Chapter 1
Tea'c, Vala, Cam, Sam and General Landry at Jack's Cabin following the events of Uninvited
"I'm glad to see you're all having a good time," said General Landry while pulling up a chair at the card table.
"Yes Sir. Last night was the best fun I've had since, I don't know when. The look on your face when I said 'Sir! Get down!' What? A hundred times the man has told me to relax," replied Cam.
Exasperated, General Landry replied "Not that much."
Almost laughing, Cam said "Yes Sir. Well, its good to see you relaxing too Sir."
Then General Landry, nodding told Vala "Alright! Now deal me in."
"Before we start a new round, can I ask you guys a favor?" Sam inquired.
"Why of course Samantha. You know that you never have need to ask us that," replied Vala.
"Yeah Sam," continued Cam. "You know that."
"Okay, well here goes. Do you think that you'd be willing to represent the Tau'ri, Tok'ra and Jaffa at the Underworld Council? You see, we have incredible technology there, and I've been telling the others that I believe that while maybe not providing full access to all of our technology and medicine, or at least not right away, that its finally time for us to start resurfacing. Teal'c, I'd need you to get Bray'tac and maybe 2-5 others that you really think could represent your people well to represent the Jaffa, but I think that for the Tau'ri having at least one of Generals Hammond, O'Neill and you Sir as well as Daniel, Cam, Vala, Sergents Siler and Harrimon, and even recruiting Jonas Quinn would be the best. As for the Tok'ra, Anise, and Gareth being their representatives."
"Underworld Council? What the hell is that? And since when does the place you go when you die have great tech and medicine? I didn't think you needed a doctor after you died."
"500 billion years ago, long before the Alterans ever came to this world, the surface of Earth was a thriving planet full of peoples, cities, creatures and cultures, much like it is today. The major difference was that deep beneath the surface of the planet was another thriving world of peoples and creatures who lived together in harmony. While the surface was plagued with wars and conflicts that hindered progress, the underworld, Praxis, experience thousands of years of completely uninterupted progress."
"They were unbelieveablely advanced when I first made the journey there, during a time when the surface had relatively the same level of technology as America does now. Eventually, I relocated beneath the surface myself as to excape the political circus that I'd dealt with for over two centuries. In time, I was able to relocate large enough populations of thousands of rare species of plants and animals as well as several million people. Three hundred years after I'd begun my relocation project, this solar system was taken into chaos. Earth's surface began to be barraged with massive meteors and asteroids. We opened the gateways to everyone at this point, trying to salvage anything and everything we could."
"However, before we could evacuate everyone and thing, we were forced to seal ourselves in. Every individual city and dome was sealed completely. The tunnels were abandoned and all contact with the others cells was cut off. We flooded each cell with two chemicals. The first being a drug that, loosely speaking, induced a full coma. The second being an extremely advanced suspended animation fluid so that, in theory, as long as none of the fluid was drained away, all of the lives within it would be preserved from both the effects of time and all physical needs."
"We placed billions of sensors throughout the star system and throughout Earth that would drain away the fluid when it finally became safe for life to recommence on the planet and would trigger the release of a slow release stimulant into the cells to reawaken all the inhabitants. 100 million years ago, the first cells were awakened, awakened to an unknown world. What had once been the surface of the planet, then was encased in a giant, 100 thousand mile thick bubble of rock, both molten and hard and metal, leaving 100 miles between the trinium "atmospheric shell" and normal landmass and oceans."
"With so much uninhabited land, and being that it was "our" land the people decided to start expanding and building there rather than breaking for the unknown surface. Over time, more and more cells were awakened until they are had been awakened, roughly 10 million years ago. Some stayed and rebuilt Praxis while many others started on the underworld, as what had been our surface began to be called."
"I can still remember the day when the first request to go to the surface landed on my desk. It was a tough call for me. Its not like we lacked anything. We were fully self-sufficient. However, I was able to recall the way the warm sun felt and knew that it was unfair that I had memories of the surface while most of my people did not and so I ran it by the councel and it was soon approved. Before long more and more requests were passed and more people went to the surface. A small few choose to stay on the surface and attempt to "civilize" the nomadic people of earth but most returned with stories about the people above."
"143 years ago, my then protoge, convinced me to join her on a trip to the surface. We arrived in a setting that while hopelessly far behind in technology to her, was unnervingly similar to the era of my own youth. We spent twenty years in England and then twenty-three traveling around the globe, seeing the new world, and learning both its history and its most prominant languages before returning home."
"It was only twenty-five years ago that I once again came to the surface, this time, unlike the first, I'd decided that I wanted to be part of modern society and to try new things. I decided to be someone that I'd never been before. Since I'd been a physician, medical research scientist, monster expert, huntress and world leader, I choose to do what I never would have considered before but still would provide a thrill. So, since I actually had more of a history of figthing against all of my world's armed forces and my "care taker" was air force, I decided that it was a good place to start, plus it'd provide thrills for me. I wound up choosing theoretical astrophysics as its something that I could do in conjencture with being in the air force and is a fringe science, and I've only really ever worked on the fringes of science."
"I've never not kept contact with my world and people and have actually kept them up to date as to what's gone on up here. I know that non-disclosure means not sharing information but being its practically a whole other world down there, one that has never known space travel, aliens, the stargate, anything and being that all of us from down there are experts at keeping secrets, its not like the SGC is going to get revealed or anything. Plus, I know that even with all the power I weld down there, that if it weren't for the knowledge of constant threats of extra-terrestrial invasion and or destruction, the council would never even begin to consider the possiblity of beginning to share our knowledge with anyone. We'd continue keeping hidden until your technology developed a lot more."
"Now don't think that my people don't care being that its only now that they're considering sharing, its just that, well, for one thing, no one was ready to accept that Earth had already on it a far more developed culture; one that predates everything scientists could have ever guessed. Another being that the Ori are a far more powerful threat than other that has ever threatened the world, and Earth is our home too, and we want to keep it safe. Its the only world we've ever had a connection too. Our ancestors didn't come from another place. We evolved on this planet. We never had any extraterrestrial interference or involvement of any kind in our history until our world became incased in a new one, in the Earth you know. We aren't prepared to let her go."
"Someday I hope that our peoples can fully merge, that instead of being many peoples that we can be a single people. That surface humans can move to Praxis and that creatures from the underworld can find haven on the surface. The underworld is an actual place and isn't really for the dead. Its full of living things."
"Okay. Wow! Well, I'm game for this Sam. Will you be representing us as well?" inquired Cam.
"I can't. I'll be going down there with you all but I'll be getting caught up on work. I do plan to show you around our capital, and the first city I ever had built, Nero-Praxis though. Over time, we've worked on creating translator programs so that our archives could be read and utilized by those who don't know any of our languages and many of us do speak at least three surface tougues in anticipation for the day when we'd start allowing surface people into our world. Recently, we've also added Ancient and three dialects of Goul'd into the translator program so that even more people would one day be able to read and understand our materials."
"Colonel, how long exactly have plans been in the works for one day sharing knowledge with us?" asked General Landry.
"Twenty thousand years, give or take a few centuries," replied Sam.
"So, how old are you really Samantha?"
"Depends on how you judge it. In linear time meaning years since my birth, or if you want to know how many years old I've lived, not including the long time in suspended animation."
Vala responded saying "I want to know both."
"Okay," Sam said. "In linear time I'm roughly 500 billion years old though I've only actually lived about 25 million 600 years which has the approximate difference of 499 billion, 974 million, 999 thousand, and 400 years and no, its not normal, even among my people to live that long. I just had done something stupid in my youth that altered my DNA and has prevented me from ever being able to actually age."