the complete absence of human workers and the presence of a multitude of mobile machines. Wheeled vehicles like forklifts carried components to and fro while pale green avatars walked around purposefully or hunched over other machines, presumably making repairs or adjustments. A bright yellow avatar approached them.

"On behalf of Talaria Flyers, I greet you and bid you welcome," said the woman's face displayed on the front of its head. "My name is Fama; I'm the shift supervisor. You must be our visitors from Earth."

"Yes, I'm Samantha Carter and this is Teal'c."

Teal'c bowed slightly and said, "I am pleased to meet you, though I am curious - since we arrived, everyone we have met has known who we are, yet I never observed our guide, Okemnon, in the process of conveying that information."

"I can answer that," said Demophon. "As soon as you came through the stargate and were recognized as being representatives of a society we hadn't previously contacted, a gestalt was formed to manage your stay here. It's been monitoring Okemnon and making arrangements in anticipation of your needs. For instance, when Major Carter expressed interest in seeing a manufacturing plant, it looked through the list of people qualified to help you, found that I was available, then briefed me on what was known about you. Likewise, Fama here was notified when we decided to visit this facility and was given a précis of the essential facts."

"I see," Teal'c said. "I was not aware that we were being watched so closely."

Demophon looked uncomfortable. "Well, not you, not directly, since you're not linked into the information system. But everyone who is officially involved with you is. Okemnon was audited through his mobile communicator, and I, and now Fama, are being observed via the data streams linking our avatars to the system. I hope you don't find it intrusive. It's all in service of making your stay here pleasant and productive. And also, in all honesty, since you are new to our world, the government feels it's prudent to keep an eye on you. This doesn't indicate a lack of trust, just - prudence."

"We understand completely," Sam put in hastily. "We would do the same in your place."

Demophon relaxed. "I'm glad to hear it. The last thing we want is to cause offense. Well, then - Fama?"

"Please follow me," she said. "I'll show you the production line, then we can visit the control center."

Fama conducted them from the end of the assembly line, where they had entered the factory, back to its beginning, avoiding only one part of the factory which she identified as a secure area not open to casual visitors. Along the way, they saw that many of their initial perceptions regarding the similarity between Terran and Achean manufacturing techniques were in error. The chief difference was that Achean methods allowed for much more customization of each vehicle. Fama explained that each car was made essentially to order, the basic similarity between each one making the use of mass production methods possible, and the greater level of organization made possible by extensive computerization making an advanced version of just-in-time manufacturing practical. Sam commented with approval on the efficiency of the plant's layout.

"It was designed some time ago, actually," Fama replied, "by a team of engineers who linked themselves into one of the very first gestalts. The owners have since commissioned studies to find ways to improve the layout, but so far no one has been able to suggest any significant changes. This plant is used as an exemplar in every industrial design school on Achea, and its success helped validate the gestalt concept. We produce thirteen percent of all the aircars and trucks sold, as well as producing hardware for the defense forces. We're all very proud to work here.

"Another way in which Talaria leads Achea," she continued, "is its pioneering use of gestalts in management and production control. If you'll follow me to the control room, you can see the gestalt that's running this facility in action."

The group ascended a set of stairs leading to a glassed-in booth that overlooked the factory floor. Inside the booth, which was the size of a large bedroom, they saw walls lined with touch screens and a central island covered with meters and controls. Views of the factory floor, graphs, histograms, and columns of numbers streamed across the screens. The chairs in front of all the stations were empty.

"Looks like the gestalt is out to lunch," remarked Sam.

Fama grinned. "Back when the plant was first built, the humans elements of the production control gestalt all lived nearby and made the trip out here at the beginning of each shift. As remote presence came to be more widely used, they started working from their homes. Though most of the people participating in the gestalt this shift reside in this time-zone, others are scattered across Achea; the same applies to the workers on the factory floor. That's important because the ability of labor to work anywhere has been a major factor in smoothing the integration of Achea under one government. Economic integration leads political integration, as they say. It's been our privilege at Talaria to be at the forefront of this effort."

She led them around the room, pointing out how the images on the screens could be used to get a glimpse into the workings of the production gestalt. As she answered a question from Sam about parts scheduling, she pointed toward a conveyor belt on the floor below. Sam followed the gesture with her eyes, trying to isolate the conveyor in question from all the others. A flash of color caught her attention and she saw a man in the distance, wearing one of the brightly embroidered robes favored by Achean men.

"Who is that?" she asked Fama.

"Whom do you mean?"

"That man there, near the high-security area."

Fama became more alert, peering in the direction Sam had indicated. "I don't see anyone. Are you sure it wasn't an avatar?"

"Yes, I'm looking right at him. He's a long way away, but he's definitely wearing a robe, which I've never seen an avatar do. Do they, ever - wear robes, I mean?"

"No. I still see no one."

"He's over by that big blue machine, just to the right. Now he's gone behind it. Teal'c, did you see him?"

"No, I was looking elsewhere."

"Demophon?"

"Sorry, I was watching the car frames being anodized."

"I'll have some of the workers check it out," Fama said, but she looked skeptical. "If there is someone else here, he shouldn't be in the high security zone. There shouldn't be anyone here at all, in person." She turned to Demophon. "Were there any other cars in the landing area when you arrived?"

"No, none." Everyone looked at Sam.

"I definitely saw someone," she insisted.

"Well, better to be sure," said Fama. "Excuse me a moment." Her faceplate turned gray and her avatar froze for a few seconds, then came back to life. "I've sent some people to check the area, though the security system should have alerted me if there was an intruder. Still, we'll see. In the meantime, why don't we finish our tour?"

