Note: This will make absolutely no sense if you haven't seen "A Measure of Salvation". It's just some short, silly (very silly, I think) speculation based on the report at the end. All characters are products of my imagination. Enjoy!

ABOUT 3,000 YEARS AGO:

She sneezed, then sneezed again almost immediately. Then swore, loudly, because her face mask had been down and she'd just sprayed Asclepius-knew-what across the beacon's entire surface.

And that meant it would have to be sterilized all over again - what a waste of time they didn't have! She cursed herself for an idiot. Months of preparation, imminent deployment, carefully sterile environments all the way from Kobol... and she sneezed on it.

"What was that?" Iapetus' voice said over the earpiece.

She opened her mouth to confess, but heard herself saying, "Ah... Nothing."

"Sounded like you were shouting."

"Yeah, I banged my elbow." She flinched from the lie even as she rationalized it. The beacon was for future generations so, okay, contaminating it with her germs wasn't thoughtful. She could be sneezing from allergies, from illness, from anything. Who knew what humans would and would not be immune to in years to come?

But we don't have the time. I'm doing us a favor by ignoring this. Anyway, a few years of cosmic radiation should fry anything, she thought with deliberately blind optimism.

"Okay," Iapetus said. "If everything checks out we can go ahead with the deployment."

Last chance to confess. Maybe she would've - her impulse to lie was already looking like a bad one - but she felt another sneeze pricking at her eyes and said the quickest, easiest thing: "It looks fine." Switched off her earpiece and sneezed once again.

"I'm coming down with something," she muttered to herself as she exited the beacon's chamber. Stripping off her hood, gloves, and the useless mask, she glanced over her shoulder at the small machine resting snugly in the hold of the Pithos. Their gift to later mankind.

Their irreparably contaminated gift.

She decided to skip watching the deployment. Instead, she took herself to the infirmary, where she learned she was, indeed, coming down with something. Something fairly ugly, in fact.

By then, of course, it was too late, so Pandora decided the best thing to do was to simply keep her mouth shut.

And hope.

--end!--

Another Note: Pandora means "all gifts".