Back in the city, Jack and Daniel had concluded a preliminary meeting with Achea's hastily-created diplomatic corps, their talk having led to the predictable conclusion that more talks were called for. As they settled into their car outside the capitol building, Jack remarked to Okemnon, "Your people have a lot to learn about diplomacy - that went way too quickly."

"You'd rather they had taken longer?" asked Okemnon with a straight face.

"Perish the thought! I'm just saying that real professionals would have dragged the whole process out for days. Your guys just came right out and made sense. I barely had a chance to get bored."

Okemnon smiled. "I'll be sure to pass your recommendations on to them, in that case."

"Good, otherwise they're gonna get eaten alive when the State Department guys get here."

Daniel, who had been listening to this exchange with growing alarm, spoke up. "Um, you realize, of course, that Colonel O'Neill is joking? I thought the talks went quite well. Being a military man, Jack favors a, ah, more direct approach."

Okemnon now grinned openly. "Don't worry, Dr. Jackson, we prize directness ourselves. And I think Colonel O'Neill will find the military people we're about to meet more to his own way of thinking."

The big car swept noiselessly along the streets of Argolis. While Jack explained to Okemnon the English word "limo", which he had used in reference to their conveyance, Daniel watched the city slide past them. Much of the populace lived in apartment buildings near the city center. These buildings, and most others, were of medium height and faced with snowy limestone. A few very tall skyscrapers rose among them, but most of the city was built on a human scale, residential and commercial structures alike set back from tree-lined boulevards behind lawns and gardens of flowering shrubs.

The streets were wide but held little traffic, mostly large, quiet freight vehicles. The sky, on the other hand, was alive with air traffic forming mute streams of navigation lights overhead. As the sun neared the horizon, it cast a red-gold tint over the scene. Fountains played in the antique light. What a lovely place, thought Daniel, but the Goa'uld would burn it all without a second thought, like monstrous children smashing an anthill. His face tightened with anger as he brooded.

"Is something wrong, Dr. Jackson?" He turned to find Okemnon looking at him with concern.

"Um, nothing, no. I was just admiring your beautiful city, and thinking about the Goa'uld and what they'd do, given the chance."

"Ah. Forgive me if I'm touching on a delicate subject, but have they done much damage to your own world"

"No. No, we've been lucky. But I've seen what they've done to others. I can't speak for my whole planet," Daniel said earnestly, "but if there's any help I can provide your people against them, I will."

Okemnon smiled warmly. "Thank you, Dr. Jackson. That shows great generosity of spirit. But you needn't worry on our account. As you'll see when we reach Defense Central, we are well-equipped to deal with this Ba'al."

Jack rolled his eyes. The Acheans were likable enough, at least from what little he'd seen, and they might make useful allies, but his first priority was the defense of Earth. He decided to divert the conversation to another path before Daniel wound up enlisting in the Achean army.

"Dr. Jackson is right about one thing, this certainly is a beautiful city you've got here. Are all your cities like this?" he asked.

Okemnon turned back to him. "Actually, Argolis is something of a showplace, thanks to a big redevelopment project that the city fathers just finished. Most of our cities, frankly, are not so attractive, though we hope to change that in the coming years."

The conversation continued, wandering from urban renewal to how the presence of limestone indicated that Achea had evolved into a life-bearing, Earthlike planet naturally, rather than being one of the many which had been terraformed by the Ancients. Okemnon's people knew nothing of the elder race which had built the stargate system and he pressed Daniel for details. They stayed on the subject until their car parked itself in front of Achea's defense headquarters on the city's outskirts.

Inside, Okemnon introduced the visitors to General Kohnas, head of Achea's defense forces. In contrast to the kaftan-like robe worn by most Achean men, the uniform of the Achean Defense Force was utilitarian, being a brown and green tunic and trousers, padded where straps, holsters and armor would hang or rub. Calf-length boots completed the ensemble. Stripes, triangles and circles of various colors on sleeves and chest apparently denoted rank and honors. Kohnas' uniform featured a smaller number of insignia than those that adorned the other officers present, but his were of gold.

After a brief exchange of pleasantries, Kohnas got right to the point, asking the SG team members what they could tell him of the pending Goa'uld threat. On hearing that, essentially, all they knew was that there would be an attack and that Ba'al probably had something new up his sleeve, Kohnas scowled at Jack.

"We routinely maintain readiness for an assault, so knowing that one is coming does very little for us. And the vague supposition that they'll try something new is basically useless - we always assume that the enemy will throw something unexpected at us. Is that all you can give me?"

Daniel looked uncomfortable but Jack relaxed - unreasonable demands from a superior officer were part of the fabric of military life. He began to feel at home for the first time since arriving on Achea.

"I'm sorry, General, but that's the extent of our intel."

Kohnas grunted and turned on his heel. "Come with me," he ordered, and walked out of the reception area. Jack, Daniel and Okemnon trailed behind him.

After traversing a long corridor in silence and riding an elevator deep into the bedrock beneath the headquarters building, the group entered a room filled with viewscreens, control consoles, immersion tanks and uniformed men and women.

Kohnas faced the visitors and swept his hand to encompass their surroundings. "This is our Command and Control Center. There are a number of others like it scattered across Achea. Each can work with the others in distributed fashion, or by itself if the others are destroyed, to manage any level of military operations.

"Over here," pointing to one bank of screens, "we have stations that monitor all activity in space out to several light-hours from the sun. Any uncloaked ship that drops out of hyperspace within that volume will be detected immediately. Ships large enough to be a threat, the so-called 'motherships', will be detected even if cloaked since the Goa'uld can't hide their gravitational signatures. So even if they drop into normal space outside our detection range and try sneaking in while cloaked, we'll spot them.

"We can't detect cloaked small craft, such as the alkesh or death gliders, but ships that size aren't large enough to inflict more than pinpricks; they aren't of any strategic importance unless they're carrying naquada bombs, and we have ways of dealing with those."

"And what would those ways be?" Jack asked.

"That's classified," replied Kohnas. He moved to the next cluster of stations.

"Over here we have battle management, for when a fight actually starts. Most of our defense is organized around small, remotely piloted fighter craft which are launched from large carriers that are spread throughout our system." A spherical vessel appeared on one of the screens as he gestured toward it; a swarm of tiny fighter craft issued from the carrier.

"In addition to the fighters, we have mid-range ships that possess offensive capabilities, the nature of which is also classified." A series of brick-shaped vessels were displayed in quick succession. "I can describe our mainstay weapon, though, since the Goa'uld know all about it from first-hand experience," he said, smiling for the first time.

The screen again displayed one of the small fighters. The image rotated so that four missiles ranged along its ventral surface could be seen; the image faded, except for one of the missiles, which grew to fill the view.

"The main difficulty in engaging a Goa'uld mothership, as you no doubt already know, is penetrating its defensive energy shield. We get around that problem by, as it were, getting around it - this missile possesses a faster-than-light drive that allows it to jump very briefly into hyperspace. We haven't yet perfected a drive that will allow us to travel to other star systems, but we can use what we have to sort of stutter in and out of hyperspace long enough to cover some tens of thousands of kilometers in a very brief time and, most importantly, jump past the Goa'uld shields.

"The missile carries a naquada-enhanced nuclear warhead, so once inside the mothership's shield, it impacts the ship and destroys it."

Jack nodded. "We've used a similar tactic ourselves." He explained how he'd once flown an X-302 past a mothership's shield to deliver a missile.

"The X-302 uses a naquadria generator to open a hyperspace window," he continued. "I take it your missiles use the same method?"

"Naquadria? What's that?" asked Kohnas.

"It's a radioactive form of naquada," said Jack. "Lots more powerful than naquada or what you can get out of a fusion reactor, as long as you can keep it from blowing up in your face. It's real tricky stuff, but we've managed to get to where we can jump a million klicks or so without it getting out of control. But if you folks don't have naquadria, how do you create a hyperspace window with something as small as one of these missiles?"

Kohnas looked interested. "A million kilometers is better than what we've been able to do. To answer your question, our scientists have developed a way to extract all the energy out of a small quantity of naquada all at once by drenching it with radiation. It has to be done just right or it simply explodes, which is why our fighters each carry four missiles - it's not a very reliable technology. But if it works the way it should then it creates a space-time distortion which can be used to open a hyperspace window."

"Impressive," remarked Daniel.

"Yeah, Carter will be all over that one," Jack added.

"And this naquadria technology of yours sounds like something that we'd like to learn more about. This may be an area where we can trade information with your people."

"I think something can probably be arranged," Jack said. "But let's get back to the main reason we're here." He pointed to the spherical carrier which had reappeared on the viewscreen. "You've been pretty successful so far against our snaky friends with these deathstars of yours - you figure you can still deal with Ba'al if he's found a way to neutralize them?"

Kohnas smiled for the second time. "'Deathstars', I like that. Catchy. And, yes, as I said, we have other resources that I haven't described. I won't tempt the gods by saying that we are unassailable, but I feel reasonably confident that, one way or another, we will prevail."

Later, Daniel and Jack returned to their hotel. Kohnas had warmed to Jack, the two finding themselves to be kindred spirits, and had invited the visitors to his office for a cup of wine, which the Earthers had found a bit sweet and thick for their taste. Nonetheless, they had talked for over an hour, moving from the Achean defense system to Jack and Daniel describing some of their off-world missions. Kohnas had expressed an interest in meeting Teal'c and had concluded by inviting Jack to attend war-games, via avatar, that were scheduled to take place in a desert on another continent in a few days.

After collecting Sam and Teal'c, Okemnon had provided the group with appropriate attire and taken them out for dinner. The venue had proved to be a sort of restaurant where the diners all shared a single large table, drank heavily, watched a floorshow that featured energetic dancing, and engaged in loud conversation. The visitors from Earth had been a big hit and had been hard-pressed to limit their consumption of wine to a level that had left them only moderately hung-over in the morning. Achean medicine had demonstrated its worth in the form of a hangover cure that Jack declared sufficient to provide a basis of trade all by itself.

Refreshed, the team breakfasted on bread and fruit, then met Okemnon to plan the day's agenda. Achean military officials had requested that Sam and Jack, as the only members of Earth's armed forces present, meet with them to

discuss areas in which the two planets' military establishments might cooperate. Daniel and Teal'c had been invited to speak with academics at the city's equivalent of a university.

Returning to Defense Central, Kohnas introduced them to a waiting group of Achean officers and they settled down to an exploration of what might be gained from military cooperation. The Acheans brought advanced technologies to the table, while the Earth team's more recent, and much more extensive, experience with active military operations generated strong interest on the part of their hosts. Jack was explaining how officer exchange programs between nations on Earth worked when an alarm sounded, causing the Achean officers to leap from their seats and run to their duty stations.

Jack and Sam, forgotten for the moment, decided to see if they could gain entrance to the Command and Control Center that Jack had visited previously. Entering, they took places against the wall near the door.

A young officer named Eryx, one of the group with whom they had been negotiating, noticed them and motioned them over to his station.

"You can stand here and watch the engagement with me," he said. "My task is to coordinate a response to atmospheric incursions, and right now there's nothing for me to do."

"Is Ba'al attacking?" asked Sam.

"Someone is," he replied, indictating the tactical display in front of them. Blue arrows swarmed from two blue circles, closing on three yellow triangles. "Three Goa'uld motherships have just dropped out of hyperspace about thirty million kilometers from Achea. Our two closest deathstars have launched fighters."

Jack raised his eyebrows. "'Deathstars', you say?"

Eryx grinned. "Yes, the name has caught on."

They watched as the motherships moved toward Achea and the fighters sped to intercept. As the fighters crossed a line surrounding the motherships, green dots began to emerge from them.

"The fighters are launching their missiles," Eryx said.

The missiles began winking out, reappearing closer to the Goa'uld ships an instant later. This continued until they had covered most of the distance to their targets, at which point the Goa'uld began to slow, then reverse their course. Abruptly, the motherships all vanished from the display as they re-entered hyperspace. A low hum of satisfied remarks and a little laughter could be heard from the Acheans.

"And that's that," said Eryx.

"Seemed a little easy, don't you think?" Jack commented.

Eryx shrugged. "It was probably just a probing attack, seeing if we still had our guard up."

"Yeah, maybe."

Kohnas approached. "Well," he said, "it looks like your warning was unnecessary. Not that we aren't glad to have made contact with your people - even if the Goa'uld threat didn't exist, I think we can be very useful to each other."

"Sure," Jack said. "But I wouldn't assume that Ba'al's just going to go away for another twenty years. Our source seemed pretty convinced that he's going to try something new. He'll be back."

"Well, if he comes, we'll deal with him. Now, why don't we get back to our meeting?"

Later, Sam and Jack got out of the car that had brought them back to their hotel. Seeing Okemnon, they started across the street to meet him.

"You've been awfully quiet since the meeting, Sir," said Sam. "Is anything wrong?"

"Nothing that wouldn't be fixed by a swift kick in the pants," he answered.

"Sir?"

"These people, they're cocky. They chased a few motherships away and they figure they're on top of things. It's going to come back to bite them, probably sooner than later."

They paused to let an approaching truck go by. It slowed to a stop, so they started walking again.

"They do seem complacent."

"That's one word for it," Jack muttered.

At that moment the truck suddenly leaped forward, accelerating hard toward them. The Terrans dove out of the way, barely avoiding the vehicle. It sped away, turning a corner and disappearing. They climbed back to their feet and brushed dirt from their clothes. Okemnon, his face white, ran up to them.

"Major, Colonel! Are you all right?

"Yeah, fine," said Jack. "Anybody get his license number?"

"What? I didn't see any numbers," said Okemnon, peering in the direction of the vanished truck. "I can't believe that just happened."

"I didn't see a driver," said Sam.

"No, there wouldn't have been one. Delivery trucks operate under automatic control. But it should have sensed you and stopped. That is, it did stop, but it shouldn't have started moving again until you were out of the way."

"Well, it was probably a glitch. Does this kind of thing happen often?" asked Sam.

"No, it never happens, never. The system is practically foolproof."

"I think the operative word there is 'practically'", said Jack.

"Maybe our lack of implants confused it, you know, because we aren't on the data system," Sam suggested.

"Maybe," said Okemnon, dubiously, "but it would have stopped for a child or an animal lacking implants. Still...I just don't know, but I promise you I'll have this looked into."

"You do that," Jack said, as they entered the hotel lobby. He reached for the radio at his shoulder. "Excuse me a minute, I'm going to check in with Daniel and Teal'c."

While Jack spoke with the other SG team members during the elevator ride to their floor, Sam tried to calm Okemnon. The Terrans, accustomed to the catastrophes routinely encountered in battle, and, more to the point, to traffic on Earth, had shrugged off the incident, but Okemnon was badly shaken.

They paused outside of Sam's room and Jack reported that Teal'c and Daniel were still talking with the academics. "Daniel's in dweeb heaven," he said. "Teal'c's probably bored. Listen, I'm going to stay with Okemnon while he looks into our little traffic boo-boo." He leaned closer. "Maybe help him get settled down a bit," he murmured. "Why don't you stay here and rest up? If dinner tonight is anything like last night, you'll need your energy."

Sam grinned. "Actually, Sir, I'd like to go 'remote' and do a little exploring."

"Have fun," he said, putting his hand on Okemnon's shoulder and guiding him back toward the elevator.

Free to do as she liked for a while, Sam briefly considered changing into one of the long, belted gowns that Okemnon had gotten for her, then decided that her hair, blonde and cut short, would defeat any attempt to pass as an anonymous Achean woman. Happy to have an excuse to remain in her more practical military attire, she climbed into the immersion pod and let it take her to the neutral staging room. Once there, she called up a directory and browsed a selection of destinations.

Having already seen an Achean city, she paged through the natural wonders category and settled more or less at random on a canyon that seemed to be highly regarded. The room dissolved to leave her standing in a little pavilion with a number of unused avatars. She stepped forward and found herself on a lookout point at the edge of a great chasm that stepped through brilliantly colored strata down to a winding river. Looking around, she saw that the canyon snaked through an arid region of red sand dotted with small bushes. The only other tourists present were a large family, all of whom were staring at her with unabashed curiosity. Sam smiled and waved, then, feeling self-conscious, stepped back into the pavilion and returned to the staging room.

The Achean news services had picked up the story of the visitors from what they uniformly referred to as "exotic Earth, ancient home of humanity". Flitting through a succession of crystal caverns, inspiring mountain vistas and scenic valleys, Sam found herself continually the object of fascinated attention. She began to relax into her celebrity status and spent a few minutes at each location answering questions and expressing optimism at the prospects for cordial relations between the two worlds.

It was on her third such jaunt that she began to notice something peculiar. As she stepped from the niche that gave onto a view of a truly amazing waterfall, she saw another avatar step from the one next to hers. Moving forward to watch the overlapping cascades, she quickly became the focus of a friendly crowd of inquisitive Acheans and didn't think about the other machine until she happened to glance back and saw it standing quietly a few feet in front of its niche. Unlike all the other avatars present, this one was not hidden behind the appearance of the person operating it. Its matte-black surface presented no name or other identifying markers. It seemed to feel her gaze and stepped back into its niche as though caught doing something it shouldn't. No one else appeared to notice.

Arriving at her fourth destination, she again saw an anonymous avatar step from its storage alcove, give the appearance of assessing the situation, then step back. She watched for it on her fifth trip and called the attention of her fellow tourists to it, but all maintained that they had seen no avatar acting as she'd described.

Sam began to suspect that it was the presence of other people which had resulted in the mystery avatars' retreats, so she looked for a location that would be free of witnesses. Deciding on a museum devoted to antique mining machinery, she was gratified to see when she arrived that it was deserted except for an attendant who sat snoring behind a counter.

Facing the avatar niches, she only had to wait a moment before one of them stirred, then stepped forth. It looked around and, seeing that they were unobserved, walked over to her.

"Hello, Major Carter," it said. "I see that you have selected a location that will allow us to talk privately."

"Yes. Who are you."

"It is better that I remain anonymous for now."

"You kind of stand out, not having a human appearance or any identification marks. Aren't you worried that someone will notice you?"

"No one else can see me if they are looking through the eyes of an avatar. I've subverted the system so as to edit out the presence of any avatar that I am occupying, just as the Goa'uld have done."

"The Goa'uld are here? In avatars?"

"And in person, that is why I am speaking to you. I have good reason to believe that Ba'al has infected more that one Achean with symbiotes subservient to him.

"He has penetrated the civilian communications network and can masquerade as anyone he wants if he is wearing an avatar, or make himself effectively invisible to anyone not viewing him through their own eyes. The same goes for his Jaffa and subordinate Goa'uld. Ba'al has been unable to penetrate the military net so far, but that is his ultimate aim. The military net is more secure and is controlled by a gestalt - the Goa'uld can't join a gestalt since participation requires a level of identity verification that they can't fake and because their lack of implants would be detected." It turned away abruptly and walked back toward its niche. "I am at risk of being detected. I must go now."

"Wait! Why are you telling me this? Have you notified your government?" she called after it, but the machine, evidently now unoccupied, gave no answer. The museum attendant, disturbed by Sam's voice, snorted and sat up, blinking. Sam backed her avatar into its niche and returned to her room, then climbed out of the immersion pod and used her radio to contact Jack.

"Carter? Everything OK?"

"No, Sir, I think we have a problem."

"What's up?"

"I don't think we should discuss it on an open channel. Where are you?"

"At the capitol building."

"Maybe I should meet you there. We might want to talk to someone in the Achean government about this."

"OK, I'll wait for you here."

Sam hurried downstairs and called a cab from the lobby. A few minutes later she met Jack outside the capitol building.

"OK, Carter, what's going on?"

"I think I've found out what Ba'al's up to, Sir." She quickly recounted her conversation at the museum. "I can't think of any reason why he'd tell me unless he has some reason not to trust the government."

"Well, we have to tell someone."

"Sir, do you think we should?"

"Carter, this was your idea. And what else are we supposed to do? I trust Kohnas, but he'll just bump the problem up the command chain. We're already here," he said, motioning toward the building behind them, "so we might as well do it ourselves."

"What about Okemnon?"

"Same problem. Anyway, he's off somewhere writing a report on the truck mishap this morning. Which mishap, by the way, is taking on a whole significance."

"Yes, Sir. So who do we talk to?"

"There was a security guy named Yarabas there when we were telling the traffic manager about the truck. We might as well try him."

They found Yarabas in his office and Sam described her encounter with the faceless avatar. He seemed skeptical.

"You understand that if an avatar is being used, the face and identification of the user would be displayed. The things have a chromoplasmic skin that can display any color or pattern."

"Yes," said Sam, "we know all about that."

"Then forgive me if I'm telling you something that you already know, but if an avatar is not displaying any of that information, then it should be on its way back to a storage niche."

"Yes," she repeated, growing frustrated, "that's what made the incident so strange. I don't think this was just someone joking around with us. Something is going on."

Yarabas nodded gravely. "I'll start an inquiry at once. In the meantime, I don't think you should tell anyone else about this. If there are Acheans under the control of the Goa'uld, you don't know whom you can trust."

"And wouldn't that include you?" Jack asked.

Yarabas nodded again. "A valid point. But if Ba'al had managed to infiltrate a large number of Goa'uld into the Achean government and military, he'd already control this planet. Since he evidently doesn't, we can assume that he has only managed to place a few symbiots and that, therefore, the odds of me or any other randomly chosen official being a Goa'uld agent are slim." He smiled. "Don't worry Colonel; I'm on your side."

Outside Yarabas' office Carter said, "Sir, I couldn't swear to it, but Yarabas might have been at the aircar factory we toured yesterday." She described the incident.

"And the manager, Fama, didn't see him?"

"No. I didn't think anything of it at the time, but now I think she couldn't see him."

"As in, he was being edited out of the picture for the avatar users, but you could see him because you were live and in person?"

"Yes, Sir. He was a long way off and I couldn't see him clearly, but it looked a lot like Yarabas."

"All right, this stinks on multiple levels. We're going back to the hotel to get our weapons," he said, reaching for his radio.

"Teal'c? What's your location?"

"We are en route to lunch, where we will meet with scholars to discuss Achean funerary practices."

"Tell them you'll have to meet them later and get back to the hotel. We have a problem."

"That is welcome news. We will meet you there."

A short time later, Jack and Sam pulled up to the hotel to find Teal'c and Daniel waiting for them out front. Joining them, Jack said, "It looks like Ba'al has hacked into the avatar system and has Jaffa here on the planet. He's also probably gotten a snake into a security type named Yarabas and probably others. I think he's about to make his move, so we're going to get our weapons and head over to Defense Central."

They stepped from the elevator into the foyer at the end of the hall that led to their rooms to discover that they were hemmed in by a half-circle of eight faceless avatars.

"Wait!" said Sam. "I think these might be friends."

The avatars froze, then one of them stepped forward. Its faceplate turned gray, then a face appeared on it. It wasn't a friend.

"Major," said Ba'al, whose visage now beamed out at them. "And the rest of SG-1. So good to see you all again. Were you expecting someone else?"

"Um, no, I guess not," said Sam, nonplussed.

"Well, no matter. After we've finished our business here, I don't expect the Acheans will be paying visits to anyone in these stupid machines anymore."

"Pretty confident, aren't you?" asked Jack, stalling for time. "Don't you think this place is a little public for your dirty work? What if one of the other guests sees you and calls the cops?" He glanced around as though looking for the hypothetical guests. His eyes lit on a pair of wooden chairs set against the wall. He flicked a look at the others, then back to the chairs. They signified understanding with slow blinks or small nods.

"Really, Colonel, have you ever seen anyone else in this hotel? It's practically empty - that's why Okemnon put you up here. He was doing a favor for a cousin of his who owns it. Business has been terrible lately," he said in a tone of mock sympathy. "These Acheans never go anywhere in person anymore, just spend all their time in plastic boxes at home, 'travelling' by avatar. Pathetic.

"But that will change soon. When I'm running things here, they'll have lots of invigorating work to keep them occupied in their own skins."

"Mining naquada, you mean," said Sam.

"So right, Major. This planet may have the richest naquada deposits in the entire galaxy. This whole system, in fact - it's practically swimming in the stuff.

"It was once owned by a Goa'uld who styled herself Eris, a rather nasty piece of work even by the standards of some of my more unrestrained brethren. Several centuries ago a number of System Lords joined forces to defeat her and its location was lost - until I found a record of it in one of her derelict motherships."

"And now you're here to grab what should rightfully be yours," said Jack. "Oh! But wait! Those darned humans keep kicking your ass. Gee, that must be frustrating."

A shadow of annoyance passed over Ba'al's face, then he resumed his genial expression. "Yes, you humans can be troublesome when you forget your place. But that's no more than a temporary inconvenience. Very shortly now, I will rule this planet and the Acheans will learn that one does not inconvenience a god without suffering the consequences."

"I'm hearing a lot of talk, but I still don't see how you're going to be able to pull it off," Jack sneered. "The Acheans seem to have things pretty well in hand."

"Oh, they have some effective weapons, I'll grant you that. In fact, I expect to find those weapons most useful when they're mine. But weapons are only effective if you can use them, and I now have the means to deny these humans their use. Please, don't fall back on your usual reserve, Colonel - ask me how."

"Ok, I'll bite - how?"

"I'm glad you asked. As you might have noticed," he said, gesturing at the avatar he occupied, "I have penetrated the Achean's civilian communications network. The Acheans can detect large ships when they're cloaked, but my small cargo ships have been free to come and go as they please, so it wasn't hard to get in and do what I needed to do.

"The military network proved a bit more resistant but only until I introduced a symbiote into an Achean fighter pilot and provoked an opportunity for him to link into the network under battle conditions."

"The attack you launched yesterday," said Teal'c.

"Correct. Once linked into the system, the pilot was able to upload a virus into the network which opened all the doors that had previously been closed to me. At this very moment, my Jaffa are seizing control of the avatars in the main Achean command center and using them to evict the personnel who are physically present. Once they've done that, they will lock out all the secondary command centers and break the links between the Achean fighter pilots and their craft. After that...well, no need to belabor the obvious, and I do have other matters to attend to, so I'll be leaving you now. I apologize for not killing you myself but a god's work is never done."

His face faded from the avatar and it crouched into a fighting stance. The other avatars assumed similar postures and moved toward the SG team.

Daniel and Sam broke for the chairs, pursued by four of the enemy. Jack stepped back and half-turned as though making for the elevator. As the avatar nearest him sprang forward in pursuit, Jack pivoted and landed a hard kick to its chest. The avatar was not meant to take such punishment: something inside it snapped and it fell on its back. The Jaffa operating it kicked the machine's legs but apparently had lost control of its arms. Assuming that it was out of the fight, Jack turned to the next.

Meanwhile, Teal'c had moved to engage the remaining two. Not knowing how hard the material covering them was, he refrained from using his fists, rolling past one and attempting to throw the other over his shoulder. But the Jaffa controlling that machine was good. He flowed into Teal'c's attack and turned his momentum against him. Teal'c allowed himself to be thrown, twisting in mid-air to land on his feet. As he did so, he realized that the Jaffa had unconsciously assumed that the avatar's strength matched that of his real body, when in fact it was no stronger than a normal human being. Teal'c helped the Jaffa in his effort to fling him over his back, feeding his opponent's misperception until he could turn it to his advantage.

Sam and Daniel had reached the chairs but Daniel had been unable to lay hand to one before an avatar drove its fist into his ribs. He fell to his side, inadvertently blocking the others' pursuit of Sam. She swept up one of the chairs and brought it down on the head of the avatar standing over Daniel, causing it to crash to the floor, inert. Swinging it to the side, she knocked down one of the others.

The remaining two leapt over Daniel and backed her into the wall. She jabbed the chair at them, keeping them at a distance while they tried to snatch it from her grasp. Momentarily forgotten, Daniel struggled to his feet and ran for his room. The avatar that Sam had knocked down jumped up and ran after him.

Jack and Teal'c continued to dance with their three opponents. Wary now of the damage that could be done to his machine by a hard kick, the Jaffa fighting with Jack was blocking his kicks and had managed a painful chop to his shin. Teal'c had torn the arm off one of the two attacking him and was using it as a club.

One of Sam's attackers had yanked the chair from her grasp and flung it aside. She was blocking blows from the other when they all started at the sound of gunfire.

Looking down the hall, they saw Daniel emerge from his room bearing a P-90. The rest of the SG team threw themselves to the floor simultaneously and Daniel dispatched those avatars still standing with a burst of automatic fire. Walking up to the one that Jack had damaged with his kick, he finished it off.

"Nice work, Daniel," said Jack, rubbing his shin. "Ok, get your weapons." He limped over to the communications panel by the elevator and tried to contact the Achean defense center, but the device was dead. Ba'al had evidently used his access to the network to crash the system.

The others returned and the group took the elevator down. As they descended, Jack told them that he'd been unable to contact General Kohnas.

"I guess that means Ba'al has started to implement his evil plan," said Daniel. "It always amazes me that the Goa'uld feel this compulsion to gloat. It's a real psychological shortcoming."

"Yeah, they should read that Supervillain's Do Not Do List. I mean, it's right there on the internet," Jack said.

When they reached the street they were greeted by confusion. The avatars that would normally have been walking around stood like statues; flesh and blood citizens stood around them talking worriedly.

The team flagged down a cab and crammed themselves into it. As they neared Defense Central a speaker inside the vehicle came to life and announced that an attack from space was imminent and urged all citizens to take cover.

They pulled up outside the defense headquarters and witnessed more confusion. A large group of military personnel and civilian workers milled about in front of the building. Approaching the crowd, they spotted General Kohnas.

"General," called Jack, "what's going on?"

"Colonel O'Neill, good, I see you're armed. That's more than I can say for us. They caught us completely by surprise. It looks like you were right about Ba'al having a new strategy."

"What happened?"

"All the avatars in Defense Central suddenly turned against us; Ba'al's Jaffa must have taken them over. They are military models with enhanced strength and durability - they didn't have weapons, but none of us had a chance to arm ourselves, either. The Jaffa running them were good hand-to-hand fighters. They chased us right out of the building."

"Will bullets work against them?" Jack asked, holding up his P-90.

"They should," Kohnas replied, eyeing it. "The military models are hardened against energy weapons like the Jaffa use. Projectile weapons would probably be effective. Would you consider lending yours to some of our people?"

"They aren't trained on these. With your permission, we'll give it a go."

"All right, you lead, my men will follow. Hear me!" he called to the crowd. "I want every man who can find a stick, chair leg or other blunt object front and center. Move!"

The crowd dispersed, frantically ransacking the landscaping for branches and running into nearby buildings in search of anything that could be used as a weapon. Jack gave Kohnas his pistol and ran through a quick tutorial on its use. Kohnas shattered a planter with a test shot and pronounced himself impressed. A few minutes later a cluster of club-wielding soldiers stood waiting eagerly.

"OK, listen up!" Jack shouted. "We'll take point. We'll shoot any avatars we see - those of you with clubs attack the ones we knock down, make sure that they're out of commission. If you're confronted with an avatar that's still on its feet, attack it as a group. Let's go!" He turned and trotted toward the building, followed by the rest.

As they neared the entryway, they could see an avatar standing in front of the heavy doors. Jack fired a burst at it and it went down. They reached the doors and found them locked. Jack pulled a small brick of C4 from a pocket and stuck it over the latch. "Everybody back!" he shouted.

He set off the charge and the doors bounced open. The assault team surged through.

Inside, they found more avatars waiting for them. Sam and Jack fired and the machines fell. They jogged down the hall toward the elevator leading to the Command and Control Center, dispatching two more avatars along the way. Arriving at the elevator, they were gratified to find it still working.

"Do you think they know we're coming?" asked Daniel as they rode down.

"I don't know," said Kohnas. "The Jaffa running the avatars you destroyed are probably climbing out of their pods now, but I don't know if they can warn the ones still immersed. Normally, you can't hear outside noises when you're sunk into sensor gel - your ears are covered, you know. I'd say if we can get there fast enough, we have a good chance of catching them by surprise."

The elevator doors slid open and they traversed the short corridor that led to the command center. As they entered, a small group of avatars that had been watching the battle monitors spun, their faces blank but their postures registering shock. They recovered quickly and began smashing the control panels with their fists. Several shorts bursts of gunfire from the SG team took them out.

"Teal'c, you and Daniel take some people and make a sweep of the rest of this place. Make sure no Jaffa are still around," Jack ordered.

As the Achean soldiers in the command center made sure of the renegade avatars with their clubs, Kohnas and the Terrans ran to the control panels and looked at the monitors above. Nine large triangles, motherships, and a host of smaller ones representing alkesh moved across the screens. As they watched, fire from one of the motherships erased a blue circle representing an Achean carrier from existence.

"Our people are being slaughtered," grated Kohnas. "We have to get the system back up!" He and several of the other officers began punching commands into the control panels. On the monitors above they saw another carrier destroyed by a mothership.

"Something's wrong," said Kohnas. "They didn't do that much damage to the controls, but I can't get establish a link between the fighter pilots and their ships and I can't transfer command to another control center. The battle management gestalt is online from their location but they're locked out, too." While he spoke, the Goa'uld obliterated the last of the outer sphere of Achean carriers and began moving toward the ring of ships in close orbit around the planet.

Jack's radio rasped and a voice said, "Colonel O'Neill?"

He pressed the talk button. "O'Neill here. Who's this?"

"This is the gestalt Arcos. As we anticipated, Ba'al has seized control of all Achean digital communications networks; we observed you using this device earlier and secured control of an analog transmitter so that we could communicate with you in that event. Time is short - please follow our instructions and we will re-establish communications between Defense Central and the fighters."

Jack looked at Kohnas, who nodded. "Tell us what to do."

"We have used our own transmitter to contact the battle management gestalt on a frequency normally used by Achean ground forces equipped with radios like your own. If General Kohnas will shut down the systems we specify, then manually reset their operating frequencies to the one the battle management gestalt is now using, this will allow them to regain control and lock Ba'al out when the systems are brought back up. General Kohnas, you will need to initialize the systems from archival media to avoid reinfecting them with Ba'al's virus."

Under Arcos' guidance, Kohnas and his officers powered off most of the command center's computers in the required sequence, then brought them back up. The whole process took less than five minutes, but that was enough time for the Goa'uld fleet to draw perilously close to Achea and its defenders in orbit.

The Achean military all looked as one to a large panel covered by lights which had been dark, but which now began to glow orange, singly at first, then in rows, then in blocks. They then turned to the room's main battle display and waited. Finally, small blue dots began issuing from the carriers in orbit. The Acheans cheered.

The fighters loosed a fusilade of missiles at the motherships then moved to engage the alkesh. They were joined by blue rectangles representing the brick-shaped vessels that SG-1 had seen on their first visit to Defense Central. First one, then another mothership blinked out of existence, followed by swathes of alkesh as the smaller Goa'uld ships succumbed to the classified weapons that Kohnas had mentioned earlier.

"Look at 'em go!" exclaimed Jack.

Kohnas' face was wreathed in smiles. "Deathstars," he said with satisfaction.

Three motherships and at least twenty alkesh had been destroyed before the Goa'uld finally accepted defeat and began pulling away from the planet. They winked out of view as they entered hyperspace and a few seconds later the screen was clear of yellow.

"Well, that appears to be that," said Kohnas. "We took heavy losses, though. The fighters close in to Achea are manned by people on the ground, but the ones operating from the carriers on our outer defense perimeter are - were - aboard the carriers themselves. Heavy losses," he repeated.

"Still," he continued, "it could have been much worse. We owe you and your people a great debt of gratitude, Colonel O'Neill."

"I think I speak for all of us when I say we were glad to help, General," replied Jack.

"May I borrow your radio, Colonel?" Kohnas asked.

Jack unclipped it and handed it to him.

"Arcos?" he queried.

"Yes, General?"

"I want to thank you, as well. Without your help our efforts here would have been wasted. I'd like a complete report later, but for now can you tell me how you came to be involved?"

"Certainly, General Kohnas. Several months ago we began to notice anomalies in the avatar network and in the behavior of members of the government. We believe that three individuals have been compromised by the Goa'uld - we have sent word to the security service and efforts are now being made to apprehend them.

"As regards the anomalies in the avatar net, we started to see instances of avatars being activated and moving about without anyone being signed on to them. We suspected criminal activity at first, but the avatars' behavior was not consistent with that explanation. It eventually became clear that the rogue avatars were being guided by someone who wanted to learn about the military network.

"We concluded that this could only be an effort by the Goa'uld to subvert Achea's defense system. We were reluctant to notify the authorities because by that time we had become convinced that individuals within the government had been suborned, but we couldn't be sure that we had identified them all and that the Goa'uld wouldn't find out that their activities had been discovered. Since we did not know if the Goa'uld plan had reached the point at which it could be successfully implemented, we did not want to risk exposure of our knowledge for fear that it would precipitate an attack.

"The arrival of the visitors from Earth, whom we became convinced were not agents of the Goa'uld, presented an opportunity to act. We commandeered an avatar and approached Major Carter with a warning about the Goa'uld threat. Our forecast was that there was a better than ninety percent chance that Major Carter would approach Yarabas with the information, and that, rather than precipitating an attack, Yarabas would seek to isolate or kill the party from Earth."

"Oh, hey, very accurate prediction, there," said Jack. "Thanks for that."

"I should also add that we assigned a very low probability to his success, Colonel O'Neill. We predicted that if the Goa'uld used avatars to attack you, your fighting prowess and Teal'c's great strength would result in a favorable outcome. Likewise, when Ba'al attacked you prior to our warning, we were able to enhance the odds of your survival by resetting the speed governor on the truck that he used in the attempt so that it was unable to accelerate as fast as it normally would.

"More importantly, we predicted that Yarabas would contact other Goa'uld agents, thus exposing the rest of the compromised government officials, which in fact he did."

Kohnas broke in at this point. "Arcos, there's something I don't understand - your functions are strictly passive, restricted to monitoring social trends. How is it you were able to do things like take control of avatars and change the settings on a truck's governor?"

"Once we realized the nature of the threat, we contacted other gestalts, such as the one concerned with running the avatar net, and enlisted their help. When Ba'al finally made his move, we joined with others to form a temporary 'super-gestalt' and prevent him from taking control of more avatars and other aspects of Achea's network infrastructure."

"Ah, I see. Well, that's good that you were able to do all that, I suppose," said Kohnas, a note of doubt in his voice.

"Actually, General, as I believe you realize, it's incredibly dangerous. Our assessment is that that sort of over-arching control could easily result in a nearly unbreakable tyranny. We will not take such an active role in society's affairs again, except in the case of an extreme emergency."

A few days later, SG-1 stood in front of the stargate as the wormhole back to Earth formed. Their discussions with the Achean government had been fruitful, but Jack was troubled.

"You know, Carter, these people have a nice thing going for them here, very peaceful and well-ordered and all that, but they seem, I don't know..."

"Insular?"

"Yeah, like the only thing that keeps them from falling into their own navels is the threat from the Goa'uld. I don't know what'll happen to them if the System Lords are ever defeated completely."

"I think humans need conflict to avoid decadence," said Daniel. "Without an external threat humans will have to supply their own. Somehow I don't think we'll ever have any lack of that on Earth."

"I hope not," said Jack as they stepped into the event horizon. "Otherwise, we're all likely to end up as Barbie dolls in plastic boxes."